I didn't get that from the article. "It’s something of a golden age of video game engine licensing. Not too long ago — hell, 5 years ago, licensing a big, bran

I didn't get that from the article. "It’s something of a golden age of video game engine licensing. Not too long ago — hell, 5 years ago, licensing a big, brand name engine (including Source) involved gnarly negotiations, NDAs, and a small mountain of cash. Then Unity came along and changed the game." Unity did change the game. There have always been game engines and game makers. But Unity was the first big name engine, with complete tooling, to go free. Suddenly developers had access to a full featured game engine with little upfront investment. If the game failed, it wasn't as big of a deal. If you payed the half a million for Unreal or Source, and the game failed, you had bigger problem. Torque tried, but failed to compete. Blender, Orge 3D, Panda 3D, etc never became big name, widely used engines. They might be cheep/free, but good luck getting everything to work. The documentation and support just aren't there. Modding is different. Unreal and others included their editor so you could mod the game, but you couldn't make a new game and sell it. You had to stay in the confines of Unreal/Half-Life/Warcraft/Starcraft. DOTA and Tower Defense came from the Warcraft 3 modding community, but they where still Warcraft 3. If you want to release your modded Warcraft 3, sell it, move it to other platforms, then you either have to pay for the engine, or use another engine.