This is of course not including the yearly Unity subscription, where Unity Pro costs $2,040 per seat (although they may have Enterprise pricing)
Absolutely ridiculous. Many Unity devs are saying they’re switching engines on social media.
This is of course not including the yearly Unity subscription, where Unity Pro costs $2,040 per seat (although they may have Enterprise pricing)
Absolutely ridiculous. Many Unity devs are saying they’re switching engines on social media.
founding your business on proprietary software is just a crazy gamble.
I turned down a job offer at a company that relied solely on twitter’s api in order to accomplish their goals. It was a sales lead generation tool that used a scripted approach to warming leads before handing them off to AE’s to bring home.
Within a year Twitter shut down their access and the company went under. That’s the day I learned not to trust another company to allow you to make money with their product permanently.
uncomfortable AWS noises
AWS is different as it’s a product marketed and sold as a product.
This company was using Twitters api in a novel way that want subject to an agreement, just Twitter’s whims to allow it to continue.
I worked for a company that used Google application engine for all of their cloud tools and services. Then one day Google flipped a new billing process and the entire thing became more expensive than self hosting. Sure gae would let us scale to support insane levels but the product was never going to need that scale.
Any aws pipeline I build I write as agnostically as possible, and usually write basic ideas and selections from another platform into my docs and proposals.
It’s happened twice in my career that a shop had totally jumped provider, which isn’t a lot but is enough to keep one eye open
Developing a good and feature rich game engine which also runs performant is a huge effort. That alone can cost a good team 2 years at least. Even more if we consider todays graphic standards. That’s nothing which smaller studios can easily deliver. So yeah, it’s an obvious decision to buy a license for a proprietary engine, where a lot of work has already went into. That’s just business and nothing crazy about it. Companies using services or products of other companies is pretty ordinary.
FOSS alternatives to Unity exist though. And from my personal experience it looks like Godot seems like the better engine anyways. Not to mention the fact that there is no need for a game engine to create a game. Opengl + a windowing/utility library is ideal.
Until a few years ago there was barely any alternative afaik
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Game devs and engine devs don’t necessarily have the same skill sets though, right?
And who complained about Sync for Reddit? How would used foss alternatives to access Reddit have changed what happened to Reddit?
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People wrote their own game engines since the earliest of games, they just want the easy route today and a marketplace to monetize on. These are poisoned gifts, and always have been.
And if everyone invented their own wheel every time they wanted to build a new cart all we’d ever have is various different wheels and very few carts.
I mean that’s honestly true. There are so many “infant” small selfmade game engines that are just complete shit lol
Great analogy, but this is a wheel you’re being charged for, after you’ve installed it on your product. Maybe you would have been better suited with your own wheel.
You’re not picking an existing good wheel solution that you can use forever, you basically took a promise for a free wheel that you’re now being charged for, and you’re sad because the free wheel isn’t free anymore. Well, maybe you should have picked an actually free wheel to begin with.
Unity is not the only solution to your cart problem. You’re just using it, because it is convenient.
Are you being obtuse on purpose?
This isn’t a case of “I use unity because it is free,” because outside of recreational game developer use-cases, it isn’t free. There are very real costs associated with monetization that any developer, team, and studio should be aware of.
Developers who have been using unity with knowledge of their pricing mechanisms are being blindsided with new pricing, that you can’t opt-out of, with a little less than 3 months notice. Going back to the wheel analogy, these teams have designed entire vehicles around these wheels, with application-specific knowledge and workarounds to be told that “Hey, regarding that product which underpins your entire project, one with which we’ve already entered into a sales agreement… we decided we want to change the agreement and track its usage and charge you more money. You have 11 weeks to get over it. Your continued use of our product implies consent to the new terms of this agreement.”
You can’t just move to a different platform without significant amounts of rework.
I get that, and it sucks. But too many offerings on the market are nowadays accepted as normal operating procedure, when they seem like such obvious traps to me. There is no financially-driven company out there that you can rely on with your project. Go with an open-source project or write what you need yourself. I fully understand the challenge of writing a product from scratch and bringing it to market. Your dependencies can break your neck one way or the other.
I know and feel that. I am no longer in entertainment, but I also see these exact same patterns in my current line of work (IT infrastructure). People use “free” tools that they take for granted, and then they’re surprised by rug-pulls. This has been happening for so long in so many areas that it’s almost tiring.
Unity isn’t free, what are you on about, you pay money for it.
There really isn’t much point having this conversation if you’re going to operate on flights of fantasy.
It’s not “the easy route”. Making a game engine is a tremendous investment these days. If you are making anything other than a game that looks like early 2000s or earlier, you need a pretty capable engine that takes years to develop. That’s on top of the time it costs to make a game, which is also typically years. Not to mention that your proprietary engine will have subpar tooling and make your game development slower.
