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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

#511

Post by manquer »

JackMorgan wrote: post #376

This should also be a wakeup call to anyone using closed source tools at all: DynamoDB, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, AWS Lambda, Azure, AWS, Azure Devops, SqlServer, Oracle, etc. While some of these tools are best in class, it's borrowed time until the owner decides to change the terms, stop offering it, or raise prices enough to damage your business. Closed source software tools are a liability, and the benefits often ar…

> MongoDB, Elasticsearch

> Redis

You suggest that mongo and elastic search are not open source and redis is ?

While all three have a company backing them and sell or have some restrictions (usually targeted towards cloud providers not self hosting ) i would have said all of them are open enough in their current versions not to have a vendor lock in risk

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

#512

Post by grotorea »

olig15 wrote: post #290
grotorea wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not not it's an everything engine it's the most popular engine on steam by far from a quick search, although it does leans towards indie. https://infogram.com/1d560b7e-21a1-437a-91f4-198309bf3e25 https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/game-engines-on-steam...

I’d probably bet that the majority of games on steam have less than 1000 sales, so being a popular game on Steam probably doesn’t mean much compared to being a popular game by daily active users viewing unity ads.

The methodology on the site only includes games with a minimum popularity, so the long tail of tiny indie games isn't included. By the way, since steam has a fee to be included, aren't most of those tiny indie games over at itch.io anyway?

> Unless stated otherwise, we filtered out unreleased games, free games, those that launched with less than a $4.99 price point, and those that have fewer than 50 reviews.

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

#513

Post by autoexec »

DeepYogurt wrote: post #462
linuxftw wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running out of ammo and instant payment sounds a lot like an arcade, which is how video games became commercially successful in the first place.

> Running out of ammo and instant payment sounds a lot like an arcade Any chance you have an example? I can't recall an arcade game that had you pay per bullet.

I remember there were arcade games where your health continuously drained and inserting another quarter would heal you. That's worse than a per-bullet price because you were losing even when there were no enemies on the screen. I don't remember the titles because I played those kinds of games exactly once and never again. Total rip off.

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

#515

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

dehrmann wrote: post #474
tschellenbach wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's true that this can happen to external tools, it doesn't happen very often. Companies have a very strong incentive to ensure their products are supported long terms and work well. For in-house developed software it happens frequently that past employees leave the codebase in a state, where new team members end up rewriting it. So it's a bit weird to say you shouldn't use closed source since there is a small…

If AWS actually tried to abuse its power, it would really damage the tech industry. Tech companies would see the risk and start treating the cloud as rented machines (EC2), and stop realizing all the benefits of their provider managing a complex system on their behalf. If I were AWS, I'd willingly write into contracts that costs can go up no faster than the PPI + 5%, barring some sort of force majeure. Hardware gets…

If AWS tried to abuse its power, people would switch to another CSP.

While certainly, the shift would not be easy, but if AWS increased their prices enough, it could still be a savings in the long run.

EDIT: On the other hand, publicly traded companies are often extremely short-sighted because they have to make those quarterly reports, so maybe they would be unwilling to spend $X over the course of a year in order to save $X every year after that.

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

#516

Post by lotsofpulp »

giobox wrote: post #501
lotsofpulp wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Surely the CEO has both interests, and securing resources for themselves is of higher priority than securing them for others. They might be expected to hold proportionally more of it than others, but I also would not expect any half intelligent person to put all their eggs in one basket just for the benefit of others.

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

#517

Post by BlueTemplar »

somenameforme wrote: post #508
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…

I can't see how anything less favorable to the devs would not be instantly rejected in court, especially in the EU ?

Speaking of which, I don't see why the Unity using devs can't just keep using the old version of Unity, and therefore never have to accept the new license ?

(Of course I assume that Unity would have made it extra-annoying, because these changes don't just come out like that, but the point here is to give themselves time to find an alternative to Unity.)

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

#518

Post by fragmede »

lelanthran wrote: post #505
aniforprez wrote: post #17

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…

> 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.

Okay, but when we're told to share our work for free "for the exposure", we're supposed to buy that and just give it away? They wanted people to use their product for free for the exposure. Changing their mind is one thing, making it retroactive is another.

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

#519

Post by dfxm12 »

linuxftw wrote: post #425
mnau wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

Running out of ammo and instant payment sounds a lot like an arcade, which is how video games became commercially successful in the first place.

A key difference is that you paid nothing up front to play an arcade game compared to Battlefield 2024 (or whatever). There's decades of expectations/inertia not having microtransactions on home games, but I understand that is what publishers are trying to fight against.

It's worth noting that the death of the golden age of arcade games was due to no small part of the rise of console games. People didn't want to pump quarters into a machine to keep playing, they wanted to buy a game once and play it forever.

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

#520

Post by BlueTemplar »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #453
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 get that you're writing stylized speculations but in my experience in the games industry, every single point is wrong. It is the most upvoted comment because it touches on a bunch of first-principles-know-nothing boogeymen, but so it goes with Hacker News nowadays. You can keep reading to find out why, or whatever, my dog in this race is (1) I use Unity (2) I don't think they're going to change anything about these…

If there isn't right now, after news like this, someone will start making one.
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