Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

You should add evergine to the list of engines with C# support. And it's free... completely free.

 

Unity's oldest user group is dissolving with their last meeting happening today.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023...-breaks-up-over-lack-of-trust-in-the-company/

 

Worst scenery: Unity stocks down under $10 and is the end of Unity.

Best scenery: Unity change their CEO and directive board and Unity made a long term compromise to respect the TOS, respect the plans like Plus and not abuse with unfair fees and in this way Unity can survive.

 

The only engine you need to consider is Monogame.

"Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities," the group leadership wrote in a departure note. "Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue matter more to Unity than the functionality game developers care about."

It's funny because they put profit above all else, yet saw a stock fall 85%, and we are totally happy to backtrack the latest flawed idea of exe installation charges. But we are not going to back track the 85% stock value decrease.

The idea is flawed because how is it going to decipher the number of times a single user installed the app. How will each Installation know that it is unique? Does unity provide all of the bar codes for each distributed copy of its exe? Or would it only ever be a rough estimate. And what if users install offline? Would it crash or hang the exe? Slow start up times?

More; what if the app were free?
What if user buys a new phone?
It's. Unspeakable.

It's utterly insane.

 

Monogame is a very good framework but is not a engine, is a fork of XNA, i programmed with XNA many years ago, but is time for that Monogame community to create a Game Engine based on Monogame, a good visual editor with all out the box, this engine can use the Monogame SDK and update only this, but why? because many game developers prefer a visual environment and most are not expert programmers, only think in visual code tools like UE Blueprints or Unity PlayMaker. I am a senior programmer but not all people can made a videogame only coding.

 

Unity offering ads is a good thing it has going for it and it is a unique thing and it attracts large customers with big names who will actually profit meaningfully from the revenue. So focussed on ads isn't a great reason to leave. But it's not that they were focused on ads it's actually that while focussing on ads somebody screwed up the editor and introduced the Hub. And lots of people lost projects from 2019.

 

It's not an engine no it has no features. But it is good ! I have made some of my best on here. As I was writing my own engine, I hit the learning curve of implementing DX so I did some research located Mono who is only 1 step from DX implementation so I can Draw 3D and 2D and do light and all that stuff. And so I have all that is needed and I didn't have to go through the homeogenus lookup of the ATOM and definition of string and integer. For all that is required on the MS tutorials. So mono is good. You can also implement materials and custom shaders. So I love it. And you get window control and all that lovely stuff. Makes you feel like a pro, very rewarding.

I completed my first full split screen and online multiplayer project in mono. And I can write support for infinite resolution defines. It's great stuff. Never have to leave VS. Even get VS memory profiler. Much better than unity profiler. Performance is better than I could get with unity.

It's also Net 6.0 compatible

 

No. You're spreading absolutely incorrect false information. Please don't do that, as it is harmful to aspiring developers.

At one point I wrote a scene conversion to transfer unity scene to unreal engine, and when you did that, point lights by default WOULDN'T look the same. Due to engine differences. Completely different result. Specifically with point lights.

And yes, if you do it without engine, it STILL will not look the same, because there's more than one way to implement that lighting equation.

 

Aspiring developers don't do light.
They make a scene without using mathematics using platforms like unity.

 

With that said, for those who are interested in VR dev, I've been checking out LÖVR lately. No editor window, no fluff, just pure fast scripting (Lua) over a tight C source engine. Not sure if I'll use it for a full project yet (still finishing up a Unity-based game that's too far along to switch), but yeah it's been a blast so far working with something more straight to the point and free of distraction.

 

I didn't knew that either a week ago to be honest. And thinked it was 5% on everything.
Pretty much misadvertised.

Epic should really put it somewhere in large letters. Like:
"Hey, this engine does not tax you with Runtime Fee! And its FREE under 1000000$ per product!"

 

I checked monogame a few days ago. It felt like going back to 1995 when I used VGA 320x200 and VESA.

 

Nah, I know several games that do their own lighting. I also did my own super simple 2 point lighting set of shaders since I wanted to have my own math for both falloff and the wrapping.

 

I did XNA at the start of the game dev journey. Actually wrote a course term paper with it at the university.
Fun times, except it was probably wiser to use something less low-level.
But hey, everyone at least once tried to write a copy Terraria, right?

Monogame is probably a better fork though, so, hard to judge.
I'd still pick any editor with the shell and some barebones for everyday work or as a hobby.
Or, go Bevy for max performance (its kinda similar).

