Things got SO much worse for Unity...
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ส.ค. 2024
- The latest updates on evolving Unity game engine drama. The downward spiral continues.
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#unity #gamedev
Man, Godot couldn't buy this much good advertising if they wanted to
Not just Godot. I believe other opensource engines will get some sort of boost (although much smaller one)
Even GameMaker was recently seen as the good guys with people stating their shift to a subscription model was way less of a thing compared to Unity now.
@@Smaxxlooks like every game engine company is going to turn this situation into a marketing campaign.
@@personismaybe0610 They would be stupid not to :D
As an open source fanboy shill I see this as an absolute win. With the open source nature, and the licensing and copyright they have. There is a 0% chance of godot pulling shit like this.
Imagine buying a shovel and having to pay the shovel manufacturer every time you dug a hole.
It makes no sense.
Imagine being an artist that had to pay the paper company 20 cents everytime someone else touch the print you sold.
Imagine buying a shovel, then 20 years later they start charging you 20 cents every time someone steps in any hole you ever dug with it.
@@donwald3436 Because we don't know if these are retained players...just downloads... seems like you only have to have someone go near the hole to be charged, they don't actually have to ever step into the hole... who says they ever played it to see any monetization by the dev.
It is more like Unity is trying to get other people to pay for the shovel and dig the grave that they will be buried in.
The upside is that even if Unity the company dies, the IP will be sold to someone, and perhaps have better business acumen than the idiotic bean counters at current Unity Technologies.
Let's be honest here? How many of you have actually paid for Unity? That's what I thought!
I'm a web developer. An old web developer. I will give you an advice for the future. Try to always choose open-source tools with big communities. Even if they are worse and harder to use. We are very flexible and smart. We can handle these complications. Every time I choose proprietary garbage I regret it. They will inevitably do stupid things. Yes, there are some exceptions but if exceptions exist then the rule exists too.
I love Phaser 3 JS.
Paid web dev tool are worse than the open source ones.
Rust is open source, ..😅
same. wasted my time learning 3dsmax 12 years ago when i could be using blender now
@@hamammsoleman9099 Rust Pro-Derangement Crew on schedule.
Feels to me like the reason it happened was just that the CEO decided "this is what we're doing" and nobody else had the authority to say stop.
The board has the authority, and they went along with it or pushed it themselves.
The theory of "pushing to be bought out" (by apple) or other companies makes the most sense.
that was definitely the case, just a bunch of greedy bastards who knew nothing about game development and the video game industry in general.
tracking installs, what a fucking joke.
It was Lazarus, of that I'm sure. He alone had the King's ear and whispered dark and evil magics into it, and convinced him of an imminent attack by Westmarch. Afraid to speak against the Bishop, the ministers nodded their empty heads and sent us of to die. ... When we returned from our horrific defeat...
Art keeps predicting reality.
I hope shareholders will push the CEO out, because surely this is really bad for shareholders too
I can relate - people not coming out of Flash don't know. I built an entire company around that tech, grew it to 25 awesome employees, built a tonne of cool stuff. It seemed like it was a great choice - until it completely disappeared. Within a year 85% of our revenue went up in smoke. Having lived through this, I have NEVER again been an advocate for any platform. I switched to open-source and have not regretted it for a minute. Nobody can take my toys away now.
Impressive. What open-source engine and/or tool are you using now?
Facts. I started game dev in flash and published with moshimedia. Moshi went under before flash did, and my games were all using the hot update feature which means they would never load again.
Or build your own tech
There have been plenty of cases where open source repos have changed their license or stopped development. Not sure what Flash has to do with this. Support stopped for flash for good reasons. Flash allowed for executable code and cross-site scripting. Apple was just the first to stop support for it.
What open-source is that?
There is a saying in India, vaguely translated to "it takes a lifetime to gain respect and trust, but only 1 moment to lose that trust". This is that moment for unity.
My grandfather always says "It takes a lifetime to make yourself a name, but it only takes a few minutes to destroy it"
Yeah there's a version of that saying in French as well, I guess it's universal ;)
It doesn't even effect 99% of people Unity did the right thing my guy
Engine barely make money especially unity as it is free and it's better than all engines meaning it also has more staff
Most of the people crying are crying because they think they will become millionaires by making a good game 😂😂
@@iamhuhuhulal9109 Unreal is free to use but they don't have to resort to scummy business practices like this, they have other means of making money on the engine.
You can build a thousand bridges and never be called a bridge builder, but you fuck _one_ goat...
lets not forget that the current Unity CEO used to work for EA and he's on record for saying "if you don't put microtransactions in your game, you're a moron"
Unity is basically completely cooked
Just riot
How do these people even get into the CEO position...
... AGAIN ...
@@mz00956no kidding, this tool's greatest career achievement was running EA into the ground with bad ideas and exploitative practices. He should have been blacklisted from the industry after that shitshow.
@@mz00956
Money.
He really needs to flip burgers for the rest of his stupid life. Some people just aren't cut out for being captain of the ship.
The Godot developer with the 3 main priorities is just the absolute smartest move he could do right now, bravo to him such a great move.
I don’t actually know anything about godot other than I knew what it was, but it’s very surprising to me it doesn’t have those things already. Console support is like a day one project for a real engine, asset store is an absolute no brainer that creates free revenue once implemented, and c# support is obviously a must for any engine without cpp support (I’m assuming it doesn’t?)
A big shopping list, though...
@@Parker-- it's a community-driven, open-source project. No one owns the engine. All full-time contributors are paid with donations and grants. It's not like Unity where they lose 100s of millions of dollars every quarter throwing money at engineering. Godot has like maybe on the order of 10 full-time guys? The Godot Foundation that pays these guys is also a non-profit. And open source projects can't have console support without a legal entity behind them. There's some work being done there, but you'd have to prove you've been approved for console export to get access to the binary blobs and APIs that allow godot to publish. Unity can package it all in because it's all proprietary. Unreal also downloads binary blobs when you build the engine for this functionality. Also godot has C++ support, Rust support, I think there's even haskell support if you want to go down a weird rabbit hole. C# is also there, but gdscript has no garbage collection (its all ref-counted).
@Parker-- I know that console support requires tools and licenses from the console manufacturer, and since Godot is open source, people could just look at the underlying code and take it.
Unless they get added as plugins under a different license, you won't see them in the main engine.
@@Parker--the thing about console support is that he probably would've had to pay Sony/MS/Nintendo some fees, and do that basically out of his pocket since Godot wasn't raising that kind of money. With more donations, that's less of a problem.
If all of us band together and take a game engine like Godot and help develop it, with thousands of us as developers, we can propel Godot to heights it could have only dreamt of...
No need to help develop it, just fork it for yourself.
By definition, most people are average. And if you look at it in terms of relative skill, then most people are below the middle in terms of skill level.
So, if a developer base experiences a sudden influx of mediocre developers, that will only harm the product.
That's not to mention there are bad developers out there. Them banding together to help develop Godot will do even more harm.
Additionally, as the number of developers grow, that puts a strain on the management, because unless managed properly, the ensuing chaos will undermine all effort.
Finally, different developers have different preferences, and I think forking solves that problem brilliantly. And if you like someone else's branch, just fork that. Distributed decentralized operations like that are the strength of open source, not everyone banding together.
@@peezieforestem5078 yeahhh. i love indie unity devs, i really do, but most of them are not good programmers. they are video game enthusiasts who know a programming language or two.
not to say they can't learn, but godot does not need them by the thousands
too bad none of you are capable of more than crying and unity flips.
@@peezieforestem5078 if you make a pull request to merge your “bad” code it most likely would get rejected. I don’t think mediocre devs would work on a game engine anyway.
