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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

#501

Post by giobox »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #469
Iulioh wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the CEO was slowly selling millions of shares was an indication

I would expect any CEO to continuously sell shares as they are awarded. Diversifying investments is a very recommended and common investment choice.

The CEO's role though is to help make the stock attractive to other investors, not just optimize for their own personal finances. I personally would expect most CEOs to hold a significant portion of their stock awards as a show of confidence in the future value of the company - if the CEO won't hold the investment, why should anyone else?

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

#502

Post by ribit »

This is a straw man argument. The problem is not closed source but lack of regulation and power asymmetry between the large company and a small customer. These types of bait and switch one-sided contract changes should be illegal. In fact, the way how Unity approached this is likely illegal, since they have retroactively changed the contract while attempting to hide this fact from the customers.

We need to strive towards establishment of fair, enforceable legal frameworks that prevent this kind of abuse from large players, instead of magically hoping that open source will fix everything.

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

#503

Post by numlock86 »

adultSwim wrote: post #490
numlock86 wrote: post #482

> 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. I sense a lack of arguments if people make up pure speculation like that without any foundation. Also Unity's business model had a negative tendency over the last couple of years already ... with Epic having…

> Unreal Engine is open source It doesn't look like it to me. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal

> The Licensed Technology licensed to you under this Agreement includes all Unreal Engine code and related content that is copied to your computer when you install Unreal Engine.

Have you read it? You literally get read access to their entire GitHub repo.

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

#504

Post by ethbr1 »

fredsmith219 wrote: post #488
ethbr1 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To parent's opinion, I'd respond that bad management is a possibility in any company. However, a broken revenue model misaligns incentives and makes user-bad decisions a certainty . Laying it at the feet of management is blaming the messenger -- the root cause was revenue and expectations being strategically unbalanced. It's surprising how many people watch companies make "dumb" moves and gnash their teeth over "how…

Since management sets the expectations, laying the blame at their feet is correct. Who else would you hold accountable for management decisions?

Majority shareholders for choosing an ownership model that their operating model couldn't service.

Unity going public was like .org's PIR being sold to PE.

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

#505

Post by lelanthran »

aniforprez wrote: post #17
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…

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…

> 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.

They ran the numbers. If it was going to work they would have gone that route, but I think the problem is that the clear majority of Unity-users (indie devs) make no money anyway.

Revenue sharing with someone making $0 in revenue is pointless.

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

#506

Post by bmer »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #484
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…

> and the reason they grew too big is because they took the company public and in that sphere success is measured in growth Why is "growth" always interpreted as "higher headcount" and not "higher profits"? Certainly a company that has continually growing profits without increasing costs would be seen as more valuable than a company that constantly increases their costs with revenue? Does Unity hiring more Engineers…

Perhaps because it is generally well accepted that you can maintain stable profit margins with a fixed employee count, but increasing profits with a fixed employee count is not possible beyond the maximum potential of that fixed set of employees?

(Not sure, this is an amateur's guess on my part.)

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

#507

Post by _hypx »

gochi wrote: post #491
_hypx wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never every game needs to have insane graphics. For a lot of games, “good enough” graphics is fine.

It's not just graphics, it's everything. Look at Frostbite for example from EA. While a good shooter engine, they had to make significant changes over the years to adapt the engine to other genres of games, and that significantly bloated timelines. Jason Schreier has reporting on this if you're interested. We kind of forget that a lot of custom engines aren't universal ones like Unity or Unreal that can adapt to anyt…

Frostbite is a weird example because they focused heavily on graphics over gameplay. It is also an FPS engine that was forced into powering an RPG, and without any real input from the developers in question.

I'm sure most larger gamedev companies can make a decent game engine on their own if extreme performance is not needed. The recent Baldur's Gate is a good example.

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

#508

Post by somenameforme »

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…

There's another strong argument in favor of this point. This [1] is from Unreal's license:

---

"7. The Agreement Between You and Epic a. Amendments If we make changes to this Agreement, you are not required to accept the amended Agreement, and this Agreement will continue to govern your use of any Licensed Technology you already have access to.

However, if we make changes to this Agreement, you will not be allowed to access certain Epic services or download the Licensed Technology unless you have accepted the amended Agreement. If we make changes, we will provide you with notice, such as by sending an email or giving you notice when you next log into an Epic service."

---

So in other words, if they do a bait and switch, you're free to keep using the old license for older versions of the engine. The reason I think this is telling is because they did this in the day and age where basically every EULA comes down to "We can do anything at any time, for any reason, and you can do nothing." For them to actually have this in their terms is a tremendous display of good faith.

[1] - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal

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

#509

Post by __loam »

ribit wrote: post #502

This is a straw man argument. The problem is not closed source but lack of regulation and power asymmetry between the large company and a small customer. These types of bait and switch one-sided contract changes should be illegal. In fact, the way how Unity approached this is likely illegal, since they have retroactively changed the contract while attempting to hide this fact from the customers. We need to strive tow…

I agree completely, but open source alternatives like Godot make it easier for people to pack up their things and leave, and you'll never need to deal with this issue if your business uses open source software. Open source can be a part of how we hold abusive corporations to account, and it's a way for developers to take action without hiring a lawyer.

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

#510

Post by gumballindie »

1323portloo wrote: post #190
gumballindie wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER For a 5% cut. Add that on top of taxes and steam and you’re basically an employee.

Yes, unless you build everything from the game engine to the distribution channel yourself, there is a cost to doing business. IIRC Epic Games Store offers a more reasonable 88%/12% revenue split, while Steam uses the same rapacious split as Apple and GOG at 70%/30%.

Cool, that's why godot and open source are much more reasonable paths moving forward.
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