The Unity Drama (A Dev's Perspective)

[@ameer6168]

Thank you unity for promoting the open source alternative called GODOT

[@aviralshastri]

😂😂

[@MattMcQueen1]

We've all been waiting for GODOT.

[@muhwyndham]

ah I just realized the name lol

[@DAB009]

​@@muhwyndhamsorry. What does that mean?

[@lastmanstanding5423]

​@@DAB009 "Waiting for Godot" is a name of a famous play. google it... spoiler: Godot never arrives.

[@silentspaceship]

Just want to share that John Riccitiello, who's currently CEO of Unity, was the CEO for Electronic Arts when they started with its micro transactions, that might make things clear

[@Caldaron]

He is also the one that called game devs "f-ing idiots". That guy is unemployable and he should be fired. This charging fee could end unity itself. So out with him.

[@quantum_dongle]

Now it makes sense, thanks lol

[@Fiercesoulking]

Weren't Unity acquired by a financial company a while back ?

[@Fiercesoulking]

ah it was a mobile company : In August 2022, AppLovin made an unsolicited offer to buy Unity in exchange for $17.54 billion in an all-stock deal". But another spice fact came up : Unity's CEO Sold Company Shares Before This Week's Unpopular Announcement

[@Sairysss1]

He also sold like 2.000 of his shares last week before announcing new pricing model. Looks like market manipulation, this guy should rot in jail

[@yannick5099]

Unity: "So we are charging by tracking..." EU GDPR: "Go on..."

[@dealloc]

Unity: "There's no possible way for you to calculate how much the costs will be, just trust us that we charge you correctly...": EU Law: "Tell me more..."

[@realmimak]

There's also no possible way for me to control what happens on my computer and what telemetry goes out of it

[@mikopiko]

@@realmimak Ofc, there is. Look at Glasswire or Fiddle.

[@realmimak]

Thanks captain

[@jaredsmith5826]

@@mikopiko pretty sure that was sarcasm

[@Cybnew]

“Imagine if AWS started charging a fee for every unique user who goes to your website” Amazon be like: 👀

[@grexlin85]

Bro dont give ideas to Amazon

[@ooogabooga5111]

yeah, don't spark ideas like that man. Framer, webflow... all of the "I'm a designer" no code tools have that per traffic pricing and it is ludicrous. I'm from a third-world country where global solutions like these don't make sense due to the insane pricing. I feel like technology itself is a way of enslaving the poor and enriching the rich in the modern world, I can't express how much respect I have towards companies that have different pricing in different countries and people who contribute to open source works, we work with those to give colors to future generations (children) and paint a picture for the present.

[@odra873]

dont they? user visits your page -> trigger request to aws to s3, db fetching etc. -> cost you money

[@Lalit-yw2tb]

Isn't that already a thing with AWS Lambda?

[@AceVGame]

@@Lalit-yw2tb Theo was referring to another per user fee on top of AWS service fees, which is what Unity is doing

[@falxie_]

Unity literally got me interested in programming at like 14 and now I'm 23 and been working professionally for 4 years, so this is really disappointing

[@wrestlingPC]

Have you tried Unreal Engine?

[@ectsy]

Still learn unity. Use the editor and engine to learn c#. C# is a very important language and can help you dip your toes into C++ and C eventually. Just don’t release titles on unity. If you want to release a 2D game use godot since it can use c#. For 3d games go with unreal since it uses C++

[@JiggyJones0]

Same for me. Started using it 12 years ago when I was in highschool. I enjoyed using it way more than Unreal

[@SollomonTheWise]

this level of betrayal is unheard of.

[@Kyoshi267]

same here

[@ghosthunter0950]

Even if unity backtracks the little trust they had is completely gone now.

[@jbeaudoin11]

Imo the only way that it could work is if the CEO gets fired or resign while also assuring devs that this will never happen again. But even then, I'm not sure it would be enough.

[@kptmaci4979]

@@jbeaudoin11 yup, I hope this happens. Nothing else would make me calm about the company's state. With this irrational idiot in charge Unity is sinking ship.

[@irarelyupload6930]

@@jbeaudoin11 Yeah firing that CEO, denouncing him instead of ("Our CEO has voluntarily stepped down") bs and reversing this awfully greedy and corrupt pricing scheme is the only chance Unity has. Failing that, they are finished.

[@shadowhenge7118]

Yeah, I was planning on getting into gamedev. Was studying Unity... time to pivot. Feels like I dodged a bullet.

[@YammoYammamoto]

It's like... waking up with one's crazy girlfriend standing above you with a knife. Nobody "trusted" Unity before... - people in general just didn't think they would go THIS level of crazy. _Longwinded way of saying - I agree!_ :D

[@computerfan1079]

I think Unreal is going to gobble up the AAA/AA Unity customers and Godot is going to take over Indie with aa small part going to things like Bevy or FNA. Unity really timed this badly, if they did this 2 years ago, many people would feel Godot wasn't ready but with 4.0 being out for a while, most showstoppers are gone.

[@richardwhite6062]

Except godot is just plain terrible.

[@sleepymarauder4178]

@@richardwhite6062 Terrible but improving is better than getting fcked over by unity knowing that tomorrow will be a little worse than today.

[@richardwhite6062]

@sleepymarauder4178 but its not even thast bad. Game prices will rise with inflation. Thats whats happening here. Thats why they do it. Cuz supporting that ecosystem of games is getting more expensive.

[@ArcticWolf124_]

People will also flock to the HAVOK engine as well.

[@GreatAdos]

Unity is MUCH more flexible than Unreal Engine and can make a large variety of different games. On the other hand, Unreal Engine is mostly for 3D extremely graphically intensive FPS/TPS. Different market.

