Just think how much lost time, money and anguish this has needlessly caused the developer community. That alone should be condemned. It's tough enough out there without this kind of bumbling incompetence.
@@kkrup5395 If you pay a company money, you deserve a level of respect. As I see it, Unity are the only ones with a sense of entitlement here: they own the engine so they can do whatever they want
@@kkrup5395of course you need an engine. But there are many competing engines around. If you see that a companies Management is incompetent and not reliable it is better not to do business with those guys. Find like-minded companies as partners
"The door-in-the-face technique is a persuasive strategy that involves making a large, unreasonable request first, followed by a smaller, more acceptable one. The idea is that the contrast between the two requests makes the second one seem more reasonable and appealing, increasing the likelihood of compliance."
@@ronanbradshaw It is not terrible at all. Everybody and their dogs complains yet not many are in the business. For these folks, they can now release their Unity creations for free and without the ugly splash screen. If they ever make significant money they'll have to give Unity a 2.5% share. What is really terrible is the Apple and Steam 30% tax and their monopoly on digital distribution network.
They literally kept the "Per-install" in there, the cap is just a fake stand-in to persuade you not to protest for now until they lift the cap slowly all the way to 100%.
The way I see it, Unity can try to sweeten the pot with any deal they want, but no developers will want to even touch their engine unless some serious Corporate Restructuring happening starting with their CEO.
Even then, they have to not only offer a better deal, they have to seriously put in some more RND into their engine. Considering how many and how quick and easy some devs could swap to other engines. I honestly see less and less reason to stick with unity.
Sadly if you look at comments on other TH-camr's videos like Code Monkey or Jason Weiman, quite a lot of devs are happy with the change and won't switch in the end. I don't know if the well known studios who talked against Unity recently decided to not switch though.
I'm not excited. I think a lot of what makes it good is the fact that it's small. As the amount of interested people increases, the small and efficient products tend to bloat. The recent interest influx will probably give them a short boost, and then turn 99% of the products into worse versions of themselves. Seen it too many times to count, happens with messengers, services, you name it. Anything that "makes it" turns into a monstrosity over time.
Open source is still going to suffer from the lack of console support, which is not an insubstantial obstacle. Any dev going that route is either forgoing a large chunk of the market or signing up for a lot more work & expense.
A lot of th backlash online are indie devs. I do freelance game dev but no one talks about troubles unity caused us. Some of my clients already turned against me since I pushed them to use unity. I'm not gonna put myself in that position again. I'm done with unity after the current project im working on. Probably gonna stick to Godot.
Don't be fooled. Unity can, and will change the rules, whenever it suits them. You have no assurances that Unity will abide by the terms they have set.
Yeah, but how many kids / new game devs get into Unity every year, and how many of them google "historical licensing controversies" before deciding which engine to use...
They have literally done this back in 2019 with SpatialOS already by retroactively pushing change to previous version and already released games, and ended up adding a clause to their TOS to show that they couldn't do it again. Lo and behold they just deleted that clause earlier this year to pull of what they did this time. They _will_ do something lie this again. That's just how corporations, specially publicly traded ones, work. FOSS like Godot is the only way.
@@mallninja9805 i watched literally 1 video about using unity and immediately got bombarded with this controversy, having never even heard of it before. targeted media works faster than anything companies can come up with to patch their reputation
It's the first sentence of section 9 in the ToS. Unity reserves the right to change the prices as and when they please, with as little notice as they like. I'm not even being glib, that's pretty much exactly what it says.
This part really sums up what has, is and is going to happen with Unity: "Corporations will forever try to push the boundaries and see what they can get away with, and then you know push it too far. Get push back, apologize, roll back a bit. Rinse repeat. And as a consumer you one day look back and you realize truly how much you have given up over time." It might seem like a victory now, some might even say a fabricated victory by Unity, but it's still winning the battle but not the war. Even though they've rolled back their plans, they still have the scaffolding in place to work towards those plans again. They just need to jingle some keys in front of their clients to make them switch to 2023LTS.
It's a definite pause for now. Enough for many to not stress about rapid migration. I'm pretty sure only the shills and absolute fools would wholeheartedly believe this reversal.
Really, we should all be always be asking this question before each new game. "Which engine makes the most sense for us now?" There's nothing stopping either Unity from doing this again, or Unreal (or others) from starting. I have definitely learned a lot from this saga. The good is that it brought me down from the clouds of trusting Unity. As John said, all companies are out to make money first, not help you first. So we need to look out for us first when deciding which engine to choose.
@@ktoto2853 Unreal's TOS say that each engine version has its TOS. If you are not happy about a new change, you can stick for ever the version you have agreed to. Its not of course that they are the good guys, but its that its, as you said, easy lawsuit money.
Godot is open source, thus cannot do that, O3DE (which no one uses because is still in early development) is too. Defold has a license that forbids them to do something similar, not every engine can apply a unity, so in a few words, change to any of those.
Really, the first question to ask yourself is if the company who owns the engine is publicly traded on the stock market ...... if the answer to that question is 'yes', maybe consider avoiding it. Just a rule of thumb that might save you an existential crisis or two down the road.
Unity: I will punch you twice! People: No, back off. Unity: I will punch you only once then. People: A step in the right direction. Man, don't buy into this, it's obvious they've always planned to make an absurd change to just step down a little bit and pass down a slightly worse change that people will accept simply because "well, at least it's not as bad".
Exactly. People who view this as "a step in the right direction" and are even remotely *considering* sticking with Unity are gutless, illogical fools. They're part of the problem.
but from the feedback ive seen from developers and community what you said about people saying "its a step in the right direction" are few and far between. not many people are saying that and the overwhelming majority are calling unity out for their bullshit. The part where developers are saying "good for now" is because they can at least finish their games without getting screwed over. then they can move on to a new game engine after they finish their 2-4 year game development commitments that are all coded in unity. no game dev wants to spend another year porting the game to a new program. they would have if unity didnt make immediate changes. but there is no trust in unity, so whether unity did this as a marketing strategy to give us the lesser of two evils so we feel like we "won" or they didnt intend it as a strategy. either way, they failed because they lost all game devs and future devs trust in the engine.
Badly worded, there is no reason now to be scared of success. If you make a $10 game, you will not even start paying any fees until you have made $10M in revenues, and your fees after that will be 20cents on every $10 sale. If you do a cheap game, then it is 2.5% of sales after your first million. Neither case is frightening at all.
@@PeterSedesse i think you did not count mobile games that cost 1 or 2 $ and can get very successful and the 20 cents will be 20% of the sales(without counting the fees of the store and tax)
@@ahm4642 no, because the fee is ' either or '... in your example you wouldn't pay the 20 cents fee, you would pay the 2.5% fee. So for a $2 game, once you hit a million games sold, you would have $2 million in revenues...at that point you would start paying 2.5% of revenues...or 5 cents a game. 5 cents out of $2 is not a big deal considering the first $2million was fee free
It would be kinda funny if unitys pricing blunder was the final drop that kicks if the open source revolution. A lot of people seem to currently reconsider their options and find out that they really don't need greedy partners like that.
I hope people don't fall for their obvious tactics. This shouldn't be celebrated too much, all they did was the bare minimum. This wasn't a company listening to their community, it's a company not detonating the bombs they have strapped to themselves. Edit: correction, this should ABSOLUTELY be celebrated, but because the community did something great. Unity is still awful, even if they walked back. What we shouldn't celebrate is unity "listening" to the community
8:19 - _"And while I may choose to finish up my current project in Unity, I don't think I'll ever be the advocate I once was... I'll need some time."_ I could really feel those last four words. I'm glad you found an alternative that gives you the same joy you once had with Unity, but it shouldn't have come to this.
