Unity Game Engine DISASTER: The Full Breakdown | Weekly Gaming News

[@Rhykker]

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[@gunting]

It is illogical and nonsensical decision. I've never seen this kind of monetization before on any game engines. Monthly Unity license to pay per month, and on top of that, pay per install as an extra tax with no real value added. Like what the f? They are so desperate to get an extra 'cent'. I guess it's time to join the "Godot community"... Type godot dot community on your browser address bar and find your new home!

[@Reelix]

So - When's the Ashley Madison or Equifax sponsorship? :)

[@MrJonHimself]

Can't imagine how brutal the lack of success Diablo 4 has seen has been for you, I'm sure you were expecting it to be a big boom for your channel. Keep your head up Rhykker, you do great work.

[@duskshadow25]

It's not his fault.; it's purely just Diablo 4 is not a good game and has a huge disappointment to the community, especially if they're charging $70 for the game. Not only is the game not worth $70, but the money you're paying for doesn't even live up to the service you're getting. D4 spent more money on advertising and marketing than actually developing the game itself. You can clearly see that at their game convention.

[@DarkWanderer666]

Who said D4 has been a lack of success? Blizzard doesn't think so. Keep whining about D4, or go play Last Epoch.

[@DarkWanderer666]

​@@duskshadow25Yes, Blizzard truly cares about long time Diablo fans complaining (:

[@jprice_]

@@DarkWanderer666 who said he was talking about the kind of 'success' that d4 got 😅 ie the kind of success that allows content creators to blow up

[@XIIISerpents]

​@@DarkWanderer666Blizzard thinks it's a success because they stole hundreds of millions and everyone did go play Last Epoch because D4 sucks.

[@jprice_]

Unity severely underestimated basic psychology. Nobody buys their clarification that only fraction of devs will be liable to pay these new charges because everyone dreams and imagines themselves as a successful dev one day.

[@alexhulea2735]

unless ricitello and all asshats like him get blacklisted from the industry, this kind of shit will never stop

[@jtsole7565]

I am a game developer. A indie team solely made possible by unity. We are shocked and appalled by this news. It scares us, I don’t know what will happen to our game. We are 4 years deep into development of an unreleased game. The amount of money we have paid to unity already is frightening. I hope things change, I know for a fact this is the only game on unity we will ever develop.

[@Rhykker]

All the best!

[@jtsole7565]

@@Rhykker thank you for raising awareness!

[@PrimalWildfire]

Old farts everywhere taking every last dollar they can get at all costs as usual. This is a sad state the economy is in. They only care about getting their money.

[@BaconMcSwagger]

I am a game dev as well in a similar situation our team is quite worried by this news. I just can't believe that Unity (the engine kind of made for smaller devs and Indie devs) would even try and do this. Seems like Unity wants to bleed us all dry at this point.

[@jtsole7565]

@@BaconMcSwagger the way we look at it, once this 200k download effects us we already made it. It’s just scary to think this could just be the beginning

[@dionrobison8516]

In D4: the problem isn’t getting to lvl 100… it’s what to do between levels 70 to 100 that’s fun. You could hit lvl 200 - it won’t change the endgame.

[@magickmynd1296]

"not accusing them of insider trading because they have been selling shares in a pattern over the past year". Just like with game development, decisions like what Unity did don't just "happen" suddenly. No one just woke up one day and said, hey, let's screw over a big portion of our users! No, that kind of thought is generally far in advance and discussed in meeting after meeting for a long time and I can assure you that anyone in the executive team who heard the proposal knew what it was going to do to their stock prices and pre-emptively started selling just so that they wouldn't be accused of insider trading. 100% premeditated and absolutely insider trading.

[@RealMrObvious1]

You look tired @Rhykker. Your eyes give it away. Take a break and get healthy!

[@legendaryvicius]

That or he went all in with the necro look.

[@SergentJConn]

He does look tierd. Take care Rykker

[@SymbolicLogic24]

I noticed that as well

[@MrScratch69]

Yeah dude get outside for a couple of days.

[@merikijiya13]

He always has looked like that

[@MsRafaelRGO]

the funny part is. leveling faster at early levels is not very good, if you don't have time to get some items you get outpowered by monster, super fast, it already happen close to the "power jumps" of items levels

[@LtksK]

Depends on how leveling faster works. If it's just more exp, like it is in this case, you'll run into your mentioned problem. But they could also increase mob density while at the same time decreasing mob health and push leveling speed that way. Due to more kills you would get more items as well. A third option would be to increase exp as they did and increase loot drops as well.

[@thinkagain9315]

People leveling from Tier 2 to 3 are already at this risk if they go much further beyond lvl 50. Doesn’t look like the were paying attention to their game design strategies. Level scaling on D4 is bad design. It’s funny how they are lacking creative takes borrowing things from their other IPs. It’s like they are out of money to hire new artists to think it through.

[@Roughneck7712]

Unity’s new pricing model will go down as the BEST marketing strategy in history … for Godot

[@robertg6019]

Nope Bud has the worst ever marketing strategy that can never be beat.

[@Boris82]

The best worst 😆

[@ash1kh]

Godot doesn't need marketing. They are open source. They are not actively looking for customers and run ads campaign. Use your brain bro. Anyone can use it or dump it. It won't effect how they develop it with passion as the dev fund is generous after following footsteps of blender.

[@Boris82]

@@ash1kh No one here said it needed marketing. The fact it gets some free 'marketing' is something else.

[@ash1kh]

@@Boris82 once again "marketing" terms is used when you need active customers. 😂 basic, free or paid.

[@GatsuGaming]

On the Square Enix stock news with regards to FF16, maybe their sales would have been better if it wasn't a console exclusive? They're artificially limiting themselves to a VERY small market in PS5 owners which will absolutely have an effect there!

[@gaberielpendragon]

Yea, not releasing on PC in this age is just bad business. Small indie devs can get away with it for a bit, but AAA devs definitely can't.

[@SerenRhewi]

The ff16 not meeting sales is also false Ff16 met their sales expectations it just didnt meet their high end expectation

[@THEAETIK]

I worked at a game company that was working directly with Unity as what you could call their Guinea pigs for 2 years before they finally decided to set sails on Unreal instead. Bullet dodged. It looks like there's already tutorials on how to port to Godot, the next best alternative to Unity, it's also open source.

