they made the original announcement already prepared to "backpedal" from it. they will just backpedal a little bit, then push things further and people are going to accept it
@@McDinglefart_69 In terms of functionality, stability, features, support, etc... it used to be considered really good a few years ago and even a gold standard in the indie scene, especially for 2D games, but nowaday it doesn't seem like it's keeping up, hence such drastic measures. More and more people who used to worship unity are now hating working with it. Some of my friends have turned against Unity (independently of the recent controversies) and are looking at Godot (supposedly on its way to become the new Unity) and UE4/UE5 in a better light than Unity, whereas it used to be the other way around. Hell, the studio they are working for has a discord emoji of the unity error icon named "working as intended", the engine gets memed on hard. If Unity gave up on using its own engine to make its own game because it wasn't worth it, that should be a pretty significant red flag.
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii I wouldn't count on that. Any partner that's big enough that their words carry weight will already have a bespoke contract.
I forgot where I got this point from, but there was a youtuber/blogger back in 2012 that properly pointed out; this is a technique, The idea is to present you the absolute worst version of the thing they're pushing, predictably get the backlash, THEN "backpeddal" and revise that "worst" thing into what they actually want to implement. It's how the industry giants eventually got away with the concept of DLC, microtransaction, live service. It's how, despite the constant outcry, we still landed on the this state of the videogame market today.
@@CatsOverdrive Definitely. The most bizarre part is that individuals are already "negotiating" a softer version of the deal on Twitter. Consider an excavator manufacturer requesting a percentage of the rent collected by a housing company if their machines were used to construct the building. That's the level of absurdity going on here.
on a serious note, i was just waiting for an excuse to give other engines more of a serious try, having only dabbled in unreal and godot. unity is slow, not cohesive, missing fundamental functionality and qol, etc... it took me 1 day of looking at godot docs and tutorials to feel like i already understand everything i need to know to, and it's so nice to use compared to unity. this current fiasco is a "last straw" only because the engine itself has been suffering
Yes because obviously none off us goes into a party where we slaughter like police men or other people in cold blood. or in a party where we steal from stores and when the clerks notice us we murder them in cold blood. Yup I also only do that in games and definitly not in real life nope.
It depends how far along they are. If they're too far along, they may have no choice but to finish and release, then patch out the engine later on. Patching out the engine is not an easy task, but I've seen it done before - Papers Please for example ported from Haxe/OpenFL to... Haxe/Unity. The poor guy made up really bad bet, but at least he has the option to reverse it back to OpenFL. Star Citizen is another example, when they switched from crytek to a spin-off version of critek called Lumberyard. Although much of it was easily transferred, it wasn't a perfect match, and is one of the reasons why the game took much longer to develop then intended (although that is just one of a great many issues plaguing it).
@@TheEDFLegacy I'm aware it won't be an easy or fast transition but disgusting predatory monetization like this can NOT be tolerated. Consumers (in this case, the Developers of games) must make a stand, however painful, or else garbage like this will be the new norm.
There is some off-the-cuff napkin math sort of logic we can use to guess which studios will or won't. Right away, big teams almost certainly won't. That's a lot of people who need to both investigate and learn probably a whole new pipeline. This video already pointed out that Immortals of Aveum had half its staff laid off instantly. Axios stated this: " ... with a development team that was 30 to 60 people for much of development, and peaked at 100, compared to a Call of Duty’s 500." So that's probably around 30-45 people laid off to pinch a couple pennies out of their wages. Studios signed to big corps won't spend any money on retraining their employees on new engines. AA might, those signed to sub-AAA publishers. Indie studios are too inconsistent, either strapped for cash all the time (most of them) or swimming in it (the lucky 5%). Publicly traded corporations are the platonic ideal, the very definition of selfish evil - retraining would only be used if it guaranteed money, which it no longer will. Small studios are in very much the same deal as the inconsistency with AA. They might or they might not. It must be seen case by case by looking at twitter. What needs to happen is the systemic change in how publicly traded corporations operate, and the defeat of infinite growth in a finite world. This will not be accomplished by gamers.
Even if they back out completely and bow down to everyone, people will not forgive them and their reputation, whatever rep they have, is completely tarnished and smashed apart. Good Job Unity, you are the gaming community’s Villain of the Week! Here’s your dumbass badge, don’t poke yourself with the pin!
Yeah, I imagine if you're fully invested in a large project and it's too costly to back out, then you'd probably take whatever olive branch they offer, but pretty much everyone is going to have an eye on jumping ship a soon as it's feasible. This kind of damage can take a decade to repair, and it doesn't sound like Unity have the kind of funds to withstand that. Probably the "best" we can hope for is that someone with deep pockets buys them out, but I'm not sure I'd trust Epic Unity or MS Unity that much more, to be honest (they'd need to offer some incredibly strong up-front guarantees).
Don’t let this be the end of the revolt BECAUSE the games industry is going to try this again. They will absolutely try again and are only backing off because, “The time is not right.” That’s how the games industry got the place of loot boxes, Day 1 patches, always online for single player games and so much more.
People are already letting single player games go pay to win, and giving them good reviews. The only reason this didn’t fly is because they were messing with indie games.
You do understand that the people revolting are apart of the games industry, right? It's tbe only reason it's even working. This is an internal matter. Once it calms down the industry will unite again in shafting the customers and there will be nothing we can do about it.
We've all seen this happen many times before with games. The company backpedals and releases a press statement that says "we hear you loud and clear". Then they go back to the drawing board and try to find a sneakier angle of attack. As long as the people making the decisions remain in their positions, nothing will change.
No second chances for Unity. In 2019 Tim Sweeny made it clear that the EULA for Unreal doesn't allow this kind of back-stabbing. To quote his twitter on Jan 10, 2019 "We specifically make the UE4 EULA apply perpetually so that when you obtain a version under a given EULA, you can stay on that version and operate under that EULA forever if you choose." When asked again about this on Sept 12, 2023; to see if this was still the case with UE5, Tim replied: "Yes, it’s perpetual, and there are more recent improvements in the license (e.g. Epic can’t terminate a license even for breach or non-payment). Goal is to put the EULA contractual terms on par with the custom terms negotiated by the most powerful publishers." So if you still need a professional-grade engine to make your games, Unreal seem to be the safer option. However, if your game doesn't need all the fancy features that Unreal comes with, Godot is also an excellent option, especially since you won't have to worry about any fee structure. Godot is fully free & open source. From Godot's own EULA: "Godot Engine is free and open source software released under the permissive MIT license (also named Expat license). This license grants users a number of freedoms: You are free to use Godot Engine, for any purpose."
Again, with Unity everyone isn't just concerned about what the CEO and executives just did, everyone's wondering if other companies will do the exact same thing and get away with it, everyone's wondering if Unity will tack on more costs in one or two years since they've proven the business of changing past agreements is profitable by then. It's not just this one thing, it's what this means going forward for all industries. Businesses that cannot trust other business partners even after signing agreements is the future if nothing is done.
On a plus side engines like godot literally cant someone will fork it and boom damage is undone. And the other biggest players, UE even if they change the terms they are not backwards aplicable and they apply only to whole versions ie ue5 terms are set in stone no matter what if they chage the rules they will apply to ue6 and you can still use ue5 with same old terms otherwise they will get raked over the coals by eu for billions, source even only a few games outside of valve even use it would cause such a massive developer exodus on steam it would not be funny, and again same rules as ue, bound to whole versions(as per their licences). But these things will cause friction in the publisher developer relationships
They already have been doing it. Big companies have been robbing people from the bottom to their face since Covid and it just keeps on happening. The greed is finally showing its face.
Most of this is contractual matter. You can write contracts and licenses in such a way that you can't pull this stuff off. It's a risk that existed within Unity ecosystem, and now that risk has been realized.
@@YunFuriku it’s not that simple. Previously, Unity had told developers that they could pin their TOS to whatever version of Unity they were using. Then they silently got rid of that option in an otherwise innocuous update, so they’d be able to make this change without being in breach of contract. Courts don’t always allow those type of sneaky TOS updates, so it’s unclear how they would decide the matter if game devs try to sue Unity for breach of contract. Unity can change the pricing for the future however they want. They’re trying to get rid of the pro tier and force everyone to buy the higher tier products. If that was all, people would be pissed but the outrage would likely be more muted. The true outrage comes from the fact that they failed to follow their promise that pricing would follow the version and how they based future pricing on retroactive sales numbers. The lesson, IMO, is that you have to care about how everyone you’re in business with is making money. If any vendor is loosing money (like Unity was) you have to assume they’ll eventually change the terms and will likely screw you in the process.
I have friends in the indie space and we make little games, just about all of us are switching from Unity to Godot, others are going Unity to Unreal but very few are staying with Unity unless they were 'too far' in with current projects, and even then they're vowing all future projects will not be in Unity. The trust is gone even if they backtrack this.
That's exactly what I think... unfortunately I've been working on my project for two years and it's almost close to launching the first alpha. At the moment I don't have much choice (I feel like crying if I have to start from scratch without even knowing the engine). For now I'm forced to continue my game with Unity and in the meantime I evaluate and study other engines (Godot and Unreal). The only thing that would keep me at Unity would be firing the entire amministation board including the CEO.
@@Shatteredworld Even if they were all fired, if there aren't guarantees put into the Terms of Service that assure this wont happen in the future, then any developer that partners with them going forward is indeed a fool.
@@morgierwin6641 Exactly. This is not even the first time. They backed out of their promises of transparency after their last attempt at exploitation. Frankly if it's not spelled out in an iron-clad contract you deserve what you get at this point.
Right. I said it at the start and will say it again. They need to drop this idea entirely and replace everyone responsible for this decision before they can even start to rebuild trust. Anything short of that will just be met with more loss of trust. I dont think they realise what they have done.
Unity CEO fighting with Tim Gurner for most out of touch CEO this year, which is quite the feat considering Gurner literally said "we need more unemployment. Employees are too arrogant and need to be put in their place". If you forgot, Gurner is also the guy who said the only reason Millennials can't afford houses is because they spend too much on avocado toast and starbucks.
An additional reason for developers to stop using Unity on top of having lost all trust in Unity, is that after so may customers leave what kind of shape will Unity be in years down the road. They might be losing so many customers in the next few years that Unity might have trouble supporting and updating its own products. That is another issue that developers should consider, even if they are ok with Unities future monetization schemes.
Unity has been in trouble for years. Their financials reveal they are losing millions a year. Hence their decision to charge per game install. Honestly, if I were a unity game dev I'd still be worried about the engines future.
Imagine being a fresh new indie developer. You have secured funding and are no looking into getting into the nitty gritty. You have to make a choice of what engine to choose. Given what Unity recently did, would you trust the people behind Unity to be reliable business partners? Or would you choose any alternative, even if it would be more expensive in the short term?
Unity was the one with up front cost though with a per dev seat subscription for anything but the free tier. They were going to increase those at the same time they added per install fees. Then all the plugins you have to pay for to get functionality build into Unreal (if you needed it). They were never the cheaper option. They just presented themselves as cheap and easier to get into, the later of which was only indirectly true due to the volume of community made tutorials rather than the editor being intuitive and user friendly. Their market share bought them more market share not their quality or affordability.
Depending on what you want to make Unity might even be a shit choice. I tried it, laughed at it and never used it again. Try making a scale 1:1 chain, with moving links. You know, just an ordinary metal chain. No cheating with rope physics now, only meshes and colliders. People are amazed at my shitty video where I made exactly that. The only problem is that it breaks if you look at it angrily. Unity colliders are the worst ever. But maybe they fixed them and objects spawning in other objects don't fly off to space anymore. Nah ... lol
Even being a multi billion dollar company, why would u risk using unity, you never know when they gonna change their policy. So yeah unity is fucked, no smart studio/publisher will use them anymore.
