I guess this means Roll20 will stop working through Hangouts in April?

I guess this means Roll20 will stop working through Hangouts in April?

Super shitty.

Originally shared by DiceStream

It was a good ride.

I just received the following e-mail:

Hi,
At the Google Horizon event in September 2016, we previewed a new experience for Hangouts focused on meetings.

In order to streamline our efforts further, we will be retiring the Google+ Hangouts API that enables developers to build apps for the older version of Hangouts video calls. This API was originally intended to support social scenarios for consumer users as part of Google+, whereas Hangouts is now turning to focus on enterprise use cases.

Starting today, no new apps will be allowed, though existing apps will continue to work until April 25th, 2017. Users may continue to access existing apps through current entry points until that date.

We understand this will impact developers who have invested in our platform. We have carefully considered this change and believe that it allows us to give our users a more targeted Hangouts desktop video experience going forward.

We welcome your continued support.

Best regards,
The Hangouts team

So it looks like Dicestream on Google Hangouts has an end of life of April 25th, 2017.

I'm going to start shifting my efforts into a Discord app, or if possible a stand alone app. I'll keep you all informed of any new details.

-Mike Hasko, the guy behind DiceStream.

Comments

  1. I wonder if Hangouts will eventually be bundled away to some sort of thing that businesses pay for instead of an application anyone can use with their account.

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  2. More troubling is that I've been following a thread at Roll20 where, because of their update to newer technology with their video/audio chat thing, there have been quite a number of people who have been having problems getting everyone together without success of getting everyone to see/hear everyone else at the same time.

    These people have been falling back on Discord, Skype, and of course Hangouts for the social aspect of their games. This news from the Hangouts team is concerning, to say the least.

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  3. Yeah, one-stop shopping for game/voice/video seems dead. Back to what we used to do with one application for game, and another for voice.

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  4. For our games, it's been a necessity to do that anyway. Hangouts has gotten laggier and more unreliable when we play Roll20 games, even without much of anything actually happening in the game board.

    We've been using Discord for chat and links, and only now use Roll20 for the actual game stuff. And it's actually ended up being a lot smoother of an experience for us and allowed players with weaker machines to play by separating the apps.

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  5. Casey G. Discord is planning on rolling out videochat sometime this year. If they can do that, then it'll be a viable replacement for Hangouts - and I suspect extensions would let it serve as a replacement for Roll20.

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  6. We've been using Roll20 without Hangouts. Things have been running pretty smooth that way. When trying to run it in Hangouts we've had all kinds of strange problems.

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  7. Seems like for now chatting through Hangouts and having Roll20 in a different window will have to do. I've heard good things about Discord.

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  8. I have a friend who uses Roll20 quite a bit, and his groups have had the same trouble Alex Hakobian mentioned. And what about Hangouts on Air for live YouTube videos? Seems like we hit a technology peak for online gaming about two or three years ago, and now it's fragmenting for no good reason.

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  9. Super weird! Now I got that email for some reason. I am in no way a developer of anything in the intertubes.

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  10. I attempted to use it last night, and it didn't work. had to use google+ for the hangout, but roll20 directly for the game.

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  11. Oh really, Hoov? Maybe we'll be doing that tonight then...

    Could they have cut resources for this version of Hangouts so that it sucks even if it still works?

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  12. Thinking about it, it's been shitty for me for a couple months. I had to turn my bandwidth way down to even use it.

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  13. yeah i had a google+ event/hangout, then clicked the roll20 app - and nothing. it minimized the cameras but just black screen for roll20. it worked opening in roll20 directly, but everybody will need an account.

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  14. Damn, that sucks.... We've been using Hangouts and Roll20 for a while and it has been a great ride. It's shitty to lose such a great platform.

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  15. Well, we can still use them, Bob, just individually, not on one platform. It's just becoming inelegant.

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  16. That was my point, hangouts will no longer be a platform, instead it will be a component of a solution.

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