[@Zaphispo]

One of the recent games that has been very well received using Godot is Dome Keeper. It's still a small indie title, but when we get a lot more good games, it'll be a good showcase for the engine.

[@SaHaRaSquad]

And Brotato

[@stickguy9109]

People should make more 3D games in godot

[@OzzyTheGiant]

@@stickguy9109 yeah, all it takes is adoption. As more people tinker and push it to its limits, Godot will only improve. The game industry needs this now more than ever.

[@levesteM]

@@stickguy9109 Cruelty Squad is probably the most famous of the 3D Godot games, but it's also weird as hell.

[@DasIllu]

5:40 Epic did not do that because they feel like game studios are being shafted, they just want to clear out the playing field. Once the competition is dead, expect the blow. UE x being the most popular choice for high end games generates a huge income stream to support price dumping even at a loss. But once competition is dealt with, there is no reason to keep up that model. We've seen it every where in every industry. At the end of the day, the only decision left to you is what branding the turd on your burger will be.

[@containedhurricane]

We have seen it happened to Adobe, Autodesk and Unity. It will only be a matter of time before Epic Games start to capitalize on their win against Unity and other big 3D game engine companies, by increasing their prices in the future

[@Noccai]

Thankfully Godot exists, and with Unity out of the way Godot will now become Unreal's main competitor.

[@robertonome2448]

I mean thats every corporation ever for you (especially when theyre public) Dunno why people are still surprised by that sort of stuff. They NEED to be constantly on edge against their competitors in order to actually offer a good product... which was something unity wasnt, or rather, wasnt feeling like it was. And Id also blame it on a lot of the more elitists users who never even bothered to give other engines a chance... and on certain companies which also put all their eggs into the same basket. Its always a loss for everybody when it comes to this

[@ditch_magnet]

this this this. Amazon was once upon a time the best place to be a buyer, then it was the best place to be a seller, and now it's just the best place to be amazon. They operated at a loss for years in order to kill off all competition. This is just an example of using sheer capital to strongarm an industry, which is a very established practice.

[@mikaellindberg93]

I have been a hobbyist game developer for quite a while now. Even though I'm somewhere in web development land 'professionally', game development is ultimately what I'd like to spend by creative hours on if possible. I have not gone all in on development tools, as I've equally been curious about making custom game engines as I have been on actually making games. In this instance, I'm very lucky. I do, however, have multiple prototypes going in Unity, which I will just scrap or remake in a library instead - I was on the fence before, and I'm most certainly not banking on Unity now. Thank you for covering this, and also thank you for pointing people towards Godot.

[@nicosoftnt]

Same boat, this is essentially because web dev is so demanding that is very likely that you will get employed for that as your first interaction with the professional world as a developer. But I really love game development. It's true that it's rough for game developers and it's often said that they are overworked, but to be honest, I don't think they can overwork me more than what I'm experiencing right now, so might as well do what you like you know? Do you have a plan on moving towards game development professionally?

[@mikaellindberg93]

@@nicosoftnt I understand what you mean regarding being overworked, and I do to a certain degree agree with jumping over if you have the option of taking the leap. Back in 2016-2017 is when I first touched anything code related, and out of pure stubbornness I managed to beat my head against the wall and produce a couple Android games over the span of roughly a year. Both made in Unity. I've casually learned more programming since then, but never even considered the web world, really, until I got so tired of my grocery store job that I started opening up to the idea of a development job outside of games. Now don't get me wrong, I find a lot of stuff in web development really fun as well, and I've learned plenty of things - but it just doesn't fulfill me creatively in the same way game development does. So to answer your question: I very much plan to move into game development professionally if my circumstances allow it. I'm not too keen on working in a bigger team, but solo game development or a small team sounds extremely fulfilling. Summarized, I like to think of the sterotypical question: "What would you do if money wasn't a problem?" And the answer is go hard on game development. If you feel burnt out in web dev and you have the option (and want to) take the leap over to game dev, go for it! I'm rooting for you. :)

[@OzzyTheGiant]

This is a stark reminder for us web devs that if we are working with any third party tools, we need to build software that is as decoupled from the tools as possible. That way if we need to switch tools, roughly 90% of our code is reusable.

[@Terr-E]

7:18 OMG this killed me ! What a way to poke fun of the situation. I hope Godot genuinely attracts some more (game)devs because they did such a good job on the v4.0 rewite…

[@jzea5605]

totally correct about how to course correct after this, anything less than a complete apology, undo, and put in significant efforts to appease the community is not enough. Stock has tanked nearly 10% overnight. This has done nothing but hurt everybody.

[@scratchy996]

As long as they keep that CEO, the company is screwed. They should fire and sue him. He sold Unity stock the day before the new pricing announcement. That's insider trading, he should be locked up.

[@somerandomchannel382]

one thing that piss me off, is that we cannot just say. "?". And then ask Unity why they do this, and then try to have a conversation from there. Instead we rage and put out all kind of 'bs' we can think of. While Unity is like... but we did it for... x reason. While every kid just scream in the air as loud they can.

[@jzea5605]

@@scratchy996 as much as I dislike Riccitiello he only sold 0.06% of his stock with those 2000 shares which wouldnt be considered insider training in a court and is largely not the case. But he sucks don't get me wrong.

[@killerdroid99]

Godot was just so simple to get started even as a web developer

[@triplezgames3882]

...unless you want to stick to C#... 💀

[@AnUncreativeName]

​@@triplezgames3882You can use C# with it.

