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Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

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Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#81

I feel like there ought to be a really good open source game engine competing with Unity and Unreal, but I’m unfamiliar with any.

There’s quite a few. The biggest one right now is Godot. There’s still MonoGame, Open3D, Unreal, and others. Unity has one thing these others don’t (outside of Unreal) and that’s a healthy asset store. Solo indie devs aren’t necessarily the best artists. We know the math, but lack the eye.

Its fairly trivial to buy art assets from the Unity asset store and port them to Godot, there are tools to do it automatically. They are just meshes and textures after all.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#82
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's just no way this change is actually gonna happen. Many prominent indie developers have already announced they'll be switching away from Unity for future projects, and you have to think that larger studios are drawing the same conclusions. The ship is sinking. Unity will retract this. Switch to revenue share or whatever. They'll eat a huge loss of trust because of this idiocy, but they'll remain a relevant gam…

Revenue share is going to be worse for most indie developers - the .20 install fee is only bad for extremely high volume, low ARPU games. Basically mobile F2P. They deserve a different payment option, but switching everyone to revenue share is would be much worse for a typical Steam, $5+ indie game.

The problem with install fees is that it's a potentially unlimited financial risk.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#84

I feel like there ought to be a really good open source game engine competing with Unity and Unreal, but I’m unfamiliar with any.

There’s quite a few. The biggest one right now is Godot. There’s still MonoGame, Open3D, Unreal, and others. Unity has one thing these others don’t (outside of Unreal) and that’s a healthy asset store. Solo indie devs aren’t necessarily the best artists. We know the math, but lack the eye.

One of the others is Panda3D. It's not on a lot of people's radars but you can use it with Python and C++. It's pretty code oriented which might not be everyone's cup of tea but I enjoy working with it.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#85
post #36

Wondering if Microsoft shouldn't have bought Unity, It could have made sense, because of its focus on developer, because of its interests in gaming and because it's a huge showcase for C# and .Net as many of the features of unity could have been folded into regular .Net or there could have been an opportunity to have a '.GameNet' version, maybe.

on the flip side they kinda left XNA out to dry despite basically being the unity before unity in some ways for indie devs

Monogame came in to fill in the XNA gap to a certain extent. Works pretty well as long as you're making 2D games. I'm trying to make a 3D game in it right now, and it's...okay, not great.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#86

What I'd like to see is that this fiasco encourages studios to produce their own engines rather than using the pre/existing selection. I'd happily wait another 5-7 years for a new game on a new engine then have a new game in two years that feels identical to others. And then open-source it and let the creativity roam free.

I do agree that more engines would be nice especially if they push workflows in different ways.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#87
post #36

Wondering if Microsoft shouldn't have bought Unity, It could have made sense, because of its focus on developer, because of its interests in gaming and because it's a huge showcase for C# and .Net as many of the features of unity could have been folded into regular .Net or there could have been an opportunity to have a '.GameNet' version, maybe.

~Microsoft already has XBox, and CryEngine is also C#/.NET.~ see reply comment

Xbox doesn't provide a game engine, just lower level APIs. Unity is a popular way to get games on Xbox for folks who can't build their own engine. Further, things like HoloLens run Unity as a first class dev environment.

I used to work on both Xbox and HoloLens at Microsoft, but this is all public info.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#88

What I'd like to see is that this fiasco encourages studios to produce their own engines rather than using the pre/existing selection. I'd happily wait another 5-7 years for a new game on a new engine then have a new game in two years that feels identical to others. And then open-source it and let the creativity roam free.

Square enix spent millions on their in house engines (luminous engine). They have a good report on how and why it wasn't a great investment (10 year delays on projects). They've switched to unreal for everything now.

It seems like part of the problem is they're being poorly managed https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/report-square-enix-mi...

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#89

I feel like there ought to be a really good open source game engine competing with Unity and Unreal, but I’m unfamiliar with any.

There’s quite a few. The biggest one right now is Godot. There’s still MonoGame, Open3D, Unreal, and others. Unity has one thing these others don’t (outside of Unreal) and that’s a healthy asset store. Solo indie devs aren’t necessarily the best artists. We know the math, but lack the eye.

The Unity asset store isn’t limited to Unity (yet…). If you’re ising Unreal or Godot or whatever, there’s no reason you can’t use assets from the Unity store. (With the exception of code assets of course)

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#90

I've been a pro Unity dev, as an employee and then a freelancer running a small team doing contracts for 10 years. I think this was in the back of my mind for a long time but yesterday a switch just flipped in my head and I decided Unity are just not to be trusted anymore, the company has lost all credibility and I never want to use Unity for another project. I'm learning Godot atm.

It seems everyone is switching to Godot.
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