I've been using Unity almost every day of my professional career since about 2010. I consider myself a Unity expert. I've shipped titles to consoles, pc, mobile, ar, vr and mr devices. Some of my...
I've been using Unity almost every day of my professional career since about 2010. I consider myself a Unity expert. I've shipped titles to consoles, pc, mobile, ar, vr and mr devices. Some of my titles have been considered GOTY by various outlets.
I'm not going to use Unity as long as the leadership team that made this decision is still in control. The manner in which this new pricing decision was made demonstrated an utter disregard for their direct customers, the businesses that ship Unity titles.
Unity can't just have some rando write "sorry" on the internet and make it all better. They need to clean house in their c-suite.
Yeah, game dev especially is such a long-term commitment to ship any project, knowing that the software making up the backbone of everything you do could change erratically in pricing or support...
Yeah, game dev especially is such a long-term commitment to ship any project, knowing that the software making up the backbone of everything you do could change erratically in pricing or support when you're two years into a 3-year project makes it a risky investment of your time and money. The content of their pricing update, while pretty awful in its own right, isn't what's scared people away from the engine, it was the fact that the working relationship could change drastically for the worse overnight. As unwieldy as Unreal is to use, and as grimy Epic is as a massive corporation, at least they could deliver a consistent experience without fear of random bankruptcy.
Corporate apologies don't mean anything, developers are looking for guarantees that this will never happen again. "Oops we forgot to ask anyone before making a massive, global, retroactive change to our pricing model" doesn't do anything to restore confidence, in the best light it just looks like stunning incompetence.
What is the alternative for you? I'm curious as someone who is not a developer at all and just reading some other comments from others who say Unity has a strong position with little alternatives...
What is the alternative for you? I'm curious as someone who is not a developer at all and just reading some other comments from others who say Unity has a strong position with little alternatives etc. and you being someone who uses it professionally, what do you plan on doing if Unity leadership doesn't change?
Not OP but Unreal Engine is increasingly becoming more accessible. For instance, you don't really need programming skills to make games if you use their blueprint editor (visual programming)....
Not OP but Unreal Engine is increasingly becoming more accessible. For instance, you don't really need programming skills to make games if you use their blueprint editor (visual programming). Plus, it's latest version (5) is open source while Unity is not
Unreal is not open source. The source code is available to you to look at and modify under the terms of the license, but that's "source available," not open source, which means something very...
Unreal is not open source. The source code is available to you to look at and modify under the terms of the license, but that's "source available," not open source, which means something very different.
Free/open source licenses make certain guarantees about your rights, as a user, to use the code, which are fundamentally incompatible with Unreal's entire pricing model.
I can't see this saving them. This reads to me like they're trying to appear magnanimous by walking back a lot of the changes that they would have been hard-pressed to implement in the first...
I can't see this saving them. This reads to me like they're trying to appear magnanimous by walking back a lot of the changes that they would have been hard-pressed to implement in the first place, particularly the application of the new terms to already-released stuff. I don't know why any dev would look at this and think it represents an improvement in behavior; they're just trying to negotiate a slower path to the same goal.
If these changes seem reasonable, it's hard to avoid asking why this wasn't the plan from the start. The management that decided to hand down this outlier of a licensing scheme in its original...
If these changes seem reasonable, it's hard to avoid asking why this wasn't the plan from the start. The management that decided to hand down this outlier of a licensing scheme in its original form before any conversations with customers just can't be trusted to care about their customers in future decisions. How do you build a business case around a platform and invest the time and money building a game if you can't be sure the foundation isn't going to shift around on you before launch?
I would say these new terms are reasonable enough to allow companies to complete ongoing projects without needing to figure out a rip and replace. They are definitely not stable enough for a new...
I would say these new terms are reasonable enough to allow companies to complete ongoing projects without needing to figure out a rip and replace. They are definitely not stable enough for a new project start though. That will take time and Unity needs to eat that cost of new project start delay for their hubris.
