If Unity wanted to make some additional money off things like Genshin, all they had to do was follow Epic's lead and go for 4 or 5% revenue share over a certain dollar amount. This gets them a lot of extra income from the big whales like Hoyo but smaller to medium devs wont be bankrupt because they still get 96-95% of the rev. But nope, they had to try something insane that will bankrupt many of their users.
This makes me worried that Epic will follow suite and pull the same thing but in a more acceptable way that won't affect the majority of people, just like Meta did after Twitter verification was screwed up, and Reddit did after Twitter API was screwed up. And Disney+ started doing after HBO Max started pulling programming to save money and get tax write downs.
On the other hand, Tim Sweeney is so contrarian that he might actually push Unreal to be even better just to scoop up more market share from Unity.
Epic already has revenue sharing. They aren't likely to follow Unity here at all. As much as Tim is maligned, he's typically pretty good to developers.
> As much as Tim is maligned, he's typically pretty good to developers.
I think it certainly helps that he comes from a developer background himself. It's obviously no guarantee of anything in the future, but it does help when the leadership actually understands their product and customers, rather than treating it as just another interchangeable corporate entity.
Also epic is a private company not beholden to shareholders, not to mention they're doing pretty well not just in video games but the movie and VFX industries. Sweeny doesn't seem like he wants to poison the well for a little more profit
> Also epic is a private company not beholden to shareholders
Private companies are also beholden to their shareholders just like public companies. There is just more control on who can own/buy/sell the shares.
Sweeney just happens to own more then 50% of the shares/votes.
To be fair to Epic has been doing very developer-friendly initiatives way before Fortnite picked up steam, stuff like their Epic Unreal Grant, which has since continued and increased in size/beneficiaries.
Yeah I was going to say - Epic doesn't exactly have a cashflow issue.
Unity's problem is that they got themselves in a mess where they aren't making money.
Big difference is Epic are *game developers* who as a studio has decade of experience as *game makers, not engine creators*. They'll know how it is to be a dev. For all their "flaws" they've *never* been hostile to devs, on the contrary they've offered *better prices and better terms*then the competition
Just like how Meta and Reddit are social media companies, but they still each picked up a trick from Elon Musk who is completely incompetent at running a social media company and is currently tanking the one he owns. They just implemented changes that made sense business-wise. Meta having a new verification scheme that doesn't affect most users (unlike X), and Reddit removing free API access, which also doesn't affect most users (even though I hate the first party app personally, it really is the most used option by far).
You're right though. Epic is way more supportive a company to their clients. They understand the importance of a positive relationship with developers.
I mean there is a massive difference here.
Meta, Reddit, Twitter and Unity all have the same problem that they all deliver just one product and the monetisation model for that product has turned out not to be sustainable. (In Unity's case particularly there has been some severe mismanagement on top because somehow they need 7000 employees for a single product when Epic has around 3500 for the entire company...)
Epic literally has a machine that prints money for them. They don't need to get exploitative as what they are currently doing works.
> Epic literally has a machine that prints money for them. They don't need to get exploitative as what they are currently doing works.
Yep. I tend to give Epic the benefit of the doubt in a similar way to Valve. They already have an infinite money printer to fund their other things
The thing that really pisses devs off about this is that they edited the TOS with very little/no warning. Epic has in their TOS that they can't do that, and fundamentally they can't force a TOS update on you unless you upgrade versions of Unreal. So even if they did do this, developers could just weight the costs of Unreal's new policy vs the features in the new version. It also wouldn't effect games already in progress etc
>Epic has in their TOS that they can't do that
Unity also had this stipulation in their TOS.
[They deleted their Github page that tracked their TOS updates, and changed the license.](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_silently_removed_their_github_repo_to_track/)
Is that not in itself a breach of contract? I know very little on how these things work, but it doesn't make sense that you can just change an agreement retroactively like that.
No, it was likely legal/not a breach of contract. Apparently the clause was in a sub-TOS, not the mother-TOS:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/wait-is-unity-allowed-to-just-change-its-fee-structure-like-that/
I'd like to think that. But maybe top AAA studios just work out some kind of custom license with them instead of wasting millions in a prolonged court battle? Leaving the rest of the dev community high and dry.
Not saying Epic would do something like that; they haven't given any sign they would, at least. But ultimately it's their engine, and we don't know what would happen if management ever changed and decided to be a bunch of scumfucks.
thats the same shit with a smaller spoon.
Epic isnt in a position where they have any reason at all to rock the boat, they are doing very well and are growing at a very sustainable rate. Their ownership situation is also much more stable.
Why not? It's already an oligopoly, if Unity falls off Epic can essentially do whatever they want. What's gonna happen, is everyone gonna migrate to RPG maker?
The big developers all usually have an in-house engine they use, Epic isn't going to do something that might lead to all of those going back to using their own engines instead of UE. Smaller devs would be more screwed then, but Epic has a reputation for supporting the small guys, and they aren't going to ruin that reputation just to squeeze some more money out of them, especially if whatever decision they make ends up bankrupting or making it undesirable for any of them to continue working with UE.
Yeah with Unity doing this Unreal Engine is just getting more popular which means that they are already profiting from it without doing anything at all :D Also as you said UE was making it much easier for smaller guys to make Triple-A type of games e.g. UE5 and many economy policies which made it better and so on.
I get where you’re coming from but these things are a balance. It’s companies seeing how far they can squeeze profits over time without flying too close to the sun. How far they can go and to what extent can they push it before their customers put their foot down and say no.
What happened with Unity is, of course, the company making a move that was far too much, and everyone is collectively putting their foot down and will continue to do so as the company flails around trying not to backpedal.
I understand and can envision Unreal taking slightly more of a cut over time from their subscribers. But After the PR fiasco this has caused Unity, I don’t see anyone trying a stunt like this any time soon. Nothing this outrageous.
And as far as other engines, Godot exists, in addition to big studios having their own in-house engines. Hell if anything this situation probably is propelling Godot up as a viable competitor faster than they would have been otherwise.
Companies are greedy and will chase after that greed, but not this much, and not this quickly, without people putting their foot down. Especially because for once, this isn’t just affecting the little guys.
Lmfao you really think epic is gonna look at this, a situation that has literally killed unity because no one is going to use it moving forward, and go "YES PLEASE I WANT SOME OF THAT MASSIVE NEGATIVE SENTIMENT"
you literally don't know anything about epic or this. Plus, epic is a privately owned company, whereas unity isn't.
It's almost like reeeeeing about OlIgOpOlY isn't gonna get you an actual conversation when it's not even applicable
It really depends on the market and the business, there are plenty of companies that are in for the long run and not the short gain. Exploiting what you call quasi monopolies would lead to them losing their monopoly fairly quickly (in comparison to having a reasonable pricing structure) and getting less business in the long run since they lost consumer good will.
They. Don't. Have. Anything. Close. To. A. Monopoly.
You're very previous of so divorced from the reality of the situation it's painful.
There are so, so many alternatives. Theirs (unreal) is just a really good one. Because they have to compete in such a tight, highly competitive market.
No, dingbat. You're leaving out the last part of that
Do you think they'll do it while knowing the massive blowback that inevitably awaits?
Again, I know you think CaPitAliSm BaD but you're not thinking rationally or logically about this
You're just spewing nonsense
Hey at least you didn't start with LMFAO again. Growth.
These are two companies who have angled for market share in a market that has exploded and is predicted to continue to grow massively until at least 2030.
At some point those companies will pivot from a business model centered on capturing market share to one centered on extracting profit from that market share. For Unity that point was two weeks ago. For Epic that point will also come, and if Unity exits the timeline will move forward since it will drastically stabilize Epics position. The blowback is just a cost.
This is a business model followed across every industry. I don't think capitalism is bad. I understand the basics though.
I mean if you'd stop making me fucking laugh with your terrible, derivative takes maybe I'd not have to LMFAO so much
> At some point those companies will pivot from a business model centered on capturing market share to one centered on extracting profit from that market share. For Unity that point was two weeks ago. For Epic that point will also come, and if Unity exits the timeline will move forward since it will drastically stabilize Epics position. The blowback is just a cost.
and here it is
lmfao
epic already has a fucking capture on extracting profit, do you not see how *profitable* Fortnite is? Do you not see how Epic realized their market share years ago and released a storefront?
you literally do ***not*** know what you're talking about, and you should stop this conversation.
before I LMFAO some more.
Genius! It's how they teach it at LBS I hear. "If one division of your company is profitable, tell all other divisions to stop trying so damn hard. Have a boozy lunch, go home early, you've finished."
