Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Unity's Clarification will be "You are still screwed... wait, you want to know how?"

 

It's not in their best interest to wait too long, unless it is. Either they are trying to come up with some changes that make sense and will be accepted (without scraping the whole thing), OR this is part of some other plan, in which case waiting as long as possible is to their advantage.

 

Maybe in a few years but for now Godot is not for mobile developers

 

Has anyone looked into OGRE? It is 3d only by the way.

 

If that were true, they would have announced the replacement plan days ago. They're hemorrhaging paying customers right now and some of them will never come back. Every day that goes by reflects poorly on the company and costs them more users.

 

I think that's what worries me. If they were willing to scrap this whole terrible plan, that could potentially be done quickly.

 

Those of us old enough to remember came to Unity from Ogre.
Not sure about current status though.

 

ah the good old days of combining Ogre, Bullet, and Crazy Eddie's GUI system

Back when I thought I was going to make a one man free roaming procedurally generated MMO.

 

Interesting. There was always something alluring about OGRE to me. Any reason for leaving? Features, community, etc.?

 

I think they where really that "f.... idiots" and really believed the outrage will not be so bad.
They probably tries the same tactic as before: put something stupid, backtrack a little and done. And now they realize the made a big mistake and need to solve it (or at least i hope they did). They now have ironsource, that was probably bought with this idea in mind and they need to find a way to make devs not so angry and still make use of ironsource. And they don';t realy know what to do.
I think they realized at this point that silence will not solve the issue.
That's my ...... 20 cents

 

maybe this is of interest for unity > unreal people:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16nlovg/im_an_ex_unity_dev_with_a_decade_in_unreal_and_im/
"Hey everyone,

I worked in unity for a few years back in 2010s at a mixed reality app company (holo, vr, mobile and PC) then moved to unreal making large multiplayer games in blueprint since then.

I've been looking to get back into making tutorials, and I would like to know your questions!

Such as:

• the equivalent of game objects
• the equivalent of scripts/ components
• how various features work, like world building, level composition, UI, animation, particles, materials, sounds etc
• how multiplayer works
• how the game flow is managed
• how to localize your project
• how to test in editor and check performance
• how to cook and test

Please let me know your needs in the comments, anything from games to mixed reality, visualisation, plugins, explanation of the market place as a seller and more!"

also:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16npgq6/unity_cant_stop_telling_us_we_re_confused/

 

Right, and that's the real issue. Do they still believe they can salvage some part of this new price structure? Because I don't think they can. The longer they wait to fix this the more users they lose.

 

Your guess is as good as mine.
I understand they need more money, but this is stupid., Let alone very costly to implement this kind of s..t
I want for them to stop changing the pricing structure every few years and to start working on that f... engine because the feature update is slow AF.
they have 3 times more empoyees that epic and they don;t do games, the engine is kinda lacking. so my guess is services at least half of them, then marketing etc etc and probably 100 developers.

 

Visions never align perfectly. Thinking they do can lead to real challenges. We work together while we align and head off when the time comes.

If Godot becomes incompatible in the future, that doesn't diminish what they can give you before then. Only a retroactive terms change does that.

 

Haha yeah ogre is pretty old btw, i know there was an WYSIWYG some years ago but i don't know if that sitll exist, Ogre was pretty powerful back then

 

Nice anti-competitive practices you have there, would be a shame if something were to happen to it...

 

Also, hey Unity, you seem to think we're just confused about the new price structure. We're not confused. We understand exactly what you're trying to do and we're telling you it's unacceptable. Improving your messaging will not fix this problem one bit.

 

There are fanboys everywhere. When we started finding alternatives to Unity Godot 4 was the first engine we checked and we arrive at the same conclusion as you. It is not prepared to carry out professional 3D games. It lacks optimisation and it is overly complicated (or undocumented) when you want to go low-level with it. I hope that with more funding they will be able to hire professional developers to help with it.

Flax seems promising and it is nice to work with, but it seems like a one-person effort and some colleagues who have work with it told us some information which we didn't like. I will not enter into details as we haven't checked that information ourselves. We discarded it but it's an engine we would be considering in the future.

