What I think about the Unity Engine drama...

In a nutshell, it's not great.

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This video features clips from my stream. Catch it live: Weekdays 1-6pm AEST.

Later, pals!

[Kikindo]

Godot could be a good choice for upcoming 2D games & it's on its good way to improve 3D engine as well

[CrossCoderDev]

It really is a tragedy. I hope Unity reverts their decision but the whole situation is extremely frustrating especially for those who have been working so hard on amazing games like Insignia for years. I wish the best for everyone going through in these difficult moments.

[mlmattin]

The really scary part to me is that it is not 20 cents per USER. They are not tracking users. It's 20 cents per INSTALL. Uninstall and re-install..another 20 cents. That's my understanding. This could get out of hand really quickly. There's nothing to keep someone from hammering you by uninstalling and re-installing your game a million times. Also, you mentioned early access and demos....no difference....20 cents per install. So a demo, which you are likely giving away for free...20 cents per install. It's crazy. Even if they back out of this...trust is lost. I'm done with Unity. I have nothing in progress, so I realize it's easy for me to make this decision. Not so easy for those people who have been working away for years. Good luck with your game. It's looking great so far.

[iWannaNuhh]

More than anything its just the last breach of trust with developers. Even if they undo it, it doesn't matter. They have officially killed their relationship with developers.

[gmc]

What you mentioned about certifying true installs - that's the big thing. The company now has an incentive to overcount installs, and every response to this question so far has been "Well we have a proprietary way to verify this and no you can't know what it is exactly." How can you trust them at this point with anything?

[MacRabbitPro]

In Software development, nothing is fix. Things come and go. Languages, development environments, systems, companies. There is never a guarantee that what you have learned or developed will be relevant or useful tomorrow. I started software development in the early eighties, the digital Stone Age, from todays point of view. Every three to five years, I learn new. Being in my mid 50th, I can tell you it gets harder and cost me more energy than 30 years ago. But what stays and always grows, in opposite to the technical changes, is the experience you have. Experience in how to do things, to know best practices, to judge what is good and what not. So be not afraid to start from the beginning, it is a natural process.

[noskillgames]

While i agree Godot isnt ready yet for 3D if youre aiming for that for future projects, for 2D games is an amazing engine. No idea why people have that stigma with it still.

[knightofsolace]

This reminds me a lot of Wizards of the Coast and the Dungeon and Dragons OGL controversy earlier this year, too. They tried something very similar, and even though they were forced to backtrack, they didn't regain the trust of the community and had a large exodus of players & content creators. Of course, a competitor making a table top game system is much faster than making a fully fledged video game engine.

[st.altair]

Casette Beasts is a fantastic game that I recently learned is made with Godot, among others like Brotato, so I don't get this stigma of it 'not being ready'

3d development in Godot has also been quite good since 4.0

[slowcreep]

The thing about something like Godot, is that, if knowledgeable devs move to it, we will see huge improvements quickly, because of its open source nature. Oh, it lacks a feature? Either code it yourself or request it of the community. I'm not trying to make the case that you should move to it, but I hope it does get an influx of talent, if for no other reason than it will hasten the pace of its improvement.

[stysner]

I used to think Godot wasn't ready either, but Godot 4 is actually really close to Unity. For 2D stuff it's basically on par, 3D is getting there but lacking.

[AndreaFromTokyo]

Godot not ready yet?? especially for 2D games???! WHAAAAT?!

[KyleSzklenski]

Cassette Beasts, Dome Keeper, and Brotato would beg to differ on whether or not Godot is ready. 😀 Glad to hear your standpoint on this generally, though! Thanks for making the vid.

[hamsterbyte]

Godot is actually pretty well fleshed out as far as 2D goes, it even supports C# though tutorials are a bit sparse and hard to come by. I found the transition to be pretty easy.

[Grynjolf]

Apparently the CEO sold a lot of shares a week prior to this announcement.

[cyberkaius]

Glad to see you made a video on this. Quite literally uploaded as I was checking on the situation again 😆

[JosephFaulstick]

Very succinct and well spoken take on the situation. Thank you for sharing, Adam.

[RancorSnp]

The main problem is that they aren't taking a cut out of your profits. They are charging you per installation - and the users do not pay you to install the game, they only pay you to own the game, then they can do anything they want with it - yet Unity will continue to charge you for it - because as their FAQ said before they updated it to the current version - they can't actually tell if the installation was associated with a purchase. Even assuming they CAN - which they can't - accurately track re-installs and pirated copies and do not charge you for them, still text, as written a single person who bought your game, can easily cost you not 20 but 60 cents if not more.

Not to mention a lot of developers did the math and the amount of installs tends to be so high for a bunch of studios that the fee as written even at the pro pricing tier can end up being MORE than 100% of the game's revenue for some studios

Also I like how Unity's response to blacklash wasn't to say that the situation where a studios can go bankrupt over this new license can't happen they say "Guys, it will only affect 10% of the users"

[InfiniteDistraction]

I am very glad to have picked godot as my engine when starting my first game dev project 5 months ago. I also hope this change results eventually in godot-related skills being more valuable for job searches in the industry.

[delqyrus]

4:22 As i understand "We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is **downloaded** by an end user.": It is per installation, not per user. If your user installs it on two different devices, like a PC and a Steam Deck, you have to pay them twice. So the 1% becomes 2%. Your user gets a new PC? 3%. Their Steam Deck ran out of space and they had to uninstall it temporarily? 4%. Your user logs into a friends pc to play it there? 5%. At some point you have to pay 100% just to compensate for their bad design.