[@ShadeAKAhayate]

I imagine someone like MihoYo moving from Unity to GoDot with their Genshin Impact and Star Raill would work wonders for this engine if they contributed to it. They didn't announce anything yet, but I presume their higher-ups are already trying to solve the problem.

[@st.altair4936]

​@@ShadeAKAhayate I can't imagine mihoyo staying on Unity after this, even if it takes ludicrous amounts of resources to convert it to something else. This hurts f2p models most after all. Doubt they'd convert it to Godot though. As cool and beneficial to the engine that would be, 3d is much better done in UE right now. Or maybe they'll make their own engine, realizing the risks of relying on another company's. It's gonna be a very interesting next couple years.

[@ShadeAKAhayate]

@@st.altair4936 Well, whatever they decide, interesting it will be, indeed)

[@larkendelvie]

On the Unity thing - don't forget - if you are a studio making money you pay a licensing fee per dev seat (this has been the case for years) plus this new crap. There is some part of this that is retroactive and that brings up all the crap they have done with the TOS on the sly over the last few months.

[@solitude7566]

One thing that has bothered me about D4 from day one is the whole additive vs multiplicative way stats are handled. The different damage buckets and behind the scenes calculations that leave players in the dark, and now experience. It just needlessly misleads the player for no apparent reason. This is really annoying and the tooltips really need to say what they do.

[@matthuck378]

All video games need to be more transparent in their systems. They need better tooltips and a built in PDF manual. What's nice about playing CRPGs like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is the fact that Pathfinder's rules are available to read, and the game itself explains EVERYTHING. (yeah, it's 100's of pages, but still)

[@Funkpocalypse]

​@@matthuck378sure, it's hundreds of pages, but it's a reference book, so its easy to check the index and flip to where your query is. Imagine how nice it'd be if we had that for every game, where we can just learn the internal, the behind the scenes, but we just...don't. Sure, it's a lot of work, but hey, you could prolly pay some struggling technical writer 5 grand advance to compile everything.

[@luciusliu9417]

I would say that's *apart* of their design. Leaving you guessing. Making you spend hours upon hours testing and gear-swapping (using their systems- continually playing). Were it clear, would you spend as much time on theory-building your perfect set of gear/skills?

[@solitude7566]

@@luciusliu9417 From my perspective most players fall into one of two categories. There are those like myself that don't want to dive too deep into min maxing. I like everything to be intuitive and easily understood without external resources. That's not to say I don't put a lot of thought into my builds, I just prefer to figure things out myself rather than going off guides. In order for me to do this I need the tool tips to be accurate. I'm not capable or willing to do in depth testing on the various systems to figure out what's additive and what isn't, I just want to pick up the game and build my own character and be able to believe what a tool tip is telling me. The other type of player does min max. They want to be as efficient as possible. They rely less on their own experiences and prefer to search out external resources. For this type of player the tool tips can be off and it won't really matter because there will be some hardcore fans online they can learn from. I don't know if the type of design you mention would benefit either player. And if that really was Blizzard's intent they would be better off not supplying any info about skills at all leaving everything up to the player to discover. Presently they give us a good deal of information, some of it is just misleading.

[@Boris82]

I agree, i absolutely hate it.

[@gorodn009]

In D4 I'm currently lvl 78 and I honestly don't feel like playing anymore. Takes forever to level up. I wish the game have a better end game system or at the very least a party finder, a leaderboard and more interesting seasonal themes

[@st.altair4936]

The one good thing coming out of this is the possibility of Godot becoming the Blender of game engines someday, thanks to this exodus. And we wont have to worry about something like this happening again. An influx of devs is massive for the development speed of open-source software like Godot.

[@grumdiddlydoo3559]

"and we wont have to worry about something like this happening again." I can't tell if this is sarcasm or unnecessary optimism. In fairness, I'm largely clueless on how these game engine company's operate. What I am aware of though, is that once something becomes popular enough, eventually they get offered a price they won't refuse. In short, what ever game engine rises in the coming years, would face a similar trend when original management moves on from it, or caves to the ridiculous temptation that money offers.

[@st.altair4936]

@@grumdiddlydoo3559 It's FOSS like Blender, except it's even more free since it's under the MIT license, so that literally _can't_ happen. If the creators wanted to make it closed source, the community would just fork it move to that, like what happened to Emby with Jellyfin.

[@grumdiddlydoo3559]

Appreciate the insight. Suppose I'm just jaded from how time and money tarnish most good things.@@st.altair4936

[@dhgodzilla1]

This Unity thing needs to be quashed immediately! If not this trend will grow & soon all developers will pull things like this, NO MORE UNITY GAMES PURCHASED until they walk this back!

[@0bzen22]

It's so moronic, it will never ever get the go ahead. The people who thought that up are brain-dead idiots. It's not just the money-grabbing scheme, it's all the implications and breach of trust. And if they apply their poiicy retroactively (i.e. on games already published under previous licenses), they're gonna get sued to oblivion. And I don't think they want to get sued by Microsoft or Sony.

[@maxime669]

It's the share holding thing that made them go be worse trying to syphon every penny. Let hope a new company without shareholding system will raise up

[@Souldaze1]

Nah man it doesn’t matter if they walk it back. Everyone needs to bite the bullet and move from it. Unity needs to fade into the histories as a has been.

[@dhgodzilla1]

@@maxime669 Fng Stockmarket has gutted this country

[@spencereades]

One interesting consequence of Starfield's release is that Hello Games saw a big uptick in sales of No Man's Sky that week. I speculate that a lot of people tried Starfield, realized it wasn't exactly what they were looking for (not that it's bad, just different from what they personally wanted), and found a better fit for themselves with a similar game that's been worked on for years.

[@zodwraith5745]

That's simply because it added exposure. NMS never had the exposure of a true AAA game and it helps to get that renewed exposure when the game is in a ridiculously more polished state than it was at launch. They're still violently different games and anyone that expected NMS out of Starfield is an idiot. Starfield has 95% of NMS's exploration, but NMS has 5% of Starfield's story. As someone with a ton of hours into NMS, Starfield really fills the void of what was always missing, and that was a _reason_ to bounce around hitting different planets instead of just mining. Imagine MS suddenly adding a hundred hours of story to Minecraft?

