First of all, huge thanks to all of you for your amazing support! It really means a lot, and I'm happy to know many of you are there for the game devs and the content creators, and are eager to start exploring open-source alternatives like Godot :) A few important extra notes: 1. In the video, I say that Unity might be right that the conditions will only impact 10% of the devs. This is something I understood from the articles I’ve read, and that is mostly true for PC/Console games, which I’m familiar with. The world of mobile gaming will definitely be way more impacted, sadly :( 2. To answer some of the comments: I will NOT be removing my Unity content from the RUclips channel or my Medium profile - I am still proud of this content and there's no need to rewrite the past. So this content will stay, just feel free to browse through it whenever you'd like!
Doesn't impact 90% of the devs might mean 90% of games are free and don't have any kind of monetization. Please don't delete your old videos, these are one of the best Unity tutorials I've seen anywhere.
@@PaintsAreOp Yep that's definitely a big part of the "non-impacted games"... but I don't enough on the topic, that's why I don't want to "teach" anyone on this ;) No worries: I will leave all the existing videos as-is on the channel - no need to rewrite the past, and I'm still proud of my content up to this day! I'm very happy to know you like my content and that my videos have been helpful to you :)
It's not even about the impact of costs, it’s the fact that Unity is no longer a trustworthy company to build your game with, never put your eggs in one basket, then protect that basket inside a castle of sand.
I'm one of those who will be affected, I have free to play mobile game published to 4 millions of downloads and game is almost not profitable at all. After Unity TOS change, I'll be bankrupt. We are closing the company at the moment.
@@mehmetakyuz5290 Don't rush your decisions. We don't even know if it's legal what they're trying to do especially for the games released under a different tos.
I really get you. Unity is why I started to create games, I've seen it grow and improve for almost a decade... and then, not so much. I'm still happy I could share my knowledge with the community these last few years, but yeah - a hard week for all of us :(
@@muhdiversity7409 they really don't care if homeless stats grows to 100% landlords are landlords. They can sit in empty houses with no tenants without any problem.
Looking forward to the Godot tutorials! Its development fund seems to have nearly doubled over the past week from this whole fiasco; maybe it can become the Blender of game engines someday.
Thanks, I'm really eager to dive into the engine further and share all I learn with all of you :) And I do agree: would be really cool if we could have a Krita/Inkscape - Blender - Godot game creation workflow one day!
Apparently there is a humble bundle for a godot tutorial, which if you donate enough you get stuff on blendr, photoshop and other courses geared towards game making. Just came across it and looking it over now and for anyone who has purchased it, confirm if its any good. But its a start. 😅😅🤷🏿♂️
I do hope Godot gets the similar support from people, similar to what Blender has now! (Blender have become amazing software over the recent years, all thanks to the community!)
Absolutely going to follow you with your new journey into Godot! This is such a breach of trust that I absolutely refuse to come back to Unity, even if they did a u-turn. Hoping the best for you!
It really is the breach of trust for me. It's like finding out your SO has installed tracking software on your phone without your consent and will be withdrawing money from your account on terms that they never fully let you in on. I don't care how "reasonable" the final cut ends up being. Thank you so much for your hard work Mina. I'll be transferring my main project to Unreal, but for smaller projects like jams I will surely be coming to you for Godot tutorials. Whatever Unity does, this amazing community will thrive with or without them.
Yep, really an unbelievable (and "poorly communicated", to stay polite) decision from Unity... many thanks for your support, and I do hope like you that we can keep this community alive, even if we switch to slightly different tools! :)
With all been said, Unity just can't even claim for the money for each install. This is something that has completely no relation to them. It is literally the same if they asked the devs to pay whatever fee for each key-press on their PC while Unity is just installed there. There is just no relation between the number of installs and Unity. And that is the main problem: their inadequacy. And they don't even understand it yet.
Absolutely right: announcing a few that relies on such a weird/incalculable/shady metric is just impossible to swallow. As many people said: announcing something about taking X% on the revenues would have generated some heat, but nothing near this...
it's a bit different because you are using Unity's proprietary runtime to play the actual games. it's unprecedented and will probably get a lot of legal scrutiny but their runtime does have relation to them.
@@ubestbegood No, it still has no sense, but I'm pretty sure that's how they think: since your game is using their runtime, they think they are allowed to do anything around it. And it actually hurts to even try to think in their absurd and dirty coordinate system. But ok, let it be such. Installation is an action performed by an end-user - the player. The player is the subject. And if Unity is so greedy to monetize even this, the only one they could charge is the player itself. Neither developer, nor the publisher are involved in this process. But I'm 100% sure even this will be illegal. Because otherwise, there would be no limitation on their side on what they can charge: every time you look at the executable in explorer, or everytime you just select it. It is still their runtime! What's the difference between "install" and "look at"? Or they could even charge the rental fee for having runtime installed for some time 🤷♂Where's the limit? Anyway, developer's/publisher's only "entry point" is at selling the product - and that's where they could charge for distributing the runtime once.
Im so nervous, ugh. I'm waist deep into my solo gane dev journey and just the thought of migrating everything over to a new platform is so scary to me.
Overhype is bad. Putting all your eggs in one basket is also bad, even if this basket is open-source. There are a lot of cool engines in the world besides Godot, please don't make it look like it's the default and only option I personally use Unreal and Bevy. Unreal for revolutionary features and ease of complex things, Bevy for open-source, ECS by default (without mandatory OOP and it's issues like in Unity and Godot), exceptional modularity, flexibility, and Rust language
Got a sub from me. Excited for the future of Godot! This is a big loss for many (I've been a Unity exclusive for years now), but if the silver lining is that devs flock to and support an opensource engine that will only get better with time... it might be worth it. I've heard folks say that Godot is the 'Blender' of engines, and based on how incredible Blender has become while remaining free and opensource, I think the future is looking bright.
Unreal Engine's cost is easier to grasp after this change from Unity. Even if you'll make less if you succeed using UE, knowing beforehand what it'll cost and understanding all the cost factors is a much better solution. Unknown factors that's up to interpretation is not good.
Yep - that's so right! This new monetisation scheme is way too complex (and hard/impossible? to calculate)... a basic "take X% of the revenues" is clear and already familiar to the game dev community, it would probably have been received way better!
I'm a software developer. Just played with Unity few days before the drama. I want to point out that I can easily track API requests and endpoints made in Windows. I can see the metadata, I can't see the content of the API without running it through decryption software which may take a long time(months if lucky), after which they would change their encryption standart and have to wait few more months to decrypt. But is certainly possible to create exploits and hijack the communication between Unity Servers and local machine.
I haven't dived into the security stuff myself, but I do trust you and other devs will quickly find a lot of backdoors and data streams that are sending things they shouldn't... and have been for a good amount of time, maybe? Anyhow, good luck on escaping the drama ;) And on finding a better alternative for your projects!
Thanks for all the wonderful tutorials you did, especially the series on the behavior trees. We are still using your method in our game today. Best of luck and looking forward to your first Godot tutorial!
Don't expect Unity to change. They are set on this. The board of directors consists of people with weird ideas on how to make profits. They'll only change if they see the death of the engine coming. Publishers are already rejecting projects that are based on Unity. The goal should be for Unity to go under and its up to the board of directors and CEO to prevent that by actually not being so sinister. Don't hold your breath, plan to move on and don't come back until they've changed to something better and not just reverting this change.
Oh no - I don't trust them at all. I'm just leaving a door open for, perhaps, one day, a better board and executive team? Dunno. Honestly, right now, I would say "Unity? never again?" but I try to stay positive and not be too final in my decisions ^^
You're welcome, I'm glad you like my content! Well I've been looking at Godot for a while too, but I definitely have less experience than with Unity so - please don't hesitate to tell me if you have specific topics you think would benefit from being explained, or little tricks I could reshare with other devs ;) Cheers!
Sadly, Unity has disappointed a lot of its devs, I'm glad to hear that you will continue with your game dev journey and even more that it will be in Godot. Looking forward to those great quality tutorials as always! Just to know, will you be explaining Godot using GDScript or their WIP C# solution? Some topics that are quite interesting coming from an Unity background are: 1. Duck Typing 2. Scenes and Nodes 3. Inheritance over composition 4. Signals Among others, hopefully those will give you some ideas for future videos so we can all hear your take on such interesting topics! Best of luck!
Thanks a lot for your support!! My primary goal is to discuss C# in Godot since it's way less explained overall on the net, and it's definitely something that Unity devs would be interested in, I think :) And thank you so much for your ideas of tutorials - I'm writing all this down and will try to fit it in the schedule :) Cheers!
Happy to hear you are switching to Godot, I am also switching to Godot! So I will need all the help I can get from people like you. I hope the transition goes smoothly! Sucks to see Unity go out like this.
