They broke my heart and it made me stop working on my game entirely. I'm currently switching engines but they've broken my trust and any faith in them that I could have had. I am never going to trust them again after this, and honestly it was such a scummy thing to do to their consumers and smaller studios. The amount of effort it will take to learn another engine from the ground up is daunting and they know that so they assume people will just stay with Unity, little do they know I am powered by spite.
i was (lightly) working on making my own game as well, and had very high hopes for Unity being the ideal for it. Even with their backpedaling, I have swapped off of their platform entirely - apparently Godot is being seen as a commonly-agreed-upon sidestep, if it helps to know a nice alternative.
I really hope it works out 😢 what is your game called or what is it about? I would love to check it out in the future or something. I know its dumb, but hearing about these changes I suddenly just felt so bad about small game developers and just how many might have to just give up on their projects they've worked on. I want to support them
It was a silent hill style game with puzzles and maybe amnesia inspired elements with concepts of abstract horror and surrealism. I don't have a proper name for it yet, and I am currently writing out the plot so I may end up starting a new project and deciding to work on a different style of game entirely but in the meanwhile, I am working on other projects all the time and haven't really gotten a full game finished but I'll get there one day, just definitely not with Unity. @@alkimia1791
I've been tossing a lot of small ideas around with little progress, but the main idea I am trying to keep focused on is a procedural-generated world with a few static towns and cities; the "universe" of the game will have collapsed, apart from the "islands of stability" with small camps to explore. I don't have a working title of any kind yet, so it would definitely be a long ways out.
Unity's FORMER!!! CEO also came out and said "mobile developers that don't prioritize microtransactions are fucking morons". Are we surprised that a guy like that is criminally greedy?
This is the same guy who was in charge of EA during some of their most money hungry years(and that's fucking saying something considering it's EA) so that tracks
@@TrashBin2126 he won't be for long. He's 100% under investigation for insider trading after this latest stunt. You don't get to take charge of a company, get paid in stock options, then dump your shares right before making an announcement that tanks your market value
As if John Riccitello being former CEO of EA wasn't bad enough, he once said that game developers who didn't put microtransactions in their games were "f***ing idiots". He's also the guy who pitched the "let's charge $1 per reload in multiplayer shooters" idea. Can't believe he found a way to beat both of those downright evil things.
Whats worse is the full context is, he said "once gamers are an hour or more into a session, we could realistically charge $1 per reload without any backlash". He honestly believed people were that gullible and that they could make serious money doing it.
Side note, they later came out and said that for game pass and similar services, they’d charge the distributer. They were gonna charge Microsoft and Sony for Game Pass/Playstation Plus downloads. I’d have loved to see the reaction/lawsuit.
Personally, this would prolly make me listen to it. Making jokes about current events is the only thing that has made me cope during these serious times.
Fun fact: By selling a bunch of their stock before making the announcement they committed an actual crime. So there's a real good change the board could go to jail for insider trading!
@@gabrielpineirogarcia2078all they gotta do is lean on members of the board and I guarentee someone will roll over and testify in exchange for immunity. Happens all the time.
Believe me announcements and talks for this sort of thing Go on for months up to a year before they even make any kind of announcement. It starts out as a good idea fairy. And then it starts to gain traction. And then the CEO goes you know I really think this is a bad idea but I want to go for a money grab so we're going to push it but also hey jimothy could you please sell 5,000 shares of mine in from the company Yes Yes I'm selling 5,000 shares I'll talk to you in about 6 weeks and we'll sell another $5,000
@@AdmiralStoicRumPretty sure That he Set those Stocks to Be sold A year Ago, like, Most corps Do that. But you Are right, These plans Were months In the Making, up To like, 2-3 years. It just Takes a Little extra Planning.
Re-Logic, the creators behind Terraria, were so pissed about this move by Unity, they made an announcement stating that they will be donating $100,000 each to Godot, FNA, and Monogame on top of a $1,000/month sponsorship to them in order to ensure these platforms stay free and accessible to aspiring developers
@@ShreddedWombat Yes, but this is even worse because unlike D&D, which can be appreciated as a stand alone general product by the average consumer, Unity is a tool. This is like demanding a cut of ticket sales because a painting was made with your company's paint.
@@corbeaudejugement They tried to re-write the OGL that said specifically you couldn't re-write it. There was a huge amount of backlash, a lot of inside information came about on how the higher ups treat customers and their own workers, Paizo jumped on the opportunity by releasing Pathfinder 2.0, it's own OGL included. Eventually they just relented and said "Fine, we won't do it. #### you all". While not exactly what they said, they were definitely backhanded about it
Unity didn't shoot themselves on the foot, they shot themselves on the head. Unity died, that's their twitching corpse refusing to let the soul go but it's already dead.
Honestly even if they replace the CEO they have destroyed all trust and any respect they've built up over the companies time. The only way I can see them recovering is firing that guys ass making a hard about face on this decision and they honestly might have to rebrand entirely, the name Unity has been stained by this announcement and I really don't know if it can ever fully recover from this
This isn't just killing the golden goose, this is killing it, shitting on it's corpse, then summoning demons to drag the mess down to hell, and wondering why bystanders are scared and upset by your actions
Friendly Reminder that Unity is not the problem, its CEO is. People working on Unity got the news first and were also against those changes, but management told them theyd answer their questions. Then They made the announcement public behind their backs. Remember also that before this Shit went down the CEO pre-emptively dumped a couple millions from actions on Unity. He knew the effect It was going to have on the company and sank It to make a profit.
This is the same CEO who ran EA. His crimes includes - loot boxes in EA Sports titles - wanted to make reloading weapons in Battlefield a one use DLC (meaning: you need to pay each time you want to reload). - SimCity 2013's always online requirement - Christmas rushing The Sims 4 and forcing them to cut content just to make it (also, babies are mere objects). - the latter 2 caused the death of sub-studio Maxis. This is the kind of evil we're dealing with.
@@RAMChYLD Wait, Maxis is dead??? Who the hell is the ghost who keeps the Spore servers up then? I thought it was a Maxis employee that was in time out, or haunting one of the towers. What, is the whole studio haunted???
@@theworldoflivvy3150 most likely "The Sims Studios", previously a child company of Maxis that has been restructured to be directly under EA after Maxis was taken out to the back and shot.
Aww, don't be so harsh on them. Corporations are people, too, y'know, and are just as susceptible to making bad decisions and having bad character like any other "people" based on their definition. Footnote: that was sarcasm, BTW.
unity has been doing scummy stuff for over a year now, a year ago there was drama about them merging with ironSource (a company that had history with malware), and about the CEO of Unity calling all game devs who do not prioritize monetization in their games "fucking idiots" (word to word)
I hope I never know what it’s like to be driven only by greed. Must be a sad, sad existence. Those types of CEOs always seem like empty shells in designer suits.
That's not even the full story. There was gonna be an under the table kinda deal that as long as you use IS' ad system or something instead of other partners they can subsidize the runtime payment. Probably not fully accurate, please do your research before trusting me
this is the same CEO that run EA during EA's worst times. Of course he would do this. He's such a sad, sad man. He should be in jail for insider trading but no.
@@RAMChYLD He was the one who brought up the idea of charging money for RELOADING. His reasoning was "when you're in the middle of a battle you don't care that much so of course you're gonna pay" which is stupid. He was fired from EA for being greedy, and considering how greedy EA normally is, that should say a ton
Fortunately, he said that he's not going back to Unity regardless. I'm sure that even with a learning curve for Unreal Engine, he'll make fantastic games :>
@@LaurenT3Gyeah a lot of developers are likely never going back to Unity even if they stop this change. Unity has lost all of the trust and respect they've built up over the years with this one move because the people using it and even people just playing the games have just been viscerally reminded that this is a big company that does not care about us and would bleed us dry if it meant getting an extra cent out of us and they can't be trusted not to do so and not to alter their contracts
Mark mastered Unreal Engine in two hours (done it in a Corridor Crew episode where he got pitted against Sean aka Jack). And Mark has zero programming experience. This made possible by Unreal's Blueprints system and the fact that you can buy someone else's code directly from the Unreal Marketplace (yeah, there are people who readily sell pre-made code for UE). I'm sure Lixian can master it faster and do more with it.
