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Unity Acquires Parsec for $320 Million

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by undevable, Aug 10, 2021.

  1. PutridEx

    PutridEx

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    I think I am -- if you know some, do tell.
    Any games that get anywhere close to Valheim, dyson sphere program, or rimworld?
     
  2. AcidArrow

    AcidArrow

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    Satisfactory?
     
  3. PutridEx

    PutridEx

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    Maybe you missed the 1-5 developer headcount I mentioned.
    I already know about satisfactory (good game by the way, tons of hours in the sink cause of it)
    but it has way more than 5 developers. This is ignoring employees for the publishing part of the studio.

    In fact, at least +13 (more, but I'm being safe) people worked on it. Quite the distance from 5.
     
  4. AcidArrow

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    I do consider 5 to be arbitrary, and dyson sphere has big publisher behind them now...

    But anyway, I'll concede that point.

    I do disagree with the implication that this means Unity is somehow more suited to small teams than Unreal. If it was true at one point, I don't think it still holds true.
     
  5. SamTheLearned

    SamTheLearned

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    They should've spent 300 million making a game with unity.
     
  6. spiney199

    spiney199

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    A supposedly impossible feat as many here would like to tout.
     
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  7. AcidArrow

    AcidArrow

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    It definitely is if they force the whole team making the game to use Collaborate.
     
  8. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    I love how you call it "idealistic speculation" when it's already running on some of the items in your list.

    https://blog.unity.com/manufacturing/reimagining-in-vehicle-experiences-with-real-time-3d

    Choosing a game engine for non-gaming tasks is all about not reinventing the wheel. With Unity you can display just about anything you want in any way you want and you can build it both very quickly and very affordably.
     
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2021
  9. Antypodish

    Antypodish

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    https://www.ibtimes.com/elon-musk-hints-fortnite-could-be-installed-tesla-cars-soon-2793293

    Article from 2019.
    Tesla Inc. continues porting (EVs) the Unity and Unreal Engines to its electric vehicles, two of the most popular cross-platform game engines on the planet.

    But that is a bit different, what OP thread discusses.

    Regarding mobile devices and game dev. While game delving on mobile is rather radicoulus, need not forgetting, that using mobile laptops, or low end PCs, or even highly demanding projects, with streaming game dev environment, all would make much easier and opens doors for many opportunities.
     
  10. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    I feel that a lot of innovation ends up remaining in eternal preview/unfinished state forever.
     
  11. OccularMalice

    OccularMalice

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    I saw this and was a little concerned. The technology, while it can fit with Unity (remote access) is a bit outside of their primary business. For example it would make more sense for them to acquire a physics engine or some rendering or modelling technology. Still I hope it works but I get jittery when I see companies acquiring properties like this. If it's Microsoft or a Google it's a rounding error as far as investment but if you end up doing too much of this and being too diverse in your acquisitions you can end up draining the bank so much while trying to keep those tools current you run the risk of going under. Every asset they acquire they need to feed, manage, and maintain. Software is like a puppy and needs TLC over time. Different situation but look at something like Tell Tale games. Sure there were a lot of factors that contributed to their downfall but one of them (and a big one IMHO) was the sudden acquisition of a ton of new IP they all rushed to get to market. Again it's a different comparison but you get the concept. The one thing in Parsec that could make sense is the network stack (which Parsec licenses as an SDK) so that could be the new network code stack in Unity in the future. Sure you'll be able to remote stream Unity for developers but for end users there's really no impact or benefit to this. So if they look at redoing their network stack that might be where parts of Parsec fit in that everyone can use.
     
  12. kdgalla

    kdgalla

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    I've never heard of Parsec, but if it's faster than Citrix then it will also be of interest to industrial and enterprise developers. These guys will have a lot more money than indie devs.
     
  13. andyz

    andyz

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    Unity could have put more money and resources into the smaller acquisitions - like decent TextMeshPro integration earlier, being able to delete vertexes in ProBuilder (!! done yet?).

