Giving Unity a Reality Check
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Unity recently made sudden changes to its revenue share and terms of service (TOS) while introducing a new runtime fee, sparking backlash from the game development community. In this video, I discuss why Unity has lost all trust of game devs, why there's more to it than just the recent Unity revenue changes and why people are jumping ship to move to other game engines.
Unity Engine, since going public, has done more towards harming its brand and its viability for indie game devs, all while becoming one of the most disingenuous game engine solutions available today.
The choices made over the past couple of years have proven company is currently disloyal and untrustworthy, throwing even their own projects and employees under the bus.
It’s a shame to see the engine that once inspired many to get into game development fall to corporate greed.
💻 Links
Second Channel: / @dax_plays
Support me on Patreon: / darkdax
Follow me on X (Twitter): / thisisdarkdax
Join me LIVE on Twitch: / darkdax96
Stay Safe & Thanks for watching! ~(˘▾˘~)
#unity #gameengine #videogames #changes #trust
Can't wait to see how many years this adds to Yandere Simulator's development lmaoooo
(Edit: well this aged like fine wine. Glad to see Alex finally get what he deserves)
Is that game still a thing? lmfao
It'll be the Sagrada Familia of gaming
Bruh I was like 7 when the game was first announced, now I have a wife and kids /s
Ikr LOL
He's already started rewriting it from scratch in Godot
Honestly, the worst part is that the modern company tactic is “cause a massive pr nightmare so that when you go back on a **few** of your policies, you’ll be hailed as amazing”
“NEW POLICY ANNOUCEMENT: To work on unity you will need to pay us £10,000 monthly and also you’ll need to give us your first born child”
*Backlash ensues*
“Okay okay, well I guess we realised we made a mistake, we’re sorry! We will only need £200 and your second born child”
*All the smooth-brain bootlickers rejoiced* “OMG SEE UNITY LISTENS TO US”
Meanwhile before it was free!
This corporate gaslighting is reaching levels of moral turpitude we did not even think were possible 😅
Anyway, Great video dude!
I completely disagree, it ruins your companies reputation and how can game devs trust them anymore?
At another youtuber, someone in the comments section even said "I don't get why people are upset. They are just doing some anti-corporate sentiment", like how does one not understand that this decision is not only insanely greedy, but also damaging the company. It's something we see a lot in the western world atm, many companies, great companies, are getting destroyed by the quick money making CEO's, who come to a company, please the shareholders and leave a burning ruin behind. Employees face increases of workload to a point were their job just isn't fun anymore. Consumers find that the quality of the products goes downhill real fast while the pricing goes up at the same speed, pay more for less. A company in ruins, employees burned out and lost the fun in work and consumers angry cause they get a crappy deal, but hey, the CEO and Shareholders are happy, they made another bit of pocketmoney right? They can now buy that boat they wanted right?
Trust is gone. Even if they reverse all changes, the trust is gone and I won't spend my time wondering what will this company which obviously hates me and looks for ways to screw me over will do next. They are hostile to their customers and it's been obvious for a long time now. I'm switching to Godot and that is final.
It's insane how easily you can sway people that are obsessed with your product.
For example I was a LOL player, with emphasis on was, and almost a year ago a lot of youtuber started talking how the game is no longer releasing actual new stuff, how new champions don't bring much to the overall gameplay, how events became extremely low effort etc etc etc.
Riot Games sees this wave of dissatisfaction from their obsessed player base so they put a video with two of the team leaders and how they are going to communicate better, how they have this awesome things in plan and blah blah blah, the usual shit.
I was expecting the player base to realize how shallow the whole thing was and continue their commentaries...but no, they all hailed Riot once more as a god company and whatnot before even showing that they were saying the truth...it's just depressive to see.
similar to roblox
Turns out (according to Polygon's Nicole Carpenter who contacted the SF Police on the matter), the threat was made not by a random gamer, but by a disgruntled Unity employee. Very strange situation.
Not really that strange. Unity's CEO and board have killed any long-term viability of the company. Everyone working there would be _furious_ at these utter bozos for doing their best to put over 7,000 people out of work.
But also, I wouldn't be surprised if it was faked. Either is possible at this point.
I think I can understand them. But alas, I'm afraid they will be in a bad situation because of this.
They hired an ex-executive from EA. I don't think reality is a thing they understand. And R.I.P. Unity a year ago.
Oh, they understood exactly what the consequences would be. Execs shorted something like $50k of their own stock a day before the announcement.