 

https://docs.monogame.net/api/Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.SpriteBatch.html


Looks like this

On void Draw

Code (CSharp):

1. _SpriteBatch.Begin(optional data includes matrix defines)
2.  
3. // Your draw calls
4.  
5. _SpriteBatch.End()

It also has a sound FX class which I had been using to create frequency scaler for music production. Takes byte of floats as input. Can load sound files play one shot etc. Auto dispose.

Experienced dev like I say have no problem working with this stuff

You can unlock the default locked frame rates by setting SynchronizeWithVerticalRetrace on graphics device initialize or changed. And then you can go ahead and implement shaders which draw to GPU in same way as Unity did for use in materials. But you can have it all compact neat and fully understandable

 

@MonoKingMono is like the sith of troll.

 

Or a Terry Devis follower. In any case, I'm too old to draw quads line-by-line.

 

they just know.

 

Well, there's many features that I either implemented or plan to implement into my game with the aid of Unity, some of them are even done with the new features that people hate for varying (sometimes good) reasons.

• The ability to add in our own custom post-process shaders
• Procedurally generated UI based off of something similar to CSS (Unity uses USS) that can be interacted with gamepads and VR controllers
• Input frameworks to handle gamepads and VR controllers
• A render system that grants me a greater control over each stage of the the process without having to create underlying infrastructure from scratch, that supports compute shaders, geometry shaders and custom render passes
• Serialization systems to handle loading/saving of vast amounts of complex data
• Infrastructure for handling vast amounts of objects and entities in parallel (DOTS/Jobs)
• Networking systems for multiplayer that can handle rewind (DOTS networking)
• Content management systems for handling stuff like DLCs and modding

Many of these are just not in that list of things you mentioned, and a lot of engines either don't support them or it is a pain to implement them. Unity does all of these (but will admit that some of them need polish). Switching engines for a game that uses all these features is not so easy.

 

Aspiring developers DO light, and N dot L is the first thing you learn while writing shaders. Then it is pow(V dot R). It is basics of the basics of the basics. And "without mathematics" you'll have problems getting far in development. Dot product and cross products are your daily bread and butter. Auto-aim turret? That's a dot product.

Anyway, it is quite obvious that you're outside of your element and are trying to discuss you haven't worked with or at best only understand theoretically. I recommend to stop. Like I said, spreading false information is harmful.

 

What are you talking about a dot product

Are you talking about 90° being mathf pi / 2?

This is a monogame with an autoaim turret. Did not use a dot product lol

Here's another

https://youtube.com/shorts/VJHAoWinO-g?si=dDYOQ4nh_2mV3RZS

 

Are all the accounts created this Monday trolls?

 

If the unity Dev experience is no longer fun. If it's no longer worth it. If the productivity of your team is low. If you are unable to publish assets to sustain income, if you are unable to afford the constant fees. If you don't want a splashscreen or lost trust completely. All is not lost. There is hope out there.

Unity can do whatever it want charge you whatever it want at its discretion. Sure it can get backlash. Should it care? Well. It cares as much as you care about your dependence on unity to provide all of the mechanism required to choreograph your games. How much do you care about that? Not enough to seek independence. So why they want to sell their engine for that price. And they think it will work for a profit and will improve engine in years to come. Then that's the plan. And maybe it will work out for them.

 

Everyone else is too busy learning a new game engine.

 

You'll probably have to wait another year until the 2023 LTS comes out. I see no reason for them to publish now a TOS for a version that will be out in a year.

 

my theory is that once the 2024 alpha shows up they need to publish the terms of service. but I'm no lawyer so maybe there is an alternative tos for alpha and beta. who knows

 

Nope.

Told you you don't know what you're talking about, and here you are, proving my point. Off by a mile. Put this turret onto a tilted platform or a plane, see what happens. Extra fun if you place it onto a 6DoF flying vehicle, and use bullets that have travel time.

Either way, there's no point in continuing this nonsense.

 

Perhaps my understanding is incorrect, I would like to ask.
Is the $200000 required by Unity the overall financial performance of the company or team for one year? Isn't it a game project?
For example, I created game A, but I also have game B and game C. How should I count?
It's not total revenue, is it?

UE charges 5% only when the total revenue of each project exceeds $1000000,
Not the overall financial performance of the company?
If my understanding is correct, UE should be more friendly to independent game developers.
Because it only charges for each game separately, and there is no subscription fee.
Because it's not necessarily that your revenue per game exceeds $1000000, it's safe.
If calculated in the former way, it is easier to reach the threshold.

 

Try reading the FAQ ? Try using the calculator?

 

"On Thursday, Unity said it was forced to closed two of its offices after receiving "credible" death threats, according to Bloomberg reporter and Triple Click podcast host Jason Schreier.