    Seems like these new ones are about now having the money to invest in tech that will keep them afloat whatever happens (cuz shareholders etc) - Speedtree, streaming tech... It is less Unity-specific
     
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  14. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    But that's a reasonable thing to do, isn't it? For a business.
     
  15. april_4_short

    april_4_short

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    Only if you think "whatever happens" is more likely than what your business was supposed to be doing.
     
  16. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Businesses exist for one purpose: making money. By that definition Unity has never been doing what they are supposed to. :p
     
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  17. april_4_short

    april_4_short

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    Strawman. Did not say "sole" purpose.

    Words were "supposed to be doing".

    Investors invest based on what a company supposes its staff and management are good at, and what it proposes it can do with them and its resources.

    Not on the basis that the company begin acting like a precautionary hedge fund.

    Investors wanting someone to use their money on a "whatever happens" basis have all sorts of hedge funds that are absolute experts in these sorts of contingency based precautionary investment.

    They do not buy shares in Unity on the basis that it will act in this manner, as their investments in Unity are optimistic that Unity will do well at whatever Unity proclaims itself to be, and is supposed to be doing with investor monies.
     
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  18. Ryiah

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    I changed the post to be more humorous. That said everyone has been saying they need to focus on game engine development and that's literally ONE purpose.

    On the contrary a purchase like that is precisely what an investor wants as can be seen by the fact that their share value spiked the day of the purchase. Which just goes to show how clueless most of this community are when it comes to running a company.

    upload_2021-8-12_11-19-22.png
     
  19. april_4_short

    april_4_short

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    This has much more to do with perception than reality.

    As does just about everything on the stock market.
     
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  20. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    If investors cared about reality they wouldn't invest in a company that has never turned a profit.
     
  21. ippdev

    ippdev

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    That perception leads to the reality of fungible cash coming in the door.
     
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  22. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    A publicly traded business is supposed to pay dividends and drive value of shares up. That's it. There's no other greater purpose.

    If Unity decides to switch to making hamburgers tomorrow and by doing that quadruple their revenue, that would be a valid action. From the position of making money for the investors.

    Making share value going up by a 5% (per day) is something a trader would like to see.

    And also being ready for "whatever" is a reasonable idea.

    Well, we have Tesla.
    9 years in red since founding.
     
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  23. BIGTIMEMASTER

    BIGTIMEMASTER

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    I am sure there is a lot about monies that none of us know, but what we are concerned about is what helps us make games right now, and what the forecast for our important game making tools is in the future.

    I would really love if maybe 1 million of that 320 million went towards putting together a task force to figure out why entering play mode is slow, and fix the problem.

    I cannot imagine trying to create a game with a slow play mode. It is like walking on a blister! How can anything be prioritized over that?
     
  24. undevable

    undevable

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    Let's say 2 seconds is taken away entering play mode. Let's say you enter play mode 20 times a day. 40 seconds a day wasted. 5 days a week, 200 seconds, or about 3 minutes. 52 weeks a year, 156 minutes a year, or 2 hours used up by a slow play mode. 2 hours may seem small in a year, but it's very frustrating compared to Unreal engine where it takes milliseconds to enter in play mode. What I think that is causing it is something very backend in the core of Unity on how it handles loading causes a slow play-mode, therefore, I think it'll be very hard fixing it without rewriting how Unity handles loading.
     
  25. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    To disable this nonsense, adjust those settings.
    https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ConfigurableEnterPlayMode.html
    Check "Enter Play Mode Option" and UNcheck "reload domain" and "reload scene".
     
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  26. BIGTIMEMASTER

    BIGTIMEMASTER

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    more like 200+ times a day. and usually more than 2 seconds...
     
  27. Kamyker

    Kamyker

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    They are targeting developers not players, at least that's what I understood. Well, that's even worse that I thought.
     
  28. spiney199

    spiney199

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    A game engine buying up a software package user by game developers? Scandalous
     
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  29. april_4_short

    april_4_short

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    If you're changing scripts, which is why I re-enter play mode to test things... then this doesn't help at all.