[@ShadeAKAhayate]

@@zodwraith5745 There's no 'hundred hours story' in Starfield though. And by the looks of it, total most of it consists of fetch quests.

[@Vampyrr]

@@zodwraith5745 Glad you like it! I hear the opposite though with more playing Starfield for the story but enjoying NMS more for the better exploration and true sandbox experience. If you like Fallout and Skyrim then Starfield is for you. But if you want a true survival space sim NMS or the others like Elite Dangerous are there for you. Room for everyone.

[@dbrown23]

The issue with Starfield is playing Larian’s BG3 beforehand… when you have a developer building a game specifically for their fans and new players then other games just won’t feel the same. How many major patches have we had for BG3 since release? They are doing everything in their power to have the single best game of the year and a top RGP ever in gaming. Starfield I’m sure would have been incredible 1-2 years ago.

[@JDTalo]

I actually enjoying starfield. Yes it's not as deep and immersive as bg3 but hey it's fallout in space. And it's relatively bugs free (for me). That's a welcomed break imo.

[@luciusliu9417]

@@JDTalo Come on, 'no bugs' is a low bar lol But hey, genuinely good that it's enjoyable. Looking to get Starfield myself when it's on a deeper sale.

[@mjdibella]

I hate what this will do to small indie developers. But for AAA devs to say, ‘they sold us a product, unilaterally changed the TOS, and added ‘surprise’ monetization’….seriously?

[@SerothTalon]

To be fair, FF16 is not the reason for SE's stock drop. And while sales "didn't meet investor expectations", it still sold very well. The bigger issue is games like Forspoken flopping entirely or the absolute lack of promotion that went into titles like Neo: The World Ends With You.

[@palladiamorsdeus]

No, it didn't. It didn't even hit XVs sales numbers and XV didn't get profitable until after the 5 million mark. Combine that with a seven year development period on new hardware and extremely mixed word of mouth and the game flopped, period. But no, it wasn't the only reason for the stock drop. But it was a large contributing factor.

[@SerothTalon]

@palladiamorsdeus not sure where your "mixed word of mouth" is coming from. I've only seen people raving about it.

[@ZSMacLean]

What the D4 devs need to do is change when you get the season blessings... I mean the final one is at L100?! seriously the final blessing should be around 85 so its actually useable.

[@sachinjungade9265]

No time stamps?

[@Rhykker]

Whoops, forgot to copy-paste them from my google sheet! They're in now

[@Dryzark]

@@RhykkerAwesome, thanks! 👍

[@matthuck378]

I still wish D2 would get a complete act 4...But I know that's always been wishful thinking.

[@Christian-ry3ol]

The CEO did not want to charge a fee for reloading your gun, he made an example on how price sensitivity works. And he is right.

[@grants5399]

"its been a pattern of selling shares from the executive team" is a strange way of saying, they all knew this would be a problem and all did the same thing.

[@BoxBoxBoxGaming]

I am severely depressed about D2R development stopping. truly disappointing.

[@rudidekok]

Your best bet is to look into Project Diablo 2

[@utmastuh]

D4 chalks up another L. The XP nerfs dating back to s1 launch actually means 1-70 is slower than during vanilla launch. D2R another L. Promises were made about new rune words, QoL, content, and balances to bring new builds to A tier. Instead completely abandoned the game. D3 is a great season. The enmity portals are so rewarding although they spawn too often. The paragon changes suck.

[@luciffer420]

Some people dont realize if we not play a game as a collective it says something to the creators. It can promote a change in our favor and not what the devs think we need or continue without fixing things that should be fixed now and not later.

[@nh251]

Diablo 4 has made me appreciate Diablo 3 so much more. I'm enjoying Season 29!

[@hadarc01]

It has not been a full year since WotC pulled the OGL fiasco. They really managed to put the thought out there.

[@oblivionsmuse]

I imagine the possibilities of what games would be like if profit was not an element or need, that greed was completely out of the way and that the devs could pour their heart & soul without roadblocks into making the things they love. Imagine how amazing those prev Star Wars titles may have been if EA hadn't been POS's. And now, with this Unity fiasco, I just. . . video games are not just entertainment for most gamers, they are a significant and important part of our lives. They inspire, they bring communities together, and they have the probability of creating so much joy. Sorry for the rant, just tired of hearing about execs and CEOs ruining the gaming industry, piece by piece. As always, terrific video, Rhykker! Keep it up, man.

[@cymantics8249]

I feel like pinning SE's 2b loss on FFXVI is an incorrect take. It was a successful game, just not successful enough to recoup the losses they were incurring on other fronts.

[@Xero_Kaiser]

Yeah, SE's had a string of huge bombs. No way FF16 could have single-handedly turned all that around.

[@ShopFloorMonkey]

My only real criticism of the Visions of Enmity portals is that they don't send you back to where you encountered them, leading to backtracking - either complete your bounty objective and track back to the portal, or do the portal and start again from the waypoint for your bounty task. I would have thought Blizz would have learned something about how the player base feels about needless backtracking from D4!

[@Rhykker]

Good point!

[@BlitzMedia1216]

Wasnt the xp buff nerfed in season one. So all theya re doing is elevating back to how it should be? Like doing a sale of buy one get 1 free but add the cost to the one so you pay more or even out...

[@Zanderb20]

