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> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's. Epic is not doi

> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's. Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. > BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work. Over the last week, Godot had 32 authors pushing 52 commits. Over the last month it had 135 authors. This is not "one or two guys". > So if Godot devs stop working on it you're stuck with a project with zero support. Guess what, if a closed-source company decides to stop working on their product you're also stuck, but now you're even more stuck because you don't have access to the source to make your own changes!

plagiarist 3y ago
It's hilarious that their arguments for the commercial engine are somehow both "you can use one version forever" and "you might be forced to use one version of something else forever."
- Libcat99 3y ago
  Doubly so, since the "something else" is able to be updated by you, if necessary.
- isaiahg 3y ago
  If you understood the problem then you’d know that their argument is about how Unity’s new pricing change is retroactive, affecting all Unity versions and charging fees to devs for games made years ago. Unreal uses perpetual licenses for their versions meaning this kind of bullshit behavior is not possible
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    Perhaps it is you who doesn't understand. We all get that part, and it makes sense in isolation. Yes, that is better. Then it's goofy af to say Godot might make a license change that necessitates using one version in perpetuity-except a version you and others are allowed to modify and distribute.
    - darkwater 3y ago
      In opensource, you can use that version and add more changes to it after the original author changed the license.
troupo 3y ago
> Guess what, if a closed-source company decides to stop working on their product you're also stuck Isn't Unreal's source open?
- TMM2K 3y ago
  You can access the source code to unreal engine when you get a license, but the terms are not by any stretch of the imagination open source. You wouldn't be able to freely share your modifications for instance.
  - dkersten 3y ago
    > when you get a license I was going to comment that it’s viewable by anyone on their GitHub, but you are correct: you have to be part of the Epic GitHub organisation to access the repo. Getting access is easy, but you do have to agree to their licensing terms to do so. So yes, what you said.
  - flohofwoe 3y ago
    You don't have to get a "license" (at least in the sense of paying anything), IIRC you just connect your EGS account to your Github account, accept an EULA (which technically is a "license" I guess) and then have read access to the Unreal Engine GH repositories. (currently there seem to be around half a million users with access)
    - TMM2K 3y ago
      What do you think clicking the EULA is?
      - flohofwoe 3y ago
        I'm hailing from an era where "getting a game engine license" involved several in-person meetings between top-level management of both companies, followed by multiple technical meetings between engineers from both companies, followed by exhaustive due diligence investigations from both sides, followed by intense haggling and shady backroom deals for several months, and finally signing a proper "contract", handing over absurd amounts of money upfront and then paying equally absurd amounts of royalties after release. That's basically what I understand as "getting a license for a game engine" (this is also why Unity got popular in the first place, because they skipped all this nonsense). OTH I accept probably 5..10 EULAs a week without thinking or even reading the text (most of them are not enforceable anyway).
kaliqt 3y ago
Epic is mainly owned by its founder. They are not primarily corporate though they are influenced by it. They are 100% more trustworthy than Unity or other corporate game companies.
- andrepd 3y ago
  I find your innocence touching. EDIT: To elaborate, this is an article about a company fucking users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase. Your response is yes but this other company would never fuck users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase.
  - jasonlotito 3y ago
    > Your response is yes but this other company would never fuck users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase. Well, Epic didn't do that when it went through it's aggressive growth and the last time it dumped it's business model. Instead, they changed their licensing to lower fees, and when you look at what they did across the board, made things better for customers and game developers. So, all evidence is to the contrary. Edit: Also, nice strawman.
  - rpdillon 3y ago
    Watching this industry for a long time, I've learned that I can never trust a company. Companies are made up of people but the people within them change, and their incentives change. This is very much the case with Unity. People, on the other hand, I can trust. Not often, but in cases where a person has made a long series of decisions over a decade or more, you can get a feel for what their value system is. Tim Sweeney is in this category. He was involved in Unreal back when I was in undergrad, more than 20 years ago. So I sort of put him in the same category as Gabe Newell and John Carmack: relatively enlightened game business leaders that understand the true value that gamers and developers derive from the ecosystem. None of them are in to make another dollar in the next quarter: they are focused on long term success and the are passionate about games themselves. So it's not that you're wrong, it's just that your argument applies cynicism uniformly, and I'm not sure that's fair given the history of those involved.
isaiahg 3y ago
> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. Holy straw man! And there’s certainly no self-interest involved with me using their engine without giving them a cut under 1 mill right? You can make this argument about literally anything. Godot must have no self-interest in releasing their engine for free and making $30k a month to develop their project. Who cares what the motivation is if it gives real benefits to devs. If anything it tells me they’ve picked a business model that’s mutually beneficial unlike Unity
- Mechanical9 3y ago
  While you can make this argument about literally anything, it seems apt to make it about a multi-billion dollar company chasing a trillion dollar company. It's fine to support them while they are the underdog and are saying and doing the right thing, but don't pretend like they will say and do the right thing forever.