@@ClokworkGremlin He sold 2000 shares. He has sold 50,000 in the past year, and still owns 3.2 million, so no, he didn't simply short to take advantage of this annoucement. I'm a developer using Unity myself, and am more than willing to criticise this awful and deceitful policy, but there's no substance to the myth that the CEO was trying to exploit the announcement.
@@TorchdriveIndustriesApparently things look even worse when you look at the behavior of other executives at Unity, but I don't know much about that
8 years of experience in Unity gone to waste. It's scary and annoying to start over, but I'm moving to Godot precisely because I want no one having me by the balls like that again.
Good luck! I'm definitely going to try Godot out, seems to be where a lot of people are heading.
When Unity's CEO called developers idiots, he apparently really meant it XD
Of course he meant it. Guy had a lapse of judgement and let his real thoughts slip on an interview. But no worries "he's listening and will do better". Yeah... do better in thinking about what he says publicly
I can't believe anyone could say "It's not as bad as it's made out to be" when a) it discouples fees from revenue, and b) it's retroactive! When Unity has a different fee structure as part of its terms of service, that goes into making the decision whether to use the engine over others. Changing that after the fact is invalidating the reasons people chose Unity in the first place!
Imagine this scenario, let's say going forward Unity puts these terms of service onto their engine. So anyone who has made or began a project in the past is not subject to them, but those going forward would be. That way anyone who signs on to use Unity would be doing so with that agreement in mind. That then would at least be an honest situation - that those who choose to use this "per install" pricing model are getting it because they decided it's worth it. I'd bet that most developers would abandon Unity right away - especially the Indie Devs. But for the ones that stay, that's on them. This way, though, is a complete betrayal of the terms under which developers chose to use Unity. It's mind-boggling that anyone with any business brain would think this is good for business!
This is the biggest problem 💯. If the install fee was announced for 2024 - and applying to engine versions released thereafter - this would all be legit.
This is not only about Unity. But also about every other service software (MS Office, Photoshop, and so on): As soon as Unity gets away with it, other companies will follow this example! Everyone is watching this now! Not just gamers, developers, but every other company too!
Thats why its extremely important we boycut unity
That's why we should prefer libre open source software, not owned by any greedy company.
@@diligencehumility6971That would also mean that we'd need to boycott games made with unity engine (since they want to monetize the installs). That'd harm the Devs which aren't responsible for this fiasco.
Dear god I would very much not like this applying to other services
This is an absolutely good point! Once other companies see the push back isnt bad enough or that people are willing to deal with it, they see NOT doing it as leaving money on the table.
Just look at Samsung making fun of Apple's changes of the headphone jack and power brick, then next release doing the same exact thing.
Unreal should release a "lite" version of UE and call it Unreal United. It would be a hit, especially if it served as an introduction to UE for everyone familiar with Unity.
Everyone at competing companies should be thrilled honestly.
Or make some good integrated Tutorials that only load the parts you need for the tutorial. That way it wont need to load so long. Maybe break up the engine into modules so you can only install what you want and add others later when needed
Thank you for helping raise awareness of this issue.
After everything I have invested in Unity I can't afford to switch engines now and this whole situation is terrifying.
There's so much more time, effort and money that goes into changing engines that it's not an option for a lot of people.
I just hope there's a silver lining way down the road that helps developers like yourself whether it is with Unity or some aid in migrating.
Stay strong, we're all united in this!
Same here. Nevertheless, I refuse to continue working with the utter piece of garbage that Unity has become. It's a matter of principle because let's be honest, Unity is only going to get worse from here on out.
This is one of the saddest aspects of this whole situation. On other videos ive discussed this, but if someone bought the most expensive plan, a bunch of plugins, and are pretty much incredible at unity, itll be increadibly difficult to switch. Fell ya man.
@@DarkDax Thank you for the warm wishes, I will not be giving up my dream for developing is an art of passion.
I am praying that we can get our original TOS clause enforced - that stated we should be allowed to use the TOS meant for the year version we are working on.
That is the only thing that will bring back community faith....
and even then none of us will ever update our projects to the new 2023.X versions....
@@spacewizards9039 I don't believe we should be bullied into giving up our projects we have worked on over the years. Now is the time we should fight for our rights.
I have upgraded to use unity 2021.x so my TOS should be the TOS for that version year.
On that note though I will not be installing or upgrading my project to 2023.x and a doubt others will either.
I have worked with Unity for about 2 years now, on and off with different prototypes and experiments of which i really enjoyed making and developing. I can't believe they spit in the face of everyone with such an outrageous announcement. I see people with wayyyy more experience than me switching engines showing how deep Unity dug their grave, and I will probably follow suit. Good luck to everyone having to do the same.
