I’m sorry, but Unity is just not a viable entity. They have consistently lost money since 2004, and in 2022 reported nearly 1 billion in net losses. Just close it down!
Despite all that’s happened, at least one source told the outlet they don’t think Unity’s moves were made out of complete malice. “They need to do something to make more money. Sadly, it wasn’t delivered well, but the need to make more money is still there.”
And that’s why every dev (who can) should run as far away from Unity as possible, because Unity will try to screw them some other way.
To where? Godot isn’t there yet (sorry, maybe in five years, it’s impressive and on the right track. Not today). And unreal is under the same pressure.
You know what else isn't there yet? Unity, Unreal, Source, CryEngine... literally every commercial game engine requires development if you're actually looking to push hardware limits. They're just toolboxes.
Godot is no different, except that developers are going to be much more likely to release their changes publicly.
Keep in mind that the console makers likely don’t want too much of their SDKs to become part of Godot’s open codebase. They license it to publishers who promise them that they won’t divulge important IP.
keep in mind that unreal engine is also open source. Epic just has a system where if you get the go-ahead from a console maker, and they can confirm that, then you get access to the parts of the engine that connect to the console SDK’s
if you are an indie dev today, you can get the go-ahead from sony/nintendo/whoever and launch your UE/unity game on those platforms without much fuss. if you have a godot game you have to contact a third party porting house and ask them to port the game to those consoles. those companies have already made the godot hookups into platform specific SDK’s but you still have to contact, and licence them to do this, if they accept working with you.
keep in mind that unreal engine is also open source.
The Unreal Engine is not open source by any reasonable definition of open source. Being "source available" is not the same as open source, as you can't use the code whoever you like.
you can’t use most open source code “however you like” either, they all have licenses. the main restriction with unreal engine is that you can’t mix it with copyleft licenses and you can’t use it commercially.
but you can do what most people want to do, modify, extend, fix, learn. that’s the most relevant thing for what we are talking about here
you can’t use most open source code “however you like” either
Alright, sure my language was overly broad. "The licensing is restrictive in a way which makes it clearly not open source." would have been a better choice.
...the main restriction with unreal engine is that you can’t mix it with copyleft licenses and you can’t use it commercially.
So, it's not open source.
...but you can do what most people want to do, modify, extend, fix, learn. that’s the most relevant thing for what we are talking about here
That still doesn't make it open source, mainly because you are missing one of biggest aspects, distribution.
Open source != copyleft. That’s free software if you want to go that route.
Also, you can distribute your version, of course you can. Both your changes and binary form. It’s just all distributed under epics unreal engine licence
Also, you can distribute your version, of course you can.
Are you sure?
You may Distribute Engine Code (including as modified by you) in Source Code or object code to a third party who is separately licensed by us to use the same version of the Engine Code that you are Distributing.
Any public Distribution of Engine Tools (e.g., intended generally for third parties who are separately licensed by us to use the Engine Code) must take place through a marketplace operated by Epic such as the Unreal Engine Marketplace (e.g., for Distributing a Product’s modding tool or editor to end users) or through a fork of Epic’s GitHub UnrealEngine Network (e.g., for Distributing Source Code).
So, you can only distribute source to people who are specifically licensed by Epic to use the source. That sure doesn't sound anything like "open source" to me.
you can only distribute your source under the licence of the source code, yes. just like copyleft licences. The whole concept of open source is demonstrably, flaky.
You want it to be a concept closer to free software, I say if the source is open, you can modify it and your changes are able to have an effect then it’s open source.
I don’t think we are going to resolve this. I would prefer if it was free software but that’s not gonna happen for godot or unreal engine
kinda, its MIT so it’s not free. I can, for example, change a bunch of godot. release my changes in binary only form and you can’t demand the source from me. I mean you can but i’ve no legal compulsion to do that.
i don’t think unreal is under the same pressure for three reasons:
they already have a reasonable revenue sharing model. they make a lot more per licensee than unity does because they take a cut of your sales rather than charging a per-engineer license for the dev kit.
epic’s headcount is not nearly as horrendously bloated, even before the recent layoffs.
the company is still privately held with Tim Sweeney the majority owner.
points 1 and 2 mean epic is actually profitable, and has been for decades at this point. meanwhile, the publicly traded unity has struggled to break even for most of its existence
Its stating that because he owns a majority share, he has the ability to suppress publicly traded short term value inflation in favor of showing other private investors that long term growth is both sustainable and profitable.
Which, as shown by how completely anti-short term the epic games store is run, is clearly a sales pitch that his other private investors are buying into.
Which is probably the exact reason they are remaining off the public market
It points at the long term focused business decisions, and then points at the private nature of its investors, and says “hey thats a pattern we see a lot with privately owned and invested companies.”
Yes, point 1 is the model they should have adopted in the first place. The whole problem with their original announcement was that it was a) retroactive, b) structured in a way that would significantly hurt f2p and indie games, and c) based on installs rather than sales, meaning you could get charged multiple times for the same sale. If Unity had come out and said “starting with Unity 2024, we will be switching to a revenue sharing model", a lot of people might have still been upset, but it would not have caused nearly the same shitstorm and they would have had a better path towards sustainability.
Point 3 is absolutely real, because when you own your company, you do not have legal obligations to throngs of faceless public stockholders. Companies turn to shit all the time when they go public, because the pressure for immediate quarterly returns outweighs the pressure to maintain long-term sustainability. I think it’s exactly why platforms like Steam have avoided enshittifying, because their owners know they can make more money long term by building a sustainable platform that people like rather than burning their users to make a quick buck and juice their next quarterly report.
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