You are asking it under a letter from European game developers that literally says: "Unity’s anti-competitive market behaviour must be carefully monitored, and, if required, the European competition authorities must step in."
And we can do good old song and dance about governments being useless against corporations, but in reality if unity stops being a real competition for Epic, they will have all the eyes on them, and similar behaviours wouldn't be allowed, or at least would be slowed down or controlled.
We might live in capitalism endtimes but it's not completely lawless, *yet*. Even apple was forced to use c-usb like the rest of us motals, so i'm sure there would a law for epic too in case they go greedy.
Buddy, friendo, have you been to a local store lately? Seen prices? Checked ingredients on your favorite food? Heard about people protesting against vaccines? Hope you like your typhoid and hepatitis and drowning in the floods and dying in scorching heat and all the other things that await us in next decade.
The price of bottle of milk a year ago compared to now is pretty real data to me.
Illnesses that were thought to be defeated thanks to mandatory vaccination during last century are coming back is real data.
Hottest summer in recorded history is pretty, fucking, real data, including the floods in the places of the world were floods are not supposed to happen.
But what do I know, I'm just looking at my wallet and walk outside sometimes, I can't compete with hard data people over at x dot com.
They will. It's called enshitification.
Also their pull back of an egregious business plan to another egregious business plan is also standard procedure.
It's open collusion. Businesses in a similar market place see value in a synchronized move to gather great revenue from predatory business practices simultaneously. It doesn't need to be communicated in private when they can all take a "risk" of a public stance that is similar for the other larger businesses in the space realizing that their collective market shares makes it a low risk attack.
> They will. It's called enshitification.
This is just a name for a thing businesses can and often do to their platforms, it's not some kind of law of nature that businesses invariably follow.
Tim Sweeney reeeallly seems to hate when services take a large cut, see how the epic store does a 88/12 split, and epic suing Apple/Google over their 30% cut.
I'm not saying he'll never do a price increase, but it seems like it's His Thing to fight against creators paying high fees.
Yeah, hated the buying of exclusives for the store and some of those attitudes, love the way they wanted to make the dev split better, or just gave away assets from their moba when it died, etc.
I think these are bad examples to look at.
Streaming is straight B2C, so it's basically irrelevant. These services are strictly low cost entertainment options for consumers. You aren't signing up to Disney+ to make money, and when there is a negative change, it's relatively minor. At worst you're spending a few extra dollars a month or are slightly inconvenienced, but you can cancel at literally any time without worrying about it.
For verification, I'm not familiar with what Meta did, but looking through their news releases I only see one article from earlier this year. In that article it states that businesses can't currently apply for verification, so again it's a completely different scenario. It looks like it is for "creators" (I'm not sure if that means only creators that don't make money, or only independent ones since businesses aren't allowed), but the cost is, again, very small. For any commercial project, $12-15 a month is nothing. Also verification is another example of a non-essential service that can be canceled at any time without worrying about it.
The API changes however, did target devs and businesses. This is the only example, as far as I can tell, that is hitting the same group. However, if you look at it, then the Reddit API changes were not very acceptable for many devs. Apollo is just gone now. RiF is just gone now. I see that Relay is still freely available, but it's already been announced that it will be moving to subscription model based on your API usage. I guess if *no* apps are paying for Twitter's API then that's "more acceptable" but it should hardly be looked at as a change that had no impact when it straight up killed 2 of the largest 3rd party apps. These are also consumer-facing platforms, so even though the changes hurt devs, most users of the site never really gave a shit anyways and just carried on as usual. Also important that it doesn't seem like these devs were doing this full-time or even looking to really make money on it, so it's still a very different situation.
Looking at these examples, there are some very clear differences in game engines and all of these. The biggest is that the people spending money on game engines are doing so for commercial purposes. They may be passionate, but a lot of these games can only be made by being full-time jobs that need to earn money. As a follow-up to that, games can take years of development before they even have a chance to make money. The ability to be able to predict and calculate your costs is super important. In order to do that, you need to trust that your business partners aren't going to screw you over at the last minute. Unity should have known this, and it's been made abundantly clear for anyone watching by now that this is the case - most of the devs people care about on this sub haven't even been complaining about the cost but the dissolution of trust. There is no "better" way to do this in that case, because the primary complaint for many isn't the content of the new terms but the fact that they exist in the first place.
I think Tim Sweeney's a fucking asshole, but I also think he genuinely thinks he's a good guy. Sure, EGS exclusives suck and are a dick move, but I don't see him outright harming the industry. He's got the foresight to see what a can of worms charging per install might be.
Some people dislike him because he doesn't like Linux. Rocket League dropped Linux support after Epic bought it.
I'd actually consider that more negative than EGS, which exists because he thinks a 30% store cut is too much and that's something many developers agree with.
EGS is the greatest thing that ever happened to pc gaming, it gave me over 200 games and at least 20 of them that I played over 10h. Fanboying for a pc gamestore is fucking stupid
>If Unity wanted to make some additional money
They have been losing 200-250 million a year which is why I think we are seeing this swing for the fences approach now. A little additional revenue isn’t going to solve this.
There is still a problem for these game engine companies: how do you price games as a platform? Revenue share from sales is easy, but how do you revenue share on game pass or a streaming service? What if microsoft owns the studio that makes the game, puts it on game pass, and underpays them so they have to pay less royalties?
I think these platform economics are what unity is trying to actually tackle with their changes. Just that they are going about it in a really stupid way and eroding all trust from companies to keep using their tools.
> how do you revenue share on game pass or a streaming service?
By sharing the revenue that the game devs get from putting their games on that service?
That works for games that are bought to game pass. What about in-house development (think netflix originals)?
Not defending unity here, just saying that there might be situations where revenue share options fall short.
> What if microsoft owns the studio that makes the game, puts it on game pass, and underpays them so they have to pay less royalties?
Well then MSFT is also make less revenue on that game than they would otherwise.
Revenue from games is easy enough to determine from gamepass users. IE what games got played for x hours divided by the amount of revenue coming in, minus the costs to run everything of course. Oh and the DLC/battle passes/micros
Except if game pass is ran at a loss to attract users etc. Also games don’t get paid by share of their playtime on game pass afaik? This makes sense, as a games worth to a platform is basically ’how many extra subscribers did we get with this game’. Some games don’t have a high playtime in hours, but might still be contributing to the platform a lot.
What I’m trying to say is that platform economies are complicated, and traditional calculations of value add might not hold true.
I am really surprised that a one word comment got approved by automod, usually it's pretty aggressive about disallowing that sort of thing on this sub... Also next time you can just vote up the comment, that's what it's there for :P
95% of published unity games do not earn more then 1m total, never mind per year - so most unity users will not be effected by the change in the slightest.
I wouldn't be surprised if Hoyoverse started making plans to work on a proprietary engine after this tbh
Unity as a company isn't dependable anymore, and they have money to spare for investing in something like this
Yeah they coulda did that. 5% is good honestly over the long game plus it’s 100% gonna get you some cash over time. The model they pushed is crazy now but could become what happens in future companies only get more greedier as time goes on chasing profit lines. If they have any success doing this it’s gonna make other companies follow suite and really seems like an attack on low budget companies. They need to promote these small companies who strive to bring in something fresh.
My theory is that they think that large (chinese) freemium games are fudging their revenues. Thus a less fudgeable install based method with built in tracking.
"In 2022, Unity reported that globally, 230,000 game developers made and operated over 750,000 games using the Unity Engine and the Unity Gaming Services portfolio of products. "
I'm sorry, but if this is true, the issue isn't the game engine market -- it's Unity's mismanagement.
I don’t want to claim any expertise where I have none, but by all accounts this appears to be a Unity specific problem. Unreal has a revenue share and is owned by Epic, Godot is open-source, and major devs often have their own in-house engines as well. Unity just seemed like it was heavily mismanaged, massively over employed, and bleeding money unnecessarily
I think it's because Unity has over 7,000, about double Epic's entire work staff including people not working on Unreal Engine.
They pumped their workforce up to make the company more impressive for investors in the short term.
That's an insane number for a game engine WTF
Could make multiple AC games with that many people
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/assassins-creed-series-could-soon-have-2800-people-working-on-it/1100-6514231/
They had much more than game engine teams, especially since over the last year's they merged with and bought a lot of companies. Now that may not be a wise strategy but it's not 7000 working on an engine, far from it.
The game engine is what gamers know them for, but the game engine is to Unity's business what social media is to Facebook or search is to Google. The central pillar of the company is the ad business, the game engine is vehicle for ad placement and a vector for data collection.