    If you're moving objects around in your scene, this doesn't reload scripts, so it's quicker to enter Play Mode. Remember when you first started using Unity? About that fast.
     
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  30. BIGTIMEMASTER

    BIGTIMEMASTER

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    Yeah, that is not a solution, however it is useful in some situations.

    Some years ago I learned a valuable lesson while doing some training in the military. As part of a group of trainees, we were given a task to move a really big heavy thing about 50 yards. To get the job done we were given some rope, beams, poles, etc. And there is a time hack - it needs to be done fast.

    Everybody is right away going back and forth with a lot of clever ideas, then others shoot it down, "that wont work here's why!"

    I looked around and noticed that there was like 40 of us, i made an estimate how heavy the thing could be, and figured if we all just lifted it and walked in step we could be done in less than a minute. I mentioned it but the group just scoffed because, well obviously the exercise couldn't be that easy. This was an opportunity for clever people to impress.

    Once it got to the point that the instructor started yelling that we were almost out of time then we had no choice but to just lift the thing and walk it over. It wasn't hard at all. Didn't even require all the people.


    I notice with programmers similar mindsets. A lot of times I might give a task to be done, and a programmer will deliver it back without testing the work thoroughly. So then it's a matter of iteration, and by the time all that is done I might as well have done the work myself.

    The good programmers just patiently work through the refining process, not taking anything personal at all. They just want to get the work done.

    The bad ones take things personal. "No no no, the code has to work. I am really smart, I know how the things work, it couldn't be broken." But it is.

    So when I writing code, which for me is visual scripting, I don't operate like that. Because I like to solve the problems right away, I don't like surprises later. So jumping in and out of play mode is happening the entire time I am writing code. Make a few changes, test it out. Even if I feel certain that things will work as I expect, I got to keep in mind there is a lot that I don't know. So I always test, and I want to test right away. That way if there is a problem, I can deduce what it is easily. I'm going pretty fast so two hours from now I might not remember all the things that have been changed, and then troubleshooting is more difficult.

    It's a discipline. it would be easier to assume that I am really smart, and avoid the trouble of constantly checking my work as I go. But I know that will cause problems. And I know that even people who are really smart still have the same problems. There is always some caveat they weren't aware of. So having the editor be fast and responsive is important so you can constantly be playing the game at the same time your are creating it.

    That's why a fast play mode button is important to me - important enough that I would rather learn another engine which has a fast play mode than deal with it (among other reasons, but play mode lag is really important).


    being able to more easily remotely collaborate is fine but if it is anything like unity collab, it will basically be unusable. A huge part of the time spent waiting on my unity projects is because of collab. I wouldn't use it ever again, it's a major killer of productivity.

    For a small team I don't really see the problem being solved with a tool like this, it seems like jsut one more thing to fuss with and slow down productivity. But i dont really know how other people are working, and i imagine i am not in audience unity CEO cares about.
     
  31. JohnnyA

    JohnnyA

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    A bit off topic, but using primarly C++, rather than blueprints, I've found the UE workflow to be significantly slower than Unity.
     
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  32. SamTheLearned

    SamTheLearned

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    Did some tests and I didn't find this to be true for myself. Although I may not have a big enough project to come by any problems using fast play mode yet.

    Reload domain tends to be the majority of time waiting on play mode so I keep reload scene checked.
     
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  33. Kamyker

    Kamyker

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    Could we get a bit of investment in Unity bug report servers?

    Thanks

    I wonder how UE5 Verse will look like. Simplicity of C# (or rather Python) + instant/runtime compilation?
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2021
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  34. CityGen3D

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    While this acquisition may also be factor, the current share price rally is largely a response to the good Q2 results that were announced the prior evening, which showed big year on year increase in revenue.
    This in turn led to price target increases and more Buy ratings from analysts.

    So I don't think the recent share price increase is an evaluation of this specific acquisition, it just happened to come at the same time as the good Q2 results.