Unity is definitely learning their lesson the hard way rather than letting others make the mess so they can learn from it. Hasbro, at the start of this year, had it's Open Gaming License (OGL) debacle. Hasbro execs were getting pissed that someone like Critical Role was making $11m on a Kickstarter to make a cartoon based on their IP ruleset. So, in order to monetize and try to get some of that juicy money they changed their OGL to include revenue grabs over a certain amount which would hurt a bunch of indie publishers. They tried to do that under the table, like Unity, and it came out and blew up in their face. Then they tried to not make it such a big deal, so thousands upon thousands of TTRPG players canceled their subs to their online toolset. Hasbro walked back really quick once they saw they were bleeding money. For everyone to remove Unity's ad streams is great because it really shows how much they have to lose but ignoring their customers. And, just like Hasbro, no one looks at them with trust anymore and people have already started building out substitutes so that the D&D rules are still available without having to support actual Hasbro products. So, instead, Unity decided they could pull it off, instead they went for the live action remake that wasn't needed. haha
Nobody that matters will forget charging per install, which is an invitation to crippling debt outside of the developer's/publisher's ability to predict or control. Nor will they forget trying to push this retroactively on games already released, which would've immediately forced companies into costly legal battles. Even if Unity can distract and divide, I don't see what they can offer that's worth the risk of another betrayal on this scale.
If devs contribute to Godot then the friction to switch will be reduced. Focusing on import tools for example that already exist in part could reduce the time to clean up and thus reduce the opportunity cost.
@@ghb323 Switching cost would be an opportunity cost here. Spending 6 months changing to a new engine is 6 months you chose to forgo further development
The problem is, they very likely were trying to pull the scam of going so far over the line that when they pull back, people will accept something they otherwise would not just because it's less bad by comparison even though that was likely what they actually were trying to get in the first place. The fact they tried this at all should be reason enough for developers to jump ship as if they didn't backpedal because they cannot be trusted. And frankly, there is no way they did not know this was a ridiculous thing to try, so it screams that they have a hidden agenda.
PSA: lies of P added denuvo last minute before the final release... just beware all these reviews saying it runs well were made BEFORE denuvo was added
Even if they were to reverse this nonsense completely, the simple fact that they ever considered charging per install as a legitimate business model shows that they are no longer trustworthy as a potential business partner.
And even though employees were fighting this internally. This like ones own personal experience in working environment shows how often leaderships are bad at their job. The crazy thing is, that leadership arguments that they earned their high pay with all the responsibility. But when it comes to these decisions, you can see how bad they are and still earn 30x and more than the average employee...
Once trust is broken on this scale it'll be highly unlikely that Unity will EVER get that trust back. Developer's are always going to wonder if Unity is going to pull another stunt like this again in the future. To put it bluntly, I see very bad tidings in the future for Unity as a whole. Expect to see layoffs in their future because of the revenue loss from this. Their CEO, a greedy little shite, thought this would bring in the money; but all it did was piss everyone off. Wouldn't be surprised if there is a new CEO in the coming months.
If you truly trusted something or someone, once that trust breaks it will NEVER come back. So it's not gonna be tough to get that trust back, it'll be outright impossible.
We have to remember that the CEO of Unity, John Riccitiello, is the same guy who was CEO of EA Games while they created their own microtransaction hell across most of their titles. He is known for commenting that it is a good idea to not hit your prospective targets with exorbitant fees immediately - you wait until they are good and invested in your product before cranking up the fees. First taste is free!
@@Chadekaful You can sustain your game through things like cosmetic microtransactions (games like Rainbow 6 Siege or TF2), subscription fees (games like WoW), or simply by setting the entry price high enough (games like Deep Rock Galactic). All of those are decent enough methods, and clearly support the games enough to sustain them.
Even if Unity roll back their decision, any game dev studio with a working brain would start planning their migration from to another engine. Unity have shown that they can randomly take horrendous decision that impact their user base, without consulting any of the impacted people. You can't trust them
I teach app dev in college and this is unilaterally the talk of the moment in my classes. Because of this we are actually taking a moment to discuss the impacts of licensing on application development.
Definitely the first thing they need to be thought is how to protect themselves. Make their code more portable and rely less or (preferably none) on proprietary tools. Seek open source tools when possible and contribute in code, patches, support or donations. Since these tools belong to all of us.
I will not be surprised if it comes out that this was all an insider trading scheme. Most likely this bit of back-pedaling will raise their stock again, which honestly sucks. If management were to change, then I'd be willing to support Unity again, but with the current CEO and team behind him, I hope they continue to fall.
@@blar2112 This makes sense. I've been thinking the only hope for them at this point after destroying trust is to be bought by another big corporation.
if apple buys it no indie comp will use it. cus apple is just as scummy. you didn't notice? you can't change your iphone 15 with a "none Apple" usb c cable... apple is just as greedy!
I mean the stock sell offs they did were all pre approved by the sec and were around like 2% of his total stock portfolio in the company. I think its more likely to be him trying to milk devs cause the unity books werent looking too hot. Same thing hes done before. Do something outrageous. Backpedal to a position thats still bullshit but less bad. Everyone accepts the changes cause u backpedal. Repeat.
The Unity situation is just more proof that companies are not your friend and should never be trusted, they only want your money. The way a lot of people simp for companies is weird to me.
I think something that isn't talked about as much is that Unity has completely halted any new devs from choosing Unity. Zero growth. Even if there are some who have no choice but to stay, they've doomed themselves. If you thought Unity might have been a sinking ship before, they threw a stick of dynamite in the cargo hold and removed all doubt, it's just a matter of time until they're underwater.
I'll never forgive EA for keeping the Alice IP from American McGee himself when he was willing to work on the design bible of the game for years and even suggested a studio that's capable of working on the third game - Alice Asylum. Now the guy just gave up fighting the brickwall that is EA.
About the Unity shenanigans, my predictions: some minor fee reduction, maybe some protection against "unity charges you more than you've ever made" explicitly written in instead of the 'we'll work with you, trust me bro' answer they gave previously. They won't address the ironworks stuff, they won't elaborate on how they plan to count installs, they won't rescind the installation fee entirely. Maybe they'll delay it a bit.
I still see this as being rather hard to enforce since they are saying the distributors would have to pay for this. For something they never signed or agreed to. I know some publishers and distributors have made some pre-emptive actions because they aren't sure what's going on, but I just don't see it holding up if someone like Microsoft or Valve pushed back on a bill from Unity.
I don't know anything about this, but are they even allowed to make such changes out of the blue? There must be a contract or license that can't just be changed on a whim. Ok sure, half a year from now anyone that starts production with our engine has to abide by these retarded rules, yada yada; fine nobody will make games with Unity anymore starting from that period, not starting since yesterday it affects anyone that ever used or will use our product...
@@Relhioso, that is the most insidious part in all of this. In 2019, they had a similar issue where it seemed like they had retroactively changed terms (the whole situation was a mess, so I can't say whether or not that was actually true). To respond to community backlash, they added a section to their license that explicitly said you could use the old terms with the existing engines (and could even use bug fix releases), and that new terms would only apply to new versions. Guess what provision was dropped from the latest license? The upshots are two fold: 1) In all likelihood, the folks building with Unity 2022 LTS can't have their existing terms revoked. 2) Unity is trying to work around that fact by calling this a runtime charge. Their creative lawyers seem to be trying to say "yeah, you can continue to use the editor under the old terms, but we never agreed on the terms for the runtime, so here are the terms". I actually have a hard time believing that a judge would rule in Unity's favor on that, because it is their own software that is embedding the runtime, and contractual ambiguity is dealt with in favor of the party that didn't write the contract. I'm not a lawyer, but I really don't see how you thread the needle on: "yes, our software embeds our IP, and no, the contract doesn't explicitly say that the terms for the runtime are different from the terms of the editor, but there is absolutely no ambiguity that could read a license grant for the runtime into the editor license". This, like everything else Unity has done has been too clever for their own good. I'm sure the lawyer who found the loophole was very proud of himself. But, the courts aren't going to let Unity get away with it on a shrinkwrap license they wrote and didn't negotiate. If they had said the install fee only applied to games created with Unity 2024+, they would be on much firmer legal ground and, while people would be pissed, the trust wouldn't be as broken.
Happy to see Matt again! and once again thanks to the team for the thorough research, scripting etc. Really enjoy my news session on the evening with you!
I rarely purchase a game from EA because of the general shitty business practices. I don't blame the workers but corporate is the devil with how they treat their customers. I'm feeling the same way about Unity.
There's a significant difference: when you deny EA game sales, you deny the EA the money. When you deny a Unity game its sales, you're only punishing the unfortunate developer who chose their engine - quite sensibly and under different terms - assuming it would continue to be a reasonable choice into the future (and to be clear, it IS quite a solid engine for many projects that are too big or multiplatform for Godot, yet too small to justify Unreal). That developer is just as appalled with Unity as you are, and is possibly locked into doing business with them due to the opportunity cost. If the devs don't make money, Unity *still gets* their cut of the ongoing engine license fees they're paying.
@@SeventhHouseGames Godot or other open source can expand like Blender did to fill that space. This will accelerate that process. It's sad for developers stuck in the middle right now (and that is a LOT of the people), but they are learning a hard lesson that you're crazy to use a game engine that doesn't have guarantees against this in the terms of service like Unreal has, and if you're going to invest years of time and big money in using a software you should probably actually read the terms that you are accepting. Any developer that starts new games with Unity after this deserves to be stigmatized and fail, because now they know better.
@@morgierwin6641 Certainly, but consider that Unity's ToS had a very similar clause in it right up until this announcement went live, which was quietly revised after it was pointed out that the new changes were in direct contradiction to its terms. Unreal is no more of a guarantee today than Unity was a year or two ago. That's still well within the development timeline of many games, so I don't think anyone is "crazy" for not having a crystal ball to predict this. For all we know, Epic might change hands and renege on its ToS promises the same way in the future, damning the projects we're starting today. Part of why this is such an outrage is that we *did* read the terms of Unity's agreement. And they were reasonable, seemingly offering a guarantee that even if future changes happened, older projects could use the older ToS - and then Unity changed its mind.
Everyone would be well advised to remember that Riccitiello was hired by the Board, and they **knew** exactly what he's up to all along. Everyone would be well advised to remember that you mean nothing to that board. Their sole consideration, even legally to some extent, is doing well, or failing that, at least survive. Which is unlikely. Everyone would be well advised to assume that those bills, exactly as already stated, are going out 1 January even if the company fails before then. Which they won't (more like Q2-4 of '24, but I get such predictions wrong a lot.). You deal with the Unity board and Riccitiello the way Europe is dealing with Vlad Putin's gas. Dev studios need to band together for an engine commons or get behind an existing one. And remember what happens when you're hostage to the wrong people's tools.
So, you still buy their stuff but now just a little bit secretly? Cuz not a single European country stopped buying natural gas and oil from Russia, even more so, they strated buying more.
I demand an investigation into the top of Unity. The known fact that A LOT of shares were sold right before they did this. EDIT: For the weird Unity white knight here. "The top of Unity" means all of them. IDK if me not being clear or the average IQ dropping over the last 8 years.
It does not matter, if they made a vote a someone felt that this is a bad decision they had every reason to sell stocks, I dont think they made in on purpose to manipulate the market.. it would be at the cost of the company and in the end there is no gain from that, just some stupid and greedy decision's.
I think the CEO only sold 2% of his total shares. He sold something like 2000 and he has 300,000 if i am not mistaken. Look into it, him selling shares is actually not that big of a deal. People are saying it like he sold a majority of what he had and he was cashing out - which isn't the case
This only matters if people are smart enough to stay gone. There needs to be a notable permanent loss. It’s the only thing that may scare other companies from trying. We’ve had a lot of shady horrible practices that we once thought would never happen, become commonplace. The only way to make progress with the greed these higher ups act with, is to make a corporate example of them.
