Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

This is classical example of degradation of proprietary products. Look how 3ds Max and Maya end. Its "gold" mess of S***. Gold because license costs just crazy moneys and you can expect crashes at least several times per day with work being loosed.
Meanwhile Blender: Okay... I just exist for free and Open-Source.

Basically every proprietary solution will end up in deep degradation and die, unlike FOSS solutions. Because there is no dumbass to take fees for installs or to push destructive changes etc.

 

I agree.

That said, I said the same things about the state of JavaScript as the days of Flash were dying. It was too slow and unperformant to ever be up to the tasks that Flash could do. That it was the worst possible situation for developers who wanted to make anything rich or interactive or a game.

Then industry (mainly Google) poured money and effort into V8 and suddenly Javascript wasn't slow anymore.

Sufficiently motivated actors can take a pile of poo and turn it into a house. A house also made of poo, but a house none the less.

 

Did you find any alternative that you think viable?

 

The https://unitedgamedevs.com/ website appears to be mysteriously down.

 

Issue with flash was that it codewise was a really cool language. but performance and security wise it was garbage and they didnt manage to get it working. That and the iphone debacle, when steve jobs took a S*** on it.

Godot needs 1-3 more years, depending on what team they get to improve it. The more unity is what it is right now, the faster this will happen.
Basically you cant be sure that Unity wont rob you lol. Thats all that it is. Their financial data will be S*** and they will probably become worse

 

Out out of genuine curiosity, what were the pain points?

How many tris, textures, and drawcalls were you using ?

I plan to make a 3D game with 1-2 million tris visible at a time, and some animations. Is that too much for Godot?

 

Aledge changes to the plan

1. A maximum fee cap of 4% of a game's revenues over $1 million
2. The installation threshold will no longer be retroactive, so only installs after the imposition of the policy would count toward the threshold
3. Unity will no longer rely on "proprietary technology" to track installs, instead asking users to self-report numbers.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-reportedly-tells-staff-details-of-runtime-fee-backtracking

Point 1 is still an issue for those under 1 million...

 

The problem with this is if you work for a newbie type client making their first game or app then they are on free and you should be if you are working for them to not mix licenses. Then my other client needs pro and I have to use pro or mix licenses. Then how the hell do I switch back and forth to meet my business clients needs without being in legal hot water? And what about the client who is an idea person, Never opens the editor and you deliver them the goods. Your contract has then ended. You should not be on the hook for their sales. That was not the contract you had. The payout cheques go to someone else and you don't get a dime. And mods..stop with your woke crap censorship.

 

Point 2 is also still an issue since the install count might not be retroactive, but the policy change is still retroactive.

Point 3 is a joke.

 

This exodus is going to be like Andor. One Way Out.

 

Well, it's been a week now, a wasted week waiting to see how things go with Unity to decide if I should switch to Unreal. Is it that hard for them to fire the executives responsible for this huge mess, tell the community their real problems, get some sage advice from the community, and remove the splash logo screen that tarnishes Unity's reputation with thousands of bad games a year?

 

I wish they would just get their heads out of their asses and say 4% if they want 4%.
At least that's a clear answer.
Then let everyone decide for themselves.

 

Everything you describe about performance in Flash was worse for pure Javascript and HTML5 at the time. What you're talking about is irrelevant in the context of the conversation, which was a comparison of Godot's performance and development compared to Unity's or even Unreal's for that matter.

The point being that Godot is no true replacement just like at the time Javascript was no true replacement, but there is no telling what the future holds. Perhaps a Google-sized entity will decide to bless Godot with performance buffs.

 

I mean, this is also the pattern for Blender. Ubisoft started backing them, among other studios. With the gobs of donations Godot can collect, maybe they can turn it around.

EDIT: Oh hell, even Epic donated to the Blender fund. Maybe they can donate to... oh wait, that won't happen.

 

i love this. every line. i don't care if the cat is dead. i love the way the new business models are created and tested together with real customers. keep this going. don't stop.

