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It's difficult to tell if this is the result of bad management forcing the company to enact a poor market strategies or sabotage. Developers can invest a signi

It's difficult to tell if this is the result of bad management forcing the company to enact a poor market strategies or sabotage. Developers can invest a significant amount of time and resources building tools, supporting systems and workflows around these engines that aren't necessarily portable to other engines. There is also a significant time investment in learning the API, engine internals, and nuances of operation. Disrupting revenue streams so aggressively for the licensees is only going to result in breaking trust between Unity and their customers, driving them away permanently. They can also forget about taking on any new customers as few will be willing to move to a platform which tries to aggressively limit their choice of income model. While Unity has filled a niche in it's usefulness, there are much better offerings (either higher or lower on the spectrum of capabilities) for other proprietary engines and a few under-featured free engines. They are not irreplaceable. I do feel bad though for all the Unity developers that are having to deal with this but at the same time I think that many might have anticipated something like this would happen for some time.

ungamedplayer 3y ago
The wise man does not build his house on the sand.
- giuseppe_petri 3y ago
  A wise man does not build his house on another man's land.
  - HelloNurse 3y ago
    A wise man doesn't allow unilateral changes of contract terms. It will be a good, and hopefully not too expensive, business lesson.
- macguillicuddy 3y ago
  I think part of the challenge is that no ground is knowably stable. Since very few of us are shipping products that we've built from the atoms up we do have to rely on platforms provided by others. Everywhere you look there's uncertainty: - relying on big hardware, OS platforms, or cloud platforms, e.g. iPhone/iOS, Android, AWS you're at the mercy of bugs, changes in behaviour, deprecations - relying on walled garden ecosystems your risks are app review processes and changing priorities, e.g. the App Store, console distribution - relying on open source you're at the mercy of project governance and contribution. Yes you have the source, could your business model really fund the maintenance and development of the project if independent contribution ceased or you needed to fork? At some point you just have to place your bets and play the game. Good architectural decision making can, of course, mitigate your risks - and there definitely are 'bad' decisions.
  - ungamedplayer 3y ago
    Re open source. You extend even more with project governance, extending to copyright, user agreements and product lifecycles you can not influence. That's the thing right? You don't need to extend it if it worked at the time. You have the source and you can employ someone to make it work. The risks are much less than a any other option. Copyright, access to source and even the ability to continue functioning almost make it a no brainer. I do agree that at some point a decision has to be made. We often shortcut the right thing to do for the immediately profitable. I should not be surprised, but I do get disappointed.
nightowl_games 3y ago
I abandoned Unity in 2019. I didn't expect them to do something like this, but I was dedicating a ton of my personal time into honing my craft of game development and I simply felt more comfortable using an open source engine so that I could own my entire craft and I could work on stuff without constantly thinking about money and capitalism. More of just a fun thing done for the love of it. I didn't expect _this_ to happen, but I still feel like if your putting your life into something you probably want to make sure you own it.
- nvy 3y ago
  Which engine are you using these days?
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    Probably Godot. That seems to be the most popular open-source alternative.
    - solumunus 3y ago
      Why not just wait for OP’s response?
      - arein3 3y ago
        Does his response prevent OP from responding?
        nightowl_games 3y ago
        lol wow yeah its godot
        solumunus 3y ago
        No. It just seems insane to step in on someone else being asked a question and try and predict their response for them.
tjpnz 3y ago
>It's difficult to tell if this is the result of bad management forcing the company to enact a poor market strategies or sabotage. If you've followed John Riccitiello's career it's hard not to conclude that it's the former.

ungamedplayer 3y ago

The wise man does not build his house on the sand.

giuseppe_petri 3y ago
A wise man does not build his house on another man's land.
- HelloNurse 3y ago
  A wise man doesn't allow unilateral changes of contract terms. It will be a good, and hopefully not too expensive, business lesson.
macguillicuddy 3y ago
I think part of the challenge is that no ground is knowably stable. Since very few of us are shipping products that we've built from the atoms up we do have to rely on platforms provided by others. Everywhere you look there's uncertainty: - relying on big hardware, OS platforms, or cloud platforms, e.g. iPhone/iOS, Android, AWS you're at the mercy of bugs, changes in behaviour, deprecations - relying on walled garden ecosystems your risks are app review processes and changing priorities, e.g. the App Store, console distribution - relying on open source you're at the mercy of project governance and contribution. Yes you have the source, could your business model really fund the maintenance and development of the project if independent contribution ceased or you needed to fork? At some point you just have to place your bets and play the game. Good architectural decision making can, of course, mitigate your risks - and there definitely are 'bad' decisions.
- ungamedplayer 3y ago
  Re open source. You extend even more with project governance, extending to copyright, user agreements and product lifecycles you can not influence. That's the thing right? You don't need to extend it if it worked at the time. You have the source and you can employ someone to make it work. The risks are much less than a any other option. Copyright, access to source and even the ability to continue functioning almost make it a no brainer. I do agree that at some point a decision has to be made. We often shortcut the right thing to do for the immediately profitable. I should not be surprised, but I do get disappointed.

nightowl_games 3y ago

I abandoned Unity in 2019. I didn't expect them to do something like this, but I was dedicating a ton of my personal time into honing my craft of game development and I simply felt more comfortable using an open source engine so that I could own my entire craft and I could work on stuff without constantly thinking about money and capitalism. More of just a fun thing done for the love of it. I didn't expect _this_ to happen, but I still feel like if your putting your life into something you probably want to make sure you own it.

nvy 3y ago
Which engine are you using these days?
- deaddodo 3y ago
  Probably Godot. That seems to be the most popular open-source alternative.
  - solumunus 3y ago
    Why not just wait for OP’s response?
    - arein3 3y ago
      Does his response prevent OP from responding?
      - nightowl_games 3y ago
        lol wow yeah its godot
      - solumunus 3y ago
        No. It just seems insane to step in on someone else being asked a question and try and predict their response for them.

tjpnz 3y ago

>It's difficult to tell if this is the result of bad management forcing the company to enact a poor market strategies or sabotage. If you've followed John Riccitiello's career it's hard not to conclude that it's the former.