Notice of Mozilla Hubs Service Termination and BELIVVR Team Disbandment, and BELIVVR’s Future Plans
Hello, this is Luke, the CEO of BELIVVR, a company focused on the metaverse and AI webtoons. Today, I am sharing some rather sad news along with our future direction.
Notice of Mozilla Hubs Service Termination and BELIVVR Team Disbandment, and Believer’s Future Plans
Hello, this is Luke, the CEO of BELIVVR, a company focused on the metaverse and AI webtoons. Today, I am sharing some rather sad news along with our future direction.
1. Downsizing of BELIVVR’s Team and Business, and Mozilla Hubs Service Termination
BELIVVR has managed to build some branding in the web metaverse in Korea, but the decline in interest in the metaverse has made business progress difficult. Although we had ongoing development projects this year, the costs of maintaining our current team were unsustainable, making additional projects crucial.
As some of you may know, Mozilla Foundation’s Hubs project announced its termination suddenly in February, declaring an end on May 31 Impact of Mozilla Hubs Termination
This was particularly bad news for us, given our branding tied to the open-source support from the Mozilla Foundation.
Despite attempting to capitalize on the Hubs market by presenting an open-source commercialization project to the Information and Communication Industry Promotion Agency, we ultimately faced rejection.
Following this setback, I had no choice but to disband the team. Anticipating the worst, I had begun transitioning code from May 9, and by May 17, after completing key development projects, the remaining team members were let go. I am deeply grateful and sorry to the team members who supported development until their last day.
Moving forward, I will operate as a solo developer, focusing on supporting existing clients and improving functionalities rather than aggressively expanding our customer base. Despite the unfortunate situation, our goal is to avoid inconveniencing existing customers, and I will explain our current measures and future plans.
2. Completion of Data Migration for All Scene Data on XRCLOUD
A key measure involves migrating data potentially affected by the termination of Mozilla Hubs. Many project files from Mozilla Hubs Editor Spoke were stored on XRCLOUD. The multimedia data in these files were linked remote url, and with the termination of Mozilla Hubs, these resources would become dead links. As of May 17, all data has been migrated to our server on Naver Cloud.
- Please contact us if any data has not been migrated.
Files from uploads-prod.reticulum.io should now be on api.xrcloud.app.
3. Adding Data Migration Functionality in XRCLOUD’s Web Editor (Spoke)
For those concerned about the termination of Mozilla Hubs, we have developed a migration feature. Although the Hubs team provided various migration options, non-developers or those using only the Spoke editor might find it challenging.
By importing legacy Spoke files into XRCLOUD, all multimedia files within the Spoke file are uploaded to Naver Cloud, changing their links. Therefore, if you have spaces on Mozilla Hubs, export the Spoke file and register it on XRCLOUD for migration. There might be some delay in publishing as all data is downloaded and uploaded.
- I was concerned that publicly releasing this feature might lead to an overwhelming number of migration requests compared to our server capacity. However, I decided to go ahead and make it public, thinking that it could turn into a business opportunity.
4. Commitment to Server Operation
Concerned that the team disbandment might result in lost files, we assure you that we will maintain the infrastructure at least until 2025. We promise to provide advance notice if an unexpected termination occurs.
5. Future Development Plans: Integration of Web Metaverse and AI Technologies
After receiving the code transitions from our developers, I, a computer science major with experience in web services and AI model development at Korea’s largest internet company, plan to continue operations and improvements within a solo developer scope. Believing in the evolution of the web into a 3D environment and its crucial role in the XR environment, I aim to sustain and grow, supporting current clients independently.
With the recent release of ChatGPT-4, solo developer productivity has significantly increased, making growth and improvement feasible.
I will continue developing AI NPCs, reducing the scale of the initial team projects. The goal is to run all servers for AI NPCs and Mozilla Hubs on a single desktop, enabling users to build their metaverse and AI services without the cloud, even in intranet environments. Most related technologies are open-source, so it’s a matter of time. By the latter half of this year, I hope to showcase this.
In XRCLOUD, I plan to integrate the following video AI NPC
- Integrating NPCs into XRCLOUD (web metaverse).
6. Gratitude and Commitment
I extend my gratitude to all team members since COMIXV, and as the remaining captain of this big ship (XRCLOUD), I have not given up. I hope the technical contributions of my team have benefited the world. We apologize to BELIVVR’s investors for not being able to deliver good investment results.
Personally, I view this as a new challenge, aiming to see how far a solo developer can go in the AI era. This also means more freedom for my hobbies. I plan to merge this blog into a high-reliability personal blog account and operate as a one-person development company, moving projects swiftly and flexibly.
P.S. AI Webtoon and Content Business
Our content business since ComicsV aimed for synergy between the metaverse and IP business, leaving assets like the character VRRI. These will continue to be utilized in AI metaverse development.
#WebMetaverse #XRCLOUD #WebXR
