This. Who in their right mind is going to develop their game using Unity after this? Their only revenue source from the point forward is going to be games already published.
The thing that’s crazy is there are some Wall Street analysts who are more bullish on Unity in our current context, which is hilarious to me, because given how they’ve (perhaps illegally) pissed off so many different and critical parts of their ecosystem, the only clear trajectory I see for Unity at this point is down.
Not easily, but if you become a game developer you can start to tell at a glance. Unity games have a very specific type of jank and look + feel. (So do Unreal, Source, and Godot games.)
Even if a game is highly stylized, a Unity game always “feels” like a Unity game. Kerbal Space Program, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, Pokemon Go, Cuphead, Untitled Goose Game, Cities Skylines, Valheim, etc. It’s a combination of physics, shaders, and input latency that’s hard to put into words.
The closest I’ve come to seeing a game that breaks out of the “made in Unity” feel is Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, which was made in Unity but pretends to be made in Source (the original Stanley Parable was made in Source).
Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but last I know of, any games made with Unity start up with their name and logo first, or at least shortly after their intro.
This feels like Reddit all over again. There’s no saving it, their CEO has long touted the “gotcha bitch!” approach to extorting money from users and called people who didn’t “fucking idiots”. This is all he knows.
I don’t understand how unity has any legal standing to retroactively charge new fees to developers who have already made their games. You’re only required to abide by terms agreed to in a deal as it was written at the time of agreement. Isn’t that literally how EVERYTHING works?
Unity doesn’t give out perpetual licenses any more, it’s a subscription model. If you don’t like it, you can leave at any point in time, but then you also don’t have a license to distribute their engine along with your game.
The problematic part (for Unity) is that they used to have a clause in the contract that said that you could keep using the old license terms as long as you didn’t update the engine. They removed that last year, but developers who are using an older version than that should be able to have a chance at the court. The problem is just that small indie devs don’t have the money for this multi-year legal battle.
Honestly I agree. If you are building a game with the same mechanics of other games that already exist its fine. Once you reach a point where to need access to the engine code itself to make something a reality, you are fucked.
So far the most popular games ive seen pushback from are Slay the Spire, Cult of the Lamb and Darkest Dungeon. Those games also have the benefit of dedicated fanbases. Those people will easily follow them.
Slay the Spire in their statement specifically said theyre looking into other engines. I meant that if said games were ported the audiences would follow.
They didn't say it but I'd assume for Spire they're looking at Godot.
Honestly wouldn't be surprised if we see developers make tools to more easily port over games to Godot from Unity.
Specifically, Riccitiello said that developers who don’t implement monetization systems early on are “the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots”.
I didn’t even know he had said that till this news.
I think that may be the greatest dammage they’ve done to themselves. They used to be trusted as one of the good players. Now they can’t be trusted anymore. Apart from unhappy developers leaving, who would start to develop with Unity after this?
I have a pipe dream of slowly developing a game of my own, but even if I think I could eventually figure out my own homebrew engine, the whole thing is operating on my free time so that’s even more unrealistic of a goal that’s either gonna lead nowhere or to massive headache down the line.
So I looked around and liked a few things about Unity:
2D game support
Easy publishing to consoles
Free to develop in while I test the waters
Plethora of training material available
I’ve sunk a decent amount of time into training materials already, and was starting to feel good about the whole process when this news hit. Not even gonna question it, I’m looking elsewhere. Godot looking mighty tempting to avoid any shenanigans like this. Ultimately if my dream ever realizes I’d like to be able to publish to console, but there are routes available for that with Godot and maybe the options would improve by the time I reach that point.
Yeah I’m in the same boat. Looked at all the engines, decided that my idea was simple enough and picked Godot. Then this news hit. Glad I made that decision.
The game developers affected by Unity’s new pricing model are striking back. A collective of developers across 19 companies, mostly based in Europe and mostly developing mobile games, has put out an open letter urging Unity to reverse course on its recently announced pricing model changes. The letter contains some of the same sentiments expressed by other developers this week but with one big twist.
“As a course of immediate action, our collective of game development companies is forced to turn off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization across our projects until these changes are reconsidered,” the letter read.
The reason those games are so popular is that they’re inherently exploitative. I have no issues with predatory app developers being priced out of business.
Maybe just search for better games then. There’s plenty of mobile games that don’t rely on gambling. Most are indie, but there are really some gems in there.
Unity cares. This whole fuckup is Unity trying to further monetize mobile games and get a stranglehold on mobile game advertising. Console/PC games are just collateral damage.
If this costs Unity enough money it might work. I’m not holding my breath but stuff like this has a better chance of working than PC indie devs abandoning Unity does.
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