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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

#131

Post by jackmott42 »

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…

Any product can end up no longer having work done on it, or the work can start getting bad. Such is life. With open source at least you have an option, if you run into one bug or missing feature, there is a chance you can patch it yourself and get the game done. In the distant past I wanted to use Unity and ran into a breaking bug in the particle system that wasn't fixed for at least 2 years, if ever.

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

#132

Post by mcv »

prmoustache wrote: post #86
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…

> So if Godot devs stop working on it you're stuck with a project with zero support. Good luck developing it further instead of focusing on your game. > > The same goes for his very own product. The same goes for Unity and Unreal.

But without the option to continue development. In the case of Godot, the rest of the community would probably fork it and continue development.

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

#133

Post by RugnirViking »

Ekaros wrote: post #66
intelVISA wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Unreal thing is that Unity has/had ~8,000 employees last year. Sounds like an awful lot for a mobile game engine.

That seems quite a lot. Compared to game development teams with their own engines which they have kept modern while releasing games...

How many such game development companies actually are there? I see a lot of aging engines out there, and companies that jumped to unreal, but I have by no means broad knowledge

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

#134

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

isaiahg wrote: post #121
ekianjo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source available means you cant do shit at the end of the day before going in legal trouble

Except you can because of unreal’s perpetual license. You’d just have to use the same pricing attached to the version of source you use

If you'd amended the source, then it wouldn't be the same version and the license would be invalid. If you want to use the perpetual license, you can't do anything with the source.

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

#135

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

carstenhag wrote: post #95
kgwxd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are different, open source is obviously better in that scenario.

Except Unreal is also open source in the sense of them providing you full source code access & documentation on how to build it.

That isn't what open source means. Open source means that you can make changes to the source code and distribute it.

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

#136

Post by ThatPlayer »

nottorp wrote: post #130
ThatPlayer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bribing implies an illegal act. Giving money in exchange for goods and services is completely normal: I don't bribe a restaurant for food. Exclusivity is just a way of competing for games, a sign of a good competitive market. Kickstarter is kickstarter. Half of them probably don't fulfill all their promises. That's the risk you're taking, and why it's not a preorder. Epic don't have gambling. They've even removed gam…

> Bribing implies an illegal act. Giving money in exchange for goods and services is completely normal: I don't bribe a restaurant for food. Exclusivity is just a way of competing for games, a sign of a good competitive market. It doesn't have to be illegal, merely immoral. > Kickstarter is kickstarter. Half of them probably don't fulfill all their promises. That's the risk you're taking, and why it's not a preorder.…

Releasing on a store is not immoral. Is not releasing on GoG what you believe to be immoral? Even GoG has paid for exclusives, they charge store fees like everyone else. They're a business too at the end of the day.

That sounds like an unfinished feature to me then.

Why are you playing games forever that aren't entertaining?

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

#137

Post by codeulike »

Seems to me, the bit where all these game frameworks get a bit tricky is when you want to target iOS. Apple keeps moving the goalposts (you must use some version of Xcode, or you must target some version of iOS) and so the open-source frameworks have to constantly faff about to support the latest apple things. A few years ago I was building using LibGDX which used RoboVM to target iOS but then Xamarin bought RoboVM and shut it down and etc etc etc...

What Unity offers is a solid way to build cross platform and target iOS. They're able to offer that because they have the resources to keep up with iOS. Open-source alternatives understandably struggle to keep on the iOS treadmill.

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

#138

Post by gausswho »

alpaca128 wrote: post #113
popmatrix wrote: post #82

The author seems to misunderstand the new pricing model (as did many others; this is Unity's fault) [1] The $0.20 is not retroactive, nor do you need to hope your users see 10 and impressions to cover a cost to the game developer -- you need to earn $200,000 _and_ have 200,000 installs. A free game would not be charged, and if you don't believe you can muster 10 ad impressions per user (to cover the unity install cos…

Basing the fee on number of installs instead of number of buyers is a problem, it's an unpredictable cost that developers have no control over as it also counts repeated installing of the game. Their FAQ suggests that malicious "install bombing" is something they cannot prevent automatically but instead have to resolve via their support. In other words you depend on them having good support while they profit from bad…

Install bombing sounds like a way to smother out this install fee policy. Especially if installing could be automated.

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

#139

Post by RugnirViking »

j-bos wrote: post #73
isilofi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a wakeup-call also to do due dilligence and risk management when entering contracts. And yes, clicking "agreed" in the installer is very often a contract that you should run by your legal advisors. Or at least think very hard about. _Some_ kinds of Open Source might help there, since _some_ open source licenses are very easy to comply with and very business-friendly. On the other hand, all the game studios now…

>clicking "agreed" in the installer is very often a contract that you should run by your legal advisors. The law often makes use of the reasonableness standard. I'm hard pressed to believe that carefully reading the hundreds of TOS and EULA's hoisted upon us is reasonable. If you're reading my comment you must have read the TOS/EULA for ycombinator, firefox (or chrome), your wireless or ISP, the keyboard app on your…

to be more charitable to the above, we're not talking about consumer software. if you're starting a company selling something there is a fair bit more reasonableness in asking you to read a contract

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

#140

Post by mcv »

intelVISA wrote: post #42
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…

The Unreal thing is that Unity has/had ~8,000 employees last year. Sounds like an awful lot for a mobile game engine.

It's not just a mobile game engine, it's an everything game engine. They support (nearly?) every platform. That does take some work.

Even so, 8000 employees does sound a lot. And if they're losing a billion per year, it sounds like they have no revenue at all.

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