  - gameman144 3y ago
    I don't think the parent was ever saying they'll be good forever. More that if they do become evil, their licensing lets you continue using a revenue structure that made sense at the time you chose it (even if new versions have super awful terms).
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  > Who cares what the motivation is if it gives real benefits to devs. Motivations matter, because they will decide in which direction a project moves over time, or if situations change. Epic is the "good guy" now, but only because they are an underdog. If they become the dominator, they might become the predator which Unity tries to be at the moment. But if we are honest, such uncertain possibilities don't matter if they are so far in the future. This might be a problem for future games, 10, 20 years down the river..
doikor 3y ago
> Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. More then 50% of the shares/votes is owned by a single person. The founder and CEO Tim Sweeney.
- objclxt 3y ago
  Yes, that's why I said "part owned". 40% of Epic is owned by Tencent.
  - re-thc 3y ago
    > Yes, that's why I said "part owned". Which doesn't really matter unless you'll lose control. If 1 entity has >50% it's pretty safe.
pdpi 3y ago
> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart Tim Sweeney founded Epic and wrote the Unreal engine himself. John Riccitiello’s whole career is in management. Even if they’re both entirely motivated by profit, they have different perspectives on how to get there. Also, Unity is a public company, while Epic is private. Even though Tencent owns a considerable share of the company, Sweeney still holds over 50% ownership. That gives them very different incentives. Sometimes we forget that executives are people too and they have their own personalities. Tim Cook famously[0] told climate change denialists in a shareholder meeting that “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock”. Sure enough, shareholders are also not solely motivated by profit, and voted with Cook on that occasion. It’s useful to remember that cynicism isn’t the same thing as realism. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook-climate-change-sceptics-ditch-apple-shares https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook...
- 40yearoldman 3y ago
  Eh. Part of apples brand is “doing the right thing” and “being the good guy”. I would wager Apple’s brand would be hurt more by not being a green company. ROI is more complicated than simple fist level cost. Going green and doubling down on recycling has generated a much larger ROI than doing nothing. Further more, Tim is bound by law to do what is best for the shareholders. Simply put, if Tim favored environmental concerns over profit he would be removed.
  - Pannoniae 3y ago
    "Further more, Tim is bound by law to do what is best for the shareholders." This stupid meme needs to die already. There is no such obligation, he only has a fiduciary duty to not trash the company and spend the earnings on cocaine. "companies are legally forced to maximise profit" has never been true and this piece of misinformation has been going around for ages now.
    - re-thc 3y ago
      > "companies are legally forced to maximise profit" has never been true It's more like too hard to be proven in any way. Unless you live in an simulator it's really hard to say which set of decisions is better than another. People often say it is obvious or in hindsight but fact is there are no such hard proofs.
3seashells 3y ago
[flagged]
cableshaft 3y ago
> Over the last week, Godot had 32 authors pushing 52 commits. Over the last month it had 135 authors. This is not "one or two guys". Yeah, right now (and I hope it keeps increasing thanks to the Unity news). I got burnt once (and almost twice) from this in the past. cocos2d-iPhone used to be huge, and Zynga even contributed to it. I released two games using it, and started another one. And then it stopped getting updated (and Apple keeps breaking things like Apple likes to do), so it died on the vine and I had to port to something else. Currently making a game in Monogame, and while it did get a significant update a little over a year ago, it's had very little activity on it since then and no other releases besides a hotfix shortly after, and zero communication about what's going on with any of their official channels at least. Not great especially since there seems to be spotty support for .Net 6 outside of Windows still, and I keep running into various issues with its 3D support (which it is mainly supposed to be a 2D game, but it does support 3D to a certain extent). Also while it claims to support platforms like PS4 and Switch, I see almost no documentation on it, and very little documentation on getting Steamworks working with it (I have some basic things working, but I'm having to figure things for Unity first and then porting that knowledge over). Also most of its multiplayer libraries seem outdated, at least the ones I looked up. And the forums/Discord still have some activity on them, but not a ton. Also I'd love to make a game that supported VR (almost switched to Unity just for that alone). I actually compared its Github activity to Godot a week ago, and Godot looks SO much better supported than Monogame at this point, that I was already considering either porting or making my next game in Godot before this Unity news was announced. But maybe that's just me hopping onto another platform that will have the same problem in 5 years after I've gotten pretty invested into it. I also know Unity (worked on a game professionally years back) and considered switching to that for my game too, but that mostly got killed by this announcement. Personally I prefer code-based development (I don't like using an editor too much), so if Monogame was better supported and had much better 3D support I'd probably just stick with it. I thought I was going to when I first started using it seriously three years ago. But I hesitate to keep dumping time into it if they don't maintain it. Also I made a small game with Phaser.js and was going to do more with that, but even that creator is pretty much the only one maintaining it and they got sidelined by life for about six months (which is fine, but get someone to help keep it going if you can! I know that's hard though). Phaser at least is already close to what I want from it, and doesn't seem to need much else for the foreseeable future.