Well - thanks a lot for your support and for taking a look at my videos ;) Just a quick info: I will NOT be removing any videos on Unity that are already present - I will just stop making new ones. So you can still watch all the ones you want on the channel :)
I did not want to write much more about this topic, but I found this video very good, so I will write something. After years of working with Unity, we as a community have decided to move away from Unity. The reasons mentioned in the video are of course 1 to 1 for us! But the main reason why we decided to invest and move all projects to other engines is the reason "trust". The trust in Unity has been destroyed. Even if Unity undoes everything, the trust is destroyed. Unity will definitely try to change something again to get money, but who knows how they will do it? One thing is for sure, it won't be as public as it is now! Will we still have a chance to change anything? I dare to doubt it. That is why we are turning away from Unity, even if it hurts a lot because of investments etc. We currently see Unity as a pure bad investment. That is why I advise everyone who wants to work with Unity to use it only as an educational platform and NOT, I repeat NOT, to release any games.
Moreover, this is our chance to stand up to Techno Feudalism in our own back yard. We must send a strong signal that this does not stand. If we don't do it now, it's opening the gates for more of that. So from a principal point of view, let's vote with our feet.
They just apologized on twitter and promised to make a change, and yeah it may be about trust but for me is about 26 pages of assets I purchased over last 10 years worth thousands so no I can't move just like that ... i invested too much not just in assets but in time learning it , to easily walk away ...
@@Berndr "They just apologized on twitter" you mean "X"? seriously, Musk has made ANYTHING said on "X" to be completely worthless as far as real information goes. I know you're panicking, but you really do need to walk away from this. not just for others, but for yourself.
First of all, many thanks for your kind words - I'm very glad you found the video useful! I really agree with your statement about using Unity for education (cause I think it's worth it in that specific scenario), and just disregarding it for actual games. I'm truly saddened it's come to this, but that's the most logical course of action given Unity's current state :/ Good luck on your future projects, and on continuing your journey :)
Got Godot forever ago thinking I'd be some fancy pants solo game dev buuuut _lazy._ With all the new tutorials coming out, it seems like a really good time to try again.
This is a really great and I hope I can get to it! Right now, to be honest, I'm quite underwater with the Unity to Godot transition, but it's definitely something I want to try as soon as possible :)
Arg, sorry :/ But hello, and welcome! I hope you'll like my upcoming Godot content - I'm really excited to dive into this engine and share what I learn with all of you ;)
Not so sure about things going back to normal. Why? They just proved that they cannot be trusted at all. I honestly think they'll double down. The other shenanigans going on within Unity and its "leadership" should be a massive source of concern. Wish you the best on your journey as you take the other fork in the road.
Thanks for your support and your kind words! And no - I don't trust them at all to rollback or anything :/ I'm just leaving a door open for, perhaps, one day, a better board and executive team? Dunno. Honestly, right now, I would say "Unity? never again?" but I try to stay positive and not be too final in my decisions ^^
It's not a half of my life, just shy of a decade. But I have loads of purchased assets. Letting it almost all to go is painful. I feel empty now. After last almost 4 years of Covid and war, have this.
Almost exactly this, it is about the stability of the platform. If they can make up new rules and twist old ones on a per second basis that nothing makes sense. But on the money side, while the fee is minimal the point is it shifts drastically how we monetize. Because for some devs this will mean de-listing your game is better than leaving it up after a certain point. Say for example NMS, their constantly developing the game, I once ever few years reinstall it to see what's up. They have over a million people who do this. The machine I use now is not the machine I used when I installed it the first time. In this case it would pay more for them to de-list the game since they do not use in game monetization. AND EVEN IF THEY DID do in game monetization, the devs will simply translate the cost to the in-game items. So now players need to pay more. I'm against micro-transactions myself so I've got no love lost for predatory devs who do it and players who indulge in it. But 99% of this is the shadyness and thusly confusing way Unity went about it.
How can they enforce a retroactive ToS change? Surely any court will throw the book at them if they tried to enforce it, especially when the company is on record promising they wouldn't do this?
I'm changing engines too. It's great to see the game dev community mostly united on this and its exciting exploring new possibilities with different engines together, and yet despite the trust Unity has broken I don't wish to see the engine die, even if I don't go back - and I'm afraid it might. People say this change was an act of greed, but I think it was most likely an act of desperation (even though there still is greed at play as well, I'm sure) considering they've been at a loss for years. If they were trying to save their company, it looks like they've just made things worse for everyone.
Hi, just wanted to give a direct feedback to you. Firstly, I'm not a native English speaker. The ts and s sounds are for some reason exaggerated in this recording and making it harder for me (and likely others) to follow what you are saying. Thanks :)
Hello! Thanks a lot for the feedback, I'm always open cause it helps me improve :) Yep I'm currently getting used to a new microphone, and this whole situation forced me to fast-track my schedule... I'm hoping I'll get better at recording/mixing with this new tool!
Really solid video and I support and appreciate your call for game ethics in development. The entire gaming industry has so corrupted by the profit motive, that it is a struggle just to enjoy gaming or interact with gamers anymore. It has allowed so much toxicity and abuse (to everyone from game developers, content creators, and gamers themselves) and its just time to put it to an end. As far as the pricing structure and the "rent" (fee) getting cheaper the more you make...its a practice that is more common with wholesale and distribution sectors. The idea behind it is that the more money someone is making the more business they are going to do than their competitors in the same time, as well as the longer they will be doing business. I am not sure about whether that in itself will lead to a higher percentage in costs, but it is very telling. They don't want to to pay benefits to smaller game dev's they are going after bigger fish by offering (what is typically) a reduction in overall operating costs. Put simply the amount of money may be more but it lower fee (usually) means a lower percentage of costs for bigger business's. Its economics of scale. I thoroughly find it disgusting, because small indy games, and small studios are the only thing really keeping gaming alive, because they are the ones making games with any passion.
01:40 about unity/unreal pricing, problem with Unity it's planning, a lot of small indie company need to understand what cut will be took from them, but with Unity it's even hard to calculate, and they basically force you to update subscription plan to expensive one to reduce fees, but it also can harm small companies, they still need to pay wages/taxes etc.. With Unreal even if it's bigger cut, it is at least obvious, you pay only when you sell game, and easier for taxes you don't need to provide any additional calculcations bill from Unity each month/quarter, you have only one agreement with 5% and that's all. Also some countries ignore this agreements and you still need to pay income tax even on fee that you pay to engine.
Absolutely! The monetisation scheme with this hard/impossible? "install" metric calculation is one of the major flaws of this "plan" :/ Job security is already hard enough as it is for small indie companies...
And that's how pay to install was invented. Truly a visionary. I couldn't even think of just one move which could kill entire company. Former CEO of EA must be proud of himself.
Wow 15 Yeats. I've been coding since 1990s but I stared unity in 2017. It is only a hobby but it became a big part of my everyday life. I think I heard someone say that brackets saw this coming but he decided not to warn others. I'm looking forward to seeing how you teach Godot. I'm already having trouble with it and I'm so frustrated. It is a big change from unity.
Yep, Godot's definitely a different beast! I hope my videos will be useful for you in the transition, and by the way: don't hesitate to tell me if you have ideas of specific questions/points I could make tutorials on! :)
I'm an Unreal Engine Indie dev myself but my heart goes out for all the other Unity devs out there. It's such a shame and I'm incredibly angry at this situation. It shows just how vulnerable we can be when big companies change over the years...
the sad thing is, that i have invested so much time and energy working on my game, and its kinda too late to switch engines, i dont know if i should worry about that since i am no where near the threshold neither when it comes to the revenue nor the install count, but if submit to these changes means that my dream is dead "which is not a thing i would consider" but lets for a better future good luck on your journey though
Good luck to you too - I'm definitely feeling for all the devs like you that are completely blindsided by Unity's announcement and need to take a really hard decision. Hope you'll still manage to finish and give your game to the world in a "decent" way! :)
You should finish your game in Unity if you're too far in to turn back, and then switch to another engine of your choice when you're done with it. Even if Unity reverts these changes they've broken our trust. Not to mention in the last few years Unity has been in a decline anyway
@@Keanine thanks for your supporting words, i am working on it atm, i am still waiting for what unity has to say after their tweet today, lets hope for the best, and yes i might really switch engines after this game
@@TheCuteBandicoot Yeah, of course there's no pressure to switch engine if they revert it and you're most comfortable with Unity. Personally though even if they reverted it and gave me a free £50 for the asset store I still wouldn't return. I just can't trust them to do the right thing anymore Whatever happens, good luck with your game!
Unity didn't just destroy their own developers, but us gamers too! 😔 Most games are projects born from the hearts of their creators, and are their own works of art, but because of Unity us gamers will likely be deprived of games that should have been. Whats worse is how it will affect the developers of tomorrow. It's rare that a person goes into game development on a whim, but most developers were at one point inspired by a games that lead them to develop their own projects. This new "policy" will hurt EVERYONE...Gamers, Developers, and even Future Developers have all lost something at the greedy hands of Unity. Though I will _Always_ continue to support creators and their games, Unity has managed to make me not want to buy a unity engine game because it would also support them. Though I won't actually stop buying and supporting the games and their creators, the fact that Unity has made me feel this way has honestly sickened me. Greed has truly shattered the relationship between all of us and Unity, and I don't think it can be repaired.