If this had been what they launched with out the window, I don't think they would have had the same uproar. I don't think this is a door-in-face technique planned retreat (compared to the "leaked"...
If this had been what they launched with out the window, I don't think they would have had the same uproar. I don't think this is a door-in-face technique planned retreat (compared to the "leaked" proposal earlier this week which basically just started the install count at 0 and increased a revenue threshold, but still maintained it applied to existing games developed under the current deal).
I don't think this is enough that I would consider Unity for a new project (compared to my niggling doubts on my projects using Godot and Bevy in the past that maybe I should just bite the bullet and learn the "grown up" engine, until this announcement). That would require something a bit more iron clad renouncing their claim to be able to change the deal like this.
I don't know if Unity considers it a success that they've moved from their customers being in a "port everything now" rush to "Well I wouldn't take that deal, and a lot of customers will now not be upgrading Unity or developing their next titles in Unity".
But I guess as a consumer this moves my position to "someone should sue them for a declaratory judgement that making this retroactive is not legal" to "Well, guess I'm not investing in learning Unity".
The worst part of this installation fee isn't the cost, it's that it turns game developers against their customers. Instead of encouraging players to support them and install their game frequently...
The worst part of this installation fee isn't the cost, it's that it turns game developers against their customers. Instead of encouraging players to support them and install their game frequently on all their devices it tells users they shouldn't do this and encourages developers to limit installs with DRM. Unity's market is primarily indie developers and they depend a great deal more on a positive relationship with customers than AAA games do. This is an attack on that relationship and should be rejected entirely.
A lot of people are saying this is the end of Unity, but honestly, it very likely isn't. This is because there isn't really a good alternative to Unity right now. Unreal isn't designed for the...
A lot of people are saying this is the end of Unity, but honestly, it very likely isn't. This is because there isn't really a good alternative to Unity right now. Unreal isn't designed for the space that Unity games are (low-cost, indie, mobile). Along with that, any Unity developer has to make this choice between two painful programming options: blueprints (spaghetti), and 'unreal' C++.
As for Godot, it just isn't there yet, in my experience: The biggest problem I have with Godot is that it's not designed for performance, which you might not think is a big deal for indie games, but projects of any size often expand to fill the available performance budget. It's also in a transitionary period with a lot of crucial components, for example the physics system (many indie games are physics based), and C# mobile support.
2D games don't have it as bad, but still you are missing out on a lot of pre-existing tooling and assets that are available for Unity.
Given this, I'm actually surprised Unity walked back their position so much. They actually have a pretty strong hold on the industry right now. Of course it'd be worse in a few years, but it's just weird to see them move from a very short-term oriented decision to a long-term one. I guess there's probably some internal struggle about the future of the company.
When Unity did this they basically stopped being an option, because if they can change their terms whenever they want then what is the point of using the engine at all? Many developers were...
When Unity did this they basically stopped being an option, because if they can change their terms whenever they want then what is the point of using the engine at all? Many developers were posting about how they would certainly lose money by keeping their games available to be bought and installed at all. For some, it would have been cheaper to nuke their own games than to do nothing. If that is a possibility at all then Unity stops being an option entirely. At least that's how I understood based on some of the responses from dev's I've read!
I get that there's not a lot of options right now, but when this kind of thing has happened in the past it usually results in a lot more options than their were before.
I don't think this matters as much as you're saying - Godot doesn't need to be a 100% replacement to hurt Unity; even if 10% of Unity's 3D devs switch to Godot, that still gets the ball rolling...
As for Godot, it just isn't there yet, in my experience: The biggest problem I have with Godot is that it's not designed for performance, which you might not think is a big deal for indie games, but projects of any size often expand to fill the available performance budget. It's also in a transitionary period with a lot of crucial components, for example the physics system (many indie games are physics based), and C# mobile support.
I don't think this matters as much as you're saying - Godot doesn't need to be a 100% replacement to hurt Unity; even if 10% of Unity's 3D devs switch to Godot, that still gets the ball rolling and moves up Unity's deadline of Godot* being a full-blown competitor to Unity.
