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NecoArcKbinAccount ,
@NecoArcKbinAccount@kbin.social avatar

Switch to Godot or FTEQW, screw Unity.

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

FTEQW

Quake world engine. Huh, wasn’t aware of that one! Speaking of which, you can do all sorts of silly stuff with Doom sourceports, so that’s also a valid alternative.

TwilightVulpine ,

This might kill entire indie projects.

9point6 ,

There’s other engines, this will kill unity

TwilightVulpine ,

I know and thank goodness for that... but there will be projects that simply won't be able to afford to move to entirely different engines. It's a lot of work that might have to be redone.

9point6 ,

There’s going to be a lot of money on the table for another engine that can build a unity migration or abstraction tool

I don’t see that being left on the table for long

echo64 ,

… not really, and for what a few years? Indie devs don’t have a lot of money, and there is a huge discrepancy between unity and other engines. They work in fundamentally different ways.

9point6 ,

There are some pretty big games built in unity, the money on the table is coming from them, (assuming reasonable licensing terms) not the small indie games.

I may be entirely off the mark, as I don’t work in that part of the industry. But I’ve messed around with unity and it’s not particularly unique compared to any other engine it competes with in my experience, particularly when it comes to actual runtime. Assets will need conversion and sure, the API shim will probably give a performance hit, but there’s no reason I can see that unity is fundamentally different.

Asifall ,

I’m sure someone will try, but it seems nearly impossible to do this in a way that’s actually useful. Most game engines are going to have fundamental differences that won’t easily map to the unity way of doing things

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Art assets, sound effects, storylines, that sort of thing transfers pretty easily.

Rigging, animations, scripting, physics…these pretty much don’t and would have to be rewritten from scratch.

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot ,

I’m in the middle of a project right now that’s going to be released on an out-of-date engine because the newest versions broke backward compatibility and I’m too far along to port everything. If I had to change engines entirely at this point I’d have to cancel the entire project.

BURN ,

Honest question though, what other small engines have the support and features of unity while also having the permissive licensing they used to have?

At least when I was looking into engines unreal and unity really stood out as the only useable free engines.

Defaced ,

There’s unreal, Godot, and a couple others I can’t think of off the top of my head. They’re not as widely used because they lack the feature set of unreal and unity, but they’re out there.

BURN ,

That’s pretty much what I thought. Unity is so big because it offers a ton of features with a pretty permissive license. There’s not something comparable except unreal, which has an even worse licensing situation

Aux ,

The thing about Unreal is that you can always negotiate with Epic Games. And if they like your project, they can even invest or provide tech support.

BURN ,

True, but you also have to deal with Epic, which is a downside for many. It’s a great engine without a doubt, but it does come with its downsides too

EnglishMobster ,

I dunno if Epic’s licensing is worse. At least it’s a cut of revenue and not charging per install.

Not to mention that Epic gives sweetheart deals to indies periodically. They make their money from Fortnite, not the engine.

theterrasque ,

Unity got popular because it was simpler than unreal, and way more feature complete than Godot.

Was… these days unreal is easier to work with, and Godot is much more capable. So it’s mostly inertia at this point. And now everyone is going to take a real hard look at the alternatives.

9point6 ,

I’m not a game engineer, so someone else who’s actually in that segment of the industry can probably give more answers, but Godot and Bevy seem to be making some waves.

And if they’re not enough for what a dev needs, given these license changes, I don’t really understand why someone wouldn’t pick unreal or something much more comprehensive over unity now.

Correct me if I’m off the mark, but unity always seemed like what you’d go for if you wanted something like unreal, but (completely understandably) didn’t want to pay the fees associated with it

AWittyUsername ,

I only prefer unity for 2 reasons, 1. I have assets that I’ve purchased. 2 I like c#.

Vittelius ,
  1. You can actually import assets from unity into godot using a 3rd party add-on (If the assets license allows is)
  2. Godot has C# scripting
captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

It depends on the game you’re making.

Godot has a dedicated workflow for 2D games, so I’d rather make one of those color sorting puzzle games that’s all people play on mobile these days in Godot than Unity or Unreal.

ahornsirup ,
@ahornsirup@artemis.camp avatar

It's probably still going to take some projects with it. If you've sunk hundreds or even thousands of manhours into a project you can't just... do it again, or at least not always. Especially not if you've invested money as well as time, which is probably the case for most indie projects that aren't literal one-person shows.

TheRagingGeek ,

I have a friend who has been moderately successful in the game creation space and he is saying he wants to just give up at this point because of this change.

BURN ,

I can’t even blame him. I would too. This is essentially a situation where the only option is going to be a rewrite from the ground up in a new language and new engine.

If I was an indie game dev I’d be questioning my future right now too.

The_v ,

This will kill new development on the engine and older games without who have a limited number of users.