I'm with you! The trust is broken, and we really need to switch from Unity to another platform. I'm also going with Godot because all my art style is hand-drawn in 2D, and I believe Godot can handle that well. There are some differences that require adaptation, but it is what it is! Perhaps, due to the sudden increase in users and investment, Godot can grow even more. We are starting a new chapter, and I hope this new beginning brings many amazing games.
@LostRelicGames I think Unity is done, no matter what they do unless they self-destruct and make the engine open source. They have the freedom to change anything they want in the future, not to mention the spyware included in the runtime (Who knows when they started tracking installations and what kind of info they collect from us) if I was a studio with people depending on me and years ahead of the development of a single project there is no way in hell I trust these scumbags. Best option is to support Godot to become the Blender of indie devs and learn Unreal.
Zayniac Games stands by our statement we will use Unity till the end of this production cycle but afterwards will migrate to Open Source options. Stay creative Devs and never accept a bad deal!
This is true unfortunatelly. A month ago I'd laugh at thought of using other engine. Today I'm learning how to create Unreal modules. Well, what a timeline we live in.
Honestly, now that I've tried Godot, I don't think I'm going back to Unity. At least not for 2D games. I developed in Unity for more than 12 years now, creating both small indie projects and larger AA games. I know that engine by heart, and can very quickly prototype with it. But this whole situation has made me try Godot, and let's be honest, it's amazing. Everything just works. No complicated render-pipeline stuff, no packages to install, complete source code access, amazing performance both in editor and in builds... the list goes on and on. Even if you don't plan to switch to Godot, I think it's very eye-opening to experiment with other engines. I just never realized how complicated Unity had become over the years until I tried out Godot.
Well said, Also remember that this is'nt the 1st time Unity have tried this sort of thing, Game from Scratch covered a prior TOS change that they had to walk back from 2019 i believe, so it's certainly a good idea to be EXTRA vigilant going forward.
sounds like the proposed outrageous changes to then propose "smaller" changes that would have still been perceived as bad but in comparison to the outrageous proposal they seem like a "win". it's the oldest trick in the book
This is the worst possible scenario for unity. They've broken all trust for a cash grab , but they will not even get the money because they had to backtrach and say the changes are not retroactive because of the outrage. All that for nothing , and nobody will be touching their engine ever again. The only way they can retain at least 50% of their possible clients is 1) Fire Ricatiello 2) Revert all changes 3) Change tos to be unreal-like , making them unable to do retroactive changes without a fat lawsuit.
Retroactive changes would have probably been rather costly in lawyer fees as developers sue saying 'This wasn't the deal at the time'. There's only one man who can unilaterally alter the deal at will, and that's Darth Vader.
New to your channel. I really felt like I needed to follow this issue as an avid gamer and lover of Indy games in particular. Thanks for providing a candid commentary on it and I wish you well finishing your current projectn and look forward to what you and devs like yourself can show us in the future.
The problem is that yes a lot of people could switch to Unreal. But what does really happen? What happens is that now Unreal has majority market share. In other words the Monopoly shifted to Unreal/Epic. Corporations main and only focus is to make money. If they have a mediocre product and a monopoly they'll never compete with themselves. In fact doing the bare minimum is what gives them most profit. The only way to counter greedy corporations is to pull a "Blender". It was a complicated, not very user friendly alternative and now after a lot of development is super popular and mainstream enough to keep anyone from having a monopoly. Even A.i. has powerful open source alternatives. We need to now do the same but for game engines.
I went to a game show yesterday and talked to indie game developers. and these ranged from bunch of teenagers that got together to make a game they wanted to play to really professional teams. now the catch was the whole booth was Unity supported. all and I mean all that were there (some did not come) said they will finish this project and switch to another engine. The options were; Godot and Unreal, majority said they will choose Godot because of what they experienced with unity expecting something same from Epic as well.
You were my guy to listen to through this debacle... thanks man. You handled it well... you were smart, and real. I appreciated your voice and I will continue to follow your dev...
We'll see the true ramifications of what Unity did to themselves, what Riccitiello did to the company more accurately, once multiple studios complete their development cycles and can dedicate their resources to learn a new platform. As long as those execs stay with Unity, noone can entrust their company's future to them. The only way I can see Unity still be around 5 years from now is if the current management steps down and the new makes a statement promising never to do this or something similar.
I'm glad that everyone who was creating games in Unity at least has a chance to finish and publish them under the old conditions. However, I still think this should and will have a significant impact on the number of studios using Unity for future projects. I also have to say that, so far, they have not done much to regain trust. I thought Marc Whitten's open letter was ok (even if the new conditions are a lot worse than what we had originally), but I watched his interview with Jason Weimann and all the answers seemed like corporate talk, where he said just enough to kind of answer but avoided delicate subjects as much as possible. I assume he needed to do that for legal reasons, but I don't think that is how you start to regain trust. If they fucked up they need to own up to that, not pretend it was all a miscommunication and that these new rules were what they always intended.
@@DietChugg I don't think I had seen any of his videos before, but while watching it I did feel like Jason was going quite soft on him. At the moment I kinda assumed that maybe they were friendly from before and he didn't want to be confrontational, but I was mostly annoyed by Marc's responses. Then, Jason answered a comment I left where I also criticised the corporate speech and them claiming missunderstandings, where he said that Unity themselves had miscommunications internally (as if that would excuse the rules they first released being horrible). After skimming through his original reaction video, let's just say that none of what I saw convinced me to stick around.
"This is a move in the right direction" -No, it isn't, and you've fallen to the supremely obvious negotiating tactic of throwing a stupid madness offer at you with no intention to uphold it, but to have you read it and then be relieved at the real offer which comes later. You are worse off now, not better.
Therefore also the amount of stuff they can own. There will naturally have to be police doing random searches in attics and cellars for hidden stashes of assets, but obviously those who run the country should be left alone, for their peace of mind is good for the national interest. Naturally foreign investors must be repelled for an even playing field. Yes, it could work...
Even tho Unity revert back their old statements, I believe that the trust is not fully healed. When the new unity version of 2024 takes place unity will also see the effect of how many devs migrated. Thus this will be a lesson for Unity management to learn to be trasparent and start making an effort to communicate at least with the big names of our game dev community. Cause at the end of the day, Unity's one way communication can really hurt them as equal as they hurt their customers.
Hats off to everyone. This situation was incredibly stressful for me because I just moved to a city to do gamedev with no backup plan and I don't really know anybody in the region. Got my first apartment, settling into a whole new situation, dealing with life and studies in general-- this could not have happened at a worse time. I basically break into pieces when things get too stressful and that is exactly what happened. Would only get a couple of hours of sleep every night, laying in bed with heart racing while covered in sweat from the anxiety. Things are settling down now and I'm so thankful to the community for standing together like this. Godot is pretty fun, eh?
We should continue pressuring them to let everyone remove the splash screen regardless of what version they have. Why should their horrible image damage our games? Especially since they removed the plus plan and their no splash screen option is a whole year away.
Unity 2022-LTS is the last run of a creative giant. I will keep working on my projects, but they will forever be on unity 2022. The days of me upgrading versions for new features is over.
@MandosFeanturi And Unix was proprietary, not open source, at the time, so Linux was made without cooperation from the company behind Unix (AT&T/Bell Labs). The cooperation of Unity is unnecessary for a reimplementation of the runtime.
Unreal gamedev here. It is sad to see a community of such size to be literally disbanded on demand by the company itself. No only it will hurt the competition (as Godot will succeed Unity as Indy 2D and some folk will go to Unreal for 3D, basically creating monopolies for 2 worlds), but it will also create a precedent for other companies to follow that path, just like Twitter, Reddit and some others did already (as Unity followed). It is also deeply concerning that even after that fallout they straight out lie in our faces about ToS removal (LOL repository file low view count is NOT the reason to omit the literal CONTRACT). Also, according to them STILL pushing this as an option (which IS ridiculous giving the whole reason behind this situation), this is not over, they are buying time for the sinking ship until they plant a new bomb, to sink it for the best or the worst.
