this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Games

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by ekZepp to c/games
 

To say it's been a bad week for Unity is the understatement of 2023. First they announced a terrible new Pricing scheme, then their customers revolted, as the week goes on though, it gets worse and worse for Unity, from threats from an employee shutting down their offices, to more studios threatening to leave, to scummy secret changes to their terms of service and back door deals with clients to get around the Unity Runtime Fee in an attempt to bury a competitor.

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[–] Weslee 166 points 1 year ago (17 children)

Am I the only one that wishes these video posts had some text explaination for those of us at work and unable to watch videos in the middle of the office?

[–] ekZepp 71 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
[–] Weslee 13 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Excellent work srgnt

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] ekZepp 5 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

If it does what it sounds like, it really should be integrated directly into Lemmy or Lemmy clients.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

looks very useful but the description is pretty sus haha

Get a summary of any long YouTube video, like a lecture, live event or a government meeting. Powered by ChatGPT.

government meeting?

[–] Raxiel 3 points 1 year ago

Parliamentary debate or similar?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That's one for the bookmarks. What an incredible site.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I've had that thought about 6 separate times this morning sitting at a hospital. I miss RIF showing me the link before I go to it.

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[–] CosmoNova 53 points 1 year ago (5 children)

One gripe I have with this video is that he said the situation at the unity office - namely the supposed death threat by an employee against their employer - was "understandable". It absolutely isn't understandable. No matter how shitty your tech CEO is, unless they happily throw puppies into a wood chipper in the office, death threats are definitely not understandable.

[–] whileloop 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What if they only indifferently throw puppies into a wood chipper?

[–] ExiledElf 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] ekZepp 8 points 1 year ago

Man, i've missed this. πŸ˜‚

[–] hansl 7 points 1 year ago

They still shouldn’t do it in the Office. They should do it at home, like all others puppies-in-wood-chippers people I know. Boundaries, Karen!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I assumed the threat was from a developer whose life's work is ruined by these terms. I wonder what the employee's motive was.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I presume a day off work.

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[–] ekZepp 6 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If the studios don't switch to Godot and contribute back, they'll be setting themselves up for another Unity a few years down the line.

[–] bighi 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If we don’t get together and destroy capitalism itself, we WILL get another Unity every few years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The easier path is opensource. You can use it today, no need to wish the fall capitalism and do nothing until then

[–] ExtraMedicated 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm also interested in checking out Stride tomorrow. Hopefully I can find a good alternative to Mirror for multiplayer networking and the FinalIk package I had in Unity.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Holy shit, I had no idea about that whole quid-pro-quo bullshit. That’s crazy. Also, that’s definitely super illegal.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Anyone know off the top of their head what the price difference is between Unity and Unreal now? And are there Unity engine alternatives that people can seek?

[–] echo64 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

there is no "price difference" they use a completely different pricing model, unity is SaaS, and moving to pay per install. Unreal is free, if you make more than a million dollars then you have to pay 5% royalties to epic.

there is no equating the two

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

They’re just different pricing models, not different verticals. Unity is still cheaper, but incurs significant risk now. Whereas Epic will take their 5% after $1M, Unity has no revenue split. However now that they’re charging per install, devs need to be sure their marginal profit clears this bar. No one is sure their pricing model works before launch, so I think this risk is unreasonable.

[–] rigatti 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Wouldn't the new Unity pricing model be somewhat comparable to the current Unreal pricing model?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Unity is charging per install (not per sold unit), so technically developers can owe Unity more money than they make.

[–] micka190 8 points 1 year ago

Not necessarily. Unity says they're charging per initial install once you break $1M (they walked-back on the "every" install bit), but Unreal takes a cut of your royalties once you break $1M, so it's still hard to really compare them properly. If you're making a free to play game, your install number could be dramatically higher than what a non free-to-play game would need to break $1M, for example.

[–] Stovetop 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They're pretty different.

Unity is planning to charge a flat fee of $0.20 per install over the entire life of a game. A Triple-A developer can release a game for $70 and it earns ten million dollars. Assuming every customer installs the game maybe three separate times on average over their lifespan, Unity's gonna take maybe about $85,000 in total in runtime fees. If the game had been developed in Unreal, Epic would have taken $450,000.

But let's say an indie dev makes a great game in Unity, sells it for $5, and it goes viral (like Vampire Survivors). They make ten million dollars, Unity takes 20 cents per install, and assuming the same install rate, the bill comes to $1.2 million, over 14x what the AAA developer is paying. Epic would have still charged $450,000.

With the AAA example, Epic's 5% may seem steep for games that cost a lot per unit, but at least when a game stops making money, they stop charging money.

For Unity's runtime fee, though, as people buy new PCs/consoles/phones and install their library of games to them over and over, the developer keeps getting billed with no profit coming in. Effectively, the more games they have out there in the wild, the greater a financial burden a developer has. They'll be living in fear of some Reddit post sending 10,000 people in /r/gaming down a sudden nostalgia trip and wake up to a $2000 bill the next day with seemingly no explanation.

And this is to say nothing of the problematic nature of how Unity would even accurately assess the install count of a game, or differentiate paid copies from promotional or pirated copies (which I doubt they will). Or if a developer wants to bankrupt a rival developer, how they could just rent a click farm in Malaysia to install a game over and over again and rack up a bill too high to afford.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Pretty sure godot is pretty up there from what I hear but that’s the extent of my knowledge.

[–] Maven 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Godot is great at 2D and would be a great replacement for those games but lacks a lot of 3D stuff Unity users would miss. If someone is doing a 2D game tho... Godot is a fantastic option to go with.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks for elaborating.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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