*If Unity devs move to Godot, I expect that some of them will help Godot's development, and some of them will pull tooling/assets/etc to the Godot ecosystem.
I think what most people saying "this is the end of Unity" mean is that they think Unity is about to breach the trust thermocline - which turned out to be wrong this time, but they're probably still on the brink.
Godot has received multiple six figure donations from several developers over the last two weeks, the most prominent of which is Re-Logic. That cash if used intelligently will allow for quite the...
Godot has received multiple six figure donations from several developers over the last two weeks, the most prominent of which is Re-Logic. That cash if used intelligently will allow for quite the feature sprint. At the least, Unity drove massive cash and interest into the arms of their competition, which is a very poor business move.
If John Riccitello and his fellow execs announced a 2.5% revenue share policy from the outset, there would have been next-to-no backlash. Epic charge 5% royalties for Unreal Engine use, even...
If John Riccitello and his fellow execs announced a 2.5% revenue share policy from the outset, there would have been next-to-no backlash. Epic charge 5% royalties for Unreal Engine use, even though the cost-per-seat for an Unreal licence is about half of what it is compared to Unity.
Leaks from Bloomberg suggested runtime fees would be capped at 4% of revenues, effectively making Unity less worthwhile than Unreal, because what I didn't mention in the above paragraph was that Epic only charge 12% in store fees on the Epic Games Store and will actually waive their engine royalties for any sales made through the EGS, meaning that you'll have to pay almost three times more in store fees and royalties if you developed the same game in Unity and released it on Steam (30% of revenues are taken by Steam, plus 4% from Unity.)
Here's the thing, as major a rollback this is, Unity have almost wholly eroded the trust between them and their stakeholders with the original announcement, and I really think that any publisher would be stupid to stick with Unity on future projects. Riccitello & Co have categorically proven that they're willing to rip up their old ToS to fit their own narrative and try to milk as much out of developers as they can.
Godot is free, open source and perfectly serviceable for a lot of use cases. It may not be as feature-rich or supported as other engines on the market, but it still works for a lot of people. If you want industry standard and plenty of support... Unreal is that way.
I know for damn sure that if I were a game dev, I'd be jumping straight on the Unreal or Godot train right now. Not a huge fan of Tim Sweeney but he's nowhere near as much of a money hoarder as John Riccitello.
So if you want to stay on the Unity platform, they are basically not walking back anything. If you upgrade, as you absolutely must, then you pay the new fee schedule, with all of its associated...
So if you want to stay on the Unity platform, they are basically not walking back anything. If you upgrade, as you absolutely must, then you pay the new fee schedule, with all of its associated problems. All they did was trim off some of the legally questionable retroactive stuff.
You don't have to upgrade today, but you will need to eventually. If Unity is going to be your main dev tool and you don't have plans to retire soon, you'll eventually need to upgrade.
You don't have to upgrade today, but you will need to eventually. If Unity is going to be your main dev tool and you don't have plans to retire soon, you'll eventually need to upgrade.
A walkback? Not really, just changes. The runtime fee is still going to apply to Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise starting in 2024. Only if they keep using the current (or older) versions of the...
A walkback? Not really, just changes.
The runtime fee is still going to apply to Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise starting in 2024. Only if they keep using the current (or older) versions of the engine will they be exempted.
The most significant change would be this one I think:
For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month. Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.
Frankly I don't think this is going to undo any of the damage already done. Nobody is going to trust this company any time soon. Not with that clown John Riccitiello at the helm.
I think the more significant change is no longer attempting to apply this fee to games that have already been released. I don't think this will fix their lost trust despite that though -- it'll...
I think the more significant change is no longer attempting to apply this fee to games that have already been released. I don't think this will fix their lost trust despite that though -- it'll just save them a potential lawsuit over that portion imo. It's a positive development for devs with existing Unity games, though.
"Loss of trust" is the way it's usually put, but another way to think about it is that once people have decided that someone is a villain, they really don't want to change their minds. Thinking...
