Disclaimer: I work for Unity (and it was a hell of a week
)In the live fireside chat Marc Whitten said that we will be changing the TOS so that any future changes will only be applied from a particular version of Unity and not retroactively.
Unity and a data-oriented approach
- Thread starter Scott_Arm
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Disclaimer: I work for Unity (and it was a hell of a week
)In the live fireside chat Marc Whitten said that we will be changing the TOS so that any future changes will only be applied from a particular version of Unity and not retroactively.
They've also shown they'll respond to their devs who have demonstrated they won't take abuse. Try it again and see what happens! the execs should be scared at this point and in full "we need to make amends and restore faith or our business is sunk" mode. Of course, they may not be and may be ultra aggressive in a couple of years, but we can see how things evolve.
Unity had that too - they removed it! There's a lot of question that's even legal. Any of these companies can try that sort of shenanigans. None of the big players are good agents. They are just competing for mindshare and money and all are vulnerable to the risks of management and attitude changes.
It's not just development but knowledge and best practice and workflows and assets and features of the engines. In chatter over the alternatives, experienced Unity devs have reported Godot isn't ready for prime-time. Flax has a dodgy license (apparently being redrafted). Unigine is for PC. Unreal is quite a different beast (C++ over C# for one thing) not to mention we don't want a single-monopoly on gamedev. etc. There are no direct comparables and a swap to another engine is a massive backstep in some ways. It's a sacrifice worth making if your engine-dev is trying to screw you over, but not one worth it otherwise.
2.5% is very reasonable for a tool that complex. The main issue is the management needs to stop trying to grow in random directions and make smart business moves including progressing the engine, or the alternatives will catch up.
I'd recommend new developers try a range of engines and then develop games for those engines rather than picking a dream game and picking a major engine to drive it. In the case that you want a multiplatform title with various features, if you're a full-fat develop you can use whatever with low level API calls etc., but for a lot of indies, if you're already a Unity dev, the engine should be good for a couple of years. Maybe then the execs will push the fee a little further out, and a little further? Eagle eyes will be on the TOCs each release. So we can use that time to wait for other engines to develop and get our feet wet with them while Unity can also get to a healthier state and hopefully pull up its socks, or we walk once the other engines are ready to take us.
All round, more competition, some investment in the new engines from those who are leaving Unity, an overall rebalancing of power. A healthy shake-up of the industry in the end.
Agreed. It is less than the 5% Epic charges and is enough to cause many developers to think twice when making game engine decisions.
You (Unity) already explicitly made that change in 2019.
As Shifty Geezer notes, Unity then simply deleted that clause in 2023. Sinking more years and costs into using Unity will only make it even harder to disentangle when the same people who are still there try this yet again, or worse.
The dev of Wipeout-clone BallisticNG has said they won't port their game to NSW as Nintendo requires they use the latest Unity. I don't understand that as it means turning down money from a port which is the cheapest ROI once you have a game. Discussion has varied opinions including perhaps the new T&Cs would then retro-affect their Steam copy or complicate development, but it does raise an issue about licensing and changes.
Conceptually, TOS shouldn't change 'mid contract'. As such, someone should be able to use Unity 2022 forever without a change in terms. But then Unity can't move people onto a new Unity with a new license - 2022 and earlier are good enough for a lot of games with no need to upgrade. That ties Unity to their licensing model of yesteryear which was fine back then but no good now.
That must be their concern. How can they introduce a new revenue sharing system like Unreal if the T&Cs cannot be usurped? If they can't change licensing model, they risk being eclipsed. Whatever they do now, they are going to be crucified by developers for the changes. I can say what they did with the uTax was bonkers and wrong, but I can't say what the right next move is regards T&Cs. They'll introduce a very fair 2.5% revenue share, but everyone will stick to old Unity's and they won't see any money. If Unity don't force people to upgrade, they'll get no money. If they do force people, there'll be understandable outrage. Can they coax people by offering a better engine and experience worth the new TOS? Not in any short term so their revenue remains limited.
Conceptually, TOS shouldn't change 'mid contract'. As such, someone should be able to use Unity 2022 forever without a change in terms. But then Unity can't move people onto a new Unity with a new license - 2022 and earlier are good enough for a lot of games with no need to upgrade. That ties Unity to their licensing model of yesteryear which was fine back then but no good now.
That must be their concern. How can they introduce a new revenue sharing system like Unreal if the T&Cs cannot be usurped? If they can't change licensing model, they risk being eclipsed. Whatever they do now, they are going to be crucified by developers for the changes. I can say what they did with the uTax was bonkers and wrong, but I can't say what the right next move is regards T&Cs. They'll introduce a very fair 2.5% revenue share, but everyone will stick to old Unity's and they won't see any money. If Unity don't force people to upgrade, they'll get no money. If they do force people, there'll be understandable outrage. Can they coax people by offering a better engine and experience worth the new TOS? Not in any short term so their revenue remains limited.
Unreal has to compete with Unity 2022 too, it's not all that relevant to the relative market for Unity 2024.