@@potawatadingdong the problem being that it takes time to learn and master other engines, which is a huge drawback for releasing games of a standard quality.
That's absolutely disgusting. Greed is what's killing just about everything at this point. I hope this backfires as horribly as possible on those assholes.
It’s just how publicly traded companies are. The shareholders hold all the power and their primary concern is to pump their stocks before selling off. All they want to hear is that their stocks are going through the roof, not necessarily the long term well being since they can always jump ship by selling. A successful but stagnant company is useless to investors who want to, in the end, get as much out of what they invested. Success doesn’t matter, only the all-important growth. This incentives short term thinking within management to always increase profits no matter the cost so they don’t get in trouble. They keep pumping and pumping, inevitably pushing out shit like this until it backfires and the investors then turn around to complain about the situation they started,
The guy behind the decision definitely knew that this would backfire hard and sold his shares before then to still get his money out before the stocks dropped, he legit ruined the company's trust and shareholds in order to make him the only one getting dough while everyone else gets screwed over in the end of the crossfire. Idc how many people used Unity, it's now as bad as EA and Activision/Blizzard in my eyes and the game devs deserve better after all of that
Standard deal in the world right now. Basically good company does good things and grows. Gets bought or grows beyond management ability of starting people. Greedy people with connections to other greedy people do shady stuff and make lots of money from the hardworking people. I hope they don't wonder why quality of life isn't improving and we Basically stopped making real advancements. Too many fearful leaders focused only on maintaining the status quo and protecting their fragile egos
The CEO sells lots of shares of his own company, then puts in policy that is obviously going to backfire. Deliberately acting against his own company for personal financial gain. It just feels illegal, don't know if it is though...
The only term I hear on such topics is ‘Insider Trading’, but I never looked into the exacts of that. As far as I know, it absolutely is illegal, but I definitely don’t have a deep understanding on it
@@ObsessedwithZelda2 They actually talked about this later in the segment. Not terribly well versed in this sort of thing myself, so I'm mostly quoting Bob, but this IS insider Trading and is SUPER, go-to-jail-do-not-pass-go illegal. Sadly, there is a chance the CEO might get off scott free as he was trading earlier in the year instead of only selling stock right before the policy was announced. Fortunately, some other board members didn't establish said pattern, are much more likely to be found guilty, and could point the finger at their boss in exchange for a plea bargain.
Johnny Richettello is an outright inspiration for one of the antagonist of No More Heroes: Travis Strikes Back/ one of the primary antagonist of No More Heroes 3, who shares his surname, exclusively due to Sudan 51's (guy who directed the original MNH as well as a few other notable niche cult classics) horrible experience of trying to work with this man, with his creative vision constantly being shafted for things that Mr. EA thought would appeal to the broadest market which I think should enough info to highlight how bad he is. Basically he's one of the biggest reasons for why EA is what it is today, and it has been miserable seeing his exploits.
FR? Me gotta check that out alongside with Succession, but I'll need some SERIOUS pallet cleanser for detoxification after watching those. ...Got any feel-good cartoon series you can recommend maybe?
Not only have those game companies made statements, the developers of Terraria made a huge announcement that they were donating $10,000 to Godot and FNA. It was also promised they would be maintaining a monthly donation of $1,000 to give the new engines a chance to advance and rival Unity.
@@Oshroth I would hope some of that money also, in SOME way, goes into making public content to help educate ex unity users on how to use the engines. I'm not saying "this money isn't enough" or anything, it's amazing. But that this money will be wasted if no one knows how to use the engine and there's no good resources to learn. To be more specific, I hope these companies getting the money use some of it on guides. Let unity burn to the ground, but I want the transition to be as smooth as possible for devs.
I work in the finance industry with several licenses. The selling shares thing pisses me off it’s straight up insider trading which is very illegal but because it’s so hard to prove without a whistleblower who has hard documentation, rich people and politicians get away with it all the time by saying it was unrelated.
@@bleh329 been reading some comments, and apparently some pokemon games were made using unity, so if unity goes and changes their terms for their already established deals, well...we *all* know how spooky japanese lawyers can be.
I speculated about a ban specifically for CEOs who had involvement in a corporations downfall or made money prior to the business going bankrupt, like the CEO is not allowed to touch another business as CEO for 10yrs and someone replied saying no it should be a permanent ban... AND now I'm thinking yeah you know you're right it SHOULD be a permanent ban AND they should be fined the money they made before they left and that money should go to the employees who have now lost their jobs or ability to do their jobs due to the CEOs decisions. We are in some dogcrap era of real creep spineless money grabbing CEOs making everything from entertainment to life saving drugs harder for the average person to access and what the hell
I Hella agree, what he is doing is criminally sinister. I would say any CEO of any company should a Criminal background check, corruption investigation and also if they have anything that warrants removal from the company that should be removed immediately. Not to mention terms of removal are and because of their actions never be allowed to the board of directors, CEO, Chairman, CO-Chairman or any other leadership position in a company after the removal of position.
CEOs want all the profit of being the leader of a company but none of the responsibility. If they make a dumb decision that causes the company losses (and by extension causes people to lose their jobs) then the CEO should be responsible. Legally or financially. If they want to earn $100000000000000000 an hour, then they should have the level of stress of a military bomb defuser 24/7.
Unfortunately I doubt restrictions will ever take place as those who are owners of these companies will line the pockets of every legislature necessary to protect their own interests. Really we need lobbying to become illegal so that law making isn't dependent on which side can pay out more in the short term and is instead dependent on the ethicality and benefit of the law towards those it will affect. But the lawmakers will also vote in the best way to suit *their* *own* interests, and the more money they can make selling off their votes the happier they are. This is of course another effect of unchecked capitalism. For now those at the top see no reason to change the system to benefit the plebs, they'd loose money or at least not make it as fast as before if they did that. Perhaps another viva la revolution should occur.
This is an issue of Corporatism not Capitalism. Like, im doubting the INDIE studios wanted this, because it SEEMS the mega conglomerate is what did this. Also the reason these mega companies happen is BECAUSE of government regulations being made that strangle indies and coallesce power into the corporations. Capitalism and this are two VERY different things.
Because Government Regulation can never be corrupt…. The Market will handle Unity when Customers stop buying Unity products and Businesses stop using Unity as an engine. Unity will either back down after they lose too much money, or a competitor will rise up to replace it. Regulation is not required, when Customers are empowered. In fact installing Regulation takes control From the Customers and gives it to the Government.
What government regulations do you believe strangle indies and prevent competition. From what I can see it has nothing to do with government, it's just the natural result of unchecked, unregulated capitalism. @@Dodsodalo
It all just boils down to greed. As always. You can't expect better out of someone who is incapable of creating anything worthwhile on their own. Wouldn't it be amazing if scum bags were actually held accountable for their actions?
And of course, it's not an exaggeration that the prominent lack of royalty fees *is the reason Unity got to where it is.* They would not be anywhere near as big a name in game development if they hadn't advertised the engine as royalty-free from the start. Then you get enough buy-in from people who've trusted you and sunk years of development onto it and you pull the rug out of them. Not even to mention the in-game advertisement bundling they then tried.
this hurts. Unity was my entry to making games, the tool I used through my formative years as a creator learning and working with other classmates in college to make great things together. it hurts to know other students won’t have that readily at their finger tips and all these indie devs now have to scramble to figure out what to do with all their hard work
I was really excited to start learning in unity but a couple weeks after I downloaded it, they released this message. I don't expect anything I create to become popular if I even release it but in case a miracle happens, I don't want to pay that fee
This hurts me because I loved unity they were behind so many games that I absolutely adore including cult of the lamb so I am truly saddened to hear this but yes this is incredibly wrong of them
Nothing wrong with loving the engine, which is also why it's so painful for many of the developers: They liked it, and now question its future because the people owning the code have shown they are untrustworthy.
