Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

ramatak.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 733 posts

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#51

Post by TMM2K »

thenerdhead wrote: post #38

> By using an open source engine you can be sure that whatever that “next thing” is, the engine won’t keep you from taking advantage of it. Nor would the engine be able to dictate your monetization strategy for you. We really ought to separate the fact that "open" does not always mean "free" here. Especially given that it is fairly straight-forward to change licenses on a whim. Imagine you wake up one day and suddenl…

That's not possible with something that is open source. If it has a "dual license" that means you can pick which license to apply. You just pick the one that doesn't make you pay.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#52

Post by Hamcha »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #47

This is written based on my quite poor understanding of the game business. I am sincerely wanting to learn more about how it works and how the new license structure impact developers. My questions below might be idiotic. (but not intentionally so) I have no idea how many apps reach above 200.000 installs total or $200.000 income per year. How common is it for apps to meet the minimum requirements when the fees kick i…

The problem here is that most platform tax your income, not your userbase size. If you think of big free to play Unity games like Genshin Impact (or even smaller stuff like VRChat) the amount of paying user is probably in the single digit percentage, yet with Unity terms you are on the hook for everyone who installs your game.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#53

Post by master-lincoln »

charcircuit wrote: post #44
bsza wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if Godot devs stop working on it Then others can take it from where they left off, since it’s open source. As long as it has a user base, it is guaranteed to live on. Unlike Unreal.

People are free to fork Unreal. People can continue working on Unreal even if Epic stops devoting reosurces to work on it.

How? Unreal is not FOSS. You have access to the code, but the license doesn't allow changing it legally afaik

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#54

Post by progx »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #47

This is written based on my quite poor understanding of the game business. I am sincerely wanting to learn more about how it works and how the new license structure impact developers. My questions below might be idiotic. (but not intentionally so) I have no idea how many apps reach above 200.000 installs total or $200.000 income per year. How common is it for apps to meet the minimum requirements when the fees kick i…

Look at the millions of free to play games in the App-Stores. Normally you have 98% of free playing users paying nothing, 2% pay.

Imagine now you have 1 million installs. 2% (20.000) pay you 200.000 / year. 980.000 players pay nothing. Now Unity want 1.000.000 x 20 Cent = 200.000, you made ZERO with your game... crazy. That is an uncalculatable risk for a small company.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#55

Post by nottorp »

NotGMan wrote: post #4

>> While Unreal engine currently does not have terms like Unity’s, there’s nothing stopping them from doing something similar. In fact if Unity manages to get away with this it seems likely they will follow suit. Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change…

> the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's.

the Epic games leadership are bribing developers for exclusivity, including kickstarters where i was promised steam or gog

the Epic games leaderhip makes money from free to play grinding/gambling simulators

the Epic games leadership also comes from Tencent that made all their gaming money before trying to get into the western market from asian gacha

The only reason their terms are more reasonable now is because they're the underdog and throwing a lot of money made from free to play crap at fixing that.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#56

Post by nokiz »

charcircuit wrote: post #44
bsza wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if Godot devs stop working on it Then others can take it from where they left off, since it’s open source. As long as it has a user base, it is guaranteed to live on. Unlike Unreal.

People are free to fork Unreal. People can continue working on Unreal even if Epic stops devoting reosurces to work on it.

As long as I know, Unreal is not open source, so no, people can't fork it.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#57

Post by troupo »

objclxt wrote: post #29
NotGMan wrote: post #4

>> While Unreal engine currently does not have terms like Unity’s, there’s nothing stopping them from doing something similar. In fact if Unity manages to get away with this it seems likely they will follow suit. Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change…

> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's. Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. > BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work. Over t…

> Guess what, if a closed-source company decides to stop working on their product you're also stuck

Isn't Unreal's source open?

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#58

Post by Takennickname »

ahoka wrote: post #37
TMM2K wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source is that protection. There's no way for an open source project to change their terms that drastically. The whole hasicorp disaster is a prime example of that. Terraform is forked and continues on like normal, users are not impacted. For programming platforms (like game engines) this is even MORE of an advantage, as with something like terraform you could conceivably rewrite your stuff in a matter of weeks…

“There's no way for an open source project to change their terms that drastically.” Like going from GPLv2 to GPLv3 or straight to AGPL, so now you are stuck with an old version forever? Yeah, that would never happen!

You're not stuck with an old version forever, that's very hyperbolic and you purposefully ignored OP's example of Hashicorp and Terraform and instead responded with sarcasm.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#59

Post by TMM2K »

troupo wrote: post #57
objclxt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's. Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. > BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work. Over t…

> Guess what, if a closed-source company decides to stop working on their product you're also stuck Isn't Unreal's source open?

You can access the source code to unreal engine when you get a license, but the terms are not by any stretch of the imagination open source. You wouldn't be able to freely share your modifications for instance.
Post reply on HN