The ones halfway or more through development to recently launched will have to move to subscriber model or a shit-ton of ads.

In the next 3-5 years however their profits will likely be up. So some larger company will likely buy them out.

Touching_Grass ,

I think we need to kill everything so this is a good start. Snake blisken LA

TwilightVulpine ,

Indies are the ones who deserve to die the least.

colonial ,
@colonial@lemmy.world avatar

I can’t decide if they’ll get away with this or if they’re committing corporate suicide.

chemical_cutthroat ,
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

This is 100% targeted at bleeding indie game developers dry in hopes of taking some of that sweet viral cash from devs like the one who made Vampire Survivors. They see that indie devs are charging $3-5 for their games, and so they aren’t hitting the $200k threshold unless they go viral, so Unity is charging by install, not just by total revenue. I hope that the ESA or other interested groups take legal action against this retroactive greed.

Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow ,

Has to be a smarter way than this. This is just going to make devs go back to activation limits.

chemical_cutthroat ,
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

After seeing the way WotC handled DnD and MtG, and the way Musk has been dragging Twitter through the shit, I really believe that shareholders are trying to take what they can while they can and peace out. No one is looking at the long term anymore. Everyone just wants theirs, fuck everything else.

LiveLM ,

No one is looking at the long term anymore.

It feels like no one has been looking at the long term for ages now, and this is just the natural conclusion

mojo ,

That’s pretty awesome of them to do such a great Godot advertisement

OsrsNeedsF2P , (edited )

I work for a small (15 people) Unity gaming company. Will let you know what the CEO says, just shared the actual Unity blogpost

Edit: Update - CEO added a gravestone emoji and said “yikes”

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/1e5f2e17-fb28-4d31-bdbd-9bea20207c23.png

colonial ,
@colonial@lemmy.world avatar

For the sake of your sanity, I hope there’s a resolution to this that doesn’t involve a rewrite.

AWittyUsername ,

This is the problem with being a whole company on the ecosystem of another, they can pull the rug at any time.

jackoid ,

Yeah this is why many bigger studios just use their own Engines even if they’re shit.

reversebananimals ,

The problem is that its so expensive to build from scratch. All Unity does is build just the engine, and that’s enough to make it a 7000 person company. Trying to build a game engine and then an actual game on top is a herculean effort.

This is why open source software is so important. It enables these small companies to pool their resources and share an engine as long as they each contribute fixes back.

Floey ,

7000 people is misleading. Being a general purpose game engine it has to be everything for everybody. An engine developed for a single game can be simpler, and once it is done, making the game will be simpler than it will be in Unity. Also those 7000 people are doing way more things than develop an engine.

That said, an engine like Unity can save a massive amount of time, especially for games that are medium scope. It’s these games where developing engine code and tooling would both take a lot of time and the advantages would likely go unnoticed.

Serinus ,

Yeah, this will insure I never use Unity. But at least they can collect from their existing games.

Gork ,

This is a good way to incentivize game developers to just not use Unity and just some other engine that does this.

Great for short term profits which makes the quarterly statements look good, but bad for long term sustainability.

Skoobie ,
@Skoobie@lemmy.film avatar

Short term profits making quarterly reports look better to stakeholders. Isn’t that how 80% of these bigwigs get their job in the first place? We should be calling it the Zaslav Model at this point 😂.

Gork ,

Just because it looks better to shareholders now doesn’t make it a good business decision. I swear the majority of CEO types don’t give a damn if the company goes under in a few years because they either:

  1. Have a golden parachute in place by sucking up to the Board.
  2. Will move on to another CEO position at another company before it folds. Bonus points if they golden parachute on the way out.
Jajcus ,

Modern corporate management model is just broken.

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

It’s a good decision for the CEO though. That’s part of the problem, they’re not beholden to the business. They’ll just bugger off and go elsewhere.

HBK ,
@HBK@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

That’s what the golden parachute is supposed to be for: a payout long term so the CEO doesn’t make a short term decision that fucks the company up but pays out big. Ex: offering a stock package that you can’t sell for 5-10years.

A decision like this will pay out HUGE in the short term, but if they don’t change it I doubt many will be using unity in a few years.

commandar ,

The CEO of Unity used to the the CEO of EA.

It explains a lot.

BarterClub ,

A CEO who can’t manage. Shocker.

AlmightySnoo ,
@AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

“Runtime fee” is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard im the programming world, I think we hit a new record of low

wizardbeard ,

Beyond what this means for Unity and the indie gaming scene, I’m concerned about copycats.

With how big Unity is for hobbyists, I’m worried this might have an “Apple” effect, where other runtimes (even non-gaming related) begin to try this.

