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The Death of Unity

gamedeveloper.com

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Re: The Death of Unity

#81

Post by garblegarble »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #51

>Imagine releasing a game for 99 cents under the personal plan, where Steam takes 30% off the top for their platform fee, and then unity takes 20 cents per install, and now you're making a maximum of 46 cents on the dollar. Not only that, but with this predatory practice of taking any percent (steam, apple) or fix dollar value, makes just having a game up a potential liability. If you need to refund anyone you are re…

Do you have evidence for that claim? My understanding is that Apple takes their cut after any refunds have been settled[1], and the same appears to be true for Steam[2].

1: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/does-apple-keep-its-c...

2: https://www.techradar.com/news/how-steam-refunds-are-a-bless...

Re: The Death of Unity

#82

Post by 9dev »

kevingadd wrote: post #61
hitpointdrew wrote: post #51

>Imagine releasing a game for 99 cents under the personal plan, where Steam takes 30% off the top for their platform fee, and then unity takes 20 cents per install, and now you're making a maximum of 46 cents on the dollar. Not only that, but with this predatory practice of taking any percent (steam, apple) or fix dollar value, makes just having a game up a potential liability. If you need to refund anyone you are re…

It's also catastrophic for services like Game Pass where the developer gets a flat fee regardless of how many people install the game. You can take a flat fee that seems reasonable based on an expectation of 100k installs, but then your game turns out to be a smash hit and it gets a million installs. Now you're on the hook for a massive amount of money to Unity but the money you got is barely enough to cover it, if i…

That situation sounds horrible, is that actually a thing? Why didn’t the industry protest these business models in the first place?

Re: The Death of Unity

#83

Post by autokad »

samtho wrote: post #74
byyoung3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If I bought a nail gun, a saw, a pile of wood, and proceeded to build a house, did DeWalt actually build that structure? Any reasonable person would say no. You seem to have the same thought process that people had about computer animation. For some reason, many people were under the impression that just because it happens on the computer, you can simply ask Maya to create a full-length animated feature. The platform…

that's a good point

Re: The Death of Unity

#84

Post by aaaaaalop »

badsectoracula wrote: post #46
qayxc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two types of game developers: those who finish and publish games and those who write their own game engine. Every minute spent on re-inventing the wheel for the umpteenth time is time lost on actually writing and polishing the actual game. Tools like Unity were a godsent for small teams and solo devs who just wanted to write and publish games. While libraries like SDL can lighten the burden somewhat, they are…

> There's two types of game developers: those who finish and publish games and those who write their own game engine. This is wrong, there are tons of finished games that use custom engines. For example one of the most recent indie games i bought was Zortch which was made by a single person and used a custom engine. EDIT: actually here is a page that collects some custom engines, ranging from big studios down to one…

This is meaningless without percentages. How many devs didn't release their games for each game in this list?

Re: The Death of Unity

#85

Post by __loam »

garblegarble wrote: post #81
hitpointdrew wrote: post #51

>Imagine releasing a game for 99 cents under the personal plan, where Steam takes 30% off the top for their platform fee, and then unity takes 20 cents per install, and now you're making a maximum of 46 cents on the dollar. Not only that, but with this predatory practice of taking any percent (steam, apple) or fix dollar value, makes just having a game up a potential liability. If you need to refund anyone you are re…

Do you have evidence for that claim? My understanding is that Apple takes their cut after any refunds have been settled[1], and the same appears to be true for Steam[2]. 1: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/does-apple-keep-its-c... 2: https://www.techradar.com/news/how-steam-refunds-are-a-bless...

Also worth noting that the unity fee only takes effect once you're making a pretty large amount of revenue, so most devs will be unaffected. Still shitty and I'm glad I made the switch to Godot a few months ago, but not as bad as people are making it out to be.

Re: The Death of Unity

#86

Post by fxtentacle »

badsectoracula wrote: post #46
qayxc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two types of game developers: those who finish and publish games and those who write their own game engine. Every minute spent on re-inventing the wheel for the umpteenth time is time lost on actually writing and polishing the actual game. Tools like Unity were a godsent for small teams and solo devs who just wanted to write and publish games. While libraries like SDL can lighten the burden somewhat, they are…

> There's two types of game developers: those who finish and publish games and those who write their own game engine. This is wrong, there are tons of finished games that use custom engines. For example one of the most recent indie games i bought was Zortch which was made by a single person and used a custom engine. EDIT: actually here is a page that collects some custom engines, ranging from big studios down to one…

That's an amazing list. And it hammers your point home. There are plenty of custom engines, it seems.

Re: The Death of Unity

#87

Post by hnthrowaway0328 »

chaostheory wrote: post #63
mdtrooper wrote: post #4

Well, I write one thing: https://godotengine.org/

You beat me to it. I don’t understand the licensing changes unless Roccitiello isn’t aware of both the existence of Godot AND its new C# support. There will always be someone to say that an open source project can’t replace a mature, proprietary one since it doesn’t match all the features or ecosystem. Historically, this changes really fast once you make the licensing terms bad enough to make a large chunk of your cu…

IMO this move doesn't really hurt the hobbyists (200K installs + $200K over last 12 months). And Godot as an OSS still has to feed the hands that make it eventually.

Re: The Death of Unity

#88

Post by msla »

qayxc wrote: post #18
ghostzilla wrote: post #7

About time. What makes a game unique in spirit is its engine.

There's two types of game developers: those who finish and publish games and those who write their own game engine. Every minute spent on re-inventing the wheel for the umpteenth time is time lost on actually writing and polishing the actual game. Tools like Unity were a godsent for small teams and solo devs who just wanted to write and publish games. While libraries like SDL can lighten the burden somewhat, they are…

> There's two types of game developers: those who finish and publish games and those who write their own game engine.

Which is why that silly "Quake" thing never went anywhere.

What was John Carmack thinking? How did he ever imagine "Doom' and "Quake" could ever get released?

Re: The Death of Unity

#89

Post by Quikinterp »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #77
kevingadd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also catastrophic for services like Game Pass where the developer gets a flat fee regardless of how many people install the game. You can take a flat fee that seems reasonable based on an expectation of 100k installs, but then your game turns out to be a smash hit and it gets a million installs. Now you're on the hook for a massive amount of money to Unity but the money you got is barely enough to cover it, if i…

Our game Void Bastards was in gamepass for 2 years and we had many million installs.

If this thing was already in effect during that period, would you have been screwed over?

Re: The Death of Unity

#90

Post by __loam »

sydbarrett74 wrote: post #41

IPO's are usually the beginning of the end as far as a company being responsive to its customers and producing quality. From the time an IPO is made, the company is responsive only to its shareholders and that's it. Thanks, Bork and Friedman!

And with OSS alternatives like Godot available, it's getting harder to justify using Unity.
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