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The Death of Unity

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Re: The Death of Unity

#231

Post by bitec0de »

manicennui wrote: post #220

Why is every article and discussion about this filled with misinformation? There are thresholds for the per install fee that I'm sure the majority of small indie developers will never hit. The idea that most Unity developers will switch to Unreal is laughable.

> The idea that most Unity developers will switch to Unreal is laughable.

Why?

(I experimented with both, and preferred Unreal's interface, open source code, and ability to use a compiled language, but have never made a game.)

Re: The Death of Unity

#232

Post by slowmovintarget »

lenkite wrote: post #188
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…

What I am confused about is WHY is the CEO taking such a brain-dead executive decision on a stable, profit earning cash-cow. I mean - this is something that all high-level executives should have pointed out to Riccitiello as a very dumb idea. This isn't rocket science or some financial black-magic wizkid deduction. This is basically committing hara-kiri on the product and looks to be effectively a company killing dec…

The usual reason for this kind of thing is prep for acquisition.

Re: The Death of Unity

#233

Post by tavavex »

TylerE wrote: post #230
tavavex wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to with Cities: Skylines? I've never had any issues with it, it's a pretty polished game. The real issues only start cropping up after installing tons of mods on top of it. And yeah, I feel like you're choosing some specific games while ignoring all the others. Tons of famous Unity games are great. Is Subnautica janky? What about Hollow Knight? Rimworld, Beat Saber, Outer Wilds, Cuphead, both O…

The Ori games have terrible performance for pre-rendered 2d graphics. That's the exact kind of jank I'm talking about. Tons of microstutters. It's like using a '90s Java GUI app.

Really? I can't say my experience matches that at all. Hell, the developers got both games running on outdated Switch hardware at 60fps, even in handheld mode.

And even then, as far as I know, they're not really simple 2D games, but more of 2.5D. There are 3D background layers and 3D-like lighting and effect calculations, in addition to overall being very visually dense and complex. I certainly can't compare it to fully flat games, like the aforementioned Hollow Knight or Cuphead, etc.

Re: The Death of Unity

#234

Post by pjmlp »

__loam wrote: post #210
pjmlp wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compilation is quite relevant when targeting mobile and game consoles.

Gdscript is an interpreted language but it is compiled to bytecode when exported which results in large performance increases. You can also improve performance by using static typing. Please continue with the smart ass responses about a tool you clearly don't understand though.

So what is the intelligent response for GDscript targeting platforms where only native AOT is allowed?

Re: The Death of Unity

#235

Post by steakscience »

Wouldn't this model be better?

Open source the engine and IDE, have inhouse teams and contributors working on it, ultimately it becomes the go-to for game dev.

Then, provide best in class cloud services for using Unity, all the game backend stuff, comms, etc.

Wouldn't this model work?

Re: The Death of Unity

#236

Post by FrustratedMonky »

RakutenSatori wrote: post #190
frfl wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> specific case law which cemented this fact. Maybe it was Ford himself? The details escape me, but afterwards, companies were forced to prioritize shareholders above all else. I think there was a thread (don't recall if I saw it on HN or reddit). Someone said Dodge brothers (?) sued Ford (?) because Ford was trying to give it's employee raises (?) or reducing their working hours (?).

They're referring to the Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. lawsuit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co . Basically Ford wanted to cut shareholders dividends to dramatically increase production and the number of people employed in his plants while at the same time cutting the costs and prices of his cars. He told his shareholders that the goal was the long term benefit of the company and the value of this str…

So Dodge Brothers themselves were shareholders.

So this is more about shareholder rights? They can vote for board members, and then those board members can direct strategy.

It seems like a corporation can do all these things that Ford was planning, it just has to factor in shareholders.

So if shareholders wanted to paint all the plants purple, they have some rights to force that.

Is this correct: It doesn't have to be about profits, it is just about control?

Re: The Death of Unity

#237

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Death of Unity

#238

Post by yesbutnopdf »

gmerc wrote: post #170
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…

This is factually incorrect. Steam (And I suspect Apple too) handles these challenges pretty transparently and fairly and don’t leave you on the hook. Frankly speaking - there’s a lot of comments similar to this in tech, especially when espousing the solutions that crypto may offer for these “problems” that are built on ignorance or misunderstanding of how the industry actually operates. Having been in more discussio…

Worked with selling games on steam. Op’s scenario would happen in the current model.

Re: The Death of Unity

#239

Post by throwuxiytayq »

pjmlp wrote: post #114
kkukshtel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The .NET ecosystem has recently added "NativeAOT" compilation as a first class feature, and Unity's gall-bladder relationship to Mono (instead of migrating to Dotnet Core, they continue to work off their own Mono fork) has opened up a space where anyone programming C# now has the once-hard-to-reach AOT holy grail for consoles now just behind an XML flag. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/nati...

Native AOT is still WIP, behind .NET Native, and someone has to implement the consoles backend, and runtime support.

Unity’s software is permanently in a WIP prerelease state (and then it usually gets obsoleted in favor of something even less stable). Good luck making a game with their multiplayer package. I have full confidence that better .NET game development stacks (plural!) will emerge. Maybe even ones not based on some ungodly mutated version of Mono from decades ago.

Re: The Death of Unity

#240

Post by slowmovintarget »

ffhhttt wrote: post #176
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…

> it gets a million installs. I highly doubt many/any(?) games os Gamepass or Apple Arcade were created using the personal edition (after all they already have a 100/200k per COMPANY revenue limit. would MS really pay less than that for any game and you have zero sales every else?) On Pro you’d only have to worry if your downloads went significantly over a limit. Which is concern in this case, just relatively a much…

It's apparently even worse. An update or patch counts as an install from Unity's perspective. So does an instantiation in a browser of their web player.
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