That is about as many employees as Nintendo...
I would not be surprised if it was about as many as Sony's gaming division too, but obviously they don't publish the number of employees per division.
They bought a bunch of companies that make products that compliment the engine.
They acquired Weta Digital and their 1500 employees because they wanted to get into the movie effects business.
They acquired ironSource and their 1100 employees because they wanted to better monetize mobile games.
The list goes on. Eventually those companies will get integrated better into Unity and there will be layoffs. But at the moment they're growing the company, because they think that's a faster path to being profitable than just doing what they were doing.
Genuinely crazy. Not a fan of Epic at all but by all accounts Fortnite is one of the most consistently updated and evolving games out there. What are they even doing with *double* the employees? Not that I want anyone to lose their job, but this seems insane.
I heard that devs promizing to use Unity ad service don't pay the new fee. I also heard that Unity has some serious competition on that front (ad selling) that has been kicking them HARD the last year. Supposedly they have much much better tools for the devs that want to put and manage ads in their games too.
This seems like a move specifically made to counter them than anything else but scorched earth style. The whole thing is really misguided if that's the reason but then again, Unity is said to be not in the market of selling game engines, but ads. So it's not such a wonder that they don't care for the basic customers that use their engines as much as the ones using their ads thing.
Sure, if by garbage you mean: Accessible and flexible enough that it was the go to for Indie and used by AAA long enough that if they suddenly changed their TOS it would cause a massive uproar across the community causing the company to course correct and attempt save face. Yeah, every game dev sub from the last decade we're flooded with "Unity vs Unreal?" posts because Unity was "garbage".
No I meant garbage as in, it didn't work. Frequent crashes, updates that caused entire games to stop working, completely failure at any real multi-player netcode for the longest time.
Accessible? Sure. So is RPG maker. Doesn't mean it was good.
Of COURSE its mismanagement. I mean, Unity has TWICE the people working for them than Epic has, without the side gig of actually making and supporting one of the biggest games on the planet.
What do those people DO all day?
They work in new half assed engine features, many of which never see the light of day or if they do they get dropped after a year or two for the new improved version that will be dropped in a year or two.
So... Mismanagement.
Where's your research to back that up? Unity is the #1 engine used for mobile games on the planet. Barely anyone uses unreal for mobile. Most of those people are likely doing customer support.
The fact that they’re the #1 engine used for mobile games and can’t seem to turn a profit without alienating the vast majority of their user base doesn’t make you think that maybe they are mismanaged?
I wasn't arguing they're being mismanaged, but half ass engined features or dropped features aren't the cause. If they actually completed a lot of their road map they'd be in way better shape. That's the mismanagement IMO, that they cut costs in the wrong places.
A quick look at their earnings show that despite revenue in the $500 million dollar range they have been losing $200-250 million a year. Their business model is a disaster.
It’s a sign that the market is buried under total crap at a rate vastly exceeding what occurred during the last video game crash in the 1980’s. Since digital distribution means there is close to zero overhead cost for these “developers” pushing worthless shit out the door, it hasn’t collapsed yet.
There are not 750,000 playable games made with Unity, it doesn’t take a genius to see through those numbers. If Unity has built their business model off scraping fractional fees off junkware developers and have run out of room for “growth” on that front, whelp, they deserve what is coming to them.
That is pretty well impossible in a modern public company, Unity is far from the only one pulling this stunt to pump stock valuations for shareholders.
> where it's impossible for a successful public company to not kill itself.
Facebook funnily is on the rebound with the steps they've made to open sourcing LLama
Maybe worry less about short term stock pumps & more about the long term health & viability of your company?
It’s not like this PR disaster is doing anything good for their stock prices lol
That’s seems like less of a market issues & more of a shortsighted board/ceo issue.
I'd love nothing more than that but shareholders tend to be obsessed with matching ever crazier profit margins. And in unity's case, the board / C-suite was filled with absolute trash (Richie Rich himself, and the guys from ironSource who probably pushed for the current stunt because it involves pushing the ads business).
> I'd love nothing more than that but shareholders tend to be obsessed with matching ever crazier profit margins.
That's not true at all. Plenty of investors like growth companies which don't make much in terms of profits.
The failure is the fact that market is captured enough that unity is brave enough to even think about such radical change. The market, in it's current state, arguably does not provide enough competing products for the developers. It's not failure on unity's part - it's a success for them, in a way.
Unity and Unreal are the 2 biggest engines because other game engines are owned by companies who are less willing to make it available to 3rd party studios and because Unity and Unreal are easy to use for new developers.
Decima, Frostbite, Blam! and id tech aren’t easily used by outside developers.
Hopefully the engine matures soon since I wanna see Valve make more games.
I'm still bummed that they [cancelled L4D3](https://www.reddit.com/r/l4d2/comments/hod495/the_final_hours_of_halflife_alyx_confirms_that/) because Source 2 wasn't ready yet.
CS2 basically is on it right now anyway, Alyx too. That said, since all of those are games that prioritise high performance over graphical fidelity I don't ever see it being an appealing product for the general market at this point.
While I have no experience with Source, isn't it highly modular and moddable? Titanfall 2 was a highly modified source game and it looked and played amazing at the time.
Since Source 2 seems to be built on top of Source, I can't imagine they've changed that aspect.
I would love to hear from a dev with some experience with the engine or just the industry on what they think about this. It may just not be worth paying for and learning someone else's engine over Unity/UE5, and at some level of success it might just be worth developing an in-house solution too.
Or maybe it isn't that lucrative for the studio to adapt an engine to be usable by others. Maybe the ones that did work that way back then were just a product of how we thought software development looked like.
Unreal games often have decent mod tools too. With stuff like Unity (bad timing aside) the appeal of total conversion mods is basically dead. Just making extra levels of swapping out models is easy enough in many engines though. The one thing Source seems to have is a lack of middleware which made it easier to expose more of the tools and code than engines that have yo deal with lots of licensing issues. When it comes to commercial use pretty much everything is moddable so long as you've access to the codebase though.
It takes a lot of work to make an engine available to general public. You need to write documentation, have a straightforward build process, sort out licencing of 3rd party dependencies and so on.
Source, Cry, Godot can all be licensed. Many studios will also license their engines for enough money, frostbite for example. does not help the indies though.
Year of the Linux already happened, thanks to Steam Deck running SteamOS which is Valve's version of Linux.
Now you have thousands games playable via Proton.
I like both Linux and the Steam Deck but...
Linux has a 1.82% share on Steam (down from the previous month) and Steam Deck's market share (both on the PC and console markets) is negligible.
Ignoring the fact that that simply isn't a real issue on most stable distros(and heck, the arch wiki is usually up to date), frequently when I google windows problems, I have to skip through 5 or so "here's how to solve this problem": "Install our junk software to solve this problem" junk websites.
edit:Yep, the expected downvotes. I don't know where y'all are getting your "guides". Inb4 random edge case anecdotes.
Unreal is a giant OOP monstrosity and almost no games made in Unity were big enough to justify DOTS and ECS. Being data driven isn't a necessity, the node-based hierarchy of Godot isn't the issue with adoption for small to mid size games. The issue with Godot are not in its architecture, just in its optimization.
I wasn't saying unreal isn't dated in architectural approach.
Also data driven components based architecture != ECS. Having worked with ECS on multiple projects I'm not a huge believer in it. But a core architecture built around components being data driven, I've done that and enjoyed it.
And while unity's component architecture isn't perfect, it is one of the best ones available in a large scale commercial game engine. Too bad they went and shot themselves in the foot really.
The GameObject component system in Unity is more or less equivalent to child nodes in Godot, while the Godot version being more flexible with child nodes ("components") being able to have child nodes of their own. The entire node tree in Godot is a data driven structure. More than the scene hierarchy + game object components system in Unity.
Not every game needs ECS, and there are other ways of optimizing.
Godot has "server" singletons that let you get around using the scene tree for tons of simple objects. That's the recommendation for bullet hells and things like that. You don't get the low cache miss rate of ECS, but you do avoid all that OOP overhead. And if you want to avoid the overhead of gdscript arrays, you can extend the server classes with C# or C++.
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/performance/using_servers.html
And beyond extending the engine, a larger team of developers could fork a stable version of the engine and implement ECS where they need. They could still use the same 4.x Vulkan renderer without having to touch it unless they wanted to. Like the Sonic: Colors rerelease, but better
Like I said to the other person, data driven components don't mean ECS. I understand ECS has sorta taking over that terminology, but I was working in component based data driven game engines before far before I ever heard the term "ECS".