This has definitely changed my preferred engine(s) going forward. Like you said "be Engine Agnostic." I'm also looking forward to AppLovin's new migration project, making it even easier to swap between engines.
Even though I used Godot from the start,I loved your channel even if you were using unity. I think an additional merit of switching to Godot with the latest turn of events, is that it will benefit you greatly on growing your TH-cam channel even further with the influx of people towards the Godot engine.
"Let's finish this and be done with it shall we?" Bruv, I was done with Unity a year ago the last time they borked their terms and pricing. Dunno why anyone still uses it.
Links: Part 1: th-cam.com/video/1zuZaJE3n-4/w-d-xo.html Part 2: th-cam.com/video/RlDNFAKpoVA/w-d-xo.html Wishlist My Game: store.steampowered.com/app/1081830/Blood_And_Mead/ Come chat - discord.gg/yeTuU53 Letter from game devs: unitedgamedevs.com/
Dude youre incorrect... its now called an engagement fee its a rebranding of the runtime fee but it's the same fee you guys really are fucking idiots like the ceo claimed in that interview
Im still going to keep using unity cause they took it from very bad to just bad and i kinda have to use it cause its the best option that i know how to work with .. but im also going to learn open source engines because i think game dev community should'nt take this risk to be under big companies hands so they need their own tools ... this is the future no doubt
Hey, thanks for keeping us updated with what has been happening with Unity, with your insight on the whole matter. It's helped me realise more of the situation and understand how it has affected others, as well as the sacrifices that have been made to get us where we are now. I'll be sticking with my current project in Unity, but I may consider Godot in the future. I look forward to your videos on Godot.
Yep, godot has a steep learning curve when coming from Unity, for me at least. Once you get past that it's pretty familiar stuff going on. I was supposed to be mastering my 2d Art right now though, instead here I am back to coding up my tools this time for Godot. It's still got quite a few things I need to learn but Unity really slapped my progress this last year and a half down in this craziness.
@@LostRelicGames I'm still looking into other engines though; only chose Godot because the project I am going into is 2d. But I hear really sus things about the engine, tech and problems with the administration. Really this act by Unity may be the end of an era.
@@dibaterman The importen part is keep our eyes open :) knowing different engines are never going to hurt, even if it might slow us down a bit at first :)
At this stage the best course of action would be not finishing the product on an older Unity version, but 100% transitioning to a new engine. The trust is lost completely, why would any sane person stay on board with a company that made such a dick move?
Possibly because the probability of achieving success is higher when utilizing a well-established product like Unity, coupled with the wealth of knowledge accumulated over numerous years.
As a small start up I chose Unreal to build my first projects, despite the 5% royalty cut if any of my initial projects hit the 1,000,000$ marker. I had planned to use Unity for some future projects that lets say will be experimental in the least. After watching everything that has transpired, the shady business practices, the doubling back, honestly to be frank The strong arming that Unity is trying to pull on current and possibly future devs. For me it wasn't about the fees, and to be frank unless the fees where a big problem it would be the sudden back stabbing and disrespect that this shows. I look forward to see what Godot has to offer and when I'm finally ready to begin my step into some experimental development i look forward to learn a new engine. Hopefully one that feels familiar enough that the transition will be easily done.
Thanks for your great videos & comments. The whole debacle of the past few days has also cost me unnecessary time that I would have much preferred to spend working on my projects. But I also believe that the only truly important change resulting from these events has been an expansion of the community towards Open Source. Although I haven't (yet) gone as far as installing Godot on my computer, I have already watched numerous videos and tutorials about it on TH-cam and subscribed to some of the content creators. Even seemingly insignificant actions like these can, when added together, lead to significant progress for projects like Godot in the near future. Any TH-camr who now focuses on Godot will find a much larger audience. It's not difficult to draw parallels with Blender at this point. The more people engage with Godot, even if only briefly, the more enticing it will be for future newcomers due to the growing ecosystem. For my part, I will try to keep projects like Godot in my secondary focus alongside my ongoing work with Unity. And perhaps people like me will one day be able to contribute their knowledge from the Unity universe to this new world. Whether it's in the form of feature wishlists, their own source code, or classic beta testing. Until then, we should all encourage developers to support open-source projects like Godot as much as possible. Even if it's just through a few likes and follows on TH-cam, X/Twitter, and so on. And maybe in the end, even companies like Unity or Epic could benefit from these developments. Just as Blender attracts more new users to the 3D graphics field year after year. I suspect that many original Blender users, over the course of their careers, also transition to commercial 3D software to improve their job prospects or gain access to certain features not available in Blender. Similar patterns could also establish themselves in the game development field in the future. Looking back, we may even be grateful to Tony Tortellini for this daring stunt from Unity. Sorry for the long text. I needed to get it out somewhere. ;-) Cheers, Onur Pekdemir
Please also do us the favour and program your games for FOSS operating systems. If not natively for Linux, at least make sure they run fine in proton or wine.
I'm not a dev, so this is my personal take. Even if Unity not going with this. I don't want to work with software with this kind of behavior. But if I'm a game dev, working on my passion. Would I trust my time, my energy, and my money just to be threatened like that again? No, I can't trust such software anymore considering the risk.
Only a fool would trust Unity at this point. I've hated Unity for years. I don't understand how people can so easily brush past the warning signs when they were written long ago. I can only hope people open their eyes this time. It's getting embarrassing the amount of times people roll over and take this crap from them. Finish whatever you're working on if you're that deep-in and move on to the next chapter of your life. It's time.
One thing has to be understood. 2.5% might not sound like much but the important part is that it's from your GROSS revenue. If you are making a freemium mobile game you have to reinvest most of your money back into marketing and getting users. You have absolutely no chance of succeeding in the insane freemium market otherwise. If most of your gross revenue is gone then NET profits might actually come down to like 10-5% of your gross revenue. At that moment Unity taking 2.5% could become HALF of all of your NET profits. That's why you don't see almost any freemium games made in Unreal. And that's why you can expect most of larger mobile game companies to ditch Unity soon.
That final letter from the United Devs is on point. This Unity's "correction" only makes it less horrifying to finish and publish already ongoing Unity projects. But the future lies in an open ecosystem where no company can cut the power on a whim and screw with ToS, alter existing agreements without consent and sink businesses with no recourse. I'd like to add that Epic is not without controversy - last year they've taken down their seminal games from all storefronts, effectively burrying their legacy of Unreal, Unreal Tournament and all games that came after, as well as their 2D games from the 90s. Imagine if id Software removed the original Doom games and tried to replace them with DOOM 2016 and what came after. That itself is a crime against game history and culture. Theres nothing that would stop Epic from pulling a Unity with Unreal Engine as well. The fact that they didn't yet is - as Unity shown us - not a guarantee. I hope that will never happen, but I'd rather build on a small rock than pray for no rain on the desert.
worst part of that whole story is that Unity as a company, basically destroyed trust they had in community that stood behind the engine. That was their greates strength and i am not sure if they will be able to rebuild it.
Personally I am very happy with these changes and have been hoping that Unity can bring in more money to make their engine better. Having said that I hope every studio in that very strong letter put money towards Godot, and good money at that. Otherwise it will never be a real alternative to Unity for most devs.
Why limit yourself to videos on Godot? Seems like a great opportunity to make videos on all the open source engines!! Go forth and kick Unity leadership in the nutsack! 🤘🏻🤘🏻
the whole splashscreen only being removable under the new TOS makes me worried that they will wait for a year or two for people to go the new version and then hit them with what they wanted to do. Probably because the way they did it now was pretty illigal and with the new one not
it was worse, it was not illegal. their protective clausel in their old TOS was a red herring. they put that there so people would shut up in 2019. they legally gave you the right for nothing, since they had other TOS in place. and they only reason they now went back on that promise, was because the marketing damage a lawsuit about exactly that would have absolutly destroyed their company in the public eye.