FROM WHAT I’VE HEARD, Unity has since rolled the changes back and implemented a new, more fair set of changes. It will start at a million downloads and a million dollars in revenue, the fans devs will keep track of the install count, and it won’t be retroactive; previous Unity games will not be affected. That being said, this only fixes the immediate problems. The trust is still destroyed horribly, possibly beyond repair, and it’d be wise for people to learn a new engine regardless of how long that may take. There’s no way Riccitello WOULDN’T try this kind of thing again, and many people just do not wanna take that risk. Perhaps we can collectively give Unity a second chance, but only after Ricitiello either steps down as CEO or gets fired from the position. Until then: don’t even bother with Unity. Hopefully there’s a big class-action lawsuit coming his way soon, and Suda51 made an expy of Riccitello as the final boss of No More Heroes 3. We should’ve heeded that warning.
They have walked back a lot of it, including their plan to retroactively charge devs, (which was going to get them sued,) and say anything being developed on their current version won't be subject to the new fees, but as soon as someone updates their unity they will be. So...finish the projects you have now, and start learning a new engine.
@@FirsonaYou're going to see a lot of devs remaining on old LTS versions of Unity because of this. They've shot themselves in the foot in regards to new adoption.
Unity making this change made me and my friends literally shook in awe on the balls of these guys, we had just come out off College in Games design (Learning C# which is the coding language used in Unity) so this information if this whole thing burns down could be catastrophic for our future and would've been a massive waste of our time. We have already begun learning C++ to recover, I really hope this wont affect my portfolio as Unreal was not the taught Program however it will be self taught aka YT video's. My condolences for the other games dev's that have been making this change.
C++ isn't that hard to learn, I had zero background in programming and I picked up a working knowledge of it in about a month so you should be fine. Bro Code does some damn fine tutorials on multiple languages.
I’m so used to them doing hypotheticals that for the first minute or two I genuinely didn’t think this was real and just thought “wow that’s such a ridiculous idea”
What is laughably stupid about this is Unity came out with multiple statements to clarify come confusion. There has never been any confusion. There has only been outrage about this non-sense.
Being taught both unity and unreal as assessments. I prefer working in unity, but this change scares me and my classmates (and probably our lecturers too)
as someone whos an inspiring game developer and spent most of his free time learning all he could with coding on unity, it seriously hurt my soul when i first heard this. I entirely hope they backtrack and decide to not do this at all. I seriously do not want to waste the time i spent and dont want to lose what progress ive already made just to pack up and move on like some hobo
I'm glad that I decided to go with Unreal Engire for a game that I've been working on. I didn't want to go with Unity at first and thought about trying it out in the future. Now I won't be trying it out at all with this bullshit. I feel bad for the game developer who uses Unity, especially Lixian who had used Unity in the past.
It can't be understated how big of a game engine Unity was. Like, over 50% of the market share for game engines. Unreal doesn't come close! Heck, from my understanding of Google Trends data, it seems that Godot (an open-source engine) got a bigger boost from this than Unreal did (probably because Godot is not gonna ever be able to pull this bs, it's lightweight, newer, can do 2D and 3D, can do C# which is what Unity users are used to, and has a closer vibe to Unity)
As somebody learning game dev still, even though they reverted much of what made the new pricing structure problematic and made it entirely optional, unity has still been removed from my toolbox, it was the first engine I properly learned how to use, but I'm never going to use it again now that they've completely betrayed the trust of their entire community, if they'll do it once, they will do it again, and I'm not going to get stuck in the middle of that. Long live open source game engines! :D
I feel they've completely ruined trust with consumers and their reputation - whether temporarily or permanently, I'm not sure, but certainly enough to give them a huge slap in the face And if a game isn't near completion/already released, I do not blame anyone for shifting over to a new engine following this announcement, even if it means more time and money will be spent just relearning stuff I was considering learning game development and making a mobile game, one day (one that'd actually be a game suited for mobile, rather than console-quality stuff that requires a microscope to navigate via the tiny screens) Was gonna go for Unity, now will search for suitable alternatives - I hear godot is great, for example
For once, my struggle to start making games paid off. I dropped Unity long before these changes, and my friends were already using Godot. I will be okay, but not everyone will. I feel for those who have been nearly if not completely shafted by this blatant breach of not only trust but basic human decency. Businessmen do not make games, they make products, and that is why companies like Unity can't go on forever.
You know what we need to complete that thumbnail… Jim Carrey’s Dr Robotnik reaching for the left hand button, and the Unity logo plastered on his face.
I think the creators of Terraria put a middle finger to unity by announcing they would be donating a crap ton to another studio monthly or something like that. I don't remember the exact details though
Can't see them recovering from this. Even if they back pedaled, fired the CEO and anyone else backing the idea, and do a big show of all the good new people they have and how much they support game makers, trust is broken. Enough people are gonna jump ship that there's no going back even if they change.
No it's the almighty dollar not his bank account. Just chasing after that big green paper...Greed will always be ones downfall@@genericyoutubecommenter589
While it was addressed towards the end of the video, I feel that there wasn't enough coverage of the retroactive pricing structure. Because, yes, it wasn't just 0.20 per download for future games, which would've been bad enough until they capped it at 2.5% of developer revenue. They would've made it apply to games made in the past, too. So, yeah, Cult of the Lamb would've been screwed either way if that was allowed. But I doubt it would've been allowed for long, as retroactive changes of business agreements is a fraudulent act in violation of many laws in the world. Doesn't change the fact that most of us would want to stay out of such a business agreement instead of hoping the authorities step in before our businesses die. Hence the lack of trust.
Even as someone who hasn’t had very much direct involvement in the gaming ecosystem, with the most gaming I’ve indulged in recently being a few hours on roblox a month, I can confidently say that this sucks. There’s no way in hell any sane person in unity actually wants this change to go through, they just have an money hungry dragon breathing down their neck that will turn them to ashes if they say anything about it. It honestly sucks that so many good games and studios are being fixed into this position, all because of one asshole that has money as a normal part of his diet.
What sucks is that the CEO of Unity was also the CEO of EA. This is the guy that tried to make reloading in Battlefield a one use paid DLC and he was fired from EA for being too greedy.
Lots of new developers are going to be learning Unreal this year... and just when I thought I too would try my hand at developing games in this - what a waste of time it must be for most people.
This is why you had activation registration keys, they were good for once. At least for billing purposes. If you need to reinstall on your computer you'd already registered that code and it wasn't going to get billed again
I was going to use Unity to design my games but now Idk, its hard enough gaming companies are milking every game with battle passes, deluxe, pay for cosmetics that cost more than the game itself or monthly subscription, let alone I have even seen companies deny peoples game they made then later create it stealing a persons idea. I believe in fun and listening to the community because if it wasn’t for the gaming community none of those companies would of made it if it wasn’t for us. But I’ll leave my rant there lol, love you all and hope for those making games the best of luck and nothing but good fortune ahead and don’t give up!
I’ve been fuming about this for weeks now. There is no logic or trust behind anything up at Unity HQ. As a game dev, as a creator. Fuck. You. Stay strong fellow indie devs
Funny thing is ive been wanting to learn C# and how to use Unity for a while now but I've been my lazy self and procrastinating for a while now. Then this happens and for once in my life im happy i was lazy and chose to procrastinate instead of learning C#.
What he’s doing seems to ACTUALLY be a legit crime called “insider trading”. Other comments discuss it more and I barely know what it is. People say that politicians do it but it’s hard to convince a court that the person is actually guilty because they could’ve just felt like selling stock at that time or they sold stock far earlier so it’s hard to relate that spent money to present events.
