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

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

#101

Post by withinboredom »

Fluorescence wrote: post #25
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…

> use one version of their engine FOREVER In an age of locked down mobile OSes and forever changing graphics drivers and such, I don't think "FOREVER" is very long any more. It's like a perpetual license to a specific version of JetBrains Rider. It's sold as if I own a general purpose tool FOREVER and can opt out of an endless subscription but no, it doesn't mean much at all. It will not work with the next runtime up…

> I don't think "FOREVER" is very long any more.

I can still run my first 3d engine from 2003 on Windows. Windows actually does a really good job with backwards compatibility.

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

#102

Post by flohofwoe »

TMM2K wrote: post #93
flohofwoe wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to get a "license" (at least in the sense of paying anything), IIRC you just connect your EGS account to your Github account, accept an EULA (which technically is a "license" I guess) and then have read access to the Unreal Engine GH repositories. (currently there seem to be around half a million users with access)

What do you think clicking the EULA is?

I'm hailing from an era where "getting a game engine license" involved several in-person meetings between top-level management of both companies, followed by multiple technical meetings between engineers from both companies, followed by exhaustive due diligence investigations from both sides, followed by intense haggling and shady backroom deals for several months, and finally signing a proper "contract", handing over absurd amounts of money upfront and then paying equally absurd amounts of royalties after release.

That's basically what I understand as "getting a license for a game engine" (this is also why Unity got popular in the first place, because they skipped all this nonsense).

OTH I accept probably 5..10 EULAs a week without thinking or even reading the text (most of them are not enforceable anyway).

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

#103

Post by kypro »

enlyth wrote: post #19
kypro wrote: post #12

I kinda feel bad for Unity. The company is in a bad place finacially. They're burning almost $1 billion a year and they have no good solutions to this. Either they try to increase pricing and piss off their customers, or they cut costs (which they've been doing with mass layoffs) and risk losing ground to other game engineers like Unreal. For years the only thing really holding the company a float was their valuation…

I wouldn't feel bad for their executives. They are the ones who chose the 'growth at all costs' path, and this is what you get. They could've probably been sustainable and profitable if they mainly serviced their core audience of indie developers with a smaller amount of employees and a simpler product, but it seems they really wanted to brute force themselves into the AAA market.

I suppose. There's quite a few companies in Unity's position right now for a reason though.

For better or worse the "growth at all costs" strategy was the strategy companies like Unity had to employ for the last decade to attract investor capital so I tend to blame the low interest rate "easy money" environment more than companies like Unity being reckless.

Although that said, it does seem Unity made some stupid moves in recent years. I don't follow the company that closely, but I'm aware they made some large acquisitions funded in-part with debt during the pandemic. It's one thing taking on debt if you have a strong balance sheet, but it seems a little short-sighted for a company losing billions to use debt to fund an acquisition – especially at the elevated prices they paid during the pandemic.

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

#104

Post by doikor »

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…

> Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate.

More then 50% of the shares/votes is owned by a single person. The founder and CEO Tim Sweeney.

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

#105

Post by JCharante »

kypro wrote: post #12

I kinda feel bad for Unity. The company is in a bad place finacially. They're burning almost $1 billion a year and they have no good solutions to this. Either they try to increase pricing and piss off their customers, or they cut costs (which they've been doing with mass layoffs) and risk losing ground to other game engineers like Unreal. For years the only thing really holding the company a float was their valuation…

Losing a billion means they spent more than that, but on what? I haven’t used unity since 2016 and never in a professional capacity but I can’t imagine anything significant was improved or added in the last year.

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

#106

Post by mattdesl »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #11
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…

Nobody can take away your rights if the contract you sign with the engine developer doesn't allow it, as people have been pointing out is the case for other engines. IIRC Unreal's contract gives you access to a particular version of the engine in perpetuity, with source and the permission to make your own additions/changes to that source. It doesn't guarantee updates, but neither does the MIT license.

Apparently this is exactly what is happening with Unity[1], where the TOS previously said that you can continue using an old version, but now they are walking this back and trying to apply fees retroactively. Whether this is legal or not might be debatable, but unless users mount a legal challenge they are probably stuck paying or finding another engine.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37499731

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

#107

Post by thenerdhead »

tpush wrote: post #99
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…

No, that doesn't work. You can't retroactively change a license like that. What could happen is that future versions get licensed differently (if either all contributors agree, the project used a CLA or is permissively licensed). Either way however then you could either stop using it or fork the project.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. Yes I meant future use.

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

#108

Post by kypro »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #94
kypro wrote: post #12

I kinda feel bad for Unity. The company is in a bad place finacially. They're burning almost $1 billion a year and they have no good solutions to this. Either they try to increase pricing and piss off their customers, or they cut costs (which they've been doing with mass layoffs) and risk losing ground to other game engineers like Unreal. For years the only thing really holding the company a float was their valuation…

> and they have no good solutions to this Bought by Apple or Microsoft maybe?

Both Apple and Meta would love buy Unity, but my understanding is that regulators likely wouldn't allow it.

If you haven't seen it already: https://sriramk.com/memos/zuck-unity.pdf

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

#109

Post by [deleted] »

bsza wrote: post #22
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…

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#110

Post by jehb »

nhinck wrote: post #46
TMM2K wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Godot is MIT licensed though, there's very little we can do to screw our users if we wanted to, which we do not :)

You could change the license for future versions and charge for said updates, for the market that godot targets that would be more a little screwing to them. How long would it take for someone to take over the project (if ever).

And it's at exactly this moment the community would fork the project and development of a free version would continue. This is not a real risk for a community-driven project, only for corporate-driven projects where a single entity owns copyright on the on all or close to all of the codebase.
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