Best arguments for sticking with Unity on next project other than c#?

In the context of portraying Epic as some friendly neighborhood company that is here to help all game developers it does matter. The decent deal they're offering is more of a consequence of circumstance rather than goodwill and care for the wider gamedev community. A good deal does not mean Epic is good.

The great leader of Godot sect in their recent GDC presentation mentioned that modern game engines are not profitable without services being built on top of them because maintaining and developing a modern engine is incredibly expensive and those expenses rise every year with new tech advancements. They announced their own upcoming online services, paid enterprise support and subscription based availability of console binaries. The source of the claim seems credible as I haven't developed a game engine from scratch so I don't know how expensive it is or isn't. Epic is in a very unique position where they don't have to do this due to Fortnite/other first party titles and AAA licensing subsidizing engine development.

I just don't subscribe to this idea that Unity want us to struggle, while Epic wants us to succeed based on their monetization models. It's a very shallow interpretation that falls on its face. If you look at Unity's monetization, they also gain from people succeeding - the more successful you are, the more you have to pay Unity. It's in their best interests for users to be successful (and also use their services). I ascribe Unity's problems to incompetence rather than malicious intent. Although, perhaps greed from moneysuits on top also plays a role.

 

Yes, but was the message you were replying to implying that Epic is good or something?

Cool, that is something for someone who makes an engine to care about, I don't care about it.

No, I disagree with this, Unity's model is successful when you try to make a game for years, if you are successful or not is not of any consequence to them. (Unless you are making ad-ridden mobile apps, in which case you should release as many as possible). This is just they way they have set up their business models and does not mean anything about them being "good" or whatever.

 

Yeah guess why they "can't afford it" - because they have awfully inefficient and slow pipelines, causing them to be not competitive in features nor stability. Then they think they have to offer inferior services at inferior prices, which drives more customers away, making them less able to afford staying competitive.

Unity had all the resources, manpower, talent and time in the world to make an engine to compete in the big leagues. They did not expect Unreal to make such big leaps and thought they could keep on going on their terrible processes and minimum viable "features by checklist" for a long time with no consequences.

If we report something now to be improved, like a oversight in the Raytracing calculation causing massive lag, the realistic turnover time is 2 years for this to see the light of day.

Their processes and intentions did never care to make a real competitive engine that any larger studio would want to use and that is the price they have to pay now on the PC market. They are selling the dream not the product to make the dream.

They still show zero intentions to change anything on their extremely slow turnover times, extreme process bloat, maintaining of 1000 branches and resulting terrible stability and iteration speed. You can't really blame any employees, this is clearly processes from management bogging them down hard-core and there is a extreme lack of technical vision. Dots, 3 Pipelines, Bolt, just terrible choices. Features by checklist. Hey this would look cool on a marketing paper. Just no vision to be found here, no greater whole.

Unreal is running circles around them in terms of technical vision and value proposition. Unity is now trying to increase prices and monetarization to avoid sinking instead of trying to fix management, process and engine issues at their core.

 

Yes, that's the general feeling I had after reading the post. They ascribe maliciousness to Unity's business model and the opposite for Unreal's business model.

I'm not saying Unity is "good" or better than Epic. I just don't subscribe to the idea that Epic's model is based on people succeeding and Unity's is not. They're just different business models for different companies. Unity can't adapt Epic's business model without Fortnite and AAA licensing at scale. Current Unreal 5% revshare after first mil came about 3 years after Fortnite generated billions upon billions in revenue.

And if people struggle "for years", they'll just switch to some other engine that is not Unity after the project is done. It's not a valid business strategy for Unity long term. Unity's and Unreal's growth was roughly equal by games released on Steam last year so I don't really see that happening even if there is a vocal minority here making a lot of noise. And there are big, successful Unity games released every year.

You talk like they ever had intent to compete on AAA level. Unity succeeded because there were no other accessible alternatives for the general public and it could export to all relevant platforms with largely the same codebase. Recent development of HDRP and other high end tooling in general is rather a recent push into new markets since Unity already dominates indie and mobile markets. They don't have to compete, they service markets where Unreal is not even present.

There is some intent to change, they're restructuring - reducing half of their offices in the next few years and flattening the management structure some. I do agree that turnover times are extremely slow, and the bloat continues to accumulate, hopefully the restructure will address at least some of it. Part of the reason bloat is still here is that there are 10 year old live service games still running on the platform and require new SDKs that come with new Unity versions.

I don't think Unreal is running circles around them in value proposition - Unreal can't do web, can't do low end mobile well and by extension also Switch, can't do proper 2D. The new Lumen and Nanite tech runs only on mid to high end PCs and latest generation consoles. It's also not the best fit for VR in performance and tooling. It forces you to use Blueprints which have different API from C++ and C++ itself has long compilation times and Unreal builds take forever to complete. There is no perfect engine. You trade one set of problems for another set of problems. Key deciding factor are project requirements.