Natanael ,

I’ve heard of proprietary code libraries before with expensive licensing, but still nothing this dumb

Jaysyn ,
@Jaysyn@kbin.social avatar

This is great news!! For Godot.

reversebananimals ,

The person who runs Unity is a shithead.

theverge.com/…/unity-ceo-john-riccitiello-apology…

DocMcStuffin ,
@DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, he was a former CEO of EA. That explains a few things.

half_built_pyramids ,

A Big fucking idiot

DoucheBagMcSwag ,

This is why they shut down Parsec Arcade. Cause they’re an asshole

MossBear ,

Godot.

Jordan117 ,

Context: godotengine.org

leprasmurf ,

Some more context: Godot established the “Godot Development Fund” to accept donations directly (lemmy.ml/post/4815592).

colonial ,
@colonial@lemmy.world avatar

Every other engine is smelling blood in the water it seems

SpaceNoodle ,

Their tagline is on point.

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA ,
@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world avatar

I only code in Guffman

Cossty ,

Or Wicked engine.

wickedengine.net

store.steampowered.com/app/…/Wicked_Engine/

look pretty cool.

nogooduser ,

Existing games built on Unity will also be hit with Runtime Fees if they meet the thresholds starting January 1.

How can you have a deal in place and just say “you’re giving me more money” and think that that’s ok?

I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further. - Vader

TwilightVulpine ,

Tech companies badly need to get their shit kicked in to stop with this "I have the right to change the terms unilaterally anytime"

Buddahriffic ,

This might actually lead to that, depending on what kind of lawsuits arise from this change. Which could mean there will be pressure from others who don’t have a stake in the “unity install fee” game but do have one in the “wants to change terms at a whim” game.

Or maybe it will threaten the “by continuing to use this, you agree” clause instead and open up a path to continue using a previous license agreement if you don’t like a new one.

AeroLemming ,

I mean, that can’t be legal, right?

AndreasChris ,

I don’t believe that is legal. That’s just absolutely ridiculous.

Syndic ,

I can’t imagine that it is.

If that’s the case then they could simply up the charge next year to $10 to get even more money for doing absolutely nothing. And then to $20 the next year and so forth. There’s no sane court anywhere in the world who would say “Yeah, that sounds reasonable!” and even the less sane ones would think that’s bonkers.

Psaldorn ,
@Psaldorn@lemmy.world avatar

Jokes on them, I never finished a unity project.

Tolstoshev ,

It used to be illegal. Part of anti-trust was forcing IP owners to license their technology to everyone at a reasonable price. That means that reddit’s API price gouging would also have been illegal and tesla and apple would have had to license their FSD and OS to other hardware manufacturers. This ability to control other companies through abusive pricing and licensing lock-in is classic monopoly violation that the govt has stopped policing.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

This makes sense to me, it looks like it’s $0.20 for each install, only if

  • you have passed a threshold of installs
  • you yourself are charging for your game

Which, I know Lemmy has issues with proprietary software, but if you are charging for your software and it’s built off this, I don’t think $0.20 is too much to pay them. Unreal takes a percentage I believe, sounds like this is a “keep the lights on” charge.

makatwork ,

Except steam will let you un/re-install something infinite times.

Carnelian ,

Is that really how it works? That seems like a pretty egregious oversight if so, couldn’t groups of people bankrupt devs, especially small ones with small file size games that are easy to reinstall over and over?

delcake ,
@delcake@kbin.social avatar

Nah, it's per device install. So unless you modify your PC enough to generate a different hardware fingerprint or go install a game on a fleet of laptops or something, most people won't be running up that counter too much.

aggelalex ,

Virtual Machines.

colonial ,
@colonial@lemmy.world avatar

Depending on how they generate a hardware fingerprint, fabricating random ones every check is a single LD_PRELOAD (or equivalent) away.

delcake ,
@delcake@kbin.social avatar

After Unity's clarifications, I'm honestly kind of expecting the old "null-route the web address in the HOSTS file" to be a valid method to prevent their installer from phoning home to increment the counter. It's gonna be incredible if people start trying that just to frick with Unity.

The fact that we can even have this discussion should be proof enough to Unity that it's a complete non-starter of an idea to let user behavior influence the developer bottom-line.

colonial ,
@colonial@lemmy.world avatar

I wonder if distributors could get away with doing that automatically. My gut instinct tells me that Unity isn’t stupid enough for that to be feasible long term, but… like you say, the C-suite bozos clearly aren’t listening to the engineers.

TwilightVulpine , (edited )

How many reinstalls? Because I have games I have bought 4 PCs/laptops ago, not counting some few more when I installed them in family members' computers to play with them. What about OS updates? Windows keeps insisting to move to 11.

Frankly, this doesn't sound reasonable at all. It's not even like Unity is doing any of the hosting to justify squeezing devs like this.

edit: Now it has been confirmed it's not measured on an unique hardware basis, any reinstall counts. It's just madness.

