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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

#321

Post by bennyschmidt »

Everyone told me "use Unity" "the biggest mistake you can make is building your own engine". How well did that advice age?

Nobody needs Unity or Unreal.

My most recent game (playshadowvane.com) is built on 100% proprietary technology, I built everything in-house down to the physics.

Always ignore mainstream game dev advice, they are just trying to sell you products. Build as much as you can in-house, it's not only better for the look/feel of the game, but no company will be able to rug pull you later.

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

#322

Post by sumtechguy »

PeterisP wrote: post #151
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…

Is Unity-2023 version a billion dollars better than Unity-2022, or even close to that?

Some of the stuff looks pretty cool that they are adding but would probably take a retooling of many workflows to use correctly. They had some very compelling items they were adding in that would make people pick it over others. But with those license terms. That will be a hard pass by many. My guess is they are hurting financially but took cues from their weta tool stack for installs. Where in that industry per install cost is decently normal and just rolled into a production budget. But on the games side that is not going to fly. As it is a one time cost vs recurring. I feel bad for the shops where they are 2 years in with this thing and just had the rug pulled on them.

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

#323

Post by jasonlotito »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #297
RugnirViking wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What you are proposing is literally impossible. If I were to comb through every ToS and EULA and every other legal text related to tools I use as a developer, I would not have any hours left in the day for, you know, actual development. Even then, I wouldn't have time to read and comprehend all of the legal contracts. Hell, if I stopped sleeping entirely and spent 24 hours a day combing through legal contracts, I sti…

The Unity TOS doesn't take a full day to read. And if you have trouble with it, you can hire a lawyer.

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

#324

Post by cyanfrog »

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…

That reminds me. How is blender able to stay free. How is their approach different?

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

#326

Post by cornstalks »

agentgumshoe wrote: post #303
SSLy wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still better CO2 footprint than anything else on the market

What?

iPhones have long support cycles. iOS 17 supports the iPhone XS/XR, which were released 5 years ago. So iPhone users don't have to replace their phone as much, reducing environmental impact. Plus with the recycling and other stuff used to make iPhones in the first place, their environmental impact is going to be lower than some other options on the market. Combine these two things together (longer device life, smaller impact for making a new device) and I can believe iPhones have the smallest CO2 footprint.

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

#327

Post by macspoofing »

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…

>You now have to pay $0.20 per install after your app has made $200,000 over the past year. ... Now you're still using open source, but still legally held to the terms of that license.

You can't retroactively pull an open source license ... whatever the new license is, if it forces you to pay, it no longer meets the definition of 'open source' [1]

[1]https://opensource.org/osd/

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

#328

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#329

Post by bannedbybros »

pdpi wrote: post #225
jorvi wrote: 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.

If Tim Cook had calmly said what he did, I’d believe it was just toeing the party line. The fact that he actually got angry, though? He doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who’d fake that, I don’t think that’s the image he wants if nothing else.

He doesn't have to fake it. Dude probably believes that there's no connection between right to repair, unsustainable consumption, and planetary destruction. That might be worse than faking it.

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

#330

Post by rozab »

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…

Maybe they should stop acquiring a continuous stream of startups that have nothing to do with their primary mission? I would bet only a very small proportion of Unity employees work on or even adjacent to the Unity engine.
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