@@peezieforestem5078 There are many good working Open Source projects out there, look at the Linux Kernel, or the BSD operating systems. They have a form of management where you essentially have to prove your skills, and are only allowed to join a project as a member that can commit to the repos afterwards. In this case it's up to the Godot maintainers to get good developers on board.
Personally I hope that Godot will win in regards to usability, functionality and installbase due to this situation.
Godot being open source is a huge advantage. The MIT licence is extremely permissive and the spirit of open source is just inherently conducive to an engaged community.
Its also a huge disadvantage if you want to deploy to consoles.
Looking on the short-term, it looks like a great option, but do not forget that in the long-term it doesnt mean Godot wont go in the same direction eventually…. They can ofcourse react to recent events and make statement towards game devs that something like that will never happen there.
@@MichaelGGarry yes because of the consoles being extremely secretive about their software.
You guys should look up the MIT licence and what it actually means. The GNU licensing, which is another popular open source licence, stipulates that any derivative work has to also be under the same licence. This is great in the Linux space as it forces anyone who repackages the software or modifies it to make their changes openly available to others but it also creates issues when integrating with proprietary software like that in the consoles.
Godot uses the MIT licence which allows anyone to legally copy, modify and reticence their own version however they like. If Godot goes a bad way, another developer can take the source code and create their own version with whatever changes they want. The MIT licence also allows for integration of 3rd party proprietary software packages or add-ons. It's perfectly permissible for a team or company to create their own version of godot that works with console dev software and licence it in a way that Microsoft or Sony allow. It is an extra step but it's not an insurmountable problem.
@@SpencerHHO thanks for the info! I did not read up on the license, my apologies for jumping to conclusions there. That aside, I will consider Godot for upcoming projects!
felt so bad for the employees that were against this decision yet they are also getting the hate from the community.
I'm sorry for them losing their jobs if everything goes further downhill.
@@voidling2632 Sounds like a lot of them are just cutting to the chase and resigning. Don't blame them.
The community shouldn't hate the devs / workers at Unity, but their focus should be on the corporate leaders of said company for their criminal business practices of greed.
@@skilz8098 some people just don't understand that, unfortunately.
@@voidling2632 I do feel bad for them, but it's at least encouraging to know that many of them are very skilled and wouldn't have any trouble finding a job.
My wet dream is if some of the core team would band together to create an open source replacement with a company behind it and kinda of do like red hat where you pay them for support. that kind of model isn't the most profitable possible, but it can work.
Unity charging 20 cents per game install feels like a farmer being charged every time a seed sprouts. It’s not just about the initial investment, but the growth that follows.
Hate to break it to you but seed patients are a thing and while they don't get charged when the seed sprouts they do if they replant.
Might this be why years ago Unity games started trying to connect to Google servers on launch?
Monsanto joined the chat
In my opinion, Unity has already crossed a line they shouldn't have. Devs are either abandoning or planning their great escape after this news. Like you said once, that trust is broken, it's almost impossible to regain. We'll have to wait and see what Unity plans to do on the situation moving forward. Course game devs don't really have the luxury of waiting on what happens.
The only way to regain it is to redact this new policy before it ever comes to fruition and to fire their acting CEO and other Corporate Board Members who voted in favor of it. And also any shareholders who supported it should also have their shares forfeited - revoked!
@@skilz8098 And also make unity somehow seem cool again because right now like the guy says I am sick of even looking at unity.
Honestly Unity just needs to pack up. It's over for them.
I can only see Unity surviving as a mere ember, a mere remnant of itself.
And that would only be the case by rolling back the whole plan, and chopping off pretty much the whole upper management, or at the very least Riccitiello.
Unity might survive, but it will have to chop off its rotten body parts.
Yet even then, it will likely be a slow death. There's no coming back from this.
Unity won't be a major player in the foreseeable future.
At this point they re-enacted Russia in 1917
The argument that this will only effect a small part of the community is the thing that triggers me the most. They are looking at the numbers and seeing that 90% of developers don't sell over 200k, and their conclusion is these 90% won't care about the pricing, not realizing, every developer hopes to be successful and viral. If they take away the dream and opportunity, why should developer even try?
Game development is often a multi year process frequently with multiple developers. And that's just labor costs. If you aren't making a revenue of $200,000 you probably aren't making much of a profit at all. See Miziziziz for an example.
Well said and this is what pisses me off the most. Some people say they won't be making that much anyway but bruh don't you want to? If there's no hope why would I continue like this?
Besides, this is just a foot in the door. Who knows when they will lower that threshold? Who is to say it won't get worst?
Everyone is at risk of getting a surprise bill if they can legally change their terms at any time.
the scary part of me is that every year there will be new indies that barely break the threshold. and with the new plan in place they will be absolutely obliterated by the new fees. Even if that's only a few people that it happens to, that's still a group of indies with a lot of heart and potential getting fucked over. And Unity themselves admit they will change the pricing in the future if they have to, and i don't trust them enough to lower the prices. Losing $40,000 from $200,000 is not a small amount as an indie dev.
No matter what happens, this is a huge trust issue.
more importantly, most of us work under those 10%... if they go bankrupt, we have no publishers to work with
I'm so happy and proud to see the gamedev community come together like this. Thanks for keeping us up to date on this John! Excellent coverage!
You got it Ponty. May a culture arrise from this that gives power back to the community. In many ways this was needed!
Heard that large companies like EA, Activition Blizzard and even the allmighty Nintendo have put all projects using Unity at least "on hold". This is not shooting in the foot, that is a straight headshot.
Large companies can directly negotiate license terms. They will not be affected...
@@davidlloyd1526 if Indie developers left unity, the company will die very quick. I don't think it is a good idea for those big companies to keep working with such dying company.
Didn't EA use their own engine?
Ea use frostbite bra
It so crazy how similar this situation is to the WOTC situation with a BIG mess up where people just went to other better places and learned that there are other options which were on so many levels better then the mainstream option
War of the chosen?
@@silent7152 Wizards of the coast going ungodly fucking woke and likening orcs to black people because racists with subconscious guilt made a fuss about it during big race inspired riots, among other really incredibly woke things. D&D is basically effectively dead along with their monetization bullshit except for the people who are too pussywhipped to move on. Bad business decisions and woke shit go hand in hand because everyone involved in both in modern day are inept children.
I had this similar thought too!! I guess it is a year of greed O.O
@@silent7152 Wizards of the Coast, the people that make Dungeons & Dragons
@@silent7152 Wizards of the Coast. In December/January, they introduced changes to their game license that the rue books were licensed under and that other projects could use. This was also done with profits in mind. It backfired, and the news wouldn't die down, resulting in them backing down and releasing the core rules as creative commons.
I am so pleased that you acknowledged the Flash demise, and the fact that your chosen platform could just dissolve from under you. Many of us jumped to Unity because of that unnecessary nightmare that happened to Flash. Now here we go again with an unnecessary nightmare. Few understand how much is lost on so many levels when shite like this happens. The execs can just easily move on to mismanage something else, while the rest of us have to retool to stay relevant. I jumped to Godot when this corporate craziness started to happen. So glad I did.
good luck from another dev who immediately jumped ship to godot
I would not call this "unnecessary" after Unity made -60% profit last year. With that high losses they have two options left: make more money or kill the whole product.
@@OlafsLeftArm Or both. Short it, buy put options against it, kill it, and profit from it. Make it subtle by multiple separations and obfuscations, and done. Instant money.
@@ultimaxkom8728 i vote for this. After a few years, Unity will be sold out to another company, everybody gets cash, everybody happy. Except the thousands of devs that had to jump to another board after so much invested.