[@srv5614]

@@triplezgames3882 It exists an official Godot Engine NET version with C# support. Also all the docs have a GDScript, C# and C++ examples well documented

[@robertonome2448]

Imo its cuz theyre actually consistent with most of their design decisions... unlike most game engines. Take nodes and resources for example. You use them for literally everything (even for the whole engines interface). Simple as that, no need for special cases and exceptions here and there And thats kinda ironic coming from an engine thats built by a million of different random people lol

[@zerohbeat]

@@robertonome2448 Yeah I really appreciates how consistent Godot is. Defold is another great example too.

[@quantum_dongle]

I've been on both sides of game engines, developing them directly and using them as a tool. The amount talented man-hours required to keep these things running and modern is unbelievable. Part of me understands why Unity wants to increase revenue, they are the giants whose shoulders many devs stand on. This approach though, my real question is how this decision made it though every layer of management without getting scrapped.

[@BossFlight]

The real shame is they chaging nules for worse and retroactively. We never know what they are going to come up next, always breaking the implict social contract like this. It is like a girlfriend that out of blue says: "I have decided we are in a open relationship, fyi: It started 5 years ago!"

[@bisonbro7]

This probably originated right at the top. Their current CEO was CEO of EA when they started their microstransactions.

[@chazimartin7293]

I understand wanting to increase revenue, but they should have just added revenue share like unreal

[@0skuro]

Sadly, this looks like the standard MO for the Games Industry regarding monetization, only that this time it is affecting developers instead of players. Well, thinking about it, this will affect both.

[@WhatWillYouFind]

@@0skuro Games like Vampire Survivors and other small hits will just disappear over night, January 1st will be a proverbial doomsday for a lot of developers even if everything is turned back. Itch and other indie game platforms will become barren as users will stop development outright instead of gamble what might or might not come to haunt them later. Cult of the Lamb, Rogue Genesis, and other developers have began giving notice that it might just be the end.

[@SaHaRaSquad]

Unity's CEO is the dude who wanted to add $1 microtransactions for every weapon reload in Battlefield when he worked for EA. This move here is perfectly on brand for him but now it seems there's no one to hold him back from doing the really stupid stuff. Apple's chad PR opportunity now would be to just start pushing updates to Godot for their VR dev kit. Would be funny to see.

[@ditch_magnet]

this is technically a misquote. Unity's CEO never actually SUGGESTED charging a dollar to reload a weapon in battlefield, it was a hypothetical example for using ingame tension and stress to push sales of convenience based p2w microtransactions in the middle of a game. Still, the practice he was advocating is incredibly shitty.

[@ChrisKhaled83]

Please, Dont have Apple of all companies having control over Godot.

[@paprika2736]

This is not only about Unity. But also about every other service software (MS Office, Photoshop, and so on): As soon as Unity gets away with it, other companies will follow this example! Everyone is watching this now! Not just gamers, developers, but every other company too!

[@OzzyTheGiant]

That's why we gotta vote with our wallets, and our tech stacks

[@hidoryy]

there's a gamedev/youtuber that said that if his game was released in 2024 he'd owe like 5M to unity LMAO it's literally insanity

[@rlhugh]

Yeah, that was Dani

[@ammartahir5871]

I just recently started watching your videos, starting from your last Flutter dev video, and I must say, you are truly inspiring. keep up the good work

[@Kane0123]

The point about the banks is pretty hilarious. Would love to see Apple request 30% of any payments I make to my bank using the app.

[@samuelgunter]

I never expected Unity to cause so much chaos

[@landonp629]

Really? They seem to be pretty good at it from my experience.

[@MarcusBuer]

The whole rendering pipeline bullshit going on for years is a good example at how great they are at being chaotic.

[@hanes2]

It’s flutter for gamedevs. Keep liking getting punished /s

[@ryanchristian9388]

They do this like every week. 😂

[@mcRast]

I have been learning UE5 for a while now and was just starting to think that maybe i should take a look at Unity as well.. It seems that i'm going to check out Godot instead.

[@m4rt_]

In my opinion even if Unity reverts the changes people should still switch away from unity. They have now proven that they can't be trusted. And abandoning Unity will show Unity and other companies that doing this kind of thing wont end well. Also changing engines now will spare you of the frustration in the future if they change it back, or make it worse. Switchning to something like Godot will probably be the best move for most devs since its free and open source.

[@_Aarius_]

im a web/server dev and I've always wanted to get into game dev - my natural destination would be c# because i prefer it as a programmer than c++ (for unreal) - but the hostility and bullshittery has always kept me away from unity. So i never really got into it. This is...the sort of thing thats putting me off lol

[@wiztek1197]

Same here Been trying to get into defold because of Lua But its not great for 3d stuff

[@Unbreathable]

You can always use another game engine with C# support. Godot's is pretty good.

[@madduckling4436]

There's flax game engine too along side Godot and Stride

[@OzzyTheGiant]

Same, that's been on my backlog to do as well. Unity is off the list, Godot is definitely gonna be on my radar now. I also heard Godot's game architecture embraces a similar pattern to MVC which should feel familiar to us web devs.

[@Unbreathable]

@@OzzyTheGiant I've made games in both Unity and Godot before and they're almost exactly the same when it comes to how the engine is structured. I don't know how you would use a MVC pattern for game engines, but it's definitely not in Godot. Godot uses more of a component tree. Everything is basically a node, there is gonna be a root node and you can attach child nodes and to those child nodes you can attach more child nodes. I guess it's more like React components if you think about it.

[@sleepymarauder4178]

Every time a company goes public, life gets a little worse.