Greed is not is issue, in a sense companies are there to make money, he is just a pr nightmare at times. Saying game devs are stupid for not maximizing monetizing things to the max, while from a business standpoint true, ignores the fact it simply doesn't work that way for most small companies including smaller game devs. This latest announcement was a dumpster fire, while the story that the current model doesn't cover the costs of running Unity is true, does not mean the method chosen and the way it is presented is good. Even if there is a per install cost, make sure you have everything laid out before announcing it with pricing. If they announced btw we are moving to an installation based model in the future, future announcements will follow, it would have had a lot less outcry, when they made such a move with proper details and explanation. The messaging is just garbage. When as a company or person you are going to do something people won't like you have to massage it in and explain it in detail, not drop a nuke and make a bad deal turn into outright panic.
As if any developer who has the option to use a different engine will risk their project on Unity not pulling a stunt like that again. Even if they backpedal now, the damage is done. Silver lining, the backpedaling might allow smaller indie devs to survive and give them time to switch to a product that's not from Evil Corp.
I don't even believe that. They were caught last time, tried to cover that up, and made an even worse mess. They won't be more careful; they'll maybe wait a little, and hope the damage they've done is the last of it and everyone who's left will tolerate any madness.
Honestly if I was unreal or another engine I'd offer help in getting people to port away from unity. It's not every day that a competitor sticks their neck out and asks you to take their head. It might cost revenue in the short term but the long term good will and effectively removing a competitor from your pool would far outweigh that cost.
The thing that makes me cautious about this, is that they're writing up a new policy. It makes me feel like rather than saying they are going to screw you over directly, they are now going to try to say they are going to screw you over in-between the lines. Which is what corporations usually do when they back peddle on policies like this.
"We are sorry that you guys didn't understand what we meant." 😂 I can't see this ending without Riccitiello stepping down with a personal public apology.
"We're sorry if our incredibly vague statement caused any confusion. Please accept our equally vague assurance that everything will definitely be fine, somehow."
The whole "Use Level Play and this whole fee problem? That can alll just go away." Tells me all I need to know. They know this is a bad deal and is using it like a stick. They could have easier gotten money using a different model but they didn't. Instead of party members we're donkeys to be moved via carrot and stick.
"Some additionnal revenue was needed" It's never the case. It's always the case of the management caste outstripping its usefulness and being impossible to contract due to its control on its own employment without an executive decision that rarely comes because management is nepotistic and incestuous and the CEOs is probably directly genetically related to 80% of the management so it would be awkward for him to do anything about it..
They take it all back AND they remove the "We can change contract how we want when we want" part from any current or future contracts. Anything less and Unity is 100% done for.
"If someone held you at gunpoint and apologize only after their gun jammed when they pull the trigger, you should never give them a single amount of trust ever"
I can see a lot of projects choosing to continue to use unity. However, I absolutely do not see any new project starting up to ever choose unity again. I think that they can stop the bleeding but from what I’ve seen they have cut off any potential for growth.
Sadly seems likely. This has been the _modus operandi_ of the gaming industry for a long time, so it's no real surprise to see it here. Got a policy you know everyone will hate? Just announce something ten times worse, then walk it back to what you wanted to begin with. They come out looking like the party willing to compromise, and the people pointing out how horrible the new deal _still_ is get accused of just trying to keep the outrage going. Then in a couple of years, they'll do the same thing again, pushing the envelope a bit further. Rinse and repeat. They rely on short memories and apathy to continually get away with this, and they've been getting away with it now for a couple decades at least.
The problem is you cant convince somone to invest their future in your company, when your company has shown that they will rewrite their agreements retroactively. What are they gonna do, sign a contract saying they wont rewrite contracts anymore?
As long as unity walking it back means that Team Cherry and Silksong are safe, I'm happy, but I still think any developers that have the ability to do so should jump ship as soon as they can.
This is exactly like the first Wizards of the Coast response, if they don't follow up with the equivalent of the second one, they're still done from lack of trust. (For those who didn't follow it Wizards had to make all their existing stuff open license forever to get people back on their side.)
NDA be damned! Unity has lost over 37% of its developers. The staff at Unity is panicked. We have been told to keep quiet while the BRASS figures out damage control. IMHO: Its time to find a new job. "Bye UNITY!"
I'm doing a gamejam in Unity this week, and a lot of us are seeing it a last-hurrah before we all sit down and go learn Godot. They could revert it all and the trust is still in the negative.
You mentioned unity looking to save face by making the price to stay lower than the price to retrain, and it's valid, but I'm thinking someone is going to take advantage of the unforced error and make the price to retrain lower and put unity down for good. It really was a self inflicted wound.
Unity is not "Apologising". "We are sorry you feel confused and Angst" Does NOT mean "We are sorry for what we did." Rather It accuses people for being "Dumb" and "Overrating".
Great to see you on the channel again, @Matt :) - Liked your takes and reasoning on Unity and what they need to do. But the BIG take-away is at 8:27 - That says to me that everyone who can get off of Unity now, or soon - _should_ do so! - As you eloquently pointed out: The mask is off. Unity's management might have had to backpedal this time - Like Hasbro/WotC, we can expect Unity to try to pull off some other "d!ck move" once this current drama has gone quiet.
Theres a pretty specific person they need to have step down to reclaim a bit of the good will they lost. Either way, it may take decades for them to get back to where they were and I imagine most companies will weigh this act when choosing an engine until the end of time.
Well, I'm just happy for all the devs of ongoing projects that are no longer in the 'too far into the project on unity to switch over but this could kill our game' conundrum. I'd be interested to see a graph of games starting development in unity over time... wonder how sharp that dip is.
Yep, I didn't buy WildHearts because of the really poor optimization on PC and overpricing at launch. However I regularly checked on Steam during every sale events to see if it was fixed. This is sad to see it get abandonned that way, a Monster Slaying game with really good combat concepts and the ability to layer your base on the map as you see fit was a really a cool idea. I guess that's the essence of the live service model though, micro-transactions or not, what you paid for can just get its value ablated in the snap~
1. Sell company stock before announcing bad changes 2. Announce bad changes, stock drops 3. Buy back low stock 4. Tweet apology and reverse bad changes, stock goes up 5. Repeat
Speaking about EA originals Wild Hearts had so much potential, if they had not had all of the performance issues they could have genuinely been some good monster hunter competition. More than likely their own screwups on performance have killed the series as it could have been
I love MH but i would have loved to see WH succeed. Alas, the giant of boss hunting remains unchallenged for the most part. Hoping for MH:W 2 where they'll bring all the most fun features of world and rise, and update all of the horrible tedium, padding, systems and UX. You know, all the typical j-rpg antiquated UX and tedium that makes you want to die. The combat, movesets, combos, new features in rise felt so damn fun, including the improved traversal options, but World was just... cooler. It felt cooler, too.
I've been working on a project in unity for the last few years. It hasn't been full time because of school and working part time to help my mom, but I did get to something that I'm fairly proud of. With all this though I've still decided to move to Godot. regardless of what Unity say now, the trust has been broken. I'm just trying to look at the bright side of this though. Starting fresh just means I get a better chance to set up good game architecture, something I didn't really understand when I started my project in Unity and it became a bit of a mess. As well as the fact that most of the time I spent in unity learning and developing the ideas and designs of what I want to make and how to make it. I want to wish I could stick with Unity and ignore all this but I can't trust them. I can't even trust that they will still be around in 5-10 years. And as someone who wishes to make game dev my career then moving to a reliable game engine, it's just the only good decision I can make out of all this.
Yeah, the guy who wanted to sell weapon reloads in first person shooters. It never ceases to amaze me how these incompetent cretins, who only know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, seem to be able to just fail from one multi-million dollar role to the next with no real accountability or responsibility. This guy has probably tanked Unity in the mid to long term, but he'll pop up somewhere else in a couple years with an equally horrible idea.
i'm not a game dev but it would be super nice if it turns out that godot was a better engine than unity and that people who are migrating their project there have a smother time with godot than with unity.
Honestly, Godot seems pretty nice - it might not be as mature a product, but the main reason most people elected for Unity (as far as I could tell) is that there were more learning resources, but I don't think that's going to be enough to make people stick with a company that's shown its true colours. I'd rather take a bit longer to figure things out in Godot than risk going bankrupt just because my game was too popular.
Abandon. Unity. Do NOT let this bell get unrung, this has to be a statement from the community or else it's just permission for them to keep it up. Them AND their friends at other companies.
Anybody who was surprised that Riccitiello turned out to be evil all along just hasn't been paying attention. I knew he'd eventually do SOMETHING super-sleazy the second he took over the company. If Unity wants to have even a hope of rebuilding public trust, they need to fire his ass.
Villian of the year still goes out to Hasbro& WOTC for the DND OGL kerfuffle that hit in January and what it looks like theyre setting up for theyre VTT, though this is a close second. I have no idea how ANY company today can make a new policy retroactively like this with this broad a scope. Like I have a bunch of games that were built on unity and the thought that reinstalling the game in the future could hurt some of my favorite indie publishers, is just insane as a policy. And we cant even go back to physical releases anymore because all they are are glorified install codes. Messed up.
I disagree. WotC is second to this. WotC, iirc, didn’t try to bankrupt thousands of people AND do it retroactively. They didn’t try sending Pathfinder a bill for the last 5 years of work they did under a previous license agreement… They also had a real concrete plan for monetization. It wasn’t a bill based on “trust me bro” math.
I disagree on wotc, at least when everyone started abandoning ship on the DND policy change, not only did they backpedal the entire change. They made the license "open forever"... Meaning they will never ever touch it again
@@voxkine9385 But they did. Anyone who was publishing stuff for dnd was affected and that's a lot of companies. And they were trying to claim everything that had been made as theirs. I dunno maybe its just because this years desensitized me to this stuff but I remember being way more upset at Hasbro and Wotc. This just feels like "yup another turd on the pile".
My impression of Immortals of Aveum was "I'm not impressed just because of a lot of flashy cotton candy". It is like those AI articles that are filled with a lot of junk, because this is what people are talking about and want. It really isn't.
Personally I think part of the problem with Immortals of Aveum is atleast on pc i'm not sure high end graphic are as big of a selling point as people in the industry actually think they are to most people that play on pc. don't get me wrong nice graphics are just that nice but how many games like vampire survivor are gonna have to come out until insiders realize people want a good feeling game more then a visually impressive game that doesn't feel good to play. I think part of the problem might be that because dev tend to be tech heads that find the stuff behind the graphics impressive which it is they lose sight of the fact actually a vast majority of people are not like that. Personally i think the biggest take away from the steam hardware survey that is missed is that it arguably dispels the myth that pc gamers are somehow more 'harecore gamers' then console gamers. Look at how many people are playing on lower end devices and some of that might be from poorer parts of the world but my bet is a lot of those people are also people that use the same device for work and play and won't buy a new computer until they need to for work and not for a hobby. These people are potentially the most 'casual' gamers their are because they aren't shilling out huge amounts on high end hard ware hell some are using hardware that ancient by the standards of the industry but you know what odds are it still runs microsoft word, a browser and whatever else they need for work. They potentially also aren't spending money on a console either or a phone that lets them play a game like genshin. The image of the pc gamer as some hardcore tech head that builds their own pc is probably massively overblown and should of been dispelled the moment the steam hardware survey came out. Overall i think it could be described as a value weighting issue where insiders have place way to high of a weighting on graphics compared to things like story and how a game feels to play. I can only speak personally but i would rather play some rpgmaker game with a great story and the dev has implemented mechanics in an interesting way that feels good over a unreal game that is visually stunting but is lackluster in both mechanics and story.
I think that most dev's that even now depend on Unity will start migrating towards other platforms. Even if the evil U backpedals and makes it "tolerable" it's a clear sign that they don't care about the relationships they've built. And I think Dev's see this, so I expect most of them will start to devote time to moving to a platform that will respect them, even if it takes time and, in the meantime, they will use whatever they must of Unity to keep their games afloat. U really shot themselves in the foot with this one, no going back. True colors have been shown. Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.
