Unity VS Godot Engine: Game Developer Fees

Unity just announced a new "Unity Runtime Fee" that will charge certain developers that use their engine up to $0.20 per installation. The feedback on this fee has not been positive and game developers are rightfully upset about the change.

So I figured it was a good time to compare the game developer fees of Unity Game Engine and the Godot Engine, with the help of a friend.

This is about as close to "urgent news bulletin" that I'm going to get.

NOTE: Developers do need to reach a revenue and install threshold for it to kick in but the criteria for an install is not clear and there are A LOT of potential issues and questions that people have been asking.

0:00 Unity Runtime Fee
0:37 Unity Fees VS Godot Fees

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#godot #godotengine #unity

[stayathomedev]

Post on Twitter with the hashtag: #NOUNITYWITHFEES

And express your frustrations with this decision to let Unity know that this is NOT OK.

[drakewilliams]

The current CEO of Unity, was the CEO of EA at the time they got voted worst company in America two years in a row (2012, 2013).

[holderian]

Even if they walk it back they might not recover. Trust is already lost. Being dependent on Unity is a risk that many game studios won't like taking.

[bmhyakiri]

This reminds me of horse armor. Sure, most devs will never cross the threshold where unity charges for installs, but it’s a way for them to test the boundaries of what people will put up with. Remember when microtransactions weren’t a thing? Good times.

[wchorski]

Godot: We're looking for more funding to help with the future of Godot. Would be really cool if you guys could donate a bit more.
Developers: HEY YOU JUST GOT A BUNCH OF MONEY DON'T BE GREEDY

Unity: We're gonna start putting a static priced tax that is very hard to monitor or police
Developers: well i guess Godot isn't so bad...

[TechBoxNorth]

Unity sure is making an effort to make developers choose other engines!

[QatariGameDev]

So glad we switched from Unity3D to Godot a few years back! 🎉

We faced some discouragement along the way, and it was tough on the team, but looking back, it was totally worth it.
Super happy with Godot! 👏🎮

[cikame]

I get the feeling Godot is about to get a good stress test from a lot of people, i suspect it'll fail in some ways that will hopefully propel its development forward, but you can't argue with ZERO.

[furynotes]

Its very similar to what EA does. You can only install it 5 times or you can only install it once on that one machine. It does remind me of that.

[porytlim]

Unity is dragging game industry to days when we had to insert coin to actually play a game. But weird thing is developer has to pay for players 😅

[vadstart]

Well, for 2D games Godot has already won over a while ago, now it just needs to catch up with 3D features (which is more of a dealbreaker for some people rather than just pricing model). However the fact that everyone can contribute and adds these features and they'll potentially be added to the core engine is super appealing (and the reason I finally got Godot and started fiddling with it :P )

[alepunto]

I had been seeing Unity as a sinking ship for quite some time (and I'm not just talking about its stock price), and this news only reaffirms my belief. I think the management's intention is to focus Unity as a game engine for smartphones while gradually moving away from PC and consoles. But these are good news for Godot. Unreal remains for high-end games, Godot for indies, and (I guess) Unity for casual games on the Apple Store

[Voorhees-Jason]

There is another issue not many has talked about. You mentioned the word trust. Here is the thing right now their licensing even unreal licensing is based on sale numbers. This can be tracked easy by both the devs and unity. So its easy to catch a lie or mistake from 1 side or the other eventually. With this new per install the only one that can truly track this is unity not the dev so the trust there is lop sided, how do I know if their metrics are accurate? How do I know if it came from a legate person buying the game or a pirate? How do I know unity is being honest here?

there is no way to know, you would have to 100% rely on unity doing the right thing here. Which I do not trust any company that I cannot do an oversight on. Its like a bank giving me my balance without allowing me to look at all my transactions, how would I know if my transactions are correct if I cannot view them.

[ThiVasss]

The first thing that comes to my mind is successful games that pass the thresholds... what happens when the devs want to heavily discount them? What about putting them in very cheap bundles? What about giving them free in giveaways or for charities? This is very common nowadays. Are they just gonna lose money giving them in humblebundle deals etc?

[exttsectorz]

I just got Godot prepped today after hearing the news. Unity completely broke me and my partner's trust, even if they roll this back it shows they are willing to see what they can get away with and will likely fully push something like this in the future. I don't want our games to be tied down with constant fees on top of needing to pay much more upfront just to use Unity as they removed Unity Plus.

[felipelopes]

As a programmer, I am amazed that there are still colleagues who defend proprietary software. It's so much more efficient to have a foundation who pulls funds from lots of companies who use the product and use these to develop them. Your comparison is perfect. These incredibly complex plans and licenses exist only to give jobs to sales people and intellectual property lawyers and allows scams like this. Hope they go down pretty fast.

[Hawkido]

More Godot devs mean Godot gets better faster, means more games with better margins without raising prices for gamers. If you make it big using the GODOT engine remember to back-feed someone that boon back to Godot to help pay for future improvements, or upload some of your own custom improvements to the Godot boards so other devs can make use of them.

[leandrodfcorreia]

My main reason to start with Godot, as well as Blender, was because I've never seen a good opensource platform that did not develop fast. I don't intend to create AAA games alone, but I do have the dream to create a cool game that will spread like fire, and for that I would NEVER be tied to any other company. I feel sorry for the people that decided to trust greedy companies.

[VoylinsGamedevJourney]

I honestly did not even consider pirated versions of games, my main concern is the small indie dev studios which allready have to sell their games at very low prices to even compete and earn something will have nothing left at all. Also, when you don't like a developer, basically install and uninstall their games multiple times and you can make them bankrupt ... :/

[mrfoxy]

Recently, I started doing indie development. And I chose Unity as a more common engine with a lot of information about it, software libraries, etc. But with this move, unity hammers the last nail into the lid of its coffin. After all, this is one of the few engines that is suitable for single development. The same, Unreal was developing towards a large gaming industry, adding tools to create good graphics. But unity has been standing still all this time. And now came the moment when he lost his only dignity. Now my project, which I spent more than a month on, will have to be transferred to godot.

I'm sorry, I don't know English well for the translation. Hello, from Russia.