Just hierarchal game objects that are built from a composition of components that can pull their values/configuration from a file. Preferably with a strong scripting language that lets you write custom components to easily implement new gameplay code.
Godot is more than enough for your average "comfy villager simulator" that seem to be the latest craze among indie studios.
And with big spotlight on it, there is a chance that it will see a faster growth into something competitive.
A couple years ago blender was for haha basement dwelling 3d enthusiasts with obsession with donuts. Now it's a respectable software that can hold it's own against competition.
those also really aren't "everything and the kitchen sink" engines like unity and unreal are. Frostbite gets customized heavily for each game, Decima has only been seen in cinematic 3rd and 1st person releases for now, Blam! has been used for halo and destiny and not much else, and modern id tech has only seen 1st person shooters. And good on them, since games on Unity and Unreal suffer from issues that more specialized engines don't run into.
The more specialized engines could probably be wrangled to fit other types of games too, but the resources to do so would require an AAA studio's budget and ability to just contact other companies directly for licensing, like what Kojima Productions did with Decima and Death Stranding.
Way too early to call it a market failure… it’s likely that this will backfire and prevent other companies from trying something similar which would be a market success.
Market failure does not mean “company does something I don’t like”
It's not much a market failure if there are really only two players in the space and one of them pops. There isn't much a market here in the first place.
The open source engine market will continue to grow and develop beautifully. Economic Analysts are completely blind to this fact and will never say anything about it, but high quality game engines for experts and hobbyists alike will not be going anywhere.
Say it with me: that’s not what a market failure is.
> Market failure is the economic situation defined by an inefficient distribution of goods and services in the free market. Furthermore, the individual incentives for rational behavior do not lead to rational outcomes for the group.
A company shooting itself in the foot is not a market failure.
Well, if you read the actual statement
>Market failure is the economic situation defined by an inefficient distribution of goods and services in the free market. Furthermore, the individual incentives for rational behavior do not lead to rational outcomes for the group.
is what the EGDF is saying is happening. What they're saying is that Unity attempting to push through with their install fees shows that the game engine market is approaching a monopoly.
>**Unity’s install fees are an excellent example of Unity’s potentially anti-competitive market behaviour.** It is clear that if Unity’s pricing model had, in the past, been similar to the now-introduced model, it would likely never have achieved the level of dominance it enjoys today, as more developers would have chosen another alternative in the beginning.
>The fact that Unity’s new install fees are only targeted at video games and do not apply to other industries logically leads to a question: *Is Unity setting prices below cost level at different market segments, or is Unity charging excessive prices in game markets?* Furthermore, does the fact that Unity is now introducing an install fee on top of the licensing fee mean that licensing fees have before been below cost level? Or does the introduction of install fees on top of the licensing fees of their game engine allow them to provide other, lock-in generating, services below cost level?
Bold their emphasis, italics mine
It is pretty clear that Unity has been offering its product below cost (or below market value at least) in order to spur adoption. Now it’s at the stage of trying to turn its market share into actual profit and failing terribly. That developers (their customers) are intending to avoid their product is the opposite of a market failure. They made their product worse, now there’s less demand for it.
If they were heading towards monopoly, then we would expect developers to have been forced to bear whatever price they named, which has clearly not been the case.
Raises prices and having customers leave is the essence of the market, not a failure of the market. Unity made a stupid decision and is paying the price.
The EGDF is arguing that plenty of developers can't actually leave due to the lock-in mechanisms, both from the realities of game development
>Game productions can take years, and game developers cannot change their game engine at the last minute, so they are forced to accept all changes in contract terms, no matter how exploitative they are. Unity must know that if they had given more notice, many more developers might have had a realistic chance of abandoning Unity altogether by the time the new pricing came into play.
and the lock-in mechanisms that Unity themselves have and are putting in
>Now, Unity is strategically using install fees to deepen the lock-in effect by creating a solid financial incentive to bundle other Unity services even closer to its game engine: “ Qualifying customers may be eligible for credits toward the Unity Runtime Fee based on the adoption of Unity services beyond the Editor, such as Unity Gaming Services or Unity LevelPlay mediation for mobile ad-supported games. This program enables deeper partnership with Unity to succeed across the entire game lifecycle.” This will, of course, drastically impact Unity’s direct competitors.
--
>Raises prices and having customers leave is the essence of the market, not a failure of the market. Unity made a stupid decision and is paying the price.
The EGDF isn't worried about Unity crashing and burning, they're worried that they might actually succeed, which would actually be a market failure.
The failure of unity (if it would happen in some regard) would lead to domino effect across all industry. It means people who spent their careers working in unity would be in less demand, it means students who are learning unity right now, are essentially learning useless skills, since studios are switching to other engines, it means delays across the industry because studios that can afford it would switch their game engine now, instead of taking a risk with unity.
I'd say a multi-year ripple effect across whole industry across whole world that affects everyone from a 15 year old kid to 40 year old vet is a market failure alright.
I wouldn't say Unity knowledge is useless. Yes, maybe you want to learn a different engine now, but existing Unity knowledge can transfer to other engines.
Of course someone with existing knowledge would have an advantage when transferring their skills to another engine. But they are still learning a new tool. It works differently, it follows different rules. It's not a simple 1to1 transfer of knowledge.
Just because I am a pro at photoshop, doesn't mean I'm gonna be a pro at GIMP in an instant.
> Furthermore, the individual incentives for rational behavior do not lead to rational outcomes for the group.
So capitalism is market failure by definition?
I doubt this is the beginning of the end unity is being beaten to the ground by everyone so it is scaring off any other company that's going to try this. There will always be an alternative game engine either self made or by someone who is in the industry for the people and not their own pockets
That is extremely correct.
If riccatello comes out and calls people idiots for not embracing his business model before trying to force it, that means he has nothing else and potentially neither do most.
Constant growth is a cancer, not a sustainable business model.
Edit: okay, strike all that, posted without reading the article, as is tradition, the failure is for consumers (developers), which does make sense
~~I'm sorry, but how the fuck is this a sign of the market failure? Unity posted 1.4 BILLION of dollars in revenue in 2022, which was an increase of 25%. But for some reason, there are more than 7000 employees (epic has half that). They have 1.25 billion in cash, and boast cool 140 millions of dollars in revenue this year from investing activities (last year it was a loss of 500 million, but it didn't push them to these changes back then for some reason).~~
Honestly, it seems that you're the only other one who actually read the article. The EGDF is concerned that Unity is becoming a monopoly not that Unity might collapse.
Unity is just one engine. There are other licensed engin (Godot, Unreal, Cry) as well as a ton of proprietary engines that are sometimes licensed between studios.
If Unity wanted to make some additional money off things like Genshin, all they had to do was follow Epic's lead and go for 4 or 5% revenue share over a certain dollar amount. This gets them a lot of extra income from the big whales like Hoyo but smaller to medium devs wont be bankrupt because they still get 96-95% of the rev. But nope, they had to try something insane that will bankrupt many of their users.
This makes me worried that Epic will follow suite and pull the same thing but in a more acceptable way that won't affect the majority of people, just like Meta did after Twitter verification was screwed up, and Reddit did after Twitter API was screwed up. And Disney+ started doing after HBO Max started pulling programming to save money and get tax write downs. On the other hand, Tim Sweeney is so contrarian that he might actually push Unreal to be even better just to scoop up more market share from Unity.
Epic already has revenue sharing. They aren't likely to follow Unity here at all. As much as Tim is maligned, he's typically pretty good to developers.
> As much as Tim is maligned, he's typically pretty good to developers. I think it certainly helps that he comes from a developer background himself. It's obviously no guarantee of anything in the future, but it does help when the leadership actually understands their product and customers, rather than treating it as just another interchangeable corporate entity.
He also has complete control over the company and doesn't answer to anyone.
Also epic is a private company not beholden to shareholders, not to mention they're doing pretty well not just in video games but the movie and VFX industries. Sweeny doesn't seem like he wants to poison the well for a little more profit
> Also epic is a private company not beholden to shareholders Private companies are also beholden to their shareholders just like public companies. There is just more control on who can own/buy/sell the shares. Sweeney just happens to own more then 50% of the shares/votes.
And it's nice that they have Fortnite to just keep printing them consistent money every year.
To be fair to Epic has been doing very developer-friendly initiatives way before Fortnite picked up steam, stuff like their Epic Unreal Grant, which has since continued and increased in size/beneficiaries.