"Loss of trust" is the way it's usually put, but another way to think about it is that once people have decided that someone is a villain, they really don't want to change their minds.
Thinking about it as a business transaction, maybe one lesson from this is that contracts matter, and they were too one-sided? Going forward, it would probably be foolish to start a game based on a contract that allows Unity to change the terms for whatever release you choose to build on.
This actually seems pretty reasonable to me, I understand the internet gets very upset about these things and will view anything short of a complete reversal a "defeat", and won't be happy, but I...
This actually seems pretty reasonable to me, I understand the internet gets very upset about these things and will view anything short of a complete reversal a "defeat", and won't be happy, but I doubt Unity will concede any further.
This version of the new policy is reasonable, and if this was their first move it wouldn't have been as bad. But their first move eradicated trust in them. Just the fact they were willing to try...
This version of the new policy is reasonable, and if this was their first move it wouldn't have been as bad. But their first move eradicated trust in them. Just the fact they were willing to try all that was bad.
I don't think even completely removing every planned change would be enough to regain trust. They shattered trust on a core level by showing they're willing to target ANY game ever made on Unity, past or present. I can't describe how chilled I felt just imagining how it'd feel to have a game you made 5 years ago on Unity be potentially subject to this charge because of a policy you didn't agree to when you made the game.
The retroactive fee idea are most likely illegal on multiple levels, but the fact they tried is bad enough. It shows the full scope of their intent: if you've made a game on Unity, they perpetually see you as a potential source to exploit. The best word I can think to describe the feeling is "claustrophobic", there's no real escape as long as your game is made on the Unity engine. Who knows what else they'll try in the future?
I think devs with projects far in development on Unity will go on to finish it, but many won't use it for future projects. It's just too risky.
I'm not a big Unity fan or anything, I just think it depends on how devs respond to this. When I said this seems "reasonable" I meant devs will probably return to their projects, since money...
I'm not a big Unity fan or anything, I just think it depends on how devs respond to this. When I said this seems "reasonable" I meant devs will probably return to their projects, since money usually wins out over making a point. Whether they continue to use Unity in the future, maybe not.
Surely nobody serious was thinking that this could possibly end in a "win" for anyone but Unity in the short term. Were the retroactive terms illegal? Basically. That doesn't mean that the...
Surely nobody serious was thinking that this could possibly end in a "win" for anyone but Unity in the short term. Were the retroactive terms illegal? Basically. That doesn't mean that the messaging wasn't crystal clear: Unity's management doesn't care beyond the next quarter's profit. This was never a battle, it was a sign of the times.
Unity on Twitter: Source: https://twitter.com/unity/status/1705317639478751611
Unity on Twitter:
Genuinely disappointed at how our removal of the ToS has been framed across the internet. We removed it way before the pricing change was announced because the views were so low, not because we didn't want people to see it.
This makes absolutely no sense. It's like me saying "no one was looking at my will, so I got rid of it." Of course no one was viewing it when it was stable and didn't matter!
This makes absolutely no sense. It's like me saying "no one was looking at my will, so I got rid of it." Of course no one was viewing it when it was stable and didn't matter!
The real kicker is that there's no reason to justify it's removal either. The "hosting costs" of a GitHub page is pennies and the "management cost" is 5 minutes to update the text whenever there's...
The real kicker is that there's no reason to justify it's removal either. The "hosting costs" of a GitHub page is pennies and the "management cost" is 5 minutes to update the text whenever there's changes. Leaving it up did no direct harm but it did stifle their ability to be corrupt.
For anyone just skimming and not clicking through, this tweet is in reply to another person and has some other information included as well. They didn't just post that excerpt to their main feed...
For anyone just skimming and not clicking through, this tweet is in reply to another person and has some other information included as well. They didn't just post that excerpt to their main feed as I first assumed.
I think this might be related to every tech company being revealed to be overvalued in the recent couple of years. Software isn't floating on an inflated value inherent to digital products...