@@user-dn5hh2qw2g I considered learning Godot but I mostly make 3D games and when I saw that godot was used mainly for 2D projects, I got spooked. So I decided to try Unreal Engine 5. I haven't gotten used to it though, it's pretty hard.
Randomly ridiculously monetising seems to be going mainstream. Twitter, Reddit, now Unity, when will it end?
Not to get political or anything but the common factor here seems to be out of touch CEOs
@@YahyaFalcon 110%. And it's honestly so frustrating seeing some people dismiss these situations as "not a big deal". They might enjoy getting absolutely railed by big corporations and greedy tactics but I'm sure most of us don't. 😭
It ends when we all stop using them.
Well, there is massive backlash
The golden age of investors pumping endless amount of money on every tech idea is over, now they are demanding their investment back. Unity won't be the last case, many others will follow suit. Don't be surprised if important things like Windows OS or RUclips introduce usage fees.
Started getting into unity couple of weeks before. I reconsidered to learn godot instead
Good. Don't even consider touching Unity
godot, stride3d, flax, lots of good other engines
I'm 10 years into Unity... oops 😅
Good on you. I've been working with this piece of garbage for just under two years now, but I am definitely going to switch.
@@Broockle better late than never i guess
I won't be surprised if pirates found a way to disable unity tracking system when you download the game
Other pirates will set up server farms in reputable countries you can hire to screw your competitors by billing them with constant 'game installed' triggers.
Keep in mind that, considering how much backlash Unity is facing, and some similar examples of this in the past, I wouldn't be surprised _at all_ if the threats were either sent by someone from the studio, or if they were simply made up, just to derail the discussion.
Unless they've provided receipts, I will remain cautiously sceptical of any "oh, woe is us, look at how poorly we're treated by the crazy people on the internet" arguments.
Many people are sharing the suspicion that the threats are a red herring. They're playing the victim, to save face (or what's left of it)
It's being reported now that it was an off-site out of state employee that sent the threats, which surprised me to hear that it wasn't made up completely.
"Disproprtioante Power Dynamics" this is the cux of the issue in my mind. All these unity develops, just doing their jobs, are now forced to make drastic changes to their lives or bite the bullet, no real choice beyond speaking out and protesting. Meanwhile the CEO and board of directors, also doing their job albiet poorly and evilly imo, face no consequences. Even if the CEO get fired and barred from ever working again, he's still worth $170 million.
There are no consequences for him, no leverage, nothing we can do that matters to him.
Its an unacceptable state of affairs for a person to have so much power over others without any responsibility or accountability that ought to go along with that.
I'm genuinely considering moving my project to ZDoom at this point bc the tech is so old there's no way any company can mess with it legally
ZDoom is open-source and not in any way connected to Unity. The age of the tech has nothing to do with anything.
As soon as you said "Unity, since going public", I was like ahhhh ok makes sense now
I am thinking of the bigger picture. I am wondering whether this a conspiracy to deliberately destroy the indie games industry
I used Unity for over seven years.
I am jumping to Unreal.
And I won't be looking back.
Even if they revert the changes.
Man unity has to be the best marketing team I've ever seen for every other engine ever, godot getting so many new users I cant keep up with the introduction channel
these changes removes the shaky base that unity was standing on. some devs were saying that some indie devs are now suddenly owed ~$5 million when they're barely scraping by, and that doesn't even include total installs or pirated copies.
and it scales too, they want literally about a quarter of all income, before taxes or anything.
there is a company that has already said "we have a game that's 2+ years in development, if this doesn't change, we're never going to use unity ever again, and we're going to rewrite the game in a new engine"
and this sucks for publishers too, they won't want to sponsor a game that requres them to pay $.20 every time someone clicks the install button.
and I doubt this would comply with CDPR.
I think what makes this quite horrible situation is how much unitys announcement feels like either not properly thought through change OR it's a matter of incompetence OR maliciousness, because there are so many issues with these sudden changes that people can see from even just glancing at it.
things like:
1.decoupling devs actual income by making this fee based on installs rather than sales
2.issues about how to even track installs and also legality of it
3.issues about that installs really don't have any safety with them (piracy, amount of installs per person, hardware changes, webGL installs)
4.changes being made retroactively, if any dev had remotely success with their game, they just got the floor ripped away from underneath them without any warning or any way to prepare for it.
this is encouraging developers to take their games off all platforms after they deem that they have "ran their course" to avoid having to pay more to unity than they have actual sales.
which is bad for gamers....which game developers probably also know....so it encourages going away from unity. this is bad for unity too!