I like to play slay the spire while listening to you guys and hearing that you guys mentioned it and how upset they are is sad. Hope all of this gets fixed
Yea, solo indie developer here working on Project Kobold's Tale, a 2d pixel art metroidvania, in Unity... I haven't opened the project since all this drama began. The pricing changes were ludicrious beyond belief, and like you said, every clarification made it worse, but the real and lasting issue is the violation of trust as a business partner. They just up and decided to retroactively change their terms of service and fees, and apply it to all games already made and in development, no opt out options, no choice, no warning. The people who did get word of this ahead of time, i.e. the unity employees and developers, we're very vocal against these changes, but upper management pushed them through without warning anyways. Even if they had to backpedal on everything... that violation of trust would, and does remain. Now developers can't use unity with peace of mind... we have to worry... oh are they just going to attempt this again years down the line? or slowly move towards the per-install model, as they have stated they want to do.... It's just not a safe or smart decision to use Unity now, and that is soul crushing for someone who has spent the last 3 years pouring time and dedication into learning the platform and writing my own level building and prototyping tools with plans to use them in future projects. Motivation is just at an all time low.
I'm not sure if anyone else thought so too, but for me I instantly thought it was going to be EA when Mark brought up where he used to work. Just imagine how bad you've screwed up if you went from a pretty cool game development studio to the standard punchline to "but wait, it gets worse!"
shit like this makes me so glad i picked other engines to build my projects on. i would have been heartbroken if i built something cool on unity then they did this
I can't say it enough: OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SOURCE! It's kind of hard for someone to screw you over when they have literally no control over you or your software.
More than anything, I would like to hear Lixian's side of this. He loved Unity with a passion, but I'm sure he's considering switching engines the same as everybody else.
It was bad. Literally the *second day after* Unity made their statement(s), I went into my classes for Game and Simulation Design and my professor, the top man of the program got us to survey what game engine we'd like to learn instead of Unity if Unity went through with it. To add to it, I talked to another professor in the program and I mentioned the survey and he too was like, "ah yeah, I need to touch base with him on that today. I had been sorta just watching to see if Unity was going to reveal it was an accident and they weren't supposed to let out that obviously ill thought out plan." Wild just how truly brain dead that policy was. It's literally like they hadn't thought about it at all except what sort of money they'd make.
Some recent updates on this drama: They are still keeping this change, but they've changed it in many ways to try to have their cake and eat it too. Some of these changes include: Unity personal users being exempt from having to pay this fee. Changing payment terms from two choices of either 2.5% revenue share, or a calculated amount based of how many downloads the game has, with the leaser cost of the two being picked. Games making less than 1mil in a year are exempt from paying this fee. Unity projects made with 2024 are only applied to this fee, so any game running any previous version is also exempt. They are also increasing the unity personal eligibility cap from 100k to 200k, allowing those with unity personal to make more money on their own before having to switch to the 1k yearly payment for unity pro. Overall I think this is reasonable and believe it should've been thought of first, and this certainly makes it better but doesn't fix it. It's good that they are listening though
While it definitely is better it doesn't in any way fix it. Unity was making more than enough money on its own before these changes. Trust toward the company is already broken for majority of the people and there's still chance bigger game companies will still do something about this. It just makes it less scummy and awful for indie devs at least, but it doesn't change that it was an absolute dick move to begin with. (Edit: this is Richettello we're talking about, even if this ends up sliding under the rug after more changes it's still possible he may come up with something else that's just as bad or even worse. It's about what we should expect from the previous EA CEO.)
I've seen this cycle before. Richettello isn't trying to listen to Unity's community, he's trying to shut them up until they're too exhausted to fight back.
You don’t get it: the current Unity lead is so corrupt and greedy EA FIRED HIM. EA said his methods were to greedy, like he was gonna charge for MAGAZINES IN BATTLEFIELD
Paraphrasing: "An hour into a session, gamers aren't going to care if you charge a dollar a reload." "Mobile devs who don't prioritize monetization and micro-transactions are f**king morons!"
Always remember that investors are the ones that destroy everything they touch developers don't wish to destroy the craft or squander their name but their hands are forced by such investors who believe they know best and after the Destroyer company they have little the consequence of it leaving the place Pockets full.
Unity (or CEO, EA descendant, if we go into specifics) acts like that one popular kid, who treats his coolness as a trading token and thinks that it could be brought back with ease
They broke my heart and it made me stop working on my game entirely. I'm currently switching engines but they've broken my trust and any faith in them that I could have had. I am never going to trust them again after this, and honestly it was such a scummy thing to do to their consumers and smaller studios. The amount of effort it will take to learn another engine from the ground up is daunting and they know that so they assume people will just stay with Unity, little do they know I am powered by spite.
Good for you, you can do it, I hope it turns out amazing
i was (lightly) working on making my own game as well, and had very high hopes for Unity being the ideal for it. Even with their backpedaling, I have swapped off of their platform entirely - apparently Godot is being seen as a commonly-agreed-upon sidestep, if it helps to know a nice alternative.
I really hope it works out 😢 what is your game called or what is it about? I would love to check it out in the future or something. I know its dumb, but hearing about these changes I suddenly just felt so bad about small game developers and just how many might have to just give up on their projects they've worked on. I want to support them
It was a silent hill style game with puzzles and maybe amnesia inspired elements with concepts of abstract horror and surrealism. I don't have a proper name for it yet, and I am currently writing out the plot so I may end up starting a new project and deciding to work on a different style of game entirely but in the meanwhile, I am working on other projects all the time and haven't really gotten a full game finished but I'll get there one day, just definitely not with Unity. @@alkimia1791
I've been tossing a lot of small ideas around with little progress, but the main idea I am trying to keep focused on is a procedural-generated world with a few static towns and cities; the "universe" of the game will have collapsed, apart from the "islands of stability" with small camps to explore.
I don't have a working title of any kind yet, so it would definitely be a long ways out.
Unity's FORMER!!! CEO also came out and said "mobile developers that don't prioritize microtransactions are fucking morons". Are we surprised that a guy like that is criminally greedy?
He also said people should have to pay for more bullets in Battlefield 3
This is the same guy who was in charge of EA during some of their most money hungry years(and that's fucking saying something considering it's EA) so that tracks
Its genuinely disappointing that despite the fact this absolute Insect doesn’t work in EA anymore, He’s still plaguing video games
@@TrashBin2126 he won't be for long. He's 100% under investigation for insider trading after this latest stunt. You don't get to take charge of a company, get paid in stock options, then dump your shares right before making an announcement that tanks your market value
He was fired from his previous spot for being to greedy
As if John Riccitello being former CEO of EA wasn't bad enough, he once said that game developers who didn't put microtransactions in their games were "f***ing idiots".
He's also the guy who pitched the "let's charge $1 per reload in multiplayer shooters" idea.
Can't believe he found a way to beat both of those downright evil things.
$1 per reload is fucking insane
@@LeOwwAndRose either that was a joke or that person is a fucking idiot and should be blacklisted to the day they die in the industry
Whats worse is the full context is, he said "once gamers are an hour or more into a session, we could realistically charge $1 per reload without any backlash". He honestly believed people were that gullible and that they could make serious money doing it.
so glad his idea never was allowed morons like that should be kept in isolation to prevent them from harming those around them with their stupid shit
@@TheRagingAura And for now people have proven him right, just a matter of time now
The trust is gone. Consumers might forgive or forget, business partners will not. That’s what Unity did, shit all over their business partners.
It's like they forgot that businesses are supposed to make money, so why would a business do business with them if doing so makes them go bankrupt?
@@TarsonTalon I think a more precise statement would be that business partnerships are supposed to be mutually beneficial.
Side note, they later came out and said that for game pass and similar services, they’d charge the distributer. They were gonna charge Microsoft and Sony for Game Pass/Playstation Plus downloads. I’d have loved to see the reaction/lawsuit.
I'm sure the billion dollar corporations would be fine with them changing already signed contracts and totally wouldn't sue them into oblivion.
@@thelaughingrouge Oh, how much would I pay for them to try that on Nintendo.
This court must pay me for them to talk about MY engine!
Yeah it'd be a big nope or a small initial sum.
riccitello's gonna be dead
You know it’s bad when the distractible podcast talks about the drama
Nothing will be a good enough distraction from the terror of greed.
You know its bad when talks about it
Personally, this would prolly make me listen to it. Making jokes about current events is the only thing that has made me cope during these serious times.