I think this might be related to every tech company being revealed to be overvalued in the recent couple of years. Software isn't floating on an inflated value inherent to digital products anymore, and stocks are dropping. I think the market is panicking and they're pulling desperate, scummy strategies to boost their revenue, especially companies that were just breaking even on said inflated values. Massive layoffs, aggressive advertising schemes, nonsensical new payment models, and cutting corners wherever possible is becoming the new standard because a lot of companies found out that they're only worth like, 60% of what they thought, while budgeting for 110%. (made up numbers for effect)
Ha, I think all investment is "faith based", so investors as a whole tend to put more money towards things they can be hyped up about. Tech was a massive investment opportunity because tech...
Ha, I think all investment is "faith based", so investors as a whole tend to put more money towards things they can be hyped up about. Tech was a massive investment opportunity because tech companies promise the world through the magic of technology, and investors don't really understand the product in the same way as, say, a brick-and-mortar manufacturing plant. Will a ball-bearing press revolutionize the way people live? Probably not. Will "cloud-based data solutions and analytics" revolutionize the way people live? CERTAINLY! Your refrigerator can be cloud-based! Your kids can be cloud-based! The future is limitless! How exciting to dump money into.
Anyway it's the future now, and people are realizing the return on a cloud-based refrigerator was basically nothing.
I found this commentary on the Unity situation explains this trend quite well: Unity's Plan Won't Work, But Someone Else's Will In a nutshell - business leaders don't bother to innovate anymore....
In a nutshell - business leaders don't bother to innovate anymore. Instead, they try to capture value, locking down the interface between customers and industry. This thinking can adequately explain the rash of bone-headed c-level decisions we've been seeing in all of these companies. All of these businesses you've mentioned create nothing at all - instead, they charge you for access to all of the things that other people create.
People today don't aspire to create value - they aspire to capture it. - Cory Doctorow
This is part of it — Things can’t always go up, and with the inflation going on a lot of loans now have high interest rates, the almost free VC funding has dried up so they need to extract that...
This is part of it — Things can’t always go up, and with the inflation going on a lot of loans now have high interest rates, the almost free VC funding has dried up so they need to extract that money from someone, so they turn to their users and employees. At some point you can only make so much money until you start making anti consumer choices.
I've been using Unity almost every day of my professional career since about 2010. I consider myself a Unity expert. I've shipped titles to consoles, pc, mobile, ar, vr and mr devices. Some of my titles have been considered GOTY by various outlets.
I'm not going to use Unity as long as the leadership team that made this decision is still in control. The manner in which this new pricing decision was made demonstrated an utter disregard for their direct customers, the businesses that ship Unity titles.
Unity can't just have some rando write "sorry" on the internet and make it all better. They need to clean house in their c-suite.
Yeah, game dev especially is such a long-term commitment to ship any project, knowing that the software making up the backbone of everything you do could change erratically in pricing or support when you're two years into a 3-year project makes it a risky investment of your time and money. The content of their pricing update, while pretty awful in its own right, isn't what's scared people away from the engine, it was the fact that the working relationship could change drastically for the worse overnight. As unwieldy as Unreal is to use, and as grimy Epic is as a massive corporation, at least they could deliver a consistent experience without fear of random bankruptcy.
Corporate apologies don't mean anything, developers are looking for guarantees that this will never happen again. "Oops we forgot to ask anyone before making a massive, global, retroactive change to our pricing model" doesn't do anything to restore confidence, in the best light it just looks like stunning incompetence.
What is the alternative for you? I'm curious as someone who is not a developer at all and just reading some other comments from others who say Unity has a strong position with little alternatives etc. and you being someone who uses it professionally, what do you plan on doing if Unity leadership doesn't change?
Not OP but Unreal Engine is increasingly becoming more accessible. For instance, you don't really need programming skills to make games if you use their blueprint editor (visual programming). Plus, it's latest version (5) is open source while Unity is not
Unreal is not open source. The source code is available to you to look at and modify under the terms of the license, but that's "source available," not open source, which means something very different.