Im just as upset as you. I started getting into game development 6 months ago and made my younger self proud by accomplishing my goal of making a video game Ive always wanted to make. However, through my irritation and researching engines, and more about the topic. I was confident and happy to choose Godot. I told myself if I switch over Im not returning to unity. WHY? Because I do not trust them after seeing how this has been playing out, and who the CEO is. The only way I would go back is if he is no longer CEO and if these changes never come into affect AT ALL. Both seem unlikely, but shortley after using godot im really happy with it, and impressed. Theres certain features that made me feel really comfortable to use compared to unity. And honestly I really do appreciate I can make my own splash screen, mouse cursor without a paywall like unity. I wanted to be able to release a game that would be affordable during these crazy inflations in game price, and give people a game worth playing that makes people spend time together and guide them in a brighter mindset during these hard times. If you support true gamers, their wallet, and devs who make games that mean something let me know.
I might start making Unity tutorial videos since everyone else has stopped. Here's a rundown of what the first one could be like: "How to Unity in 2023" Step 1: Insert the ball-gag into your mouth and make sure it is securely attached. Step 2: Bend over Step 3: Pay inexplicable, illegal, and potentially crippling fees, forever in perpetuity
Oh and here's what the second one could be: "How to Advanced Unity in 2023" Step 1: Back away, slowly at first. Maintain eye contact with Unity until a safe distance away Step 2: RUN. Step 3: Install Godot.
I find myself subscribing to a bunch of channels that used to do Unity videos and are now switching to make Godot videos... and unsubscribing from channels that are currently defending Unity's decision / announcement.
When an open source (FREE) engine is racing past your engine, imagine starting to charge your loyal customers/developers an insane amount. The people that made this decision clearly has no sense of direction and a severe lack of intelligence. Hope to see the amazing developers at Unity on other projects/Engines that deserve their skills.
I was unsure on whether should I change from Unity. As a hobbyist that does not pretend to sale my games at any point, their decisions on monetization do not affect me, but have definitely put me on edge because if I ever wanted to work with game development the industry would have probably changed to another platform. That being said, I'm really liking my time with Godot and in some aspects I think it surpasses Unity, especially if we're talking about project organization and performance. GDScript is also very clean to code, which is a plus, and even though it is interpreted I think i'll stick to it just because it's too nice. So far, I did not find any roadblocks and the transition of my project is going smoothly!
Honestly, at this point, it isn't even about how much this'll cost anymore. I don't want anyone to think this is just "developers don't want to pay more money". I think many developers have said that a standard revenue share would be a much more acceptable idea. It's about the fact they just woke up one day and went "we're going to change the terms you agreed to and it's going to apply retroactively". At that point there's NO trusting them anymore. You can't fix that by just saying "I take it back". Even if they fully walk back the statement, they've still shown that they're more than willing to play dirty to squeeze as much money out of developers as they can. That's something you will need to worry about whether your game sells one copy or one million copies. How could we ever think to trust our projects to such an untrustworthy company? Also the fact they keep using the term "confusion" as if we maybe *just don't get it yet* shows just how little they actually care about feedback. It's just for them to keep slowly nudging their statement back a bit until they think they've found the sweet-spot for people who will begrudgingly accept the changes. "Oh no, you don't understand, you won't be charged for EVERY install (even though that's exactly what they previously said), just for the first install! What's that, you don't like that either? Oh, you must be confused, it's actually charged to the platform, not the developer!" I only just barely started with Unity when this happened, so it's not a big deal for me to move to a new engine and start from scratch, but what about people whose jobs and careers were thrown into disarray because of this? A lot of people I am close to might have to just discard so many years of experience and start all over in a new engine. Support your favorite developers, folks.
Exactly - the money problem is now secondary, cause whatever they say to try and make it more palatable, people will (rightly) doubt that Unity doesn't just U-turn to another decision one week later. That's actually really sad, because it means that Unity employees (who really have nothing to do with this and are suffering just like we are) have to come up with something to repair the burnt bridges... knowing fair well it's probably not gonna work :/ As you said - we need to support the indie devs that will be hurt the most by this unbelievable decision, and help all of the community move forward!
@@minapecheux Every Unity employee I've spoken with has been against this decision too - many are resigning as a result of this. We should also support the employees who had no say in this and are now aboard a sinking ship.
It's very concerning. I'm not ready to switch to GODOT as my primary source of Income is working with the Unity Engine. There's currently 0 job postings for Godot, 3 for Unreal Engine, and 16 for Unity in my Country.
I am using Bevy. Doesn't have all the features but at least I know that I'm not gonna get fooled into things like this. If I ever earn something I will raise my donation to the developers.
The problem with Bevy is the project lead, 3 years in and they still re-design everything, remember Amethyst? Godot is a mature project not depending on a single person, and completely customizable, you could only use the editor and build your own engine under the hood or use Bevy.
@@geams Yes, and I know all of this and I know that Godot is very well integrated. But I'm getting much of the knowledge out of the Bevy ecosystem. These rewrites were easy to migrate for me, and I enjoy them. There are many talented and experienced developers progressing in their own domain, making the engine more feature rich and complete. In another three years from now it will be simple to use and stable. That is my forecast and because of that I am investing my time today.
Unity will lie and gaslight us, Godot will do it's best to support us as long as we also put in effort to support it. May we all get out of this abusive relationship together.
Haha, thanks for the support - but I've been using it to learn game dev, and teach it to others, so I haven't actually release real games ;) Hope I will one day, tho!
Hi Mina, like so many I have started game development with Unity and have been asking myself lately, whether I should switch the engine. I am not dependent on income from that source but nevertheless am investing quite some time of my own will. The two main reasons to not switch are currently: - do not want to learn GDScript but rather stay with C# (there seems to be a solution for that) - would want to keep the assets I bought for Unity. This obviously applies mainly to the 3d-models So if you would like to adress how to develop on Godot for Unity developers, I believe this will be of interest to many others as well. Maybe for the second part a tutorial on how to import (e.g.) Synty models or fbx in general would be cool. I will keep following you and look forward to many more cool tutorials...
Heya! First, thanks a lot for your support and for following my work :) I'll be actually focusing most of my Godot tutorials on coding features in C# in Godot - cause that's exactly something that is missing at the moment. So, hopefully, it should help a bit with the transition! And I'll definitely write down your idea of discussing asset imports, be it 3D models or images... thanks! Cheers :)
@@minapecheux I would really love this. Looking forward to the next content then... Maybe I will divide my time between progress on Unity and porting efforts to Godot then!
Well said and deep respect for doing this unity has really just become the polar opposite of unity and it should be just called divide right now you know or defy or divide whatever you want to say but basically yeah I would advise anybody with a unity account to basically start downloading all of their assets off of there Because the 3D objects and animations are still useful I would truly advise anybody that uses unity download all of your assets you can reapply them to Godot you can reapply them to other engines you know such is unreal and so on so I'll say download all of your assets you know I truly feel bad for the asset creators and more people like me who spent thousands of dollars on buying assets If unity really wanted to diversify and make more money they could have started making movies and making video games and actually hiring or collaborating with people utilizing their engines in these fields instead they just want to be dictators and you know there's more than enough alternative engines and add on the fact that AI has arrived and very soon AI will be able to basically pilot any software you're trying to learn unity is over they made their choice even if they roll this back you know the the consequence of they can change their mind anytime they want the fact that the thought could be that they're trying to have you drop your guard before they act again it's over
imagine dedicating an entire college on unity, only to be forced to stop using it due to BS. Thank you for your tutorials, it has been a journey with unity. Can't wait to learn Godot from you as well
When Unity announced charge price on game per install *Game devs :* all those years of academy training wasted ,now I have to move to different game engine I'm not familiar with
If last week I was requesting you more Unity tuts, now I was coming back to gently request a few ones on Godot... so happy to know that you are switching to it. It's a pity though the countless hours so many devs throw down the drain for such greedy corportate decision... Unity's black suits have done things so wrong, specially the retroactive change of the TOS and the removal of the old one in GIT (also old Unity versions in their archive have had the TOS changed for the new draconian one), plus the lack of clarity on how they will track reinstalls and how they are pushing some devs to reduce the fees if they use some of the services.... plus low earning f2p games with high install numbers are doomed and can enter negative numbers! Very hard to recover the trust again... with Godot, we have an open source engine what will improve fast, and monetization will only be on getting the console porting SDK, though this now scaringly reminds me of Unity 2012 where you paid a one-time fee for the Android & iOS versions, but Godot being open source things should not to that awry anymore!
I can't trust Unity anymore - Even if they roll this decision back, I don't think it'll make a difference to the majority of people who planned to release with this engine. Unity leadership have pretty openly (and repeatedly) shown their dislike for those who earn Unity their paycheck - Even if someone isn't personally impacted by the new costs, the fact the engine we relied on essentially admitted they planned to add intrusive -telemetry- _spyware_ to the Unity runtime to enforce their install charges and then retroactively modified their terms and conditions to fit the narrative? Really, really suspicious behaviour. If not illegal. I feel most sorry for the developers who work for Unity, those who just wanted to make a great engine that people love to use. They're also hit pretty hard in this situation. To everyone currently assessing the logistics of changing engine; Good luck. Thank you for sharing your opinion on this situation, and I look forward to seeing where you go from here.