 

The trajectory was already pretty good before, but I'd love to see that and feel pretty dumb to have advocated for simply using C++ in Godot for performance bits instead of being happy about droves of people making that possibly obsolete in the future. Godot also got an Epic mega grant btw: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-was-awarded-epic-megagrant/

 

Terraria devs donate $100k to Godot and FNA each. And also commit $1000/month to both projects:
https://twitter.com/Terraria_Logic/status/1704227519027651016

 

To be perfectly honest, been playing around Godot - and I can honestly say, I don't think I've ever been so excited since the first time I started playing around Unity's student edition. The fact that Godot was literally worked on out of pure passion, and you can see that - and it's totally open source - is definitely a feeling I haven't felt before.
It's a great time to be alive. To be part of something new in the indie space once again - only now I'm older and a bit more experienced than I was when I started around with Unity. So it's very exciting. Not at all frustrating!

 

Makes you wonder what Godot can do with the same amount of money that would otherwise be given to Unity Pro upgrades from Plus subscribers.

 

Not if you remove the "s" from "https", but then it just forwards to Godot's website, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
.

 

Not bullshit acquisitions or shady fee structures, we can say that for sure!

 

so if a game makes under a million with tons of downloads.. they will F*** you?

this dude really wants to force EA monetization on all titles

Edit: not 100% sure, need to read the details. lets wait and see

 

I hope more companies bless these engines. Things are looking very bright for them and all thanks to the excellent marketing strategy coming from Unity.

 

I won't express myself too much since everything has already been said, and i couldn't agree more, i'm already porting one of my small game made for a jam in basically every engine i'm finding interesting right now, and i suggest you to do so is a great way to choose on which to move (which are Godot, Flax, Unigine and of course Unreal). Making the same game all over these engine is giving me an idea on which i want to use in the next future (i chose to replicate a simple but not basic souls-like 3D game, that require custom shader so that i can at least go a bit deep into those engine before having my mind clear).

There is only one thing i want to add since i saw that no one is talking about it,
The editor from november won't work offline after 3 days that you aren't connected with Unity Hub,
basically let's say you are out for 3 days and when you come back you don't internet you can't work lol.
Or in a more realistic scenario if you don't open Unity Hub for 3 days (since at least for now Unity Hub doesn't have background process so it can't check internet unless you open it at least for now, if in november it will start to have this aggrssive analytics too at this point Unity really is becoming more like of a spyware for real) and then you want to work on some stuff but you don't have connection because you are on work-travel or whatever reason you just can't lol.
To be clear this isn't a deal breaker like the new fee policy but it just feel dumb that you need internet connection to work with the editor, and is a my personal thing that programs that works offline always to me feel less intrusive and robust.

 

Yes unless it implies that lower threshold are gone and the runtime fee start after 1 million in revenue.
But none of that is official announcement so we'll see...
Hopefully the official announcement will be clear and leave no room for interpretation or misunderstanding...

 

It now redirects to https://godotengine.org/

 

Epic gave Godot a $250k grant in 2020.

 

i somehow have the fear, that unitys executive are playing the "i was right with that idea" game. because otherwise.. they would have to admit that their plan was idiotic and that i think is something sociopaths cant do.

never admit your at fault. its always someone elses fault. you are a executive and smarter than everyone

 

PSA: keep detailed records of any time or cost associated with switching to another game engine.

If there is a class-action lawsuit and Unity loses, you could claim these costs as damages.

Even if you're just taking some time to investigate Unreal or organizing a team Godot jam for Ludum Dare next week, consider: you would be doing something more profitable right now if Unity hadn't decided to self-destruct for short-term (and given the retroactive TOS changes, maybe illegal) profit.

 

I really feel like more people should be looking at the Flax Engine. The engine code is so amazingly clean written and the C# API closely resembles the Unity API (except it is more clean + consistent). Honestly it baffles me why it is not more popular? Granted, I have yet to try implementing a full game in it, so it might have pain points, but the discord seems quite active and the developer(s) seems very active. If it got more support, I think it would be a much better starting point than Godot for Unity developers, simply because the C# binding layer is much more efficient and easier to learn. It's definitely got my attention for future projects.

 

Read CEO comments on Bloomberg: "We can do things a lot better" and what posted other Co-founder "We F***ed on so many levels." and yeah, its denial, they are playing this game.

 

I had exactly the same feeling.