Free/open source licenses make certain guarantees about your rights, as a user, to use the code, which are fundamentally incompatible with Unreal's entire pricing model.
OSI Open Source definition: https://opensource.org/osd/
GNU Free Software definition: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
I can't see this saving them. This reads to me like they're trying to appear magnanimous by walking back a lot of the changes that they would have been hard-pressed to implement in the first place, particularly the application of the new terms to already-released stuff. I don't know why any dev would look at this and think it represents an improvement in behavior; they're just trying to negotiate a slower path to the same goal.
If these changes seem reasonable, it's hard to avoid asking why this wasn't the plan from the start. The management that decided to hand down this outlier of a licensing scheme in its original form before any conversations with customers just can't be trusted to care about their customers in future decisions. How do you build a business case around a platform and invest the time and money building a game if you can't be sure the foundation isn't going to shift around on you before launch?
I would say these new terms are reasonable enough to allow companies to complete ongoing projects without needing to figure out a rip and replace. They are definitely not stable enough for a new project start though. That will take time and Unity needs to eat that cost of new project start delay for their hubris.
If this had been what they launched with out the window, I don't think they would have had the same uproar. I don't think this is a door-in-face technique planned retreat (compared to the "leaked" proposal earlier this week which basically just started the install count at 0 and increased a revenue threshold, but still maintained it applied to existing games developed under the current deal).
I don't think this is enough that I would consider Unity for a new project (compared to my niggling doubts on my projects using Godot and Bevy in the past that maybe I should just bite the bullet and learn the "grown up" engine, until this announcement). That would require something a bit more iron clad renouncing their claim to be able to change the deal like this.
I don't know if Unity considers it a success that they've moved from their customers being in a "port everything now" rush to "Well I wouldn't take that deal, and a lot of customers will now not be upgrading Unity or developing their next titles in Unity".
But I guess as a consumer this moves my position to "someone should sue them for a declaratory judgement that making this retroactive is not legal" to "Well, guess I'm not investing in learning Unity".
The worst part of this installation fee isn't the cost, it's that it turns game developers against their customers. Instead of encouraging players to support them and install their game frequently on all their devices it tells users they shouldn't do this and encourages developers to limit installs with DRM. Unity's market is primarily indie developers and they depend a great deal more on a positive relationship with customers than AAA games do. This is an attack on that relationship and should be rejected entirely.
A lot of people are saying this is the end of Unity, but honestly, it very likely isn't. This is because there isn't really a good alternative to Unity right now. Unreal isn't designed for the space that Unity games are (low-cost, indie, mobile). Along with that, any Unity developer has to make this choice between two painful programming options: blueprints (spaghetti), and 'unreal' C++.
As for Godot, it just isn't there yet, in my experience: The biggest problem I have with Godot is that it's not designed for performance, which you might not think is a big deal for indie games, but projects of any size often expand to fill the available performance budget. It's also in a transitionary period with a lot of crucial components, for example the physics system (many indie games are physics based), and C# mobile support.
2D games don't have it as bad, but still you are missing out on a lot of pre-existing tooling and assets that are available for Unity.
Given this, I'm actually surprised Unity walked back their position so much. They actually have a pretty strong hold on the industry right now. Of course it'd be worse in a few years, but it's just weird to see them move from a very short-term oriented decision to a long-term one. I guess there's probably some internal struggle about the future of the company.
When Unity did this they basically stopped being an option, because if they can change their terms whenever they want then what is the point of using the engine at all? Many developers were posting about how they would certainly lose money by keeping their games available to be bought and installed at all. For some, it would have been cheaper to nuke their own games than to do nothing. If that is a possibility at all then Unity stops being an option entirely. At least that's how I understood based on some of the responses from dev's I've read!
I get that there's not a lot of options right now, but when this kind of thing has happened in the past it usually results in a lot more options than their were before.
I don't think this matters as much as you're saying - Godot doesn't need to be a 100% replacement to hurt Unity; even if 10% of Unity's 3D devs switch to Godot, that still gets the ball rolling and moves up Unity's deadline of Godot* being a full-blown competitor to Unity.