For anyone but industry giants it’s not feasible to make a modern engine. Unless your game is not aiming to play and feel like a modern game, you have to run with an off-the-shelf engine.
Plus when you break it down you’ll still need 3rd party software in order to do anything more than a console only application (OpenGL, directX, Havok, Bink etc)
I agree with everything you’re saying, but it’s still the easy route and it’s still a poisoned gift, as can be seen by this story. People rather pick the “free” and capable tool than investing time in an open-source solution that needs more work, or developing from scratch. Maybe they just want to reach more platforms to make more money, or use the super advanced tools, but that doesn’t change that you’re picking the path of least resistance, and you might pay for it in the end.
Chances are, if you’re expecting to compete with industry giants on the same level, you’re already investing massively into the production of assets and you’re project in general. You’re just skipping the investment in the engine and tooling. If you just want to make a small game, then maybe you don’t even need Unity and would be better off with something more tailored to your project.
I just can’t feel sorry for people who walked into this trap. I feel like this pattern has been occurring way too frequently to ignore the danger of “free” tools that really aren’t.
Well, it doesn’t matter if it’s hard, the companies that did it are using it to control you and so now you don’t have a choice.
So get cracking or don’t complain.
Also Godot is a thing.
You’re not listening. It’s not that it’s hard (although it definitely is), it’s literally just infeasible financially and time wise. You cannot spend millions developing an engine unless you are a large AAA studio. You can’t pull up your bootstraps your way into making a modern game engine within the budget you have to make a game.
As for Godot:
I think you’re comparing apples to orchards here.
I’ll grant you, Unity has been a commercial standard that many large and good games have been made in, Godot hasn’t. Godot has been used largely by solo creators or small teams which has limited the scope and detail of the artwork in Godot games thus far.
This begs the question: What’s the best looking solo-developed Unity game?
Does that game include a lot of purchased/sourced assets? Should that count as “solo” developed then? Given the contents of Steam’s catalog, by sheer volume of titles it seems that Unity is THE engine for creating low effort shit-tier asset flip “games” that are little more than a tutorial project file with a retail price. “Games made in Unity” is a LOT of rough to look for diamonds in.
Once you’ve found the best looking solo-developed Unity game, ask yourself this: Could this game be remade in Godot? Is Godot technically capable of running a game like this?
I’m also unconvinced that Godot is inherently a poor choice for larger development teams. It has built-in support for versioning systems such as Git, and its modular node-in-scene system mean that different team members could work on different components independently, then bring their work together as a whole. There’s also that whole aspect where the Godot editor is itself a Godot “game” that runs in the Godot engine, which means it’s possible for developers to create their own extensions to the editor using the same skills needed to make games.
Beyond that, much of the work on graphics–3D art, level design, character/creature design, rigging, animation–a lot of that is going to be done in an art package like Blender rather than Godot. And yes I would suggest Blender for the same reason I’d suggest Godot, because Adobe and Autodesk are also pulling the same kinds of enshitification that Unity is.
The real reason that Unity is the industry standard? Because it’s what they teach in school. “Learn Unity because that’s what they use in the industry.”
Sorry but if large teams could pick up Godot and make next-gen games with it just like that, they would. You can’t. You can find absolutely stunning looking projects from solo creators in Unreal Engine. Sure you have assets from the asset store. That’s the point - you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
I’m just not going to accept a baseless assertion that “you can’t.” Show me a technical reason why you couldn’t build, say, Subnautica, in Godot.
I said this in other comments earlier, you don’t need to rewrite Unity to build your game. Build what you need, or pick up an open source product and add what you need. I don’t understand why people bring up financial feasibility if you’re being charged now for a wrong choice in the past. This was to be expected. It’s always the same pattern. If you can’t figure out how create your game without some false promise product, then don’t build your game. It’s really as easy as that.
And yet somehow Godot exists.
Somehow, they managed to build a viable 2D and 3D open source engine without a massive AAA studio so clearly your assumptions are just wrong.
You just don’t like being told you have to take responsibility for a problem someone else caused, and to that, I don’t blame you. It’s not right that we have to go through any of this. But honestly, it’s time for us millennials to realize that putting in the elbow grease to build alternatives to what others have done to us isn’t doing that, it’s us building the infrastructure to allow us to move on from the powers that be, and if you want to break away from them, you have to. Your abusers will not liberate you for you.
It’s time to nut up and do it now.
You have no idea what you’re talking about my guy. First off, Godot has been in development since 2007. That’s 16 years ago. Secondly, Godot started in Codenix, a consulting company that made money by licensing then-closed-source Godot. They only made it open source in 2014 - 7 years into development. This is a company that made its money through selling a game engine, not through making games. Thirdly, Godot receives funding from massive companies (e.g. they received $250k in funding from Epic Games in 2020). Fourthly, Godot is not up to par with Unreal Engine or Unity. It’s NOT a viable game engine for many games being developed.