Not sure if it still works but around 2018 you could just replace the splash screen image in your build with any image you wanted by naming it the same and placing it in the right folder
I cannot help shaking my head when commercial developers attempt to say the future is in FOSS. First, make your own game FOSS to show you support the strategy. Next, FOSS doesn't mean "no cost software". Someone bears the cost - time costs money. Effort costs money. Look around and see great FOSS projects wither away because people have to make a living and couldn't find it through popular FOSS projects - because the "fan boys" doesn't really want FOSS - they want stuff for free. So game developers, if you want a FOSS platform begin by making your own projects FOSS. Then we can start talking.
I don't write software any longer but if I did, I'd leave Unity in one, maybe two heartbeats. Past performance IS an indicator of future performance, no matter what you or others might say otherwise. Time to walk folks.
I remember the first moment I saw that announcement. A friend sent me Unity's announcement as he knew I was working on Unity as a solo indie gamedev and told me: "whoops seems like bad news for you". I took my time to comprehend what it was about and once I realised this is not only bad for us indie game devs but it also is bad for community, gamers and for the whole industry. I started talking about it from Linkedin and groups that are relevant and was hoping for a collective effort. Then I saw Azur Game's post about collective letter and added my name as soon as possible. In matter of hours hundreds of names started to appear and increased day by day. I sincerely thank all of the names you've shown in the video, sending a sincere big thanks to everyone in all platforms who made noise! Even though we as Unity developers just gained some time, I who coming from a different industry, spent day and night and weekends, sacrificing whatever budget I can for courses and time to learn Unity to the fullest, I also decided to learn Godot and UE to be safer and wiser for the future. Also thank you Lost Relic Games for being a voice for us like many other game devs in TH-cam!
Out of curiosity, I started learning Unreal Engine and I'm having a ball. It's a steep learning curve from the simplicity of Unity, but I feel like I am using a serious game engine as apposed to a toy. Unity doesn't even make games with their own engines anymore. At least Unreal does. I also can't stand Unity's CEO. He reminds me of the character on South Park during the BP crisis. "We're sorry.. sorry... so sorry," over and over again. This is the second time they made a major boo boo under this CEO and had to kiss developer arse. He's just terrible.
Final chapter? all this does it let developers finish what they are currently working on. After developers are going to jump to other engines because the trust Unity had is gone.
If it wasnt for all this thing with the pricing I would probably never touch Unreal Engine, and oh boy... maybe I've been losing my time with Unity to be honest.
While I'm glad they rolled it back to where they did, there's this nagging voice in my head that is thinking since they couldn't force it all through at once, they are now going to try to do it one little step at a time until they get what they originally wanted.
How is the battle over? The people responsible are still in charge and this will not be the last time things like this happen. Unless the ceo and board of directors steps down this war isn't over and you know it. Yes you might not have to pay as much for your next release but unity is still dead if it stays this way. The years of investing time in learning the engine still a waste of time and money and a huge loss. This war has merely just begun.
Thanks for the update! I'm at least glad it will be safe long enough for developers to at least ship out developements they've had. And who knows maybe there is a chance they somehow keep it alright, but we'll see with time. Still a great lesson in how it's best to not be invested in just one tool concerning something as huge as games.
Didn't even know of the whole ordeal and as someone who'd like to start game Development now I'm unsure if Unity would be a good option or if I should go and search for another Engine to start making my first game...
This may be a bit cynical but I feel like this was Unity getting the pricing model they wanted while making it seem like Devs got what they wanted. A case of them making 2 steps forward & 1 step back
From a monetisation model perspective, it’s done as far as I’m concerned. I have no problem with a company making money, it was just the utterly atrocious model they chose I had a problem with. From a consumer trust perspective well, that’s another issue, not because they needed to change the pricing model to make more money, that’s fine as Unity was frankly insanely cheap, it’s how they went about it which annoys me.
I also see some clearly paid influencers on Social Media inserting themselves into Godot and Unreal conversations saying "Godot is slow" and "Unreal is a mess", it's hilarious.
This is their highballing tactic. We need to continue to support open-source software.
Yeah, but it will at least keep us safe for the current dev cycle.
If development keeps increasing.
I think in a few years the future Godot 5 at some point could become the Blender of game engines.
highball? unity is dead now actually... everyone is going to explore or make thier own engine
@@madjunir Blender had a game engine lol
Yeah. I'd rather put some effort into developing Godot further than working on a game in Unity.
Just think how much lost time, money and anguish this has needlessly caused the developer community. That alone should be condemned. It's tough enough out there without this kind of bumbling incompetence.
Let's not act too entitled. It will be even tougher without companies that provide game engines
no game developers should be entitled to contracts they make with game engine companies being upheld and not suddenly changed on them@@kkrup5395
@@kkrup5395 If you pay a company money, you deserve a level of respect. As I see it, Unity are the only ones with a sense of entitlement here: they own the engine so they can do whatever they want
@@kkrup5395 its ok, Unity have not improved in 5+ years.
@@kkrup5395of course you need an engine. But there are many competing engines around. If you see that a companies Management is incompetent and not reliable it is better not to do business with those guys. Find like-minded companies as partners
"The door-in-the-face technique is a persuasive strategy that involves making a large, unreasonable request first, followed by a smaller, more acceptable one. The idea is that the contrast between the two requests makes the second one seem more reasonable and appealing, increasing the likelihood of compliance."
@@ronanbradshaw It is not terrible at all. Everybody and their dogs complains yet not many are in the business. For these folks, they can now release their Unity creations for free and without the ugly splash screen. If they ever make significant money they'll have to give Unity a 2.5% share. What is really terrible is the Apple and Steam 30% tax and their monopoly on digital distribution network.
That's a pain, I hope it bit Unity in the ass.
It's shock economy at its finest
Aim high hit low
They literally kept the "Per-install" in there, the cap is just a fake stand-in to persuade you not to protest for now until they lift the cap slowly all the way to 100%.
The way I see it, Unity can try to sweeten the pot with any deal they want, but no developers will want to even touch their engine unless some serious Corporate Restructuring happening starting with their CEO.
Even then, they have to not only offer a better deal, they have to seriously put in some more RND into their engine. Considering how many and how quick and easy some devs could swap to other engines. I honestly see less and less reason to stick with unity.
Yep. They havent fixed the problem. The problem was everyone who though this idea was a good idea.
javidx9's channel is getting more interesting to me by the day lmao
Doesn't matter, its the owners/board. The CEO is just their public face.
Sadly if you look at comments on other TH-camr's videos like Code Monkey or Jason Weiman, quite a lot of devs are happy with the change and won't switch in the end. I don't know if the well known studios who talked against Unity recently decided to not switch though.
Open source engines are going to get a HUGE buff and I'm excited. Not just Godot but whatever else people invent over the next few years.
Those that received the big Donation from re-logic (terraria dev), will see the fastest development and adoption.
I'm not excited. I think a lot of what makes it good is the fact that it's small. As the amount of interested people increases, the small and efficient products tend to bloat.
The recent interest influx will probably give them a short boost, and then turn 99% of the products into worse versions of themselves. Seen it too many times to count, happens with messengers, services, you name it. Anything that "makes it" turns into a monstrosity over time.
Counter point, Blender. Same open source software going down a similar road, and that's (arguaby) the best tool in the industry@@peezieforestem5078
Open source is still going to suffer from the lack of console support, which is not an insubstantial obstacle. Any dev going that route is either forgoing a large chunk of the market or signing up for a lot more work & expense.
Godot's dev fund has more than doubled over he time this was happening: 25k to over 50k as of now
So yeah, FOSS is benefiting from this massively lol
seems risky. at least retroactive pricing is gone. but I feel they are gonna push those changes slowly in the future.
It is possible, but it will more likely be higher subscriptions and more royalties fee.