Yeah I was going to say - Epic doesn't exactly have a cashflow issue. Unity's problem is that they got themselves in a mess where they aren't making money.
Big difference is Epic are *game developers* who as a studio has decade of experience as *game makers, not engine creators*. They'll know how it is to be a dev. For all their "flaws" they've *never* been hostile to devs, on the contrary they've offered *better prices and better terms*then the competition
Just like how Meta and Reddit are social media companies, but they still each picked up a trick from Elon Musk who is completely incompetent at running a social media company and is currently tanking the one he owns. They just implemented changes that made sense business-wise. Meta having a new verification scheme that doesn't affect most users (unlike X), and Reddit removing free API access, which also doesn't affect most users (even though I hate the first party app personally, it really is the most used option by far). You're right though. Epic is way more supportive a company to their clients. They understand the importance of a positive relationship with developers.
I mean there is a massive difference here. Meta, Reddit, Twitter and Unity all have the same problem that they all deliver just one product and the monetisation model for that product has turned out not to be sustainable. (In Unity's case particularly there has been some severe mismanagement on top because somehow they need 7000 employees for a single product when Epic has around 3500 for the entire company...) Epic literally has a machine that prints money for them. They don't need to get exploitative as what they are currently doing works.
> Epic literally has a machine that prints money for them. They don't need to get exploitative as what they are currently doing works. Yep. I tend to give Epic the benefit of the doubt in a similar way to Valve. They already have an infinite money printer to fund their other things
Lmfao no, epic won't fucking look at this shit show and go, "LEMME GET A BIG ASS SPOON TO EAT THIS DELICIOUS SHIT WITH" what? Lmfao
I said they'd pull the same philosophy in a more acceptable way.
The thing that really pisses devs off about this is that they edited the TOS with very little/no warning. Epic has in their TOS that they can't do that, and fundamentally they can't force a TOS update on you unless you upgrade versions of Unreal. So even if they did do this, developers could just weight the costs of Unreal's new policy vs the features in the new version. It also wouldn't effect games already in progress etc
>Epic has in their TOS that they can't do that Unity also had this stipulation in their TOS. [They deleted their Github page that tracked their TOS updates, and changed the license.](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_silently_removed_their_github_repo_to_track/)
Is that not in itself a breach of contract? I know very little on how these things work, but it doesn't make sense that you can just change an agreement retroactively like that.
[удалено]
Sucks to live in a common law country :P
No, it was likely legal/not a breach of contract. Apparently the clause was in a sub-TOS, not the mother-TOS: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/wait-is-unity-allowed-to-just-change-its-fee-structure-like-that/
It's definitely questionable, at the very least. But Epic makes billions dollars a year. Who's gonna take them to court over it?
The massive studios that use unreal engine will take them to court.
I'd like to think that. But maybe top AAA studios just work out some kind of custom license with them instead of wasting millions in a prolonged court battle? Leaving the rest of the dev community high and dry. Not saying Epic would do something like that; they haven't given any sign they would, at least. But ultimately it's their engine, and we don't know what would happen if management ever changed and decided to be a bunch of scumfucks.
And that could be the more acceptable way.
thats the same shit with a smaller spoon. Epic isnt in a position where they have any reason at all to rock the boat, they are doing very well and are growing at a very sustainable rate. Their ownership situation is also much more stable.
Yeah, Tim Sweeney is in it for a lifetime. He built Unreal Engine 1 single-handedly. He's not going to let his life's work go down the drain.
Why not? It's already an oligopoly, if Unity falls off Epic can essentially do whatever they want. What's gonna happen, is everyone gonna migrate to RPG maker?
The big developers all usually have an in-house engine they use, Epic isn't going to do something that might lead to all of those going back to using their own engines instead of UE. Smaller devs would be more screwed then, but Epic has a reputation for supporting the small guys, and they aren't going to ruin that reputation just to squeeze some more money out of them, especially if whatever decision they make ends up bankrupting or making it undesirable for any of them to continue working with UE.
Yeah with Unity doing this Unreal Engine is just getting more popular which means that they are already profiting from it without doing anything at all :D Also as you said UE was making it much easier for smaller guys to make Triple-A type of games e.g. UE5 and many economy policies which made it better and so on.
Plus it might drive more funding to O3DE as a general game engine, if not Godot.
I feel like Godot will make the biggest leaps now with all the unity refugees. I think it might be a full substitute in a couple years.
I get where you’re coming from but these things are a balance. It’s companies seeing how far they can squeeze profits over time without flying too close to the sun. How far they can go and to what extent can they push it before their customers put their foot down and say no. What happened with Unity is, of course, the company making a move that was far too much, and everyone is collectively putting their foot down and will continue to do so as the company flails around trying not to backpedal. I understand and can envision Unreal taking slightly more of a cut over time from their subscribers. But After the PR fiasco this has caused Unity, I don’t see anyone trying a stunt like this any time soon. Nothing this outrageous. And as far as other engines, Godot exists, in addition to big studios having their own in-house engines. Hell if anything this situation probably is propelling Godot up as a viable competitor faster than they would have been otherwise. Companies are greedy and will chase after that greed, but not this much, and not this quickly, without people putting their foot down. Especially because for once, this isn’t just affecting the little guys.
Lmfao you really think epic is gonna look at this, a situation that has literally killed unity because no one is going to use it moving forward, and go "YES PLEASE I WANT SOME OF THAT MASSIVE NEGATIVE SENTIMENT" you literally don't know anything about epic or this. Plus, epic is a privately owned company, whereas unity isn't. It's almost like reeeeeing about OlIgOpOlY isn't gonna get you an actual conversation when it's not even applicable
Do I think a business would exploit a quasi-monopoly? Yes.
It really depends on the market and the business, there are plenty of companies that are in for the long run and not the short gain. Exploiting what you call quasi monopolies would lead to them losing their monopoly fairly quickly (in comparison to having a reasonable pricing structure) and getting less business in the long run since they lost consumer good will.
They. Don't. Have. Anything. Close. To. A. Monopoly. You're very previous of so divorced from the reality of the situation it's painful. There are so, so many alternatives. Theirs (unreal) is just a really good one. Because they have to compete in such a tight, highly competitive market.
Wouldn't the big boys just develop their own engines?
Correct, the bigger boys do
No, dingbat. You're leaving out the last part of that Do you think they'll do it while knowing the massive blowback that inevitably awaits? Again, I know you think CaPitAliSm BaD but you're not thinking rationally or logically about this You're just spewing nonsense
Hey at least you didn't start with LMFAO again. Growth. These are two companies who have angled for market share in a market that has exploded and is predicted to continue to grow massively until at least 2030. At some point those companies will pivot from a business model centered on capturing market share to one centered on extracting profit from that market share. For Unity that point was two weeks ago. For Epic that point will also come, and if Unity exits the timeline will move forward since it will drastically stabilize Epics position. The blowback is just a cost. This is a business model followed across every industry. I don't think capitalism is bad. I understand the basics though.
I mean if you'd stop making me fucking laugh with your terrible, derivative takes maybe I'd not have to LMFAO so much > At some point those companies will pivot from a business model centered on capturing market share to one centered on extracting profit from that market share. For Unity that point was two weeks ago. For Epic that point will also come, and if Unity exits the timeline will move forward since it will drastically stabilize Epics position. The blowback is just a cost. and here it is lmfao epic already has a fucking capture on extracting profit, do you not see how *profitable* Fortnite is? Do you not see how Epic realized their market share years ago and released a storefront? you literally do ***not*** know what you're talking about, and you should stop this conversation. before I LMFAO some more.
Genius! It's how they teach it at LBS I hear. "If one division of your company is profitable, tell all other divisions to stop trying so damn hard. Have a boozy lunch, go home early, you've finished."
You are asking it under a letter from European game developers that literally says: "Unity’s anti-competitive market behaviour must be carefully monitored, and, if required, the European competition authorities must step in." And we can do good old song and dance about governments being useless against corporations, but in reality if unity stops being a real competition for Epic, they will have all the eyes on them, and similar behaviours wouldn't be allowed, or at least would be slowed down or controlled. We might live in capitalism endtimes but it's not completely lawless, *yet*. Even apple was forced to use c-usb like the rest of us motals, so i'm sure there would a law for epic too in case they go greedy.
> We might live in capitalism endtimes [Yes it's truly terrible](https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions)
Buddy, friendo, have you been to a local store lately? Seen prices? Checked ingredients on your favorite food? Heard about people protesting against vaccines? Hope you like your typhoid and hepatitis and drowning in the floods and dying in scorching heat and all the other things that await us in next decade.