plagiarist 3y ago

It's hilarious that their arguments for the commercial engine are somehow both "you can use one version forever" and "you might be forced to use one version of something else forever."

Libcat99 3y ago
Doubly so, since the "something else" is able to be updated by you, if necessary.
isaiahg 3y ago
If you understood the problem then you’d know that their argument is about how Unity’s new pricing change is retroactive, affecting all Unity versions and charging fees to devs for games made years ago. Unreal uses perpetual licenses for their versions meaning this kind of bullshit behavior is not possible
- plagiarist 3y ago
  Perhaps it is you who doesn't understand. We all get that part, and it makes sense in isolation. Yes, that is better. Then it's goofy af to say Godot might make a license change that necessitates using one version in perpetuity-except a version you and others are allowed to modify and distribute.
  - darkwater 3y ago
    In opensource, you can use that version and add more changes to it after the original author changed the license.

troupo 3y ago

> Guess what, if a closed-source company decides to stop working on their product you're also stuck Isn't Unreal's source open?

TMM2K 3y ago
You can access the source code to unreal engine when you get a license, but the terms are not by any stretch of the imagination open source. You wouldn't be able to freely share your modifications for instance.
- dkersten 3y ago
  > when you get a license I was going to comment that it’s viewable by anyone on their GitHub, but you are correct: you have to be part of the Epic GitHub organisation to access the repo. Getting access is easy, but you do have to agree to their licensing terms to do so. So yes, what you said.
- flohofwoe 3y ago
  You don't have to get a "license" (at least in the sense of paying anything), IIRC you just connect your EGS account to your Github account, accept an EULA (which technically is a "license" I guess) and then have read access to the Unreal Engine GH repositories. (currently there seem to be around half a million users with access)
  - TMM2K 3y ago
    What do you think clicking the EULA is?
    - flohofwoe 3y ago
      I'm hailing from an era where "getting a game engine license" involved several in-person meetings between top-level management of both companies, followed by multiple technical meetings between engineers from both companies, followed by exhaustive due diligence investigations from both sides, followed by intense haggling and shady backroom deals for several months, and finally signing a proper "contract", handing over absurd amounts of money upfront and then paying equally absurd amounts of royalties after release. That's basically what I understand as "getting a license for a game engine" (this is also why Unity got popular in the first place, because they skipped all this nonsense). OTH I accept probably 5..10 EULAs a week without thinking or even reading the text (most of them are not enforceable anyway).