Many thanks for your support! Oh no - I don't trust them at all. I'm just leaving a door open for, perhaps, one day, a better board and executive team? Dunno. Honestly, right now, I would say "Unity? never again?" but I try to stay positive and not be too final in my decisions ^^ And you're right: finding an engine that suits you is definitely going to be hard on a lot of game devs :( To me, Godot is a good choice because I like their mindset, I've seen the project grow since 2015 and I enjoy the way they're improving ;)
I really dont want to switch to another engine, but i kinda have to. The "count" thing they say isnt accurate and i dont know what data they will be transferring. I have been using unity for 5 years, and people say, "well, it doesnt affect you, does it?" and i answer it does, because we all want to reach that $200,00 mark, we all want money, well it might not be in a few years but we all want to reach that, so it does affect us
Yup - tracking "installs" is a strange and incalculable metric (at least I don't see how they can do it) and it's a very weird way to get back some money. I hope you'll find some alternative to keep making your games and that suits you! :)
Hi - and first of all, I'm sorry if you felt like I wasn't sincere, or was trying to take advantage of the situation. That is absolutely not my intention - I'm really sadden to have to quite an engine after 15 years using it. So to be clear: no - I don't trust them at all. They made their last wrong move. But I'm just leaving a door open for, perhaps, one day, a better board and executive team? Dunno. Honestly, right now, I would say "Unity? never again?" but I try to stay positive and not be too final in my decisions ^^ Hope you understand!
Even if Unity totally backtracks on the runtime fee (which they said they will not), how can any developer ever trust Unity not to do this again? It's like Darth Vader saying "I have changed the terms of our deal. Pray I do not change it any further." (Empire Strikes Back)
Haha, what a superpower! ^^ Well, in any case, I guess I'm "glad" I get to go for a more open-source mindset now... eager to discover more about Godot ;)
Haha many thanks! Well to be honest I'm not sure when I'll do UE tutorials cause I've never really managed to dive into this engine, and I really like godot's mindset. But I'm definitely considering all the options here, and thank you for your support ;)
@@minapecheux I like godot too, but I feel like that it's way too early to make commercial game with godot. Don't have to make tutorials, the learning journey itself is good enough to share. Keep it up girl!
@@WeirdGoatThanks for the support :) True that Godot is not as "polished" as UE for example, but they're improving a lot in little time, and perhaps for some games it's still "enough" as-is... anyhow, I'm happy to discover and share all that I learn as I progress ;)
This could be a deliberate attempt by the CEO and Board of Directors to artificially lower the company value in order to force a buyout by Apple. After the buyout, the stock price will rocket.
I say this only as a possible explanation for "why". The reaction against the breach of trust this move causes is completely 100% correct and legitimate. It appears inevitable that any time a company goes public any more, it completely loses any vision of fairness it might have ever had. This was NOT the way the stock market was supposed to work. kind of the opposite of it actually. :/
The destruction of the ecosystem that surrounded, and supported Unity, is what bothers me the most. Content creators such as yourself that have dedicated endless hours towards driving more developers to their platform... asset creators that are populating a store that make Unity more accessible... they are going to not just be affected, but will do a double take when it comes to trusting anything that their leadership team puts forward. I've invested tens of thousands of dollars into Unity and my projects and I don't think I can trust them any more. They are trying to be more than just a provider of development tools and spreading themselves way too thin. We're in the process of moving towards Unreal which just adds another obstacle on the way to a release. Anyways, great video Mina and all the best to you and your channel moving forward.
I wonder how much better everything would have been if they just.. "We are in need of more revenue to fund the future of Unity, and are exploring different avenues and pricing structures to facilitate these potential changes. Here is what we have right now. We are open to any and all discussion regarding this topic" But alas the nuke landed and everyone disliked it. Even if it is better then Unreals fees, but that only matter in some circumstances and everything leaves too much to chance.
I think you're right - being opened and discussing with their community would have been a great trust-builder fo Unity! Perhaps we should just keep this in the back of our heads to help other engines grow, and avoid this kind of disastres in the future :)
I'm mapping out my plan for Godot, starting with subscribing to their dev fund. If Unity wants me to stay, they need to end their relationship with their CEO and every manager that supported this plan. Otherwise those same people will do this again and again and again.
I for one am excited for the new community interest in godot. It's sad to see unity go, but we must let it die as a warning to others not to try this kind of switcheroo in the future.
bro I don't want to go back to Unity . but I also don't want to learn another game engine its so frustrating, CEO doesn't know how many people hate him now hope they sue tf out of him .
Even if Unity does revert the decision entirely, I would never trust them ever again. They'd just do it for the publicity, learn from their mistakes and make sure that they can't be sued for it next time.
Personally, I'm thankful for what Unity has done. If it means that more and more people now support open source tools like Godot etc then it means a closer and more tight knit community who help support each other and we can kiss corrupt, profiteering, exploitative greedy corporations goodbye forever. Screw Unity. The sheer irony of that name right now!
Heya! I'm definitely going to have a look :) Truth is, my brain is hardwired for OOP rather than ECS (perhaps that's a bad thing ^^), but I'm super interested in learning this... I just need to get a bit of time to do it ^^
It's really sad and infuriating everything that's been happening with Unity. Literally 15 years of your hard work and passion were thrown to the thrash can because of corporate greed. I really wish you the best for your endeavors in the future.
Almost a decade using Unity professionally, educationally and for fun ending in such terrible way. I know now how the creators that made the flash games I played as a teen feels.
No, this is not more reasonable than Unreal. Unreal only takes 5% over 1 million earned in a year, that's a huge jump from 200k. Unreal also doesn't take that 5% on EGS, so just only 12% instead of if on Steam 35%. That 5% is also on sales AFTER than 1 million, not counting the first million at all. That example uses some insanely high numbers of profit that less than 0.01% of devs can ever dream of reaching - while reaching 200k is much much easier. Also of course the install fee is like an eternal, reoccurring fee, a bit like property tax.
I agree with you that there are a lot of cases where it's objectively worse, and in any case having no idea how much you're expected to pay is just inacceptable. I just mentioned some of the arguments that were given by Unity and others about why it could be, in some cases, "reasonable". But yeah, to be clear: overall, I'm sadly pretty sure it will do a lot of damage, especially in the mobile gaming industry :/
First of all, huge thanks to all of you for your amazing support! It really means a lot, and I'm happy to know many of you are there for the game devs and the content creators, and are eager to start exploring open-source alternatives like Godot :)
A few important extra notes:
1. In the video, I say that Unity might be right that the conditions will only impact 10% of the devs. This is something I understood from the articles I’ve read, and that is mostly true for PC/Console games, which I’m familiar with. The world of mobile gaming will definitely be way more impacted, sadly :(
2. To answer some of the comments: I will NOT be removing my Unity content from the RUclips channel or my Medium profile - I am still proud of this content and there's no need to rewrite the past. So this content will stay, just feel free to browse through it whenever you'd like!
Doesn't impact 90% of the devs might mean 90% of games are free and don't have any kind of monetization. Please don't delete your old videos, these are one of the best Unity tutorials I've seen anywhere.
@@PaintsAreOp Yep that's definitely a big part of the "non-impacted games"... but I don't enough on the topic, that's why I don't want to "teach" anyone on this ;)
No worries: I will leave all the existing videos as-is on the channel - no need to rewrite the past, and I'm still proud of my content up to this day! I'm very happy to know you like my content and that my videos have been helpful to you :)
It's not even about the impact of costs, it’s the fact that Unity is no longer a trustworthy company to build your game with, never put your eggs in one basket, then protect that basket inside a castle of sand.
I'm one of those who will be affected, I have free to play mobile game published to 4 millions of downloads and game is almost not profitable at all. After Unity TOS change, I'll be bankrupt. We are closing the company at the moment.
@@mehmetakyuz5290 Don't rush your decisions. We don't even know if it's legal what they're trying to do especially for the games released under a different tos.
Unity is where I learned to code. It's watching my childhood home be demolished in real time.
I really get you. Unity is why I started to create games, I've seen it grow and improve for almost a decade... and then, not so much. I'm still happy I could share my knowledge with the community these last few years, but yeah - a hard week for all of us :(
It was never your home, it was rented from landlord, and now land lord is evicting tenants by imposing increased rent from January.😅😅
@@ash1kh And like so many shitty landlords in NYC they can sit on their empire full of empty stores and apartments.
I learned unreal to start I feel really bad for you guys
@@muhdiversity7409 they really don't care if homeless stats grows to 100% landlords are landlords. They can sit in empty houses with no tenants without any problem.
Looking forward to the Godot tutorials!
Its development fund seems to have nearly doubled over the past week from this whole fiasco; maybe it can become the Blender of game engines someday.
Thanks, I'm really eager to dive into the engine further and share all I learn with all of you :)
And I do agree: would be really cool if we could have a Krita/Inkscape - Blender - Godot game creation workflow one day!
yesyesyes
I would swap Unity with a "Blender-Hearted" Game-Engine any time!