And, according to a report by website Mobile Gamer, the company offered to waive the fee if developers sign up to its advertising programme.

It was less clear if the makers of Unity's biggest titles, like Genshin Impact and Pokemon Go, would be affected.
" - BBC


https://twitter.com/unity/status/1702077049425596900

Twitter added context to this


"Unity states that only ~10% of their customers will be affected, making it sound less bad than it is. As of the gaming report 2022 Unity had 230.000 developers - thats around 23.000 developers affected by the change. Lots of studios have posted statements about moving engines."

 

..

Unity banks approx 46,000,000 a month if all those customers 230,000 are paying 200 bucks a month.

The kicker here is 46 mil by 8000 heads 5,750 per head count per month. Electric bills, etc

When people leave, that 5750 closes in on somebody monthly wage.

 

no need to guess, there is some real numbers available:

https://investors.unity.com/overview/

 

That next shareholder letter is going to be so interesting to read and compare to the current one.

 

Or iron source staff...

 

yes it will. then again, i'm not sure if i care anymore at that point (couple months) ...

 

I've not attacked your metaphors, I've pointed out exactly why they're not pertinent, accurate nor relevant. You've missed the points of contention the user base has with the changes, probably deliberately, and are still avoiding them.

Good luck in whatever aspect of your employment at Ironsource you enjoy.

 

I thought I'd come back and check on the thread again. And this is me after 5 minutes of catching up:

 

Reported (low effort post)

 

Answering to spam post is a fitting end of this thread. It can be closed.

 

Sadly alot have already left. Over half of the Unity contacts/devs i know, are no longer here. They have moved to Unreal, Strider, CryEngine, Unigine, GoDot, Flax, and some in-house custom engines.

At least theres a good amount of people here, but i think its hard on all of us, to think or act on leaving Unity. We have all been here for a long ass time, and leaving would be like trying to quit a bad habit. No matter our opinions or thoughts, all we can do is bitch and wait to see what they do. Unless your on the board, it doesnt matter.

Want to leave and find another engine?, go for it and wish you the best!. Personally, ill finish my current game and release it (navigate the mine-field), but it will be my last Unity made game. Ill be moving to Unreal for personal projects, and still work for other studios and use in-house engines for inspiration.

To Unity: I know and love alot of Unity people (team members, forum admins, board members, etc.), this is why your losing user-base (studio/indie):

• The trust is gone... did you fall and bang your head?. The CEO is your root problem, numbers dont lie, facts dont lie.
  
• Unity (unlike most all other engines) develop actual games with their own engine, and its very profitable, and shows off the capabilities of the engine (crickets).
  
• Unity doesnt update/fix the engine (what it already has implimented): some of the systems in Unity are so old and outdated, that for us devs its like pulling teeth to get anything done.
  
• David Helgason had it right, then you bring in John Riccitiello, and now you have what?, a company losing stock shares, has pissed off supporting users (indie/studios), then back-tracked and apologized.

Theres your needed feedback, did i miss anything my pitchfork weilding supporters?, lol.

 

He certainly didn't have it right, he brought in JR. It really dumb to romanticize the original founders, they actually put Unity on these tracks. Had they not seek going public, Unity would be in better positions on many ways (what is important for us, the game engine users that is).

 

What happens when there's a dispute between Unity's claims of our revenues and our self reporting of actual revenues?

 

Will efforts be now distributed back to Builtin, given the obvious importance of Mobile revenue (to Unity) from these changes in fee structures?

 

That moment I can point to my game and say "Uh, no, I don't owe you anything I didn't use Unity".

 

On a positive side, heres what can be done to fix it (as a company):

• More than half of users are your mobile gaming market. So concentrate on that target, be nice and make it profitable for both sides.
  
• Do not forget about SRP's (URP/HDRP) and Built-In (which is still a rock hard foundation of Unity's line-up).
  
• Develop your own Unity game (Gigaya-type suggested). Come on, this is Unity we are talking about. Assemble a good team, and school us, develop a game that inspires, till completion, and in some cases...feel our pain. Major profits!, and would put Unity on the map for sure, lol.
  
• Stop all updates/new features, and concentrate more on what you already have, take current outdated/updated systems and make them better. Users (indie/studio), will love you for it.

Im sure theres even more ideas out there. Users are telling you they love Unity, and are fighting for it!, so ball in your court. Next move?.

 

This thread feels like a pub at 5am where everybody just mumbles weird stuff…

 

I don't know if you're going to focus on mobile it might not be a bad idea to forget them.

 

"They took our Jobs"

 

I really liked this video, and am looking forward to watching his migration process to Godot.