The issue with D4 is not that the leveling is too slow, it's that there is nothing meaningful or fun to do while you are getting those levels. Its just the same extremely boring, frustrating things over and over again with very little challenge to it. The game is frustrating to play, and you spend more time waiting on your horse and walking to different vendors in towns than killing monsters. The game lacks everything that makes an ARPG fun. They keep using these bullshit game developer terms like "power fantasy". Basically in every D4 blizzard video they use the words "power fantasy". They clearly don't even understand their own words. D3 developers knew what power fantasy means: In D3 the player is a demigod at all stages of the game, everything is fast and explodes on screen, Basically every class has some movement skill without or very little cooldown that allows them to walk throuhg walls. D3 is almost nothing but tedious grinding of the same few dungeon layouts over and over, but atleast its FUN to play, but D4 is not FUN, it is frustrating, tedious and there is no challenge to it whatsoever. The game lacks basic features and quality of life that should have been even in the closed beta last year (which I was invited to). I'm not even going to bother listing all the issues that make D4 frustrating and unfun to play, but here are some: dungeon layouts requiring insane amounts of backtracking, waiting 30 seconds on your horse after running through a pack of monsters, horse randomly deciding it cant walk over a few wooden planks while at the same time being able to phase through giant demons, waiting 10 seconds on your horse after killing monsters for 2 seconds, having to visit like 4 different vendor locations all spread out throughout the town each time your inventory is full, gems and seasonal items taking up like 30-50% of your inventory space, tedious inventory management with stats on items that are useless or bugged, spiders that insta bind you for 3 seconds 10 times in a row, etc. All that being said, I did actually have a lot of fun playing the campaign and getting to WT4, I do not hate D4 and I hope they will fix all the issues above. As for unity, I find it hilariously bold of them to assume that microsoft is going to pay the bill for their dumb installation fee. I wouldn't be surprised if Phil Spencer announced next week that microsoft is going to make a game engine that makes developing games for xbox a breeze and it being royalty free if you launch on gamepass, or something like that.

[@erk8520]

If Phil decides to create an inhouse engine, he should name it X just to fuck with Elon lol.

[@markusjohansson6245]

I think Blizzard should just make lvl 80 the maxlevel and then retune uber Lilith for lvl 80.

[@joshmercer8980]

After playing BG3 all other games seems a bit dull xD

[@finraziel]

I'm about 40 hours into Starfield and I'm loving it. I wanted Skyrim/Fallout in space, and I got it. I'm not much of a space sim player and what is there is just light enough for me to enjoy, but I can imagine people that are used to actualy space sims could be disappointed. Also even if, like me, you wanted Skyrim/Fallout in space, you have to realise one difference... Unlike those games it doesn't really work to just randomly walk into the wilderness and expect to find lots of interesting stuff. They deliberately put a whole lot of nothing in the game because 'space is empty and kind of boring'. If you follow quests though (of which there are MANY) or if you use your scanners to find more interesting things, then I think the game really delivers. One other thing though is that the game is very heavy on hardware required, while it doesn't really look it. I don't know enough about the tech to say if the amount of objects that physics calculations are applied to can justify it, but I see why people might be mad about it. I have a very beefy PC myself and 60+ FPS is good enough imho for a game like this... and I get that on ultra settings without FSR. On my old 3070 though, it didn't run nearly as well (I upgraded to a 7900XT).

[@Fearmocker]

I don't read the reviews and it's made Starfield a blast. I'm loving it.

[@abraxis59]

So I have about 100H in Starfield and I have been enjoying it more and more as I play. My reductive rating 8/10. Here is a short take and tips: 1. This is a space themed Bethesda RPG. If you are looking for a space sim like No Man's Sky or Star Citizen, you will be disappointed as these are the weakest parts of the game. 2. Biggest strength - Massive scope, good main story and fantastic faction quest lines. Even the small side quests feel more engaging than your normal step an fetch quests with interesting twists and/or fun and funny conclusions. In 100 hours with a bit of side wandering thrown in, I have done almost 100 quests and activities and I have only completed 1 major Faction storyline and I would guess about 60% of the main story. It is almost overwhelming how much there is to do just in objectives but they are organized very well. 3. Biggest weakness - The engine. Many of the problems with the game revolve around the ancient engine that the game is built on. It is VERY much better than it used to be, but inventory management, weak/nonexistent maps, lots of load screens, stilted character models, and inconsistent combat AI plague this otherwise really solid game. If you are willing, there are already some fantastic mods for the PC that help with almost ALL of these issues, but I am currently playing mod free and this assessment is purely mod free. To get the best experience here are some spoiler free tips: 1. Follow the main story at least through the first small arc. While this is a VERY Bethesda game, you can't just pick a direction and wander off exploring right at the beginning. Doing so will be boring and frustrating. Doing the first arc will allow you to gather main and side quest objectives and really get you started with basic skills and enough curated points of interest to get you going. 2. Many things you want to do in the game are locked behind Skills that you have to invest in. Read ALL of the Skills in every tree to see how and when you get the ability to do things in the game. My recommendation is to go wide rather than deep at the start. Basic things you will need or want skills for at the start: Strength, Security (Lockpicking AND Computer Hacking combined), and Jet Pack use. If you are planning on crafting, its going to take a serious investment in skills so make sure you are prepared. If you are planning to go Stealth, you will have to invest in the Skill to even begin to sneak around. Also, since this is a LONG game, investing in Commerce and other skills providing small initial bonuses are more worth it than normal. 3. Unless you are building an outpost or surveying a planet, stick to the spots where there is a point of interest you can see when scanning the planet or moon. That is where you will have the most fun things to do. 4. USE YOUR HAND SCANNER EVERYWHERE. On a planet/moon it highlights extra points of interest to go to, minerals to extract, details about creatures and plants you can discover and shows you a path to your objective. In space it shows you nearby ships and items in space to interact with and allows you to travel more immersivity from where you are to another star systems without opening menus. 5. Listen to NPCs as you walk by. This will automatically load activities for you to do and if you stop to talk with anyone that is actually saying something besides "I took an arrow to the knee", there is a very good chance they will give you a short story mission as they are EVERYWHERE. There are no exclamation points over people's heads so you will really have to talk to them to find some of these extra bits of content. There is plenty more, but it would take a novel. As cliche as it may be, this game takes time to get going, but the more you are willing to put into it the more you will get out of it.

[@Reelix]

A Paragon 800 cap? In modern day D3, what does that take you? New character to P800? An hour? Two?

[@krakan_skullz]

The chicken doc is hilarious. I made the build outside of season and I had a blast ( pun intended) 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@magellan12300]

This is plainly unacceptable. The good news is, that there is a limit to abuse players and honest developers. Those practices won't/can't stay forever.

