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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

#121

Post by isaiahg »

ekianjo wrote: post #71
chii wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that with Godot at least you could work on it yourself if you wanted to. let me play the devil's advocate - unreal's source is available (despite it not being actual opensource licensed). This means if Epic ever abandons unreal, you could theoretically also just make the changes you need to support whatever your project required - as long as you didn't distribute those changes (except perhaps the run-time? N…

Source available means you cant do shit at the end of the day before going in legal trouble

Except you can because of unreal’s perpetual license. You’d just have to use the same pricing attached to the version of source you use

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

#122

Post by alpaca128 »

JCharante wrote: post #111
progx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the millions of free to play games in the App-Stores. Normally you have 98% of free playing users paying nothing, 2% pay. Imagine now you have 1 million installs. 2% (20.000) pay you 200.000 / year. 980.000 players pay nothing. Now Unity want 1.000.000 x 20 Cent = 200.000, you made ZERO with your game... crazy. That is an uncalculatable risk for a small company.

So maybe it’ll force companies to stop making freemium trash that only targets the 2% whales and actually make good games?

No, it will make companies switch to Godot (where they have to pay nothing, ever) or Unreal (where they pay 5% for payments above a $1M threshold).

For many developers it is now cheaper to switch the engine than to pay for Unity.

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

#123

Post by isaiahg »

nhinck wrote: post #14
makomk wrote: post #2

Much as I love open source and the Godot engine, this seems more like a wake-up call on the importance of corporations not being able to unilaterally, retroactively change contracts in ways that impose new charges and violate existing contractual commitments that others have relied on. If they can do that then open source doesn't offer much real protection.

They don't though, if any developer had the means to take it to court it is incredibly likely that Unity would lose. While TOS are rarely worth the toilet paper they could be printed on, I'm curious about whether arguments could be made about whether existing subscribers from 2019 could now sue for breach of contract and costs associated with (re)development.

Do you have the money to fight it because I sure don’t

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

#124

Post by mcv »

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…

> 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 this.

If I understand correctly, Unity had that too. And then they changed it anyway.

I don't know the details, but apparently Unity maintained their license in a git repository for the explicit purpose that everybody could easily track changes to their license. Just before the license changes, they removed that repository, and later put it up again, but without the clause that you could always use an old version forever without new restrictions applying to you.

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

#125

Post by alpaca128 »

phkahler wrote: post #60

Why not charge $1 for your game? Problem solved. If you're making a game with a fancy commercial engine I would hope what you're offering is worth a buck. Let's get some quality in this world.

With $1 paid to the developer the player only needs to (re)install the game 6 times on their computer to cost the developer more than they earned.

This pricing is per install, not per player. Installations are an unrestricted functionality which can be abused. If you care about quality games: this pricing causes the opposite.

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

#127

Post by objclxt »

doikor wrote: post #104
objclxt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's. Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. > BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work. Over t…

> Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. More then 50% of the shares/votes is owned by a single person. The founder and CEO Tim Sweeney.

Yes, that's why I said "part owned". 40% of Epic is owned by Tencent.

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

#128

Post by batty_alex »

worble wrote: post #114
chii wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that with Godot at least you could work on it yourself if you wanted to. let me play the devil's advocate - unreal's source is available (despite it not being actual opensource licensed). This means if Epic ever abandons unreal, you could theoretically also just make the changes you need to support whatever your project required - as long as you didn't distribute those changes (except perhaps the run-time? N…

>This means if Epic ever abandons unreal, you could theoretically also just make the changes you need to support whatever your project required - as long as you didn't distribute those changes No it doesn't, you still don't own the code so you can't just modify it and use it to develop games.

Except you can modify it and use it to develop games, it's licensed that way

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

#129

Post by Mechanical9 »

isaiahg wrote: post #97
objclxt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's. Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. > BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work. Over t…

> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. Holy straw man! And there’s certainly no self-interest involved with me using their engine without giving them a cut under 1 mill right? You can make this argument about literally anything. Godot must have no self-interest in r…

While you can make this argument about literally anything, it seems apt to make it about a multi-billion dollar company chasing a trillion dollar company.

It's fine to support them while they are the underdog and are saying and doing the right thing, but don't pretend like they will say and do the right thing forever.

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

#130

Post by nottorp »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #79
nottorp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's. the Epic games leadership are bribing developers for exclusivity, including kickstarters where i was promised steam or gog the Epic games leaderhip makes money from free to play grinding/gambling simulators the Epic games leadership also comes from Tencent that made all their gaming money before trying to get into the western market from asian gacha…

Bribing implies an illegal act. Giving money in exchange for goods and services is completely normal: I don't bribe a restaurant for food. Exclusivity is just a way of competing for games, a sign of a good competitive market. Kickstarter is kickstarter. Half of them probably don't fulfill all their promises. That's the risk you're taking, and why it's not a preorder. Epic don't have gambling. They've even removed gam…

> Bribing implies an illegal act. Giving money in exchange for goods and services is completely normal: I don't bribe a restaurant for food. Exclusivity is just a way of competing for games, a sign of a good competitive market.

It doesn't have to be illegal, merely immoral.

> Kickstarter is kickstarter. Half of them probably don't fulfill all their promises. That's the risk you're taking, and why it's not a preorder.

I don't expect them to finish a project when i back them. I expect them to deliver my fucking GoG key when they finish the project and ask me what do I want it on and i say GoG! I don't expect them to say "Epic paid us a ton of money and you can get it on their gacha financed store".

True story. So long, Julian Gollop.

> Epic don't have gambling. They've even removed gambling from Rocket League after purchasing them too.

They're free to play. That means the game is designed to keep you playing forever and keep you buying IAPs. It is not designed to entertain you.

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