I love unity, I made games on it...I wasn't ever successful with them due to personal reasons, but it makes me sad....because I have a dream that one day I want game development to be my fulltime job and unity was my chosen engine. To me it felt intuitive in many aspects and it doesn't feel as bloated as unreal engine and had the easier programming language in my eyes than as example unreal.
The engine itself isn't the problem....I would still want to use it mainly, but how can I ever dream of getting somewhere with it professionally if something like this happens out of nowhere?
Imagine a builder that gets charged every time someone enters a house they built
I switched to unreal engine after this most recent change, even after years of using unity, I can't trust the engine anymore because of the random changes that harm devs. + they keep adding unfinished features from other engines.
Yep, Unreal clearly is the better engine at this point, and chances are that the disparity is only going to become greater.
Unitys biggest advantage was that it was free for personal use. Allowed a lot if people to enter the industry. Now that UE is free and some Open Source Engines keep poping up there isnt much reason to use Unity
It would be similar to Gibson, Tama, Casio or Yamaha, that make music instruments for musicians to produce music with, all of a sudden wanting a cut of all the music produced with their instruments...
Companies that make instruments for creative purposes should have a decent strategy on how to make money, but leeching of the creativity of the users is just cheap!!!
Unity's not just dug its own grave, but it's already buried six feet under. It's a matter of how long until it suffocates.
As a solo Inide dev working on the upcoming project No Time Left this video hits all the right points. I am too deep into development to change engines. I am stuck with no way out and a project that has been getting a lot of attention may now be treated as a cast away, something to be avoided regardless of it's depth and quality because I used the wrong engine TWO YEARS ago when I started work on it.
unity has harmed my project simple by association now. I will probably be forced to use Kickstarter as publishers will want to avoid Unity games now and this project, like many others will struggle as a result of it.
You didn't use the wrong engine, you were unlucky that the company that owns the engine went rogue. I'm in the same boat, 4 years into development and releasing in 2024. I don't think people in large numbers will hold this debacle against developers that use Unity. Most won't even know since you always pay to remove the Unity splash screen, which unfortunately now costs $2000 rather than $400.
I’m actually stoked for this. With unity essentially begging people to stop using it, that just means that all the extremely talented folk that use unity will now move to either unreal, or an open source engine like godot. These other engines are going to get soooooo much better while Unity dies.
So a fun fact anout the supposed death threats: eurogamer has since posted/updated that the police say the death threat call was apparently made by a unity employee
So either very disgruntled, or company tried to drum up sympathy with a fake move
Maybe they just wanted to cancel the event and had to cook up some reason.
I'm a student and I've been developing a game I wanted to release as a teaching tool for kids who want to make music. I can't tell you how frustrating this is. I'm unsure if it's worth me continuing to persue but I have to decide soon because this coming semester is when I was going to keep working on it.
The 2020's will forever be seen as the decade of companies actively hating their customers and expecting to keep making money.
Lmao, just the 2020's?
Because they all loved and nurtured us before.
The 2020's will be the decade you started to figure it out
@@aidancoutts2341Excellent point. Thank you for sharing.
+1 On not being able to move engines. My game heavily uses something called Unity DOTS, which basically means very easy to make massive, complex simulation/strategy type games perform very well. Moving to Unreal just isn't feasible, as I'd either have to built that tech from the ground up and then rework most of my code to match it, or sacrifice the scale of my game significantly. The former isn't financially viable, and the latter would abandon one of the selling points of my game (that it is bigger and more complex than other games in the genre).
Financially, this probably won't affect me (if and when it does, I've done well), but it's the change in Terms that are the deal-breaker. You just can't do business long-term with a company that breaks their word, which Unity has done as prior versions of the Terms allowed developers to not accept new Terms and just remain on an older version of the engine. Trying to apply the fees to existing games, is not only hostile, but begging for legal action.
12:25 don't do death threats. Instead do as much as is legal to dox the CEO!
Until independent developers/creators/makers/etc formally work together, this will continue to happen. The only way that companies like this change is when other companies or organizations are big enough to be of threat to them. Until independents realize that their power alone (even with social media campaigns) does not get things done, whereas worker's unions can make even the largest of companies think twice, the situation is lather, rinse, repeat.
Well, with them saying they will be charging Microsoft the runtime fees for the Unity games on GamePass, I wonder if Microsoft might be the one to put them in their place. Unity is in financial limbo and Microsoft has DEEP pockets. Maybe Microsoft will turn out to be the antihero we need?
