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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

#261

Post by grumple »

hokumguru wrote: post #188
RugnirViking wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Certainly not an expert but top studios like Bethesda and CDPR maintain their own engines with an order of magnitude less employees. They make games too.

They also produce games that are very similar to their other games, with similar mechanics, while Unity has to support a far more diverse set of games (basically anything 2d or 3d), and presumably has to continually offer a wider set of cutting-edge features.

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

#262

Post by makomk »

jcarrano wrote: post #63
makomk wrote: post #2

Much as I love open source and the Godot engine, this seems more like a wake-up call on the importance of corporations not being able to unilaterally, retroactively change contracts in ways that impose new charges and violate existing contractual commitments that others have relied on. If they can do that then open source doesn't offer much real protection.

Did they make a commitment in the first place? It is up to the developers using the engine to make due diligence and inspect the terms of the contracts and licenses of the software they use. I would feel very uneasy if my product was based on a framework, where the provider makes no commitment and reserves the right to change the licensing terms at any time.

Unity made a specific committment in their terms that if those terms changed in a way that disavantaged existing developers, those developers could carry on using the existing annual release under the old terms, and also that they would notify developers of changes to their terms. They then sneakily removed that committment and almost immediately imposed this licensing fee for use of the runtime, when one of the specific advantages of Unity they promoted was not having any such fees, and retroactively applied this to new installks of all existing games. It was shameless and some company offering open source software could jsut as easily retroactively decide it wasn't open source at all.

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

#263

Post by manvillej »

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…

> 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 this.

so did unity, until they removed that clause

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

#264

Post by galleywest200 »

swalsh wrote: post #229

I wish game development wasn't so monolithic. You're either all in on Unity, or all in on Unreal, or all in on GoDot. They are designer forward, code later. Each has a marketplace of sorts, but in my experience it's substandard. Compare that to web development (different beast I know, but there's no reason gaming can't be more componentized). Web development is so simple these days because I spend most of my time glu…

> Web development is so simple these days because I spend most of my time gluing stuff together, and sanding the edges.

This does exist in the gaming industry, it is called "shovelware". "Shovelware" is when you just glue existing assets purchased for cheap and "shovel" them into a game for a quick buck. Usually not very complex games, low effort stories, etc. Also usually very cheap to download.

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

#265

Post by icemelt8 »

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…

> Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license.

Unity also had a similar clause in their ToC, they removed that now and retroactively applied the new pricing model on ALL previous versions of Unity. Unreal can do it too.

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

#266

Post by darkwater »

plagiarist wrote: post #145
isaiahg wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you understood the problem then you’d know that their argument is about how Unity’s new pricing change is retroactive, affecting all Unity versions and charging fees to devs for games made years ago. Unreal uses perpetual licenses for their versions meaning this kind of bullshit behavior is not possible

Perhaps it is you who doesn't understand. We all get that part, and it makes sense in isolation. Yes, that is better. Then it's goofy af to say Godot might make a license change that necessitates using one version in perpetuity-except a version you and others are allowed to modify and distribute.

In opensource, you can use that version and add more changes to it after the original author changed the license.

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

#267

Post by grumple »

_chu1 wrote: post #224
ireallywantthat wrote: post #117

switch to godot( http://godotengine.org/ ), gamedevs. you reap what you sow. it's better to support open source projects like godot instead of unity whose control lies with the company whose actions probably might not lie with you/your companies' interest. There are hundreds of instances in the past where open source projects replaced corporate projects(ex: blender, git). so, better use godot imo.

Is Godot capable of making 3D FPS games?

Looks like a yes, but it was hard to find this example: https://www.blendernation.com/2020/10/23/behind-the-scenes-f...

All other 3d games I found made with Godot look like they came from the 90s. 2d capabilities look great though. There's probably also some selection bias, it's probably not the first choice for most who want to make a 3d fps.

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

#268

Post by maccard »

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…

Do feel bad for them but this is a problem of their own making. Many parts of their current situation were avoidable.

That doesn't justify what they've tried to do here though. This isn't just a price increase, it's a significant price increase, and a poorly thought out "revshare" model that applies retroactively people who signed deals with them and built a business model off of the deal they signed.

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

#269

Post by danaris »

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…

> Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license.

Even if this is 100% legally true, they can absolutely say that they are revoking all old licenses, and then if you used one, it's up to you to take Epic to court to prove that they can't.

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

#270

Post by HelloMcFly »

wredue wrote: post #245
j_maffe wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a complete falsehood. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

In your haste to defend the idiocy of shareholder causing constant enshittification, you accidentally forgot to read the comment you’re replying to. Businesses are legally bound to act in the best interest of their shareholders. This is quite an open ended precedent.

People write this sentence seeming to imply it means "CEOs and management have a responsibility to be as ruthless and sociopathic as possible to deliver the highest returns, and any consideration of the people or communities they trample beyond legal requirements is itself borderline illegal."

There is a lot - A LOT - of room for ambiguity and debate on the specifics of shareholder value and "best interests." The "legal constraints to act in the best interest" is not some set of corporate rules and KPIs codified into our legal code write large. It's not about maximizing a specific KPI over a fixed timeframe.

Not to mention Sweeney is the majority shareholder in Epic's case.

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