[@SeanBotha]

He did not state the true facts! 3 tiers for unity: Free, pro and enterprise. Free need to make 200k sales and 200k installs(85% of steam games never do that) Emerging market downloads/buys cost 0.02 not 0.20 if you hit 200k sales and 200k revenue YOU CAN UPGRADE TO pro that has a 1 000 000 cap and you will only need to pay the less than 20 cents after(has a scale so can't state exact amount)r that cap. As a dev i think it is bad the way they did this it will help smallgame devs. It will hurt mobile game devs. unless they take teh unity micro-transaction system then they do not get to pay teh per game fee

[@famoussession7426]

​@@SeanBothaThey're still charging for installs

[@Fielmur]

I expected from starfield to explore with unparalleled freedom a lore rich and immersive universe. According to steam, i tried to do that for 68h total and 15h those past 2 weeks. I think i spent 50% of that time in some kind of menu, cutscene or loading screen. The more i played the more i reached higher levels of disappointment and frustration. I felt unparalleled freedom in skyrim, but i never felt like i could avoid a loading screen to get anywhere in starfield even though they both have them. I'm pretty sure i could fire up skyrim right now, without mods, and enjoy it 10 times more than i ever enjoyed starfield. I'm still curious to see what the modding crew can salvage.

[@johanstrang4373]

Sold off shares over a longer time period. That shouldn't help it look less sketchy. They made this decision after selling stocks. They just planned for it further in advance.

[@kievitz]

Unity is the official partner of Apple Vision Pro VR, might wanna check on that.

[@colindanger3396]

Please keep making Diablo 3 content ❤

[@jonathanabgrall6075]

The D4 part of your video is why i completely burnt out on D4 and honestly Blizzard's game design as a whole. Having to figure out if certain metrics are multiplicative others are additive and juggling with like 200 gear variables (most doing the exact same thing just within different circumstances and so on and so forth is just convoluted and tiresome. Meanwhile in BG3, 300 xp is 300 xp.

[@Boris82]

I leveled to 100 on my Druid in D4 and i decided im done. Im not gonna try any other class. Ill be back next season.

[@bsherder]

18:09 I have skipped it. I was never interested or hyped for it. Maybe one day i will buy it, but that will be a long time from now.

[@pythonxz]

The pattern of selling shares by Unity executives is the more damning aspect. They have not bought for quite a while.

[@jetah50]

c-suite usually get shares as a partial payment or bonus.

[@MarbsMusic]

Disappointed with D4 but I also remember how bad D3 was upon release. I truly enjoyed the first month or so but the season started too soon, there are too many levels and not enough EXP nor decent loot. I don't mind the grind but there has to be a reason. I still log on a couple of times a week, run a dungeon the remember why I'm not playing so I log off. I want to love it but just don't... at least night right now.

[@Eqvil]

Who would have thought that changing the very core of a video game franchise would tank sales? FF started dying after XII. That was the last time there was proper deep world building. That was the last time there was something really unique "Gambit system". X-Sphere grid and aeons which stay in battle, IX- learning skills and magic from items, VIII- drawing and storing magic from enemies and items. XIII had a copy of a sphere grid, and the costume changes that followed were also in FFX-2. Hearing that there was only one character in XVI, after people were already complaining about the small group of XV, I lost interest in the game. XVI shouldn't have been a numbered FF bit a side story like Dirge of Cerberus or Crisis Core, or a completely new IP without using the names from FF. They fucked up XV with a super jarring switch from a road trip adventure to ultra depressing survival in the apocalypse with one short boat ride. People need to be replaced at the top to get the franchise back on track. SE doesn't deserve success with their garbage output. They should have a chat with Capcom.

[@kongkim]

I really would like a XP boost from 75-100. It takes forever as it is now.

[@merkur69]

this game is ded

[@kongkim]

@@merkur69 Not at all.

[@redshiftracing7583]

Man I really want to like D4. I see the glimpses of that great Diablo formula. But I’ve just come to the realization that I really kinda hate the 1-50 grind. Which feels so weird. I like the game after world tier 3 once it really opens up. But the 1-50 is either hard (looking at you Barb) or boring. You either play as normal which takes forever, or you grind a dungeon, which is boring. It’s just not fun.

[@gr1mkn1ght]

I wish a someone would buy up Crystal Dynamics and revitalize the Legacy of Kain series. Such a beloved series from the 90s and early 2000s. We need remakes and for the story to continue. Let's make this happen, someone, please 😢

[@SawyerLH]

oh boy, with these Unity changes we will never see Silksong comes to life.

[@grayden4138]

I don't think it's a matter of not knowing how to make money in the West for SqEnix as much as it is the competition, and not just other studio titles, for gamers' time. Anecdotally my backlog of games is still high. I've had a PS5 for almost 2 years and haven't finished one game yet. Too many games to play, and, I also think Live Service games share in the bulk of that "time sink" for gamers today.

[@Dr_Smash]

FF16's sales were not limited due to Square's knowledge on western markets. If that was the case, FF14 would not be the success that it is. 16's issue is with it being a PS5 exclusive, even for a limited time. They likely set their standards based on FF7 Remake which sold well due to it being on the PS4, which was a much longer lived console, and the fact FF7 is the most well known FF game. Once they release it on PC later on, sales will skyrocket.

[@TheOphrys]

I'll be honest, Unity's move to change their fees isn't really surprising. They had marketshare and saw how dependent devs were to their product, so it made sense for them to make this move now before another engine like Godot becomes a real threat. Will they lose marketshare for this? Yes, but right now, they have a good chance to hold on to those devs who are very dependent of their product and assets. And if the games made with Unity end up doing well, and the devs "normalize" to this new structure, then Unity will have simply set a new precedence. On the flip side, this is a great opportunity for Godot to make a splash and capture devs with their future products. The only challenge will be at the technical level. Will the devs be comfortable using Godot after years of using Unity? How will that affect the timeline of their product release? A big shake up is coming.

[@bradlopez3681]

This hurts. I have been plugging away for years as an indy dev invested in tools and assets now I need to consider change engine.

[@lawmansama]

I read that the CEO sold a ton of his stock in unity right before the announcement. My guess is that Now he can buy back that stock at cheap and make tons of money while still retaining his stocks. Than he rolls back this announcement and sells again making even more money.

[@strangnet]

He sold 2,000 shares. He still has about 3,200,000 shares of Unity.

[@Gregair13]

Opening weekend in D3 is always great. One of my fav weekends of blasting in the last number of years. As said, likely not playing for the 2500-3000 paragon but that’s ok

[@_DavidLeBlanc]

Just one note, at around 11:35 you said the fees would be retroactive, but from what I've seen and read so far there will be no retroactive fees (not that this makes things much better just thought people should know).

