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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

#521

Post by autoexec »

harles wrote: post #377
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 this comes down to ambitions. Unity wanted to be an advertising company and when that goal started slipping away, they did something drastic. Epic wants to be a store and a virtual production platform. Who knows what they’ll do if those goals seem impossible. It’s also worth remembering that Epic isn’t the good guy here. When incentives align, most corporations are capable of some pretty awful stuff. With Epi…

> Unity wanted to be an advertising company and when that goal started slipping away, they did something drastic. Epic wants to be a store and a virtual production platform.

Epic "being a store" just happens to allow them to collect a ton of personal data and push a whole lot of ads. Seems like they want to be in advertising too.

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

#522

Post by lelanthran »

ensignavenger wrote: post #276
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…

There are already well over one or two Godot devs working on the engine. The community funding is already enough that it supports multiple full time devs salaries. If the current devs quit, this funding would be used to hire new devs. At this point, I think the Godot community is already well over the tipping point where it will continue no matter what the original devs decide to do.

> There are already well over one or two Godot devs working on the engine. The community funding is already enough that it supports multiple full time devs salaries. If the current devs quit, this funding would be used to hire new devs. At this point, I think the Godot community is already well over the tipping point where it will continue no matter what the original devs decide to do.

Yeah. They've reached critical mass to, from this point on, be self-sustaining.

I don't think Unity ever got to that point.

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

#523

Post by Eumenes »

These platforms just pigeon hole developers into a corner. Yeah I get it - it makes game dev 'accessible' but what are we really missing out on? I'd take quality of quantity any day. Entire generations of programmers are being boxed into being tool dependent. Same goes for web frameworks and mobile ecosystems. Obviously building a game engine from scratch is a massive work of labor and requires vast knowledge in alot of things, but outside of AAA studios, is anything building engines from the ground up?

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

#525

Post by lelanthran »

raincole wrote: post #13
echelon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if Godot devs stop working on it you're stuck with a project with zero support. Good luck developing it further instead of focusing on your game. There's zero risk of this happening. Godot is going to become Blender for gaming and eventually eat into Tim's margins. (Unreal isn't even his cash cow.) Unreal might be significantly ahead now, but when Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. contribute to Godot, it's game over.

My estimation is about 10 ~ 15 years for open source engine to catch up Unreal. (both feature and popularity) Amazon did make a game engine. It shows "Amazon money" doesn't magically solve every problem in the world. > Godot is going to become Blender for gaming Exactly. Blender still isn't the first choice for most animation and VFX jobs.

> Exactly. Blender still isn't the first choice for most animation and VFX jobs.

It doesn't really need to be; being self-sustaining while being open-source beats Unity's model of being funded to cover operations while being closed-source.

TBH, it's only a matter of time before Blender is a choice for most animation and VFX, and then only a little more time before it's the first choice.

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

#526

Post by BlueTemplar »

pxoe wrote: post #446
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…

people trusted in unity for years, enough to build their products and careers on it and around it, and something like this still happened. was it foreseeable? even if it was, well what then, 'great, i have no options besides sucking it up or switching, since i built upon this'. what guarantees do epic/unreal customers have? oh wait, this isn't about 'what worth does 'trust in company' even have', but more like 'publi…

> was it foreseeable?

Has Unity ever said anything about turning their software into a platform, for instance asking for monthly/yearly subscriptions instead of a one time fee ?

If they did, that's when the devs (and especially teachers of future devs !) should have dropped it as soon as feasible.

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

#527

Post by dan_mctree »

fragsworth wrote: post #408
JackMorgan wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you can switch databases, but in practice it is extremely expensive. That's a big reason why it is pretty rare. Why use a closed source tool and take on that risk when great open source ones exist?

Usually the only good reason is because you already have developed lot of experience with with it. I'm just saying it's not as bad because it's quite a bit easier to switch a database than to switch a game engine.

For a lot of companies, switching databases is effectively impossible. Perhaps not quite as impossible as switching game engines, but certainly impossible enough that it would kill the business. A lot of companies use database specific functionality that's far from trivial to replicate in another database. A lot of that database specific functionality can also be legacy that no one really understands anymore. Migrating without an option to keep these poorly understood but critical systems will set you up for unexpected data loss, corruption or availability issues. And that's after spending a year on your migration. If Oracle pulls anything like Unity here, this will kill off a lot of companies

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

#528

Post by nugget »

philipov wrote: post #365
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. Thi…

Unity seems to be attempting this in the most deceptive and deceitful way possible, establishing the new Runtime Fee and then offering a temporary 100% "waiver" of the fee if you use their other (presumably inferior) products.

As soon as the pressure fades, the waiver will be reduced to 50% and then eventually dropped completely - but of course the new fees will remain.

They must think the average game developer has no business sense whatsoever.

Based on the backlash, my prediction is that Unity either quickly reverses course (damaging their brand a little and perhaps costing the CEO his job) or stubbornly doubles down (damaging their brand a lot and giving Godot and others an opening to eventually rival them).

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

#529

Post by 0x457 »

hokumguru wrote: post #188
RugnirViking wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many such game development companies actually are there? I see a lot of aging engines out there, and companies that jumped to unreal, but I have by no means broad knowledge

Certainly not an expert but top studios like Bethesda and CDPR maintain their own engines with an order of magnitude less employees. They make games too.

Given the state of Creation Engine, I wouldn't say that Bethesda maintains their engine well. CDPR is switching to Unreal. CP2077 launch issues were mainly due to their engine not being capable of handling such large games.

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

#530

Post by BlueTemplar »

fragsworth wrote: post #408
JackMorgan wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you can switch databases, but in practice it is extremely expensive. That's a big reason why it is pretty rare. Why use a closed source tool and take on that risk when great open source ones exist?

Usually the only good reason is because you already have developed lot of experience with with it. I'm just saying it's not as bad because it's quite a bit easier to switch a database than to switch a game engine.

Yeah, also that's why the article's Word and Google Docs example strikes me as weird : you shouldn't be using these either, for similar reasons !
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