@@OlafsLeftArm Consider how they got to -60% profit? These failures don't occur in a vacuum. Its usually proceeded by a long series of horrible decisions, typically in the interest of massive year on year growth to attract investors, toward unsustainability, impossible earnings projections, and massive layoffs to cut costs once they realize their projects were in-fact physically impossible.
After 7 years in Unity and thousands in the asset store, I switched to Godot 2 days ago, i'm loving it. Takes a little getting used to but everything is much cleaner. 2D is a no brainer and 3D is pretty good, still needs a little work to be up to unity standard but Godot 4 is way better than Godot 3. This new influx of devs will be able to push Godot so much further.
I just couldn't load up the unity ide either without getting sick to my stomach. With Godot 2D I think you'd probably only lose 3-4 months of dev time since you already have all the artwork, sound, etc. so just have to redo the scripting. I feel for ya man. I had a mobile game about to release and then I wanted to work on my dream project. My mobile game wouldn't be anywhere near as good as Blood and Mead.
Much love my dude!
Same, I am currently learning Godot and I love it so far! Godot 4 is pretty good for 3d
I was blown away by how fast things feel in the Godot IDE. No crazy Application Reload hangs, or any hang.
@@LostRelicGames yep, it's a breath of fresh air. As a noobie to Godot, my prior programming experiences help me be better and faster this time around, I kind of feel like a kid in a candy store or someone that had a near death experience and now wants to live life to the fullest. Unity is like an abusive relationship that we keep going back to. We just had/have to break the cycle
I've watched your videos for a long time and can't wait for Blood and Mead. Cheers!
@@digiross7199 It seems a lot of people are having the same feeling going from unity to godot these days. I am happy something good is coming out of this shit storm
@@LostRelicGames Just dropping this here, since it fits the context regarding porting, reusing assets, etc.: There are at least two or three plugins for Godot (for installation you just drop scripts in your project, enable them, done) that will allow the editor to read/load Unity assets and it will even convert many of them (although they can't do scripts so far I think). Give them a spin, even if it's just experimental.
Unity has made additional changes that retroactively affect previous conditions. Previously, all 3D models in the Asset Store came with a "Multi-Entity" license. However, Unity has since changed the default license to "Single Entity," requiring you to pay a premium if you want the "Multi-Entity" option. This means that if you initially purchased assets with the understanding that they would be available for use by your entire team, you now need to buy individual licenses for each team member. Essentially, Unity has transitioned your original "Multi-Entity" license to a "Single Entity" license, while introducing a new, more expensive "Multi-Entity" license that you'll need to purchase if you want to maintain the same level of access.
when did this happen? thats also pretty major
I think within the last last 12 months
Wtf
In other words, they committed a one sided breach of contract to their benefit. Why exactly haven't they been sued into the ground yet by any big companies that use Unity? You would think that at least 1 legal department would have gone after them before this. Not that it matters. If Unity goes through with this change, they are going to be sued into bankruptcy anyway.
that does not sound legal...
**Finally walks into the Unity Development realm with a smile and a solo devs hope**
**Fire everywhere, bricks tumbling down, people screaming**
**sigh** The universe hates me... **takes a singed seat and opens a Godot pamphlet**
Lezgooooooo
I was about 75% done with a good "make a game in Unity" tutorial, now working on a less good tutorial for godot.
Same here, mate. Was about to get into game dev and unity. sooooo.. Godot anyone?
Wayback Machine has shown this is indeed the case when it comes to them altering the TOS so it no longer covers and forces people into the new license.
And I say fuck all TOSs...
Get a lawyer 😈
There is no contract in the world that lets you freely change the contract without consent from both parties when money is involved. If the game is already published, even more so the case.
Shows the importance of the user keeping receipts.
And the Community retaining control of archives.
As usual, the Internet Archive is enforcing the "internet never forgets" rule
One thing I've noticed as a dev working in a marketing department is that most people are beholden to their technology. They mold themselves around the rough edges and pain points. No one likes Salesforce, they just have to use it. Devs on the other hand are quick to shop around and if nothing exists, make their own. Dev view tech as a tool to help them, if it doesn't, they move on.
It would be better if we all got into that habit of shopping around, not just with this, but I think most of us are just to tired with everything else in life also being a mess.
When a multimillion-dollar company refuses to upgrade its hardware because the software it uses is obsolete...oh that really rustles my jimmies. The biggest excuse is always an extreme aversion to change and refusal to learn something new.
As a dev. something you need not existing is called a golden oportunity. It's an unexploited market.
@@MrAnticeUnserved even!
@@youtubeuniversity3638Thar be money in them markets. better get to coding.
As an old developer, I've seen many languages and platforms die over the years. Unity has no clue what they've done here, and it shows. In a world with options, Unity can't afford to be as cavalier as they have; they'll learn that in time. Developers will move on very quickly, especially if they've been burned.
I'm an old developer too and switching language and platform is inevitable in time. Unfortunately has a point as many developers think they can't leave. Coming from SDL and XNA so much is configurable in a game engine editor it amazed me. Unfortunately these many young developers think it's so hard and they have search engines to find the things they don't know. Thanks for believing in gamedev's, but you really got to let them know that they can do more then they think they can.
Nice to be in a company of old developers who doesn’t care about hype technologies :-)
It's things like this that drive home the lessons of loosely-coupled architectures. Abstraction layers and the understanding that *any* component that you don't control might need to be replaced for reasons outside your control.
@@FatherOfTheParty But on the other side of the coin.... one of folks I play with is a UE5 Dev, and he never shuts up about how awesome and easy UE5 is get working.
I had a heated conversation with him over the death of Cryengine, and pointed out that despite having only a hand full of games, most of those games were technical marvels. Crysis 15 years later holds up in everything except textures; and you can swap in an HD pack to make it look half its age.
The point here is that the barrier for entry informs a lot about how educated of the larger industry ecosystem your average Dev/Team is about their other options. Difficulty drives learning in a lot of technical fields. And selling easy solutions has always been a major component to how a lot of the various dev houses accomplish what they do.
But as the entry level requirements fall through the floor, so do a lot of places starts to lean their distributions in that direction for cheaper operating costs. I mean, why pay for 5 engineers to maintain your tools, when you can hire a dozen novice coders for a fraction of the cost, and buy a middleware license for an easy to use tool set for your engine choice. Or at least, thats how it used to work, back when you could actually "buy" a middleware license, rather then subscribe to it for a yearly cost that goes up multiple times per year now.
I know a game devs who doesn't realize how bad this can be like "it's not that expensive for us small devs why is everyone complaining".
Things like this is why I am a massive advocate of Open source software and Linux. It's getting near impossible to trust proprietary developers these days
It has always been predatory and treacherous. I switched to Linux 20 years ago after the stink of Microsoft became overpowering.
@@leslieviljoen Linux is a big nope, fam... Glad I can use Windows for free though
Based pfp
I mean
Looks like somebody doesn’t have the CEO mindset
Wake up early
Invest
Have a 10-year plan
@@wallacesousuke1433 Windows is not and will never be free, my man.
@@wallacesousuke1433 ever used Android? 🙂
It’s very important for the studios to keep fighting and make themselves heard. If this business plan comes to fruition it sets a very very dangerous precedent. It will be only a matter of time until other companies think they can pull off similar disgusting practices just because Unity succeeded. I wish all the best for the hard working man and women at Unity but I honestly hope that this situation will become a example of “how not to”.
Nah - the studios are just gonna pay for Unity. They know what how "freemium" model works...
Honestly, I think it's already a done deal. The dawning realization that Unity both can and will alter their contract stipulations retroactively makes working with them a non-starter for pretty much everyone. It is impossible to build or maintain a functioning business model with such a company. Even some existing games are going to be pulled from market over this.