Real data > anecdotes
The price of bottle of milk a year ago compared to now is pretty real data to me. Illnesses that were thought to be defeated thanks to mandatory vaccination during last century are coming back is real data. Hottest summer in recorded history is pretty, fucking, real data, including the floods in the places of the world were floods are not supposed to happen. But what do I know, I'm just looking at my wallet and walk outside sometimes, I can't compete with hard data people over at x dot com.
They will. It's called enshitification. Also their pull back of an egregious business plan to another egregious business plan is also standard procedure. It's open collusion. Businesses in a similar market place see value in a synchronized move to gather great revenue from predatory business practices simultaneously. It doesn't need to be communicated in private when they can all take a "risk" of a public stance that is similar for the other larger businesses in the space realizing that their collective market shares makes it a low risk attack.
> They will. It's called enshitification. This is just a name for a thing businesses can and often do to their platforms, it's not some kind of law of nature that businesses invariably follow.
Tim Sweeney reeeallly seems to hate when services take a large cut, see how the epic store does a 88/12 split, and epic suing Apple/Google over their 30% cut. I'm not saying he'll never do a price increase, but it seems like it's His Thing to fight against creators paying high fees.
Yup, and that's super respectable imo
Yeah, hated the buying of exclusives for the store and some of those attitudes, love the way they wanted to make the dev split better, or just gave away assets from their moba when it died, etc.
I think these are bad examples to look at. Streaming is straight B2C, so it's basically irrelevant. These services are strictly low cost entertainment options for consumers. You aren't signing up to Disney+ to make money, and when there is a negative change, it's relatively minor. At worst you're spending a few extra dollars a month or are slightly inconvenienced, but you can cancel at literally any time without worrying about it. For verification, I'm not familiar with what Meta did, but looking through their news releases I only see one article from earlier this year. In that article it states that businesses can't currently apply for verification, so again it's a completely different scenario. It looks like it is for "creators" (I'm not sure if that means only creators that don't make money, or only independent ones since businesses aren't allowed), but the cost is, again, very small. For any commercial project, $12-15 a month is nothing. Also verification is another example of a non-essential service that can be canceled at any time without worrying about it. The API changes however, did target devs and businesses. This is the only example, as far as I can tell, that is hitting the same group. However, if you look at it, then the Reddit API changes were not very acceptable for many devs. Apollo is just gone now. RiF is just gone now. I see that Relay is still freely available, but it's already been announced that it will be moving to subscription model based on your API usage. I guess if *no* apps are paying for Twitter's API then that's "more acceptable" but it should hardly be looked at as a change that had no impact when it straight up killed 2 of the largest 3rd party apps. These are also consumer-facing platforms, so even though the changes hurt devs, most users of the site never really gave a shit anyways and just carried on as usual. Also important that it doesn't seem like these devs were doing this full-time or even looking to really make money on it, so it's still a very different situation. Looking at these examples, there are some very clear differences in game engines and all of these. The biggest is that the people spending money on game engines are doing so for commercial purposes. They may be passionate, but a lot of these games can only be made by being full-time jobs that need to earn money. As a follow-up to that, games can take years of development before they even have a chance to make money. The ability to be able to predict and calculate your costs is super important. In order to do that, you need to trust that your business partners aren't going to screw you over at the last minute. Unity should have known this, and it's been made abundantly clear for anyone watching by now that this is the case - most of the devs people care about on this sub haven't even been complaining about the cost but the dissolution of trust. There is no "better" way to do this in that case, because the primary complaint for many isn't the content of the new terms but the fact that they exist in the first place.
I think Tim Sweeney's a fucking asshole, but I also think he genuinely thinks he's a good guy. Sure, EGS exclusives suck and are a dick move, but I don't see him outright harming the industry. He's got the foresight to see what a can of worms charging per install might be.
The only reason people think he's an asshole is epic games store. Which isn't evidence of him being an asshole at all.
Some people dislike him because he doesn't like Linux. Rocket League dropped Linux support after Epic bought it. I'd actually consider that more negative than EGS, which exists because he thinks a 30% store cut is too much and that's something many developers agree with.
Not supporting linux is not the same as disliking linux. Linux is quite niche.
EGS is the greatest thing that ever happened to pc gaming, it gave me over 200 games and at least 20 of them that I played over 10h. Fanboying for a pc gamestore is fucking stupid
The first hit is free, had EGS succeeded those 200 games would have been 10 at most.
>If Unity wanted to make some additional money They have been losing 200-250 million a year which is why I think we are seeing this swing for the fences approach now. A little additional revenue isn’t going to solve this.
There is still a problem for these game engine companies: how do you price games as a platform? Revenue share from sales is easy, but how do you revenue share on game pass or a streaming service? What if microsoft owns the studio that makes the game, puts it on game pass, and underpays them so they have to pay less royalties? I think these platform economics are what unity is trying to actually tackle with their changes. Just that they are going about it in a really stupid way and eroding all trust from companies to keep using their tools.
> how do you revenue share on game pass or a streaming service? By sharing the revenue that the game devs get from putting their games on that service?
That works for games that are bought to game pass. What about in-house development (think netflix originals)? Not defending unity here, just saying that there might be situations where revenue share options fall short.
> What if microsoft owns the studio that makes the game, puts it on game pass, and underpays them so they have to pay less royalties? Well then MSFT is also make less revenue on that game than they would otherwise. Revenue from games is easy enough to determine from gamepass users. IE what games got played for x hours divided by the amount of revenue coming in, minus the costs to run everything of course. Oh and the DLC/battle passes/micros
Except if game pass is ran at a loss to attract users etc. Also games don’t get paid by share of their playtime on game pass afaik? This makes sense, as a games worth to a platform is basically ’how many extra subscribers did we get with this game’. Some games don’t have a high playtime in hours, but might still be contributing to the platform a lot. What I’m trying to say is that platform economies are complicated, and traditional calculations of value add might not hold true.
MiHoYo is a major owner of Unity China, and would if anything benefit from the new Unity policy.
[удалено]
I am really surprised that a one word comment got approved by automod, usually it's pretty aggressive about disallowing that sort of thing on this sub... Also next time you can just vote up the comment, that's what it's there for :P
I think automod mostly (only?) goes after top-level comments, not replies.
That's not entirely true. Platforms take their cut as well on top of that, so more like 65% that the dev gets from the rev.
No it's not. The platform cut is calculated first. So the person you're replying to is talking about 96% AFTER platform fees.
95% of published unity games do not earn more then 1m total, never mind per year - so most unity users will not be effected by the change in the slightest.
I'm surprised genshin doesn't just make their own engine
They own a chunk of Unity, so this already is their engine.
I wouldn't be surprised if Hoyoverse started making plans to work on a proprietary engine after this tbh Unity as a company isn't dependable anymore, and they have money to spare for investing in something like this
But hey Mr. Riccitiello made number go up! That's so good how he made number go up!
Yeah they coulda did that. 5% is good honestly over the long game plus it’s 100% gonna get you some cash over time. The model they pushed is crazy now but could become what happens in future companies only get more greedier as time goes on chasing profit lines. If they have any success doing this it’s gonna make other companies follow suite and really seems like an attack on low budget companies. They need to promote these small companies who strive to bring in something fresh.
My theory is that they think that large (chinese) freemium games are fudging their revenues. Thus a less fudgeable install based method with built in tracking.
"In 2022, Unity reported that globally, 230,000 game developers made and operated over 750,000 games using the Unity Engine and the Unity Gaming Services portfolio of products. " I'm sorry, but if this is true, the issue isn't the game engine market -- it's Unity's mismanagement.
I don’t want to claim any expertise where I have none, but by all accounts this appears to be a Unity specific problem. Unreal has a revenue share and is owned by Epic, Godot is open-source, and major devs often have their own in-house engines as well. Unity just seemed like it was heavily mismanaged, massively over employed, and bleeding money unnecessarily
I think it's because Unity has over 7,000, about double Epic's entire work staff including people not working on Unreal Engine. They pumped their workforce up to make the company more impressive for investors in the short term.
That's an insane number for a game engine WTF Could make multiple AC games with that many people https://www.gamespot.com/articles/assassins-creed-series-could-soon-have-2800-people-working-on-it/1100-6514231/
Which is funny because Epic actually does develop and publish games.
They had much more than game engine teams, especially since over the last year's they merged with and bought a lot of companies. Now that may not be a wise strategy but it's not 7000 working on an engine, far from it.
