@chloyster So if I want to reinstall a game I have to decide if it's worth making the dev pay more money due to my game reinstall or install on another device? Is that what I'm reading?
The most they’ll have to pay is 20 cents. And that’s only with the 200,000th to 210,000th download for developers who are using the free version of Unity (provided that the developer is also making more then $200k/yr in revenue). After that, the developer will probably get Unity Pro and the download fees will start up at $1 million/yr in revenue and more than 1 million downloads. At that point, I don’t think that the 15 cents to 0.1 cents that will be charged will hurt too badly.
Unless there's a coordinated effort by a fanbase to install the game over and over again because the game asked you for your preferred pronouns or some nonsense. Or maybe a pirated copy of the game still phones home to Unity and charges the developer. There are a lot of ways this could be problematic.
One Dev have already pointed out that they have a Unity based game due next year they’ve already contracted to game pass, so that’s 20 million odd subs who’ll have access to try the game, where as they didn’t negotiate with MS on the price knowing this clause was coming.
Unity is an engine primarily used by mobile app developers; it’s their biggest market. Indie game developers are basically just collateral damage, for this kind of a pricing change.
Mobile apps are all about massive scale (millions of installs) and ungodly amounts of revenue. They’re going after large mobile developers, not small studios. (I’m not saying small studios won’t get affected, I’m saying Unity is focusing on the big dogs - potentially at the cost of pissing off unrelated folk for no financial reason)
The per install costs don’t kick in until you’ve made half a million dollars in revenue, and a certain number of installs.
Also, you literally can’t build these apps with other engines as ad network integrations don’t exist for them. So it’s not like anyone has a choice: it’s Unity demanding to be paid more as they’re the only viable player in the industry.
Makes good business sense, though I think they should increase the revenue point of the free and personal tier to a million as well, just to put the minds of indie devs at ease. No point freaking out unrelated people.
I would never call such horrifically predatory tactics “good business sense.” It’s abuse of market position and should draw the ire of antitrust regulators, as well as make their product a major business risk for any new projects.
Let’s not forget that Unity recently merged with a malware company, so borderline-illegal predation is their entire business strategy.
Let’s not forget that Unity recently merged with a malware company, so borderline-illegal predation is their entire business strategy.
No, they merged with an advertising company - you know, the same companies with which they’re close enough to have plugins for. It’s about business; who you talk to, who you have deals with.
I would never call such horrifically predatory tactics “good business sense.” It’s abuse of market position and should draw the ire of antitrust regulators, as well as make their product a major business risk for any new projects.
It is good business sense. The engine has relatively little value, it’s about what software stacks it integrates with, plus the ease of use for making exports to the two platforms that matter (Android and iOS). There’s a reason Unreal doesn’t even exist in this space, even though it’s technically capable of running on these devices.
Again, this is not the industry you’re thinking of - it’s the mobile industry, which is less about game development and more about having millions in your war-chest (usually from a few VCs) that you can spend on your marketing budget. If you can’t market, you’re dead in the water.
The entire industry is built around ads in games and traditional social media.
Things like this will stop happening if:
A) People become less susceptible to predatory marketing.
B) Another game engine developer decides to undercut Unity while at the same time offering similar platform targets and SDK integrations.
(There’s also a thing to be said about hiring, where all new mobile-game devs learn Unity - as it’s become the de-facto standard for getting a job in this industry. Any new player would need some big names to adopt them first to make a push for people to learn the tools, not hobbyists.)
Barring that nothing will change.
Also, there really aren’t “new” projects in this field - you rarely see scrappy upstarts succeeding in the mobile space, just jaded veterans undercutting their old studios by offering their VCs (or new, hungrier VCs) a bigger cut of the pie. Also, studios with private chefs, massive salaries, and cult-y work spaces that look like adult playgrounds.
“Good business sense” = they are greedy shits. Fuck them. I wont ever praise any company for cash grabbing. I dont give a fuck if their shareholders get richer.
That was correct about maybe 5 + years ago. However, particularly the latest 4.x builds, the 3d is top shelf. It won’t beat unreal, but it’s 3d capabilities are better than most people’s ability to use them.
Is it another CEO trying to squeeze as much money as possible before abandoning the ship? I mean, from what I read people have already been migrating to Unreal.
So if I want to reinstall a game I have to decide if it's worth making the dev pay more money due to my game reinstall or install on another device? Is that what I'm reading?
I can't wait to have steam charge me $1 every time I re-download a unity5 game. MS should follow suit and force you to pay $1 a pop for each directx install. Which would actually be more like $80 because it loads every patch and version in order on every install.
Fee per download for a game framework that packaged into the download that they have no part of distributing? I hope this is the most recent example of a successful tech company commiting suicide, it really is the best theme this year.
I love it when companies start hanging up their noose and tying it around their necks. Hopefully they get to the point where they'll jump from the hill they chose to die on.