[@strangnet]

The changes are applied retroactively, i.e. whatever licensing and terms of service you thought would apply when you launched you game will change.

[@pegazz4342]

I cant imagine whats gonna happen to Escape from Tarkov... That game is 5+ years in beta, so either they will change engine or delete on that project. So what do you think?

[@imkjvc2302]

They’re already working on moving the game to UE5 apparently

[@containedhurricane]

V Rising developers must've been furious when they heard about Unity's disgusting monetization scheme

[@pegazz4342]

@@imkjvc2302 Really?! Did they announce it??

[@butwhataboutdragons7768]

@@containedhurricane Ah hell I didn't even make that connection. I've just gotten into V Rising and was really looking forward to...1.0 I think it is, the full release? The future's uncertain for sure.

[@containedhurricane]

@@butwhataboutdragons7768 They can't easily port V Rising to another game engine, because they use DOTS

[@AndrewH1994]

say what you will about GRs in D3, but I find them to be better and more fun than D4 dungeons let alone nightmare dungeons. the affixes on NM dungeons may be some of the worst possible drawbacks imaginable. the shade that follows you, the lightning strike that’ll kill you, the floating rock that wants to kill you, and enemies take 80% less from ranged or melee attacks, truly horrible affixes

[@charlescarpenter9098]

Something I heard about Unity was that they were making exceptions if you used their ad platform. Sounds like a strongarm play to rival the free to play ad people.

[@khaoss9992]

I think D4 will always be a bad game because the items are bad. What made D2 good is the higher level you were the better stats on items you would find. AND legendary items when found made you want to find a use for the item!

[@butwhataboutdragons7768]

Well not sure about it "always" being bad, since theoretically items can be changed and added. But yeah I agree that one of D4's biggest problems is that items are very bad. None of the drops are interesting in any way. In 3 and 2 and even 1, uniques not only have some very nice, oft-times game-changing effects, they can look really cool too! In 4 I've only even SEEN one unique, after 100+ hours, and that came from the final boss, which I think is guaranteed anyway! Otherwise the drop rate is so absurd it's not even worth caring about! I uninstalled a little ways into Season 1. Couldn't be bothered. I'll keep an eye on updates and see if anything changes.

[@Umbraso]

New games that have come out since Diablo 4 release have quickly removed all interest in going back to that game. I enjoyed the first leveling, tried the other classes a bit. Leveled a different class in the first season, but after 50 I lost interest. Treating Diablo 4 as a single player game, I enjoyed it. Don't think I'll be going back, though. Ingame store made it shit and slow boring grind for everything made it a borefest.

[@ShopFloorMonkey]

Honestly, I still can't see how Unity's retroactive changing of terms is legal, and I've seen no-one talk about it's legality one way or the other either. But it's overtly memey! Indies: "This isn't what we agreed to!" Unity - in full Vader cosplay: "I Am Altering the Deal, Pray I Don’t Alter It Any Further."

[@SequinBrain]

on d4, true, I noticed no visible difference in gaining xp from either the 25% bonus weekend or this 8% or 20%. The bar moves at the same speed is always has: DAYS to get more than 1 lvl. But, that's the motif for most businesses today, not just games, compliment your own company and ignore the customers since they never know wtf they're talking about anyway.

[@gaberielpendragon]

It's like people never played D2, the grind to max level was a heroic feat that was largely pointless. All this season nonsense and what not needs to just go away. Just make more games and expansions.

[@philosoaper]

if you take into account the changes to the Unity TOS a year ago, the selling off of shares by unity management since then... no longer look that innocent.

[@netpixie3503]

That's totally expected when you hired an icecream maker as CEO for a high tech company. Mr John Riccitiello was director of the Häagen-Dazs before he joined EA. 😁

[@juusosantaoja5059]

Your last video about Torchlight Infinite pushed me over the threshold to try the game. Thanks for that Rhykker! I have been enjoying the game. Im really sad that D2R is doomed to be in maintenance mode but i cant really say im surprised considering the decisions Blizzard has made over the recent years. As for the Unity thing... well that has got to be the most scumbag-move that has happened in gaming industry during my lifetime.

[@EnderElohim]

9:55 and who say they wont chance that and to or tomorrow :D I'm stuck with unity so far especially because currently my first pc game Hell Runner on steam as early access so i better finish it sooner than later because people already paid money for it so i cant just switch engine but for future games i'm thinking to learn Unreal Engine or even remake hell runner on unreal once it finished. So far half of the game almost finished so i be better quick. There are few more small size game i wanna make with unity especially because i hoarded a lot of asset so i wanna use that invensment before moving :D 10:20 main issue is trust. Even if you dont make any money why you spend your time with that kind of business when you can go other engines for safer future 17:50 expecting triple a experience from a triple a game ..... something is funny about this XD

[@laner.845]

Starfield is amazing if you want the sandbox feel. I've got four characters, each following a different faction, each through to a different point in the main story before GTFOing off to do faction things and just explore. All told, probably 80hr in the game, three level 12 characters and a level 8. This is THE SPACE EXPLORATION GAME I have waited my whole life for. No Man's Sky was too impersonal with no real character creation and I'm not into base building. Star Citizen is an MMO and not my cup of tea despite the game itself doing everything I want to do in a space exploration game... so close, and yet so far. The repetitive time loop system of Outer Wilds is not one I'm even willing to entertain. Mass Effect is a great story but way more railroady after the first one than I want in my exploration games. The Outer Worlds is first person only and that makes me so motion sick. Starfield is THE game I've been wanting to play for the past two decades since I got my first computer and discovered PC gaming. And it's amazing... if you let it be. People looking for reasons to hate it won't have to look far. People looking for reasons to love it... also won't have to look far. By far, my main complaint is the storage system. If you're going to give me infinite storage at the main base, and then not link said storage to the research/workshop lab in the basement, you are an asshole. Going back and forth to get what I need (or just taking it all and being encumbered the whole time) is absurd in a game in 2023. Modders have a fix in, but I don't feel comfortable jacking around with game files, so I'm stuck with a less-than-optimal system of gameplay for crafting, and have mostly ignored it to my own detriment. Unfortunate, since I had big plans to be a big time tech guru and make my fortune running Ryujin some day. Smaller inconveniences are that the ship and outpost systems are janky AF and not worth my time, so I'm missing out on some of the game that way. I'm also over getting a cough every time I stray too close to an unmarked gas vent. *eyeroll* I didn't want to play doctor simulator; I wanted to play space explorer simulator. Even with those annoyances, I'm ENTHRALLED with the story and faction quests, I'm constantly getting sidetracked to explore planets and moons, and some of the characters have really grown on me (interestingly enough, not three of the main four since they are annoying AF, but I only just met Andreja so maybe there's hope). I'm going to be playing this game for months or years to come. There is SO MUCH to do in it.

