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Terraria developer bashes Unity, donates $200k to open source alternatives
- MrGilbert 3y agoThey also donate 1000 USD each month to each project moving forward. I still wonder how the discussions at Unity went, thinking that a per-install fee for already released games would be a great idea. Sounds like the result of a compromise.
- rychco 3y agoThese are the kind of decisions that I (almost) can’t imagine happening at a private company. When the developer of a product you use goes public, you can expect with absolute certainty that it will become measurably worse over time. It might not happen quickly, but it will happen.
- cinntaile 3y agoYou changed from private to public, I assume you mean public in both cases or this doesn't make sense.
- lubutu 3y agoNo, they're saying they can't imagine it happening at a private company, but can once the company has gone public.
- ozim 3y agoMBAs rolling in to milk the cow dry, run it to the ground and sell scraps for profit can happen in private company as well.
- sparrowInHand 3y agoThe sea-people of our times are the CEO people..
- martijnvds 3y agoBronze age civilizations were wiped out by the sea-suite.
- mschuster91 3y agoIt's rarer though. These MBA beancounter types get attracted to public companies like flies to a pile of bull dung because it's far easier to get compensation tied to stock prices/valuation there, and it's easy to direct a stock's price upward (headcount reduction is the most common thing that will send it upwards).
- drumhead 3y agoThey do it because it succeeds. How many shitty things have we seen normalised and spread because consumers just accepted it and paid up?
- huijzer 3y agoExactly. I agree. I also find it surprising when people talk negatively about certain companies or capitalism in general, but then continue to spend a lot on various products including the companies they criticize. Companies are not making money up (apart from some fraud cases like Enron).
- drra 3y agoIn the '90s, a friend of mine was in the pharma industry. During a training session, the question came up: "Is it possible to market a useless drug as a panacea?" The straightforward answer, according to the trainer, was "Yes—if the projected profits surpass the potential liability costs." All of the outcry was likely anticipated when they made that decision.
- dharmab 3y agoInversely, heard at a very large AdTech company when a room full of engineers was told about then-upcoming GDPR requirements: "Can't we just pay the fines?" "No. The fines scale as a percent of revenues."
- adastra22 3y agoIf the percent is less than the profit margin…
- theshrike79 3y agoThe "percentage of global revenue for the whole parent corporation" was the genius bit in GDPR. Otherwise Facebook could've just founded Privacy Violation Inc and done all the bad shit there. There's just one employee, Frank, and he's paid minimum wage. Now if, for example, Youtube fucks up the GDPR fines are calculated on the global annual revenue of all of Alphabet Inc.
- hackerlight 3y agoI can't fathom the logic. Why not do a slice of revenue like Unreal does, and calibrate the percentage so you make the same amount of money as you would have otherwise made had you done it per-install? Happier customers and identical revenue.
- alphager 3y agoTheir USP was that they had no revenue share. Somehow they thought that the current retroactive per-install model would go over better than reneging on that promise.
- hutzlibu 3y agoBut how little can you know about your own product and your customers, by suddenly treating an AAA game that is sold for a fixed big price, where a fee per install might make sense or is affordable, the same as all those little games, where many are free to play (add financed, or as a free demo with full version unlockable)? I mean, how can you not see that? Or was the thinking, screw that market, we are only catering for AAA games now? Even then it makes little sense as the revenue share like Unreal does, would make more money. It likeley was something along the lines of: "they need us, they will have to find a way to pay us, if they want to continue existing."
- deafpolygon 3y agoIt was more a heavy-handed tactic to get small ad-supported game developers to switch to using Unity's ad network rather than their competitors.
- noirscape 3y agoNot AAA games - the real target here is mobile games. Those far exceed any profits the AAA industry generates. Indies are a necessary casualty in the eyes of Unity (or more accurately: they're just not considered). Unity is the engine behind some of the most popular mobile gacha games. MiHoYo (Genshin/Honkai Impact) uses it for everything, so does Type/Moon (Fate Grand Order). They want a slice of that pie. That's where the real money is. Those games rake in hundreds of millions of dollars every month. Hence also why the charge is by install and can be waived if you use Unity's adtech offerings.