[@kptmaci4979]

Im mid development on one major project in Unity, started last year few lesser ones. I was learning Unity for 4 years. Im working daily in Unity. This makes me wish I could go back 4 years back and pick Unreal. I will release my games on terms of previous agremeent. If they choose to charge me on new terms, I would like to see them pay for lawyers to enforce that charge, while they simultaneously pay me back for 4 years of intense learning of their engine, also for my college, whey they taught unity on the previous terms, while they pull out a rug from under me and make that engine unprofitable, so I have to waste another few years of my one life i got to learn something totally else.

[@Yoctopory]

I can imagine how you feel. I have been learning Unity for 2-3 years now and started my first game project around 6 month ago. Still, I'll probably switch to a different engine.

[@goldydog1]

Make sure no one on your team updates the unity editor after it takes effect if you want to go that route. But that also means you won't get any new updates until you agree to the new terms. Even if you don't update, they'll probably just have a frivolous lawsuit. There's also practically 0% chance they're going to compensate you for education. Not trying to be a jerk, but that's most realistically what will happen

[@MeShellTiel]

I am in the same boat as you. I chose Unity over Unreal because of the vast number of resources available to learn the engine. Now here I sit 3 years later looking for a new Engine to learn all over again. 3 years wasted.

[@NeonValleys]

Same here, I will finish my project in unity I can't switch at this point, but I'm starting to learn unreal on the side, I'm done with unity after this.

[@OzzyTheGiant]

Jesus Christ! all that education and then all the tutorials out there on KZbin, Udemy, etc. This is a real category 5 💩storm

[@jamesclark2663]

As a Unity dev I did very much enjoy the engine. Starting around 2017 it took a noticeable dive though. A brief period of hope revived my love in late 2018 through 2019 and everything after that has been just disappointment. I did and still do really love the core of what Unity is. But I can't go on with these terms. It's time to pursue other avenues.

[@LegndGames_YT]

"And they decided to one-up their community by showing that they hate them even more". Got a good chuckle out of me on that one... A sad chuckle, but a good one.

[@ivanavdeyev7297]

about Epic Games charging a lower percentage than Steam. steam takes 30 percent commission, but steam has communities, trading platform, workshop, guides, broadcasts and many APIs to integrate the game with steam. What of this can Epic Games give? Different level of service, so the price is different. It would be cool if developers could not pay for what they don't use, but that's another topic for discussion,

[@yarapolana]

I always wanted to get into unity but this puts a hard stop in my interest.

[@SzaboB33]

I low key want Unity to f up because it will bring some people to Godot which would solve one of it's biggest problem: small asset library

[@ChristopherCricketWallace]

This has been the most insightful video on this issue that I have seen so far.

[@asifzamanpls]

epic's doing a great job for developers but god their app is unusable. steam in comparison has a much better app which is easy to navigate (relatively), and the whole community aspect of it is i think the main selling point. plus theres the workshop for easy installation and sharing of mods. i dont think epic games store can win the steam users over (which is like 90% of pc gaming) without all of those things no matter how many games they give out for free. its just a totally different experience.

[@kiddhkane]

yeah but epic is the worst publisher ever. Very shady, china owned, no buy.

[@stephenmontague6930]

​ @kiddhkane Tencent has a 40% stake - that is interesting. Tim Sweeny controls Epic and others own 60%... still, good to keep an eye on and be careful - and yet - there's tons of US-China business partnerships (with Tesla, Apple, you name it - like, many favorite board games...) - it's mostly for making money, I assume, but yeah, not ideal.

[@kombuchas4684]

​@@kiddhkaneSo just because a chinese company has a large stake it is automatically shady? I believed what you people were saying for years and yet epic has not done anything to actually be shady. Just say you hate chinese people and that is the only reason.

[@3ventic]

I have a much more cynical view on Epic Store and what Epic Games is doing with it all. They're a big company and under a publicly traded holding company. If they manage to create the walled garden for game development, they would very likely start pushing changes that benefit them but others disagree with, counting on studios to not have a real alternative anymore. Maybe Tim Sweeney's intentions are genuine, but what happens when he's no longer the CEO or if there's more pressure for profit from Epic's owners?

[@artoodiitoo]

Also remember that China (CCP) owns Epic

[@nezzled]

Lmao no they don't@@artoodiitoo

[@stephenmontague6930]

​@@artoodiitoo Hey, got a source? Believe that's a false rumor. [Edit - cut out the "What the hell..." dramatics - no need for that, I guess. Your comment just surprised me.]

[@stephenmontague6930]

Good to be a skeptic, but keep in mind that the Epic Games Store is just an alternative to... STEAM and others that are hugely dominant. These super friendly dev and player policies are the only reason the Epic GS can exist at all. Pretty sure Amazon and Google both failed at setting up a viable game service, while Epic, with its game-dev roots, has pulled it off.

[@stephenmontague6930]

ok, googled it - Tencent has a 40% stake, which is significant, something to keep in mind, especially if you're chatting in game about foreign policy or trade secrets... uh, you probably shouldn't do that on a game platform - but still - Tim Sweeny controls Epic and others own 60% - and if we don't like any US-China business, we'll have to throw out a big chunk of the US economy right now, unfortunately.

[@Kuj]

Best breakdown of this ive seen. over the last year I just started using Unity again with a few buddies to make a game and this has us really on edge.

[@VektrumSimulacrum]

Brotato was also made in GODOT and that game slays. It's so good for what it is and I'm not even that big of a fan of the bullet hell genre.

[@thricemindblown7883]

Very insightful. You have a very informing approach to affiliation as well.

[@linkfang9300]

I always think charging by percentage is a SICK business model. Using percentage feels like a super easy way for giant companies to earn money by doing almost nothing, and that's it.