Fun fact: By selling a bunch of their stock before making the announcement they committed an actual crime. So there's a real good change the board could go to jail for insider trading!
Its hard to prove, They can say It was unrelated and that makes It harder to prove
@@gabrielpineirogarcia2078all they gotta do is lean on members of the board and I guarentee someone will roll over and testify in exchange for immunity. Happens all the time.
Believe me announcements and talks for this sort of thing Go on for months up to a year before they even make any kind of announcement. It starts out as a good idea fairy. And then it starts to gain traction. And then the CEO goes you know I really think this is a bad idea but I want to go for a money grab so we're going to push it but also hey jimothy could you please sell 5,000 shares of mine in from the company Yes Yes I'm selling 5,000 shares I'll talk to you in about 6 weeks and we'll sell another $5,000
@@AdmiralStoicRumPretty sure That he Set those Stocks to Be sold A year Ago, like, Most corps Do that.
But you Are right, These plans Were months In the Making, up To like, 2-3 years.
It just Takes a Little extra Planning.
@@gabrielpineirogarcia2078especially because it's spread over the whole year.
Re-Logic, the creators behind Terraria, were so pissed about this move by Unity, they made an announcement stating that they will be donating $100,000 each to Godot, FNA, and Monogame on top of a $1,000/month sponsorship to them in order to ensure these platforms stay free and accessible to aspiring developers
GOOD ON RELOGIC, WOOO! 🥳
@@grape_protogen Re-logic have always been the fricking goat!
Wizards of the Coast: Wow, I don't think we could have upset our customer base any more.
Unity: Hold my beer!
It really does have a similar feel to the idiocy of the ogl changes, doesn't it?
@@ShreddedWombat Yes, but this is even worse because unlike D&D, which can be appreciated as a stand alone general product by the average consumer, Unity is a tool. This is like demanding a cut of ticket sales because a painting was made with your company's paint.
I was just thinking about how it sounds suspiciously like what WotC tried to do with the OGL
i'm completely OOTL here. what'd wotc do this time???
@@corbeaudejugement They tried to re-write the OGL that said specifically you couldn't re-write it. There was a huge amount of backlash, a lot of inside information came about on how the higher ups treat customers and their own workers, Paizo jumped on the opportunity by releasing Pathfinder 2.0, it's own OGL included. Eventually they just relented and said "Fine, we won't do it. #### you all". While not exactly what they said, they were definitely backhanded about it
Unity didn't shoot themselves on the foot, they shot themselves on the head. Unity died, that's their twitching corpse refusing to let the soul go but it's already dead.
Tell that to some of the editors at TVTropes who put so much faith into unity that they deleted my edit, saying that it's too early to tell.
@ArenVrem Yeah, it's still too early to tell what will happen, and TVTropes is probably waiting for the controversy to conclude.
Honestly even if they replace the CEO they have destroyed all trust and any respect they've built up over the companies time. The only way I can see them recovering is firing that guys ass making a hard about face on this decision and they honestly might have to rebrand entirely, the name Unity has been stained by this announcement and I really don't know if it can ever fully recover from this
@@RAMChYLDTVTropes?
@@KraylebStudios It's a wiki for common tropes in creative works.
This isn't just killing the golden goose, this is killing it, shitting on it's corpse, then summoning demons to drag the mess down to hell, and wondering why bystanders are scared and upset by your actions
Friendly Reminder that Unity is not the problem, its CEO is. People working on Unity got the news first and were also against those changes, but management told them theyd answer their questions. Then They made the announcement public behind their backs.
Remember also that before this Shit went down the CEO pre-emptively dumped a couple millions from actions on Unity. He knew the effect It was going to have on the company and sank It to make a profit.
This is the same CEO who ran EA. His crimes includes
- loot boxes in EA Sports titles
- wanted to make reloading weapons in Battlefield a one use DLC (meaning: you need to pay each time you want to reload).
- SimCity 2013's always online requirement
- Christmas rushing The Sims 4 and forcing them to cut content just to make it (also, babies are mere objects).
- the latter 2 caused the death of sub-studio Maxis.
This is the kind of evil we're dealing with.
@@RAMChYLD Wait, Maxis is dead??? Who the hell is the ghost who keeps the Spore servers up then? I thought it was a Maxis employee that was in time out, or haunting one of the towers. What, is the whole studio haunted???
@@theworldoflivvy3150 most likely "The Sims Studios", previously a child company of Maxis that has been restructured to be directly under EA after Maxis was taken out to the back and shot.
Don't forget that he plans to buy shares again once the shares stop dropping!
Aww, don't be so harsh on them. Corporations are people, too, y'know, and are just as susceptible to making bad decisions and having bad character like any other "people" based on their definition.
Footnote: that was sarcasm, BTW.
unity has been doing scummy stuff for over a year now, a year ago there was drama about them merging with ironSource (a company that had history with malware), and about the CEO of Unity calling all game devs who do not prioritize monetization in their games "fucking idiots" (word to word)
I hope I never know what it’s like to be driven only by greed. Must be a sad, sad existence. Those types of CEOs always seem like empty shells in designer suits.
That's not even the full story.
There was gonna be an under the table kinda deal that as long as you use IS' ad system or something instead of other partners they can subsidize the runtime payment.
Probably not fully accurate, please do your research before trusting me
this is the same CEO that run EA during EA's worst times. Of course he would do this.
He's such a sad, sad man. He should be in jail for insider trading but no.
@@RebbyEviolite iirc the actual thing was that people who used ironSource's built-into unity ad system got reduced rates for the runtime fee
@@RAMChYLD He was the one who brought up the idea of charging money for RELOADING. His reasoning was "when you're in the middle of a battle you don't care that much so of course you're gonna pay" which is stupid. He was fired from EA for being greedy, and considering how greedy EA normally is, that should say a ton
Poor Lixian, a game developer. Hopefully, he can still make games and master Unreal Engine if Unity is literally falling apart.
Fortunately, he said that he's not going back to Unity regardless. I'm sure that even with a learning curve for Unreal Engine, he'll make fantastic games :>
@@LaurenT3Gyeah a lot of developers are likely never going back to Unity even if they stop this change. Unity has lost all of the trust and respect they've built up over the years with this one move because the people using it and even people just playing the games have just been viscerally reminded that this is a big company that does not care about us and would bleed us dry if it meant getting an extra cent out of us and they can't be trusted not to do so and not to alter their contracts
Mark mastered Unreal Engine in two hours (done it in a Corridor Crew episode where he got pitted against Sean aka Jack). And Mark has zero programming experience. This made possible by Unreal's Blueprints system and the fact that you can buy someone else's code directly from the Unreal Marketplace (yeah, there are people who readily sell pre-made code for UE).
I'm sure Lixian can master it faster and do more with it.
There are other engines besides Unity and Unreal.
@@potawatadingdong the problem being that it takes time to learn and master other engines, which is a huge drawback for releasing games of a standard quality.
That's absolutely disgusting. Greed is what's killing just about everything at this point. I hope this backfires as horribly as possible on those assholes.
Late-stage hypercapitalism. So let's eat them.
@@Echo81Rumple83 Lot a fancy terms to say the asshole CEOs
It’s just how publicly traded companies are. The shareholders hold all the power and their primary concern is to pump their stocks before selling off. All they want to hear is that their stocks are going through the roof, not necessarily the long term well being since they can always jump ship by selling. A successful but stagnant company is useless to investors who want to, in the end, get as much out of what they invested. Success doesn’t matter, only the all-important growth.
This incentives short term thinking within management to always increase profits no matter the cost so they don’t get in trouble. They keep pumping and pumping, inevitably pushing out shit like this until it backfires and the investors then turn around to complain about the situation they started,
The guy behind the decision definitely knew that this would backfire hard and sold his shares before then to still get his money out before the stocks dropped, he legit ruined the company's trust and shareholds in order to make him the only one getting dough while everyone else gets screwed over in the end of the crossfire. Idc how many people used Unity, it's now as bad as EA and Activision/Blizzard in my eyes and the game devs deserve better after all of that
Well the guy behind the idea was the CEO of EA. So.. ya know.