Unigine is very good and is one the options still on the table. The other one is obviously Unreal. We will probably end up going with Unreal. We already have some experience with it and seems like the less risky option at this moment. The only thing with Unreal is that it is a little bit over the top for the game we are doing. We do not really need a beast to make our game.

 

Yeah I know that. And I know an awesome game which will be released soon using it. It's more coding, less visual ... things.

 

They're hemorrhaging price sensitive customers. The lower the heat goes the better the tier of F***ery you can implement. Losing "friendly indie dev"-face was a given with their financials.

 

https://unitedgamedevs.com/

Wow so this grew from 16 to 900+ companies/supporters that have a combined 25 billion installs for their games. I did some digging into a few of these companies and some make 10+ million a year. Assuming they really are turning off their Unity ads, I wonder if Unity is in a world of hurt right now. Apparently, Unity makes most of their money from ads

On top of that Unity is already losing 100s of millions per year, so it seems like this move is likely backfiring on them financially too. Can't imagine their asset store sales are doing great either or many people are signing up for Unity Pro right now. Of course this all conjecture

IMO come January, a lot of the free to play mobile companies that rely on high install counts could not even pay these fees if they wanted to. They're pretty much backed into a corner and have to fight back. There's no way they have enough time to port their existing games or create a new portfolio of games in a new engine/framework. I would not be surprised if many companies refuse to pay the install fee and counter with legal action

This week of relative silence from Unity does not look good or restore any confidence

My prediction is that the fall of Unity may come far quicker than any of us expect

I was initially going to try to finish my Unity game and just choose something else for the next project. Now I'm wavering. It might be best to just rip the band aid off now and not waste another few months of development. My only hope is that Unity gets acquired by and we get all new leadership + full reversal of this policy

There was that freak incident about a year ago with The Machinery engine where they went bankrupt and demanded everyone to delete their software. Yikes. I wonder if this could happen to Unity if they go bankrupt and no one wants buy them out? Damn I need to go for a walk

 

yes, also i think torchlight was made with ogre, that is an amzaing game

 

That website isn't reachable for me at least from yesterday.

 

Once upon a time, Steinway, Kawai, and Yamaha decided to charge every pianist per piece on their performance after the purchase/rental of the piano. They said every new piece would count, first, then, they changed it to every new piece would count, but they also destroyed all the evidence that pianists could use to defend their rights. Pianists raised and fought back to this. Greedy corporations didn't know what to do but they called this "poor communication". Then, some magician leaked their plans on limiting the fee charges by a %4 cap, assuming, the purchase/rental price of the piano was still there for the pianists.

To be continued...

 

The Flax Engine EULA is going to be updated to prevent the same shenanigans that Unity's done. Attached is a screenshot of the discussion in their Discord.

 

Maybe it's changed in the past 10 years but Ogre when I used it was purely a graphics API. Meaning if you wanted physics you had to use middleware such as Bullet and implement it yourself. GUI system came from another middleware. Robust multiplatform input? Not out of the box.

If all your game has to do is show graphics on screen and you can work exclusively through code then great!
Otherwise, it was just smarter to pick something more feature rich to save yourself literal years of development time.
That includes character controllers, extension libraries, convenience functions, etc.

What converted me to Unity was that a year's worth of work in Ogre+Bullet took me a single day in Unity.

 

It's possible that whatever server solution this ran on wasn't up to task.

 

Jason Booth in on the discord talking with the dev about porting Better Shaders.

Also, I spoke with the main dev and based on what he told me there's a lot going on behind the scenes (he did mention some specifics) to help Flax move much quicker in a positive direction for growth. I think it's an engine that is really going to take off

 

This conversation says nothing about my base problem: Flax dev doesn't like my game, he terminates my usage of his engine based on the EULA we always had. From there I am forced to stop selling my game. Where does the "they can't change the EULA" help me?

Yeah, but "interestingly" the http version is redirecting to Godot... well.

 

I found your blog post very interesting and valuable, as a long-time Godot hobbyist. I'm very sorry it was received in that way by the Godot community. Any hostility or discussion outside of the technical merits of your post is unacceptable imo. I totally understand not wanting to engage with Godot development after that kind of experience.