*If Unity devs move to Godot, I expect that some of them will help Godot's development, and some of them will pull tooling/assets/etc to the Godot ecosystem.
I think what most people saying "this is the end of Unity" mean is that they think Unity is about to breach the trust thermocline - which turned out to be wrong this time, but they're probably still on the brink.
Godot has received multiple six figure donations from several developers over the last two weeks, the most prominent of which is Re-Logic. That cash if used intelligently will allow for quite the feature sprint. At the least, Unity drove massive cash and interest into the arms of their competition, which is a very poor business move.
If John Riccitello and his fellow execs announced a 2.5% revenue share policy from the outset, there would have been next-to-no backlash. Epic charge 5% royalties for Unreal Engine use, even though the cost-per-seat for an Unreal licence is about half of what it is compared to Unity.
Leaks from Bloomberg suggested runtime fees would be capped at 4% of revenues, effectively making Unity less worthwhile than Unreal, because what I didn't mention in the above paragraph was that Epic only charge 12% in store fees on the Epic Games Store and will actually waive their engine royalties for any sales made through the EGS, meaning that you'll have to pay almost three times more in store fees and royalties if you developed the same game in Unity and released it on Steam (30% of revenues are taken by Steam, plus 4% from Unity.)
Here's the thing, as major a rollback this is, Unity have almost wholly eroded the trust between them and their stakeholders with the original announcement, and I really think that any publisher would be stupid to stick with Unity on future projects. Riccitello & Co have categorically proven that they're willing to rip up their old ToS to fit their own narrative and try to milk as much out of developers as they can.
Godot is free, open source and perfectly serviceable for a lot of use cases. It may not be as feature-rich or supported as other engines on the market, but it still works for a lot of people. If you want industry standard and plenty of support... Unreal is that way.
I know for damn sure that if I were a game dev, I'd be jumping straight on the Unreal or Godot train right now. Not a huge fan of Tim Sweeney but he's nowhere near as much of a money hoarder as John Riccitello.
So if you want to stay on the Unity platform, they are basically not walking back anything. If you upgrade, as you absolutely must, then you pay the new fee schedule, with all of its associated problems. All they did was trim off some of the legally questionable retroactive stuff.
Must? The vast majority of games start on a Unity major version and stay there forever.
I mean as a studio or a developer. You can’t keep using 2023 Unity as new consoles keep coming out.
You don't have to upgrade today, but you will need to eventually. If Unity is going to be your main dev tool and you don't have plans to retire soon, you'll eventually need to upgrade.
An almost entire walkback of the changes Unity had planned, though we'll see if it's too late with trust lost now.
A walkback? Not really, just changes.
The runtime fee is still going to apply to Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise starting in 2024. Only if they keep using the current (or older) versions of the engine will they be exempted.
The most significant change would be this one I think:
Frankly I don't think this is going to undo any of the damage already done. Nobody is going to trust this company any time soon. Not with that clown John Riccitiello at the helm.
I think the more significant change is no longer attempting to apply this fee to games that have already been released. I don't think this will fix their lost trust despite that though -- it'll just save them a potential lawsuit over that portion imo. It's a positive development for devs with existing Unity games, though.
"Loss of trust" is the way it's usually put, but another way to think about it is that once people have decided that someone is a villain, they really don't want to change their minds.
Thinking about it as a business transaction, maybe one lesson from this is that contracts matter, and they were too one-sided? Going forward, it would probably be foolish to start a game based on a contract that allows Unity to change the terms for whatever release you choose to build on.
Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.
In other words I don't think I'll trust Unity ever again. And that's fine by me.
This actually seems pretty reasonable to me, I understand the internet gets very upset about these things and will view anything short of a complete reversal a "defeat", and won't be happy, but I doubt Unity will concede any further.
This version of the new policy is reasonable, and if this was their first move it wouldn't have been as bad. But their first move eradicated trust in them. Just the fact they were willing to try all that was bad.