Unity's execs trying to force retroactive changes on old games to demand future costs is breach of contract, pure and simple. I legitimately hope dev studios take the time to press charges and see those people fined to oblivion for what they did and then have them blacklisted from tech companies from here on out.
An ex EA leader suggested $ per reload and Lootbox approval... yeah, Unity lost all the trust with the one change and this... attempt to 'step back' is just PR at a glance.
This really reminds me of the OGL situation that happened earlier this year. In Unity’s case, I guess they’d have to release their runtime under a BSD style license. Anyone agree?
Yeah they are setting a precedent for many shitty companies ceo to do like that eventually. every comment, click reply, click cancel, view a video, every time open steam, open tab, etc etc will have fee.
I'm certain this is coming about because they think some indie devs have not been reporting and upgrading after they hit the royalty threshold. They were thinking about the simplest solution that was the least accurate but would most certainly cause the most anger. Instead, there was an alternate solution. They could have just worked with digital distribution platforms (like Steam) to help report those numbers back to Unity. Unity knows that the charge by install will make them a fortune more than royalties that why they'll keep trying to push it. The current CEO doesn't care about small time devs or freemium games, he just wants every game developer to put a price tag on their game. As he's been quoted saying, game developers that don't monetize their games are stupid.
I actually don't even think that is the case. For traditional computer games (not mobile), the per-install fee will be much less than the 5% of revenue royalty that Unreal charges. Switching to a royalty model would probably have brought them in more revenue. But, it would have relied on developers self-reporting their revenue, which Unity appears to be unwilling to trust.
I'll be honest, I wouldn't have known of Immortals of Aveum hadn't you featured a couple of clips a while back. Had a look at the marketing material, though that's a lot of effects, what's even going on on the screen? And shelved it. It seems visually impressive but that's about it. That's another thing that is going to be a challenge for AAA going forward I think. Their calling card is largely impressive graphics and (real) hardware upgrades are feeling smaller generation to generation. Checking the Steam Hardware survey, most players are still on midrange 20 and 30 series cards, you can't really do a Todd Howard and expect the majority of people to have a 4080+ so they can play your game. There was also (I think it was an Act Man video) the issue that it's just minor details that are getting better, we no longer have the big jumps in graphic fidelity we used to have "back in the days", like going from Tomb Raider 1 to 2 to 3 it's a very noticeable difference. Now it's down to real time rendering facial hairs?
There is one major thing to keep in mind. People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, people will never forget how you made them feel. Unity's time is limited, and it needs to be made a example of anyways. If Unity survives, they will simply find a more underhanded way to achieve the same. Of you're a gamer, demand refunds for Unity games, if you're a developer, take the 10 years or whatever it takes to port you're game, early release it, and be transparent about why it's not what it used to be. But build it back. Easier said than done, but I for one will support devs who do these things, because no one should have to stand there like they have a gun pointed at there head.
Refunding Unity games does nothing to directly hurt Unity, just the developer who made them. Unity makes their developer-side money through engine licenses, which the devs are paying out of pocket whether or not their game sells, and through ads on mobile platforms, which don't offer refunds.
@FASNaota honestly you're right. I misspoke kinda. It'd insecticide devs to move to a credible engine. However, it would certainly hurt there bottom end. At the same time unity will be doing that by making old games still cost them. There's no win here for anybody supporting unity. Including devs who were dumb enough to think unreal's c++ is much different, the engine itself has safeguards that fix the issues with aforementioned code. Such as data leaks ect... point is, there has been little reason to use unity for the last few years. They haven't improved it, and are unable to properly monetize it, which feeds into the first issue. Personally I properly won't refund my unity titles, unless the online ones are delisted. which is highly likely if you think about server cost, licensing, general payroll and unity install costs on top of that and more I'm sure I missed. So... why should the consumer be out anything cause the devs were to stupid to see the obvious writing on the wall. Why I decided to go with unreal myself, unity games feel cheap, and take a hell of a lot more effort to make work, if the slightest bit if real research was done, it's obvious unity is a garbage engine. That said, the devs that did create via unity have my admiration, in the cases of making a decent feeling game anyway. Truth is, most fail at that with unity, and tbh it's not there fault, they were bullshitted into thinking unreal was worse, when in fact, day and night cycles are basically vanilla, lighting is easiest thing to achieve as is time of day, 5 free assets a month, lumens work out the box, so.... realistic light passthrough, and that's not even touching nanites which makes you're high poly models run better than low poly models. Nanites are new technology from my understanding, last I knew it they worked on stationary and environmental meshes, such as mountains, foliage, and donuts. But haven't really looked at the new 5.3 as of yet, so who knows. Unlike unity epic updates it's systems. Because unlike unity they know how to monetize there products, this is why they own fall guys, fortnite, and unreal tournament in the past. You cannot make money off nothing.
@@zaodacrusher7498 I just mean to say that it's important to consider what your chosen form of protest is, and who it affects. Unity devs are right there with you on being appalled at what's happening, and are likely doing their best right now to avoid any of the fallout from this decision. *They're* the ones with the power to deny Unity business, and if anything is obvious about this debacle, they certainly don't need any extra convincing from players. Presumably we're all mad because Unity is taking an unjustified, ill-considered, sudden, and unpredictable bite out of the prosperity of its developers. If you really care about the developers trapped by this, I wouldn't recommend doing them *further damage* to protest Unity's mistreatment. They'll be the ones suffering the impact, not Unity. If you want to take action, other than just spreading the word I'd suggest talking with your favourite devs, or anyone you see with a promising Unity game that you feel something about. See if they plan to move elsewhere (they probably do), and if it's feasible for them to do so. If you have resources to help them along as an Unreal dev, share them! That move off the engine might be possible if you support their studio; it definitely won't if you attack them just to make a statement about Unity that they probably agree with. If they can't move right now, be understanding: for people with finished or near-finished projects, we're talking about an amount of completely thankless work to migrate their games that could be years in the making. In all likelihood they'll be out at the start of their next project - but to do that it would be polite to let them *have* a next project, instead of an extra scoop of collateral damage.
@FASNaota I don't disagree. But consider this, if the unity devs are hurt due to lackluster sales because of unity's incompetent business practices, that class action lawsuit just got a lot of momentum, and on top of that it's price just skyrocketed. The devs, should then start a group funding campaign for there legal defense if needed. You need to look at it from a legal perspective as well.
It almost seems like this situation was intended as some insane attempt at anchoring, but they were so hopeful that everyone would just go along with the initial terms that they didn't even bother coming up with any other revisions. Now they're left scrambling, trying to come up with a more workable alternative before absolutely _all_ of their customers abandon them.
There's one thing I think hasn't been said about this entire thing - another company has tried to do basically the same thing earlier this year. AND THEY FAILED. The Dungeon's and Dragons community has fought the exact same battle with Wizards of the Coast, starting in January. The company wanted to push a new license that would bankrupt anyone working under it. It was even worse than the current situation, since Unity actually gave a three months notification, while WotC wanted the changes to be implemented and enforced immediately. The community could react only because of an insider leaking the new license. Initial reactions, apart from the general outrage, was Paizo (a rival publisher, responsible for Pathfinder) announcing a brand new D&D alternatinve that wouldn't use the WotC license, also having it's own ORC license that gives A LOT of freedom to community creators; then the Kobold Press (the biggest community creative group) announcing ANOTHER D&D alternative, also outside of the WotC license; then Critical Role (the largest, financially, D&D streaming channel) announcing not only that they'd part ways with WotC, but also that they'd make YET ANOTHER D&D alternative, obviously outside of the WotC license. All of these had huge implications for the WotC, but the thing that changed their minds was when D&D Beyond (a website/app hosted by WotC and used to play D&D digitally) started to lose it's userbase on a massive scale. The company even had the audacity to temporarily disable the option to unsubscribe from the services! And THAT was the moment the giant company, CEO and board of directors had begun to listen. When they saw dollars flooding out of their bank accounts in real time. Dear Unity community. Take a lesson from our past battles. We won't charge you for it, unlike the devs.
The good news isn't the backpedaling, the good news is that they've shown everyone who they are.
Yea, I was entertaining idea learning unity as it seemed easiest engine to learn, but I'm no longer interested doing anything in unity.
they made the original announcement already prepared to "backpedal" from it. they will just backpedal a little bit, then push things further and people are going to accept it
Pretty sure they got some threatening legal letters from big partners.
@@McDinglefart_69 In terms of functionality, stability, features, support, etc... it used to be considered really good a few years ago and even a gold standard in the indie scene, especially for 2D games, but nowaday it doesn't seem like it's keeping up, hence such drastic measures. More and more people who used to worship unity are now hating working with it. Some of my friends have turned against Unity (independently of the recent controversies) and are looking at Godot (supposedly on its way to become the new Unity) and UE4/UE5 in a better light than Unity, whereas it used to be the other way around. Hell, the studio they are working for has a discord emoji of the unity error icon named "working as intended", the engine gets memed on hard.
If Unity gave up on using its own engine to make its own game because it wasn't worth it, that should be a pretty significant red flag.
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii I wouldn't count on that. Any partner that's big enough that their words carry weight will already have a bespoke contract.
I appreciate how they apologized for the ”confusion” and ”angst” their consumers are experiencing rather than for what they actually did.
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
There was also NO confusion - we understood exactly what they were doing... PR firms trying to gaslight us 😂
@@The_Beardyes! Gaslighting is what this is exactly.
I forgot where I got this point from, but there was a youtuber/blogger back in 2012 that properly pointed out; this is a technique, The idea is to present you the absolute worst version of the thing they're pushing, predictably get the backlash, THEN "backpeddal" and revise that "worst" thing into what they actually want to implement. It's how the industry giants eventually got away with the concept of DLC, microtransaction, live service. It's how, despite the constant outcry, we still landed on the this state of the videogame market today.
@@CatsOverdrive Definitely. The most bizarre part is that individuals are already "negotiating" a softer version of the deal on Twitter. Consider an excavator manufacturer requesting a percentage of the rent collected by a housing company if their machines were used to construct the building. That's the level of absurdity going on here.
matt: imagine you're in a party…
me: confused
matt: …in a game
me: ohhhh, gotcha
on a serious note, i was just waiting for an excuse to give other engines more of a serious try, having only dabbled in unreal and godot. unity is slow, not cohesive, missing fundamental functionality and qol, etc... it took me 1 day of looking at godot docs and tutorials to feel like i already understand everything i need to know to, and it's so nice to use compared to unity. this current fiasco is a "last straw" only because the engine itself has been suffering
That''s the only party gamers know :''''v
@@captaincool6268 completely untrue. I went to a pool party just a week ago. No, wait.. that was also online.. damn.. nevermind.
Yes because obviously none off us goes into a party where we slaughter like police men or other people in cold blood.
or in a party where we steal from stores and when the clerks notice us we murder them in cold blood.
Yup I also only do that in games and definitly not in real life nope.
@@georgekitchen7046 What is this "pahr-tee" you speak of?
As difficult as it will be for Devs to pull out and restart in a new Engine, this is exactly what needs to happen.
It depends how far along they are. If they're too far along, they may have no choice but to finish and release, then patch out the engine later on.
Patching out the engine is not an easy task, but I've seen it done before - Papers Please for example ported from Haxe/OpenFL to... Haxe/Unity.
The poor guy made up really bad bet, but at least he has the option to reverse it back to OpenFL.
Star Citizen is another example, when they switched from crytek to a spin-off version of critek called Lumberyard. Although much of it was easily transferred, it wasn't a perfect match, and is one of the reasons why the game took much longer to develop then intended (although that is just one of a great many issues plaguing it).
@@TheEDFLegacy I'm aware it won't be an easy or fast transition but disgusting predatory monetization like this can NOT be tolerated. Consumers (in this case, the Developers of games) must make a stand, however painful, or else garbage like this will be the new norm.
