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Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

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Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#21

Post by GaggiX »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #5
GaggiX wrote: post #3

Hopefully this will encourage the use and development of Godot and other open source engines. If Unity doesn't back off, I don't see any other possible reality.

OSS isn’t tenable as a competitor to any real engine you want to ship big games on. Just the QA testing budget alone that is required to support all consoles, PC/Mac, iOS and Android outstrips the budget of even Godot. What we need is a VC backed, for profit engine, that is up front about taking 2% of revenue after $1mm for perpetuity. And only being an engine company. Period. And like Unreal, source available, just…

Doesn't source available go against "support all consoles" as the SDK of these platforms are under NDA?

Also Blender officially support more than two platforms but I don't know how it's in topic here.

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#22

Post by lelandfe »

0dayz wrote: post #10

I could be wrong here, but wasn't it said that it'll be mostly big studios that will face the brunt of the burden here?

https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updat...

I'd wager it won't affect most small studios, since most games never get close to the prerequisite $200k revenue in a year. But the thought that if you finally do see success you have to start paying danegeld to Unity...?

Far worse is that Unity apparently has the ability and desire to do things like this. What's to stop them in the future from altering the deal further?

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#23

Post by lotsoweiners »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #5
GaggiX wrote: post #3

Hopefully this will encourage the use and development of Godot and other open source engines. If Unity doesn't back off, I don't see any other possible reality.

OSS isn’t tenable as a competitor to any real engine you want to ship big games on. Just the QA testing budget alone that is required to support all consoles, PC/Mac, iOS and Android outstrips the budget of even Godot. What we need is a VC backed, for profit engine, that is up front about taking 2% of revenue after $1mm for perpetuity. And only being an engine company. Period. And like Unreal, source available, just…

I’m not a game developer nor do I plan to become one but the thing that seems strange to me is all of this talk of revenue sharing with the development tools. If I create a successful app or website using Visual Studio, Microsoft isn’t going to take a percentage of my revenue. Even Apple won’t take a percentage to use Xcode and only charges to publish on their platform. Why is game development different?

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#24

Post by hesdeadjim »

floydnoel wrote: post #8
hesdeadjim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSS isn’t tenable as a competitor to any real engine you want to ship big games on. Just the QA testing budget alone that is required to support all consoles, PC/Mac, iOS and Android outstrips the budget of even Godot. What we need is a VC backed, for profit engine, that is up front about taking 2% of revenue after $1mm for perpetuity. And only being an engine company. Period. And like Unreal, source available, just…

I don’t think VC-backed engines can avoid enshittification. Unity is really demonstrating that now. OSS is the only way.

Depends on who the backers are I guess. Perhaps not the classic kind — like say, convince MS, Apple, and Sony to pony up $10mm each. It’s a good play for them to not be caught in this Unity fiasco and $10mm is a rounding error.

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#25

Post by hesdeadjim »

GaggiX wrote: post #21
hesdeadjim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSS isn’t tenable as a competitor to any real engine you want to ship big games on. Just the QA testing budget alone that is required to support all consoles, PC/Mac, iOS and Android outstrips the budget of even Godot. What we need is a VC backed, for profit engine, that is up front about taking 2% of revenue after $1mm for perpetuity. And only being an engine company. Period. And like Unreal, source available, just…

Doesn't source available go against "support all consoles" as the SDK of these platforms are under NDA? Also Blender officially support more than two platforms but I don't know how it's in topic here.

Source available for consoles would be gated on your company having the same NDA.

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#26

Post by hesdeadjim »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #23
hesdeadjim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSS isn’t tenable as a competitor to any real engine you want to ship big games on. Just the QA testing budget alone that is required to support all consoles, PC/Mac, iOS and Android outstrips the budget of even Godot. What we need is a VC backed, for profit engine, that is up front about taking 2% of revenue after $1mm for perpetuity. And only being an engine company. Period. And like Unreal, source available, just…

I’m not a game developer nor do I plan to become one but the thing that seems strange to me is all of this talk of revenue sharing with the development tools. If I create a successful app or website using Visual Studio, Microsoft isn’t going to take a percentage of my revenue. Even Apple won’t take a percentage to use Xcode and only charges to publish on their platform. Why is game development different?

Microsoft and Apple get their cut by charging 30% on their game platforms.

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#27

Post by 0dayz »

lelandfe wrote: post #22
0dayz wrote: post #10

I could be wrong here, but wasn't it said that it'll be mostly big studios that will face the brunt of the burden here?

https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updat... I'd wager it won't affect most small studios, since most games never get close to the prerequisite $200k revenue in a year. But the thought that if you finally do see success you have to start paying danegeld to Unity...? Far worse is that Unity apparently has the ability and desire to do things like this. What's to stop them in the future from altering…

Oh I 100% agree, it's a bit refreshing to not just be told "don't worry if you're an indie dev" - like you get told oh so many times like the trap it is.

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#28

Post by wokwokwok »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #5
GaggiX wrote: post #3

Hopefully this will encourage the use and development of Godot and other open source engines. If Unity doesn't back off, I don't see any other possible reality.

OSS isn’t tenable as a competitor to any real engine you want to ship big games on. Just the QA testing budget alone that is required to support all consoles, PC/Mac, iOS and Android outstrips the budget of even Godot. What we need is a VC backed, for profit engine, that is up front about taking 2% of revenue after $1mm for perpetuity. And only being an engine company. Period. And like Unreal, source available, just…

Anyone down voting this needs to pause and take a good long look at their cloud provider bill.

Why are you not self hosting?

Probably, its because the its very convenient having some else doing the release cycle QA, deployments, infra work for you.

The same goes for game engines.

Are you going to start self hosting tomorrow if AWS announces it’s charging you $0.2 per db query on top of the existing pricing?

No, you’ll swap cloud provider.

Maybe some people will try self hosting… but they’ll find out it’s actually more expensive and harder than it looks, once you start doing it.

Anyone telling people to go self hosted in this situation would, rightly, be giving bad, naive advice.

So, maybe have a moment to think about that, before you down vote someone for saying “that’s bad advice” to use an open source game engine.

Re: Unity's Just Not into You, Indie Developer

#29

Post by metabagel »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #19
rowanG077 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to agree with you. But then I thought about it. Linux kernel handles way more so it's definitely not outright impossible.

Linux kernel doesn’t require signed NDA contracts with console manufacturers.

In exchange for what? What does that give Unity access to which Godot doesn’t have access to?
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