Actually, I believe that this precedent already got set with Reddit and Twitter charging per-access on their API calls, and this is a continuation of that trend. If you look at Unity CEO's social circle, it's clear he'd be very aware of those events and hearing about their success in increasing revenue and brand lockin. I suspect in his mind he sees it as "huh, PR doesn't matter if your users can't leave, and is therefore overvalued. Let's burn it to get as much revenue as possible."
This is obviously just a theory, but it matches up with some of the stuff my own tech illiterate bosses have thought over the years. I'm sure some engineers might have tried to explain to him that the ones locked into Unity aren't the actual end-users and therefore there's no network effect, unlike with reddit and twitter, but that he didn't want to hear it.
i'd bet quite a chunk of money that we eventually end up learning the thought process was something like that.
@@Vastin True. Depending on your game, it could unironically be a potentially financially sensible move to literally port your game to a different engine. It might take 2-3 months for complex games to be moved, and the financial gain would be relevant enough to warrant doing so in some situations.
This is why open source game engines are a good choice. If the leadership of an open source project makes a braindead decision, you can at least fork the project
Being large and publicly owned is exactly how nonsense like this happens. Shareholders don't care about the company or their model, they care about short term dividends. They insist on changes they don't understand, burn a company to the ground, and shrug and move on. Short term thinking is poison.
more so than short-term thinking is decision makers who don't know about the things they are making decisions about.
Minor correction, since Unity Technology is a growth stock shareholders and potential investors care most about revenue projections, not dividends. In fact Unity doesn't pay out dividends and this would actually be rather negative for a growth company since this is money that's not invested back into the company itself, which means less growth.
Less (potential) growth means less interest from market participants, which also means the full damage to their stock will probably be done when the 2024 Q1 or Q2 revenue reports are released. If the pricing changes are rolled out like this, dev studios actually pull their games and ad companies keep their ads offline that is.
If their revenue isn't tanking and/or they can convince shareholders that this is a minor dip and projections are much better for the future then they won't lose a lot of value either.
Also CEO of the company is the dude who wanted to make an ammo refill be a microtransaction in battlefield
@@Stunex the point is that they’re greedy bastards that only want as much money to be milked out of the end users as possible. I hate shareholders. I have yet to see a company that is not soulless when it’s publicly owned.
I thought I was confused for a second when I heard a company loudly pivoted their entire licensing scheme into what arguably the most unsustainable, predatory, and illogical model anyone at the time was thought possible...... and I was like "How can Wizards of the Coast top the idiocy from last time?".
there are many reports about Unity personal managers offering random devs to mitigate install fee, if they ditch other ad providers and move to unity's ironsource instead. Which is basically a blackmail. So yeah, it can get worse
Oh , you mean ironsource, the Israeli company ? Interesting
@@blanketparty5259 yeah the malware tracking company. the same malware that will be used to track installs perhaps? : )
@@blanketparty5259no. Ironsource, the company Unity merged with.
Product linking and racketeering are both illegal let alone the individual contracts with hundreds of devs they broke
And this ought to be charged and tried in a criminal court case. This is a form of extortion and almost falls under the purview of money laundering... It's corporate greed and this ought to be in violation of The Consumer Protection Act!
Unity is uniting everyone against them. Quite poetic if i can say so. 😊
They literally became the antithesis of unity
The DnD Community says Hello.
All we need is a new Queen Isabella
This is almost exactly what happened with Wizards of the Coast, the people who make Dungeons and Dragons. They tried getting greedy and it didn't go well. They ended up retracting everything and making an eternal free licence.
WotC was a bigger FU to the community
but this aszhat COE is EA.... so
Yea DnD almost lost all good will with their community over a debacle very close to this. If Unity even thought for like 10 seconds about the ramifications of their actions they would have seen the shitstorm brewing ahead. At least DnD when they retracted effectively ensured that something like they tried could never happen ever again as you said with the eternal license, but they literally gave Pathfinder the greatest advertising that they ever could have.
Don't worry Wizards of the Coast isn't finished setting fire to Dungeons and Dragons yet, just wait until all the former Zynga employees finishing having their way with DnDBeyond. They will be breaking out every that dirty and or illegal trick they've used a Zynga. Don't worry it will be almost assured that stuff you've bought you will only have access to it while you have an active paid subscription and 2025 will be the start of class action lawsuit after lawsuit.
One of the major things that hurts here is the impact to the employees of Unity who are just trying to do their job and have no real say in what the executives decided here. As someone who's seen and been impacted by similar executive decisions I know how it feels. :(
I don't know how they can recover now without a major change, but even then I don't know how they can ever get the trust back at this point.
Well, if they have say 100 Devs working there and one day 100 of those Devs all walked off the job without notice and all walked to the front doors of say Unreal offering their skills and assets... or they all went off and started their own company and produced their own product that would blow Unity out of the water and maybe even compete with say Unreal Engine... There's many options... There are independent developers out there whom I've followed throughout the past few years that have and are in the process of building their own engines and their communities are growing. There's javidx9 with his OLC engine and framework, and then you have The Cherno with his game engine Hazel. So there are still plenty of options out there. Also there are many mid level game developer companies that would also be looking for good talent where they focus on having in house game engines as opposed to 3rd party ones... Just because of the fact that Unity might collapse as a result of this and they might lose their currently job doesn't mean that there isn't ample opportunities out there...
Unity employees will be less effected then devs. I bet most of them are great engeniers, and finding new job as a mid level is realy easy. Devs on the other hands are basicly adapt to new skills since thare will be less and less jobs for Unity devs, and more and more jobs for other engines.
Change of engines isn't so easy as it seams, engines are huge and complicated, and even most of the functions are similar, you still need to learn how to do things that you ware able to do before. Its like learning to fly helicopter while you ware airplane pilot whole life. You still move in thi air, but controls are different.
@@PanSkrzynka_ I bet they're all great devs and will be able to find a new job. That said, it is indeed stressful no matter what. I've been in the software industry for around 35 years now, this isn't new but it still is something to be ready for as the technology can change pretty quickly and if you don't learn new things you will soon enough be out of a job. The biggest hit for me was around 2008 when I was let go after being at a company for 20+ years, was very rough and took me a while to get out of being depressed as it was so unexpected and I didn't have a lot of control over that part. It turned out to be for the better because I went elsewhere and was able to live closer to my daughter. :) And now I'm at the point where I can go and do a thing that I wanted to do since I was a kid but never took on for various reasons, making games. :)
I feel more sorry for the solo developers like this guy and Adam C younis who have been working for years on their games and now have to release them under these atrocious conditions, or migrate to another engine.
I feel bad for them, but the smart ones will get new jobs ASAP and cash out their options before the stock falls to junk status.
The whole discussion about the death of Flash starting at 11:11 is very insightful.
"The bigger they are, the harder they fall"
Flash -- Sadly another proprietary technology that we were saddled with. People need to learn... these companies do not have your best interests in mind. Make sure you control your own software stack...
Flash didn't fail because it was big. It wasn't a scalable architecture, and it had more holes than swiss cheese (security holes and zero days). It was more about greed and not wanting to disturb the golden egg. It's a common trope in this business trust me. It aint broke, so don't fix it. ... but, but, it can run FASTER, and handle more USERS ... I don't care, it works today and that's all that matters. That would be a typical conversation in this business whether it's missile tracking software, web applications, or games you are writing. Ownership is usually afraid of risk, and they won't take it unless there is a definable reward for that work - ROI they call it. If you can't say to owners - hey, I can save you a kajillion dollars if we just spend 5 million rewriting the code base - they will tell you to pound sand. The money people make the decisions, not the engineers at the end of the dayu.
Totally. Unity proves that the myth "too big to fall" is busted.
