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They should honestly just move their engine anyway. Unity has played their hand, and showed they are willing to make changes to their pricing retroactively.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Yep, they might roll back the changes this time but they’ve shown where they want to be and now we know. They’ll work their way slowly towards it instead of a sudden change now and it will be less noticeable and harder to fight legally when they do that
They're cranking the bad PR to 11 so they can dial it back to 9 and point to it as a compromise.
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I think most developers can see the writing in the wall there, but switching mid-way through a project will be costly and time consuming. If the changes were fully rolled back, I would still bet many would finish what they working on and then switch for their next game.
Problem is that if your current unity game is successful this year, and then they reimplement the retroactive charge next year, you’re still screwed. If you can afford it then it’s best to change now in order to avoid that mess that might mean you have to delist your game
I'm not sure it's legal to implement it retroactively. I'd be very curious to get an attorney's perspective - seems a lot like trying to unilaterally change a contract after both parties have signed. But I have a hard time imagining anyone being willing to develop using Unity going forward.
I bet they will do so for their next game but reimplementing a entire game is FAR easier said than done, something like that could very well bankrupt a smaller studio!
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I love that last line.
"We have never made a public statement before. This is how badly you fucked up."
A public statement ever? Or about this? If the former, damn.
ever
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We have never made a public statement before now. That is how badly you fucked up.
Lmao shots fired. Unity’s C-suite made their own bed… and the bed is made out of anti-personnel mines. I genuinely hope this picks up steam.
Unity showed their hand when they made the announcement. I had never thought to look up who owned them before. Now that I am aware that they’re majority-owned by VC and PE firms, it’s pretty clear to me that this category of monetization-oriented behavior is here to stay, because that’s how VC and PE operate. Unless and until they somehow get a new owner, it’s my sincere opinion that Unity should absolutely not be seriously considered as a game engine for any new game project.
If there's a penny in your hand, it's a penny they need. Leave not one cent to be saved, not a morsel for tomorrow, because the people who control the money, want to own it all too.
There's a subscription for every need, for every hobby, for ever facet of reality. No matter what you do you can give one of these firms between 30 and 300 dollars a month to send you a box of crap you don't need.
There is no aspect of your life that is not fully monetized, and if there is, they're coming for it. A stroll through the park? Buy water from a fountain that used to be free. An old game with friends you love? Why not buy the expansion, play online only a small fee to have the latest updates and play with anyone! They'll find any avenue to sell to you and completely miss the point of what it is you're looking for, in the quest to fill that need at the highest price you'll pay.
LOL this is how capitalism operates.
This. We're only just now feeling the sting more keenly in a number of ways because companies are desperate to stay the course with increased profits year over year despite there being a massive global economic slump.
The 2010's were full of venture capital pumping money into companies, and when we asked, "How is this business profitable," they'd respond "Just trust us, bro." Well, now the well has dried up, the venture capitalists are here to collect, and we all get to be surprisedpikachuface.jpg watching this trainwreck unfold in slow motion.
Even if they do revert it, the trust has been lost. They've made mistakes before, but none as stupid as this one
It's a matter of self-preservation to get away from Unity as soon as possible at this point.
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Is it just me or are all big companies killing themself right now?
Yeah, inflation rate is high, so central banks are trying to counteract that by basically slowing down the economy, so that our normally scheduled inflation countermeasures kick in appropriately. Well, and the usual way to slow down the economy is to make it more costly to loan money, i.e. increase interest rates. Which means investors can't just pump money into any company anymore, they want that money to actually pay out to cover those interest rates. And that means companies need to actually be profitable to get money to finance their operation.
So does that mean all these businesses were always doomed to fail anyways, just living on borrowed money/time, and now the bill comes due, they’re all fucked?
Kind of. In the past investors were willing to be more patient, and company values were artificially high, because they were based on potential profits rather than actual profits. That's shifting a bit as interest rates go up.
Simplified: If you can borrow 1 Million USD for 0% apr and earn 1000 USD with that, you have 1000 USD in profits. Now change the apr to 5% and you are 49,000 USD in the red.
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I've said this for about a decade now: I firmly believe this world we live in now is the inevitable, unavoidable result of having every company run by people with business degrees and no passion for the businesses they run. When your entire education was focused on how to extract one more penny from customers and how to psychologically make addicts out of everyone, this is what we end up with. I fucking hate it. Everything is enshitified and it sucks.
Agreed, VC have poured free money into excellent, but unsustainable businesses trying to chase 'growth' long enough that they can sell out just before everyone realizes that it won't make money. It's just a scam of rich people preying on other rich people.
Instead of trying to build a self sustaining company to begin with (which requires hard work to balance revenue against customer needs and desires) they build 'free' products that people love, but can't make money, only to switch the company to crappy products that people hate, but now are trapped into using.
Our entire digital economy is built on these bait and switch companies and it sucks
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With the words of the rust developer: Unity can get fucked
I read rust as the programming language for way too long reading that article, lmao.
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Why stay at all whether they revert it or not? They're egregiously incompetent and if they've done this sort of thing once, they're going to do it again. Developers should go where their support will help make something better (Godot) and not stick with the crusty old Unity hag that is constantly pawing at their pockets hoping for the jingle of coins.
Because changing the engine in an existing project is a huge pita that requires many, many hours and possibly in some cases a full rewrite.
This also applies to games that would be released in 2023 or 2024.
Nobody should be considering Unity for a new project, but it's understandable to make either decision for many existing projects.
Ripping out the engine of your game isn't a trivial thing.
Many many hours is a massive understatement.
Thousands and thousands of hours is more appropriate
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- It's a significant effort to change engines
- Even though it's just one dev, they're giving Unity a reason to revert. If you just say "Yo, I'm OUT!" then they've already lost you and they have no reason to revert on your behalf.
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Yeah fuck Unity, I'd love to see devs abandon them altogether whether they revert the changes or not.
OMG that last bolded line made me legit LOL. Gotta love it!
Fuck yeah devs! Get em!
Slay the Spire is currently -66% on steam... just saying
Haven't Hearthstone been made in Unity? Are we to believe Blizzard will be OK with this?
Looks like you’re right! Blizzard definitely isn’t okay with it. But I would expect them to get a sweetheart deal behind the scenes
I'm willing to bet this won't affect the AAA companies - they almost certainly have exclusive licencing deals already.
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This is what we get with propietary software. We can't go to another entity or create one to develop the engine for us moving forward. We can't take the current state of the engine and just patch it to keep existing games alive.
If you depend on some work and that work is being done by software only some other company control, this company is really in the control of that work.
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