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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

#361

Post by miragecraft »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #354
miragecraft wrote: post #340

The logic that Epic and Unreal Engine will do something similar as Unity doesn't track for me. The argument hinges on the premise that Epic, who operates their own game store and is courting developers aggressively with generous revenue split, is willing to burn their bridge with developers for questionable increase in profit; in addition it presumes that the plain old revenue share model that Unreal Engine utiltizes…

I don't think this is a problem of company structure. It's solely a problem of bad management. If they had listened to their users or their own developers, or any remotely sane person with some touch of reality, then this wouldn't have happened. But if you hire the former CEO of EA - a guy with no low level industry experience and who left his last job because of poor financial performance - then this whole fiasco se…

On the surface that is the case, but once you're a publicly traded company you're beholden to your shareholders, not your customers, so your goals and incentives changes drastically and "bad management decisions" gets made.

You think the management made a mistake, I think the management (as a result of going public) is the mistake.

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

#362

Post by bob1029 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #348
bennyschmidt wrote: post #321

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 be…

Obviously I won't defend the Unity situation. Ultimately though it is all about time efficiency, solo or small teams have little manpower and since they don't even know if their first, second, or fifth game will sell any at all it may not make strategic sense to spend months reproducing common engine features in order to save a hypothetical percentage of revenue that they may never ultimately make. You need to test t…

> You need to test the gameplay concept as cheaply as possible.

There are some edge case concepts that I have found to be completely impenetrable on commercial engines.

Multiplayer is the #1 thing in my mind. I've gotten the FPS multiplayer examples to "work" for UE and Unity, but the confidence I have in these solutions is not great. I've seen what Unity can do (BattleBit), but I don't know how many decades of game industry black magic and hackarounds it requires to force a commercial engine to behave that well.

I really think the answer is that it depends. If you aren't trying to have a "perfect" version of some gameplay aspect (i.e. multiplayer in my case), then the commercial engines will absolutely be the fastest path to validating your idea. Put differently, I think some game ideas are not possible to validate on commercial engines. But, I don't think this is very common.

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

#363

Post by wlesieutre »

jorvi wrote: post #194
pdpi wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart Tim Sweeney founded Epic and wrote the Unreal engine himself. John Riccitiello’s whole career is in management. Even if they’re both entirely motivated by profit, they have different perspectives on how to get there. Also, Unity is a public company, while Epic is private. Even though Tencent owns a considerable share of the company, Sweeney still holds over…

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

Is that why iFixit rated the iPhone 14 repairability as 7/10?

https://www.ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone-14-teardown

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

#364

Post by r053bud »

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…

Yeah if Godot stops being maintained, at least I have the source! At least I’m allowed to fork it and move forwards.

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

#365

Post by philipov »

miragecraft wrote: post #340

The logic that Epic and Unreal Engine will do something similar as Unity doesn't track for me. The argument hinges on the premise that Epic, who operates their own game store and is courting developers aggressively with generous revenue split, is willing to burn their bridge with developers for questionable increase in profit; in addition it presumes that the plain old revenue share model that Unreal Engine utiltizes…

> I think the only reason Unity went this route is because they don't want to be seen to publicly break the promise of no revenue ...

Not quite. Unity merged with a company that sells mobile ads: ironSource. They are direct competitors of AppLovin, the dominant player in that market. The terms and backroom deals that Unity is offering devs will waive these fees if they use Unity's ad products instead of AppLovin. This is clearly an attempt to abuse their position in one market (game engines) to bolster their position in another market (mobile ads).

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

#366

Post by glenstein »

miragecraft wrote: post #340

The logic that Epic and Unreal Engine will do something similar as Unity doesn't track for me. The argument hinges on the premise that Epic, who operates their own game store and is courting developers aggressively with generous revenue split, is willing to burn their bridge with developers for questionable increase in profit; in addition it presumes that the plain old revenue share model that Unreal Engine utiltizes…

That all hinges on a motley combination of rationalizing, squinting, guesstimation of intentions and projecting future behavior of unpredictable third parties. One could have with equal plausibility made an assessment that Unity would not proceed with self-inflicted wounds, yet here we are.

Just like the "I've got nothing to hide" argument fallaciously depends on assumptions about the coherence of motives on the part of people violating your privacy, "I've got nothing to worry about" depends on assuming reasonable motives from private actors. It is a lot less strenuous to reason from a place that is agnostic about future intentions of third parties.