Mad props to Juan on his work for helping people port over to Godot, that alone makes me want to use the engine
Right? I'm an unreal whore while Epic is so friendly, but I'm CONSTANTLY on edge that they might pull some shit like this someday.
I tried Godot out forever ago, and didn't feel that it had enough capabilities for what I wanted at the time, based on current reactions though I'm debating whether the switch to Godot would be worth it now. Gonna have to snag it and try.
This is such an insane situation! I really really hope that Godot can grow from this and eventually become as big as unity and unreal. Just like blender took over and has become legitimately better than the likes of 3dsmax (which I started with 15 years ago) and many other costly 3d software. We just need the same kind of support from big players and studios and this could become the reality. And arguably this would be a much better world for developers, as we would all own the software with source code access and a foundation behind it that cares about us developers and the art and technology first and foremost. I really think this terrible decision by unity could be the beginning of a much better future ❤
Blender is better than 3D Max? Good to know haha started learning Blender recently, no money for the paid alternatives
@@wallacesousuke1433it’s not better, has lots of functions absent, yet it’s pretty on the level, give it a year and it will definitely leave no chance to paid alternatives. Oh, and Blender has plugins, that already add absent and totally unique functions, so from that perspective, yes, blender is already better, than 3dsmax. Long live, Blender!
@@wallacesousuke1433 Blender is seen as one of the greatest tools for 3D designers to begin with. The greatest part is: IT'S FREE! and that's a great price. But for real now Blender is used a lot in 3D videogames and even got used in film production. I think the people at Corridor Digital managed to show the power of blender through some of their projects and it's amazing. If you are just starting out in 3D design I recommend you watching some of their videos.
@@wallacesousuke1433 Blender is insane and you can make some crazy things, it's complex but the more complex the more freedom you have to create your assets
I will say that the sliver lining to this whole chaos is that this situation teaches companies that they can't make shitty rash decisions, because they will burn to the ground, or lose lot's and lot's of money. Let's hope that TH-cam learns from this as well.
Have you been sleeping the last 10 years?
@@habibishapur that’s why I said hope
According to some insider comments, this change has been discussed for a while, like over a year.
This wasn't a rash decision.
This was just another example of the futile pursuit of explosive and infinite growth at any cost to appease shareholders.
They've always been making rash decisions and not learning. Look at Battlefront 2 when it released, Cyberpunk 2077, fallout 76, ROCKSTAR, more recent is RS3 with the hero pass, so much backlash they had to turn it down with the MTX. It's y so many games are released buggy as hell or released with atrocious micro transactions. Greed will always overtake rational thinking. It will continue. These are just some examples I could think of but there is so much more and I just listed off game companies.
Thats y the other person most likely said where have you been for the past 10 years. Its always happening, its always gonna keep happening.
@@CrazyFikus Yep. Shareholders are the biggest bane to exist on creativity and innovation across EVERYTHING.
Unity should not only change this back but expel their CEO.This never should happen and is not forgivable.
I am sorry for those unity developers that weren’t on board with those changes 😢
You should be sorry for those who ARE on board with those changes, cause they clearly are brain damaged and need help
Literally NO ONE that develops on Unity is on board with the changes
yeah it must be shit for them, I would be really surprised if any dev there supports this it's a fair bet to say they didn't.
nobody apart from C-suite management was on board with the changes. Everyone inside knows this is a disaster
I imagine it's like being on the starship Enterprise and Picard decides one day to pilot directly into a dying star. Unfortunately for the Unity team, there's no chain of command to assume proper leadership in the face of such a stupid decision. It's horrifying how many lives the Unity management is destroying with their actions.
Back in the day I was walking towards our company's canteen. I noticed a large note on a door with a text that said "GAME OVER". Behind that door was a team who worked with one of our biggest clients. Giants do fall even without doing something as stupid and immoral as Unity has done. The team behind that door worked for Nokia.
Imagine if the 7,000 people who work at Unity ran the company collectively instead of the suits in the boardroom
Let's say they had some sort of internal management system that allowed that, well after going public that becomes completely unrealistic as the shareholders need someone to hold accountable for their investment. If your game engine is publicly traded then the likelihood of these terrible, greedy decisions explodes infinitely.
@@soulweightstudios Yes that’s the problem with private property
Duhhhhhh thats exactly what happened with diablo 4. Everyone put their ideas in and nothing was cohesive or good.
In Germany they do that in part. That's why they make the good stuff and have pride in their company. It seems that in the USA workers are just "surviving" and fearful of being laid off. I'm quite sure the people working at Unity now have a healthy fear of Friday, as that's traditionally the day the people get axed. Management messed up and they have to show shareholders that they are doing something, so they will throw people under the bus to save their own skin. There is also a global economic downturn going on, so they probably already have those plans and are moving them up. Generally, during a recession companies get more efficient at what they do. The Indie scene wasn't making them much money, so anybody developing or supporting that will be "optimized" away. It's dehumanizing, but many say it's what makes America great. It does make those "resources" available sooner for other projects.
Basically communism
I'm not a unity developer, rather a godot developer since the beginning. Still, I can't believe what happened this week. Even now, after a few days, I still can't believe it. It looks so unreal!
I rejoice for the push that godot is actually benefiting, but I understand it's a rather dark time for many game developers who were fully into unity. It must be like being backstabbed by your closest partner. And I sympathize with the pain.
What I also still can't believe is that the ceo of unity and a few other execs sold a lot of shares before they threw that bomb. Like, those scums knew it would blew hard! They knew it! They literally sacrificed Unity and most of its community just for a big bunch of money! At that point, it's criminal.
You could say that this situation is quite *unreal*
This is insanity, we spent two years working in our first pc game, after many years of mobile. Investing time and money, we are only two, we can't afford porting the game to other engine. I was so happy that we were going to be able to show the game for the first time very soon, this takes all of that away.
Agreed. Same boat. Spent 2 years on a multiplayer game. Half way through, but already started the transition to Unreal. People don't realize devs will be lucky to get 40 cents on the dollar after paying platform fees. Then your going to drop another $40k after you hit $200k? With no language being in the ToS to keep the pricing structure in place we have to go with blind trust? Screw that. I will loose money with downtime porting, but I will be damned if I can just give them more and more money whenever they change the ToS.
+2, Im still deciding if porting or not. Best thing is to wait a little to see where this thing goes.
I'm so sorry man. There are going to be a lot of devs in your boat today - and even if a miracle occurs and Unity rolls everything back tomorrow, everyone in your position is either going to have to renegotiate your contracts so that they cannot be retroactively 'updated' like this, or you're going to have to move over to other engines after this project.
@@Asylum3D The way you have worded that makes it sound you have to pay $40k as soon as you make $200k. That isn't the case. You just pay 20 cents for every new install after that.
@@VastinAlmost 100% sure our next game will be in another engine. But is sad anyway, i like unity, plus i worked a lot building a framework that generates dungeons based on the paper by the guys of dead cells, took me a lot of time.
Heads up to all Unity Dev's especially those who boycott their own revenue to make Unity bleed! Stay strong, don't let yourself get strong-armed by the Corporate Overlords....
I wonder if the Unity execs, especially the one who dumped almost 60,000 shares, have possibly violated insider trading laws. Would be nice for the the SEC get involved.
That and or those who enforce the rulings of The Consumer Protection Act.
Unity did Unify the gaming community...
At least we have to give credit for it.
That's my favorite painfully ironic part about all this
The prophecy has come full circle.
The moment I heard john riccitiello's name, it all made sense. You remember the mid 2000s to early 2010 when EA got worse and worse with their short-sighted greed? Guess who their CEO was at the time?
