They fucked themselves like WotC (Wizards of the Coast) did with the OGL (Open Gaming Licensing) changes.
If the changes were launched this way, being tied to a new version in 2024 then this would have been a perfectly fair approach, you could stick with 2022 / 23 LTS for your projects and only if you want ‘new’ features would you pick up 2024 LTS and agree to the new terms.
I’ve honestly not seen much difference between major versions e.g. 2021 - 2022 LTS, so unless these new versions come out with amazing new features, devs can still stick to these old reliable versions.
It’s much better overall but the way they’ve handled this has been shithouse
It might now win any new developers but people who work many years to build things like custom simulations have no way of switching to other platforms.
It’s not impossible to switch engines on new projects lots of devs have stated this. Devs have switch engines for far less or made their own.
It depends on a lot of factors though. Creating your own engine is by far not an easy task. The more feature rich it shall become, the more work it will need. Especially if it should have high 3D graphics quality while also running performant. That alone can cost a good team at least 2 to 5 years.
Switching engines also depends on how portable your work from the old engine is with regard to the new engine. It may not be impossible but can still be a lot of work. The earlier that decision is made, the better.
If the devs are determined enough they can surely do a switch. But they might sweat a lot. And especially for smaller studios, or studios without sufficient funding, this quickly becomes a matter of financial survival.
So it’s not impossible, yes. But don’t take that lightly as well.
Switching engines also depends on how portable your work from the old engine is with regard to the new engine. It may not be impossible but can still be a lot of work. The earlier that decision is made, the better.
Not to mention I’m guessing a good amount of indie devs are not abstracting every detail of interacting with the engine from the getgo in the chance they want to swap engines down the line. I’m sure some more experienced studios due for that just incase measure or to make migrating past breaking changes a bit easier when they crop up. But generally speaking I can’t imagine that’s a common tactic. But even if it did your still going to have to recreate every new implementation for your interfaces and there are bound to be differences here that are gonna take some time.
Nah, they’ll go back. If it’s one thing I’ve learned from Greedy companies doing dumb shit. People will always go back to trust them again.
That works for consumers because they don’t have nothing to lose. Smaller devs will still gravitate towards Unity because the various fees don’t apply to them, but any big studio won’t touch it with a ten feet pole. Immagine putting the salaries of a full studio in the hands of a company that might decide out of the blue to ruin your business model, it’s a nightmare scenario for any CEO! More so when there are viable alternatives
Deserved
It’s times like this I wish we did things more like china. The one person who is actually responsible for this change is going to get a huge payout, but the same can’t be said for everyone else at the company whose lives are going to be completely thrown off from the incoming layoffs.
They have over 7,000 employees they need to lay people off anyway. The reason they’re not profitable is because they’ve massively overextended themselves. Why did they buy Wetter, utterly bizarre purchase choice.
If they had a sensible number of employees and didn’t buy random companies every 5 minutes they’d be profitable.