 

Of course is Unity not intended to be a AAA engine, however it should be viable to use for 5-50 people though.
We work with hierarchy and basic organization features on prototype level here.There is no proper positioning of objects in 3D space. You can't read full names in the project window. You can't see prefab icons half of the time. Absolute basics are missing and nobody had and interest in improving them.

URP is getting SSAO in 2022, while we are entering the AI age. Let's not talk about things like Terrain or Lighting.
Theres no copy paste in the project folders. Features from the beginning of the computer.

The Gigaya people couldn't make the game as they said themselves because basic Industry standards were not met and building the lacking elements themselves would have been way too high of an effort.

 

All of those are valid problems, I don't say otherwise.

I too struggle with timelines. They acquired Bolt in 2020, and half of 2023 is already gone and they've done nothing with it, nor is it actually usable in production in its package form. It's some derelict zombie that was last updated in 2018 with the biggest new feature being sticky notes. Nor is a proper graph API anywhere in sight yet. They're rewriting Bolt/Visual Scripting from scratch it seems. Maybe in 2024.

I don't know if that's true. The PR response could be interpreted that way if you really try but the utility of finishing it is described in the context of delivering a clean, best practices example for the community after the team was already fired, which, of course, would be expensive without the said team. Unity have downsized multiple times in the past year, GIGAYA just wasn't vital to Unity's continued existence and 20-30 people teams are not cheap to sustain for years without any revenue generating potential.

 

We do know, since at least one fired Gigaya employee said so here on the forums
And its understandable. They couldn't just buy asset store things like other people do, since its official Unity right.
(even if asset store solutions are unreliable and prone to breaking they still make things somehow work)
So their sample project would have to make the lacking features on their own, and in a commendable way so its an example for others. Good luck building a new Terrain system, navmesh, light baking etc etc. They of course couldn't, and the existing options were of course not viable for a slightly more ambitious project.

 

This is what a ex-GIGAYA member wrote after the PR announcement. That they were on track finishing it.

EDIT: Here's another post that clarifies that GIGAYA was not cancelled for technical reasons.

 

Yeah thats a quite different story from the one I read from the other thread from another person.

Dosn't matter much, the result was that it never got finished and it was said to be too much effort to finish it officially anyways.

 

Time to close this thread. It achieved the usual "why unity isn't unreal" state of downness in the toilet.

 

Ippdev, I command you to leave this body which is none of yours! Regain your own corpse and liberate the spirit of AcidArrow from your vile emprisonnent!

 

Unity is not and was never supposed to be Unreal.
Unity however was and always supposed to be doing equally well, having equal vision for the future, equal stability, equally steady progress, equally solid business models, equally fast turnover times.
You are simply deflecting here.

Also it does not matter at all what other engines are doing. All Unity issues exist no matter if Unreal or Cryengine or Godot or whatever exist.

 

By what metric? There were more than thrice the amount of games released with Unity on Steam in 2022 compared to Unreal. More than 70% of mobile games are made with Unity. Any given top games list likely has far more Unity than Unreal games on it.

Let's look at one for 2022 from Polygon:

50. Unity - Immortality
49. Game Maker - POINPY
48. Unity - TINYKIN
47. Proprietary engine - MONSTER HUNTER RISE: SUNBREAK
46. Unity - SERIAL CLEANERS
45. Unreal Engine 4 - GHOSTWIRE: TOKYO
44. Unreal Engine 4 - TINY TINA’S WONDERLANDS
43. Unity - I WAS A TEENAGE EXOCOLONIST
42. Unity - ROLLERDROME
41. Unity - DORFROMANTIK
40. Proprietary engine- HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST
39. Proprietary engine - POKÉMON SCARLET AND VIOLET
38. Unity - METAL: HELLSINGER
37. Unity - ROGUE LEGACY 2
36. Adventure Game Studio - PERFECT TIDES
35. Proprietary engine - LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
34. Proprietary engine - GRAN TURISMO 7
33. Proprietary engine - SPLATOON 3
32. Proprietary engine - A PLAGUE TALE: REQUIEM
31. Unreal Engine 4 - STRAY
30. FNA framework - TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SHREDDER’S REVENGE
29. Proprietary engine - FINAL FANTASY 14: ENDWALKER
28. Unity - RAFT
27. Unreal Engine 4 - THE QUARRY
26. Proprietary engine - WARHAMMER 40,000: DARKTIDE
25. Proprietary engine - NBA 2K23
24. Unity - PLATEUP!
23. Unity - TUNIC
22. Proprietary engine - TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER 3
21. Unity - DISNEY DREAMLIGHT VALLEY
20. Proprietary engine - XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 3
19. Proprietary engine - NOBODY SAVES THE WORLD
18. Unity - CULT OF THE LAMB
17. Proprietary engine - KIRBY AND THE FORGOTTEN LAND
16. Proprietary engine - RETURN TO MONKEY ISLAND
15. Unity - NORCO
14. Proprietary engine - MARIO + RABBIDS SPARKS OF HOPE
13. Unity - NEON WHITE
12. Unity - SIGNALIS
11. Unity - STRANGE HORTICULTURE
10. Proprietary engine - GOD OF WAR RAGNARÖK
9. Unity - POWERWASH SIMULATOR
8. Proprietary engine - POKÉMON LEGENDS: ARCEUS
7. Unity - MARVEL SNAP
6. Unity - PENTIMENT
5. Unreal Engine 4 - FORTNITE
4. Phaser - VAMPIRE SURVIVORS
3. Godot - THE CASE OF THE GOLDEN IDOL
2. Unity - CITIZEN SLEEPER
1. Proprietary engine - ELDEN RING