Can't wait for your unreal engine tutorials
Or Godot :D
@@Neekoolos you are probably right
I'd definitely appreciate some tutorials, since I'd be an idiot to use unity at this point
Yeah, Unity helped me make up my mind for changing to Godot. I had been interested for a while but my experience was keeping me with Unity.
Hey, just wanted to share humble bundle have great learning materials for Godot if you want to check that out, Unreal too.
Same here!
Exactly the same case with me. I'm going to try Godot for now, so I don't know for sure if that's where I'll stay, but for the time being, it's looking like a shining horizon over a dusty rubble pile.
I feel so bad for the developers that put so much effort into this amazing engine over the years and when major changes like this happens and they can't do anything about it.
Keep in mind the CEO & others who knew about this before announcing their rug pull on devs, stock dumped.
They knew this would gut Unity.
They likely know this isn't even legally tenable.
They knew this would absolutely slaughter their brand trust.
And they just personally profited off of tanking the company.
They knew exactly what they were doing.
Can you explain me, why is it lucrative? Couldn't they just sell it anyway to get the money?
@@mtsds7801because it’s cheaper to run a company into the ground then to maintain it.
@@mtsds7801not sure but its probably due to the fact that you have to actually buy the shares therefore, by them selling their shares, stocks, whatever before they pulled the trigger and the stocks price plummets they wouldnt get a major loss of profits unlike the workers now who due to the price of the stocks plummeting they would most likely take massive or minor losses. They most likely knew this was a horrible idea but still did it anyways and its very scumy
@@mythic2541 oh, now I undestand it. Ty.
@@mtsds7801 The idea is, they sell at high price, pull the trigger, stock plummets, then they buy at an all time low due to loss of trust, and then do things well to raise the price back up. Like that, they profit. Also to force others to sell. So there's more stock available for them. So they have a higher share of the company, thus more control. Very very scummy.
Edit to add: they could've also opened short orders after selling, then close them once the price goes low enough. Another scummier tactic.
I've used Unity for over 8 years developing stuff. My current game is about 40% done, but now I hit the brakes. We are moving to Unreal. You are 100% correct, the only reason I never switched before was the awesome community Unity has/had.
Me too. Im an game dev student on my uni and uni is already focusing on c++ instead of c# despite having unity programs on their pc units. And i know damn well why they took that
Epic being awesome
@@kendarr "for now". D&D creators had to suffer that lesson twice, before realizing they need more than 2 options.
@@freelancerthe2561 sure, eventually Godot will surpass it, just like blender is surpassing Maya in most things, minus animation, but that's in the long run, you'll not develop your game 20 years from now, you'll do it today
I know that porting to another engine isn't easy. Stay strong!
This is really a huge mess. I'm just a 2D art & animator and we use GMS so it hasn't affected us, but I can't imagine seeing years of work go up in flames or become a very serious liability like this.
My heart goes out to all of you Unity devs. Stay strong and God speed!
I think that's an elegant way of putting it. A large appeal of the engine is the community. Many people are flocking to Godot for that simple fact. It truly feels like every project is a community project and we are all working towards something better together
Agreed
As a new gamedev hobbyist, I started with Unity, but landed on Godot as my first one I would say I can use with any degree of competence.
I always kept Unity to mess with later.
Last night, deleted the hub and all the builds I was dinking with.
as another hobbyist I also ended on godot, the payment situation with unity (before this) seems like to much trouble for me to deal with.
For me it was the other way around :( I decided to go with unity because i thought it had more answers and tutorials for specific things I want to learn. I wish on that day year and a half ago I have chosen godot lol
So, here's the thing. Don't delete Unity. It's still a fantastic engine and you'll learn very useful things following the myriad of tutorials for it. Obviously I wouldn't recommend any sort of monetized game any time soon, but as a tool, Unity is still outstanding. Get familiar with many engines and you'll get better and better.
This is such a wild story. Blatant greed is a big problem.
Great points John. Always good to hear your thoughts with clarity and fairness.
Cheers Sebastian, I hope you are well.
you brought up a good point at the end there: unitys strength is/was largely through it's community...when I watched years ago the videos about which engine to choose it was a largely deciding factor to go to unity because of the way the community would create alot of content in form of tutorials for it.
So true. It is almost always the deciding factor, because of all the assets and videos been made. It does also mean that with enough people making videos a different engine could take over soon :)
@@Summer_and_Rain that's true ^^ and a positive way of looking at this.
Unity is challenging to both learn and master, but you've come a long way. In contrast, Godot is straightforward to pick up and excel at, making everything more intuitive. I encourage you to take about a week to import and test your assets in Godot to see if a transition is feasible for you. It's worth the exploration.
Unreal Engine tutors are going to make a lot of cash going forward.
Also, unreal engine devs are going to be sought after, and Unity devs won't be particularly attractive to employers anymore...
It's CRAZY the damage that Unity did to themselves and developers with this. I don't even think they envisioned the collateral damage here... Either that or they just didn't care at all.
Yeah it will be telling to have “Unity experience required” removed from all job listings.
I'm pretty sure employers are just going to pay the Unity tax. It's called "lock-in". You should think about it before committing to using Unreal as well...
Unreal is so far ahead in features that its unthinkable that a competitor would do anything that might get their customers to look at it, but here we are.
Unreal also charges you once you reach a certain amount of sales. Pretty similar to this. No one is complaining about that.
@@rexplorer.official They only charge 5% of your revenue if you make over $1 Million dollars. Most indie gamedevs won't be making that much.
does unreal charge you per install?
installs that are confirmed to also be counted if reinstalled?
does unreal charge you for pirated installs of your game?
let me know! @@rexplorer.official
@rexplorer.official
Jsnt Unreal's charge just based on your profits? This is by INSTALL. Literally every install done will cost developers, even if that install is done at $0 profit.
Branding is one of the big reasons behind this. When I went to college, I took an first level marketing course, and right there in the textbook it spelled out this type of garbage in the branding chapters.
They teach these business students who go on to be business execs that the most important part of any business isn't the product or the service. In fact, they go so far as encouraging distance between the actual product/service and the business decision making staff. To them, it's just a widget. Their supposed to just deal with business decisions, separate from whatever the company does. A big part of what their supposed to do is to build a brand and brand loyalty. Right there in the first level text book it explained formulas that each company should use to calculate how it should act. When building your brand, it actually says that you should be reinvesting hugely into product/service quality and customer service. Ever notice how the help staff is so much better at newer companies, but gets worse as their brand gets popular? That's a branding formula in action.
A huge part of branding is abusing that loyalty when formed. Reducing the quality of the product/service to cut costs. Increasing the price, because people will pay it out of loyalty. Reducing help staff.
Now, this moron behind this debacle is probably thinking that the loyalty to Unity, along with how many companies are tied to it through production time investments, felt he could get away with abusing that loyalty quite a bit. I think his big mistake is one many areaking lately. I find that a lot of these idiots have been so insanely wealthy that they've destroyed their ability to sympathize, so they have no idea of the limits with which to work in.
Let's face it. Unity has taken so much of the share of the 3D engine market, nobody would have been too surprislzed if they bumped up the pricing some. It's the insane proportions that has people stumbling back in shock.
This idiot reminds me of those psychotic jack@sses who bought up the sole patents for certain drugs like insulin and raised the rates super high on them despite how that would definitely kill whole piles of people.
The Bush jr era actually pushed the economic model of greed being the most desirable ecenomic driving force. I'm not even kidding one little bit. They came straight out and claimed that. This sort of nonsense is the result of such drives.
Blind greed devoid of sympathy or common sense, grasping at incredible profits at even a hint of a near monopoly. Just look at concert ticket prices. This is no different. The people driving this think they have the gaming industry over a barrel and Unity has the power to do whatever they want to them to take a majority of the massive gaming market profits for themselves.