- herbst 3y agoThere is one 'good' aspect I can see. Nearly all worthless trash games on steam, those that need more resources than anything else, those where you easily get stuck, those with generally no gameplay. Shine a very bad light at unity. A unity splash screen is and always was a sign that the game might won't work on my setup. Maybe this will drive away all these shitty games. That's definitely mostly just good for the brand, but IMO kinda necessary as the brand stands for shitty games for some.
- hnben 3y ago> Maybe this will drive away all these shitty games but why? when the cost scales per install, it shouldn't hit small trashy games harder, should it? (or am i missing something like large one-time payment?)
- Auracle 3y agoIt was only after you hit $200,000 in sales for a year.
- herbst 3y agoIf it doesn't even help against that issue then I have no theorie either
- coolelectronics 3y agothe ability to make "worthless trash games" is the only reason that the indie industry can exist at all. there are huge communities around sharing small lower-effort projects (which countless well-received games started out as) and gatekeeping an engine to enterprise customers only would be a far far worse decision than what they've already done besides, the rates only kick in after your profit reaches 200k so it wouldn't do anything
- herbst 3y agoTo be fair I am not talking about small indie games with creative gaming aspect. Go to steam, sort any 3d category by price and be amazing by the amount of reskinned unity shooters, RPGs, whatever.
- Operyl 3y agoHonestly, credit where credit is due. These are substantial donations that will hopefully be put to good use. On top of recurring 1k per project per month.
- mock-possum 3y agoTerraria is pretty legit honestly.
- layoric 3y agoCompletely agree, discovered I didn't own the game on Steam (not my type of game), but just bought it anyway. Win-win move.
- jliptzin 3y agoI found unity to be so unbelievably bloated and confusing that I am seriously shocked people are actually using it
- johnnyanmac 3y agoIt functioned (barely, but still functioned), had a lot of support, and had a lot of answers around the inevitable jank. For a game engine, these put it above 90% of other engines. Having console support alone puts it in the top 1%.
- depereo 3y agoAlso plenty of tutorials and introductions to the various features.
- krasin 3y agoUnfortunately, Unity tends to break things often, so many of these tutorials are obsolete. But yes, it's a lot of tutorials and it's always possible to find the one you need.
- jliptzin 3y agoFor most indie games I feel like three.js + css + JavaScript would be so much better for both developer and user (no steam install just go to a website)
- ivalm 3y agoSteam install is valuable way to monetize/promote.
- pjmlp 3y agoIf they only care about 2011 (WebGL) or 2015 (WebGPU) hardware, sure. Still waiting to see a WebGL game that matches Infinity Blade, released in 2011 alongside iPhone 3G and iPhone 4. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDvPIhCd8N4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDvPIhCd8N4 Meaning, those graphic API are able to deliver at least PS 3 graphics, yet due to browser support, specially the way browsers blacklist drivers, download sizes, and lack of tooling on par with native, very few professional developers bother, hence streaming.
- omgmajk 3y agoTerraria devs have always been great, their updates are fantastic and they keep the game and community moving forward even after all these years.
- Rapzid 3y agoI've been diving into the engine development scene this week. Lots of cool activity going on. There is a PR shaping up to produce "libgodot"; Godot as a shared lib for embedding in other code. Users reporting use cases and what they are currently doing with that: * embedding in .net to flip that script * embedding in Blender so assets can be viewed in engine and a tighter integration created * VR applications * Miguel de Icaza's(yes that one!) SwiftGodotKit * Image export, a UI system, 3d viewport, asset conversion automation, etc. Really cool stuff!
- slabity 3y agoDo you have a link to that PR? I am actually very interested in something like that.
- Rapzid 3y agoYes it's here: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/72883 https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/72883 . Looks like it lost a little momentum in the past few weeks but it's working for people and there is a path forward to getting accepted by maintainers. It's also on the DotNet contributors meeting agenda for tomorrow..
- livrem 3y agoThere are many mentions of C# there, but it is just a C library that can be embedded without involving C#, right?
- Rapzid 3y agoYes, I think someone who first started pushing for it was interested in embedding it in their C# app as the entry. But it's just an .so that can be used in any app through the C ABI I gather.