Likely. They already went back on that exact thing, so I’m guessing they are still going to try implementing it.
"The right actions for the wrong reasons reinforce the wrong reasons."
A lot of th backlash online are indie devs. I do freelance game dev but no one talks about troubles unity caused us. Some of my clients already turned against me since I pushed them to use unity.
I'm not gonna put myself in that position again. I'm done with unity after the current project im working on.
Probably gonna stick to Godot.
They will and people will swallow it up like fools.
Don't be fooled. Unity can, and will change the rules, whenever it suits them. You have no assurances that Unity will abide by the terms they have set.
Yeah, but how many kids / new game devs get into Unity every year, and how many of them google "historical licensing controversies" before deciding which engine to use...
They have literally done this back in 2019 with SpatialOS already by retroactively pushing change to previous version and already released games, and ended up adding a clause to their TOS to show that they couldn't do it again.
Lo and behold they just deleted that clause earlier this year to pull of what they did this time.
They _will_ do something lie this again. That's just how corporations, specially publicly traded ones, work. FOSS like Godot is the only way.
@@mallninja9805 I'm sure many Google "what engine should I use" and I'm positive people will mention this debacle when that's asked
@@mallninja9805 i watched literally 1 video about using unity and immediately got bombarded with this controversy, having never even heard of it before. targeted media works faster than anything companies can come up with to patch their reputation
It's the first sentence of section 9 in the ToS. Unity reserves the right to change the prices as and when they please, with as little notice as they like. I'm not even being glib, that's pretty much exactly what it says.
This part really sums up what has, is and is going to happen with Unity:
"Corporations will forever try to push the boundaries and see what they can get away with,
and then you know push it too far. Get push back, apologize, roll back a bit. Rinse repeat.
And as a consumer you one day look back and you realize truly how much you have given up over time."
It might seem like a victory now, some might even say a fabricated victory by Unity, but it's still winning the battle but not the war.
Even though they've rolled back their plans, they still have the scaffolding in place to work towards those plans again.
They just need to jingle some keys in front of their clients to make them switch to 2023LTS.
I actually expect the initially announced pricing scheme to be fully implemented in 15 years if enough devs are dumb enough not to switch engines.
Unity ask for 2.5% royalty, gamers cries, request a diaper change and a wipe. Steam charges 30% royalty, lord gabensomething.
this also applies to government
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWiiunity is Game Development Software, steam is Game Distribution Platform. Not same thing
It's a definite pause for now. Enough for many to not stress about rapid migration. I'm pretty sure only the shills and absolute fools would wholeheartedly believe this reversal.
Really, we should all be always be asking this question before each new game. "Which engine makes the most sense for us now?" There's nothing stopping either Unity from doing this again, or Unreal (or others) from starting. I have definitely learned a lot from this saga. The good is that it brought me down from the clouds of trusting Unity. As John said, all companies are out to make money first, not help you first. So we need to look out for us first when deciding which engine to choose.
Unreal can't have retroactive changes per their tos. Easy lawsuit money if they do a unity moment.
Other engines cannot in fact do this due to their licensing
@@ktoto2853 Unreal's TOS say that each engine version has its TOS. If you are not happy about a new change, you can stick for ever the version you have agreed to. Its not of course that they are the good guys, but its that its, as you said, easy lawsuit money.
Godot is open source, thus cannot do that, O3DE (which no one uses because is still in early development) is too. Defold has a license that forbids them to do something similar, not every engine can apply a unity, so in a few words, change to any of those.
Really, the first question to ask yourself is if the company who owns the engine is publicly traded on the stock market ...... if the answer to that question is 'yes', maybe consider avoiding it. Just a rule of thumb that might save you an existential crisis or two down the road.
Unity: I will punch you twice!
People: No, back off.
Unity: I will punch you only once then.
People: A step in the right direction.
Man, don't buy into this, it's obvious they've always planned to make an absurd change to just step down a little bit and pass down a slightly worse change that people will accept simply because "well, at least it's not as bad".
Exactly. People who view this as "a step in the right direction" and are even remotely *considering* sticking with Unity are gutless, illogical fools. They're part of the problem.
but from the feedback ive seen from developers and community what you said about people saying "its a step in the right direction" are few and far between.
not many people are saying that and the overwhelming majority are calling unity out for their bullshit.
The part where developers are saying "good for now" is because they can at least finish their games without getting screwed over. then they can move on to a new game engine after they finish their 2-4 year game development commitments that are all coded in unity.
no game dev wants to spend another year porting the game to a new program. they would have if unity didnt make immediate changes.
but there is no trust in unity, so whether unity did this as a marketing strategy to give us the lesser of two evils so we feel like we "won" or they didnt intend it as a strategy.
either way, they failed because they lost all game devs and future devs trust in the engine.
2:30 If you the developer are scared that your game may become a hit, then something is still seriously wrong.
Your game suddenly being successful definitely shouldn't be factored as a risk to your financial security.
Badly worded, there is no reason now to be scared of success. If you make a $10 game, you will not even start paying any fees until you have made $10M in revenues, and your fees after that will be 20cents on every $10 sale. If you do a cheap game, then it is 2.5% of sales after your first million. Neither case is frightening at all.
@@PeterSedesse i think you did not count mobile games that cost 1 or 2 $ and can get very successful and the 20 cents will be 20% of the sales(without counting the fees of the store and tax)
@@ahm4642 no, because the fee is ' either or '... in your example you wouldn't pay the 20 cents fee, you would pay the 2.5% fee. So for a $2 game, once you hit a million games sold, you would have $2 million in revenues...at that point you would start paying 2.5% of revenues...or 5 cents a game. 5 cents out of $2 is not a big deal considering the first $2million was fee free
Irrational fear is definitely a problem
The fact they kept in "runtime fees" at all is astonishing. Let the engine die.
It would be kinda funny if unitys pricing blunder was the final drop that kicks if the open source revolution. A lot of people seem to currently reconsider their options and find out that they really don't need greedy partners like that.
Godot received a TON of financial support because of this whole deal, it's going to be beautiful.
I've switched to Godot and am enjoying it like a hog.
@@aceofswords1725 like a HOG?!
@@sayori3939Yeah, wrestling in the mud and all that. :)
@@aceofswords1725 😂😂😂 nice
I hope people don't fall for their obvious tactics. This shouldn't be celebrated too much, all they did was the bare minimum. This wasn't a company listening to their community, it's a company not detonating the bombs they have strapped to themselves.
Edit: correction, this should ABSOLUTELY be celebrated, but because the community did something great. Unity is still awful, even if they walked back. What we shouldn't celebrate is unity "listening" to the community
They did ALMOST the bare minimum. Their CEO is still in charge and wasn't the one who apologised for these decisions
We're just breathing a sigh before getting on with the task of moving on without super urgent haste.
8:19 - _"And while I may choose to finish up my current project in Unity, I don't think I'll ever be the advocate I once was... I'll need some time."_ I could really feel those last four words. I'm glad you found an alternative that gives you the same joy you once had with Unity, but it shouldn't have come to this.
I'm with you! The trust is broken, and we really need to switch from Unity to another platform. I'm also going with Godot because all my art style is hand-drawn in 2D, and I believe Godot can handle that well. There are some differences that require adaptation, but it is what it is! Perhaps, due to the sudden increase in users and investment, Godot can grow even more. We are starting a new chapter, and I hope this new beginning brings many amazing games.
@LostRelicGames I think Unity is done, no matter what they do unless they self-destruct and make the engine open source. They have the freedom to change anything they want in the future, not to mention the spyware included in the runtime (Who knows when they started tracking installations and what kind of info they collect from us) if I was a studio with people depending on me and years ahead of the development of a single project there is no way in hell I trust these scumbags. Best option is to support Godot to become the Blender of indie devs and learn Unreal.