Don't expect sympathy going forward, unless others in the company have enough power to get rid of those pushing for this. Basically, if the industry caves to these people, it will prove them right and it will just get worse as they tighten their hold.
Branding rules, in the face of such a miscalculation could force them to go into brand repair mode, which would dictate they reverse things and apologize. Yes, an official apology was part of the formula. If the damage is bad enough, they may even have to rebrand. Just keep in mind that all these things are part of the branding formulas. Facebook becoming Meta, ya, branding 101.
Keep in mind that even if they do these things, branding formulas will dictate how they go forward. They may end up back at this point in 5 to 10 years down the road again. Maybe with a bit more common sense, but taking advantage of loyalty again. At this point with for profit companies, the ideology of branding is so ubiquitous, that it isn't even a choice for them to abuse their clients and customers. It's a decision made by formulas.
This is reminiscent of the dungeons and dragons licensing changes wizards tried to push out earlier this year. I guess it's the year of corporate missteps. Boycotting got them to revert those changes so stay frosty.
They're going to have the same problem as WotC though. Rolling back the changes and setting the prior version licenses in stone helps put out the fire of people who have already released or are close to release... But at the end of the day, do you want to invest your time making content with a business partner who genuinely thinks it's ok to change their terms on you after you've adopted them?
I think the only way trust can be regained at this point is to replace the CEO with someone more trustworthy who enacts a plan to work WITH the community.
Even though I'm not fully a game developer, it's a reminder that you can't get too comfortable or complacent in any one game engine and if you're not willing to cobble together your own engine then learn as many engines as you can so you can have an escape plan when something goes terribly awry. Believe me I'm not trivializing programming your own engine because I've read and heard nightmarish testimonials of how difficult it is but if approach that way nobody can skim off the top later like Unity is trying to do. The Flash analogy was spot on and a fantastic reminder.
see you on the unreal side~
I'll wait over Godot :P
Lol. Right on!!!
you are just switching what company you will depend on, unless you really need unreal for let's say a 3d game or something more complex, go for an open source engine.
So you got burned by one company trying to take their chunk out of you and now you want a second go at that?
@@leotelesunreal’s license prevents this kind of bs, cannot impose anything on already released engine. So, who used Ue is fine for Now, cannot tell about future.
*Hopefully some great FOSS 3D game engine comes along, something like Blender*
As another small dev who's stuck in a project I understand your disdain for opening the IDE right now. We're taking a little time off to learn Godot while the Unity bus keeps burning. So once this is over, we always have options.
Honestly, I understand why you'd still use unity for this project if it's far enough in. But if you got any shred of self respect, this should be your last Unity project either way.
Dude tyvm for shedding more light on this subject that some of us including myself are a bit ignorant on. Your explanations and rational thinking are on point. I agree we all loose if Unity goes down. Hopefully this gets resolved and we can all learn from this.
When you realize that it’s only a tool, it becomes easier to switch when it goes out of wack.
That's it!
but you put effort , time and passion to learn how to use it and then you get screwed sad
As someone that can't code but have about $10k invested in the Milwaukee cordless platform, this is a very good analogy. Imagine if they retroactively started charging for each tool you put your batteries in
Now see, that's true for someone like me who is very early into the development process with no deadlines whatsoever. It's just me in my bedroom in my free time. This is far from the case for full on dev teams who are months out from their scheduled release. They have far more on the line and no time left to learn a new engine. Even if the transition wouldn't be that difficult, the time just isn't there for them. For me it's as simple as getting a new hammer - for them, it's asking a team of astronauts to jump onto a foreign country's spaceship and pilot it down to Earth in the span of maybe a couple days.
Not that easy if you have a current project with a lot of customers/fans waiting for updates… :(
Me and my team of 5 were lucky that we're only losing a few months to pivot to a new engine, but it hurts regardless. To have unity essentially betray our trust and put a cap on success just to try and pull more money from mobile games, it hurts.
We wanted to port to consoles eventually. I'm not sure if we'll be able to anymore. We've been testing out new engines all week and i think we have our choice but man, this was a bad week
Unity really living up to their name. Uniting everyone against them
if you do choose to learn godot, i think videos on your findings and progress would be massively appreciated. Godot simply doesnt have the wealth of information about it that unity enjoys.
This story plays out over and over, it's the wheel of time rolling on. A group comes together and makes something great and they get big. Well, to run a big business you need a suit at the top, so you put one up there, and he tells you that you're gonna need more suits to run the legal/finances/marketing/etc. Then those suits hire more suits, and soon the company is controlled completely by people who don't understand their own product and only know generic strategies to increase revenue that take no consideration for their actual engineers or customers.
Suddenly I am very thankful that I decided to do 2D games without any kind of engine, just WebGL :)
I will be surprised if the board doesn't "ask" the CEO to "step down'
the board is the problem. the CEO answers to the board, which means they likely forced this decision. the board, who are almost all just investment managers. That's probably why the CEO sold his shares. Cus he knew this decision was a terrible idea. He's probably out either way but the board will just find another puppet.
@@jumpkut the board as a whole just wants profits. To save face, they need a scapegoat. The CEO being the face of the company is that scapegoat and the board can say "We never told him how to increase profits." Business is dirty in these larger places
Nope they need to sell Unity to someone who knows gaming, and fast while it's still worth something.
@@cbuckley5697the board wanting profits have nothing to do with the CEO taking a terrible decision that will sink the company. Also, he was already fired from EA once.
@@jumpkut Bro the CEO is 100% the kind of person to forward this dude was part of EA!
I have been using Godot for about 3 years now and I absolutely love it (I used Unity since version 4 and still use it for my day job) . Its not as advanced as Unity but its getting there and its a perfect solution for indie devs. I really recommend anyone take the time to mess around with it and see what you think.
I already decided to make the switch to Godot. I'm attempting to use their C# integration. It's not super intuitive but it definitely works. Godot as an engine is really strong. It has a lot of features built in that normally you had to seek out with Unity. I recommend at least giving it a try!
Its a shame because Unity was so accessible. As a casual who has made a couple demo games with my kid it was really easy to figure out how to do something in the engine, often even without coding. Shoot, the free stuff FROM Unity is so great. And the asset store was such a great tool. Its been coming but Im so sorry to see this happen. I feel like becoming publicly traded is a guarantee a company is gonna go full renegade.
I wonder if this situation will create a general distrust towards proprietary engines. Like, what the point of using a piece of software for which general TOS may go south overnight?
....... erermm .... microsoft..... errm steam ......errrm online games ......... just about anything in todays modern world .....
@@ealtari dont think anyone’s afraid of steam going to shit, valve have proven time and time again they’re real ones with constant product quality, a flat internal structure so employees can do things they like (that system has its flaws but it was absolutely good intentioned), not to mention singlehandedly carrying the linux gaming scene
@@duckonaroll1913 errm... 100ish days to chrome "features" integration all hail the censor bot
autodesk and adobe .... ... even outside of gaming .. BMW with the subsciption to activate features .....
Beginning game dev here. After learning to code, I started a learning project in Unity over 3 years ago. 2.5 years ago, I started making my first proper game, finishing in another 6 to 12 months at the current rate (it's a bit ambitious for a first game, but a lot of the time has also gone into learning new mechanics and adapting to necessary changes as time went by, such as ECS).
I have to finish this project in Unity and if that becomes impossible, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do. I took a risk and evidently made a bad call committing this much to a first project, and I'm already badly behind in life due to severe mental health issues - I can't imagine myself doing anything other than game development, neither in terms of capacity nor in terms of skill. I can fully understand people wanting to abandon the platform over this and would personally join in if I had the choice, but I truly hope Unity somehow manages to backpedal from this and survive, because my life might depend on it on the long run. I also truly hope no one else has gotten themselves into this fucked of a situation.