@chloyster So if I want to reinstall a game I have to decide if it's worth making the dev pay more money due to my game reinstall or install on another device? Is that what I'm reading?
What devs see is “all those other devs are too lazy to make a good game”.
What players mean is “all those other games are full of micro transactions and sell missing content and features as dlc”, which is not the same thing.
What players want to be addressed is the bad influence investors have on the products. Publishers aren’t interested in publishing good games, they only care about money.
Devs don’t go about making a game only for the money. Most of them would rather do it the same way Larian does it, focus on quality and provide a good gaming experience, but their hands are tied.
So the message gamers try to get out goes to the wrong recipients, and it’s obviously being taken the wrong way.
And that’s why I generally prefer indie games. Many indie games are made with passion, with money being down the list of priorities. AAA games are made with money first, though there is certainly passion as well, it’s just not the top on the list. As studios and budgets get bigger, so will their expectation of profits.
So if you want better games, buy from smaller studios. Show them that you value passion over high budget.
But when a game like BG3 comes out, with all the stuff no indie studio can afford to do and it has this level of passion without sticking its hand in your pocket, it absolutely reminds us that AAA doesn’t have to be like it is.
As good as indie RPGs are, Disco Elysium was only able to afford voice acting after being a giant commercial success. No small budget team is going to be able to have mocap work on the level of BG3. These things cost a lot of money and involve paying a lot of workers. BG3’s Kickstarter got to be carried by the name recognition of Baldur’s Gate and Dungeons & Dragons in general, following a huge popularity surge for the latter thanks to the rise of real-play podcasts and such.
Do games need hundreds of voice actors and incredible mocap to be good? No. But it’s something that only AAA studios have the ability to add, and it’s a shame that it’s all going into the next fifa/COD/whatever other money pit GAAS the industry is shitting out.
Agreed. But I’d much rather sacrifice AAA features like mocap, voice acting, and RTX if it means a higher chance of playing a game with a lot of passion put in. Those are nice to have, but not the reason I pick a game.
Yup. And I wish more AAA titles took more risks in gameplay and storytelling, but those seem to be few and far between.
Starfield is a fantastic example. If you asked me to describe a Bethesda game set in space, it would look a lot like Starfield (but I probably would’ve missed the procedural generation). Usually AAA games are pretty much as expected, with one or two surprises on the side, and that’s it.
BG3 basically delivers on Cyberpunk’s promises (branching storylines, mocap, great visuals, etc), and it did so on launch, which is really rare.
I’m with Tim Sweeney here - why restrict creativity with arbitrary restrictions like that? We already have some amazing 1-person games, how many more we’d have with this immense productivity boost? I’m excited for more games even if that means more trash out there, I have the brain power to sift through it if it means another Stardew Valley.
The problem is more that generative AI is trained on the actual work done by other, actual people. And we have no legal framework so far how those people should get paid in turn.
Plus, let’s not for a moment imagine that Sweeney is saying this out of a firmly held personal belief. He’s entirely based on his reactionary stance to Steam. Steam goes against generative AI -> Sweeney is in favor of it. If Steam would say they’re against eating live babies, you can sure as hell bet he’d sing praises for that, too.
Why is everyone have to be paid for everything? The real dillema is wether AI is learning or is it remixing and the science is on the side of learning while all grifters on the side of remixing. All of these lawsuits like the gettyimages one are for profit. They are grifting off this and people so blindly fall for this propaganda thinking they are protecting “the little guy” when big majority of world’s copyright is owned by mega corporations. Fuck that.
I wonder if you would be so adamant to defend AI if it could copy your work, and even your exact style by prompting your public name. I am going to bet on no
I’m a software engineer and AI can already do a lot of my programming and it’s great! Most of my software is FOSS - so your bet is very wrong.
If somehow AI kills programming and puts me out of job then that’s great! I’ll find another job and we’ll be living in objectively better world because code is suddenly infinitely more accessible and powerful :)
So, to me this protectionism thought process is very alien. Especially when it comes to something relatively meaningless as entertainment.
When you chose a FOSS license you explicitly say that you are ok with derivatives of your work. These artists never distributed their work under a license where they allowed AI to be trained on it and make derivatives of it.
AI is far from replacing programmers. It can replace some simple boilerplate, but is nowhere near understanding the logic behind applications. So you simply say this knowing you are safe for tens of years more.
I agree with both your statement about AI training and Sweeney. However, I do believe there is a legitimate argument for using generative AI in game development, and I therefore also think Sweeney has a legitimate point, even if he’s doing it as a reaction to Steam.
Something oft acknowledged as okay in art (or any creative endeavor) is inspiration. Legally, we can really go even further, saying that copying is okay as long as the thing being copied is sufficiently transformed into something that can be considered new. Say, for example, different artists’ versions of a character such as Pikachu. We might be able to recognize them all as Pikachu, but also acknowledge that they’re all unique and obviously the creation of one particular artist.