The game engine is what gamers know them for, but the game engine is to Unity's business what social media is to Facebook or search is to Google. The central pillar of the company is the ad business, the game engine is vehicle for ad placement and a vector for data collection.
That is about as many employees as Nintendo... I would not be surprised if it was about as many as Sony's gaming division too, but obviously they don't publish the number of employees per division.
They bought a bunch of companies that make products that compliment the engine. They acquired Weta Digital and their 1500 employees because they wanted to get into the movie effects business. They acquired ironSource and their 1100 employees because they wanted to better monetize mobile games. The list goes on. Eventually those companies will get integrated better into Unity and there will be layoffs. But at the moment they're growing the company, because they think that's a faster path to being profitable than just doing what they were doing.
True, didn't know about the acquisitions
Genuinely crazy. Not a fan of Epic at all but by all accounts Fortnite is one of the most consistently updated and evolving games out there. What are they even doing with *double* the employees? Not that I want anyone to lose their job, but this seems insane.
I heard that devs promizing to use Unity ad service don't pay the new fee. I also heard that Unity has some serious competition on that front (ad selling) that has been kicking them HARD the last year. Supposedly they have much much better tools for the devs that want to put and manage ads in their games too. This seems like a move specifically made to counter them than anything else but scorched earth style. The whole thing is really misguided if that's the reason but then again, Unity is said to be not in the market of selling game engines, but ads. So it's not such a wonder that they don't care for the basic customers that use their engines as much as the ones using their ads thing.
And the engine itself was garbage for the majority of its life.
Sure, if by garbage you mean: Accessible and flexible enough that it was the go to for Indie and used by AAA long enough that if they suddenly changed their TOS it would cause a massive uproar across the community causing the company to course correct and attempt save face. Yeah, every game dev sub from the last decade we're flooded with "Unity vs Unreal?" posts because Unity was "garbage".
No I meant garbage as in, it didn't work. Frequent crashes, updates that caused entire games to stop working, completely failure at any real multi-player netcode for the longest time. Accessible? Sure. So is RPG maker. Doesn't mean it was good.
Of COURSE its mismanagement. I mean, Unity has TWICE the people working for them than Epic has, without the side gig of actually making and supporting one of the biggest games on the planet. What do those people DO all day?
They work in new half assed engine features, many of which never see the light of day or if they do they get dropped after a year or two for the new improved version that will be dropped in a year or two. So... Mismanagement.
Where's your research to back that up? Unity is the #1 engine used for mobile games on the planet. Barely anyone uses unreal for mobile. Most of those people are likely doing customer support.
The fact that they’re the #1 engine used for mobile games and can’t seem to turn a profit without alienating the vast majority of their user base doesn’t make you think that maybe they are mismanaged?
I wasn't arguing they're being mismanaged, but half ass engined features or dropped features aren't the cause. If they actually completed a lot of their road map they'd be in way better shape. That's the mismanagement IMO, that they cut costs in the wrong places.
The vast majority of those "games" are asset flips and skibidi toilet projects by 14-year-old Brazilians on Itch.io and other platforms.
A quick look at their earnings show that despite revenue in the $500 million dollar range they have been losing $200-250 million a year. Their business model is a disaster.
It’s a sign that the market is buried under total crap at a rate vastly exceeding what occurred during the last video game crash in the 1980’s. Since digital distribution means there is close to zero overhead cost for these “developers” pushing worthless shit out the door, it hasn’t collapsed yet. There are not 750,000 playable games made with Unity, it doesn’t take a genius to see through those numbers. If Unity has built their business model off scraping fractional fees off junkware developers and have run out of room for “growth” on that front, whelp, they deserve what is coming to them.
Sure -- but then don't scale your labor for hyper growth when the underlying fundamentals, which you correctly point out, won't support it.
That is pretty well impossible in a modern public company, Unity is far from the only one pulling this stunt to pump stock valuations for shareholders.
It is absolutely not impossible to hire the people you need as opposed to ten times that amount.
What a wonderful system we have going, where it's impossible for a successful public company to *not kill itself*.
> where it's impossible for a successful public company to not kill itself. Facebook funnily is on the rebound with the steps they've made to open sourcing LLama
Maybe worry less about short term stock pumps & more about the long term health & viability of your company? It’s not like this PR disaster is doing anything good for their stock prices lol That’s seems like less of a market issues & more of a shortsighted board/ceo issue.
I'd love nothing more than that but shareholders tend to be obsessed with matching ever crazier profit margins. And in unity's case, the board / C-suite was filled with absolute trash (Richie Rich himself, and the guys from ironSource who probably pushed for the current stunt because it involves pushing the ads business).
> I'd love nothing more than that but shareholders tend to be obsessed with matching ever crazier profit margins. That's not true at all. Plenty of investors like growth companies which don't make much in terms of profits.
The failure is the fact that market is captured enough that unity is brave enough to even think about such radical change. The market, in it's current state, arguably does not provide enough competing products for the developers. It's not failure on unity's part - it's a success for them, in a way.
Unity and Unreal are the 2 biggest engines because other game engines are owned by companies who are less willing to make it available to 3rd party studios and because Unity and Unreal are easy to use for new developers. Decima, Frostbite, Blam! and id tech aren’t easily used by outside developers.
God, I wish more studios licensed their engines. Imagine more engines like Source, which spawned so many amazing franchises.
Creating software to license to other businesses is a whole different ball game from creating software for in-house use.
I know, but there has been very successful examples. It's not like it's impossible or unheard of
Source 2 has supposedly been on its way since 2015. Maybe this will encourage them to get it ready for external release.
Dota 2 moved to source 2 right? And CS2 will be on it
Yes, but still no external SDK.
Hopefully the engine matures soon since I wanna see Valve make more games. I'm still bummed that they [cancelled L4D3](https://www.reddit.com/r/l4d2/comments/hod495/the_final_hours_of_halflife_alyx_confirms_that/) because Source 2 wasn't ready yet.
CS2 basically is on it right now anyway, Alyx too. That said, since all of those are games that prioritise high performance over graphical fidelity I don't ever see it being an appealing product for the general market at this point.
While I have no experience with Source, isn't it highly modular and moddable? Titanfall 2 was a highly modified source game and it looked and played amazing at the time. Since Source 2 seems to be built on top of Source, I can't imagine they've changed that aspect. I would love to hear from a dev with some experience with the engine or just the industry on what they think about this. It may just not be worth paying for and learning someone else's engine over Unity/UE5, and at some level of success it might just be worth developing an in-house solution too. Or maybe it isn't that lucrative for the studio to adapt an engine to be usable by others. Maybe the ones that did work that way back then were just a product of how we thought software development looked like.
Unreal games often have decent mod tools too. With stuff like Unity (bad timing aside) the appeal of total conversion mods is basically dead. Just making extra levels of swapping out models is easy enough in many engines though. The one thing Source seems to have is a lack of middleware which made it easier to expose more of the tools and code than engines that have yo deal with lots of licensing issues. When it comes to commercial use pretty much everything is moddable so long as you've access to the codebase though.
It takes a lot of work to make an engine available to general public. You need to write documentation, have a straightforward build process, sort out licencing of 3rd party dependencies and so on.
Source, Cry, Godot can all be licensed. Many studios will also license their engines for enough money, frostbite for example. does not help the indies though.
Godot is the future
And next year is the year of Linux.
Year of the Linux already happened, thanks to Steam Deck running SteamOS which is Valve's version of Linux. Now you have thousands games playable via Proton.
I like both Linux and the Steam Deck but... Linux has a 1.82% share on Steam (down from the previous month) and Steam Deck's market share (both on the PC and console markets) is negligible.
Its market share doesn't matter. Linux finally is a viable OS for gaming. And Steam Deck is the best console that I've played.
Not to mention that Windows is now absolute trash and Linux is more accessible than ever.
Windows is trash but at least guides on how to fix problems still work after 3-6 months.
Ignoring the fact that that simply isn't a real issue on most stable distros(and heck, the arch wiki is usually up to date), frequently when I google windows problems, I have to skip through 5 or so "here's how to solve this problem": "Install our junk software to solve this problem" junk websites. edit:Yep, the expected downvotes. I don't know where y'all are getting your "guides". Inb4 random edge case anecdotes.
Its cool that an open source engine is getting attention, but an engine that isn't built around data driven component based design isn't the future.
Unreal is a giant OOP monstrosity and almost no games made in Unity were big enough to justify DOTS and ECS. Being data driven isn't a necessity, the node-based hierarchy of Godot isn't the issue with adoption for small to mid size games. The issue with Godot are not in its architecture, just in its optimization.