- foxyv 3y agoI don't know about C# but I do know Java can use C code through the Java Native Interface. I wouldn't be surprised if .NET and Mono have something similar.
- sandGorgon 3y agoif any of you folks want to support Terraria, they have versions available on Android Play Store and ios App Store (published by 505 Games) - https://terraria.org/ https://terraria.org/
- IdiranVibe 3y agoAnd ironically, the non-PC versions make use of Unity
- loloquwowndueo 3y agoLol I’ve sank hundreds of hours on Terraria since I bought it 2 months ago, while ToTK languishes in a drawer. Terraria is so amazing.
- dgb23 3y agoThis is a good signal. Ambitious OS projects have been lifting up entire software fields and provide a stable foundation.
- runiq 3y agoAlrighty, time to buy Terraria a fifth time, I guess.
- WA 3y agoI mean, why not, but you could also donate to the game engine makers directly. More money to them, no sales tax, no platform commission etc.
- hooby 3y agoI think it's great to see increased support for open source engines. Those engines might not be at the same technical level as Unity (yet), which shouldn't be a surprise given the way lower budget and man-power behind them. But they are getting better - and they do have some massive advantages over proprietary engines. One example for such an advantage would be that you can just fork the code, if they do something you don't like. They can't hold your game hostage to force changes on you.
- Leo_Germond 3y agoIMO this is not the technical level that matter, it's the UX, if we leave aside the super duper AAA games, which would use Unreal, then it's about putting a whole lot of different assets together, and hold them with code glue. Unity has some nice things that are not there yet in godot (from the top of my mind: better font support, in term of UX once again), and C# is way better than thw half-assed language that is Godotscript. That being said I'm pretty sure that Godot is about to close this gap before 2025, given the recent boost in popularity.
- lvncelot 3y agoNever used Godot myself but can't you use C# in place of Godotscript? The docs[1] would suggest so. [1]https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/c_sharp/index.html# https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/c...
- Rapzid 3y agoYes it's the second of the two first-class scripting language options. My initial impressions are pretty positive. They moved to .Net 6 from mono with Godot 4. Support for deployment to Android with c# is coming in 4.2. There also seems to be interest and discussions around how AOT can be used in the future. The engine is super easy to build and I think I actually built it with .Net 7 haha. Others are already using .Net 8.
- rcarmo 3y agoYou can. There are plenty of people porting their Unity code to Godot in that way.
- TazeTSchnitzel 3y agoFNA is a reimplementation of the old Microsoft XNA framework. I think the appeal of FNA is mostly to keep old games alive, rather than as a platform for new ones, so it feels a bit strange to see it get as much funding as Godot here. Terraria itself is developed in XNA (and presumably uses FNA now) though, so it could be pure self-interest (which isn't a bad thing).
- herewulf 3y agoYes, it would be odd for Terraria to fund solely something they don't use even if it's more relevant for replacing Unity. I was actually involved in an engineering software package that used XNA. It was resurrected a few years ago after close to a decade on ice. We were sure glad that FNA existed because Microsoft had dropped XNA like a hot potato. Yeah, I wouldn't trust them again either.
- herewulf 3y agoThe Godot project recently launched their own foundation to avoid Patreon fees and VAT while putting a larger percentage of donations directly to work. I just moved my monthly contribution to the foundation yesterday. This is great news to complement that!
- asicsp 3y agoLink: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-developer-fund/ https://godotengine.org/article/godot-developer-fund/ Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37481872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37481872
- dicytea 3y agoI really hope that Bevy will get a piece of the Unity pie too.
- Closi 3y agoBevy is almost the spiritual opposite of Unity in terms of its design goals. Hopefully it gets some more funding and attention, but if you enjoyed Unity and are looking for a replacement then Bevy just isn’t it - it would be like swapping Microsoft Word for a html editor.
- wg0 3y agoSide question - would it be fair to say that this is the dominos effect of interest rate hikes which is a dominos effect of COVID-19?
- tremon 3y agoOnly if you subscribe to predestination. Otherwise, there are too many free-willed agents to construct a causality chain of that size.
- oefnak 3y agoAmazing. Nice to see a group of developers on par with the Factorio team support these open source engines!