@@Terr-E So, wait for another behemoth to do what needs to be done? This is kicking the can down the road. Even if this is rolled back (by whatever means), until developers stand together, it is just a matter of time before the next company tries something similar. If people just want to whine about stuff and then whine when things don't go the way they want, but are not willing to stand together and stand up to it from a more formalized position, then you get what you get.
I can't understand how it wasn't obvious since like 2017. Epic set their course to make the best games with their engine and make money out of this games. Unity set their course to milk the developers and make an engine as bad as possible to get devs to pay as much as possible. And came up with this cultist mindset when users protect all the worst solutions and afraid to lose thousands of dollars and hours spent to fix the engine issues. So, it all boiled down to where you end up being a fanatic.You'll have to quit eventually, but the later you stay - the more painful it will be.
In the immortal words of Saving Private Ryan: "Don't shoot, let them burn"
Well said, trust is key. Thank you for sharing this. I was wondering if I was simply not understanding something or not. The most alarming concept to me about the pricing changes is that they said it was retroactive, but then when asked about it they acted as though it wasn't retroactive and did not apply until after January. Also, I feel that one of the most concerning things was behind the scenes of the execs selling all of their shares before the announcement. If this is true, then this could be a stunt to make money on the shares after they undo the bad policies later on. I thought this was illegal but probably illegal only on paper and not in actual practice.
As a unreal fanboy, it's upsetting that unity would even try this. If unity doesn't back pedal I'm curious what engines devs switch too. I would love them to switch to unreal of course but godot really seems like the best engine people could switch too. Makes you wonder if godot will grow bigger then unity.
Sometimes when a company goes public, someone gains control for the purpose of liquidation. They don't understand the industry, and they never intended to understand, the point is to smash and grab.
Ohoo that ending I LOVEEEEEEEEE IT! I am also a started learning Unity 2 years ago coming from completely different background and spent days and nights and whatever I can spare from my day job invested a lot of money on courses to learn Unity deeper. Now I'm actively considering moving to Godot and Unreal together which will cost me equal amount of time to learn. More to that I will withdraw my projects I was finally able to release on mobile after all this efforts bcs I just don't wanna get bankrupt bcs of unexpected success. Sad times but great opportunties for personal development.
If you can't change the source code of the engine you are using, was the game ever actually yours?
This convinces me that I should buy a Linux laptop and only ever use FOSS tools as much as possible.
9:16 I don't think anyone is suggesting it'll be easy, but if you're building a house and an earthquake shatters your foundation, doesn't really matter how far you are or how much work it is, you gotta tear it down and rebuild. Preferably somewhere less prone to earthquakes...
11:52 to be clear, the threat (singular) came from _inside_ the company towards management, there has been no mention of external threats towards the company (afaik)
12:30 err, that's some _employee_ sending a heated internal message to management that has been interpreted as "threatening", but we don't actually know the contents of to verify
in another perspective, the death threat could also be made up so they could use that as an excuse to close the office and not have to deal with answering any question. at least for a while.
Apparently it was a Employe at Unity
this info was on some news site. "Unity received death threat from one of its employees, claims report"
This is going to cause Epic Games to get even more of the Game Engine market-share :/ And since they are hostile AF towards anything that is Mac or Linux, it is not looking good for gaming on those platforms
Steam deck for the rescue
@@dankmemes8254
Yeh
Valve are the only game company who seem to actually give a crap about other platforms
Death threats were internal, employees.
I know, I'll sell metal to a fridge manufacturer, let them sell the fridge and then say years later after changing the contract which specifically states I can't change the contract that now every time someone opens the fridge door, the manufacturer owes me an amount of money I determine.
Yeah, that'll hold up in court.
Guys, this is a pipe dream.
Soon on this channel: "A behaviour tree system in the Godot engine" :D
I will plant an entire Forrest at this rate
You should probably know that the death threats didn't come from "some [sadboi] living in his mother's basement." It was actually one of the employees at Unity who was probably devastated over their life's work getting thrown into a dumpster fire over this policy change. In a way, that makes it a bit more understandable if you ask me. Not anywhere near the right thing to do in that situation, obviously but it's certainly something that makes more sense than what you guessed it was in the video.
Never using unity again. I feel bad for everyone who is stuck too deep in development
apparently the "death threats" were only made by one unity employee to his employer. but the news got confused maybe or to unity is trying to play the pity game
My money is on the latter. They seem to be milking the victim card for all that it's worth.
even if unity backpeddles, i really hope every single developer will atmost finish their game, and then immediatly jump boat to another game engine.