BURN ,

They’ve clarified this is not the case. Reinstalling counts as a new installation

delcake ,
@delcake@kbin.social avatar

I saw that a short while ago and actually laughed out loud. The only thing left is to get the popcorn ready I guess because this is going to be hilarious.

Fylkir ,

especially small ones with small file size games that are easy to reinstall over and over?

Wouldn’t even need a small game technically. I’m pretty sure the only way to properly calculate would be running a postinstall script and someone could presumably just keep running that script

chemical_cutthroat ,
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

Hearthstone runs on Unity. I’m ok setting up a little something to let people constantly install and uninstall Hearthstone to bleed Blizzard dry… hell, once it’s discovered how your installs are tracked, I could see that leading to insane exploitation.

PixxlMan ,

That’s without a doubt not what Unity means here though

Ktanaqui ,

It is exactly what Unity means; they have doubled down on the clarifications. The precise point is to charge the developer for any install a user makes once they earn a (paltry) $200K.

It’s not rocket science to see that this is a very bad, very abusive idea and its targeted to hurt indie developers the most (as larger studios like EA would be on the enterprise plan and therefore on the hook for only 1/20th of the same usage).

Some simple math says that you would have to uninstall and reinstall a $5 game 20 times to completely nullify the earnings from your purchase.

It’s surprisingly easy to rack up installs; between multiple devices, uninstalls for bug fixing / addressing, the OS breaking it, modded installs having to be reset, making space for other games, refreshing a device… and so on. And that’s not even accounting for bad actors actively trying to damage a company.

PixxlMan ,

Honestly I just can’t believe it. It’s so unbelievably stupid and prone to fraud. How did they come to this decision??

Ktanaqui ,

Clearly without consulting anyone with a modicum of common sense.

It’s also possible its a move to deliberately piss of the customer base, so they can “back off” and implement a solution that still satisfies them, but looks like they let the “customer” (mostly) win.

For example: “We will charge $.20 for over 200K installs!” Backpedal: “We will charge $.05 for only the initial install after 500K installs!”

Pretty sure there are many documented instances of exactly this occurring, especially in the game dev industry unfortunately. (The goal was never the first offer, but rather to overshadow the real goal.)

hyperhopper ,

But they already changed it from $0 to 0.2, how do you know it won’t be 10 dollars next year after you’ve already spent 5 years making your game?

What if you only were charging a dollar for your game and people like it so much they install it 5 times over the year? Easy to do with multiple devices or reinstalling OS’s

The problem is unity is forcing this on people who may have spent years and lots of money entering into a different kind of business agreement.

Justdaveisfine ,

There are a lot of cases where this might suck if you’re a full time Unity dev. Getting on Gamepass was already a bit dicey as it cannibalizes sales, but now you got an extra Unity tax on that. (And you may get a LOT of installs on Gamepass)

Give a bunch of keys to a charity auction? Guess you’re paying extra. Got a demo that’s doing wonders on Steam NextFest? Those are installs. Is your game being pirated? Those look like installs, gotta pay up.

I don’t think this will bankrupt any dev, but all those above decisions will hurt.

schmidtster ,

I think gamepass doesn’t fall under you charging yourself for the game, so those devs may not be affected.

Justdaveisfine , (edited )

I’m not a lawyer who can properly interpret the legalese but I don’t think this is the case.

Selling your game to a publisher or a third party to distribute it counts as the developer making revenue off the game.

Edit: Actually I may be incorrect - The apparent wording of the license says the publisher or distributor would pay the per install fee. I’m not sure how that would work, unless they’re planning to send a bill to Steam/Microsoft/EA/etc. I will have to reread the terms.

TwilightVulpine ,

Charging "per install" as opposed to "per sale" will be goddamn awful. At best it might lead to DRM where you'll have a limited number of installs before you lose the game you bought.

neshura ,
@neshura@bookwormstory.social avatar

Or more cases of devs saying “Just pirate the game, it’s cheaper for us that way”

Natanael ,

Unless pirate installs trigger the fee

TwilightVulpine ,

We don't know how they are measuring it. If it's baked into the engine and not removed by cracking groups, it just might cost more for the devs.

vrighter ,

as already confirmed by others, it is per install, not per sale. Meaning that if you uninstall your game and mhen reinstall it, the dev has to pay twice. You buy the game and install it on your pc, and your steam deck so you can play it whenever you want? developer pays twice.

that sort of thing

Floey ,

The model makes no sense.

Consider how it affects $60 AAA games vs close to free $1 games, it’s wildly disproportional and somehow the $1 game dev starts paying significantly earlier. Now consider how it affects games that make far less than a dollar per user, this is true of many free-with-in-game-purchase mobile games.

Then consider demos, refunds, piracy, and advisarial attacks.

It would have been simpler, more balanced approach, and have none of the pitfalls if they had just gone with a profit share scheme.

Sharpiemarker ,

Get. Fucked.

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