I don't think even completely removing every planned change would be enough to regain trust. They shattered trust on a core level by showing they're willing to target ANY game ever made on Unity, past or present. I can't describe how chilled I felt just imagining how it'd feel to have a game you made 5 years ago on Unity be potentially subject to this charge because of a policy you didn't agree to when you made the game.
The retroactive fee idea are most likely illegal on multiple levels, but the fact they tried is bad enough. It shows the full scope of their intent: if you've made a game on Unity, they perpetually see you as a potential source to exploit. The best word I can think to describe the feeling is "claustrophobic", there's no real escape as long as your game is made on the Unity engine. Who knows what else they'll try in the future?
I think devs with projects far in development on Unity will go on to finish it, but many won't use it for future projects. It's just too risky.
I don't really expect them to concede further, I just hope that in time, they fall apart completely.
I'm not a big Unity fan or anything, I just think it depends on how devs respond to this. When I said this seems "reasonable" I meant devs will probably return to their projects, since money usually wins out over making a point. Whether they continue to use Unity in the future, maybe not.
Surely nobody serious was thinking that this could possibly end in a "win" for anyone but Unity in the short term. Were the retroactive terms illegal? Basically. That doesn't mean that the messaging wasn't crystal clear: Unity's management doesn't care beyond the next quarter's profit. This was never a battle, it was a sign of the times.
Unity on Twitter:
Source: https://twitter.com/unity/status/1705317639478751611
This makes absolutely no sense. It's like me saying "no one was looking at my will, so I got rid of it." Of course no one was viewing it when it was stable and didn't matter!
The real kicker is that there's no reason to justify it's removal either. The "hosting costs" of a GitHub page is pennies and the "management cost" is 5 minutes to update the text whenever there's changes. Leaving it up did no direct harm but it did stifle their ability to be corrupt.
For anyone just skimming and not clicking through, this tweet is in reply to another person and has some other information included as well. They didn't just post that excerpt to their main feed as I first assumed.
I think this might be related to every tech company being revealed to be overvalued in the recent couple of years. Software isn't floating on an inflated value inherent to digital products anymore, and stocks are dropping. I think the market is panicking and they're pulling desperate, scummy strategies to boost their revenue, especially companies that were just breaking even on said inflated values. Massive layoffs, aggressive advertising schemes, nonsensical new payment models, and cutting corners wherever possible is becoming the new standard because a lot of companies found out that they're only worth like, 60% of what they thought, while budgeting for 110%. (made up numbers for effect)
Ha, I think all investment is "faith based", so investors as a whole tend to put more money towards things they can be hyped up about. Tech was a massive investment opportunity because tech companies promise the world through the magic of technology, and investors don't really understand the product in the same way as, say, a brick-and-mortar manufacturing plant. Will a ball-bearing press revolutionize the way people live? Probably not. Will "cloud-based data solutions and analytics" revolutionize the way people live? CERTAINLY! Your refrigerator can be cloud-based! Your kids can be cloud-based! The future is limitless! How exciting to dump money into.
Anyway it's the future now, and people are realizing the return on a cloud-based refrigerator was basically nothing.
Don't forget Disney. There was a great read posted on ~TV about Bob Chapek at Disney a couple weeks ago.
I found this commentary on the Unity situation explains this trend quite well: Unity's Plan Won't Work, But Someone Else's Will
In a nutshell - business leaders don't bother to innovate anymore. Instead, they try to capture value, locking down the interface between customers and industry. This thinking can adequately explain the rash of bone-headed c-level decisions we've been seeing in all of these companies. All of these businesses you've mentioned create nothing at all - instead, they charge you for access to all of the things that other people create.
People today don't aspire to create value - they aspire to capture it. - Cory Doctorow
This is part of it — Things can’t always go up, and with the inflation going on a lot of loans now have high interest rates, the almost free VC funding has dried up so they need to extract that money from someone, so they turn to their users and employees. At some point you can only make so much money until you start making anti consumer choices.