I don't understand how the thresholds could possibly be allowed to be retroactive before the change in contract?
Once the changes go into effect on Jan 1, THAT is when the thresholds should start counting towards the fees.
This hole thing seems bull, but that retroactive thresholds seems like the biggest slap in the face.
First off, thank you for the bottom of my heart for standing with us game developers!
But please, for the love of god, stop saying that a game developer or random guy sent death theats...
It was a Unity employee, not a random guy...
Please double check stuff before posting!
This is now hurting the game developers more because people outside thinks we are the bad guys!
CEO has been selling those 50,000 shares throughout the year in a slow trickle. That particular circumstance is a complete red herring to the issue at hand. It's a small % of his total share ownership and basically a steady trickle of cash flow for him. There's a boatload of other ways to nail him as a c**t if you so prefer.
I can't imagine this would hold up in court.
Changing a license suddenly is just such BS. For a new major version for the engine, sure, whatever.
But you can't just say "yeah everything that exists now, now has to pay us".
People accepted the license at that point in time that was shipped with the version of the engine they got, and you cannot just suddenly change that.
Also I hope this marks the end for Unity. Let them be a lesson for other companies who think they can just be greedy.
This latest move has the potential to affect end user gamers negatively. Firstly, are they going to have to transfer the costs to gamers for the installation, or will they have to simply remove the older games wholesale from platforms like Steam in their entirety to avoid being charged for installs of games that are no longer raising money to avoid being charged for future installs of these games.
About the death threat or as you put it "Some boy in his mothers basement got really fucking pissed" ... turns out things aren't all that great in the office at the moment for some odd reason. :>
With the track record of that EA guy, this is just the beginning.
I am concerned other tools like Adobe, Autodesk, Etc. want money for everything will be next if we let this happen, also heard the death threats were internal employee.
Nice video. Subscribed.
You didn’t harp on the execs for the sale, but I don’t think it’s as damning as you make it out to be. They hold huge numbers of shares and typically these sales are planned well in advanced to avoid conflicts with the SEC and others.
I believe the fucked up nature of their new pricing strategy stems from 1/ corporate green and pressures for public companies to continue unsustainable growth and 2/ the limits of their spyware to collect the data needed for sensible policies. If they could charge per sale across all platforms or collect the information to limit $/install, they would - but they don’t have this information. They’re just doing the best they can with their limited data, which hasn’t yielded a plan that is implementable or sustainable.
I don’t think this pricing plan will go live. And you’re right, it’s not because of developers, it’s bad cause of industry-wide backlash. The changes from here on out will be papercut after papercut.
“To limit $/install/user”*
Brilliant ending lol. Shame for Unity, the engine had great potential but I think it required some built features (rather than plugins) if they released a new version in January 2024 they could start the new TOS and leave the older versions as it was (would make more sense), plus they need to add something to compete with Unreal's new technology and free megascan's IMO. I never completed making a game in Unity, but I had a go at making one (I made an infinite world with procedural generation!) but now I'm close to completing making a game (game loop) for the first time in Unreal engine and I much prefer Blueprints as a beginner. I recently tried Godot and it was easier than expected to design a level and make a character, but it's also lacking in functionality or full support for certain file types/models and I didn't want to invest too much in learning another new scripting language.
"just move engines" isn't an option for a lot of people who use a lot of assets in the unity asset store. So now I have to build a replacement for all those assets I want to use myself? Unreal has some of them but not all. Godot has none of them. Maybe I can export some of them to Blender and import to another engine but it's not really something that I should have to do
the guy sending death threats was one of their employees according to polygon
I just started my gamedev journey a month ago -- following this and seeing my two favorite tutorial channels switch as of today to unreal and Godot, ive switched to godot (which has taken me a lot less time to learn in these two days)
😢 I'm saddened by their actions
Well done video ❤
what they can still do:
Charge for sell not for instalation
Yeah, but that would have been the sane option.
I don't condone the threats and from what I've heard so far.. it was someone inside Unity.. but.. lets be real here. Fucking with peoples lives is inevitably going to make room for death threats and other extreme reactions. It's basic psychology and instinctual behaviour to protect things YOU care about.. be it your work, home, family, finances etc.... A thousand years ago it could have been a sword in your back.. 10 000 years ago it could have been a stone bashing your head in. There's nothing new here and people still react to threats to their survival even in todays society, and yet somehow.. people are still "shocked" when someone reacts in a way like this.