Apparently there is a humble bundle for a godot tutorial, which if you donate enough you get stuff on blendr, photoshop and other courses geared towards game making. Just came across it and looking it over now and for anyone who has purchased it, confirm if its any good. But its a start. 😅😅🤷🏿♂️
I do hope Godot gets the similar support from people, similar to what Blender has now! (Blender have become amazing software over the recent years, all thanks to the community!)
I just started working on Godot tutorials since I haven't done any since college. Seems like the timing was great
Absolutely going to follow you with your new journey into Godot! This is such a breach of trust that I absolutely refuse to come back to Unity, even if they did a u-turn. Hoping the best for you!
Thank you so much, it means a lot! :)
It really is the breach of trust for me. It's like finding out your SO has installed tracking software on your phone without your consent and will be withdrawing money from your account on terms that they never fully let you in on. I don't care how "reasonable" the final cut ends up being.
Thank you so much for your hard work Mina. I'll be transferring my main project to Unreal, but for smaller projects like jams I will surely be coming to you for Godot tutorials. Whatever Unity does, this amazing community will thrive with or without them.
Yep, really an unbelievable (and "poorly communicated", to stay polite) decision from Unity... many thanks for your support, and I do hope like you that we can keep this community alive, even if we switch to slightly different tools! :)
I keep thinking that it is like word charging you a fee for sharing a word document. It is not a free product to start with.
take a look at Bevy, too! They're on the last stretch of the scene editor implementation and are likely to see one released within a year!
Looking forward to seeing godot tutorials in the future!
With all been said, Unity just can't even claim for the money for each install. This is something that has completely no relation to them. It is literally the same if they asked the devs to pay whatever fee for each key-press on their PC while Unity is just installed there. There is just no relation between the number of installs and Unity. And that is the main problem: their inadequacy. And they don't even understand it yet.
Absolutely right: announcing a few that relies on such a weird/incalculable/shady metric is just impossible to swallow. As many people said: announcing something about taking X% on the revenues would have generated some heat, but nothing near this...
it's a bit different because you are using Unity's proprietary runtime to play the actual games. it's unprecedented and will probably get a lot of legal scrutiny but their runtime does have relation to them.
@@ubestbegood No, it still has no sense, but I'm pretty sure that's how they think: since your game is using their runtime, they think they are allowed to do anything around it. And it actually hurts to even try to think in their absurd and dirty coordinate system. But ok, let it be such. Installation is an action performed by an end-user - the player. The player is the subject. And if Unity is so greedy to monetize even this, the only one they could charge is the player itself. Neither developer, nor the publisher are involved in this process. But I'm 100% sure even this will be illegal. Because otherwise, there would be no limitation on their side on what they can charge: every time you look at the executable in explorer, or everytime you just select it. It is still their runtime! What's the difference between "install" and "look at"? Or they could even charge the rental fee for having runtime installed for some time 🤷♂Where's the limit?
Anyway, developer's/publisher's only "entry point" is at selling the product - and that's where they could charge for distributing the runtime once.
Im so nervous, ugh. I'm waist deep into my solo gane dev journey and just the thought of migrating everything over to a new platform is so scary to me.
The more people use Godot the better it will be, Unity have shot themselves in the foot.
They did not shoot themselves in the foot. They blew their whole leg off.
Overhype is bad. Putting all your eggs in one basket is also bad, even if this basket is open-source. There are a lot of cool engines in the world besides Godot, please don't make it look like it's the default and only option
I personally use Unreal and Bevy. Unreal for revolutionary features and ease of complex things, Bevy for open-source, ECS by default (without mandatory OOP and it's issues like in Unity and Godot), exceptional modularity, flexibility, and Rust language
Got a sub from me. Excited for the future of Godot!
This is a big loss for many (I've been a Unity exclusive for years now), but if the silver lining is that devs flock to and support an opensource engine that will only get better with time... it might be worth it.
I've heard folks say that Godot is the 'Blender' of engines, and based on how incredible Blender has become while remaining free and opensource, I think the future is looking bright.
Unreal Engine's cost is easier to grasp after this change from Unity. Even if you'll make less if you succeed using UE, knowing beforehand what it'll cost and understanding all the cost factors is a much better solution. Unknown factors that's up to interpretation is not good.
Yep - that's so right! This new monetisation scheme is way too complex (and hard/impossible? to calculate)... a basic "take X% of the revenues" is clear and already familiar to the game dev community, it would probably have been received way better!
I've been waiting for what you have to say on the topic. Thanks, Mina! Cheers, Alex.
Glad it was helpful! Thanks for the support :)
I'm a software developer. Just played with Unity few days before the drama. I want to point out that I can easily track API requests and endpoints made in Windows. I can see the metadata, I can't see the content of the API without running it through decryption software which may take a long time(months if lucky), after which they would change their encryption standart and have to wait few more months to decrypt. But is certainly possible to create exploits and hijack the communication between Unity Servers and local machine.
I haven't dived into the security stuff myself, but I do trust you and other devs will quickly find a lot of backdoors and data streams that are sending things they shouldn't... and have been for a good amount of time, maybe?
Anyhow, good luck on escaping the drama ;)
And on finding a better alternative for your projects!
Thanks for all the wonderful tutorials you did, especially the series on the behavior trees. We are still using your method in our game today. Best of luck and looking forward to your first Godot tutorial!
Thanks so much for the support, and super glad to know it helped you in your projects! :)
Don't expect Unity to change. They are set on this. The board of directors consists of people with weird ideas on how to make profits. They'll only change if they see the death of the engine coming. Publishers are already rejecting projects that are based on Unity. The goal should be for Unity to go under and its up to the board of directors and CEO to prevent that by actually not being so sinister. Don't hold your breath, plan to move on and don't come back until they've changed to something better and not just reverting this change.
Oh no - I don't trust them at all.
I'm just leaving a door open for, perhaps, one day, a better board and executive team? Dunno. Honestly, right now, I would say "Unity? never again?" but I try to stay positive and not be too final in my decisions ^^
The ceo tried to charge for bullets in battlefield. After hearing this, I knew I had to switch.
I just started learning Unity about a month ago due to company requirement now it feels like ,I have to choose different engine to study onwards.
Good luck on your next steps - I hope you'll find a new engine that works well, that you like and that doesn't do this kind of philosophy U-turns!
Thank you for your videos, been trying godot for a while now.
You're welcome, I'm glad you like my content! Well I've been looking at Godot for a while too, but I definitely have less experience than with Unity so - please don't hesitate to tell me if you have specific topics you think would benefit from being explained, or little tricks I could reshare with other devs ;)
Cheers!
The behavior tree video has been highly helpful to me . Thanks a lot.
You're very welcome, I'm super glad it was useful! Thank you for the nice comment and the support :)
Sadly, Unity has disappointed a lot of its devs, I'm glad to hear that you will continue with your game dev journey and even more that it will be in Godot.
Looking forward to those great quality tutorials as always!
Just to know, will you be explaining Godot using GDScript or their WIP C# solution?
Some topics that are quite interesting coming from an Unity background are:
1. Duck Typing
2. Scenes and Nodes
3. Inheritance over composition
4. Signals
Among others, hopefully those will give you some ideas for future videos so we can all hear your take on such interesting topics!
Best of luck!
Thanks a lot for your support!! My primary goal is to discuss C# in Godot since it's way less explained overall on the net, and it's definitely something that Unity devs would be interested in, I think :)
And thank you so much for your ideas of tutorials - I'm writing all this down and will try to fit it in the schedule :)
Cheers!
Welcome to the Godot world! Looking forward to see all kind of great stuff!
Thank you so much! Hoping to discover a brand new mindset and bag of tricks ;)
Happy to hear you are switching to Godot, I am also switching to Godot! So I will need all the help I can get from people like you. I hope the transition goes smoothly! Sucks to see Unity go out like this.
Thanks for the support, and eager to share my little nuggets of Godot knowledge with the community :)
oh man, I just finished your state machine tutorial last week.
Well - thanks a lot for your support and for taking a look at my videos ;)
Just a quick info: I will NOT be removing any videos on Unity that are already present - I will just stop making new ones. So you can still watch all the ones you want on the channel :)
I did not want to write much more about this topic, but I found this video very good, so I will write something.
After years of working with Unity, we as a community have decided to move away from Unity. The reasons mentioned in the video are of course 1 to 1 for us! But the main reason why we decided to invest and move all projects to other engines is the reason "trust". The trust in Unity has been destroyed. Even if Unity undoes everything, the trust is destroyed. Unity will definitely try to change something again to get money, but who knows how they will do it? One thing is for sure, it won't be as public as it is now! Will we still have a chance to change anything? I dare to doubt it. That is why we are turning away from Unity, even if it hurts a lot because of investments etc. We currently see Unity as a pure bad investment. That is why I advise everyone who wants to work with Unity to use it only as an educational platform and NOT, I repeat NOT, to release any games.
Moreover, this is our chance to stand up to Techno Feudalism in our own back yard. We must send a strong signal that this does not stand. If we don't do it now, it's opening the gates for more of that. So from a principal point of view, let's vote with our feet.
They just apologized on twitter and promised to make a change, and yeah it may be about trust but for me is about 26 pages of assets I purchased over last 10 years worth thousands so no I can't move just like that ... i invested too much not just in assets but in time learning it , to easily walk away ...