Zayniac Games stands by our statement we will use Unity till the end of this production cycle but afterwards will migrate to Open Source options. Stay creative Devs and never accept a bad deal!
Thanks for speaking up !!! There where certain YT devs who totally dismissed it !
shills be shillin'
such as?
You would be a good communist leader. Want a job at the Stasi? We built a big wall until 1989. :/@@LostRelicGames
This is true unfortunatelly.
A month ago I'd laugh at thought of using other engine. Today I'm learning how to create Unreal modules. Well, what a timeline we live in.
Yeah I used to not see the point in engines like godot, well. I was very wrong.
lol
Honestly, now that I've tried Godot, I don't think I'm going back to Unity. At least not for 2D games.
I developed in Unity for more than 12 years now, creating both small indie projects and larger AA games. I know that engine by heart, and can very quickly prototype with it.
But this whole situation has made me try Godot, and let's be honest, it's amazing. Everything just works.
No complicated render-pipeline stuff, no packages to install, complete source code access, amazing performance both in editor and in builds... the list goes on and on.
Even if you don't plan to switch to Godot, I think it's very eye-opening to experiment with other engines.
I just never realized how complicated Unity had become over the years until I tried out Godot.
"When you see these names, remember what they did for you, and show them respect." Good stuff.
And somebody was calling all devs speaking their minds about this topic "unnecessary drama"... jeez.
I only recently realized just how ridiculous the Per-Seat price had gotten as part of the updates as well. Like, it was a wholesale FU to all devs.
Well said, Also remember that this is'nt the 1st time Unity have tried this sort of thing, Game from Scratch covered a prior TOS change that they had to walk back from 2019 i believe, so it's certainly a good idea to be EXTRA vigilant going forward.
Frankly you’d be stupid to ever trust them or use their services ever again.
Which is why they made the TOS github. Whiich apparently they only took down because it had low views.
Company full of liars.
sounds like the proposed outrageous changes to then propose "smaller" changes that would have still been perceived as bad but in comparison to the outrageous proposal they seem like a "win". it's the oldest trick in the book
This is the worst possible scenario for unity. They've broken all trust for a cash grab , but they will not even get the money because they had to backtrach and say the changes are not retroactive because of the outrage. All that for nothing , and nobody will be touching their engine ever again.
The only way they can retain at least 50% of their possible clients is
1) Fire Ricatiello
2) Revert all changes
3) Change tos to be unreal-like , making them unable to do retroactive changes without a fat lawsuit.
Retroactive changes would have probably been rather costly in lawyer fees as developers sue saying 'This wasn't the deal at the time'. There's only one man who can unilaterally alter the deal at will, and that's Darth Vader.
@@TimoRutanenwell... unless he faces an equally powerful Jedi (the dev community in our case), then he stops all brokering till he deals with them.
"Here's a lesser thing you don't like to make up for this thing you really really don't like". How about neither? Neither is an option, too, Unity.
New to your channel. I really felt like I needed to follow this issue as an avid gamer and lover of Indy games in particular. Thanks for providing a candid commentary on it and I wish you well finishing your current projectn and look forward to what you and devs like yourself can show us in the future.
it will be sad to see you go, your tutorials taught me alot
I have always advised people to learn both unity and unreal just in case. Aside from the unity drama, this also increases your job prospect.
The problem is that yes a lot of people could switch to Unreal.
But what does really happen?
What happens is that now Unreal has majority market share. In other words the Monopoly shifted to Unreal/Epic.
Corporations main and only focus is to make money. If they have a mediocre product and a monopoly they'll never compete with themselves. In fact doing the bare minimum is what gives them most profit.
The only way to counter greedy corporations is to pull a "Blender". It was a complicated, not very user friendly alternative and now after a lot of development is super popular and mainstream enough to keep anyone from having a monopoly.
Even A.i. has powerful open source alternatives. We need to now do the same but for game engines.
Or learn multiple engines and the fundamentals to keep you in good steed.
I went to a game show yesterday and talked to indie game developers. and these ranged from bunch of teenagers that got together to make a game they wanted to play to really professional teams. now the catch was the whole booth was Unity supported. all and I mean all that were there (some did not come) said they will finish this project and switch to another engine.
The options were;
Godot and Unreal, majority said they will choose Godot because of what they experienced with unity expecting something same from Epic as well.
You were my guy to listen to through this debacle... thanks man. You handled it well... you were smart, and real. I appreciated your voice and I will continue to follow your dev...
Hey I appreciate that
We'll see the true ramifications of what Unity did to themselves, what Riccitiello did to the company more accurately, once multiple studios complete their development cycles and can dedicate their resources to learn a new platform.
As long as those execs stay with Unity, noone can entrust their company's future to them. The only way I can see Unity still be around 5 years from now is if the current management steps down and the new makes a statement promising never to do this or something similar.
I'm glad that everyone who was creating games in Unity at least has a chance to finish and publish them under the old conditions. However, I still think this should and will have a significant impact on the number of studios using Unity for future projects. I also have to say that, so far, they have not done much to regain trust. I thought Marc Whitten's open letter was ok (even if the new conditions are a lot worse than what we had originally), but I watched his interview with Jason Weimann and all the answers seemed like corporate talk, where he said just enough to kind of answer but avoided delicate subjects as much as possible. I assume he needed to do that for legal reasons, but I don't think that is how you start to regain trust. If they fucked up they need to own up to that, not pretend it was all a miscommunication and that these new rules were what they always intended.
Yeah that "interview" was trash. I unsubscribed from Jason over that one.
@@DietChugg I don't think I had seen any of his videos before, but while watching it I did feel like Jason was going quite soft on him. At the moment I kinda assumed that maybe they were friendly from before and he didn't want to be confrontational, but I was mostly annoyed by Marc's responses. Then, Jason answered a comment I left where I also criticised the corporate speech and them claiming missunderstandings, where he said that Unity themselves had miscommunications internally (as if that would excuse the rules they first released being horrible). After skimming through his original reaction video, let's just say that none of what I saw convinced me to stick around.
"This is a move in the right direction" -No, it isn't, and you've fallen to the supremely obvious negotiating tactic of throwing a stupid madness offer at you with no intention to uphold it, but to have you read it and then be relieved at the real offer which comes later. You are worse off now, not better.
There needs to be a level cap on the amount of money 1 person can own.
Therefore also the amount of stuff they can own. There will naturally have to be police doing random searches in attics and cellars for hidden stashes of assets, but obviously those who run the country should be left alone, for their peace of mind is good for the national interest. Naturally foreign investors must be repelled for an even playing field. Yes, it could work...
Even tho Unity revert back their old statements, I believe that the trust is not fully healed.
When the new unity version of 2024 takes place unity will also see the effect of how many devs migrated.
Thus this will be a lesson for Unity management to learn to be trasparent and start making an effort to communicate at least with the big names of our game dev community.
Cause at the end of the day, Unity's one way communication can really hurt them as equal as they hurt their customers.
20 steps behind, 5 steps forward
Remember, "bugs" have shown up in older versions before that forced upgrading the version.
Developers will finish the games that they currently have in development, after that it would be foolish to start any other project in Unity.
I kinda hope The Internet Historian would release a video about unity.
Not the hero we need, but the hero we deserve.
Hats off to everyone. This situation was incredibly stressful for me because I just moved to a city to do gamedev with no backup plan and I don't really know anybody in the region. Got my first apartment, settling into a whole new situation, dealing with life and studies in general-- this could not have happened at a worse time. I basically break into pieces when things get too stressful and that is exactly what happened. Would only get a couple of hours of sleep every night, laying in bed with heart racing while covered in sweat from the anxiety. Things are settling down now and I'm so thankful to the community for standing together like this. Godot is pretty fun, eh?
Sounds rough. Anyway yeah, time to start using open source software.
l2godot
I encourage everyone to jump the ship and not let Unity hold you hostage to their antics
We should continue pressuring them to let everyone remove the splash screen regardless of what version they have. Why should their horrible image damage our games? Especially since they removed the plus plan and their no splash screen option is a whole year away.
