Godspeed Godot, fuck every single tech company enshittifying the whole sector to hell.
Godot’s only issue is the lack of console support, but that’s because they can’t get the licenses as an open source project.
The Godot developers created a new business entity that will facilitate porting games to closed platforms.
I was going to say, I know Cassette Beasts released on Switch and it uses the Godot engine, so there’s no way it doesn’t support consoles.
I am not sure this is something other engines even offered at this level, but my issue is bindings support.
3.X had (3rd-party) production-ready bindings, even for niche languages.
4.X, with hopes of improving support for compiled languages, has a new bindings system meaning that all bindings need to be redone as a new effort. This happened with the language that I’m interested in, the group that made the production-ready 3.X bindings abdicated the crown and there have been splintered efforts by individuals to work on 4.X bindings.
So it (3.X vs 4.X) is language vs engine features. When/if 4.X bindings do come out, it is not known how similar they will be so (aside from non-Godot-specific code) that will likely add complication to it as well.
I don’t really care about consoles (needing to jump through hoops to develop for it is one reason) so a different potential issue would web export limitations. Both for different languages and for visual quality (AA). Those were issues in the past, though I’m not actually sure where they’re at now (the 4.1 docs do say you can’t have C# web exports in 4.X).
I’m all for Godot getting better; that said, has Epic, Open3D, or Crytek made similar moves?
(I know Crytek isn’t much of a player currently, but as someone who’s been following them closer in recent years, it really seems like they got their house back in order)
It’s not even another CEO, it’s the same old: EA’s former CEO John Riccitiello.
I wonder how people expected anything else…
All the people here are missing the point.
Unity is an engine primarily used by mobile app developers; it’s their biggest market. Indie game developers are basically just collateral damage, for this kind of a pricing change.
Mobile apps are all about massive scale (millions of installs) and ungodly amounts of revenue. They’re going after large mobile developers, not small studios. (I’m not saying small studios won’t get affected, I’m saying Unity is focusing on the big dogs - potentially at the cost of pissing off unrelated folk for no financial reason)
The per install costs don’t kick in until you’ve made half a million dollars in revenue, and a certain number of installs.
Also, you literally can’t build these apps with other engines as ad network integrations don’t exist for them. So it’s not like anyone has a choice: it’s Unity demanding to be paid more as they’re the only viable player in the industry.
Makes good business sense, though I think they should increase the revenue point of the free and personal tier to a million as well, just to put the minds of indie devs at ease. No point freaking out unrelated people.
Signed: an ex-mobile game developer.
Makes good business sense
I would never call such horrifically predatory tactics “good business sense.” It’s abuse of market position and should draw the ire of antitrust regulators, as well as make their product a major business risk for any new projects.
Let’s not forget that Unity recently merged with a malware company, so borderline-illegal predation is their entire business strategy.
Let’s not forget that Unity recently merged with a malware company, so borderline-illegal predation is their entire business strategy.
No, they merged with an advertising company - you know, the same companies with which they’re close enough to have plugins for. It’s about business; who you talk to, who you have deals with.
I would never call such horrifically predatory tactics “good business sense.” It’s abuse of market position and should draw the ire of antitrust regulators, as well as make their product a major business risk for any new projects.
It is good business sense. The engine has relatively little value, it’s about what software stacks it integrates with, plus the ease of use for making exports to the two platforms that matter (Android and iOS). There’s a reason Unreal doesn’t even exist in this space, even though it’s technically capable of running on these devices.
Again, this is not the industry you’re thinking of - it’s the mobile industry, which is less about game development and more about having millions in your war-chest (usually from a few VCs) that you can spend on your marketing budget. If you can’t market, you’re dead in the water.
The entire industry is built around ads in games and traditional social media.
Things like this will stop happening if:
A) People become less susceptible to predatory marketing.
B) Another game engine developer decides to undercut Unity while at the same time offering similar platform targets and SDK integrations.
(There’s also a thing to be said about hiring, where all new mobile-game devs learn Unity - as it’s become the de-facto standard for getting a job in this industry. Any new player would need some big names to adopt them first to make a push for people to learn the tools, not hobbyists.)
Barring that nothing will change.
Also, there really aren’t “new” projects in this field - you rarely see scrappy upstarts succeeding in the mobile space, just jaded veterans undercutting their old studios by offering their VCs (or new, hungrier VCs) a bigger cut of the pie. Also, studios with private chefs, massive salaries, and cult-y work spaces that look like adult playgrounds.
You don’t have to use our advertising service. In unrelated news, we’re raising prices for everyone not using our advertising service.
So, can I buy the game once, then keep reinstalling it over and over to fuck the developer up? That’s dumb.
For those on Unity Personal or Unity Plus licenses, the fee will kick in after a project crosses both $200,000 in revenue over 12 months and 200,000 total installs.
It has to cross both the revenue and installs not just not 1.
Yeah, but when they reach that limit, it says it’s gonna cost $0.20 per install. So can I reinstal the game 1 000 000 times to accumulate $200 000 of costs?
Even so, after they hit the limit, if the game costs $20 I can reinstall the game just 100 times so the developer doesn’t get any profit from that sale.
I guess that when they hit it. Reinstalling the game will generate costs so the revenue is now lower than $200 000, so it doesn’t work. But that just means that we can effectively limit the developer to $200 000 revenue.
It’d be some API call regardless, if you can figure it out you don’t even have to actually reinstall it, just call the endpoint correctly. Use a botnet to do it so it’s harder to detect as fake (there are already preexisting solutions for that) and bam, you can probably make at least a dent in their revenue.
