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

ramatak.com

301–310 of 733 posts

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

#301

For the record, I am not a game developer but I don't think that changes my opinion on open source technology. Open Source software is great, but that also comes at the cost of support when you are running into a problem. Particularly if you are on a critical timeline, especially if trying to fix a bug after something is released. You are at the mercy of the community being able to help (and most likely only being ab…

> the possibility of the company you are licensing from sending you engineers to actually help you fix the problem.

Have you ever tried to use Microsoft "support"?

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

#302
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like which?

AFAIK in Germany the TL;DR is that if there's anything in the EULA which violates "German Civil Code (BGB)", then either parts or all of the EULA are invalid. I remember that in Germany an EULA cannot prohibit reselling the software to somebody else, or making your own backup copy (kinda tricky nowadays though where everything is just a "service").

That's just standard contract law in any country.

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

#303
post #294
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same Tim Cook that tries to make iPhones as unrepairable as possible? :) Don’t fall for feelgood greenwashing.

Still better CO2 footprint than anything else on the market

What?

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

#304

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 a…

Which is why we should support open source mobile platforms like those built on Linux etc. as well as supporting open source hardware.

Not saying it's realistic that those types of things will get very far, but the Apple monopoly and their activities is worse than DC in some ways.

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

#305
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that is what the Unreal Engine license allows you to do https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal > 2. How You Can Use the Licensed Technology > Epic grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to privately use, reproduce, display, perform, and modify the Licensed Technology in accordance with the terms of this Agreement (the “License”). This means that as long as you are not v…

Well, you can always modify source code and use it privately - you hardly need a license for that. The additional sections that allow distribution are the important bits and I guess the devil is in the details.

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

#306
To me (not really into gamedev actually so chances are I'm completely wrong) it seems like nowadays, when physics and reneding is done in hardware and game engines bundle so much logic and are shared among so many games, creators will soon be able to give up coding (anything except scripts) and concentrate on selling pure content. Users will then purchase compatible engines from engine developers or use open-source engines.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, if they just added revenue share like Unreal does and tweaked their subscriptions a little, the backlash wouldn't have been nearly as bad. The uproar is a combination of a really badly announced system and details that don't seem to be ironed out properly leaving devs ripe for abuse. Plus you have one of the most tight knit communities of artists who all reacted almost as one to this announcement and have e…

> Do they seriously think a fee applied on retroactive sales and revenue numbers would be accepted without issue from them? Unity have not proposed a fee on retroactive sales. They have proposed a from-this-point-forward fee that applies to new sales/installs of any game made with Unity, including new sales/installs of back catalog games.

This is incorrect. They are basing the numbers in January based on previous install numbers, not "from this point on."

Note, it's not sales, it's installs. And it's not new installs.

That you keep saying sales really means you aren't fully informed about the changes and should spend some time researching this.

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

#308
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can. But unless you're a AAA developer studio, it's ridiculously infeasible. At least for Godot, there would be a community effort to maintain it. Such a community would be impossible with any closed-source (even if readable) engine.

In general one very rarely upgrade engines after release. Even during development you usually don't upgrade if there isn't a new feature in the new version you really need. Really it is only an issue for new projects and at that point if the license of the newest version is not to your liking pick a different engine. Also the last UE3 game I know of (Them and Us in 2021) was made by a small indie studio not some big…

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

#309
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're burning almost $1 billion a year and they have no good solutions to this Maybe they should have something to show for this $1B/year and take a cut of this $250B+ industry to cover the costs? They appear to have about %30 market share, so they need to capture less than %2 of the value created with their tool to break even and if they can't do that or they are providing tech for the less than average profitab…

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It appears that the video gaming industry size is 242B as of this year: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/video-ga...

None of this is attributable to engines, it's the size of the products built using the engines and it appears that the ad revenues are not included and that appears to be another $80B.

The game engine market is the market of supplying the game developers with the tech to build their games. That's where the game engine makers that spend 1B per year and hold %30 of the engine market need to charge about %2 of the products made using their engines to break even.

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

#310
post #222

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 a…

I would have never thought in a million years iOS was considered a large gaming platform.

please tell me you have never had a kid come up to you like this

https://i.imgflip.com/5aw95n.jpg

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