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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

#591

Post by kevingadd »

TylerE wrote: post #588
kevingadd wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Godot games have been shipped on consoles plenty of times

There are paid, non open source forks that support console. Actual godot does not, and never will. From their own docs: “ Godot does not officially support consoles (save for XBox One via UWP) currently. The reasons for this are: To develop for consoles, one must be licensed as a company. Godot, as an open source project, does not have such a legal figure. Console SDKs are secret, and protected by non-disclosure agre…

So your argument breaks down to "once I get access to the closed source console SDKs and spend money for devkits, I will need to use a closed source fork of Godot to ship my closed source app on consoles"? What is the alternative? The console vendors do not allow console ports to exist in the open.

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

#592

Post by [deleted] »

TylerE wrote: post #578
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what they jump to ; godot, for instance, should be similar AIUI?

Godot is never going to be able to ship for consoles due to license incompatibility. That's a pretty big dealbreaker for non-hobbyist projects that aren't exclusively targeting desktop.

[deleted]

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

#593

Post by TylerE »

kevingadd wrote: post #591
TylerE wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are paid, non open source forks that support console. Actual godot does not, and never will. From their own docs: “ Godot does not officially support consoles (save for XBox One via UWP) currently. The reasons for this are: To develop for consoles, one must be licensed as a company. Godot, as an open source project, does not have such a legal figure. Console SDKs are secret, and protected by non-disclosure agre…

So your argument breaks down to "once I get access to the closed source console SDKs and spend money for devkits, I will need to use a closed source fork of Godot to ship my closed source app on consoles"? What is the alternative? The console vendors do not allow console ports to exist in the open.

Use Unity, Unreal, or anthoer commerical engine that doesn't have a large upfront cost?

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

#594

Post by numlock86 »

adultSwim wrote: post #556
numlock86 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes. Having access to the source is not the same as open source. I encourage you to re-read it. They also have an FAQ clearly outlining the restrictions. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq "Can I copy and paste Unreal engine code into my own project or engine? If you use any Unreal Engine code in your product (even just a little), then your entire product is governed by the Unreal Engine EULA, and is subject to 5…

> [...] and is subject to 5% royalties when your gross lifetime revenues from that product exceed $1 million USD.

That's part of their general license and business model anyway, and not specific for source code usage, but the engine (parts) itself. How is this relevant?

> I encourage you to re-read it.

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

#595

Post by mschuster91 »

mabbo wrote: post #563

I think at this point, the real question is who in their right mind would ever build a game in Unity again? I'm sure this will make their company a short term gain in profits, but in very short order no more Unity games will be made . Even if you accept the terms they're proposing, you know damn well they are willing to change the rules at any time at your expense. Unity just became an extinction-level-event liabilit…

> The leadership will be ousted by their shareholders quickly enough, I expect.

Wouldn't be that certain... there is a lot of stuff built on Unity. The most common theme I heard was that they're trying to capitalize off of Genshin Impact [1], but there's also a ton of other highly successful games like Among Us or Untitled Goose Game that won't/can't (easily) be ported to another engine.

In other words, they want to become the IBM of game engines. Rent seekers for sub-par service.

[1] https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/will-genshin-impact-affe...

[2] https://www.create-learn.us/blog/top-games-made-with-unity/

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

#596

Post by flangola7 »

TylerE wrote: post #588
kevingadd wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Godot games have been shipped on consoles plenty of times

There are paid, non open source forks that support console. Actual godot does not, and never will. From their own docs: “ Godot does not officially support consoles (save for XBox One via UWP) currently. The reasons for this are: To develop for consoles, one must be licensed as a company. Godot, as an open source project, does not have such a legal figure. Console SDKs are secret, and protected by non-disclosure agre…

Why would an SDK be secret?

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

#597

Post by [deleted] »

TylerE wrote: post #578
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what they jump to ; godot, for instance, should be similar AIUI?

Godot is never going to be able to ship for consoles due to license incompatibility. That's a pretty big dealbreaker for non-hobbyist projects that aren't exclusively targeting desktop.

[deleted]

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

#598

Post by omarqureshi »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #580
mabbo wrote: post #563

I think at this point, the real question is who in their right mind would ever build a game in Unity again? I'm sure this will make their company a short term gain in profits, but in very short order no more Unity games will be made . Even if you accept the terms they're proposing, you know damn well they are willing to change the rules at any time at your expense. Unity just became an extinction-level-event liabilit…

Realistically - how locked in are developers to their current engine? I imagine >50% of video game development is art. And I imagine some decent percentage of code can be translated without nearly as much effort as the original implementation. Still, I doubt many developers are going to switch engines mid or late development. But a lot of times, developers re-use much from their old games in development of their new…

I work for a hedgehog based studio for their supposedly non existent mobile games arm albeit I don't work in engineering.

For us, it's a huge deal. It's that people have spent the best part of a decade working with Unity, their support and enterprise training is very good. Also we have a game out in December which is also Unity based.

As of yet we haven't made a decision on what to do but legal are looking at it, so, it's business as usual for now.

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

#599

Post by hedora »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #572

So to summarize the answer to the title: Probably, unless a dev used an older version that had language around being able to keep the old terms, in which case it'll be for the courts to decide. And of course "is that legal" may or may not quickly play second fiddle to "is anyone going to use them ever again after this stunt".

Note that, "older" means before April 2023. The language that existed then said you could continue to use the calendar year version that was available at the time, so presumably, you can use 2023 releases of their software as long as you were using it (started development? started training?) before April, assuming the courts rule that the old Software ToS applies.

I can't imagine anyone will start using them now, so there's a good chance that the new ToS will only apply to whatever new customers they signed on between April 2023 and Sept 2023, and people that voluntarily update to the 2024 release.

Still, it's a shame. They just threw out millions of developer hours (minimum), and it doesn't seem likely they'll be able to come back from their mistake.

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

#600

Post by eestrada »

corethree wrote: post #582
eestrada wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Epic is privately held, Valve is too, Unity is not and we ended up here. I think that says a lot. I've been thinking a lot about private versus public companies. Most of my favorite products come out of privately held companies. There is something about the incentives for publicly traded companies that encourages them to make poor choices. I think it is because there are effectively two forms of revenue: selling pr…

>My current theory is to focus more on revenue sharing instead of stock price. For example, dividend stocks. I don't think it completely solves the problem, but it at least moves things in the right direction. This can't be directly enforced. You can't make laws for what people to "focus" on. Though there is a way to indirectly push this notion: Restrict all stock ownership to be a minimum of 10 years. This indirectl…

I apologize for not being clear in my comment. None of my musing was meant to allude to public policy or law. It was about what an individual (or group of individuals) could choose to do with a corporation to avoid perverse incentives in the future. I'm not really interested in directly enforcing anything.

To make a play on an old programming joke:

Once there was an individual who noticed there was a problem with society. He said to himself "I'll use the State to change things!" Now there were two problems.

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