Standard deal in the world right now. Basically good company does good things and grows. Gets bought or grows beyond management ability of starting people. Greedy people with connections to other greedy people do shady stuff and make lots of money from the hardworking people. I hope they don't wonder why quality of life isn't improving and we Basically stopped making real advancements. Too many fearful leaders focused only on maintaining the status quo and protecting their fragile egos
@@baddawgdavis When I heard about it after the decision, I wasn't too surprised since that's exactly what EA does
@@dasboots3272capitalism in a nutshell. Get the most profit at any cost
It's insider trading and he could legit see jail time over this.
The CEO sells lots of shares of his own company, then puts in policy that is obviously going to backfire. Deliberately acting against his own company for personal financial gain.
It just feels illegal, don't know if it is though...
The only term I hear on such topics is ‘Insider Trading’, but I never looked into the exacts of that. As far as I know, it absolutely is illegal, but I definitely don’t have a deep understanding on it
@@ObsessedwithZelda2 They actually talked about this later in the segment. Not terribly well versed in this sort of thing myself, so I'm mostly quoting Bob, but this IS insider Trading and is SUPER, go-to-jail-do-not-pass-go illegal. Sadly, there is a chance the CEO might get off scott free as he was trading earlier in the year instead of only selling stock right before the policy was announced. Fortunately, some other board members didn't establish said pattern, are much more likely to be found guilty, and could point the finger at their boss in exchange for a plea bargain.
@@jameswest6232 Fascinating. Thanks for the extra info!
@@jameswest6232 sounds about right
@@ObsessedwithZelda2is most used by polticians as a way to abuse their position amoung many other ways.
Johnny Richettello is an outright inspiration for one of the antagonist of No More Heroes: Travis Strikes Back/ one of the primary antagonist of No More Heroes 3, who shares his surname, exclusively due to Sudan 51's (guy who directed the original MNH as well as a few other notable niche cult classics) horrible experience of trying to work with this man, with his creative vision constantly being shafted for things that Mr. EA thought would appeal to the broadest market which I think should enough info to highlight how bad he is.
Basically he's one of the biggest reasons for why EA is what it is today, and it has been miserable seeing his exploits.
FR? Me gotta check that out alongside with Succession, but I'll need some SERIOUS pallet cleanser for detoxification after watching those.
...Got any feel-good cartoon series you can recommend maybe?
Not only have those game companies made statements, the developers of Terraria made a huge announcement that they were donating $10,000 to Godot and FNA. It was also promised they would be maintaining a monthly donation of $1,000 to give the new engines a chance to advance and rival Unity.
It was $100K initial donations to Godot, FNA and Monogame plus ongoing monthly donations of $1K
@@Oshroth Absolute chads
@@Oshroth I would hope some of that money also, in SOME way, goes into making public content to help educate ex unity users on how to use the engines.
I'm not saying "this money isn't enough" or anything, it's amazing. But that this money will be wasted if no one knows how to use the engine and there's no good resources to learn.
To be more specific, I hope these companies getting the money use some of it on guides. Let unity burn to the ground, but I want the transition to be as smooth as possible for devs.
I work in the finance industry with several licenses. The selling shares thing pisses me off it’s straight up insider trading which is very illegal but because it’s so hard to prove without a whistleblower who has hard documentation, rich people and politicians get away with it all the time by saying it was unrelated.
I mean... is there a way to get an investigation started so financial professionals can audit their accounts?
@@bleh329Having a giant company file a lawsuit against you
Like maybe Nintendo or Microsoft?
@@bleh329 It’s possible, but I mean… How often does it usually happen?
@@Unmustache1 Not nearly as often as it should, I imagine 😑
@@bleh329 been reading some comments, and apparently some pokemon games were made using unity, so if unity goes and changes their terms for their already established deals, well...we *all* know how spooky japanese lawyers can be.
I speculated about a ban specifically for CEOs who had involvement in a corporations downfall or made money prior to the business going bankrupt, like the CEO is not allowed to touch another business as CEO for 10yrs and someone replied saying no it should be a permanent ban...
AND now I'm thinking yeah you know you're right it SHOULD be a permanent ban AND they should be fined the money they made before they left and that money should go to the employees who have now lost their jobs or ability to do their jobs due to the CEOs decisions. We are in some dogcrap era of real creep spineless money grabbing CEOs making everything from entertainment to life saving drugs harder for the average person to access and what the hell
I Hella agree, what he is doing is criminally sinister. I would say any CEO of any company should a Criminal background check, corruption investigation and also if they have anything that warrants removal from the company that should be removed immediately. Not to mention terms of removal are and because of their actions never be allowed to the board of directors, CEO, Chairman, CO-Chairman or any other leadership position in a company after the removal of position.
CEOs should be sentenced to a fucking 9 to 5 office job when they do shit like this
CEOs want all the profit of being the leader of a company but none of the responsibility.
If they make a dumb decision that causes the company losses (and by extension causes people to lose their jobs) then the CEO should be responsible. Legally or financially.
If they want to earn $100000000000000000 an hour, then they should have the level of stress of a military bomb defuser 24/7.
@@jadecoolness101 At least when failing to do their jobs properly has such massive consequences for other people.
There is no ethicality in rampant unchecked capitalism. The video game industry needed regulations and restrictions yesterday.
Just do mandatory drug testing and all these douches would pop for cocaine.
Unfortunately I doubt restrictions will ever take place as those who are owners of these companies will line the pockets of every legislature necessary to protect their own interests. Really we need lobbying to become illegal so that law making isn't dependent on which side can pay out more in the short term and is instead dependent on the ethicality and benefit of the law towards those it will affect. But the lawmakers will also vote in the best way to suit *their* *own* interests, and the more money they can make selling off their votes the happier they are. This is of course another effect of unchecked capitalism. For now those at the top see no reason to change the system to benefit the plebs, they'd loose money or at least not make it as fast as before if they did that. Perhaps another viva la revolution should occur.
This is an issue of Corporatism not Capitalism.
Like, im doubting the INDIE studios wanted this, because it SEEMS the mega conglomerate is what did this.
Also the reason these mega companies happen is BECAUSE of government regulations being made that strangle indies and coallesce power into the corporations.
Capitalism and this are two VERY different things.
Because Government Regulation can never be corrupt….
The Market will handle Unity when Customers stop buying Unity products and Businesses stop using Unity as an engine. Unity will either back down after they lose too much money, or a competitor will rise up to replace it. Regulation is not required, when Customers are empowered. In fact installing Regulation takes control From the Customers and gives it to the Government.
What government regulations do you believe strangle indies and prevent competition. From what I can see it has nothing to do with government, it's just the natural result of unchecked, unregulated capitalism. @@Dodsodalo
It all just boils down to greed. As always. You can't expect better out of someone who is incapable of creating anything worthwhile on their own. Wouldn't it be amazing if scum bags were actually held accountable for their actions?
And of course, it's not an exaggeration that the prominent lack of royalty fees *is the reason Unity got to where it is.* They would not be anywhere near as big a name in game development if they hadn't advertised the engine as royalty-free from the start.
Then you get enough buy-in from people who've trusted you and sunk years of development onto it and you pull the rug out of them.
Not even to mention the in-game advertisement bundling they then tried.
this hurts.
Unity was my entry to making games, the tool I used through my formative years as a creator learning and working with other classmates in college to make great things together. it hurts to know other students won’t have that readily at their finger tips and all these indie devs now have to scramble to figure out what to do with all their hard work
Really sucks when companies work so hard towards ruining a good thing
I was really excited to start learning in unity but a couple weeks after I downloaded it, they released this message. I don't expect anything I create to become popular if I even release it but in case a miracle happens, I don't want to pay that fee
This hurts me because I loved unity they were behind so many games that I absolutely adore including cult of the lamb so I am truly saddened to hear this but yes this is incredibly wrong of them
Nothing wrong with loving the engine, which is also why it's so painful for many of the developers: They liked it, and now question its future because the people owning the code have shown they are untrustworthy.
