8BIT Closes Its Doors

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August 21, 2013

18 Comments

8BIT surprises once again with a seemingly sudden game changer. As of today, the company is officially closed for business.

Their Support Forums will continue to be open for another 30 days, but after that, they will no longer support their products—including their core product, Standard Theme. For those looking for a partner post-Standard, 8BIT recommends Woothemes and StudioPress.

The company behind Standard Theme was made up of John Saddington, Chris Ames, Jared Erickson, Tom McFarlin, Michael Novotny, Eric Dye, and Jason Bradley. 8BIT was also the organization behind WP Daily, and the closure of 8BIT comes on the heels of the company pulling the plug on its popular publication.

In his goodbye post, ringleader John Saddington assures readers that this was a collective and mutual decision on behalf of the team:

…“everything is in a great place relationally and life has changed the pace and direction for all of the partners” … “There’s no hidden agendas, no hard feelings, and certainly no conspiracy. As I mentioned before, besides death and taxes, change is guaranteed.”

All of the guys from 8BIT are talented and ambitious in their own right, so we can’t help but wonder what they will each do next.

We do know that John Saddington has raised over 56k on Kickstarter for his project Pressgram, which is similar to Instagram (but, unlike Instagram, allows users to retain control over their data and the content they create).

Could Pressgram be what Saddington is going to focus on next? What about the others?

What do you all think of 8BIT’s closure?

Image: 8BIT

There are 18 comments

August 21, 2013 #

ThatGuyKC

Kind of pissed. I started following Saddington the month after he first launched Tentblogger. Since then I’ve been a fan and user of 8BIT, WP Daily Co and Standard Theme. All 4 have closed up shop now.

The team formerly known as 8BIT does great work. They are all talented and hard working. I wish them the best. However, I’m going to be a cautious fan going forward.

I understand change. I’m a dad w/ 3 kids. You gotta roll w/ the punches. But I haven’t been a fan of their recent exits or the trend of cold turkey closures.
- May 6, 2014 #
  
  BusinessUnleashed
  
  If you read John’s blog, you’ll see how some of the decisions we’re probably made because he was quick sick last year.
August 21, 2013 #

Ben R Woodard

Gotta tell you, I hate it. I think they filled a definite gap in the WordPress community. An active base theme that mid level developers could use and grow with. Who else is working closely with the WordPress core developments so closely and has an active community around it? While there are other Theme Companies out there, I haven’t found one that does what 8BIT does…um…did. 🙁
August 21, 2013 #

Daniel C Berman

I am sorry to hear that they are closing, I kinda hope that they release the Standard Theme for further development by others if desired.
August 21, 2013 #

csfalcao

Sad, good people..
August 21, 2013 #

Shaleane Marie

So they became too greedy to care about what they started and want to move up in the world… it happens.
August 21, 2013 #

davidlaietta

Most important, we need to know what is happening to all of that beautiful, old school videogame art that can’t be easily removed from the office. I wish I was cool enough to have a space like that
- August 27, 2013 #
  
  Chris Rouse
  
  I’m imaging them carefully removing the drywall and taking pieces of it home with them.
August 21, 2013 #

Chris Langille

I completely understand if they out-grew their current careers, but with such a thriving community around their product(s), I’ll never understand the abruptness of their exit, and brevity of their final goodbye. If they are truly passionate about publishing, they’ll sell Standard Theme to someone so that the thousands of customers who depend on it aren’t left in the dust. That said, they are some good people, and I wish them nothing but the best going forward.
August 21, 2013 #

Jon

Whoa… I could roll with shutting down wpdaily, but shutting down a theme shop on 30 days notice seems severe. It’s hard to believe they’re all breaking up own good terms and this is just inevitable change….