I believe they said that they are dropping the Splash Screen requirement, regardless of which version you are using.
Unity 2022-LTS is the last run of a creative giant. I will keep working on my projects, but they will forever be on unity 2022. The days of me upgrading versions for new features is over.
Why not come together to create a new open source engine based on Unity like Linux does for Unix?
Because Unity is not open source, and they would need to agree for you creating an engine based on their work. You think they will?
Godot is an alternative Truly Open Source without craziness of unity's TOS
@MandosFeanturi And Unix was proprietary, not open source, at the time, so Linux was made without cooperation from the company behind Unix (AT&T/Bell Labs). The cooperation of Unity is unnecessary for a reimplementation of the runtime.
Unity showed you who it was the first time. Best to believe them.
Unreal gamedev here. It is sad to see a community of such size to be literally disbanded on demand by the company itself. No only it will hurt the competition (as Godot will succeed Unity as Indy 2D and some folk will go to Unreal for 3D, basically creating monopolies for 2 worlds), but it will also create a precedent for other companies to follow that path, just like Twitter, Reddit and some others did already (as Unity followed). It is also deeply concerning that even after that fallout they straight out lie in our faces about ToS removal (LOL repository file low view count is NOT the reason to omit the literal CONTRACT). Also, according to them STILL pushing this as an option (which IS ridiculous giving the whole reason behind this situation), this is not over, they are buying time for the sinking ship until they plant a new bomb, to sink it for the best or the worst.
I am all for Godot being the dominating engine. It's open source they can't do anything like this.
This has definitely changed my preferred engine(s) going forward. Like you said "be Engine Agnostic." I'm also looking forward to AppLovin's new migration project, making it even easier to swap between engines.
Even though I used Godot from the start,I loved your channel even if you were using unity.
I think an additional merit of switching to Godot with the latest turn of events, is that it will benefit you greatly on growing your TH-cam channel even further with the influx of people towards the Godot engine.
If they just took their time to get feedback from unity devs first before they announced the new policy, these issues would have not surfaced.
If Unity can do this, they will do so again, we need to support a competitor just in case Unity goes through with their malpractices in the future.
Their first post is the final.
It doesn't matter what they are trying to say now, there is no way i would start a new project using Unity.
UE5 for me. I'm never trusting Unity again. They're just trying to do damage control.
"Let's finish this and be done with it shall we?"
Bruv, I was done with Unity a year ago the last time they borked their terms and pricing. Dunno why anyone still uses it.
Links:
Part 1: th-cam.com/video/1zuZaJE3n-4/w-d-xo.html
Part 2: th-cam.com/video/RlDNFAKpoVA/w-d-xo.html
Wishlist My Game: store.steampowered.com/app/1081830/Blood_And_Mead/
Come chat - discord.gg/yeTuU53
Letter from game devs: unitedgamedevs.com/
Dude youre incorrect... its now called an engagement fee its a rebranding of the runtime fee but it's the same fee you guys really are fucking idiots like the ceo claimed in that interview
I’m 10 years old and my dream has been to use unity, but this happening really hits me in the heart badly. I’m just so upset :(
Im still going to keep using unity cause they took it from very bad to just bad and i kinda have to use it cause its the best option that i know how to work with .. but im also going to learn open source engines because i think game dev community should'nt take this risk to be under big companies hands so they need their own tools ... this is the future no doubt
"Sorry will not work in our courts. Mr. Unity."
Hey, thanks for keeping us updated with what has been happening with Unity, with your insight on the whole matter. It's helped me realise more of the situation and understand how it has affected others, as well as the sacrifices that have been made to get us where we are now. I'll be sticking with my current project in Unity, but I may consider Godot in the future. I look forward to your videos on Godot.
Same here
Consider FNA, Monogame, Stride and Flatredball too.
Babe, wake up.
Latest Unity TOS patch is out.
Yep, godot has a steep learning curve when coming from Unity, for me at least.
Once you get past that it's pretty familiar stuff going on.
I was supposed to be mastering my 2d Art right now though, instead here I am back to coding up my tools this time for Godot.
It's still got quite a few things I need to learn but Unity really slapped my progress this last year and a half down in this craziness.
I'll also be rebuilding my game boiler plate and basic utils. It's an investment that will be pay us back with certainty.
@@LostRelicGames
I'm still looking into other engines though; only chose Godot because the project I am going into is 2d. But I hear really sus things about the engine, tech and problems with the administration.
Really this act by Unity may be the end of an era.
@@dibaterman The importen part is keep our eyes open :) knowing different engines are never going to hurt, even if it might slow us down a bit at first :)
At this stage the best course of action would be not finishing the product on an older Unity version, but 100% transitioning to a new engine. The trust is lost completely, why would any sane person stay on board with a company that made such a dick move?
Possibly because the probability of achieving success is higher when utilizing a well-established product like Unity, coupled with the wealth of knowledge accumulated over numerous years.
As a small start up I chose Unreal to build my first projects, despite the 5% royalty cut if any of my initial projects hit the 1,000,000$ marker. I had planned to use Unity for some future projects that lets say will be experimental in the least. After watching everything that has transpired, the shady business practices, the doubling back, honestly to be frank The strong arming that Unity is trying to pull on current and possibly future devs. For me it wasn't about the fees, and to be frank unless the fees where a big problem it would be the sudden back stabbing and disrespect that this shows.
I look forward to see what Godot has to offer and when I'm finally ready to begin my step into some experimental development i look forward to learn a new engine. Hopefully one that feels familiar enough that the transition will be easily done.
Consider FNA, Monogame, Stride and Flatredball too.
Even with the changes Unity made to their garbage plan, they've wholeheartedly fucked up to the point where nobody is going to use Unity anymore
Thanks for your great videos & comments. The whole debacle of the past few days has also cost me unnecessary time that I would have much preferred to spend working on my projects. But I also believe that the only truly important change resulting from these events has been an expansion of the community towards Open Source. Although I haven't (yet) gone as far as installing Godot on my computer, I have already watched numerous videos and tutorials about it on TH-cam and subscribed to some of the content creators.
Even seemingly insignificant actions like these can, when added together, lead to significant progress for projects like Godot in the near future. Any TH-camr who now focuses on Godot will find a much larger audience. It's not difficult to draw parallels with Blender at this point. The more people engage with Godot, even if only briefly, the more enticing it will be for future newcomers due to the growing ecosystem. For my part, I will try to keep projects like Godot in my secondary focus alongside my ongoing work with Unity.
And perhaps people like me will one day be able to contribute their knowledge from the Unity universe to this new world. Whether it's in the form of feature wishlists, their own source code, or classic beta testing. Until then, we should all encourage developers to support open-source projects like Godot as much as possible. Even if it's just through a few likes and follows on TH-cam, X/Twitter, and so on.
And maybe in the end, even companies like Unity or Epic could benefit from these developments. Just as Blender attracts more new users to the 3D graphics field year after year. I suspect that many original Blender users, over the course of their careers, also transition to commercial 3D software to improve their job prospects or gain access to certain features not available in Blender. Similar patterns could also establish themselves in the game development field in the future. Looking back, we may even be grateful to Tony Tortellini for this daring stunt from Unity. Sorry for the long text. I needed to get it out somewhere. ;-)
Cheers, Onur Pekdemir
Please also do us the favour and program your games for FOSS operating systems. If not natively for Linux, at least make sure they run fine in proton or wine.
The final chapter... or is it?
*Vsauce music*
Being able to freely change user agreements is terrifying, and companies that do not want integrity can use any method to accumulate wealth
We need John Riccitiello to leave and never come back because he is a liability to us indie developers, and we cannot let this ever happen again!