[@ryvyr]

Starfield has taken over my spare time. Also Unity execs can take an infinite walk off a planck scale plank.

[@ShopFloorMonkey]

To the Max! ;)

[@tinkmaster1054]

It's already too late for Unity; even if they walked EVERYTHING back, fired a bunch of the upper management behind this decision, and bent over backwards to reconcile they've already triggered the migration that'll lead to their doom. Employees are leaving the company in droves, tons of devs are finalizing plans to move away from the engine, the community has suddenly stopped making assets and tutorials for the engine, and the trust won't ever be regained. Don't mess with your developer/engineer customers. We're all used to constant learning to keep up with the latest tooling/platform/engine updates; don't underestimate our ability to pivot on a dime or our willingness to immediately drop a tool whose creators despise their users.

[@GTeaO]

I don't know why devs think reaching level 100 faster is the goal here. My biggest problem with D4 is the end game. There is no end game! By reaching around 90 most players already technically reached end game which makes leveling pointless imo

[@datasneb7069]

"They have sold shares in the past so this is not insider trading" is a really bad faith argument, rhykker.

[@macarraodeshanghai]

So they pulled a wizards of the coast move... i don't believe they didn't learn from that exemple.

[@themlasu]

Sadly can't say much about D4, while I own it I am just not enjoying it much at all. I find I usually hop back into D2 for fun. Well I refunded Starfield at about 110 minutes. It was okay, but not a $70 value. I liked that combat was improved but it still had that atypical Bethesda game mechanics. I felt like I just played Skyrim/Fallout 4 with a new coat of paint. As for the Unity engine revamp, it reminds me of WotC OGL debacle. Even now most 3rd party content developers have moved away from 5E even though they walked it back. You would think that Unity would have looked at that as a possible outcome.

[@NelielSugiura]

I am waiting for the Star Wars and Star Trek mods to Starfield before I get into it. If it is going to be space exploration simulator, I at least want the nostalgia and iconic elements of popular franchises, especially if I get to mix and match.

[@Sephiroth8080]

Yo, I don't usually say this, but your facial hair looks REALLY good, Rhykker. I've been watching you for years, and while your facial hair hasn't necessarily looked bad, it looks incredibly well managed today. Definitely intended as a compliment and I hope you're proud of it

[@mauriciobuitrago7853]

I typically wouldn't comment on something like that, but yeah as a man with facial hair, well groomed beard ftw.

[@twistedknight8639]

BIG thank you for all videos so far. But what's Diablo 4? Oh, I already forgot about that. Didin't play for a month or so and maybe will come back for another season. No paying for it anymore tho. And since there's only so FEW rewards in free one, not sure will come back at all. No wasting money on expansions and no wasting time to raise any of my chars to lvl 100, cause WHY? There's nothing new to do after that. Give me 10x more exp from dungs and I won't come back. Finished season at lvl 76 I think, so if 1 dungeon run would give me 1 paragon point exp, that's almost HUNDRED runs to get to lvl 100. And for what exactly?? Total time waste. Been waiting for devs to make their minds and balanced classses and LEAVE them like that, no going up and down with any update, so all the builds are useless again. Is there a button finally to reset ALL paragon points at once? Rhetorical question. Don't care anymore. Will watch your clips sometimes still for other news. Just skip the D4 ones

[@Tyrannimarja]

11:08 What… The… !? OH - MY - GOSH!! Holy FUCK, this is insane! 😵‍💫😵

[@noxyoshi]

The CEO did what he said in the interview. Let them play and have fun for a while then after x amount of hours/years charge to reload their guns/download games

[@svenkilik]

Only 6 hours into starfield but I’m enjoying it, the first 2 hours were confusing and slow.. also due to some issues I had to restart 3 times so I went through that 3 times… didn’t help

[@dangabbay1]

What happened to video timestamps?

[@Kanner111]

The experience buff tinkering seems to be yet more evidence that the people in charge of Diablo 4 just do not get how percentages actually work. Which is crazy when you think about how, say, Diablo3 and especially Path of Exile fit together. No-one there has actually ever played an ARPG before. =/ I can't afford Starfield at the moment. Nor does it look like it's really worth paying full price for. Going for Breadth vs. Depth is a weird choice for Bethesda, given that no-one ever went out on a limb complaining that Skyrim or Fallout 4 were just too small. I'm not saying it looks bad or anything, but this is a competitive market (theoretically) and I just don't trust reviews that encourage people to play past the point you can definitely refund the game because it gets good later on. (I also don't watch T.V shows that 'get really good in season 5', sorta thing. That's on me, probably.). Especially, if you want a bigger Starfield eventually, you can probably just buy expansions! The exact sort of thing that generates extra revenue down the line! So launching an impossibly large game *at launch*, with few compelling stories and massive bugs, just seems weird. (Don't get me started on how unappealing it is for Bethesda execs to lean into bugs being a feature of their games and part of the fun. No, you're just cutting costs on Q.A and optimisation. Most bugs aren't entertaining at all, they just mean people can't finish a quest, and possibly can't even figure out why, which wastes their time and tanks their enjoyment.) There's a lot to say about Unity, but it's just insane to me that Riccitielo has another job after his efforts at EA. There isn't even an angle here. The decision has the exact same vibe as when Wizard of the Coast tazed themselves in the nuts earlier in the year with their Dungeons & Dragons license rework. Just annihilating all the trust you've built up over the years to attempt a massive cash grab when arguably better options exist for developers but they're still currently invested in you. That trust and the brand relationship is literally all you really have. The IPO comment was so painfully on-point. When the people who made the thing good have cashed out, it's absolutely time to reassess all merits of any brand. Diablo III just keeping on keeping on is a joy though. Gonna see if I can figure out Frenzy Barb properly this time. =)