So, 38% of the games are made with Unity, 42% with proprietary engines, 12% with Unreal Engine 4, and the remaining 8% are spread among Game Maker, FNA Framework, Adventure Game Studio, Phaser, and Godot.

By all metrics Unity is doing better than any other publicly available engine on the planet. And there are no signs of Unreal overtaking Unity, they gained market share at roughly the same rate in 2022.

 

Got a quote for that?

 

I think the fact that Unity didn't even have real time shadows until 2007 means it probably wasn't trying to compete with Unreal Engine. Just going with my gut on this one.

edit: To turn this into a serious post, I think it'd be more accurate to say that, as time has gone on, Unreal Engine has been doing more to compete with Unity than Unity has been doing to compete with Unreal Engine. There's been a pretty significant focus on making Unreal Engine more accessible to people making their first games, there's been more and more a focus on how well the engine can scale down (to mixed results), and the inclusion of a proper marketplace all shows that Epic are making sincere attempts to enter into a lot of spaces that would otherwise be handled by Unity.

This isn't just on the indie side of things either. Improvements to asset management and general workflow are also making it so that Unreal Engine is a more appealing product if you're making basically anything in 3D that needs to target a wide range of commonly used devices. Unity targets every platform under the sun, but Unreal targets things that the average consumer actually uses (again, to mixed results.)

If Unity were competing with Unreal Engine, they'd have to spend a lot of time over the past decade aggressively pursuing tech, something they haven't done and really shouldn't do. Unity's strengths need to be its extensibility (good) and having core functionality both in the base engine and its packages be robust and feature complete (dramatically less good), which really isn't competing with Unreal Engine in any meaningful capacity because Unreal Engine is still playing catchup to Unity on that front.

 

Something is wrong with this list. I have a hard time believing that PENTIMENT was the number 6 game of 2022. Number 6 in terms of what? I don't think that it shows that Unity engine is state of the art. It is a 2D game. Can we at least exclude 2D games?

 

It's a subjective list and author's opinion on a major games journalism website that's also the first google result for top games released in 2022. Take any other top games of 2022 list and you'll see similar Unity vs Unreal usage. Chances are half of the top 15 games listed anywhere are made with Unity.

The person I was responding to expects Unity to do equally as well as Unreal, but by all available metrics, Unity is doing a lot better than Unreal in terms of adoption, games released, and games represented on top games lists. Pentiment is also commercially successful and has very good user reviews on Steam. Why shouldn't it be in 6th place in author's opinion?

Cutting edge rendering doesn't automatically equal a good game. And there are plenty of good looking 3D games made with Unity on the list.

 

Excluding 2d games from unity titles would make as much sense as excluding 3d games from Unreal titles.

Meaning one shouldn't do it.

 

If you have to start making exclusions for major advantages it's a safe bet you don't have a solid argument against that engine. Incidentally in case you haven't noticed that game is from Obsidian Entertainment who are known for making excellent roleplaying games. I'm not at all surprised it's popular.

 

No, they're not. Because then you don't make money, and you go out of business, and they don't get license fees any more, assuming that they ever did.

 

is Fall Guys the most popular game made with Unity?

 

No. Pokemon Go.

 

Also according to playercounter Among Us has twice the audience nowadays than Fall Guys. Not sure about the accuracy of it though.

 

Lack of light editor theme in Unreal Engine? Out of all popular software I ever worked with, I don't know any other one which would enforce dark background - white font on everyone, and didn't allow to switch to more standard light background - black font. Same with Unreal forums. Can't read anything there any longer than a couple minutes before my eyes begin to hurt.

 

I believe you missed the point. User answered the question what would be an answer supporting Unity. At least this is how I interpret this. They said the lack of light theme in other software is something speaks in favor of Unity. Although they worded it strangely (maybe language barrier?), but just as I would sometimes, that's why I assume this.

 

Ah, yeah, you're right, I completely missed the implication of the post