Makes me beyond nervous that Saddington will flake out on delivering Pressgram as promised or even at all. Not to worried to lose my small chip in on the kick starter, but still it won’t surprise me at all if that’s the next project to get axed.
August 23, 2013 #

Jimmy Krug

I certainly understand any business closing its doors. It happens all the time. That said, it seems like there was very little thought for the community of people built around the Standard Theme product. At the very least, you could offer the rights to the product to the highest bidder in the marketplace. If there was a conscious decision to bring the product down with the ship, it would be nice to know why?
- August 27, 2013 #
  
  Chris Rouse
  
  Standard is licensed under GPL. Anyone can take it, rebrand it, and start selling it as their own if they want. The sale would essentially be for the customer names, not the product itself.
August 26, 2013 #

Chris Howard

Given they don’t appear to be selling off the business, and in light of WooThemes comments for changing pricing models, this really reinforces what WooThemes said about “lifetime support and upgrades” being not overly worth anything if it means the business can’t survive.

I’m not familiar with Standard Theme’s agreement (whether it was subscribed support or lifetime) but I’m sure the guys at Woo will be feeling vindicated in their pricing decisions to increase their long term viability.

As one who writes and sells WP plugins without subscription, I am considering my own options. Do I go “8bit” and simply shut down and start a new venture. Do I sell up? Or do I go “Woo” and switch to subscription?

The last is the one I will be moving to, but with grandfathering from the outset (I’m not big like Woo, so can carry that more easily).

It is disappointing that 8Bit didn’t sell up but I hope someone out there makes them an offer.
September 13, 2013 #

williamfoote

Clearly there is more to the story than is being revealed and without knowing what that is, it is impossible to pass judgment on the decision itself. Here is what I can say though …

In the incredibly busy WP theme and now WP news space, I forget many more sites than I remember. I can say honestly state both 8BIT and WP Daily stood out in my eyes. It is somewhat reasonable to assume many other felt the same way as I do. So I ask myself again, why the sudden closures?

I’m only speculating here, and of course have not walked in management’s shoes, but the only thing that makes sense to me is they were out of money. I’m in love with WP as a game changer for many businesses, but to be sure there are a few downsides to WordPress economics as well. Scale … and … (un)sustainability are two of the obvious ones.

To echo the points of a few others, it is more than a little bit ironic that this all comes on the heels of Woo raising prices and the fact that the there is a ton of WP buzz in general right now revolving around prices.

So what I saw with my two eyes in 8BIT and WP Daily were businesses that looked from the outside like they were thriving, adding customers and churning out awesomeness. But adding customers and having a talent laden management team for a business lacking a model that scales correctly is a death sentence. Customers cost money. Talented management costs even more money. If the revenue per customer being taken in is not enough to cover the aforementioned, then the business is not sustainable.

I arrive at this conclusion not only because of the WordPress economics argument though. It is the fact they are walking away as opposed to selling or handing off that is most telling. There are loyal customers being walked away from and very clearly they are as a business not lacking demand. Those two traits are enormously valuable and there are too many bigger shops out there with deep enough pockets to snap that value up unless there is something else going on.

That something else in my opinion has to be a very poor underlying financial situation whereby it makes more sense and is easier to just walk away than to try and salvage the business for the sake of its customers and stakeholders.

To reiterate, I am speculating. Rightly or wrongly I do not know. What I do know for sure is that sitting around voicing strong opinions in the comments section of a blog is easy to do. What’s not so easy to do is wrap up a business you’ve put your blood, sweat, tears and years into. Indeed, that is tough stuff and can never be done in a manner that satisfies everyone. I wish the whole team my very best.
March 10, 2015 #

thanghn92

I could roll with shutting down wpdaily, but shutting down a theme shop on 30 days notice seems severe gia vang giay nam thoi trang FiFa Online 3 thoi trang nu tu vi hang ngay xem boi mon ngon am thuc It’s hard to believe they’re all breaking up on good terms and this is just inevitable change….
March 14, 2015 #

vuminhkyanh

It is disappointing that 8Bit didn’t sell up but I hope someone out there makes them an offer.

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Image: 8BIT

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