The pipedream of growing to justify their size and marketcap will have to die. The CEO tried to get more continuing income from past monsterhits with a 50 IQ play, either directly or by forcing revenue targets and then staying ignorant of how his underlings were trying to achieve it. They'll have to be satisfied working for an ordinary company and not an infinite growth one.
The pipedream of growing to justify their size and marketcap will have to die. The CEO tried to get more continuing income from past monsterhits with a 50 IQ play, either directly or by forcing revenue targets and then staying ignorant of how his underlings were trying to achieve it. They'll have to be satisfied working for an ordinary company and not an infinite growth one.
I am partial to Tom Francis's response to this line of argument:
He was more open than I am to re-added TOS guarantees (which have still not happened yet, to be clear).
That's not the argument I'm making. Whether they spent wisely or not (they didn't), if a TOS can't be changed for an ongoing endeavour, it means the companies are locked in in perpetuity. You might start with a Free model, grow, then need an income and find you can't start charging one. You've no idea in Year 1 what you Year 20 requirements will be so you can design a license agreement that'll work for both Year 1 and Year 20 users! Being able to change how your business operates seems to me a sensible and necessary requirement if companies are to be allowed grow and evolve.
When it comes to Unity's situation, I shouldn't have to pay for their mistakes but if the choice is a 2.5% revenue fee over $1 million or the company going bust and me losing Unity altogether, I'd choose the former. Sadly we live in a world where decision-makers can make a complete hash of everything without consequences, so they dick about like this and we have to make best of a bad situation. In the UK, Woking Borough Council went bankrupt £2 billion in debt because they spent on an insane redevelopment strategy. The people responsible aren't punished at all. If the residents have to pay more council tax to pay to get the bins emptied, I doubt many will refuse on principle it's unfair! Letting Unity crash and burn to the ground would only hurt the shareholders. The execs are so damned rich they don't lose anyway. One less yacht to worry about.
On the matter of Unity's spending nonsense, Epic today announced they are cutting staff:
When it comes to Unity's situation, I shouldn't have to pay for their mistakes but if the choice is a 2.5% revenue fee over $1 million or the company going bust and me losing Unity altogether, I'd choose the former. Sadly we live in a world where decision-makers can make a complete hash of everything without consequences, so they dick about like this and we have to make best of a bad situation. In the UK, Woking Borough Council went bankrupt £2 billion in debt because they spent on an insane redevelopment strategy. The people responsible aren't punished at all. If the residents have to pay more council tax to pay to get the bins emptied, I doubt many will refuse on principle it's unfair! Letting Unity crash and burn to the ground would only hurt the shareholders. The execs are so damned rich they don't lose anyway. One less yacht to worry about.
On the matter of Unity's spending nonsense, Epic today announced they are cutting staff:
Considering the crazy money they make, even they are having to optimise. There's no sanity to Unity's acquisitions which aren't hugely profitable and bolstering the company's income. Hence they feel a monetary pressure they shouldn't. Shedding dead weight seems necessary, but I doubt they will. Everything they've done since floating has been a disaster.
Only in order to continue to push growth of profits at scales that investors are demanding, not to make profits to sustain and grow the company.
Unity Announces Leadership Transition
Unity (NYSE: U) (the “Company”), the world’s leading platform for creating and growing real-time 3D (RT3D) content, today announced that John Riccitie
www.businesswire.com
good riddance. Unity staff maybe could take legal action against him. What a foolish way to waste millions of dollars in brand value.Unity Announces Leadership Transition
Unity (NYSE: U) (the “Company”), the world’s leading platform for creating and growing real-time 3D (RT3D) content, today announced that John Riccitiewww.businesswire.com
No doubt Riccitiello is the MVP of Unreal Engine right now, which is beating their biggest threat without any more weapons than a few simple statements.
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Right. The timing couldn't have been better, either. You had the first batch of UE5 games shipping with performance issues or running at very low resolutions on console, and the alternative engine is shooting itself in the foot and trying to cut off the leg to stop the bleeding.
The board is the real problem, Riccitiello is just the fallguy. They will (and need to) find other ways to generate more income and lower operating costs.
Unity CEO abandons ship after recent backlash to business model changes - KitGuru
In recent weeks, Unity has been in hot water with the developer community. Those who actively use an
www.kitguru.net
hope they recover from this. I like Unity and alternatives, and now it has a nice extension for VS Code -along with .net maui-, so it might be fun to toy around with it
Interesting to see Unity picking up a Forward+ renderer for their URP pipeline. Cool that it'll be a gold standard for high-end mobile graphics ...
In Unity DOTS, the only actively developed options left are between URP and HDRP. HDRP is not supported on mobile devices and even if you don't use DOTS, Unity still wants to eventually make URP the default option. OpenGL ES also can't be used at all with deferred renderer in URP so a version bump (GLES 2.0 vs GLES 3.0) is a lot more tame in terms of system requirements to be able to use the forward+ renderer ...
I guess Unity hasn't given up on DOTS. Livestream tomorrow, unless the livestream is to announce it's dead lol.
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Let's Dev: DOTS Livestream
Join us Live on Wednesday at 12pm ET for a stream you won't want to miss!Learn more about DOTS: https://unity.com/dots
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