kaliqt 3y ago

Epic is mainly owned by its founder. They are not primarily corporate though they are influenced by it. They are 100% more trustworthy than Unity or other corporate game companies.

andrepd 3y ago
I find your innocence touching. EDIT: To elaborate, this is an article about a company fucking users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase. Your response is yes but this other company would never fuck users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase.
- jasonlotito 3y ago
  > Your response is yes but this other company would never fuck users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase. Well, Epic didn't do that when it went through it's aggressive growth and the last time it dumped it's business model. Instead, they changed their licensing to lower fees, and when you look at what they did across the board, made things better for customers and game developers. So, all evidence is to the contrary. Edit: Also, nice strawman.
- rpdillon 3y ago
  Watching this industry for a long time, I've learned that I can never trust a company. Companies are made up of people but the people within them change, and their incentives change. This is very much the case with Unity. People, on the other hand, I can trust. Not often, but in cases where a person has made a long series of decisions over a decade or more, you can get a feel for what their value system is. Tim Sweeney is in this category. He was involved in Unreal back when I was in undergrad, more than 20 years ago. So I sort of put him in the same category as Gabe Newell and John Carmack: relatively enlightened game business leaders that understand the true value that gamers and developers derive from the ecosystem. None of them are in to make another dollar in the next quarter: they are focused on long term success and the are passionate about games themselves. So it's not that you're wrong, it's just that your argument applies cynicism uniformly, and I'm not sure that's fair given the history of those involved.

isaiahg 3y ago

> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. Holy straw man! And there’s certainly no self-interest involved with me using their engine without giving them a cut under 1 mill right? You can make this argument about literally anything. Godot must have no self-interest in releasing their engine for free and making $30k a month to develop their project. Who cares what the motivation is if it gives real benefits to devs. If anything it tells me they’ve picked a business model that’s mutually beneficial unlike Unity

Mechanical9 3y ago
While you can make this argument about literally anything, it seems apt to make it about a multi-billion dollar company chasing a trillion dollar company. It's fine to support them while they are the underdog and are saying and doing the right thing, but don't pretend like they will say and do the right thing forever.
- gameman144 3y ago
  I don't think the parent was ever saying they'll be good forever. More that if they do become evil, their licensing lets you continue using a revenue structure that made sense at the time you chose it (even if new versions have super awful terms).
PurpleRamen 3y ago
> Who cares what the motivation is if it gives real benefits to devs. Motivations matter, because they will decide in which direction a project moves over time, or if situations change. Epic is the "good guy" now, but only because they are an underdog. If they become the dominator, they might become the predator which Unity tries to be at the moment. But if we are honest, such uncertain possibilities don't matter if they are so far in the future. This might be a problem for future games, 10, 20 years down the river..

doikor 3y ago

> Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. More then 50% of the shares/votes is owned by a single person. The founder and CEO Tim Sweeney.

objclxt 3y ago
Yes, that's why I said "part owned". 40% of Epic is owned by Tencent.
- re-thc 3y ago
  > Yes, that's why I said "part owned". Which doesn't really matter unless you'll lose control. If 1 entity has >50% it's pretty safe.