@@Berndr "They just apologized on twitter" you mean "X"? seriously, Musk has made ANYTHING said on "X" to be completely worthless as far as real information goes. I know you're panicking, but you really do need to walk away from this. not just for others, but for yourself.
@@Berndr "Made with Unity" is a stigma now as far as I'm concerned. I will be purchasing little to none of them.
First of all, many thanks for your kind words - I'm very glad you found the video useful!
I really agree with your statement about using Unity for education (cause I think it's worth it in that specific scenario), and just disregarding it for actual games. I'm truly saddened it's come to this, but that's the most logical course of action given Unity's current state :/
Good luck on your future projects, and on continuing your journey :)
Got Godot forever ago thinking I'd be some fancy pants solo game dev buuuut _lazy._ With all the new tutorials coming out, it seems like a really good time to try again.
Making good games is really hard that is why there is so much rubbish
Might be interesting to make a small video series of testing amd first impressions of new and up and coming engines like stride and flax, etc ...
This is a really great and I hope I can get to it! Right now, to be honest, I'm quite underwater with the Unity to Godot transition, but it's definitely something I want to try as soon as possible :)
I invested time and money into a Unity project I'll have to scrap now, found your channel and I hope to see your Godot tutorials in the future!
Arg, sorry :/
But hello, and welcome! I hope you'll like my upcoming Godot content - I'm really excited to dive into this engine and share what I learn with all of you ;)
check the description, i think you wanted to say "i can not trust this engine"
Oops, thanks a lot - it's fixed :)
Not so sure about things going back to normal. Why? They just proved that they cannot be trusted at all. I honestly think they'll double down. The other shenanigans going on within Unity and its "leadership" should be a massive source of concern. Wish you the best on your journey as you take the other fork in the road.
Thanks for your support and your kind words!
And no - I don't trust them at all to rollback or anything :/
I'm just leaving a door open for, perhaps, one day, a better board and executive team? Dunno. Honestly, right now, I would say "Unity? never again?" but I try to stay positive and not be too final in my decisions ^^
It's not a half of my life, just shy of a decade. But I have loads of purchased assets. Letting it almost all to go is painful. I feel empty now. After last almost 4 years of Covid and war, have this.
Good luck on continuing your creations! I hope you'll find a new tool that suits you and allows to keep going ;)
Almost exactly this, it is about the stability of the platform. If they can make up new rules and twist old ones on a per second basis that nothing makes sense.
But on the money side, while the fee is minimal the point is it shifts drastically how we monetize. Because for some devs this will mean de-listing your game is better than leaving it up after a certain point.
Say for example NMS, their constantly developing the game, I once ever few years reinstall it to see what's up. They have over a million people who do this. The machine I use now is not the machine I used when I installed it the first time. In this case it would pay more for them to de-list the game since they do not use in game monetization.
AND EVEN IF THEY DID do in game monetization, the devs will simply translate the cost to the in-game items. So now players need to pay more.
I'm against micro-transactions myself so I've got no love lost for predatory devs who do it and players who indulge in it. But 99% of this is the shadyness and thusly confusing way Unity went about it.
How can they enforce a retroactive ToS change? Surely any court will throw the book at them if they tried to enforce it, especially when the company is on record promising they wouldn't do this?
I'm changing engines too. It's great to see the game dev community mostly united on this and its exciting exploring new possibilities with different engines together, and yet despite the trust Unity has broken I don't wish to see the engine die, even if I don't go back - and I'm afraid it might. People say this change was an act of greed, but I think it was most likely an act of desperation (even though there still is greed at play as well, I'm sure) considering they've been at a loss for years. If they were trying to save their company, it looks like they've just made things worse for everyone.
I'm with you! I can't wait to see more C# with Godot tutorials!
Hi, just wanted to give a direct feedback to you. Firstly, I'm not a native English speaker. The ts and s sounds are for some reason exaggerated in this recording and making it harder for me (and likely others) to follow what you are saying.
Thanks :)
Hello! Thanks a lot for the feedback, I'm always open cause it helps me improve :)
Yep I'm currently getting used to a new microphone, and this whole situation forced me to fast-track my schedule... I'm hoping I'll get better at recording/mixing with this new tool!
It's like BUYING a Shovel and getting Charged every time you dig a hole in the ground.
Really solid video and I support and appreciate your call for game ethics in development. The entire gaming industry has so corrupted by the profit motive, that it is a struggle just to enjoy gaming or interact with gamers anymore. It has allowed so much toxicity and abuse (to everyone from game developers, content creators, and gamers themselves) and its just time to put it to an end.
As far as the pricing structure and the "rent" (fee) getting cheaper the more you make...its a practice that is more common with wholesale and distribution sectors. The idea behind it is that the more money someone is making the more business they are going to do than their competitors in the same time, as well as the longer they will be doing business. I am not sure about whether that in itself will lead to a higher percentage in costs, but it is very telling. They don't want to to pay benefits to smaller game dev's they are going after bigger fish by offering (what is typically) a reduction in overall operating costs. Put simply the amount of money may be more but it lower fee (usually) means a lower percentage of costs for bigger business's. Its economics of scale.
I thoroughly find it disgusting, because small indy games, and small studios are the only thing really keeping gaming alive, because they are the ones making games with any passion.
01:40 about unity/unreal pricing, problem with Unity it's planning, a lot of small indie company need to understand what cut will be took from them, but with Unity it's even hard to calculate, and they basically force you to update subscription plan to expensive one to reduce fees, but it also can harm small companies, they still need to pay wages/taxes etc..
With Unreal even if it's bigger cut, it is at least obvious, you pay only when you sell game, and easier for taxes you don't need to provide any additional calculcations bill from Unity each month/quarter, you have only one agreement with 5% and that's all. Also some countries ignore this agreements and you still need to pay income tax even on fee that you pay to engine.
Absolutely! The monetisation scheme with this hard/impossible? "install" metric calculation is one of the major flaws of this "plan" :/
Job security is already hard enough as it is for small indie companies...
I spent years on unity and switched to Godot 3 days ago. It doesn't "look" professional but it really is.
And that's how pay to install was invented. Truly a visionary. I couldn't even think of just one move which could kill entire company. Former CEO of EA must be proud of himself.
Wow 15 Yeats. I've been coding since 1990s but I stared unity in 2017. It is only a hobby but it became a big part of my everyday life. I think I heard someone say that brackets saw this coming but he decided not to warn others. I'm looking forward to seeing how you teach Godot. I'm already having trouble with it and I'm so frustrated. It is a big change from unity.
Yep, Godot's definitely a different beast! I hope my videos will be useful for you in the transition, and by the way: don't hesitate to tell me if you have ideas of specific questions/points I could make tutorials on! :)
I'm an Unreal Engine Indie dev myself but my heart goes out for all the other Unity devs out there. It's such a shame and I'm incredibly angry at this situation. It shows just how vulnerable we can be when big companies change over the years...
Many thanks for your support to the Unity community, it means a lot! :)
Trust is broken, trust is gone.
the sad thing is, that i have invested so much time and energy working on my game, and its kinda too late to switch engines, i dont know if i should worry about that since i am no where near the threshold neither when it comes to the revenue nor the install count, but if submit to these changes means that my dream is dead "which is not a thing i would consider" but lets for a better future
good luck on your journey though
Good luck to you too - I'm definitely feeling for all the devs like you that are completely blindsided by Unity's announcement and need to take a really hard decision. Hope you'll still manage to finish and give your game to the world in a "decent" way! :)
You should finish your game in Unity if you're too far in to turn back, and then switch to another engine of your choice when you're done with it. Even if Unity reverts these changes they've broken our trust. Not to mention in the last few years Unity has been in a decline anyway
@@Keanine thanks for your supporting words, i am working on it atm, i am still waiting for what unity has to say after their tweet today, lets hope for the best, and yes i might really switch engines after this game
@@TheCuteBandicoot Yeah, of course there's no pressure to switch engine if they revert it and you're most comfortable with Unity. Personally though even if they reverted it and gave me a free £50 for the asset store I still wouldn't return. I just can't trust them to do the right thing anymore
Whatever happens, good luck with your game!
Unity didn't just destroy their own developers, but us gamers too! 😔 Most games are projects born from the hearts of their creators, and are their own works of art, but because of Unity us gamers will likely be deprived of games that should have been. Whats worse is how it will affect the developers of tomorrow. It's rare that a person goes into game development on a whim, but most developers were at one point inspired by a games that lead them to develop their own projects. This new "policy" will hurt EVERYONE...Gamers, Developers, and even Future Developers have all lost something at the greedy hands of Unity. Though I will _Always_ continue to support creators and their games, Unity has managed to make me not want to buy a unity engine game because it would also support them. Though I won't actually stop buying and supporting the games and their creators, the fact that Unity has made me feel this way has honestly sickened me. Greed has truly shattered the relationship between all of us and Unity, and I don't think it can be repaired.
Im just as upset as you. I started getting into game development 6 months ago and made my younger self proud by accomplishing my goal of making a video game Ive always wanted to make.
