Unexpectedly, Alibaba's core game developer Yun Feng has resigned, citing the reason as "Ant Engine project being shut down."

Yesterday, the well-known technical guru Yun Feng in the gaming industry released an article titled "Starting Afresh" on his personal blog. The opening sentence was quite unexpected: "Today is my last day working at the Alibaba Center in Guangzhou."

Yun Feng is indeed resigning from Alibaba. According to the blog post, Yun Feng chose to leave because "the company shut down the Ant Engine project," and next, he plans to "develop an independent game for the Windows platform."

From the outcome, Yun Feng's decision seems sudden. However, after carefully reading the blog post, it becomes evident that every beginning and ending is his autonomous choice, and the constant basis for this has always been: steadfast dedication to his own ideas.

30+ years spent in the companionship of games and programming

Born in 1979, Yun Feng, now 45 years old, has had over 30 years of experience with games and programming: learning programming at an adult university with his mother during elementary school, participating in computer science competitions since middle school, creating his first mature software Cview in high school, releasing the open-source software Fenghun Engine during college—even when he later worked at NetEase, it was because of the Fenghun Engine.

Yun Feng once mentioned in an interview with CSDN's "New Programmer":

"At that time, the team at NetEase developing 'Journey to the West' used the underlying system I open-sourced online—Fenghun. NetEase hoped that I would part-time as a developer for the underlying rendering. After working remotely for over a month, to facilitate communication between teams, I officially joined NetEase. Therefore, from the perspective of coincidence, I first developed open-source software, and then entered NetEase to work on the 'Journey to the West' series, staying for ten years."

In this blog post, Yun Feng also mentioned, "Entering NetEase was because of the Fenghun Engine I had been developing since college. By chance, I also saved a failed game project (Journey to the West)."

After working at NetEase for ten years, Yun Feng found that he could not create more of what he wanted at NetEase. Therefore, in 2011, he left and co-founded Simple Joy Technology with Ding Dang (Zhan Zhonghui, then NetEase's Chief Operating Officer), subsequently developing projects such as "Momo Hero" and "Heartbeat Manor."

In 2017, Simple Joy Technology was acquired by Alibaba, and Yun Feng thus left management work behind to focus solely on doing something he wanted to do and was good at—game engines. Yun Feng mentioned in his blog: If a game company wants long-term development, owning its own underlying infrastructure is strategically important. However, the returns of in-house development are not immediate; it may fail, and it may take many years to see profits.

Therefore, Yun Feng stated: "This must be done by someone who does not seek immediate returns and has strong self-motivation. Besides myself, who else could do it?"

Planning to develop an independent game for the Windows platform

Regarding the development of the Ant Engine, Yun Feng and his small team took careful steps for six years. He believed he could rate this engine at 80 points and, more importantly, this project did not accumulate technical debt. Just when he thought the Ant Engine was about to bear fruit, Alibaba chose to shut down the project—this was also his reason for leaving.

"I feel that the company no longer wants to develop its own game client engine, at least it disagrees with my development plans for Ant Engine. Of course, these are personal speculations, only representing my personal views."

In March of this year, before Ding Dang left Alibaba, he helped Yun Feng open-source the Ant Engine. Subsequently, Yun Feng has been promoting the engine's development within the company:

"Throughout April, I had lengthy discussions with people from various project teams in the company, project producers, programmers, planners, artists... I feel that the things I said in a few weeks exceeded what was said in the past year. I conveyed my beliefs. Through the games we made, the quality of the engine was also demonstrated... I think I convinced many people, but unfortunately, the current company decision-makers ultimately gave up on it."

After a month of effort in communication, Yun Feng felt that even if he left, he would have no regrets: "I have done all I could, and the work of the past few years has been rewarding; it can be said that I am at peace with myself."

Regarding his plans after leaving Alibaba, the first thing Yun Feng mentioned was still the game engine he couldn't let go of:

The core functions of the engine have been completed, and the project is open-source, with the main developers working on maintenance in their spare time.

Secondly, he will develop an independent game for the Windows platform, but the specifics of this independent game are still being contemplated.

In fact, for Yun Feng, transitioning from making game engines to developing independent games is essentially the same thing. He once said in an interview with "New Programmer": "Essentially, making game engines is still about making games; the game engine is just a part of it. So, I define what I am currently doing not as a game engine, but as games."

Finally, borrowing a comment from an internet user: What is not enviable is the heroic and proud act of "choosing to leave and improve alone" but rather the persistence and clarity of being able to "find what one loves." Good luck.

Reference link: https://blog.codingnow.com/2024/05/farewell.html#more