I like the engine, but unfortunately, there are elements of the community that seem to take any criticism of Godot personally, and I think this is a major issue that puts off a lot of potential users. I've only ever had positive interactions with the devs, but these unsavoury parts of the community do the engine itself a huge disservice; I do wish Godot had a less cult-like and more rational following. I still use Godot, but I dabble in Bevy - hobbyists here might find it interesting, although its nowhere near ready for "serious" gamedev.

 

Although I think that scenario seems highly unlikely you could ask there to be clarifications added to the EULA with the wording that would give you the protection you need. It would be the right time to do this since they are looking seriously at modifying it to protect the end users.

 

That's great, I do not use discord. And why is it "unlikely"? How do you know what kind of games I'm planning doing? How do you know what kind of games he dislikes? Unity were okay company until they became not. Everyone can be or become stupid. Legally doesn't matter, what matters is what's the written deal (mostly).

 

I'm throwing my hat in the ring and joining the collective, and I encourage everyone else to, too. It's clear nothing is going to change unless we force them to. Or just jump ship. I'm actively looking at that as well.

 

Thank You for the insight. Looking at it in the light of your explanation makes more sense to me now.

 

Hey, since Unity is planning on charging per install, doesn't that mean Unity is liable to technically service every single user's installation, per computer architecture and setup?

 

Looks like the pendulum has swung too far to distrust position. I share your scepticism, especially in the light of current situation. But it seems like the owner is listening to community. Maybe if learns of your concerns he'll address them as well.

 

Not really, no.

 

To mention something that has not been here and seeing the mobile devs struggle to find alternatives:

https://quasar.dev/

"Quasar (pronounced /ˈkweɪ.zɑɹ/) is an MIT licensed open-source Vue.js based framework, which allows you as a web developer to quickly create responsive++ websites/apps in many flavours:

• SPAs (Single Page App)
• SSR (Server-side Rendered App) (+ optional PWA client takeover)
• PWAs (Progressive Web App)
• BEX (Browser Extension)
• Mobile Apps (Android, iOS, …) through Cordova or Capacitor
• Multi-platform Desktop Apps (using Electron)

Quasar’s motto is: write code once and simultaneously deploy it as a website, a Mobile App and/or an Electron App. Yes, one codebase for all of them, helping you develop an app in record time by using a state-of-the-art CLI and backed by best-practice, blazing fast Quasar web components.

When using Quasar, you won’t need additional heavy libraries like Hammer.js, Moment.js or Bootstrap. It’s got those needs covered internally, and all with a small footprint!"

Anyone did more than a couple of test apps with this?

 

this is a nightmare.

 

Ah, so we get to provide our own technical support, and get charged, every time we sell a dish washer to someone else, and that someone else installs said dish washer into their building, by the company who owns the patent on all the parts inside the dish washer we sold, due to the licensing on dish washer.

Seems so.. unreal.

 

look at the licence, is worse then unity

 

We would be idiots if we didn't learn the lesson. Do not trust your providers. They only look out for themselves (which Flax's EULA mirrors greatly, it only restricts you on extreme ways).
The guy actually knows our concerns about his EULA for three years. Apparently it's not important.
If he changes his mind and ACTUALLY changes the EULA, that's okay, but I'm done building on promises.

 

I can concur the general sentiment, but it's unlikely any insider trading is happening. They've been dumping the stock for years at this point, and are closely monitored by the relevant authorities. Furthermore, these sales are scheduled at least months in advance. Riccittitrololo also sold a very small amount of the stock he still owns. Like single digit percentages. It was not a significant sale from the CEO, but I don't know about the rest.

 

I much prefer the Unity forums

 

A bit of satire to lighten the mood. Sorry if this has already been posted.

https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-games/flappy-bird-guy-gets-12-million-bill-from-unity/

 

No because of two assets that are only for Unity.

 

You moved to Unreal a couple of years ago? How did it go?

 

The dev said the signed macOS version dmg is one of the priorities of this week

 

"As of press time, Unity had apologized for charging the Flappy Bird guy 12 million dollars, and also went ahead and released their next few public apologies pre-emptively, to stay ahead of things."

 

Engine funding in light of the Unity debacle and the general thing about trust