However, through my irritation and researching engines, and more about the topic. I was confident and happy to choose Godot. I told myself if I switch over Im not returning to unity. WHY? Because I do not trust them after seeing how this has been playing out, and who the CEO is. The only way I would go back is if he is no longer CEO and if these changes never come into affect AT ALL.
Both seem unlikely, but shortley after using godot im really happy with it, and impressed. Theres certain features that made me feel really comfortable to use compared to unity. And honestly I really do appreciate I can make my own splash screen, mouse cursor without a paywall like unity.
I wanted to be able to release a game that would be affordable during these crazy inflations in game price, and give people a game worth playing that makes people spend time together and guide them in a brighter mindset during these hard times. If you support true gamers, their wallet, and devs who make games that mean something let me know.
I look forward to learning some Godot from you.
Thanks for the support, I'm really eager to dive into the engine and sharing what I learn with the community :)
I might start making Unity tutorial videos since everyone else has stopped. Here's a rundown of what the first one could be like:
"How to Unity in 2023"
Step 1: Insert the ball-gag into your mouth and make sure it is securely attached.
Step 2: Bend over
Step 3: Pay inexplicable, illegal, and potentially crippling fees, forever in perpetuity
Oh and here's what the second one could be:
"How to Advanced Unity in 2023"
Step 1: Back away, slowly at first. Maintain eye contact with Unity until a safe distance away
Step 2: RUN.
Step 3: Install Godot.
I find myself subscribing to a bunch of channels that used to do Unity videos and are now switching to make Godot videos... and unsubscribing from channels that are currently defending Unity's decision / announcement.
When an open source (FREE) engine is racing past your engine, imagine starting to charge your loyal customers/developers an insane amount. The people that made this decision clearly has no sense of direction and a severe lack of intelligence. Hope to see the amazing developers at Unity on other projects/Engines that deserve their skills.
Will be watching your godot stuff!
Thank you for the support, looking forward to discovering and sharing my experience with this engine!
This event is changed my route, now I love the Godot :)
Thank you, it's so well explained, finally! Unity should hire you as a communication manager)
I wanted to subscribe, but I noticed I already does.
Haha thanks :)
And thank you for your (long-term, then) support, it means a lot!
"Richer you are, the less you pay." Motto of the century.
I was unsure on whether should I change from Unity. As a hobbyist that does not pretend to sale my games at any point, their decisions on monetization do not affect me, but have definitely put me on edge because if I ever wanted to work with game development the industry would have probably changed to another platform.
That being said, I'm really liking my time with Godot and in some aspects I think it surpasses Unity, especially if we're talking about project organization and performance. GDScript is also very clean to code, which is a plus, and even though it is interpreted I think i'll stick to it just because it's too nice. So far, I did not find any roadblocks and the transition of my project is going smoothly!
Honestly, at this point, it isn't even about how much this'll cost anymore. I don't want anyone to think this is just "developers don't want to pay more money". I think many developers have said that a standard revenue share would be a much more acceptable idea.
It's about the fact they just woke up one day and went "we're going to change the terms you agreed to and it's going to apply retroactively". At that point there's NO trusting them anymore. You can't fix that by just saying "I take it back".
Even if they fully walk back the statement, they've still shown that they're more than willing to play dirty to squeeze as much money out of developers as they can. That's something you will need to worry about whether your game sells one copy or one million copies. How could we ever think to trust our projects to such an untrustworthy company?
Also the fact they keep using the term "confusion" as if we maybe *just don't get it yet* shows just how little they actually care about feedback. It's just for them to keep slowly nudging their statement back a bit until they think they've found the sweet-spot for people who will begrudgingly accept the changes. "Oh no, you don't understand, you won't be charged for EVERY install (even though that's exactly what they previously said), just for the first install! What's that, you don't like that either? Oh, you must be confused, it's actually charged to the platform, not the developer!"
I only just barely started with Unity when this happened, so it's not a big deal for me to move to a new engine and start from scratch, but what about people whose jobs and careers were thrown into disarray because of this? A lot of people I am close to might have to just discard so many years of experience and start all over in a new engine.
Support your favorite developers, folks.
Exactly - the money problem is now secondary, cause whatever they say to try and make it more palatable, people will (rightly) doubt that Unity doesn't just U-turn to another decision one week later.
That's actually really sad, because it means that Unity employees (who really have nothing to do with this and are suffering just like we are) have to come up with something to repair the burnt bridges... knowing fair well it's probably not gonna work :/
As you said - we need to support the indie devs that will be hurt the most by this unbelievable decision, and help all of the community move forward!
@@minapecheux Every Unity employee I've spoken with has been against this decision too - many are resigning as a result of this.
We should also support the employees who had no say in this and are now aboard a sinking ship.
It's very concerning. I'm not ready to switch to GODOT as my primary source of Income is working with the Unity Engine. There's currently 0 job postings for Godot, 3 for Unreal Engine, and 16 for Unity in my Country.
The landscape of game dev is really strange at the moment... good luck on your future decisions and projects, I hope you find the right tool for you!
time to go back to basics and start contributing to some full open source engine for good of humanity
This Unity situation is so sad, so many people are suffering for a few corporative mfs :/
Unity lost my trust, even if they go back I will not. They can change their mind again.
They've already showed their hand. It's too late, we know what they're doing.
Yep, sadly - about 0% chance they rollback.
I am using Bevy. Doesn't have all the features but at least I know that I'm not gonna get fooled into things like this. If I ever earn something I will raise my donation to the developers.
The problem with Bevy is the project lead, 3 years in and they still re-design everything, remember Amethyst?
Godot is a mature project not depending on a single person, and completely customizable, you could only use the editor and build your own engine under the hood or use Bevy.
@@geams Yes, and I know all of this and I know that Godot is very well integrated. But I'm getting much of the knowledge out of the Bevy ecosystem. These rewrites were easy to migrate for me, and I enjoy them. There are many talented and experienced developers progressing in their own domain, making the engine more feature rich and complete. In another three years from now it will be simple to use and stable. That is my forecast and because of that I am investing my time today.
Unity will lie and gaslight us, Godot will do it's best to support us as long as we also put in effort to support it.
May we all get out of this abusive relationship together.
You been using unity for 15 years? What games have u made so far? I want to check it out
Haha, thanks for the support - but I've been using it to learn game dev, and teach it to others, so I haven't actually release real games ;)
Hope I will one day, tho!
Let's also add it what we learned recently about both the insider trading and IronSource.
Hi Mina,
like so many I have started game development with Unity and have been asking myself lately, whether I should switch the engine. I am not dependent on income from that source but nevertheless am investing quite some time of my own will. The two main reasons to not switch are currently:
- do not want to learn GDScript but rather stay with C# (there seems to be a solution for that)
- would want to keep the assets I bought for Unity. This obviously applies mainly to the 3d-models
So if you would like to adress how to develop on Godot for Unity developers, I believe this will be of interest to many others as well. Maybe for the second part a tutorial on how to import (e.g.) Synty models or fbx in general would be cool.
I will keep following you and look forward to many more cool tutorials...
Heya! First, thanks a lot for your support and for following my work :)
I'll be actually focusing most of my Godot tutorials on coding features in C# in Godot - cause that's exactly something that is missing at the moment. So, hopefully, it should help a bit with the transition!
And I'll definitely write down your idea of discussing asset imports, be it 3D models or images... thanks!
Cheers :)
@@minapecheux I would really love this. Looking forward to the next content then... Maybe I will divide my time between progress on Unity and porting efforts to Godot then!
Well said and deep respect for doing this unity has really just become the polar opposite of unity and it should be just called divide right now you know or defy or divide whatever you want to say but basically yeah I would advise anybody with a unity account to basically start downloading all of their assets off of there
Because the 3D objects and animations are still useful I would truly advise anybody that uses unity download all of your assets you can reapply them to Godot you can reapply them to other engines you know such is unreal and so on so I'll say download all of your assets you know I truly feel bad for the asset creators and more people like me who spent thousands of dollars on buying assets
If unity really wanted to diversify and make more money they could have started making movies and making video games and actually hiring or collaborating with people utilizing their engines in these fields instead they just want to be dictators and you know there's more than enough alternative engines and add on the fact that AI has arrived and very soon AI will be able to basically pilot any software you're trying to learn unity is over they made their choice even if they roll this back you know the the consequence of they can change their mind anytime they want the fact that the thought could be that they're trying to have you drop your guard before they act again it's over
I am so happy to see so many people recognizing the benefits of open-source and MIT license. Stallman was right!
imagine dedicating an entire college on unity, only to be forced to stop using it due to BS. Thank you for your tutorials, it has been a journey with unity. Can't wait to learn Godot from you as well
I'm sad to hear this :/
Good luck on continuing your journey - and many thanks for the support!
unity user for nearly a decade always wanted to switch to unreal engine now might be perfect time
When Unity announced charge price on game per install
*Game devs :* all those years of academy training wasted ,now I have to move to different game engine I'm not familiar with
If last week I was requesting you more Unity tuts, now I was coming back to gently request a few ones on Godot... so happy to know that you are switching to it. It's a pity though the countless hours so many devs throw down the drain for such greedy corportate decision... Unity's black suits have done things so wrong, specially the retroactive change of the TOS and the removal of the old one in GIT (also old Unity versions in their archive have had the TOS changed for the new draconian one), plus the lack of clarity on how they will track reinstalls and how they are pushing some devs to reduce the fees if they use some of the services.... plus low earning f2p games with high install numbers are doomed and can enter negative numbers! Very hard to recover the trust again... with Godot, we have an open source engine what will improve fast, and monetization will only be on getting the console porting SDK, though this now scaringly reminds me of Unity 2012 where you paid a one-time fee for the Android & iOS versions, but Godot being open source things should not to that awry anymore!