Don't forget Hollow Knight
We need a Gamers French Revolution right now
FROM WHAT I’VE HEARD, Unity has since rolled the changes back and implemented a new, more fair set of changes. It will start at a million downloads and a million dollars in revenue, the fans devs will keep track of the install count, and it won’t be retroactive; previous Unity games will not be affected.
That being said, this only fixes the immediate problems. The trust is still destroyed horribly, possibly beyond repair, and it’d be wise for people to learn a new engine regardless of how long that may take. There’s no way Riccitello WOULDN’T try this kind of thing again, and many people just do not wanna take that risk. Perhaps we can collectively give Unity a second chance, but only after Ricitiello either steps down as CEO or gets fired from the position. Until then: don’t even bother with Unity.
Hopefully there’s a big class-action lawsuit coming his way soon, and Suda51 made an expy of Riccitello as the final boss of No More Heroes 3. We should’ve heeded that warning.
They have walked back a lot of it, including their plan to retroactively charge devs, (which was going to get them sued,) and say anything being developed on their current version won't be subject to the new fees, but as soon as someone updates their unity they will be. So...finish the projects you have now, and start learning a new engine.
@@FirsonaYou're going to see a lot of devs remaining on old LTS versions of Unity because of this. They've shot themselves in the foot in regards to new adoption.
So it is classic "we'll make absurd changes and then make it bearable so we still get what we want" tactics. Screw Unity, shame to all shareholders
@@WarpPotato Yeah, I’m only using Unity for the rest of my college days, and switching to Unreal once I graduate.
They probably knew it would have a lash back and low bared it to begin with at 200,000 downloads and revenue
Thanks for posting this clip guys! It made the Unity news more digestible.
Unity making this change made me and my friends literally shook in awe on the balls of these guys, we had just come out off College in Games design (Learning C# which is the coding language used in Unity) so this information if this whole thing burns down could be catastrophic for our future and would've been a massive waste of our time. We have already begun learning C++ to recover, I really hope this wont affect my portfolio as Unreal was not the taught Program however it will be self taught aka YT video's. My condolences for the other games dev's that have been making this change.
C++ isn't that hard to learn, I had zero background in programming and I picked up a working knowledge of it in about a month so you should be fine. Bro Code does some damn fine tutorials on multiple languages.
No device is safe for downloads. Every download count, goes to the developers. 👍
I’m so used to them doing hypotheticals that for the first minute or two I genuinely didn’t think this was real and just thought “wow that’s such a ridiculous idea”
It took 3 minutes for me to realize this was distractible and I just got whiplash when Markiplier showed up
What is laughably stupid about this is Unity came out with multiple statements to clarify come confusion. There has never been any confusion. There has only been outrage about this non-sense.
Being taught both unity and unreal as assessments. I prefer working in unity, but this change scares me and my classmates (and probably our lecturers too)
"Riccitello, who's the former CEO of EA..."
Well, that explains that, then.
as someone whos an inspiring game developer and spent most of his free time learning all he could with coding on unity, it seriously hurt my soul when i first heard this. I entirely hope they backtrack and decide to not do this at all. I seriously do not want to waste the time i spent and dont want to lose what progress ive already made just to pack up and move on like some hobo
When Freddy Fazbear tries to cover up a murder or not take responsibility for the animatronics 😂😂😂
I'm glad that I decided to go with Unreal Engire for a game that I've been working on. I didn't want to go with Unity at first and thought about trying it out in the future. Now I won't be trying it out at all with this bullshit. I feel bad for the game developer who uses Unity, especially Lixian who had used Unity in the past.
I'm so pleased that you covered this - thank you!
It can't be understated how big of a game engine Unity was. Like, over 50% of the market share for game engines. Unreal doesn't come close! Heck, from my understanding of Google Trends data, it seems that Godot (an open-source engine) got a bigger boost from this than Unreal did (probably because Godot is not gonna ever be able to pull this bs, it's lightweight, newer, can do 2D and 3D, can do C# which is what Unity users are used to, and has a closer vibe to Unity)
As somebody learning game dev still, even though they reverted much of what made the new pricing structure problematic and made it entirely optional, unity has still been removed from my toolbox, it was the first engine I properly learned how to use, but I'm never going to use it again now that they've completely betrayed the trust of their entire community, if they'll do it once, they will do it again, and I'm not going to get stuck in the middle of that. Long live open source game engines! :D
I feel they've completely ruined trust with consumers and their reputation - whether temporarily or permanently, I'm not sure, but certainly enough to give them a huge slap in the face
And if a game isn't near completion/already released, I do not blame anyone for shifting over to a new engine following this announcement, even if it means more time and money will be spent just relearning stuff
I was considering learning game development and making a mobile game, one day (one that'd actually be a game suited for mobile, rather than console-quality stuff that requires a microscope to navigate via the tiny screens)
Was gonna go for Unity, now will search for suitable alternatives - I hear godot is great, for example
For once, my struggle to start making games paid off. I dropped Unity long before these changes, and my friends were already using Godot. I will be okay, but not everyone will. I feel for those who have been nearly if not completely shafted by this blatant breach of not only trust but basic human decency. Businessmen do not make games, they make products, and that is why companies like Unity can't go on forever.
You know what we need to complete that thumbnail…
Jim Carrey’s Dr Robotnik reaching for the left hand button, and the Unity logo plastered on his face.
They're back pedaling, but not fully retracting this abhorrent betrayal. They're still trying to push forward this per download charge last I checked.
Unless you use Unity Personal and do sone free advertising for their outsourced Malware company, of course.
I think the creators of Terraria put a middle finger to unity by announcing they would be donating a crap ton to another studio monthly or something like that. I don't remember the exact details though
i think it was something like 5k a month to godot. i don't know how much total but thats what i heard.
@@froxManDude thanks for clarifying, saves me looking for the tweet
Can't see them recovering from this. Even if they back pedaled, fired the CEO and anyone else backing the idea, and do a big show of all the good new people they have and how much they support game makers, trust is broken. Enough people are gonna jump ship that there's no going back even if they change.
I hope so, it'd be nice to see a corporation actually have to suffer the consequences of their own stupidity for once.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it turned out he was still loyal to EA and wanted to sink Unity to get rid of competition
Many EA games are made in Unity
my brother in christ
the only thing this man is loyal to is his bank account
No it's the almighty dollar not his bank account. Just chasing after that big green paper...Greed will always be ones downfall@@genericyoutubecommenter589
While it was addressed towards the end of the video, I feel that there wasn't enough coverage of the retroactive pricing structure. Because, yes, it wasn't just 0.20 per download for future games, which would've been bad enough until they capped it at 2.5% of developer revenue. They would've made it apply to games made in the past, too.
So, yeah, Cult of the Lamb would've been screwed either way if that was allowed. But I doubt it would've been allowed for long, as retroactive changes of business agreements is a fraudulent act in violation of many laws in the world. Doesn't change the fact that most of us would want to stay out of such a business agreement instead of hoping the authorities step in before our businesses die. Hence the lack of trust.
Even as someone who hasn’t had very much direct involvement in the gaming ecosystem, with the most gaming I’ve indulged in recently being a few hours on roblox a month, I can confidently say that this sucks.
There’s no way in hell any sane person in unity actually wants this change to go through, they just have an money hungry dragon breathing down their neck that will turn them to ashes if they say anything about it.
It honestly sucks that so many good games and studios are being fixed into this position, all because of one asshole that has money as a normal part of his diet.
What sucks is that the CEO of Unity was also the CEO of EA. This is the guy that tried to make reloading in Battlefield a one use paid DLC and he was fired from EA for being too greedy.
Lots of new developers are going to be learning Unreal this year... and just when I thought I too would try my hand at developing games in this - what a waste of time it must be for most people.