Edit: also, I’m not a milennial. I’m a zoomer. No, I’m not too young to have an opinion on this, I’ve been making games for 15 years.
Well, now that it is open-source, we ought to take advantage of it, fork it and mod it up to our specifications. Or just make our own from scratch.
You don’t have a choice if you don’t want corporations to continue holding your dick in a vice. Bitch all you want; those are your options and sometimes in life you have to grow up and make hard choices that require a lot of effort, grit, determination, knowledge and courage to better your life and the lives of those around you. You want change? You better put in the elbow grease to make it happen. The only one who’s going to suffer if you don’t is you.
That is a hard lesson my generation refused to learn, and we suffer endlessly because of it. Don’t be like us in that aspect, please.
The mindset I was addressing largely afflicts us millennials and isn’t targeted toward you. I’m not talking only to you through these comments but also to anybody else reading them, just to clarify.
You sound like you dont know anything about programming (at least engine programming). Most Engines have to run in something like assembly, else they would be too slow. (They use others too but Assembly is in like all, i am a junior dev so i could be wrong)
Assembly is already a large hurdle.
I mean it is “simple” as the arch linux type of “simple”. (Nothing more than you need to run it and nothing more)
So the option is to learn assembly or hire someone (or multiple) who can, good luck by finding one that is capable of developing an engine that does not suck and does not cost a fortune.
Then you need to know what the engine should do.
If you “only” need 2D or even only some system to interact with the console you will be fine, maybe.
3D is a bit more complicated, the reason why there are so much 2D/2,5D games out supports this claim.
Then particle support if you want it…
Every feature you want has to be supported!
And every feature costs and maybe needs maintenance when bugs occur. Supporting an operating system is a feature too :)
So the engine has to be updated when a mayor OS update comes out
There are more points for why not to make an own engine and use one of the marked that fits ones needs even if it is closed source.
You where so fond of Godot so trying to help them might be a good starting point for you to life your ideals. I sincerely dont want to mock you with the sentence. If you can successfully help a larger open source project everyone is happy. If you can learn something new i am sure it can benefit you. I was only a bit mad because it felt like you are comparing engines with “weekend projects” what they are definitely not in the slightest.
Assembly usage is pretty minor in these engines. Tends to be for just a few very tight loops. It has to be redone for every platform, too. Assembly for x86-64 doesn’t work on ARM. Hell, some things on 32-bit x86 won’t even work on x86-64. You would never want to do more than a function of inline ASM here or there. It’d be a nightmare if you did.
That said, it’s barely even touching on the complexity of modern engines. Unity and Unreal aren’t just engines, they’re a whole development ecosystem.
Except it doesn’t matter. No matter how hard of a pursuit it is, it is one you have to do because you don’t have any other choice at this point. You can’t let corporations dominate humanity because building meaningful alternatives is “too hard”. People are the ones who build those engines in the first place and if that means you have to bust ass learning comp sci to do it yourself or contribute to an effort doing it, you still have to do it.
Nothing in life is easy. Do the research, learn the skillsets and material you need, and do it. No matter how hard or expensive it is, now you have to put in the work and the money.
It’s either that or serfdom. Your choice. I won’t lose any sleep if you refuse to though – I’ll just use Godot, add to it when I need and move on from you myself. It’s up to you whether you’re gonna do the same and save yourself.
Yeah, and people nowadays don’t even rewrite basic libraries! Everyone should have their version of glibc or they are just lazy!!!1!!1!
C implementations are available as open-source. The glibc especially is a great example of this. This comparison is not good. I’m all for using open source
Yeah let me just make my own fucking game engine right quick because that’s definitely easier than using another one that a team made and continues to make, support, and add onto because
“It’s easier”
Come on dude you’re just talking out of your ass. You should read about Cynicism and why nobody fucking likes that shit
You don’t have to reproduce Unity to create your game. You just need to write what you need. And you could also chose an actual free software project instead of something where they pull the rug right out from under you. If you look at the choice today, with the rug already having been pulled, would you not consider the choice an obvious mistake in hindsight? Every other project these days loses money by trying to build a following which they will then monetize on. I’m sorry for people who walked right into this trap, but it could have been avoided by making better choices in the past. Sorry if you disagree, but I’ve been around long enough to recognize these recurring patterns with “free” software.
This isn’t how you respond to people that have a problem. Total dude bro answer
Be better man. I’m not going to continue this conversation
Valid. I take that into consideration
Lazy gets, using someone else’s programming language. They should have developed their own language and written the compiler before starting to write a games engine for the game they wanted to make.
To be honest even a home written language and compiler would be based on someone else’s hardware.
Come to think of it, imagine if American Megatrends would start with a subscription model.
10 USD tier: 10 free boots a month, each subsequent boot shows an ad. You can skip the ad for 25 crystals.
Crystals are bought in packs of 10 or 35.