pdpi 3y ago

> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart Tim Sweeney founded Epic and wrote the Unreal engine himself. John Riccitiello’s whole career is in management. Even if they’re both entirely motivated by profit, they have different perspectives on how to get there. Also, Unity is a public company, while Epic is private. Even though Tencent owns a considerable share of the company, Sweeney still holds over 50% ownership. That gives them very different incentives. Sometimes we forget that executives are people too and they have their own personalities. Tim Cook famously[0] told climate change denialists in a shareholder meeting that “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock”. Sure enough, shareholders are also not solely motivated by profit, and voted with Cook on that occasion. It’s useful to remember that cynicism isn’t the same thing as realism. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook-climate-change-sceptics-ditch-apple-shares https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook...

40yearoldman 3y ago
Eh. Part of apples brand is “doing the right thing” and “being the good guy”. I would wager Apple’s brand would be hurt more by not being a green company. ROI is more complicated than simple fist level cost. Going green and doubling down on recycling has generated a much larger ROI than doing nothing. Further more, Tim is bound by law to do what is best for the shareholders. Simply put, if Tim favored environmental concerns over profit he would be removed.
- Pannoniae 3y ago
  "Further more, Tim is bound by law to do what is best for the shareholders." This stupid meme needs to die already. There is no such obligation, he only has a fiduciary duty to not trash the company and spend the earnings on cocaine. "companies are legally forced to maximise profit" has never been true and this piece of misinformation has been going around for ages now.
  - re-thc 3y ago
    > "companies are legally forced to maximise profit" has never been true It's more like too hard to be proven in any way. Unless you live in an simulator it's really hard to say which set of decisions is better than another. People often say it is obvious or in hindsight but fact is there are no such hard proofs.

3seashells 3y ago

[flagged]

cableshaft 3y ago

> Over the last week, Godot had 32 authors pushing 52 commits. Over the last month it had 135 authors. This is not "one or two guys". Yeah, right now (and I hope it keeps increasing thanks to the Unity news). I got burnt once (and almost twice) from this in the past. cocos2d-iPhone used to be huge, and Zynga even contributed to it. I released two games using it, and started another one. And then it stopped getting updated (and Apple keeps breaking things like Apple likes to do), so it died on the vine and I had to port to something else. Currently making a game in Monogame, and while it did get a significant update a little over a year ago, it's had very little activity on it since then and no other releases besides a hotfix shortly after, and zero communication about what's going on with any of their official channels at least. Not great especially since there seems to be spotty support for .Net 6 outside of Windows still, and I keep running into various issues with its 3D support (which it is mainly supposed to be a 2D game, but it does support 3D to a certain extent). Also while it claims to support platforms like PS4 and Switch, I see almost no documentation on it, and very little documentation on getting Steamworks working with it (I have some basic things working, but I'm having to figure things for Unity first and then porting that knowledge over). Also most of its multiplayer libraries seem outdated, at least the ones I looked up. And the forums/Discord still have some activity on them, but not a ton. Also I'd love to make a game that supported VR (almost switched to Unity just for that alone). I actually compared its Github activity to Godot a week ago, and Godot looks SO much better supported than Monogame at this point, that I was already considering either porting or making my next game in Godot before this Unity news was announced. But maybe that's just me hopping onto another platform that will have the same problem in 5 years after I've gotten pretty invested into it. I also know Unity (worked on a game professionally years back) and considered switching to that for my game too, but that mostly got killed by this announcement. Personally I prefer code-based development (I don't like using an editor too much), so if Monogame was better supported and had much better 3D support I'd probably just stick with it. I thought I was going to when I first started using it seriously three years ago. But I hesitate to keep dumping time into it if they don't maintain it. Also I made a small game with Phaser.js and was going to do more with that, but even that creator is pretty much the only one maintaining it and they got sidelined by life for about six months (which is fine, but get someone to help keep it going if you can! I know that's hard though). Phaser at least is already close to what I want from it, and doesn't seem to need much else for the foreseeable future.