Thanks for the support! And really looking forward to diving into Godot and sharing all that I learn with the community :)
I can't trust Unity anymore - Even if they roll this decision back, I don't think it'll make a difference to the majority of people who planned to release with this engine.
Unity leadership have pretty openly (and repeatedly) shown their dislike for those who earn Unity their paycheck - Even if someone isn't personally impacted by the new costs, the fact the engine we relied on essentially admitted they planned to add intrusive -telemetry- _spyware_ to the Unity runtime to enforce their install charges and then retroactively modified their terms and conditions to fit the narrative? Really, really suspicious behaviour. If not illegal.
I feel most sorry for the developers who work for Unity, those who just wanted to make a great engine that people love to use. They're also hit pretty hard in this situation.
To everyone currently assessing the logistics of changing engine; Good luck.
Thank you for sharing your opinion on this situation, and I look forward to seeing where you go from here.
Many thanks for your support!
Oh no - I don't trust them at all.
I'm just leaving a door open for, perhaps, one day, a better board and executive team? Dunno. Honestly, right now, I would say "Unity? never again?" but I try to stay positive and not be too final in my decisions ^^
And you're right: finding an engine that suits you is definitely going to be hard on a lot of game devs :(
To me, Godot is a good choice because I like their mindset, I've seen the project grow since 2015 and I enjoy the way they're improving ;)
I really dont want to switch to another engine, but i kinda have to. The "count" thing they say isnt accurate and i dont know what data they will be transferring. I have been using unity for 5 years, and people say, "well, it doesnt affect you, does it?" and i answer it does, because we all want to reach that $200,00 mark, we all want money, well it might not be in a few years but we all want to reach that, so it does affect us
Yup - tracking "installs" is a strange and incalculable metric (at least I don't see how they can do it) and it's a very weird way to get back some money.
I hope you'll find some alternative to keep making your games and that suits you! :)
so what sort of "goodbye" is it, if you're ready to come back anytime they "repent"? a seriously grandiouse gesture for sure
Hi - and first of all, I'm sorry if you felt like I wasn't sincere, or was trying to take advantage of the situation.
That is absolutely not my intention - I'm really sadden to have to quite an engine after 15 years using it.
So to be clear: no - I don't trust them at all. They made their last wrong move.
But I'm just leaving a door open for, perhaps, one day, a better board and executive team? Dunno. Honestly, right now, I would say "Unity? never again?" but I try to stay positive and not be too final in my decisions ^^
Hope you understand!
It's ironic that the software's called 'Unity'. Perhaps Riccitiello thought the word meant something else.
His idea of Unity is the unification of your wallet with his
Even if Unity totally backtracks on the runtime fee (which they said they will not), how can any developer ever trust Unity not to do this again? It's like Darth Vader saying "I have changed the terms of our deal. Pray I do not change it any further." (Empire Strikes Back)
Sorry it's my fault. After looking at your Unity tutorials, I wished you would make the same for Godot :p
Haha, what a superpower! ^^
Well, in any case, I guess I'm "glad" I get to go for a more open-source mindset now... eager to discover more about Godot ;)
New Subscriber here, looking foward to learning along 😆
Berta? no, must've been the wind...
tres cool, we will be following.
I already switched to UE5 and currently rebuilding my game over there. 1 year of work down the drain because of greed...
Good luck
Sorry to hear about this :/ Good luck!
Really like your voice, looking forward to your UE5 tutorial
Haha many thanks! Well to be honest I'm not sure when I'll do UE tutorials cause I've never really managed to dive into this engine, and I really like godot's mindset. But I'm definitely considering all the options here, and thank you for your support ;)
@@minapecheux I like godot too, but I feel like that it's way too early to make commercial game with godot. Don't have to make tutorials, the learning journey itself is good enough to share. Keep it up girl!
@@WeirdGoatThanks for the support :)
True that Godot is not as "polished" as UE for example, but they're improving a lot in little time, and perhaps for some games it's still "enough" as-is... anyhow, I'm happy to discover and share all that I learn as I progress ;)
This could be a deliberate attempt by the CEO and Board of Directors to artificially lower the company value in order to force a buyout by Apple. After the buyout, the stock price will rocket.
I say this only as a possible explanation for "why". The reaction against the breach of trust this move causes is completely 100% correct and legitimate. It appears inevitable that any time a company goes public any more, it completely loses any vision of fairness it might have ever had. This was NOT the way the stock market was supposed to work. kind of the opposite of it actually. :/
Absolutely fantastic video. Fantastic script and I think the best video I've seen on the subject.
Wow, thanks! Glad you liked it :)
The destruction of the ecosystem that surrounded, and supported Unity, is what bothers me the most. Content creators such as yourself that have dedicated endless hours towards driving more developers to their platform... asset creators that are populating a store that make Unity more accessible... they are going to not just be affected, but will do a double take when it comes to trusting anything that their leadership team puts forward.
I've invested tens of thousands of dollars into Unity and my projects and I don't think I can trust them any more. They are trying to be more than just a provider of development tools and spreading themselves way too thin. We're in the process of moving towards Unreal which just adds another obstacle on the way to a release.
Anyways, great video Mina and all the best to you and your channel moving forward.
Why'd I get a YT notification about this?
I wonder how much better everything would have been if they just..
"We are in need of more revenue to fund the future of Unity, and are exploring different avenues and pricing structures to facilitate these potential changes. Here is what we have right now. We are open to any and all discussion regarding this topic"
But alas the nuke landed and everyone disliked it. Even if it is better then Unreals fees, but that only matter in some circumstances and everything leaves too much to chance.
I think you're right - being opened and discussing with their community would have been a great trust-builder fo Unity! Perhaps we should just keep this in the back of our heads to help other engines grow, and avoid this kind of disastres in the future :)
I'm mapping out my plan for Godot, starting with subscribing to their dev fund. If Unity wants me to stay, they need to end their relationship with their CEO and every manager that supported this plan. Otherwise those same people will do this again and again and again.
I for one am excited for the new community interest in godot. It's sad to see unity go, but we must let it die as a warning to others not to try this kind of switcheroo in the future.
bro I don't want to go back to Unity .
but I also don't want to learn another game engine its so frustrating, CEO doesn't know how many people hate him now hope they sue tf out of him .
Nice video. Very informative.
And welcome to the Godot community
Thank you kindly! And really happy to be part of this new community ;)
Fun. Watching something that is a big part of my life go to shit. Watching something that is meant to be my future die out.
It's indeed a very weird and sad moment for game dev. Good luck on your future projects, I'm sure you'll find another solution to keep creating! :)
Even if Unity does revert the decision entirely, I would never trust them ever again.
They'd just do it for the publicity, learn from their mistakes and make sure that they can't be sued for it next time.
Personally, I'm thankful for what Unity has done. If it means that more and more people now support open source tools like Godot etc then it means a closer and more tight knit community who help support each other and we can kiss corrupt, profiteering, exploitative greedy corporations goodbye forever.
Screw Unity. The sheer irony of that name right now!
Godot, let's go!!
I wanted to ask, have you thought about taking a look at data oriented game engines such as Bevy?
Heya! I'm definitely going to have a look :)
Truth is, my brain is hardwired for OOP rather than ECS (perhaps that's a bad thing ^^), but I'm super interested in learning this... I just need to get a bit of time to do it ^^
It's really sad and infuriating everything that's been happening with Unity. Literally 15 years of your hard work and passion were thrown to the thrash can because of corporate greed. I really wish you the best for your endeavors in the future.
Almost a decade using Unity professionally, educationally and for fun ending in such terrible way. I know now how the creators that made the flash games I played as a teen feels.
No, this is not more reasonable than Unreal. Unreal only takes 5% over 1 million earned in a year, that's a huge jump from 200k. Unreal also doesn't take that 5% on EGS, so just only 12% instead of if on Steam 35%. That 5% is also on sales AFTER than 1 million, not counting the first million at all. That example uses some insanely high numbers of profit that less than 0.01% of devs can ever dream of reaching - while reaching 200k is much much easier. Also of course the install fee is like an eternal, reoccurring fee, a bit like property tax.
I agree with you that there are a lot of cases where it's objectively worse, and in any case having no idea how much you're expected to pay is just inacceptable. I just mentioned some of the arguments that were given by Unity and others about why it could be, in some cases, "reasonable".
But yeah, to be clear: overall, I'm sadly pretty sure it will do a lot of damage, especially in the mobile gaming industry :/