He is a menace to gaming.
kind of fitting how unity was taken down through the community's unification
I'm not a dev, so this is my personal take. Even if Unity not going with this. I don't want to work with software with this kind of behavior. But if I'm a game dev, working on my passion. Would I trust my time, my energy, and my money just to be threatened like that again? No, I can't trust such software anymore considering the risk.
Only a fool would trust Unity at this point. I've hated Unity for years. I don't understand how people can so easily brush past the warning signs when they were written long ago. I can only hope people open their eyes this time. It's getting embarrassing the amount of times people roll over and take this crap from them.
Finish whatever you're working on if you're that deep-in and move on to the next chapter of your life. It's time.
One thing has to be understood. 2.5% might not sound like much but the important part is that it's from your GROSS revenue. If you are making a freemium mobile game you have to reinvest most of your money back into marketing and getting users. You have absolutely no chance of succeeding in the insane freemium market otherwise. If most of your gross revenue is gone then NET profits might actually come down to like 10-5% of your gross revenue. At that moment Unity taking 2.5% could become HALF of all of your NET profits. That's why you don't see almost any freemium games made in Unreal. And that's why you can expect most of larger mobile game companies to ditch Unity soon.
Awesome. Looking forward to the godot stuff even tho I'm pretty deep into Unreal now. Godot looks like a nice little engine to learn on the side.
That final letter from the United Devs is on point. This Unity's "correction" only makes it less horrifying to finish and publish already ongoing Unity projects. But the future lies in an open ecosystem where no company can cut the power on a whim and screw with ToS, alter existing agreements without consent and sink businesses with no recourse.
I'd like to add that Epic is not without controversy - last year they've taken down their seminal games from all storefronts, effectively burrying their legacy of Unreal, Unreal Tournament and all games that came after, as well as their 2D games from the 90s.
Imagine if id Software removed the original Doom games and tried to replace them with DOOM 2016 and what came after. That itself is a crime against game history and culture.
Theres nothing that would stop Epic from pulling a Unity with Unreal Engine as well. The fact that they didn't yet is - as Unity shown us - not a guarantee.
I hope that will never happen, but I'd rather build on a small rock than pray for no rain on the desert.
The problem is: How can anybody be sure, that Unity comes not back in one or two years with another bad change.
Trust is broken.
worst part of that whole story is that Unity as a company, basically destroyed trust they had in community that stood behind the engine. That was their greates strength and i am not sure if they will be able to rebuild it.
now Godot has the community trust instead 😀
Personally I am very happy with these changes and have been hoping that Unity can bring in more money to make their engine better.
Having said that I hope every studio in that very strong letter put money towards Godot, and good money at that. Otherwise it will never be a real alternative to Unity for most devs.
Just gonna throw out there I’m having a marvelous time with golang and ebitengine for 2D. Everything you need is there, but it’s VERY bare bones
Why limit yourself to videos on Godot? Seems like a great opportunity to make videos on all the open source engines!! Go forth and kick Unity leadership in the nutsack! 🤘🏻🤘🏻
Part of the cut was sewn, but there's still a cut.
the whole splashscreen only being removable under the new TOS makes me worried that they will wait for a year or two for people to go the new version and then hit them with what they wanted to do.
Probably because the way they did it now was pretty illigal and with the new one not
it was worse, it was not illegal. their protective clausel in their old TOS was a red herring. they put that there so people would shut up in 2019.
they legally gave you the right for nothing, since they had other TOS in place. and they only reason they now went back on that promise, was because the marketing damage a lawsuit about exactly that would have absolutly destroyed their company in the public eye.
Not sure if it still works but around 2018 you could just replace the splash screen image in your build with any image you wanted by naming it the same and placing it in the right folder
I cannot help shaking my head when commercial developers attempt to say the future is in FOSS. First, make your own game FOSS to show you support the strategy. Next, FOSS doesn't mean "no cost software". Someone bears the cost - time costs money. Effort costs money. Look around and see great FOSS projects wither away because people have to make a living and couldn't find it through popular FOSS projects - because the "fan boys" doesn't really want FOSS - they want stuff for free.
So game developers, if you want a FOSS platform begin by making your own projects FOSS. Then we can start talking.
I don't write software any longer but if I did, I'd leave Unity in one, maybe two heartbeats. Past performance IS an indicator of future performance, no matter what you or others might say otherwise. Time to walk folks.
I remember the first moment I saw that announcement. A friend sent me Unity's announcement as he knew I was working on Unity as a solo indie gamedev and told me: "whoops seems like bad news for you". I took my time to comprehend what it was about and once I realised this is not only bad for us indie game devs but it also is bad for community, gamers and for the whole industry. I started talking about it from Linkedin and groups that are relevant and was hoping for a collective effort. Then I saw Azur Game's post about collective letter and added my name as soon as possible. In matter of hours hundreds of names started to appear and increased day by day. I sincerely thank all of the names you've shown in the video, sending a sincere big thanks to everyone in all platforms who made noise! Even though we as Unity developers just gained some time, I who coming from a different industry, spent day and night and weekends, sacrificing whatever budget I can for courses and time to learn Unity to the fullest, I also decided to learn Godot and UE to be safer and wiser for the future. Also thank you Lost Relic Games for being a voice for us like many other game devs in TH-cam!
Out of curiosity, I started learning Unreal Engine and I'm having a ball. It's a steep learning curve from the simplicity of Unity, but I feel like I am using a serious game engine as apposed to a toy. Unity doesn't even make games with their own engines anymore. At least Unreal does. I also can't stand Unity's CEO. He reminds me of the character on South Park during the BP crisis. "We're sorry.. sorry... so sorry," over and over again. This is the second time they made a major boo boo under this CEO and had to kiss developer arse. He's just terrible.
Final chapter? all this does it let developers finish what they are currently working on. After developers are going to jump to other engines because the trust Unity had is gone.
If it wasnt for all this thing with the pricing I would probably never touch Unreal Engine, and oh boy... maybe I've been losing my time with Unity to be honest.
While I'm glad they rolled it back to where they did, there's this nagging voice in my head that is thinking since they couldn't force it all through at once, they are now going to try to do it one little step at a time until they get what they originally wanted.
How is the battle over?
The people responsible are still in charge and this will not be the last time things like this happen.
Unless the ceo and board of directors steps down this war isn't over and you know it.
Yes you might not have to pay as much for your next release but unity is still dead if it stays this way.
The years of investing time in learning the engine still a waste of time and money and a huge loss.
This war has merely just begun.
Thanks for the update! I'm at least glad it will be safe long enough for developers to at least ship out developements they've had. And who knows maybe there is a chance they somehow keep it alright, but we'll see with time. Still a great lesson in how it's best to not be invested in just one tool concerning something as huge as games.
"Meet me in the middle," says the unjust man. You take a step towards him, he takes a step back. "Meet me in the middle," says the unjust man.
I love how well this works every time.
Company releases horrible deal. Major backlash. Revises to a bad deal everyone acts like they won.
Didn't even know of the whole ordeal and as someone who'd like to start game Development now I'm unsure if Unity would be a good option or if I should go and search for another Engine to start making my first game...
Surprised you didn't bring up the incredible move by Re-Logic to publicly donate $100k to Godot
This may be a bit cynical but I feel like this was Unity getting the pricing model they wanted while making it seem like Devs got what they wanted.
A case of them making 2 steps forward & 1 step back
From a monetisation model perspective, it’s done as far as I’m concerned. I have no problem with a company making money, it was just the utterly atrocious model they chose I had a problem with. From a consumer trust perspective well, that’s another issue, not because they needed to change the pricing model to make more money, that’s fine as Unity was frankly insanely cheap, it’s how they went about it which annoys me.
I also see some clearly paid influencers on Social Media inserting themselves into Godot and Unreal conversations saying "Godot is slow" and "Unreal is a mess", it's hilarious.
Honest curiosity, which influencers would that be?