This is why you had activation registration keys, they were good for once. At least for billing purposes. If you need to reinstall on your computer you'd already registered that code and it wasn't going to get billed again
I was going to use Unity to design my games but now Idk, its hard enough gaming companies are milking every game with battle passes, deluxe, pay for cosmetics that cost more than the game itself or monthly subscription, let alone I have even seen companies deny peoples game they made then later create it stealing a persons idea. I believe in fun and listening to the community because if it wasn’t for the gaming community none of those companies would of made it if it wasn’t for us. But I’ll leave my rant there lol, love you all and hope for those making games the best of luck and nothing but good fortune ahead and don’t give up!
I’ve been fuming about this for weeks now. There is no logic or trust behind anything up at Unity HQ. As a game dev, as a creator. Fuck. You.
Stay strong fellow indie devs
I wonder what people who teach/make courses for Unity are going to do...
Funny thing is ive been wanting to learn C# and how to use Unity for a while now but I've been my lazy self and procrastinating for a while now. Then this happens and for once in my life im happy i was lazy and chose to procrastinate instead of learning C#.
Get into custom engine building. That's even harder but more consistent. There's some games with their own engines, so it's viable
@@WarpPotato i want to learn how to do that too, but I dont think I'm skilled enough to do something like that
Me, a forever DM of DND: “Ah shit, here we go again.”
Mark turning into kianu MK II
To quote Garry Newman "Unity can get F*****".
Ayo? Markiploer lookin like Keanu Reeves now, that's pretty cool
Corporate greed at its finest.
Oh no, my dreams of making an indie horror flashlight simulator set in the map from House Party
Hi-ho, hi-ho, to learn Godot we go!
I was literally about to start learning unity, and this turned me away.
Most people seem to be switching to either Unreal or Godot Engine. I'd suggest you do the same.
John should be under trial for crimes against common good of humanity... or something like that. Digital.. war crimes? Yeah, let's go with that.
Ok but what hes doing COULD be considered a crime. Like i know you're joking but i think this is literally a crime
What he’s doing seems to ACTUALLY be a legit crime called “insider trading”. Other comments discuss it more and I barely know what it is. People say that politicians do it but it’s hard to convince a court that the person is actually guilty because they could’ve just felt like selling stock at that time or they sold stock far earlier so it’s hard to relate that spent money to present events.
Even massive companies couldn't afford that
I'm surprised people didn't see this coming sooner
I like to play slay the spire while listening to you guys and hearing that you guys mentioned it and how upset they are is sad. Hope all of this gets fixed
If the Unity executives were in charge of the IRS, they’d tax us for individual breaths.
This is why Bethesda uses its own in-house Creation engine.
Yea, solo indie developer here working on Project Kobold's Tale, a 2d pixel art metroidvania, in Unity... I haven't opened the project since all this drama began. The pricing changes were ludicrious beyond belief, and like you said, every clarification made it worse, but the real and lasting issue is the violation of trust as a business partner. They just up and decided to retroactively change their terms of service and fees, and apply it to all games already made and in development, no opt out options, no choice, no warning. The people who did get word of this ahead of time, i.e. the unity employees and developers, we're very vocal against these changes, but upper management pushed them through without warning anyways.
Even if they had to backpedal on everything... that violation of trust would, and does remain. Now developers can't use unity with peace of mind... we have to worry... oh are they just going to attempt this again years down the line? or slowly move towards the per-install model, as they have stated they want to do....
It's just not a safe or smart decision to use Unity now, and that is soul crushing for someone who has spent the last 3 years pouring time and dedication into learning the platform and writing my own level building and prototyping tools with plans to use them in future projects. Motivation is just at an all time low.
I'm not sure if anyone else thought so too, but for me I instantly thought it was going to be EA when Mark brought up where he used to work.
Just imagine how bad you've screwed up if you went from a pretty cool game development studio to the standard punchline to "but wait, it gets worse!"
Unreal Engine CEO is definitely running around the office high-fiving everyone, fist pumping and shouting "YEAH!" right about now.
He just got forced to step down as CEO 🙏
shit like this makes me so glad i picked other engines to build my projects on. i would have been heartbroken if i built something cool on unity then they did this
I can't say it enough: OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SOURCE! It's kind of hard for someone to screw you over when they have literally no control over you or your software.
I usually avoid company but this time I learn to avoid everything Johnny Risotto have ever touched
Remember the Spongebob episode where Mr Krabs starts charging Squidward and Spongebob for working for him?
Remember when Mr. Krabbs asked: "Am I really going to defile this grave for money? OF COURSE I AM!"
More than anything, I would like to hear Lixian's side of this. He loved Unity with a passion, but I'm sure he's considering switching engines the same as everybody else.
Same also switching engines here.
I love that everyone doesn't know how to say the CEOs name
Unity really did fall like a sack of bricks
was learning unity to make VRchat games and other stuff. i have stopped entirely now. might as well learn UE now.
Sue them someone sue them so they can now feel what we felt
And now they gota lock the ad agency which is unity owned to by pass it
It was bad. Literally the *second day after* Unity made their statement(s), I went into my classes for Game and Simulation Design and my professor, the top man of the program got us to survey what game engine we'd like to learn instead of Unity if Unity went through with it. To add to it, I talked to another professor in the program and I mentioned the survey and he too was like, "ah yeah, I need to touch base with him on that today. I had been sorta just watching to see if Unity was going to reveal it was an accident and they weren't supposed to let out that obviously ill thought out plan." Wild just how truly brain dead that policy was. It's literally like they hadn't thought about it at all except what sort of money they'd make.
"Piracy is inherently predicated on ease of access. As soon as stealing your shit becomes easier than buying it, I'm choosing the former."
One of my favorite mobile games, Turboprop Flight Simulator, uses Unity. He's been pausing updates due to Unity's stupidity.
Some recent updates on this drama:
They are still keeping this change, but they've changed it in many ways to try to have their cake and eat it too. Some of these changes include:
Unity personal users being exempt from having to pay this fee.
Changing payment terms from two choices of either 2.5% revenue share, or a calculated amount based of how many downloads the game has, with the leaser cost of the two being picked.
Games making less than 1mil in a year are exempt from paying this fee.
Unity projects made with 2024 are only applied to this fee, so any game running any previous version is also exempt.
They are also increasing the unity personal eligibility cap from 100k to 200k, allowing those with unity personal to make more money on their own before having to switch to the 1k yearly payment for unity pro.
Overall I think this is reasonable and believe it should've been thought of first, and this certainly makes it better but doesn't fix it. It's good that they are listening though
While it definitely is better it doesn't in any way fix it. Unity was making more than enough money on its own before these changes.
Trust toward the company is already broken for majority of the people and there's still chance bigger game companies will still do something about this.
It just makes it less scummy and awful for indie devs at least, but it doesn't change that it was an absolute dick move to begin with.
(Edit: this is Richettello we're talking about, even if this ends up sliding under the rug after more changes it's still possible he may come up with something else that's just as bad or even worse. It's about what we should expect from the previous EA CEO.)
I've seen this cycle before. Richettello isn't trying to listen to Unity's community, he's trying to shut them up until they're too exhausted to fight back.
You don’t get it: the current Unity lead is so corrupt and greedy EA FIRED HIM. EA said his methods were to greedy, like he was gonna charge for MAGAZINES IN BATTLEFIELD
Paraphrasing: "An hour into a session, gamers aren't going to care if you charge a dollar a reload."
"Mobile devs who don't prioritize monetization and micro-transactions are f**king morons!"
We are so back Unity bros the CEO stepped down
Always remember that investors are the ones that destroy everything they touch developers don't wish to destroy the craft or squander their name but their hands are forced by such investors who believe they know best and after the Destroyer company they have little the consequence of it leaving the place Pockets full.
Not like they weren't already making enough money. Their greed and apparent incompetence is going to ruin them.
So that Ceo is going to jail for insider trading right? Thats like the definition of it
RIP old unity. Maybe godot's open source will get a lot of love and developmemt, now.
Unity (or CEO, EA descendant, if we go into specifics) acts like that one popular kid, who treats his coolness as a trading token and thinks that it could be brought back with ease
The only news source I can trust
Maybe after this, people will watch where this ceo goes and never use a company headed by him again.