Godspeed
I hear you brother, it is a sad state of affairs. It's so disappointing to have corporate arrogance and greed send such a vibrant creative product and community in to the dumpster.
The only way to gain that trust back is to send away the person responsible for it. Fire the CEO, bring another one, because the tool itself and the people working on it are okay. We dont distrust unity, we distrust their directors.
Nah, tbh they're done for. They've shown that it can happen again as long as it's not opensource. Any dev with self respect is just not gonna risk it.
It was an indie-game-industry hit job. I wonder who Ricatello works for because people of this elite class are usually intertwined.
There's a lack of great Godot tutorials so it is the nice moment to fix it 😊
It's hard to feel sorry for the Unity staff since they knowingly hired a wolf to guard their henhouse.
Employees don't hire tho
My guess is, they went hard with the initial announcement to see how the customer base would react then go "Thank you for your feedback. We hear you!" and scale it back to the point where they can implement it. This is almost common business practice at this point, even if it is not without risk.
We see the possible risk for these things here, where they went way too hard and might have killed themselves.
Was it worth it to damage the company's brand and destroy trust with your customers both public and private?
Simple answer is no it isn't and it will never be worth the long term damage you'll incur in your pursuit of short term profits
Totally agree for the tutorials. I use Unreal myself, but I would often suggest to people starting to use Unity, BECAUSE of the amount of tutorials and freely (even paid) available resource out there to learn Unity, one of the strength of unity was its community, Brackeys's already gone, but a lot of others were offering similar tutorials and course, if they stop (and a lot will), Unity will lose of it's strongest appeal.
I think a good portion of Unity devs will switch, but a good chunk will stay, because of the same reason John is talking, already invested in a game that they need to finish. But where it will hurt is the new comers, the one that, today, are looking to learn how to make games, those wont go for Unity now, they'll learn Godot or Unreal, so the first financially impacted by this will be the one selling Unity courses.
I was just starting my Unity path, and this happens. I feel like 4 months learning has been gone to trash. However, it does not compare at all with years of lifetime that a lot of developers have invested. It really sucks. I do not wish for Unity to fall, but I'm not feeling confident on investing more to Unity. Best of luck to all of us.
When you posted your last video - I had no idea what the situation was. Oh boy - after some digging after seeing your video I came to know... What a nightmare this was.
Very difficult situation considering I started with Unity's student edition a long time ago...and saw it grow into this ugly greedy monster. I couldn't believe it at first. But here we are.
Flash used to be the biggest thing when I was starting around with Unity.
I refused to believe Unity just might be done.
But thank you very much for showing Godot's creator's post about the support for consoles priority. I love that. It's a no-brainer. I know you're almost done with your work. But maybe take a look at Godot - might help with the stress of seeing Unity.
i agree with you 100%. luckily for me i was only 1 month into my game production untill this happened. The thing that sucks the most is that i invested (for me) a lot of money in their asset store. im trying out godot now.
All your assets should be transferrable to Godot 4. So unless you bought assets that have specific license limitation that does not allow you to use them outside Unity, you should be good to go with Godot. And between you and me, after a few weeks in Godot 4 you will never miss Unity again
I tried playing with Godot, admittedly because of "I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it further" move. But now I actually like it - the simplicity, the straightforward approach. No three UI systems, no two player input systems, no started and abanadoned network packages.... It still has a long way to go but for kind of small 2d games I make, it seems perfectly usable.
Will finish what I already started, but then stay away from unity as if from a minefield.
Don't know whether this can be avoided long term with Unreal; this may be one of the pushes that brings the industry closer to putting their engine money into a public open source project.
I really hope not. But it could happen, if people decided to ignore what unity did, if they roll it back.
I doubt anyone is ever going to be stupid enough to do this. The whole problem is that Unity wants to charge the developers for actions that do not generate profit for said developers. That is the breaking point, if only things you get income from were monetized - people wouldn't riot against it. It's a very low bar to clear.
But even IF we assume that all of the Game Engines on the market decide to go with this exact plan. Thing about gaming industry is - engines aren't irreplacable. They make it EASIER to make games, but they do not make it IMPOSSIBLE to make games without them. It's just that the ease they do provide is worth giving them a cut for most. At the point where all of the game engines on the market become unprofitable - game developement will just go back to writing their own engines, will just make the dev cycle a bit longer
Never doubt people's capacity for stupidity.@@RancorSnp
The real reason this is happening at all is because unity is a publicly traded company. No one there, not even the former EA CEO everyone is shitting on would have made this decision, but because all the power is in the shareholders none of them have any say in this.
Since Unreal and epic games isn't a publicly traded company I'd say it's safe from making a decision this stupid, but if that ever changes I'd be weary.
@@squiddler7731shareholders didn't force the company to make a decision that threatens the entire existence of the company. They didn't force this sheer level of stupidity. It isn't like shareholders get into the nitty gritty of how to charge developers.
Unity could have done the CryEngine thing and announced that their next major release would be offered on a pure 5% of revenue model. It would have brought in similar revenue to this plan, and the small indies would probably actually prefer it to the per-seat fee model. It would have largely defanged the movement to Unreal. Unity was just stupid in pursuing this overly complicated plan, when the industry standard would have served them just as well.
This whole Unity story makes me think about the Hasbro/WotC OGL drama.
Something people need to realize: such mega corporations are not your friend. They are not trying to create the best product or build the best community. They just want benefit. If, with a sick move, they lose users but increase their income, they do not give a damn.
Look at EA, ABK, 2K, they all have average games stuffed with predatory micro transactions. They know some people will avoid these games because of it, but as long as they can get more money from new or less informed customers, it is all for the best as benefit will continue to increase.
Keep on fighting. We may win this battle. But I really think the war against pure greed will be lost.
Honestly, as a developer, this feels exactly like that first announcement of Corona where you knew it was going to hit close to home sooner than later.
Yeah covid was wild.
What the heck are you talking about?
3:05 imagine if they made their own engine, there are several game studios that were born from veterans of other studios, the same could happen with an engine
I honestly think they are tanking the stock for institutional investors to gain complete control of the board room.
This CEO is the greatest gift in the long run. The competition is gonna be amazing in the next few years. Keep going
I have always been a fan of Godot and I use that, along with more frameworks (Raylib, Gunslinger, Cute, even raw SDL). I don't think some people realize that depending on how things go here, it could also affect other industries. I think if there was more of a push against subscription type of services about 10 or so yrs ago, some of this, may not have even been on the radar.
If we don't boycott Unity now, other software companies could consider the disgusting monetization scheme okay to increase their income in these trying times
I really appreciate your honesty in this, it's helping me as a gamer, not a developer, get a handle on what is going on from your perspective
2 days ago I talked to my developers friends (who are way younger) about Flash which was a traumatic event for me. I think I will take a step back, because now my mental health is requiring it.
It's nice to know that workers in many industries aren't putting up with corporate greed anymore. Game developers, auto workers, SAG/WGA, Starbucks, UPS, Amazon, retail workers in general (just to name a feq) have hit their breaking points and demanding better treatment, and I'm here for all of that.
You're mixing apples and bananas, gamedevs are Unity's clients, not their employees
@@lapidations Fran Drescher is currently urging members to approve strike authorizations against gaming companies. Devs can get involved.
That really is a good question: How do you get trust back when you set all bridges on fire, break down all the doors, and leave behind not much more than a pile of smoldering ash?
probably something different from Fazbear entertainment. Might not want to use the name "unity" anymore after all this.
the easy answer is you don't
The hard answer tho is still you don’t
The intermediate answer is...u don't
I'm certainly not going back.