Fable is winding down

[notpushkin]

> On November 15, 2024, the Fable product will be shut down. All users will no longer be able to sign up, log in, or access files. All customer data and project files will be permanently deleted [...]

> We recommend you look through your Fable files and export your projects off the platform (e.g. to mp4, gif, lottie… etc).

I genuinely am at a loss for words here. Somebody sat down and decided that giving you your project sources in some form is too much work, just a GIF export will do.

(For those looking to save their data: go for Lottie, it’s a bit more versatile and you can preserve vector data at least.)

EDIT: the ideal way to go here would of course be open sourcing the whole thing!

[invaderzirp]

This shouldn't be surprising anymore. This has happened every week since 2010. This is the VC cycle, and it happens over and over and over and over and over again. In fact, I'm sure there's some flashy new thing on the front page right now that will have its own corresponding "goodbye" thread in 2-10 years, and everyone will get screwed by that, too.

We can lament the current state of affairs, but let's not pretend it's abnormal.

[tsimionescu]

Was Fable using a well-known format, or is it a proprietary format specific to the app ? If it's proprietary, would it make any sense to export it directly? Is it even a file format, or is it possible they were simply storing various pieces of data related to your project in various places in backend DBs?

[next_xibalba]

I think it says more about us that we are at a loss for words or shocked that a startup goes under and its unwinding is messy. It is neither a big deal, nor is it particularly unethical that this should happen. Caveat emptor. This type of reaction should be reserved for real catastrophes like a cancer diagnosis, a war, the death of a loved one, etc.

Have we all become so fragile that something as minor as a startup with a small number of users shutting down causes us shock and disgust?

[SoftTalker]

It always amazes me how many of these "we're winding down X" stories hit the front page here and I've never heard of X. We really do work in silos, even if it doesn't seem that way.

[unsnap_biceps]

I had actually assumed it was the studio behind the Fable games, or some sort of mmrpg based on the games.

[parsimo2010]

Or maybe it's that you're well informed and X wasn't well known...

When a product shuts down it's usually because it wasn't profitable (or not profitable enough). Either they didn't get enough paying customers or they set their pricing too low. For whatever reason- but there's probably some correlation between a product shutting down and many people not being aware of its existence.

Even without being well known, these stories can hit the front page if a few people upvote a post quickly, and then the post gets a few sympathy votes as it rises up the page.

[neaanopri]

Maybe if you had heard of it, it wouldn't be winding down

[invaderzirp]

This is what happens when massive amounts of free money slosh around courtesy of ZIRP. Question is: will everybody rush to join whatever new darling graces the front page? Or will they finally learn their lesson?

[iLoveOncall]

The very best example of that is the Kagi search engine which, if you spend on time of HN, looks very widely used, but actually has less than 10,000 customers.

[tombert]

Yeah, I thought it was the F#-to-JS compiler, and I was sad for a moment. I've never heard of this app so it's hard for me to be too upset over it.

[ryanwhitney]

Sad, I’ve been waiting for the “figma of after effects”—one of the few positive (albeit unlikely) potentials around the failed adobe purchase.

“However, by the time we started to take Fable to market, AI was beginning to challenge the very nature of software itself, and our multi-modal bet with Prism wasn’t enough to cut through. And while we hold a strong pov on how the next generation of creative workflows should evolve, unfortunately, we don’t have the time to get there.”

Failed AI bet?

[oidar]

The app is built, why not just let it simmer for awhile. Are the costs of running it greater than the money it brings in?

[unshavedyak]

It's a great reason why webapps suck. A licensed local app would be great here, as the customer wouldn't lose value when Fable disappears. Yet now customers lose all value. Great.

So frustrating as a user.

[tptacek]

Keeping an app running requires personnel, personnel is expensive, and good personnel is unlikely to cool their heels on an EOL'd app at an EOL'd company.

[sunir]

Yes. The app costs. The insurance costs. The franchise tax costs. The accounting costs. The legal costs.

[imiric]

If investors are getting nervous and want a faster ROI, they can decide to bail and force a rapid shutdown.

[henning]

> However, by the time we started to take Fable to market, AI was beginning to challenge the very nature of software itself

No it didn't. ChatGPT spitting out snippets of broken shit where you have to tell it exactly what you want and think through the entire architecture yourself is not a challenge to the nature of software. Especially older models that were even worse than the current 2024 ones.

Also, AI-generated code is still code. The underlying hardware still works the same.

[moralestapia]

If the founders drop by this thread:

* Please open source it! *

This is the best conclusion for everybody involved.

[franze]

Open Sourcing is a lot of work. Plus it might contain (even huge) parts that can not be open sourced. And even unknown parts where real ownership and patents might be unknown.

[schnebbau]

From their terms:

> You must be 18 years of age or older and reside in the United States or any of its territories to use the Services

In hindsight, excluding 95.3% of the world from using their product may have been a mistake.

[pc86]

What's the TAM of people who want a web-app vector graphics and animation tool? It's certainly less than 8 billion.

[groby_b]

How on earth does the "AI! Paradigm change!" noise make any sense as reason for a shutdown?

[ratedgene]

Huh, it's interesting the supposition is that AI tools are the future, therefore they're unable to compete in time especially when they seemed perfectly poised to adopt that strategy.

Why wouldn't they use that to sell another round to bridge?

[masto]

I was just looking at motion graphics (I guess it's called motion design now) tools yesterday. I have a small YouTube channel and I was noodling around with the idea of making a little intro screen that just does some kind of swishy flooshy thing. I am very good at operating technical software, but I have no graphic design skills, so as much as I am concerned about and skeptical about AI "art", I thought I'd see what's out there. Maybe instead of starting from a template, it could generate an idea that I could finish my own way.

To get to the point: I didn't find anything that looked usable. Maybe it's telling that I didn't find Fable/Prism at all. But from what I can make of their site, it seems to be about adding (to my eye, unpleasant and unnecessary) textures, rather than generating new animations.

This looked like a nice piece of software with a lot of functionality and a meaningful customer base. It sucks that everything is grow, grow, grow, grow, exit, or die. I've been contemplating starting something, but I don't know if there's any oxygen left for the idea of simply making something people want and selling/operating it at a reasonable profit.

[hiyer]

I thought it was the reading community app [1], which I use off and on. Never heard of these guys, so nothing to see here for me.

1. https://fable.co/

[your_challenger]

What does AI have to do for the shutting down of a motion graphics design app?

They focused on the wrong thing, spent too much money and decided to call it quits.

[a1o]

Has someone reimplemented the flash Editor in some open source project? I know there's a player made in rust.

[bruce511]

I found the "why are we closing down" to be somewhat weak.

I mean, you're closing down cause you ran out of cash right? But apparently the app is beloved by customers... right?

Something about AI (which seems somewhat vague...)

Anyway, why not just be honest? We swung for the fences, didn't quite get there, the money is all gone, and no-one wants yo give us more...

Frankly as post mortems go, this one is pretty weak.

[karmakaze]

I was wondering the same, was it a decision or a realization? I suppose the decision part is to do it now rather than later when it can get messier. I've gone down with a startup ship and it was rather pointless.

[blacksqr]

Do they live happily ever after?

[adamc]

Yet another example of how startups are often a negative for customers.