[@OzzyTheGiant]

Yeah that reeks of pyramid scheme vibes

[@xxProjectJxx]

This is the equivalent of a guitar company charging a musician for every time their song was listened to on Spotify

[@valentinminkov995]

I feel Theo is staring straight in my soul. Great video as always, keep it up.

[@ianhtexas]

Also, think about the multi billion dollar companies in industries that use Unity but don't make games for downloads like automotive, medical, simulation training, etc. They can actually afford some increase in fees but it doesn't look like they will even be touched by this. It's just crazy.

[@twenty-fifth420]

I don't know why I am so invested, I am a Godot Dev and if I had to use one of the big 2, I was already predisposed to Unreal. Also, hot take. Very spicy. I am passionate about open source and I am writing this comment on Pop OS. But Epic integration and UE store is far more valuable to me then Unity Store. If I chose to put microtransactions or DLC or anything inbetween, Epic Store seems to me to have more focus on the actual business of making games rather then the business of pretending to care about Gamers. Now I still love Godot, but my computer is also 7+ years old. If I had a newer PC, I would definitely use Unreal.

[@generatoralignmentdevalue]

I have games I've reinstalled and run a dozen times, even on desktop. Some are, y'know, Skyrim, but some are made by a solo dev. I don't even remember which of those are Unity games. Most gamers never know this stuff. This takes away my ability to look at an indie game and go, "I want to support this. I'll buy it." Having that game could actually lose that dev money. That's insane. I'm kinda scared to even play Unity games right now. That's so many devs I respect whose work has been poisoned until this is over. Everyone remember that when Unity does back off, that that just means this was a stunt to make the new model look good in comparison. The only acceptable result is they go back to exactly how things were before this. Anything less, and they put all their devs through this just to get away with making things incrementally worse instead.

[@summonthecat]

I started with unity when I started making games. Now I'm using it for prototyping my first commercial game. But now I am heartbroken cause accounting said we actually cant afford the now fees. Time for the team to learn Godot.

[@LostRelicGames]

We appreciate your honest coverage of the situation

[@souvlaki42]

For me it's very sad when a big technology companies like Unity or Reddit "forget" to respect the hard work developers put to make them big. I didn't know for this drama. Very good video.

[@ambuj.k]

2023 is so wild that every company and project is trying to press the "DO NOT PRESS" red button when you least expect them to. First it was the Rust Foundation, then DHH and now Unity.

[@therebelliousgeek4506]

Imagine a paint company charging the artist every time somebody views their picture.

[@CapitalistDream]

So if you are a car company, you will switch to plastic when steel price is up? Betrayal! I already designed my car in steel. What about price your game higher? What’s the logic here?

[@therebelliousgeek4506]

@@CapitalistDream But it's only just one steel company who's management keeps destroying their own business, first by abandoning Gigaya and now this, since other's still have their prices in control, so it's better to switch suppliers now, than going down with a sinking ship. Because we know what motivates the management, and it's definitely not innovation and the organic growth that comes with it. Expect more moves like this.

[@MrRecorder1]

Godot is pretty awesome! I did a lot oh hobby-style mini games in it in the past. Interactive birthday cards for my friends etc. It is super awesome. It was my first game engine and ever since wondered if Unity copied Godot or vice versa...?

[@Veritanky]

unity is from 2004 and godot from after 2010....so .... Still small hobby games are nothing when you compare people making massive game like genshin impact

[@MrRecorder1]

@@Veritanky Hey... thanks for the info. Did not know which one came first. But I am pretty sure that the tech between the two engines is not that different. What IS different is the availability of ready-to-use resources. From what I understand Unity's asset store is quite good for small teams. Godot does not have that.

[@joedollarbiden9823]

Birtday cards ? really man ? Oh come on get something expensive next time they'll love it believe me.

[@bossmusa9075]

in small defense of unity, they charge games that wiil have big user base. And if it is a free to play game without microtransaction they will not charge you

[@bioburden]

Well said, I especially enjoyed your closing thoughts.

[@distantforest2481]

Dome Keeper is also a popular game that was made in godot recently!

[@jonathandawson3091]

Besides giving other game engines the limelight they were due, what this has done for me is to find more channels like yours. So I do have to thank them for the at least.

[@scottcastle9119]

Fee on new installs only: Once you meet the two install and revenue thresholds, you only pay the runtime fee on new installs after Jan 1, 2024. It’s not perpetual: You only pay once for an install, not an ongoing perpetual license royalty like a revenue share model.

[@OzzyTheGiant]

Wow, I didn't even realize the whole thing about the Vision Pro. As someone who advocates against using Apple, this is music to my ears. I really hope this leaves a huge dent in Apple's bottom line. On the other hand, if they acquire Unity, I will never use Unity at all. I will not support anything from Apple until they embrace open source, right-to-repair, consumer friendly principles.

[@ChristopherCricketWallace]

I'm subbing. You're on fire, man.

[@gridvid]

I enjoyed developing in Unity and I think I will never reach their threshold of $200000 per year ... having said that. I completely lost trust in the company I used to like (a lot)

[@MarcusBuer]

"Apple can't partner with unreal, lawsuit" One of the new features of Unreal 5.3 is it being optimized to run on M2 chips, so it should work properly Vision Pro, including the raytracing tech. Epic cares more about their revenue and gamedevs than about hurting Apple. They have their priorities straight.

[@marbacc]

I know companies just don't have the resources to immediately switch to another engine from one day to the next, but if I was a developer I would definitely start thinking on how to switch engine in the future, regardless of what Unity does next. A decision so bold and abrupt like that just lost my trust. Especially when its developers try to make changes and the company does not even aknowledge them.