There is some off-the-cuff napkin math sort of logic we can use to guess which studios will or won't. Right away, big teams almost certainly won't. That's a lot of people who need to both investigate and learn probably a whole new pipeline. This video already pointed out that Immortals of Aveum had half its staff laid off instantly. Axios stated this: " ... with a development team that was 30 to 60 people for much of development, and peaked at 100, compared to a Call of Duty’s 500." So that's probably around 30-45 people laid off to pinch a couple pennies out of their wages. Studios signed to big corps won't spend any money on retraining their employees on new engines. AA might, those signed to sub-AAA publishers. Indie studios are too inconsistent, either strapped for cash all the time (most of them) or swimming in it (the lucky 5%). Publicly traded corporations are the platonic ideal, the very definition of selfish evil - retraining would only be used if it guaranteed money, which it no longer will.
Small studios are in very much the same deal as the inconsistency with AA. They might or they might not. It must be seen case by case by looking at twitter.
What needs to happen is the systemic change in how publicly traded corporations operate, and the defeat of infinite growth in a finite world. This will not be accomplished by gamers.
I don't think there's a single dev out there that plans to continue with Unity after completing their current project...
@@TheEDFLegacythere is no such thing as patching out an engine. You port it. You literally re-write it in a new engine.
Even if they back out completely and bow down to everyone, people will not forgive them and their reputation, whatever rep they have, is completely tarnished and smashed apart. Good Job Unity, you are the gaming community’s Villain of the Week! Here’s your dumbass badge, don’t poke yourself with the pin!
Lol holy shit, aint that a burn.
I bet they count as the gaming community villain of the years, unless something even worse happens
They should get the worst company of 2023 award. Just like EA was awarded 2 years straight under the same CEO.
I’m sure they’d still manage to stab themselves in they eyes with the pin.
Yeah, I imagine if you're fully invested in a large project and it's too costly to back out, then you'd probably take whatever olive branch they offer, but pretty much everyone is going to have an eye on jumping ship a soon as it's feasible. This kind of damage can take a decade to repair, and it doesn't sound like Unity have the kind of funds to withstand that. Probably the "best" we can hope for is that someone with deep pockets buys them out, but I'm not sure I'd trust Epic Unity or MS Unity that much more, to be honest (they'd need to offer some incredibly strong up-front guarantees).
Don’t let this be the end of the revolt BECAUSE the games industry is going to try this again.
They will absolutely try again and are only backing off because, “The time is not right.” That’s how the games industry got the place of loot boxes, Day 1 patches, always online for single player games and so much more.
People are already letting single player games go pay to win, and giving them good reviews. The only reason this didn’t fly is because they were messing with indie games.
You do understand that the people revolting are apart of the games industry, right? It's tbe only reason it's even working. This is an internal matter. Once it calms down the industry will unite again in shafting the customers and there will be nothing we can do about it.
We've all seen this happen many times before with games. The company backpedals and releases a press statement that says "we hear you loud and clear". Then they go back to the drawing board and try to find a sneakier angle of attack. As long as the people making the decisions remain in their positions, nothing will change.
No second chances for Unity. In 2019 Tim Sweeny made it clear that the EULA for Unreal doesn't allow this kind of back-stabbing.
To quote his twitter on Jan 10, 2019 "We specifically make the UE4 EULA apply perpetually so that when you obtain a version under a given EULA, you can stay on that version and operate under that EULA forever if you choose."
When asked again about this on Sept 12, 2023; to see if this was still the case with UE5, Tim replied: "Yes, it’s perpetual, and there are more recent improvements in the license (e.g. Epic can’t terminate a license even for breach or non-payment). Goal is to put the EULA contractual terms on par with the custom terms negotiated by the most powerful publishers."
So if you still need a professional-grade engine to make your games, Unreal seem to be the safer option. However, if your game doesn't need all the fancy features that Unreal comes with, Godot is also an excellent option, especially since you won't have to worry about any fee structure. Godot is fully free & open source. From Godot's own EULA: "Godot Engine is free and open source software released under the permissive MIT license (also named Expat license). This license grants users a number of freedoms: You are free to use Godot Engine, for any purpose."
yup, Unreal watched the blowback and revised their plan for when they try it.
Again, with Unity everyone isn't just concerned about what the CEO and executives just did, everyone's wondering if other companies will do the exact same thing and get away with it, everyone's wondering if Unity will tack on more costs in one or two years since they've proven the business of changing past agreements is profitable by then. It's not just this one thing, it's what this means going forward for all industries. Businesses that cannot trust other business partners even after signing agreements is the future if nothing is done.
On a plus side engines like godot literally cant someone will fork it and boom damage is undone. And the other biggest players, UE even if they change the terms they are not backwards aplicable and they apply only to whole versions ie ue5 terms are set in stone no matter what if they chage the rules they will apply to ue6 and you can still use ue5 with same old terms otherwise they will get raked over the coals by eu for billions, source even only a few games outside of valve even use it would cause such a massive developer exodus on steam it would not be funny, and again same rules as ue, bound to whole versions(as per their licences).
But these things will cause friction in the publisher developer relationships
They already have been doing it. Big companies have been robbing people from the bottom to their face since Covid and it just keeps on happening. The greed is finally showing its face.
It is still illegal and will never hold up in court. So there is no winning any way.
Most of this is contractual matter. You can write contracts and licenses in such a way that you can't pull this stuff off. It's a risk that existed within Unity ecosystem, and now that risk has been realized.
@@YunFuriku it’s not that simple. Previously, Unity had told developers that they could pin their TOS to whatever version of Unity they were using. Then they silently got rid of that option in an otherwise innocuous update, so they’d be able to make this change without being in breach of contract. Courts don’t always allow those type of sneaky TOS updates, so it’s unclear how they would decide the matter if game devs try to sue Unity for breach of contract.
Unity can change the pricing for the future however they want. They’re trying to get rid of the pro tier and force everyone to buy the higher tier products. If that was all, people would be pissed but the outrage would likely be more muted.
The true outrage comes from the fact that they failed to follow their promise that pricing would follow the version and how they based future pricing on retroactive sales numbers.
The lesson, IMO, is that you have to care about how everyone you’re in business with is making money. If any vendor is loosing money (like Unity was) you have to assume they’ll eventually change the terms and will likely screw you in the process.
I have friends in the indie space and we make little games, just about all of us are switching from Unity to Godot, others are going Unity to Unreal but very few are staying with Unity unless they were 'too far' in with current projects, and even then they're vowing all future projects will not be in Unity. The trust is gone even if they backtrack this.
That's exactly what I think...
unfortunately I've been working on my project for two years and it's almost close to launching the first alpha.
At the moment I don't have much choice (I feel like crying if I have to start from scratch without even knowing the engine).
For now I'm forced to continue my game with Unity and in the meantime I evaluate and study other engines (Godot and Unreal).
The only thing that would keep me at Unity would be firing the entire amministation board including the CEO.
You'd be a fool to trust Unity after this, they've shown who they are.
so long as the CEO and executive staff who pushed this through in the first place are there, i wouldn't trust them at all.
@@Shatteredworld Even if they were all fired, if there aren't guarantees put into the Terms of Service that assure this wont happen in the future, then any developer that partners with them going forward is indeed a fool.
@@morgierwin6641 Exactly. This is not even the first time. They backed out of their promises of transparency after their last attempt at exploitation. Frankly if it's not spelled out in an iron-clad contract you deserve what you get at this point.
Right. I said it at the start and will say it again. They need to drop this idea entirely and replace everyone responsible for this decision before they can even start to rebuild trust. Anything short of that will just be met with more loss of trust.
I dont think they realise what they have done.
Unity CEO fighting with Tim Gurner for most out of touch CEO this year, which is quite the feat considering Gurner literally said "we need more unemployment. Employees are too arrogant and need to be put in their place". If you forgot, Gurner is also the guy who said the only reason Millennials can't afford houses is because they spend too much on avocado toast and starbucks.
Gurner. I hate that he's promulgating that sentiment essentially because of influencers my age who don't live like real people.
The hell's avocado toast…???
@@mb2001toast with sliced avocados on it. It has the same appeal as buttered toast with less fat.
Time for change.
@@HellecticMojo It's delicious with a little bit of honey, cheese and cream.
At least Unity united everyone ... against them
Lelouch moment
@@alihorda PIZZA!
Ironic, isn’t it
@@alihorda unlike lelouch, there was no clear goal that would benefit the world.
We can be a unity. They can be called "Divide" from now on.
An additional reason for developers to stop using Unity on top of having lost all trust in Unity, is that after so may customers leave what kind of shape will Unity be in years down the road. They might be losing so many customers in the next few years that Unity might have trouble supporting and updating its own products. That is another issue that developers should consider, even if they are ok with Unities future monetization schemes.
Unity has been in trouble for years. Their financials reveal they are losing millions a year. Hence their decision to charge per game install. Honestly, if I were a unity game dev I'd still be worried about the engines future.
@@sanseverything900 try to guess, who was supposed to prevent this financial crap.
Imagine being a fresh new indie developer. You have secured funding and are no looking into getting into the nitty gritty.
You have to make a choice of what engine to choose.
Given what Unity recently did, would you trust the people behind Unity to be reliable business partners?
Or would you choose any alternative, even if it would be more expensive in the short term?
Unity was the one with up front cost though with a per dev seat subscription for anything but the free tier. They were going to increase those at the same time they added per install fees. Then all the plugins you have to pay for to get functionality build into Unreal (if you needed it). They were never the cheaper option. They just presented themselves as cheap and easier to get into, the later of which was only indirectly true due to the volume of community made tutorials rather than the editor being intuitive and user friendly. Their market share bought them more market share not their quality or affordability.
Depending on what you want to make Unity might even be a shit choice.
I tried it, laughed at it and never used it again.
Try making a scale 1:1 chain, with moving links. You know, just an ordinary metal chain.
No cheating with rope physics now, only meshes and colliders.
People are amazed at my shitty video where I made exactly that.
The only problem is that it breaks if you look at it angrily.
Unity colliders are the worst ever. But maybe they fixed them and objects spawning in other objects don't fly off to space anymore.
Nah ... lol
Even being a multi billion dollar company, why would u risk using unity, you never know when they gonna change their policy. So yeah unity is fucked, no smart studio/publisher will use them anymore.
I'd say Unity is the most expensive choice in the short term too, so...
Unity is definitely learning their lesson the hard way rather than letting others make the mess so they can learn from it. Hasbro, at the start of this year, had it's Open Gaming License (OGL) debacle. Hasbro execs were getting pissed that someone like Critical Role was making $11m on a Kickstarter to make a cartoon based on their IP ruleset. So, in order to monetize and try to get some of that juicy money they changed their OGL to include revenue grabs over a certain amount which would hurt a bunch of indie publishers. They tried to do that under the table, like Unity, and it came out and blew up in their face. Then they tried to not make it such a big deal, so thousands upon thousands of TTRPG players canceled their subs to their online toolset. Hasbro walked back really quick once they saw they were bleeding money. For everyone to remove Unity's ad streams is great because it really shows how much they have to lose but ignoring their customers. And, just like Hasbro, no one looks at them with trust anymore and people have already started building out substitutes so that the D&D rules are still available without having to support actual Hasbro products.
So, instead, Unity decided they could pull it off, instead they went for the live action remake that wasn't needed. haha
Nobody that matters will forget charging per install, which is an invitation to crippling debt outside of the developer's/publisher's ability to predict or control. Nor will they forget trying to push this retroactively on games already released, which would've immediately forced companies into costly legal battles. Even if Unity can distract and divide, I don't see what they can offer that's worth the risk of another betrayal on this scale.
Yea I bet behind the scenes nintendos ninjas Microsoft’s suits, Sony lawyers… etc. we’re breathing down unity’s neck
If devs contribute to Godot then the friction to switch will be reduced. Focusing on import tools for example that already exist in part could reduce the time to clean up and thus reduce the opportunity cost.