    But I basically agree with you in that investors in growth companies want to see increase in revenue and users.
    It doesn't matter Unity doesn't turn a profit to investors at the moment. That's only the case because they are still in growth and they pump what otherwise would be profit into R&D and acquisitions.
     
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  35. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    That's quirk of the language, rather than the engine.

    In (pure) C++ you can often end up coding in relatively long periods of time, then hit compile and take a break.

    Relatively long means from 30 to 120 minutes between compiles.

    Additionally, due to compilation being long you often do not build and run the whole thing, but rather rebuild only the file you're working on without linking the whole program, but I think Unreal Build systems can't quite do that.

    There are tools for improving compilation times, specifically C++ modules were made for this purpose.
    https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/modules

    Modules are nice (though I initially didn't quite like it), but support for modules is iffy in a sense it is not as universal as for anything else. Due to the way they work, compiler developers decided to introduce new file extension - *.ixx for MS compiler and *.cppm for clang (which alsop can do *.ixx).

    Aaand at the moment CMake can't work with them. So here goes that.
     
  36. Metron

    Metron

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    Incredibuild... A real time safer!
     
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  37. PutridEx

    PutridEx

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    I found something and remembered this conversation:
    https://steamdb.info/tech/


    Not even close, lol
    This is based on tons of actual game files, not wikipedia, on a very known site.
    Detects SDKs, if you open a game directory, you can easily tell if it's UE or unity, that's basically what it does. (You can actually already do this as a regular user on this website for any game on steam, using depots) It's not perfect, but it seems pretty damn accurate all things considered. This is more of what I thought.
    List will also get better in the coming weeks, with less false positives

    I have to say, seeing how many people talk and advocate for godot like their life depends on it, it's numbers are looking really, really down.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2021
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  38. april_4_short

    april_4_short

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    The (un)real question:

    Would Unity have made more or less money out of these game's makers if they were on 5% of everything over a million in revenue?
     
  39. Kamyker

    Kamyker

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    From PUBG alone on Steam Unreal would get 30-60mln, Rust in very optimistic case with 30 licenses makes Unity 1800 * 30 = 54k per year, ~250k/5 years. About 120 Rusts would have to exist for 5 years to get to 30mln.
     
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  40. april_4_short

    april_4_short

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    Was it the Rust guy that's made some hilarious comments about Unity?

    And, more to the point, would anyone pay 5% to Unity if they were to align their interests with their game making users?

    I'd pay double that, if they included source access.

    And they could have it from the first dollar. No need to wait for the first million to click by.
     
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  41. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    On the flip side there are a lot of developers with Unity licenses that will never hit the minimum threshold of Unreal.
     
  42. BIGTIMEMASTER

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    Not sure what the real take away from numbers like this is though.

    while in the airport i had some time to check out some of the phone games my wife likes to play.

    One is a "water sorting" puzzle game. So simple it's hardly worth explaining, just look at a screen shot and you'll get it. I downloaded the game so I could play it. But it was hard to find the same water sort game that my wife was playing, because there was like 50+ clones of the game. Every one looks nearly the exact same.

    So, quantity versus quality and all that.

    Not to knock on "simple phone games," it's a market and has an audience but when evaluating numbers like this I dont think "more games made with one engine = it better engine," or anything nearly that simple.
     
  43. PutridEx

    PutridEx

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    posted that link since that's what I was discussing with the person I quoted (how many games using unreal/unity in steam) and this is by far the best and most thorough list.

    Although, if we're talking about quality, the highest rated game and in general top game ratings so far for 2021 from both unreal/unity lists is unity. It also has the bigger (in terms of peak concurrent player count) games released so far in 2021. The highest rated game in steam out of the two is made in unity. You have to go through 8 highest rated unity games before finding an unreal game.
    Actually, from steamdb, the worst rated games of 2021 so far are made in unreal. 9 in unreal before you get to a unity game.

    Also worth noting how the majority of big unreal games tend to be AA+ (or thereabouts) with big (or bigger) budgets.
    Compared to more popular games made by indies in unity,
    so i'm not sure where exactly is quality vs quantity.
     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2021
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