Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume • Hacker News Board

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#51

Post by donatj » Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 2:52 AM UTC

Any way you slice it, it's a stupid regressive way to charge for an engine by a company that already makes an unimaginable amount of money.

Their "fix" requires fingerprinting people's computers and phoning home, both of which should really be seen as privacy violations.

And all that said, at it's heart there no justifiable reason the developer should be charged for every device I install something on. The developers are not making more money, why should the engine makers get a larger cut.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#52

Post by Qwertious » Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

Ygg2 wrote: post #40

everyone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used XNA, then MS killed it for no reason, then I switched to Unity, been using it since 2012, today I'm learning Godot. Imo Godot is the new indie engine. it has the same feel as XNA and Unity. There's nothing wrong with Unreal, its a great engine, but it does not feel the same. XNA / Unity / Godot / indie engines, u just sit down and start writing C# code and can write your whole game and ignore the engine featur…

One niche Godot (or any OSS game engine) can't fulfill is seamless console ports.

Godot can't but Godot* can, where Godot* is a downstream fork of Godot maintained by $COMPANY that provides a seamless console port. There are a couple of companies trying to do this.

In the long term, if Godot gets big enough then console makers have incentive to assist in this themselves, because if an engine with major marketshare can seamlessly port its games to Xbox but has difficulty porting to Playstation then Xbox will have a competitive advantage.

In such a scenario I don't think the difference between Godot and Godot* matters that much, IMO - I could imagine an Xbox devkit shipping with a Godot* compiler, for instance, so devs don't even have to think about the issue.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#53

Post by minimaxir » Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 3:00 AM UTC

GrygrFlzr wrote: post #16

Wait, they're planning on charging the Game Pass game fees to Microsoft ? The Aggro Crab example alone could incur hundreds of thousands of dollars per game for Microsoft, they're not going to be happy about that. Surely that's going to drag Microsoft legal very quickly into this mess?

Game publishers won't be happy either. Devolver Digital made a joke about it which might not be a joke: https://twitter.com/devolverdigital/status/17016852821295394...

> Definitely include what engine you’re using in game pitches.

> It’s important information!

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#54

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 3:09 AM UTC

My understanding is that Unity is losing A LOT of cash. They have been burning cash on thousands of devs building features they never ship or finish for like years.

Other's have pointed at this CEO's history at EA as indicative of how terrible he is (and yet he still gets crazy money, because execs only fall up).

They might just have no fucking clue what they are doing.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#55

Post by tavavex » Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 3:13 AM UTC

donatj wrote: post #51

Any way you slice it, it's a stupid regressive way to charge for an engine by a company that already makes an unimaginable amount of money. Their "fix" requires fingerprinting people's computers and phoning home, both of which should really be seen as privacy violations. And all that said, at it's heart there no justifiable reason the developer should be charged for every device I install something on. The developers…

> And all that said, at it's heart there no justifiable reason the developer should be charged for every device I install something on. The developers are not making more money, why should the engine makers get a larger cut.

There is a reason that's justifiable to the company - it makes more money. The modern-day push to collect recurring payments and offer everything as an ongoing service is driving large companies into this strange form of software rent-seeking, including whatever this is.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#56

Post by Buttons840 » Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 3:15 AM UTC

hightrix wrote: post #4

Oof. So they are doubling down rather than taking the feedback and making changes based upon it. I do not see much growth in Unity's future.

Yeah. They heard all the commotion and rushed in. "We've heard a lot of bad rumors going around about our new pricing. We know you're upset, and we just wanted to confirm that all the bad rumors are true."

They're so tone deaf.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#57

Post by gabereiser » Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 3:40 AM UTC

everyone wrote: post #26

gabereiser wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are resting on the fact they have a near monopoly for indie and their only competitor is Unreal at this point.

I used XNA, then MS killed it for no reason, then I switched to Unity, been using it since 2012, today I'm learning Godot. Imo Godot is the new indie engine. it has the same feel as XNA and Unity. There's nothing wrong with Unreal, its a great engine, but it does not feel the same. XNA / Unity / Godot / indie engines, u just sit down and start writing C# code and can write your whole game and ignore the engine featur…

I have history with XNA. What’s your take on MonoGame?

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#58

Post by Semaphor » Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 3:40 AM UTC

All news coming out of Unity in recent times is making me sad, I’ll never develop a game, but as a player, Unity games made mods (both using and creating) so easy even without any official mod support at all.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#59

Post by gabereiser » Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 3:43 AM UTC

Qwertious wrote: post #52

Ygg2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One niche Godot (or any OSS game engine) can't fulfill is seamless console ports.

Godot can't but Godot* can, where Godot* is a downstream fork of Godot maintained by $COMPANY that provides a seamless console port. There are a couple of companies trying to do this. In the long term, if Godot gets big enough then console makers have incentive to assist in this themselves, because if an engine with major marketshare can seamlessly port its games to Xbox but has difficulty porting to Playstation then…

Exactly. After all, it’s not like consoles are magic black boxes. They are pc’s in brutalist form. If you get a console contract, you’ll be able to do a console port. Before then, don’t even worry about it. Just focus on making the game. All the Xbox services or PlayStation sdk stuff comes after.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#60

Post by everyone » Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 3:58 AM UTC

gabereiser wrote: post #57

everyone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used XNA, then MS killed it for no reason, then I switched to Unity, been using it since 2012, today I'm learning Godot. Imo Godot is the new indie engine. it has the same feel as XNA and Unity. There's nothing wrong with Unreal, its a great engine, but it does not feel the same. XNA / Unity / Godot / indie engines, u just sit down and start writing C# code and can write your whole game and ignore the engine featur…

I have history with XNA. What’s your take on MonoGame?

I haven't used it but a friend of mine has. His opinion is yeah good. Basically they more or less made XNA work again using Mono, so if u liked XNA its very similar.