[@FranciscoTChavez]

Clarification: I'm not a fan of the new pricing scheme, but Rhykker made two mistakes that some of his worst case scenarios were based on. It's not $200,000 USD in that game's revenue. It's $200,00 USD in revenue for that game in the past 12 months AND 200,000 lifetime game installs. For Unity Personal, a game must meet BOTH of those conditions for this new pricing to kick in. The thing about an old game suddenly getting a lot of installs or suddenly selling well. That game still needs to make $200,000 USD WITHIN 12 MONTHS. Not $200,000 in the lifetime of the game. And, if a $2 USD game gets 150,000 lifetime game installs, well, that's $300,000 USD and it won't fall under this new pricing scheme. I will repeat, I do NOT like this new pricing scheme; I think it's dumb. I'm not surprised that asshat of a CEO pushed for something like this. But, when it comes down to consoles games, PC games, art installations, interactive experiences, video production, etc., etc., this new pricing scheme isn't as bad as a lot of people seem to think. The thing that is likely to be impacted by this, well would be Free to Play mobile games and games as a service with monetization schemes. Most of the impact is going to be on monetized games. If you make a $5 USD game with zero monitiziation, then that game would need to make 40,000 sales within a 12 month period to be affected by this. Now, 40,000 sales isn't much for a AAA game when it first comes out, but a AAA game tends to cost $45 to $70 USD during that period. At those game prices, this new pricing scheme isn't that bad. So, like I said, the impact of this is mostly going to be felt by games with monetization. The new pricing scheme is still dumb, but it's not as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. What does concern me, is the shady ass shit that Unity is doing with the Terms of Service. Unity taking down the git repository where they keep track of changes to the Terms of Service is shady. Unity trying to hid the fact that older installs of their editor don't have this pricing scheme is shady. The possibility of Unity disabling signing into the version of the editor that predates this without accepting the new ToS, is something I'm concerned about. Speaking from personal experience, Unity Editor can act up when it doesn't connect to their servers.

[@Xero_Kaiser]

I've been enjoying Starfield a lot. Bethesda games are always fun sandboxes to play in despite their technical shortcomings.

[@Sarkwer]

0:50 dont forget to use protection in public

[@charlieb8735]

Unity is evidence of how destructive becoming a publicly traded company is in the long term. CEOs, who dictate the strategy of the company, are basically evaluated quarterly when the company reports earnings have a median tenure of 5 years. Basically if they invest in a project that takes more than 5 years they’re more likely than not to be gone before it’s done and it takes a year of results that aren’t driving profits up at the expected rate, they have to explain themselves 4 times in writing and on a conference call with shareholders. It certainly makes sense that it would incentivize short term profit as the principle concern for the people actually making the decisions. Why would anyone care about what the company looks like in 10 years when only about 20% of CEOs currently have been there that long and turnover rates are accelerating? Even if you did care about the company, the strategy would probably be killed off by your successor anyway.

[@MrGoesBoom]

I know this whole Unity thing is just bad all around for everyone...that being said the way the Games Industry has been aggressively monetizing practically everything in games, them getting hit with fees like this invokes a slight bit of schadenfreude. Also resulted in one of my favorite quotes on a forum post about how feebly they're trying to walk back this whole mess: "Just when you thought Unity couldn't punch themselves in the balls any harder, they paused to put on brass knuckles"

[@evanwater3633]

Not sure why people wine about the d2r season. Any old player never even expected anything new during new seasons.

[@Nekoyashiki-san]

Thanks for the news. ^^

[@michaelfalabella6296]

yes i am enjoying Starfield, i'm also still enjoying Star Citizen. both offer different things, like Starfield supporting mods and Star Citizen youre able to fly around freely. really, it all depends on what youre looking for. i think Starfield does reallly good at what its supposed to be, especially for the first installment of a new series.

[@gaberielpendragon]

No Man Sky does an amazing job of hitting many of the targets Starfield aimed at. Just short on being an RPG and no romance options.

[@michaelfalabella6296]

@@gaberielpendragon why did you just turn this into a no-mans sky arguement about which is better.

[@michaelfalabella6296]

@@gaberielpendragon if you want my opinioon, Starfield does alot better than NoMansSky, especially presentation and graphical appeal. aswell as a modding community that will make this game have more content and even graphical upgrades than any game we've ever seen so far. NoMansSky is a different game, and offers less. its only more complete because its been around for how many years?

[@gaberielpendragon]

@@michaelfalabella6296 Other than the RPG elements, which aren't great, and the romancing options. No man sky does all of it better. The only downside for no man sky is being a survival-based game instead of story based.

[@gaberielpendragon]

@@michaelfalabella6296 that's what it could have over no man sky, not what it does have. Most PCs can't even run it. Which is odd as the series s can. It's optimized like shit for PC. Funny considering people had the same complaint about no man sky, yet are ignoring it here. Graphically, it's about the same as we've seen for a while now. The UI is a mess. Workable, but a mess. Getting to the screen you want most often takes multiple menus to get to, it should be something you can go directly to. The quick menu for items on the d pad is mostly pointless, rare to have that many items you'd need quick menud. Just using things from inventory fixes that, like most games of the genre have had forever. This opens up this extra d pad options for fast menus to where you want to be. Forget what could be and look only at what is. I would play launch no man sky over this as I didn't have nearly as many issues with no man sky as I do with this. The exploration was more fun, the combat was better, everything was more interesting. Starfield is just another mediocre game from Bethesda that they expect the community to fix, again. Instead of just making it solid at release. Oh forgot space travel and combat, it's garbage in starfield.

[@Nanolis]

I can't help but see the Unity controversy as an absolute win. There's been some good Unity made games through the years, but I've never looked at one and thought it wouldn't have been better off on a better game engine. Rimworld and Battletech(2018) would be so much better off on different engines. Also doesn't help that the crash reporting in Unity is an absolute joke so adding mods is a nightmare if there's an error. Unity's better at running Easy Bake Ovens than proper games.

[@Cl0ne66]

I enjoyed the first 50 hours; but now I am getting crashes quite often (70 hours) in Starfield.

[@kr1me2000]

I couldn't play more than 3h, starfield is now my worst game of 2023, yes worse than Diablo 4