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This is of course not including the yearly Unity subscription, where Unity Pro costs $2,040 per seat (although they may have Enterprise pricing)
Absolutely ridiculous. Many Unity devs are saying they're switching engines on social media.
Until a few years ago there was barely any alternative afaik
People wrote their own game engines since the earliest of games, they just want the easy route today and a marketplace to monetize on. These are poisoned gifts, and always have been.
And if everyone invented their own wheel every time they wanted to build a new cart all we'd ever have is various different wheels and very few carts.
I mean that's honestly true. There are so many "infant" small selfmade game engines that are just complete shit lol
Great analogy, but this is a wheel you're being charged for, after you've installed it on your product. Maybe you would have been better suited with your own wheel.
You're not picking an existing good wheel solution that you can use forever, you basically took a promise for a free wheel that you're now being charged for, and you're sad because the free wheel isn't free anymore. Well, maybe you should have picked an actually free wheel to begin with.
Unity is not the only solution to your cart problem. You're just using it, because it is convenient.
Are you being obtuse on purpose?
This isn't a case of "I use unity because it is free," because outside of recreational game developer use-cases, it isn't free. There are very real costs associated with monetization that any developer, team, and studio should be aware of.
Developers who have been using unity with knowledge of their pricing mechanisms are being blindsided with new pricing, that you can't opt-out of, with a little less than 3 months notice. Going back to the wheel analogy, these teams have designed entire vehicles around these wheels, with application-specific knowledge and workarounds to be told that "Hey, regarding that product which underpins your entire project, one with which we've already entered into a sales agreement... we decided we want to change the agreement and track its usage and charge you more money. You have 11 weeks to get over it. Your continued use of our product implies consent to the new terms of this agreement."
You can't just move to a different platform without significant amounts of rework.
I get that, and it sucks. But too many offerings on the market are nowadays accepted as normal operating procedure, when they seem like such obvious traps to me. There is no financially-driven company out there that you can rely on with your project. Go with an open-source project or write what you need yourself. I fully understand the challenge of writing a product from scratch and bringing it to market. Your dependencies can break your neck one way or the other.
I know and feel that. I am no longer in entertainment, but I also see these exact same patterns in my current line of work (IT infrastructure). People use "free" tools that they take for granted, and then they're surprised by rug-pulls. This has been happening for so long in so many areas that it's almost tiring.
Unity isn't free, what are you on about, you pay money for it.
There really isn't much point having this conversation if you're going to operate on flights of fantasy.
It's not "the easy route". Making a game engine is a tremendous investment these days. If you are making anything other than a game that looks like early 2000s or earlier, you need a pretty capable engine that takes years to develop. That's on top of the time it costs to make a game, which is also typically years. Not to mention that your proprietary engine will have subpar tooling and make your game development slower.
For anyone but industry giants it's not feasible to make a modern engine. Unless your game is not aiming to play and feel like a modern game, you have to run with an off-the-shelf engine.
I agree with everything you're saying, but it's still the easy route and it's still a poisoned gift, as can be seen by this story. People rather pick the "free" and capable tool than investing time in an open-source solution that needs more work, or developing from scratch. Maybe they just want to reach more platforms to make more money, or use the super advanced tools, but that doesn't change that you're picking the path of least resistance, and you might pay for it in the end.
Chances are, if you're expecting to compete with industry giants on the same level, you're already investing massively into the production of assets and you're project in general. You're just skipping the investment in the engine and tooling. If you just want to make a small game, then maybe you don't even need Unity and would be better off with something more tailored to your project.
I just can't feel sorry for people who walked into this trap. I feel like this pattern has been occurring way too frequently to ignore the danger of "free" tools that really aren't.
Plus when you break it down you'll still need 3rd party software in order to do anything more than a console only application (OpenGL, directX, Havok, Bink etc)
Yeah let me just make my own fucking game engine right quick because that’s definitely easier than using another one that a team made and continues to make, support, and add onto because
“It’s easier”
Come on dude you’re just talking out of your ass. You should read about Cynicism and why nobody fucking likes that shit
You don't have to reproduce Unity to create your game. You just need to write what you need. And you could also chose an actual free software project instead of something where they pull the rug right out from under you. If you look at the choice today, with the rug already having been pulled, would you not consider the choice an obvious mistake in hindsight? Every other project these days loses money by trying to build a following which they will then monetize on. I'm sorry for people who walked right into this trap, but it could have been avoided by making better choices in the past. Sorry if you disagree, but I've been around long enough to recognize these recurring patterns with "free" software.
This isn’t how you respond to people that have a problem. Total dude bro answer
Be better man. I’m not going to continue this conversation
Valid. I take that into consideration
Yeah, and people nowadays don't even rewrite basic libraries! Everyone should have their version of glibc or they are just lazy!!!1!!1!
C implementations are available as open-source. The glibc especially is a great example of this. This comparison is not good. I'm all for using open source
Lazy gets, using someone else's programming language. They should have developed their own language and written the compiler before starting to write a games engine for the game they wanted to make.
To be honest even a home written language and compiler would be based on someone else's hardware.
Come to think of it, imagine if American Megatrends would start with a subscription model.
10 USD tier: 10 free boots a month, each subsequent boot shows an ad. You can skip the ad for 25 crystals.
Crystals are bought in packs of 10 or 35.
Did they clear it with the owners first?
Because if you don't, and later they pursue the legal route, there's not much you can do, you agree to their terms or fight a lawsuit where they'll likely take everything
Game devs and engine devs don't necessarily have the same skill sets though, right?
And who complained about Sync for Reddit? How would used foss alternatives to access Reddit have changed what happened to Reddit?