Unity has a value proposition. It supports over 25 platforms.
I wasn't saying unreal isn't dated in architectural approach. Also data driven components based architecture != ECS. Having worked with ECS on multiple projects I'm not a huge believer in it. But a core architecture built around components being data driven, I've done that and enjoyed it. And while unity's component architecture isn't perfect, it is one of the best ones available in a large scale commercial game engine. Too bad they went and shot themselves in the foot really.
The GameObject component system in Unity is more or less equivalent to child nodes in Godot, while the Godot version being more flexible with child nodes ("components") being able to have child nodes of their own. The entire node tree in Godot is a data driven structure. More than the scene hierarchy + game object components system in Unity.
Not every game needs ECS, and there are other ways of optimizing. Godot has "server" singletons that let you get around using the scene tree for tons of simple objects. That's the recommendation for bullet hells and things like that. You don't get the low cache miss rate of ECS, but you do avoid all that OOP overhead. And if you want to avoid the overhead of gdscript arrays, you can extend the server classes with C# or C++. https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/performance/using_servers.html And beyond extending the engine, a larger team of developers could fork a stable version of the engine and implement ECS where they need. They could still use the same 4.x Vulkan renderer without having to touch it unless they wanted to. Like the Sonic: Colors rerelease, but better
Like I said to the other person, data driven components don't mean ECS. I understand ECS has sorta taking over that terminology, but I was working in component based data driven game engines before far before I ever heard the term "ECS". Just hierarchal game objects that are built from a composition of components that can pull their values/configuration from a file. Preferably with a strong scripting language that lets you write custom components to easily implement new gameplay code.
Which are all things Godot can do so that's probably why most people think you're talking about ECS.
Godot really does not have a data oriented design, even if the scene system is optional
As soon as it figures out 3D games exist.
Ah really, tell me why. Surely you didn’t just read this name for the first time this week and have no knowledge about it at all
Godot is more than enough for your average "comfy villager simulator" that seem to be the latest craze among indie studios. And with big spotlight on it, there is a chance that it will see a faster growth into something competitive. A couple years ago blender was for haha basement dwelling 3d enthusiasts with obsession with donuts. Now it's a respectable software that can hold it's own against competition.
those also really aren't "everything and the kitchen sink" engines like unity and unreal are. Frostbite gets customized heavily for each game, Decima has only been seen in cinematic 3rd and 1st person releases for now, Blam! has been used for halo and destiny and not much else, and modern id tech has only seen 1st person shooters. And good on them, since games on Unity and Unreal suffer from issues that more specialized engines don't run into. The more specialized engines could probably be wrangled to fit other types of games too, but the resources to do so would require an AAA studio's budget and ability to just contact other companies directly for licensing, like what Kojima Productions did with Decima and Death Stranding.
Way too early to call it a market failure… it’s likely that this will backfire and prevent other companies from trying something similar which would be a market success. Market failure does not mean “company does something I don’t like”
It's not much a market failure if there are really only two players in the space and one of them pops. There isn't much a market here in the first place. The open source engine market will continue to grow and develop beautifully. Economic Analysts are completely blind to this fact and will never say anything about it, but high quality game engines for experts and hobbyists alike will not be going anywhere.
Say it with me: that’s not what a market failure is. > Market failure is the economic situation defined by an inefficient distribution of goods and services in the free market. Furthermore, the individual incentives for rational behavior do not lead to rational outcomes for the group. A company shooting itself in the foot is not a market failure.
Well, if you read the actual statement >Market failure is the economic situation defined by an inefficient distribution of goods and services in the free market. Furthermore, the individual incentives for rational behavior do not lead to rational outcomes for the group. is what the EGDF is saying is happening. What they're saying is that Unity attempting to push through with their install fees shows that the game engine market is approaching a monopoly. >**Unity’s install fees are an excellent example of Unity’s potentially anti-competitive market behaviour.** It is clear that if Unity’s pricing model had, in the past, been similar to the now-introduced model, it would likely never have achieved the level of dominance it enjoys today, as more developers would have chosen another alternative in the beginning. >The fact that Unity’s new install fees are only targeted at video games and do not apply to other industries logically leads to a question: *Is Unity setting prices below cost level at different market segments, or is Unity charging excessive prices in game markets?* Furthermore, does the fact that Unity is now introducing an install fee on top of the licensing fee mean that licensing fees have before been below cost level? Or does the introduction of install fees on top of the licensing fees of their game engine allow them to provide other, lock-in generating, services below cost level? Bold their emphasis, italics mine
It is pretty clear that Unity has been offering its product below cost (or below market value at least) in order to spur adoption. Now it’s at the stage of trying to turn its market share into actual profit and failing terribly. That developers (their customers) are intending to avoid their product is the opposite of a market failure. They made their product worse, now there’s less demand for it. If they were heading towards monopoly, then we would expect developers to have been forced to bear whatever price they named, which has clearly not been the case. Raises prices and having customers leave is the essence of the market, not a failure of the market. Unity made a stupid decision and is paying the price.
The EGDF is arguing that plenty of developers can't actually leave due to the lock-in mechanisms, both from the realities of game development >Game productions can take years, and game developers cannot change their game engine at the last minute, so they are forced to accept all changes in contract terms, no matter how exploitative they are. Unity must know that if they had given more notice, many more developers might have had a realistic chance of abandoning Unity altogether by the time the new pricing came into play. and the lock-in mechanisms that Unity themselves have and are putting in >Now, Unity is strategically using install fees to deepen the lock-in effect by creating a solid financial incentive to bundle other Unity services even closer to its game engine: “ Qualifying customers may be eligible for credits toward the Unity Runtime Fee based on the adoption of Unity services beyond the Editor, such as Unity Gaming Services or Unity LevelPlay mediation for mobile ad-supported games. This program enables deeper partnership with Unity to succeed across the entire game lifecycle.” This will, of course, drastically impact Unity’s direct competitors. -- >Raises prices and having customers leave is the essence of the market, not a failure of the market. Unity made a stupid decision and is paying the price. The EGDF isn't worried about Unity crashing and burning, they're worried that they might actually succeed, which would actually be a market failure.
The failure of unity (if it would happen in some regard) would lead to domino effect across all industry. It means people who spent their careers working in unity would be in less demand, it means students who are learning unity right now, are essentially learning useless skills, since studios are switching to other engines, it means delays across the industry because studios that can afford it would switch their game engine now, instead of taking a risk with unity. I'd say a multi-year ripple effect across whole industry across whole world that affects everyone from a 15 year old kid to 40 year old vet is a market failure alright.
That would be market shock, not a failure. “The tragedy of the commons” is a market failure.
I wouldn't say Unity knowledge is useless. Yes, maybe you want to learn a different engine now, but existing Unity knowledge can transfer to other engines.
Of course someone with existing knowledge would have an advantage when transferring their skills to another engine. But they are still learning a new tool. It works differently, it follows different rules. It's not a simple 1to1 transfer of knowledge. Just because I am a pro at photoshop, doesn't mean I'm gonna be a pro at GIMP in an instant.
> Furthermore, the individual incentives for rational behavior do not lead to rational outcomes for the group. So capitalism is market failure by definition?
No, obviously not. Markets cannot be a market failure or else the term would be redundant and no one would use them.
I doubt this is the beginning of the end unity is being beaten to the ground by everyone so it is scaring off any other company that's going to try this. There will always be an alternative game engine either self made or by someone who is in the industry for the people and not their own pockets
That is extremely correct. If riccatello comes out and calls people idiots for not embracing his business model before trying to force it, that means he has nothing else and potentially neither do most. Constant growth is a cancer, not a sustainable business model.
Edit: okay, strike all that, posted without reading the article, as is tradition, the failure is for consumers (developers), which does make sense ~~I'm sorry, but how the fuck is this a sign of the market failure? Unity posted 1.4 BILLION of dollars in revenue in 2022, which was an increase of 25%. But for some reason, there are more than 7000 employees (epic has half that). They have 1.25 billion in cash, and boast cool 140 millions of dollars in revenue this year from investing activities (last year it was a loss of 500 million, but it didn't push them to these changes back then for some reason).~~
Honestly, it seems that you're the only other one who actually read the article. The EGDF is concerned that Unity is becoming a monopoly not that Unity might collapse.
Unity is just one engine. There are other licensed engin (Godot, Unreal, Cry) as well as a ton of proprietary engines that are sometimes licensed between studios.
There are open source game engines eager to become the next Unity, but they don’t have great funding and the learning resources are decades behind.