*switching cost
@@ghb323 Switching cost would be an opportunity cost here. Spending 6 months changing to a new engine is 6 months you chose to forgo further development
@@morgierwin6641 I think you replied to the wrong comment lol
The problem is, they very likely were trying to pull the scam of going so far over the line that when they pull back, people will accept something they otherwise would not just because it's less bad by comparison even though that was likely what they actually were trying to get in the first place.
The fact they tried this at all should be reason enough for developers to jump ship as if they didn't backpedal because they cannot be trusted. And frankly, there is no way they did not know this was a ridiculous thing to try, so it screams that they have a hidden agenda.
the hidden agenda has already been uncovered...if that CEO isn't imprisoned like SBF there's no hope for Unity moving forward.
PSA: lies of P added denuvo last minute before the final release... just beware all these reviews saying it runs well were made BEFORE denuvo was added
Even if they were to reverse this nonsense completely, the simple fact that they ever considered charging per install as a legitimate business model shows that they are no longer trustworthy as a potential business partner.
And even though employees were fighting this internally. This like ones own personal experience in working environment shows how often leaderships are bad at their job. The crazy thing is, that leadership arguments that they earned their high pay with all the responsibility. But when it comes to these decisions, you can see how bad they are and still earn 30x and more than the average employee...
It will be tough for unity to get the developers trust back
Everyone that left will never come back
They likely won't at all
Once trust is broken on this scale it'll be highly unlikely that Unity will EVER get that trust back. Developer's are always going to wonder if Unity is going to pull another stunt like this again in the future. To put it bluntly, I see very bad tidings in the future for Unity as a whole. Expect to see layoffs in their future because of the revenue loss from this. Their CEO, a greedy little shite, thought this would bring in the money; but all it did was piss everyone off. Wouldn't be surprised if there is a new CEO in the coming months.
Good. They need to work hard for that.
If you truly trusted something or someone, once that trust breaks it will NEVER come back. So it's not gonna be tough to get that trust back, it'll be outright impossible.
We have to remember that the CEO of Unity, John Riccitiello, is the same guy who was CEO of EA Games while they created their own microtransaction hell across most of their titles.
He is known for commenting that it is a good idea to not hit your prospective targets with exorbitant fees immediately - you wait until they are good and invested in your product before cranking up the fees. First taste is free!
In particular, he was the guy who suggested that they charge per reload in Battlefield. Imagine having to pay real money for virtual bullets.
@@Chadekaful WoW and UO managed to exist without being predatory, so arguing that their like can't exist without predation is asinine.
@@Chadekaful You can sustain your game through things like cosmetic microtransactions (games like Rainbow 6 Siege or TF2), subscription fees (games like WoW), or simply by setting the entry price high enough (games like Deep Rock Galactic). All of those are decent enough methods, and clearly support the games enough to sustain them.
Even if Unity roll back their decision, any game dev studio with a working brain would start planning their migration from to another engine.
Unity have shown that they can randomly take horrendous decision that impact their user base, without consulting any of the impacted people.
You can't trust them
I teach app dev in college and this is unilaterally the talk of the moment in my classes. Because of this we are actually taking a moment to discuss the impacts of licensing on application development.
Good real life example to learn, before they go out into the real world
Definitely the first thing they need to be thought is how to protect themselves. Make their code more portable and rely less or (preferably none) on proprietary tools.
Seek open source tools when possible and contribute in code, patches, support or donations. Since these tools belong to all of us.
I will not be surprised if it comes out that this was all an insider trading scheme. Most likely this bit of back-pedaling will raise their stock again, which honestly sucks. If management were to change, then I'd be willing to support Unity again, but with the current CEO and team behind him, I hope they continue to fall.
Unity is looking for Apple to buy them, the apple vr thingy is all built on unity and they cant afford for it to bust.
@@blar2112 This makes sense. I've been thinking the only hope for them at this point after destroying trust is to be bought by another big corporation.
if apple buys it no indie comp will use it. cus apple is just as scummy. you didn't notice? you can't change your iphone 15 with a "none Apple" usb c cable... apple is just as greedy!
I mean the stock sell offs they did were all pre approved by the sec and were around like 2% of his total stock portfolio in the company.
I think its more likely to be him trying to milk devs cause the unity books werent looking too hot. Same thing hes done before. Do something outrageous. Backpedal to a position thats still bullshit but less bad. Everyone accepts the changes cause u backpedal. Repeat.
If it is, I am surprised how blatant and obvious it is. Riccitiello is an asshole but I would expect somebody like him to better cover his tracks.
The Unity situation is just more proof that companies are not your friend and should never be trusted, they only want your money. The way a lot of people simp for companies is weird to me.
I more go for companies I don't hate with my soul
FOSS is the only way
Well, some people might decide to ride the Titanic for the adventure…
I think something that isn't talked about as much is that Unity has completely halted any new devs from choosing Unity.
Zero growth. Even if there are some who have no choice but to stay, they've doomed themselves.
If you thought Unity might have been a sinking ship before, they threw a stick of dynamite in the cargo hold and removed all doubt, it's just a matter of time until they're underwater.
I'm definitely out. And I had a great game about aardvarks that was sure to be a big winner! ;)
@@Varksterable Could well have been, but not in Unity anymore!
You'll have to make your aardvark-based fortune elsewhere.
This is a common strategy! They put out worse so that we settle for about half as bad! Don’t let them just “tweak” the new policy.
I'll never forgive EA for keeping the Alice IP from American McGee himself when he was willing to work on the design bible of the game for years and even suggested a studio that's capable of working on the third game - Alice Asylum. Now the guy just gave up fighting the brickwall that is EA.
About the Unity shenanigans, my predictions: some minor fee reduction, maybe some protection against "unity charges you more than you've ever made" explicitly written in instead of the 'we'll work with you, trust me bro' answer they gave previously.
They won't address the ironworks stuff, they won't elaborate on how they plan to count installs, they won't rescind the installation fee entirely.
Maybe they'll delay it a bit.
I still see this as being rather hard to enforce since they are saying the distributors would have to pay for this.
For something they never signed or agreed to.
I know some publishers and distributors have made some pre-emptive actions because they aren't sure what's going on, but I just don't see it holding up if someone like Microsoft or Valve pushed back on a bill from Unity.
I don't know anything about this, but are they even allowed to make such changes out of the blue? There must be a contract or license that can't just be changed on a whim. Ok sure, half a year from now anyone that starts production with our engine has to abide by these retarded rules, yada yada; fine nobody will make games with Unity anymore starting from that period, not starting since yesterday it affects anyone that ever used or will use our product...
@@Relhioso, that is the most insidious part in all of this. In 2019, they had a similar issue where it seemed like they had retroactively changed terms (the whole situation was a mess, so I can't say whether or not that was actually true). To respond to community backlash, they added a section to their license that explicitly said you could use the old terms with the existing engines (and could even use bug fix releases), and that new terms would only apply to new versions. Guess what provision was dropped from the latest license?
The upshots are two fold:
1) In all likelihood, the folks building with Unity 2022 LTS can't have their existing terms revoked.
2) Unity is trying to work around that fact by calling this a runtime charge. Their creative lawyers seem to be trying to say "yeah, you can continue to use the editor under the old terms, but we never agreed on the terms for the runtime, so here are the terms".
I actually have a hard time believing that a judge would rule in Unity's favor on that, because it is their own software that is embedding the runtime, and contractual ambiguity is dealt with in favor of the party that didn't write the contract. I'm not a lawyer, but I really don't see how you thread the needle on: "yes, our software embeds our IP, and no, the contract doesn't explicitly say that the terms for the runtime are different from the terms of the editor, but there is absolutely no ambiguity that could read a license grant for the runtime into the editor license".
This, like everything else Unity has done has been too clever for their own good. I'm sure the lawyer who found the loophole was very proud of himself. But, the courts aren't going to let Unity get away with it on a shrinkwrap license they wrote and didn't negotiate. If they had said the install fee only applied to games created with Unity 2024+, they would be on much firmer legal ground and, while people would be pissed, the trust wouldn't be as broken.
“And how exactly are you even going to execute this change, especially in cases of incorrect billing?”
“Just trust us. :)”
Happy to see Matt again! and once again thanks to the team for the thorough research, scripting etc.
Really enjoy my news session on the evening with you!
I rarely purchase a game from EA because of the general shitty business practices. I don't blame the workers but corporate is the devil with how they treat their customers. I'm feeling the same way about Unity.
There's a significant difference: when you deny EA game sales, you deny the EA the money. When you deny a Unity game its sales, you're only punishing the unfortunate developer who chose their engine - quite sensibly and under different terms - assuming it would continue to be a reasonable choice into the future (and to be clear, it IS quite a solid engine for many projects that are too big or multiplatform for Godot, yet too small to justify Unreal). That developer is just as appalled with Unity as you are, and is possibly locked into doing business with them due to the opportunity cost. If the devs don't make money, Unity *still gets* their cut of the ongoing engine license fees they're paying.
@@SeventhHouseGames Godot or other open source can expand like Blender did to fill that space. This will accelerate that process. It's sad for developers stuck in the middle right now (and that is a LOT of the people), but they are learning a hard lesson that you're crazy to use a game engine that doesn't have guarantees against this in the terms of service like Unreal has, and if you're going to invest years of time and big money in using a software you should probably actually read the terms that you are accepting. Any developer that starts new games with Unity after this deserves to be stigmatized and fail, because now they know better.
That's funny because unity's CEO is a former EA executive.
hpw the f someone like him is trusted to be a.... oh cause he have money to buy big portion of the company share
@@morgierwin6641 Certainly, but consider that Unity's ToS had a very similar clause in it right up until this announcement went live, which was quietly revised after it was pointed out that the new changes were in direct contradiction to its terms. Unreal is no more of a guarantee today than Unity was a year or two ago. That's still well within the development timeline of many games, so I don't think anyone is "crazy" for not having a crystal ball to predict this.
For all we know, Epic might change hands and renege on its ToS promises the same way in the future, damning the projects we're starting today. Part of why this is such an outrage is that we *did* read the terms of Unity's agreement. And they were reasonable, seemingly offering a guarantee that even if future changes happened, older projects could use the older ToS - and then Unity changed its mind.
Everyone would be well advised to remember that Riccitiello was hired by the Board, and they **knew** exactly what he's up to all along.
Everyone would be well advised to remember that you mean nothing to that board. Their sole consideration, even legally to some extent, is doing well, or failing that, at least survive. Which is unlikely.
Everyone would be well advised to assume that those bills, exactly as already stated, are going out 1 January even if the company fails before then. Which they won't (more like Q2-4 of '24, but I get such predictions wrong a lot.).
You deal with the Unity board and Riccitiello the way Europe is dealing with Vlad Putin's gas. Dev studios need to band together for an engine commons or get behind an existing one. And remember what happens when you're hostage to the wrong people's tools.
So, you still buy their stuff but now just a little bit secretly? Cuz not a single European country stopped buying natural gas and oil from Russia, even more so, they strated buying more.
Corporate none apology. ”We’re sorry you feel that way”
Hell yeah, Matt doing the news! Miss seeing Matt pop up in videos.
I agree, its best when they're both there
I demand an investigation into the top of Unity. The known fact that A LOT of shares were sold right before they did this.
EDIT: For the weird Unity white knight here. "The top of Unity" means all of them. IDK if me not being clear or the average IQ dropping over the last 8 years.
Absolutely. Anything less is blatant injustice.
It does not matter, if they made a vote a someone felt that this is a bad decision they had every reason to sell stocks, I dont think they made in on purpose to manipulate the market.. it would be at the cost of the company and in the end there is no gain from that, just some stupid and greedy decision's.
