[pansa2]

Given their limited shelf-life, I’d have thought this would be less of an issue for games than for other software? Many games rely on Lua, for example, which is maintained by a team of just 3 people, and it seems only one of them writes most of the code.

https://github.com/lua/lua/graphs/contributors

[wccrawford]

True for a single game, but developers don't like to learn an entirely new system every time they make a new product. With Unreal and Unity, you might have to learn a few new things when new major versions come out, but your old knowledge is still very much applicable. And if any 1 developer quits working on those engines, it's going to keep trucking along.

But the worry here is that if the main developer of DragonRuby quits, it's dead in the water. Sure, you can use the old version and it'll probably still work, but there won't be any improvements, whereas other engines are constantly improving.

[Applejinx]

This particular objection doesn't worry me, because all the really effective 'engines' I know about, that provide an environment to be built upon by others, are originated by and run by a single visionary person.

From my perspective, this is an asset rather than a bug, provided the person is committed to his project. It's a guiding force that stops it being a vague laundry list of feature requests.