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

#367

Post by mnau »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #354
miragecraft wrote: post #340

The logic that Epic and Unreal Engine will do something similar as Unity doesn't track for me. The argument hinges on the premise that Epic, who operates their own game store and is courting developers aggressively with generous revenue split, is willing to burn their bridge with developers for questionable increase in profit; in addition it presumes that the plain old revenue share model that Unreal Engine utiltizes…

I don't think this is a problem of company structure. It's solely a problem of bad management. If they had listened to their users or their own developers, or any remotely sane person with some touch of reality, then this wouldn't have happened. But if you hire the former CEO of EA - a guy with no low level industry experience and who left his last job because of poor financial performance - then this whole fiasco se…

A CEO under who EA introduced lootboxes. A person that proposed that when player runs out of ammo could make an easy instant payment for a quick reload.

Unity engine seems to flounder under him, despite rather insane headcount (7,703), acquisition spree laden Unity Technologies with significant debt...

I am not impressed, not with his ideas and even less with his results.

For comparison, Larry Elisson (Oracle) has distasteful business practices, but very profitable.

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

#368

Post by fauigerzigerk »

pdpi wrote: post #248
Pannoniae wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Further more, Tim is bound by law to do what is best for the shareholders." This stupid meme needs to die already. There is no such obligation, he only has a fiduciary duty to not trash the company and spend the earnings on cocaine. "companies are legally forced to maximise profit" has never been true and this piece of misinformation has been going around for ages now.

> There is no such obligation And, insofar as such an obligation to “maximise shareholder value” might exist, that obligation doesn’t necessarily translate into “maximise profit”. The shareholders of a theatre company might care more about breaking even while getting an interesting assortment of plays produced with a great cast than they do about making a bunch of money out of the venture, so an executive who makes a…

>And, insofar as such an obligation to “maximise shareholder value” might exist, that obligation doesn’t necessarily translate into “maximise profit”.

And even where it does translate into "maximise profit" because it's what shareholders of a particular company may want, there is no timeframe for it, and there is no way to tell whether any particular decision by the CEO runs contrary to the goal of eventually maximising profits.

Companies can spend all their revenues plus a constant stream of new capital on growing market share or revenue, on charitable activities or the happiness of employees, on huge research and development projects or on restructuring after restructuring and still credibly claim that all of it is ultimately meant to maximise profits.

The point where CEOs and CFOs have to be careful is when the company faces solvency issues. That's where legal limits of freewheeling decision making kick in, because it's where it's no longer about shareholders but about creditors.

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

#369

Post by charcircuit »

prmoustache wrote: post #92
charcircuit wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't matter. The fork will just not be an open source fork.

You cannot fork it and change its licence unless orig unreal license permits you to do it. Does it? edit: it doesn't unless Epic Games grants you a specific license to do that. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal source: > 4. How You Can Share the Licensed Technology When It Isn’t Part of a Product > You may only Distribute Licensed Technology (including as modified by you) outside of a Product as expressl…

>You cannot fork it and change its licence

You can't do that for Godot either.

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

#370

Post by danaris »

miragecraft wrote: post #340

The logic that Epic and Unreal Engine will do something similar as Unity doesn't track for me. The argument hinges on the premise that Epic, who operates their own game store and is courting developers aggressively with generous revenue split, is willing to burn their bridge with developers for questionable increase in profit; in addition it presumes that the plain old revenue share model that Unreal Engine utiltizes…

The problem is, this isn't a question of, "Will Epic do something like this tomorrow?"

It's "Will Epic do something like this at any point in the foreseeable future?"

Will Epic's leadership decide to IPO in hopes of more money?

Will they take a lucrative private buyout from some other billionaire with more money than sense, like Musk?

Will they hire new upper management that persuades them they need to do something like this for Serious Business Reasons?

Will they retire and be replaced by people who do the same?

The problem is, if you build your game on Unreal, you're essentially betting all its future commercial success on one for-profit company's decision to remain Less Of An Asshole Than The Other Guy. The choice of what engine you use has suddenly become about much more than just "what features does it offer?" "How many developers know how to use it?" or even "What's the pricing structure today?" You have to worry about whether they'll get it into their heads, for whatever reason, to retroactively change their pricing structure in a way that ruins you financially.

On the other hand, if you build your game on Godot, or some in-house engine, you know you'll never need to worry about that.

Also worth noting: If the gaming industry, and the public at large, send a clear enough signal to Unity now that this is unacceptable, that makes it much, much less likely that anyone else will try to pull bullshit like this in the future.

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