[@gecko6872]

EDIT: Unity posted a few updates that seem to address most concerns - see underlying discussion. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 3:00 The example is not just 14%, it's a monthly running cost of potentially 14% of the last 12 month's earnings as players clear drive space, then reinstall again later.

[@anhi399]

That's not how it works--his numbers are way off and I don't think you're understanding the billing when you suggest players reinstalling on the same device retrigger the fee as that's explicitly covered. In the example figure you can't assume that the lifetime downloads of the game are what generated the 12 month revenue--that would mean they were selling the game at forty cents per copy, or in a freemium model, only generating forty cents on average per user. Since the installs are calculated monthly you also have to account for the revenue that new users are generating, we can throw out the costs of people replaying a relic game in their library as games making less than $1M a year or $200K on the pro plan (but why stay on pro if you're making that much money) don't trigger any costs, the $23.5K is a fee relative to last month's sales while a game is currently generating substantial revenue. Like if the Godot game Luck Be A Landlord ($10) was made in Unity and had that particular 300k of installs (different markets using those plans) it would cost 0.0088% of their $3M revenue on those installs... And that's WHILE its making over a $1M a year. If we said a 100k (a third) of those installs were some how fraudulent, miscalculated, or in some way didn't generate revenue, then the fee still wouldn't even hit 1%. Even if the game used it's entire lifetime revenue to finance debt, in order to make a mil a year they would need to move 8400 copies at their price point for a bill of $1.5K a month... which is just above 1% of the game's revenue for that period. The blowback Unity is getting over this is redic. There's more to talk about the TOS changing than there is anything to say about a less than one percent change in pricing...

[@gecko6872]

@@anhi399 I just saw that Unity clarified a few statements. So the problem was trying to sell it as a random runtime fee, per install, with bad explanations, unclear examples, and no justification. They could have just said 1% of future monthly sales revenue while the 12-month average is above $200K (or $1M pro), and been open about how they want to invest that income. I'm guessing nobody would have even blinked, and the effect is practically the same. It does appear that cheaper games will be making less money, but paying a higher percent of their income per sale, compared to more expensive games that reach the fee limits. Am I miscalculating?

[@UNKNWN96]

This is absolutely wild, game dev is what made me want to learn how to program. I'm starting with frontend dev to land a job and want to make an indie game on the side for the "fun" of it but sheesh this is insane. I hope people in the industry make it known how predatory this behavior is, Unity is one of the leading platforms for game dev and this will suck the life out of many studios who are already struggling financially.

[@ipv6tf2]

Godot is free and open-source.. and you can migrate from Unity to it!

[@KonradGM]

No you can't. People love to praise godot, but it isn't nowhere near unity on 3d part. You can't also build for all platforms on it (Consoles, closed source SDK's). Godot will probably win, but it's nowhere near there yet, and people need to stop pretending it is.

[@joelpearson2352]

@@KonradGMhopefully the more 3d developers that start contributing to the open source engine, the quicker it would catch up.

[@KonradGM]

@@joelpearson2352 Generally i hope too. There are two main concerns with GODOT that i have now though that are not related to just in how mature state it is: 1. building to consoles. Those SDK's are not open source and they cant be on GODOT without licence change 2.GDScript being the main scripting langugae, i would prefer if the main one was a regular programming language one (yes i know it supports c# and rust too, but most of it features are supported mostly on GDscript including mobile which is not even possible on C#)

[@RealFableFox]

Re: Apple Vision Pro. Just like the new rules on game pass - i think there will be a separate deal on it, in which Apple just say, "now... look at Unreal" in which Unity will not charge Apple anything at all - as in no install charges on vision pro (which also a new change on webgl games?). I mean, as you said, Apple have different rules when dealing with large companies, and this is where all they have to say "no install charges on vision pro" and unity will take it.

[@jsgdk]

Dropped Unity a few years ago for unrelated reasons, glad I did even though I am only a hobbyist so far.

[@PontonFSD]

One of the questions in the FAQ say the "distributor" is billed such as Microsoft for Game Pass, but is so vague it can imply Valve, Epic, Sony, Nintendo, Alphabet, and Apple as well. To think all of them will go along with it is crazy.

[@shanekdev]

9:14 At this point a massive apology isn't even enough. As long as Riccitello has anything to do with Unity, it can never be trusted.

[@Hadi-gd7ul]

Finally, I found the answer to the question of "What should I use? Unity or UE?" .

[@liviuemanuel82]

Epic doesn't do that for Game Devs, it does that to get the cut of Steam and others :) IF they would not have the exclusives, i would have love them, but the epic exclusives makes me throw almost all they did into the trash. This is, for me, just a business model to compete with Steam and not a very good one. The changes are good, but the exclusive thing just kills it. And really think that epic will be much further now if they didn't have the exclusive part. People would love them, not hate them. Other than that, 100% agree with what you say :)

[@ojan715]

Nah man, epic did sue apple to help epic and other developers to avoid the 30% tax on appstore. Does that have anything to do with steam? Let's be honest here, you steam fanboys are too comfortable with steam monopoly, steam is like a part of your life now. That's why when a new competition arise and threatens steam, you act hostile towards it. I'm just glad that I'm not using steam that often, otherwise I might develop hatred towards epic and missing all those benefits of being an epic customers.

[@AlbatrossCommando]

@@ojan715 All the benefits being the bribes Epic issues to developers and... that's about it. so yeah excuse me for not liking a massive billion dollar company trying to buy their way into success with their objectively inferior product while having the gall to act like some hero of the people.