Right now I am exploring the godot + rust + some gdscript path.
There are a lot of good rust libs out there like egui, hecs (ecs), pathfinding libs etc. which will allow to overcome some of the performance issues of Godot.

 

The entire idea needs to be trashed and the CEO needs to step down. There's simply no excuse for any of this and nothing worth clinging to. The idea was obviously bad, the people who wanted it implemented are not intelligent or knowledgable enough to wield any kind of authority in this industry, and it shouldn't be taking this long to just say "nevermind." You actually can just say "nevermind, sorry." Even the absolute fools running Patreon have managed to turn things around a few times by just backing the hell away from a bad idea. You want to save yourselves? Back off. Continuing to try to salvage this stupid idea is only going to hurt the company more.

 

Because it only recently could export to iPhone. No iPhone == no users. It has a lot of lost ground to make up. I hope it can!

 

Oh crap. Ludum Dare really is next week.

EDIT:

Hmm, great time to enter a theme, like "Goodbye Unity", or something.

 

I also think Flax it's a very good product.
I think many snub it due to the lack of assets, while on Godot there is a dedicated page in the Unity asset store style.

 

Since this seem to have been brewing for some time on unity executive side I wonder if Joachim left (or was offered/asked to leave) because he was asked to come up with the proprietary tech to count installs and foresaw the disaster it would be...

 

Looks like an attempt to switch to a monthly subscription plan, like Adobe's Photoshop and their other products. Or to have access to users projects in development.

 

Also, I don't read much about people trying out Stride/Xenko. I would think it's the next most popular open-source engine after Godot. I looked at it a bit. The engine core is C#, so I don't know how performant it can be. I don't think updates are as frequent. Godot, Flax, and Stride are for sure the three I'm looking at.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16n2ptv/quick_note_to_the_community_from_a_former_unity/
"
Hey all,

Caitlyn here, I joined in 2008, back when we were about 12 people. I wore many hats, once being half the QA and support team, working on the documentation, developer relations, community mediation, doing sales and almost everything else, but most notably helped create and manage the asset store from its inception in 2010 until 2015 when I left the company. I left largely due to differences I had with John R when he came on board. I got to know a lot of the old timers and people who are probably here right now quite well.

Before that I had worked closely with the CEO, David Helgason, and the company still felt very horizontal and open minded. I miss that company dearly.

I feel so devastated and hurt for the many developers and artists who made the asset store ecosystem so strong, my heart goes out to you.

I'm no longer with the company, but I am so very sorry that our once precious organization failed you. Do please go easy on Unity employees, I know that the majority of them share the same sense of passion as you.

I knew from the day that reps Sequoia came to sit at our dinner table to check us out for our series A, that something like this could one day happen. But never did I expect it to be this bad.

What makes Unity special, really is the work of maybe 20 people. The user experience, the interface, asset store, the core engine, all of which has inspired other engines tremendously, this is the work of a very small team. I can't imagine what the 8000 employees there are doing now but I wish in all my heart Unity was still that small and passionate company.

I send my love to all of you folks and wish you well with whatever you do.

Yours,

A fellow F***ing idiot

"

 

Why use Flax when you can use Unreal Engine? Real question.

 

Stride's biggest problem is an overall lack of platform support. It's just Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.

https://doc.stride3d.net/4.1/en/manual/platforms/index.html

 

Flax C# is pretty good

 

https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/09/18/why-unity-software-plunged-on-monday

The key line for me is the last one.

"Now that developers are rising up in protest over rate increases, it's becoming clear that Unity might not have as much pricing power as some investors might previously have thought."

Developer angst is one thing, but if it translates into widespread and realistic attempts to erode Unitys business 'moat' by reducing developer lock-in, then it becomes something a lot more serious.

 

It has the most up-to-date scripting framework: C# 11 and .NET 7. It has hot reloading too which is nearly instant.

https://flaxengine.com/blog/flax-facts-16-scripts-hot-reload/

It supports a ton of platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Xbox One, Xbox S/X, PS4, PS5, Switch. Only one missing from this list is WebGL/GPU.

https://docs.flaxengine.com/manual/platforms/index.html

 

There's also that the licensing is more strict than both Unity and Unreal.

 

Just charge everyone 20 cents on games that are sold for a profit... instead of being a brain dead fish of a company