I'm not greatful they reversed it. If you stab me and then give me medical treatment, I'm not greatful for the treatment. If you steal from me and then return some of it, I'm not greatful for the return. If you burn my house down and help me rebuild it, I'm not greatful for the assistance. They don't get my gratitude, the best they can get is my forgiveness.
And even then, I won't forget. Forgiveness doesn't mean allowing the other the chance to do it again. I will not release a game under Unity. I will not download a new edition of Unity. And once I've gotten what I need from Unity, I will uninstall every instance of it. The only way this will change is effectively bribery. They need to do something to make me want to use it so bad that I'll put all this aside.
For now, I'll try to make my own engine. If I get bored or exhausted from that, I'll use Godot. I already have it installed.
I've been a loyal Unity user since way back 2009 (14 years!). Back then we needed to fork out licenses per module (desktop build, android and iOS) which amounted around $4K in total. Not much of a problem back then because major upgrades weren't cycled frequently. But now, on top of this runtime fiasco, a new indie dev/small studio is suddenly moved from $35/mo to $170/mo or $2040/yr just to have Unity's logo removed. Holy cow, that feels dirty. But thanks to a humble bundle Godot special, I started watching yesterday and looks like I can easily transition to a new engine. Unreal's too technical for me and ain't got time to wrestle with C++. We just want to make games!
It's good to get a British persons voice on this. That final "twat" cuts through all the noise.
The strangest part of this whole saga is that Gambling games are exempt from this. Those are the games that make the most money and they don't have to pay diddly squat.
I am not going to comment on the obvious mess Unity made, I am instead commenting on how much raw emotion Dax showed when he said: "This guy isn't playing around" my feelings exactly
Who screwed up going public better, Smosh, Faze Clan, or Unity?
I've said this on a different video but I'm gonna say it again. I've never been happier to migrate from Unity to Godot before it all happened. I followed Brackey's Tutorial how to make a game on Unity, then deleted this game completely, along with Unity. This is such a nasty and ludicrous thing to see! Shame on Unity CEO who also suggested the idea of asking people to pay a dollar for every bullet/mag you empty in a game. This ex-EA CEO's greed has no bounds. Shame on him!
Used to defend unity and loved its features because they came first into the indie scene about 10 years ago next to game maker and flash.. but now even i can't defend it with this. Installs aren't predictable to calculate for a business. When my games out there, i can't worry about paying unity for an arbitrary algorithm they refuse to explain to us. How are we supposed to counter any bill they send? There's no way we can see a metric such as installing your game. Even if they backtrack, the fact nobody in the company thought this was a bad idea makes me feel its not just the CEO that's the problem. There's some useless people in marketing employed there. They can monetize anything from the number of assets, number of polygons, number of some arbitrary metrics in the future. I think iron source, a malware company, gave them tools to install spyware into your games to do things.
I am moving over to Godot. Finally give chance to open source.
See you there.
I'm completely sure that most of the actual developers on the engine hate this as much as we all do, apparently some people have already quit, and that one death threat the company got the other day supposedly came from an unknown employee. This is all on upper management and the shareholders. But even if the CEO gets kicked out, there's still the shareholders, and the other people at the top, who will all still be demanding similar things, or at least going back to the drawing board, knowing that anything else they do to squeeze blood from the stone will still be received better than this fiasco was. It's a damn shame, there's so many games I own and love that will be affected by this, and I can only hope this turns out bad enough that it seriously harms the company. If they're bleeding money a year or so after this, or even if they go under entirely by then, everyone will get the memo on how ridiculous this was, as unfortunate as it will be to all the good developers working there.
@@HorseDe-luxe Hundred percent there's no recovery here. You can see unity employees defending this on the forums and gaslighting the criticisms.
They're like the democrats. They cannot answer one simple question:
How can I track installs?
How can I dispute an incorrect bill? Cos billing will go wrong at some point, even massive payroll companies make mistakes all the time. Unity does not have any tools for us to verify incorrect charges AFTER releasing your game years ago. You're basically paying for not even using their tool.
It's not just the CEO. He has executives, and marketing teams that all signed off on this. It already created a toxic and stupid culture that doesn't give a shit about it's user base. Even if the CEO is gone, unless a massive rebranding is done, Unity is finished.
That ending is a true British being pissed.
Great video, mind u, this isn't unity, this is every top corporation in the last say, 5 years, every company, of every product, of every industry is more and more focused on profit, games aren't made out of passion anymore as many are made out of a pure vehicle for a fucking cash shop, it's unfortunate, and the people seem to get annoyed at the people that complain about that predatory behavior from companies, instead of at the company itself.
Many times have I seen the "a company trying to make money? Shocking" snarky remark, as if they weren't being taken advantage of too.
