Autodesk is backing away from its Stingray game development engine and will halt its sale on January 7, 2018.
This means that, one week into the new year, game developers will be unable to purchase or renew subscriptions for Stingray, though current subscribers will be able to use the software until their plan expires.
In a post detailing the coming closure, Autodesk explains that its customers seem to be flocking toward Unreal and Unity as game development standards and, as such, believes that its own efforts would be better spent trying to work closely with those two engines than trying to compete and develop its own alternative.
For now, the change means that Stingray will no longer be developed, updated, or sold as a standalone engine, though the 1.9 version software will be still included with Maya LT subscriptions for the foreseeable future.
The move comes also roughly five months after the company discounted its suite of game middleware products. At the time, Scaleform, Beast, HumanIk, and Navigation were all shut down in a similar manner. Additionally, the announcement falls less than a month after Autodesk laid off roughly 13 percent of its workforce to facilitate its shift toward a purely subscription-based software model.