I think the CEO only sold 2% of his total shares. He sold something like 2000 and he has 300,000 if i am not mistaken. Look into it, him selling shares is actually not that big of a deal. People are saying it like he sold a majority of what he had and he was cashing out - which isn't the case
optics dont look good for ceo to sell ANY during this time @@AlmarWinfield
The jews of ironSource have destroyed our beloved Unity. Press F
I didn't hear about Qud being ported to Godot. Absolute win. Can't wait for that version to be released.
You did great filling in! Thanks for the updates!
This only matters if people are smart enough to stay gone. There needs to be a notable permanent loss. It’s the only thing that may scare other companies from trying. We’ve had a lot of shady horrible practices that we once thought would never happen, become commonplace. The only way to make progress with the greed these higher ups act with, is to make a corporate example of them.
Like really, who hire a EA CEO that was fired because he was far too greedy??? They deservet this
EA of all place to fire someone for greed is one of the oddest thing ill ever hear in my life.
Cause they wanted to be greedy.
"We want to milk our players, not wring them to death"
-EA
Greed is not is issue, in a sense companies are there to make money, he is just a pr nightmare at times.
Saying game devs are stupid for not maximizing monetizing things to the max, while from a business standpoint true, ignores the fact it simply doesn't work that way for most small companies including smaller game devs.
This latest announcement was a dumpster fire, while the story that the current model doesn't cover the costs of running Unity is true, does not mean the method chosen and the way it is presented is good.
Even if there is a per install cost, make sure you have everything laid out before announcing it with pricing. If they announced btw we are moving to an installation based model in the future, future announcements will follow, it would have had a lot less outcry, when they made such a move with proper details and explanation.
The messaging is just garbage.
When as a company or person you are going to do something people won't like you have to massage it in and explain it in detail, not drop a nuke and make a bad deal turn into outright panic.
I'd really like to know who signed off on hiring a CEO that was FIRED from his previous position (at EA no less).
As if any developer who has the option to use a different engine will risk their project on Unity not pulling a stunt like that again.
Even if they backpedal now, the damage is done.
Silver lining, the backpedaling might allow smaller indie devs to survive and give them time to switch to a product that's not from Evil Corp.
What the corpo says: "We hear you and vow to do better."
What I hear: "Haha, you caught us. We'll be more careful in our next attempt."
I don't even believe that. They were caught last time, tried to cover that up, and made an even worse mess. They won't be more careful; they'll maybe wait a little, and hope the damage they've done is the last of it and everyone who's left will tolerate any madness.
You had me at _Bloodborne Pinnochio._
Honestly if I was unreal or another engine I'd offer help in getting people to port away from unity. It's not every day that a competitor sticks their neck out and asks you to take their head. It might cost revenue in the short term but the long term good will and effectively removing a competitor from your pool would far outweigh that cost.
I believe that Godot's founders have said that they are going to prioritize a few features to smooth over some pain points (e.g. better C#).
@@zirconiumdiamond1416Yes, that’s what I read. Better support for C# users in Godot.
The thing that makes me cautious about this, is that they're writing up a new policy. It makes me feel like rather than saying they are going to screw you over directly, they are now going to try to say they are going to screw you over in-between the lines. Which is what corporations usually do when they back peddle on policies like this.
"We are sorry that you guys didn't understand what we meant." 😂
I can't see this ending without Riccitiello stepping down with a personal public apology.
Don't know that we'll get The Good Ending
"We're sorry if our incredibly vague statement caused any confusion. Please accept our equally vague assurance that everything will definitely be fine, somehow."
If he stepps down(again), where would he go(again)?
@@Steve-YT383to access the Good Ending please purchase the Good Ending pack for $15.
@@ProsecutorValentinethe entire industry is one giant revolving door. He will have no problems finding a place.
The whole "Use Level Play and this whole fee problem? That can alll just go away." Tells me all I need to know. They know this is a bad deal and is using it like a stick. They could have easier gotten money using a different model but they didn't. Instead of party members we're donkeys to be moved via carrot and stick.
It is fantastic to see the market reacting so quickly to this blunder. Hope this sets an important precedent going forward.
"Some additionnal revenue was needed"
It's never the case.
It's always the case of the management caste outstripping its usefulness and being impossible to contract due to its control on its own employment without an executive decision that rarely comes because management is nepotistic and incestuous and the CEOs is probably directly genetically related to 80% of the management so it would be awkward for him to do anything about it..
They take it all back AND they remove the "We can change contract how we want when we want" part from any current or future contracts. Anything less and Unity is 100% done for.
"If someone held you at gunpoint and apologize only after their gun jammed when they pull the trigger, you should never give them a single amount of trust ever"
You are a great host
im not a common viewer here since i mostly am programming and less into games but your way of speaking is easy to follow.
Unity is doing a great job ensuring the success of UE5
I can see a lot of projects choosing to continue to use unity. However, I absolutely do not see any new project starting up to ever choose unity again. I think that they can stop the bleeding but from what I’ve seen they have cut off any potential for growth.
Honestly, the best thing that's come from the whole Unity news is discovering your channel :D
I'm loving the content and formatting!
They're going to backpedal to where they wanted to go to begin with. It's how one can do the wrong thing whilst also saying "we're listening".
Sadly seems likely. This has been the _modus operandi_ of the gaming industry for a long time, so it's no real surprise to see it here. Got a policy you know everyone will hate? Just announce something ten times worse, then walk it back to what you wanted to begin with. They come out looking like the party willing to compromise, and the people pointing out how horrible the new deal _still_ is get accused of just trying to keep the outrage going. Then in a couple of years, they'll do the same thing again, pushing the envelope a bit further. Rinse and repeat. They rely on short memories and apathy to continually get away with this, and they've been getting away with it now for a couple decades at least.
The problem is you cant convince somone to invest their future in your company, when your company has shown that they will rewrite their agreements retroactively. What are they gonna do, sign a contract saying they wont rewrite contracts anymore?
If it can happen once, it'll happen again.
As long as unity walking it back means that Team Cherry and Silksong are safe, I'm happy, but I still think any developers that have the ability to do so should jump ship as soon as they can.
This is exactly like the first Wizards of the Coast response, if they don't follow up with the equivalent of the second one, they're still done from lack of trust. (For those who didn't follow it Wizards had to make all their existing stuff open license forever to get people back on their side.)
They are done
Anyone who does business with them
With anything besides a set in stone protection against it again
NDA be damned!
Unity has lost over 37% of its developers.
The staff at Unity is panicked.
We have been told to keep quiet while the BRASS figures out damage control.
IMHO: Its time to find a new job. "Bye UNITY!"
I'm doing a gamejam in Unity this week, and a lot of us are seeing it a last-hurrah before we all sit down and go learn Godot. They could revert it all and the trust is still in the negative.
You mentioned unity looking to save face by making the price to stay lower than the price to retrain, and it's valid, but I'm thinking someone is going to take advantage of the unforced error and make the price to retrain lower and put unity down for good.
It really was a self inflicted wound.
Unity is not "Apologising". "We are sorry you feel confused and Angst" Does NOT mean "We are sorry for what we did." Rather It accuses people for being "Dumb" and "Overrating".
Great to see you on the channel again, @Matt :) - Liked your takes and reasoning on Unity and what they need to do. But the BIG take-away is at 8:27 - That says to me that everyone who can get off of Unity now, or soon - _should_ do so!
- As you eloquently pointed out: The mask is off. Unity's management might have had to backpedal this time - Like Hasbro/WotC, we can expect Unity to try to pull off some other "d!ck move" once this current drama has gone quiet.
-The 20¢ for each New installation per device.
-The retroactive part of this thing
-The CEO in charge
I mean, they need to get rid of all of that.
Theres a pretty specific person they need to have step down to reclaim a bit of the good will they lost. Either way, it may take decades for them to get back to where they were and I imagine most companies will weigh this act when choosing an engine until the end of time.
I'd bet my house that won't happen
not only that but a lot of board members need to go as well, they are guilty too
Well, I'm just happy for all the devs of ongoing projects that are no longer in the 'too far into the project on unity to switch over but this could kill our game' conundrum. I'd be interested to see a graph of games starting development in unity over time... wonder how sharp that dip is.
Yep, I didn't buy WildHearts because of the really poor optimization on PC and overpricing at launch. However I regularly checked on Steam during every sale events to see if it was fixed.
This is sad to see it get abandonned that way, a Monster Slaying game with really good combat concepts and the ability to layer your base on the map as you see fit was a really a cool idea.
I guess that's the essence of the live service model though, micro-transactions or not, what you paid for can just get its value ablated in the snap~
1. Sell company stock before announcing bad changes
2. Announce bad changes, stock drops
3. Buy back low stock
4. Tweet apology and reverse bad changes, stock goes up
5. Repeat
Speaking about EA originals Wild Hearts had so much potential, if they had not had all of the performance issues they could have genuinely been some good monster hunter competition. More than likely their own screwups on performance have killed the series as it could have been
I love MH but i would have loved to see WH succeed. Alas, the giant of boss hunting remains unchallenged for the most part. Hoping for MH:W 2 where they'll bring all the most fun features of world and rise, and update all of the horrible tedium, padding, systems and UX. You know, all the typical j-rpg antiquated UX and tedium that makes you want to die. The combat, movesets, combos, new features in rise felt so damn fun, including the improved traversal options, but World was just... cooler. It felt cooler, too.
I've been working on a project in unity for the last few years.
It hasn't been full time because of school and working part time to help my mom, but I did get to something that I'm fairly proud of.
With all this though I've still decided to move to Godot. regardless of what Unity say now, the trust has been broken.
I'm just trying to look at the bright side of this though. Starting fresh just means I get a better chance to set up good game architecture, something I didn't really understand when I started my project in Unity and it became a bit of a mess.
As well as the fact that most of the time I spent in unity learning and developing the ideas and designs of what I want to make and how to make it.
I want to wish I could stick with Unity and ignore all this but I can't trust them. I can't even trust that they will still be around in 5-10 years.
And as someone who wishes to make game dev my career then moving to a reliable game engine, it's just the only good decision I can make out of all this.
I really want to know what the conversations were like in Unity offices. They must have known this is a poison pill.
The CEO was hated before among gamers several years ago, when he was in charge of EA. Now in a different Company, he is hated among developers.
Yeah, the guy who wanted to sell weapon reloads in first person shooters. It never ceases to amaze me how these incompetent cretins, who only know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, seem to be able to just fail from one multi-million dollar role to the next with no real accountability or responsibility. This guy has probably tanked Unity in the mid to long term, but he'll pop up somewhere else in a couple years with an equally horrible idea.
i'm not a game dev but it would be super nice if it turns out that godot was a better engine than unity and that people who are migrating their project there have a smother time with godot than with unity.
Honestly, Godot seems pretty nice - it might not be as mature a product, but the main reason most people elected for Unity (as far as I could tell) is that there were more learning resources, but I don't think that's going to be enough to make people stick with a company that's shown its true colours. I'd rather take a bit longer to figure things out in Godot than risk going bankrupt just because my game was too popular.
🇨🇦 RN, Unity’s RUclips has 1.17 MILLION subscribers & their CEO is still in power
The trust is gone and no one should ever trust them again.
Abandon. Unity.
Do NOT let this bell get unrung, this has to be a statement from the community or else it's just permission for them to keep it up. Them AND their friends at other companies.
The problem is, how can any developer trust Unity now?
I miss hearing your perspective on the news with Michael, Matt. Good to hear from you again.
Anybody who was surprised that Riccitiello turned out to be evil all along just hasn't been paying attention. I knew he'd eventually do SOMETHING super-sleazy the second he took over the company. If Unity wants to have even a hope of rebuilding public trust, they need to fire his ass.
"We apologize for the *confusion*..." No, there was no confusion. We saw. You're not a friend, Unity.