[@ojan715]

@@AlbatrossCommando There is nothing wrong with epic paying developer for exclusive deals to boost their userbase. I mean developers themselves want the deals, and there is no stopping customers to have multiple launcher on their pc. It's not like pc gaming is owned by steam. And it's not like steam does not have exclusive games (in fact steam has tons more exclusive games than epic). Oh and epic being inferior to steam is very subjective as I have never rely on steam niche features to have fun playing games. That until epic start giving away free games, coupons, cashback while improving their launcher. Now epic is superior than steam, at least for me.

[@liviuemanuel82]

@@ojan715 epic broke an agreement and then they sued apple. I sign a contract with you, i broke it, and then i sue you. Do you think is fair?! epic are not the good guys! Sure all are corporations, all want more money, but epic does it in one of the worst possible ways!

[@liviuemanuel82]

@@ojan715 actually it is. as a costumer I look at the best price and/or store. The price is the same, and epic store is waaaaaaaay inferior to steam! we are on PC, we shouldn't have exclusives problems like on console! Epic IS inferior, there's nothing subjective. If they spend that money in the platform instead of bribing devs, they would have been miles ahead from where they are now. Competition is good, but epic does it in a very bad way for costumers ! So basically you are saying than: epic gives me free stuff, so it';s superior. IT's NOT !!! We talk about features, NOT free games! Also: "The power of free is a psychological phenomenon that has been studied in the field of marketing. According to Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, people change their behavioral patterns when something free comes along. Free isn’t just an indicator of price. It’s a powerful emotional trigger that’s often irresistible. When you pay your hard-earned cash for something, you’re taking a risk. You might not like what you get, in which case you’d actually lose money. And who likes losing money? When an item is free, it’s perceived as having a higher value because it doesn’t come with that risk 1. Free stuff is the way into people’s heart - and brains 1. The power of free can be harnessed by businesses and policymakers to inspire large numbers of people to act favorably 1." That's what they are doing. It's ok, but all the other stuff is bad. Don't look just at the free games and less revenue share, look at all they business model and you will see that beside free games and lower revenue share they have NOTHING good!

[@TheIpicon]

Actually (I learned it the hard way), apple's 100 dollar fee is just the *enrollment*, and if you're an organization the annual fee is not 100 but 300$ a year...

[@TheIpicon]

Apple Developer Enterprise Program***

[@CaptRespect]

Crazy that thier own example is: "This company will need to give us all the money"

[@itslemonandrew]

upside-down Astro and Svelte logo as a VS is hilarious

[@Scalinsky]

Epic's policies aren't altruistic though. They're trying to incentive people to switch to the Epic Store. You can be sure that if they manage to get a sizeable chunk of the market they will up their fees. It's the same strategy as Uber or Doordash did. The one long term benefit of having Epic developing the Epic Store is that they'll compete against Steam, which might get Steam to do more effort to retain players and developers. But Epic going above and beyond with low fees and loans is purely self motivated.

[@jimmyneutron129]

No business is altruistic lol

[@JBroMCMXCI]

Apple acquiring Unity could be likely as they seem to be focusing more on gaming with iPhone 15

[@OzzyTheGiant]

But given that Apple remains determined to stay behind its walled garden, what's the point? Unity will become just for apple devices. They are not trustworthy enough to allow us to use Unity outside of Apple.

[@Godalming123]

I thought that epic v apple was just 2 companies fighting over million dollar bills, thank you for shedding light on this. I guess that even though epic could add Fortnite to the app store again, they haven't yet.

[@w1-w2-w3]

I even stopped my current Unity game project which was planning to release the end of this month. That shit scare me. Unreal is good but most of the game developers don't like Unreal because of C++ and blueprint. Now, I'm trying to change my game to Godot. But at the end of the day, I still need to use Unreal for 3D game.

[@gecko6872]

You're practically done, and the fees only apply once it reaches high revenue. Why don't you just go ahead with publishing, and keep track of that metric? You can still port to Godot or start a fresh project afterwards.

[@07vShorts]

@@gecko6872 Making a game twice, in two different engines, is counter intuitive..

[@gecko6872]

​Not quite what I meant😂I'm wondering why you want to do a full port into a different game engine, two weeks before the originally planned publishing date. The fee only affects us at $200K total revenue ($1M for Pro), so I personally would just publish.

[@gecko6872]

​@@07vShorts Unity either backpedaled or clarified - it's now per sale, and most games won't be affected at all anyway. If you do some ridiculous math, any affected games above $3 sale price will effectively pay less than 2% of their income per additional sale. Still unnecessarily complicated and imbalanced, but not nearly as severe as it was made to sound. I also edited my previous comment, as unity addressed the concerns and I don't want to accidentally spread those misconceptions.

[@Spacemonkeymojo]

Wow Valve take a 30% cut for selling on Steam? I knew Apple take 30% but didn’t know Valve took the same. I feel like that’s way too much, they provide a storefront which provides reach but if you don’t have a game engine you can’t make a game in the first place.

[@ChristopherCricketWallace]

This is about the shareholder price and the big games. They see big mobile games (often from big publishers/developers) and the occasional indie hit (Among Us, maybe). Unity just wants to wet their beak.

[@AceArata]

Ngl i never really paid attention to Epic Games Store. Steam was just more convenient for me because of my modding addiction, but hearing about what Epic does for game devs? I might start using that platform more

[@Zack_Wester]

the thing whit the Epic 8-15% cut is that I dont expect it to stay and that it sooner or late will become a 20-25% cut not steam 30% but its not going to stay at 5-15%.

[@st.altair4936]

FOSS is the only way; proprietary software only exists to please investors and sell their 'customers' Godot 4 is fantastic already, and O3DE seems to have a bright future ahead.

[@johanngambolputty5351]

Godot&FOSS for the people! Proprietary for the shareholders looking to leverage dependency...