It's truly disgusting what the future of gaming, and many other industries is
The people who says "Just move game engine" needs a slap or rather a punch in the face. People are angry for multiple reasons that a company are being too greedy, suddenly adding a toll fee when to the road you used to walk/drive. If they get away with it, others will follow.
the thing is that staying on the same engine IS letting them get away with it because they've shown that they won't hesitate to fuck over their entire userbase
well , the death threats that have been sent to kojima made him regret stopping mgs series at three
I am an artist and developer as well. I think we should say we don't pay one penny to Unity! And say no more clearly. We started an project under an specific licence, and that is thrown out of the window by this company. We invested years in their engine, don't accept this!
For me, the specific policy is very bad but not world ending. What is is the fact that its retroactive. I can't trust putting out any unity game now because I'm scared of whatever other stupid and evil monetization scheme they can throw at it whenever they want
Hey great video! Couldn't help notice the awesome mouse pad in the background. What is it?
I was over Unity when they moved on from features/systems before they'd made real progress from the replacements.
The most OUTRAGEOUS part is the retroactive charge!
This just smells illegal.
Oh your indie game was downloaded a million times? That will be 200,000$ please.
Also, Godot is extra community friendly.
It's free and open source (free as in free stuff, and as in freedom)
For me, the crucial point here is retroactivity. I'm pretty sure it's actually illegal in most countries.
Unity may change the licensing terms for future contracts; it's their right. But changing the terms retroactively is the one thing that needs to be taken to court.
Also, there are some evidence of inside trading and possible violations of anti-monopoly regulations (Unity offered a big discount on runtime fee to companies who will switch from Apploving to IronSource or whatever it's called now.)
Which 3D game engine is the best Unity alternative for mobile and Nintendo Switch 3D game development with stylish graphics? I think:
- Unreal Engine is too bloated/ heavy for mobile games and Nintendo Switch. It also forces us to use Blueprint nodes which will tie us up to Unreal paradigm and Unreal Editor crashes too many times on my RTX 3060 laptop
- Godot has the largest community in free open-source game engine realm, but its Nintendo Switch porting cost is $3,000 and there is no tool to port a Godot game to Switch yourself
- Defold is way less popular than Godot and its 3D graphics aren't as good, but its Nintendo Switch porting tool fee is just $250 or less. I could be wrong though
- Stride Engine doesn't have any option for Nintendo Switch porting
IMHO, the indi and pro game community should buy up all of the Unity stock shares and then fire the CEO and board. Then restructure the company back to what it was, a great platform for everyone with a fair cost model.
Others are reporting the death threat came from an employee.
Even if they revert the changes, I feel like people still should abandon Unity.
They have now thoroughly proven that they can't be trusted.
And they can suddenly decide in the future to revert the changes, or make it worse.
Pretty sure retroactive contracts are completely illegal and if you put in a clause that said "well we can also fuck you up the ass in the future if we want" would be thrown out even if it was actually in the agreement when you signed it.
For instance if you make a contract requiring a recipient to cut off his fingers to pay you back, it would be unenforceable in court.
can anyone clarify if both threshold 200,000 downloads and revenue must be met to receive the fee or is it either one of them is met you'll get charged after. Because if it's the first one then you wouldn't have to worry about the fee taking place if your game is free (without any in-app purchases features)
There's always an 'and' in their statements about it, that I've seen. So it sounds like both requirements need to be met.
In that case, free games would be fine (for now), but at that point, developing games in Unity is less worthwhile than developing games using Scratch. Sure, if you don't plan on ever using your engine knowledge commercially, you're fine (for now), but the community guides and knowledge for any changes is going to be non-existent after this.
@@georgeandrews1394 yeah true, my university game development course has a partnership with unity. I wonder if they will disband it or continue as it is. We'll see how it goes
I wonder how Apple handles this since they just started a partnership with Unity for the Vision Pro.
I don’t really care about game engines, I code without one. But if I ever decide I want to go back to using them I’m not touching Unity at all.
12:57 indeed, @ the CEO.
Every John watching this video decided to change their names.
Please correct this video because it has come to light this was a story that blew out of proportion and it was a single employee that made the threat
something tells me those "death threats" came directly from the office of sleezy EA dude looking for any way possible to deflect negative attention.
Fun fact, Unity won't be able to accurately measure who is re-downloading, pirating, etc.
To do that they would need to collect PII... without consent.... which isn't legal. (as far as I know... I'm not a lawyer)
Maybe Unity should look up what GDPR is, since they seam to not know.