Villian of the year still goes out to Hasbro& WOTC for the DND OGL kerfuffle that hit in January and what it looks like theyre setting up for theyre VTT, though this is a close second. I have no idea how ANY company today can make a new policy retroactively like this with this broad a scope. Like I have a bunch of games that were built on unity and the thought that reinstalling the game in the future could hurt some of my favorite indie publishers, is just insane as a policy. And we cant even go back to physical releases anymore because all they are are glorified install codes. Messed up.
Nah, trying to bankrupt thousands of indie studios simultaneously is DEFINITELY worse.
I disagree. WotC is second to this.
WotC, iirc, didn’t try to bankrupt thousands of people AND do it retroactively. They didn’t try sending Pathfinder a bill for the last 5 years of work they did under a previous license agreement…
They also had a real concrete plan for monetization. It wasn’t a bill based on “trust me bro” math.
I disagree on wotc, at least when everyone started abandoning ship on the DND policy change, not only did they backpedal the entire change. They made the license "open forever"... Meaning they will never ever touch it again
@@omegablast2002 Well according to this Unity may be doing the same. Heres to hoping!
@@voxkine9385 But they did. Anyone who was publishing stuff for dnd was affected and that's a lot of companies. And they were trying to claim everything that had been made as theirs. I dunno maybe its just because this years desensitized me to this stuff but I remember being way more upset at Hasbro and Wotc. This just feels like "yup another turd on the pile".
My impression of Immortals of Aveum was "I'm not impressed just because of a lot of flashy cotton candy". It is like those AI articles that are filled with a lot of junk, because this is what people are talking about and want. It really isn't.
Personally I think part of the problem with Immortals of Aveum is atleast on pc i'm not sure high end graphic are as big of a selling point as people in the industry actually think they are to most people that play on pc. don't get me wrong nice graphics are just that nice but how many games like vampire survivor are gonna have to come out until insiders realize people want a good feeling game more then a visually impressive game that doesn't feel good to play. I think part of the problem might be that because dev tend to be tech heads that find the stuff behind the graphics impressive which it is they lose sight of the fact actually a vast majority of people are not like that.
Personally i think the biggest take away from the steam hardware survey that is missed is that it arguably dispels the myth that pc gamers are somehow more 'harecore gamers' then console gamers. Look at how many people are playing on lower end devices and some of that might be from poorer parts of the world but my bet is a lot of those people are also people that use the same device for work and play and won't buy a new computer until they need to for work and not for a hobby. These people are potentially the most 'casual' gamers their are because they aren't shilling out huge amounts on high end hard ware hell some are using hardware that ancient by the standards of the industry but you know what odds are it still runs microsoft word, a browser and whatever else they need for work. They potentially also aren't spending money on a console either or a phone that lets them play a game like genshin. The image of the pc gamer as some hardcore tech head that builds their own pc is probably massively overblown and should of been dispelled the moment the steam hardware survey came out.
Overall i think it could be described as a value weighting issue where insiders have place way to high of a weighting on graphics compared to things like story and how a game feels to play. I can only speak personally but i would rather play some rpgmaker game with a great story and the dev has implemented mechanics in an interesting way that feels good over a unreal game that is visually stunting but is lackluster in both mechanics and story.
I love how Unity's story is following Wizards of the Coast's own OGL fiasco from back in January, pretty much beat for beat XD
I think that most dev's that even now depend on Unity will start migrating towards other platforms. Even if the evil U backpedals and makes it "tolerable" it's a clear sign that they don't care about the relationships they've built.
And I think Dev's see this, so I expect most of them will start to devote time to moving to a platform that will respect them, even if it takes time and, in the meantime, they will use whatever they must of Unity to keep their games afloat. U really shot themselves in the foot with this one, no going back. True colors have been shown. Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.
5:45 - 6:00 You could say this situation created some Unity in the games industry.
The most surprising thing isn't the backpedal, but that Matt actually exists.
You're alive!! I was starting to think Micheal had bumper you off and seized control lol
Overnight, I went from not caring about Unitys existence to having to check on every new game to make sure the dev didn't use them to build the game
Unity's execs trying to force retroactive changes on old games to demand future costs is breach of contract, pure and simple. I legitimately hope dev studios take the time to press charges and see those people fined to oblivion for what they did and then have them blacklisted from tech companies from here on out.
An ex EA leader suggested $ per reload and Lootbox approval... yeah, Unity lost all the trust with the one change and this... attempt to 'step back' is just PR at a glance.
This really reminds me of the OGL situation that happened earlier this year.
In Unity’s case, I guess they’d have to release their runtime under a BSD style license. Anyone agree?
I won't be surprised if they add uninstall, graphics quality, mouse click, and keystroke fees as well.
Yeah they are setting a precedent for many shitty companies ceo to do like that eventually. every comment, click reply, click cancel, view a video, every time open steam, open tab, etc etc will have fee.
I'm certain this is coming about because they think some indie devs have not been reporting and upgrading after they hit the royalty threshold. They were thinking about the simplest solution that was the least accurate but would most certainly cause the most anger. Instead, there was an alternate solution.
They could have just worked with digital distribution platforms (like Steam) to help report those numbers back to Unity.
Unity knows that the charge by install will make them a fortune more than royalties that why they'll keep trying to push it. The current CEO doesn't care about small time devs or freemium games, he just wants every game developer to put a price tag on their game. As he's been quoted saying, game developers that don't monetize their games are stupid.
I actually don't even think that is the case. For traditional computer games (not mobile), the per-install fee will be much less than the 5% of revenue royalty that Unreal charges. Switching to a royalty model would probably have brought them in more revenue. But, it would have relied on developers self-reporting their revenue, which Unity appears to be unwilling to trust.
I'll be honest, I wouldn't have known of Immortals of Aveum hadn't you featured a couple of clips a while back. Had a look at the marketing material, though that's a lot of effects, what's even going on on the screen? And shelved it. It seems visually impressive but that's about it.
That's another thing that is going to be a challenge for AAA going forward I think. Their calling card is largely impressive graphics and (real) hardware upgrades are feeling smaller generation to generation. Checking the Steam Hardware survey, most players are still on midrange 20 and 30 series cards, you can't really do a Todd Howard and expect the majority of people to have a 4080+ so they can play your game. There was also (I think it was an Act Man video) the issue that it's just minor details that are getting better, we no longer have the big jumps in graphic fidelity we used to have "back in the days", like going from Tomb Raider 1 to 2 to 3 it's a very noticeable difference. Now it's down to real time rendering facial hairs?
There is one major thing to keep in mind. People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, people will never forget how you made them feel. Unity's time is limited, and it needs to be made a example of anyways. If Unity survives, they will simply find a more underhanded way to achieve the same. Of you're a gamer, demand refunds for Unity games, if you're a developer, take the 10 years or whatever it takes to port you're game, early release it, and be transparent about why it's not what it used to be. But build it back. Easier said than done, but I for one will support devs who do these things, because no one should have to stand there like they have a gun pointed at there head.
Refunding Unity games does nothing to directly hurt Unity, just the developer who made them. Unity makes their developer-side money through engine licenses, which the devs are paying out of pocket whether or not their game sells, and through ads on mobile platforms, which don't offer refunds.
@FASNaota honestly you're right. I misspoke kinda. It'd insecticide devs to move to a credible engine. However, it would certainly hurt there bottom end. At the same time unity will be doing that by making old games still cost them. There's no win here for anybody supporting unity. Including devs who were dumb enough to think unreal's c++ is much different, the engine itself has safeguards that fix the issues with aforementioned code. Such as data leaks ect... point is, there has been little reason to use unity for the last few years. They haven't improved it, and are unable to properly monetize it, which feeds into the first issue. Personally I properly won't refund my unity titles, unless the online ones are delisted. which is highly likely if you think about server cost, licensing, general payroll and unity install costs on top of that and more I'm sure I missed. So... why should the consumer be out anything cause the devs were to stupid to see the obvious writing on the wall. Why I decided to go with unreal myself, unity games feel cheap, and take a hell of a lot more effort to make work, if the slightest bit if real research was done, it's obvious unity is a garbage engine. That said, the devs that did create via unity have my admiration, in the cases of making a decent feeling game anyway. Truth is, most fail at that with unity, and tbh it's not there fault, they were bullshitted into thinking unreal was worse, when in fact, day and night cycles are basically vanilla, lighting is easiest thing to achieve as is time of day, 5 free assets a month, lumens work out the box, so.... realistic light passthrough, and that's not even touching nanites which makes you're high poly models run better than low poly models. Nanites are new technology from my understanding, last I knew it they worked on stationary and environmental meshes, such as mountains, foliage, and donuts. But haven't really looked at the new 5.3 as of yet, so who knows. Unlike unity epic updates it's systems. Because unlike unity they know how to monetize there products, this is why they own fall guys, fortnite, and unreal tournament in the past. You cannot make money off nothing.
@@zaodacrusher7498 I just mean to say that it's important to consider what your chosen form of protest is, and who it affects.
Unity devs are right there with you on being appalled at what's happening, and are likely doing their best right now to avoid any of the fallout from this decision. *They're* the ones with the power to deny Unity business, and if anything is obvious about this debacle, they certainly don't need any extra convincing from players.
Presumably we're all mad because Unity is taking an unjustified, ill-considered, sudden, and unpredictable bite out of the prosperity of its developers. If you really care about the developers trapped by this, I wouldn't recommend doing them *further damage* to protest Unity's mistreatment. They'll be the ones suffering the impact, not Unity.
If you want to take action, other than just spreading the word I'd suggest talking with your favourite devs, or anyone you see with a promising Unity game that you feel something about. See if they plan to move elsewhere (they probably do), and if it's feasible for them to do so. If you have resources to help them along as an Unreal dev, share them! That move off the engine might be possible if you support their studio; it definitely won't if you attack them just to make a statement about Unity that they probably agree with.
If they can't move right now, be understanding: for people with finished or near-finished projects, we're talking about an amount of completely thankless work to migrate their games that could be years in the making. In all likelihood they'll be out at the start of their next project - but to do that it would be polite to let them *have* a next project, instead of an extra scoop of collateral damage.
@FASNaota I don't disagree. But consider this, if the unity devs are hurt due to lackluster sales because of unity's incompetent business practices, that class action lawsuit just got a lot of momentum, and on top of that it's price just skyrocketed. The devs, should then start a group funding campaign for there legal defense if needed. You need to look at it from a legal perspective as well.
It almost seems like this situation was intended as some insane attempt at anchoring, but they were so hopeful that everyone would just go along with the initial terms that they didn't even bother coming up with any other revisions. Now they're left scrambling, trying to come up with a more workable alternative before absolutely _all_ of their customers abandon them.
There's one thing I think hasn't been said about this entire thing - another company has tried to do basically the same thing earlier this year. AND THEY FAILED.
The Dungeon's and Dragons community has fought the exact same battle with Wizards of the Coast, starting in January.
The company wanted to push a new license that would bankrupt anyone working under it. It was even worse than the current situation, since Unity actually gave a three months notification, while WotC wanted the changes to be implemented and enforced immediately. The community could react only because of an insider leaking the new license.
Initial reactions, apart from the general outrage, was Paizo (a rival publisher, responsible for Pathfinder) announcing a brand new D&D alternatinve that wouldn't use the WotC license, also having it's own ORC license that gives A LOT of freedom to community creators; then the Kobold Press (the biggest community creative group) announcing ANOTHER D&D alternative, also outside of the WotC license; then Critical Role (the largest, financially, D&D streaming channel) announcing not only that they'd part ways with WotC, but also that they'd make YET ANOTHER D&D alternative, obviously outside of the WotC license.
All of these had huge implications for the WotC, but the thing that changed their minds was when D&D Beyond (a website/app hosted by WotC and used to play D&D digitally) started to lose it's userbase on a massive scale. The company even had the audacity to temporarily disable the option to unsubscribe from the services!
And THAT was the moment the giant company, CEO and board of directors had begun to listen. When they saw dollars flooding out of their bank accounts in real time.
Dear Unity community. Take a lesson from our past battles. We won't charge you for it, unlike the devs.