[@scott98390]

Epic takin' a page from Steve Ballmer: "Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers"

[@yurathedigital7077]

Pirates and hackers: You may strike me down but i shall return stronger than ever

[@lancemarchetti8673]

When Unreal Engine incorporated modeling tools into the editor 2 years ago, it didn't take long for me to jump ship from Unity.

[@willywallyb2379]

I've been excited to try and develop a game in Godot actually, the ability to develop in 2d and 3d in one engine is really cool

[@odra873]

So maybe we should talk why steam is allowed to get 30% on every buy but unity not allowed to also take part of the cake? Whats more value / complex? Webstore vs. unity Ofc their per install fee is stupid and its a problem in general that everybody tries to get % of your business instead of flat fees

[@tomasviane3844]

That is like Gibson, Tama, Yamaha and other musical instrument producers wanting a cut of all the music that is made with their instruments. Of course, the difference is that musicians would change instrument in a beat, while with Unity they are stuck behind a learning curve.

[@Haapavuo]

Unity payment must be considered from GROSS SALES which means that the total cost percentage for devs will be even higher. Steam cut will be also taken from the total sales (minus VAT tax and refunds). So devs will pay twice from the actual gross sales. Then devs will also need to pay revenue tax, income tax, salaries, accounting etc... Currently without Unity license costs, devs get average 40% net from the total gross sales. Add the ridiculous Unity costs and devs will get about 25-30%...

[@garypatterson2857]

Wait... that bit about indie devs subsidising banks on iOS is a poor point to make. Banks give away their apps and you don't use their apps to purchase anything. They do this to support their customers in putting their money into the banks (their actual business). Indie devs are selling games or in-app purchases. Totally different concept. On top of that, a dev giving away their game for free isn't subsidising anyone (or making money, but that's what the banks are doing). iOS revenue comes mainly from the big apps and their in-app purchases. Indie devs are a small part of that. They're not subsidising anyone.

[@massam9343]

Imagine a paint company charging an artist for everyone who views their painting. Imagine a concrete company charging a builder for everyone who walks into a building. Imagine a tool company charging a carpenter for everyone who sits in a chair.

[@BossFlight]

Unity shows Its face since inception, priorities were neither games nor gamedevs but monetization and asset store sales, they have never developed a decent game, It is a shame because I really like Unity stack. The difference is evident when we compare to Unreal, made by game developer with focus on games and game developers first! Epic takes a 5% cut but can someone honestly say that is not fair ?

[@real23lions]

I don’t play PC games so I didn’t know that about Epic. That Epic story is pretty awesome

[@prepperchris1]

the longer this goes feels like its the land the free drop the r

[@SamyarBorder]

this makes me appreciate the web because almost everything is open source.

[@OzzyTheGiant]

The only baddie out here is Oracle, but thankfully Java and MySQL have drop-in open-source replacements.

[@goobiesgamegarage4517]

Big issue is even if they walk all of this back, no studio can feel good about starting a project in unity. This is a clear signal they will put profits over devs any chance they get. Time to move to a new engine.

[@jungsa4691]

yea, I'm already swapping over to Unreal, Since it supports C# and I was already developing a 3D game, It was no brainer. I always wanted to start with Unreal anyway. This and epic games model is waay more attractive now.

[@olygood]

Great video, I am a web javascript developer and when I want to turn to video games there is not much can be PHASER js. Not great

[@GwyndolinOwO]

I like Godot a lot. It has flaws (its not the beast at 3D yet, but at least Unreal exists for that) but i love it. Its my preferred engine. I think as Godot gets better more people will start using it. I think the weird situation its in is that not a lot of people make games with it, therefor there aren't a lot of good games and tutorials yet, and it tricks people into thinking the engine sucks when a lot of it is just about developers getting used to the workflow Godot offers. And since its free it means a lot of people who might be new to game development will be making games, which is overall a good thing, even if it means bad games are being made because of that.

[@OzzyTheGiant]

Yeah that's all it is. In the web development world, everyone uses React, even though I personally think it sucks, yet Svelte exists and has great development experience, but few people adopt it because of "lack of ecosystem and community", which is really just a chicken and egg problem. Adoption is key, which in turn leads to improvement.

[@GwyndolinOwO]

@@OzzyTheGiant Yeah breaking out of that cycle kinda sucks. Trying something new when what you have does what you expect it to is though too, even if it has flaws. It gets really easy to pick out reasons why you shouldn't change your workflow and what you're used to.

[@dancingdoormanable]

Interesting to hear that Apple may acquire Unity, because of their precious VR goggles. Microsoft is floating around too as a possible buyer, but I doubt they will touch it with the ongoing Blizzard thing. I think every decent corporate player will stay away from Unity because it's tainted. My guess AppLoving buy's it after the CEO tries to save his skin with 50% layoffs. Not good for most involved, but the shareholders need to recoup something. It's not like Unity is a financial institution that needs to be saved in order to save the economy. Bad management is a risk of doing business after all. Both Unity investors as well as all those small firms that put their trust in the wrong supplier should have known better. Isn't it to be expect that something like this would happen considering the track record of the CEO and the way Unity is bleeding money?

[@zerohbeat]

Yeah I agree, Microsoft should stay out of it. Apple kinda makes the most sense... Tencent or some other large game publisher may go for it. Supposedly there was a buyout offer last year by Apploving but Unity merged with IronSource (Apploving's competitor)......... so many twists and turns.....

[@therebelliousgeek4506]

The issue I have with Unity is there focus, first they killed Gigaya, and now this.

[@makeavoy]

It's a great time for the development of small game engines ☕