Why is this process a problem when it’s done with technology? I, as a human, didn’t get permission from someone else to transform their work. It’s okay when I do it, but not when it’s done algorithmically? Why?
I think this is a legitimate question that has valid arguments either way, but it’s a question that needs to be answered, and I don’t think a blanket response of “it’s bad because it’s stealing other people’s work” is appropriate. If the model is very bad and clearly spits out exact replicas of the inputs, that’s obviously a bad thing, just as it would be equally bad if I traced someone else’s work. But what about the models that don’t do that, and spit out unique works never seen before? Not all models are equal in this sense.
Because it is copyright laundering, which is ilegal. We are just too early in the tech to have it established. But see cases open against Microsoft’s Copilot.
I’m surprised people here on open source, free software project are defending copyright so fiercly. AI is learning not copying and even if you disagree - fuck copyright and fuck protectionism. There’s so much shit to do in this world and we’re back to “looms will end the world” nonsense. The propaganda machine is rolling hard on this one.
Open source software has specifically devoted much of its efforts to ensuring it never breaches those copyrights.
They might look at Oracle SQL DB and say “Damn, that looks so useful and well-written. Well, I guess we could copy its codebase and pretend we wrote it ourselves…but it’s probably safer to re-implement it from scratch.” Then you get alternatives like MySQL.
That’s a fast example that probably ignores extended history of database wars, but you get the idea.
You dont seem to know what you are talking about, or are dissingenous.
Copyright is the tool that allows to enforce GPL. The same with other free and open source licenses.
You seem to be leaning towards “permissive” libertarian licenses like MIT and BSD. Those don’t care much about the end users (I got your code, now fuck off I can do whatever I want with the modifications, including never sharing them back and making the whole thing closed source).
But for GPL and licenses that protect the rights of developers (including the right to ask follow-up developers to keep the code open for the benefit of users and developers), copyright laws are the tool that enforces that.
You seem to be awfully ignorant of the history and I suggest you get back to it. Copyleft and free software is fundamentally anti copyright. Copyleft and GPL is legal play against copyright because guess what - we don’t have the power to change the entire legal framework. I’ve been foss dev for over 20 years now so might as well fuck off lol
I think I read another user said “they treated the time I have to spend on video games with respect.”
And that line has stuck with me.
So while I don’t expect anything close to BG3’s scale or polish but every few years, I do expect not to buy a game and have the game hold its hand out for cash.
Games respecting my time is something that I’ve definitely come to value a lot more. Quantity for quantities sake, inane things like overly restrictive save points or busywork for people who don’t pay to skip… I just can’t really be bothered with it.
Save points stopped being an issue when game suspension/quick resume became standard. I’ve left my Series X mid game before, powered it off at the wall and gone away for a week, the game loaded back exactly to the point I left it still.
Yeah I love suspend/resume on my steam deck. I definitely don’t think it’s stopped being an issue for me though, sometimes I want to turn the device off or if I’m playing on PC I want to quit the game and do something else or just turn it off.
It’s just frustrating because saving the game is not a technical problem and hasn’t been for decades, it’s a design choice and I shouldn’t need to lean on a technical solution to get around it. Maybe I’m just stubborn though
saves are also important for archiving and sharing game states, maybe i want to preserve this specific game state so i can relive it for the rest of my life? or i want to download a save from someone else to experience something specific they found or made
That is SUCH an amazing way to put it. No grinding, no waiting for timers to run out, no traveling back and forth to savepoint, no insanely hard challenges or unlocks. Just experiencing it, and (for the most part) even failing forward.
Just scores of empty containers to check. I know they can’t all have something but respecting my time would include minimizing having so many empty containers. That’s about my only complaint so far though in that regard so it’s not that bad or anything either.
Lol my pinky gets tired holding down the alt key all the time. I need a mod that permanently enables those highlights and I need it to highlight everything including plates, cups, bottles, etc. Because I’m gonna take it all!
The standard argument here is that you’re not supposed to look in every container for loot. However yep everyone I’ve seen play this game including myself is an absolute loot goblin. What if this rotten fruit basket has a +2 greatsword or boots of elvenkind!
I think there’s a mod that adds a button you can click to “loot the room” - characters make perception rolls and “find” anything of value and put the items into their inventories. Haven’t tried it but might be your jam.
I completely agree with your comment. It’s a bit of a slowdown from play when you search everything but at the same time if playing tabletop you’d have people trying random things that don’t light up for interaction of a video game. In the end it’s only a slight slowdown anyways and does add to immersion so it’s not terrible but more a time waster is all.
I haven’t looked at mods yet, I like to do a first playthrough vanilla usually but I completely forgot they were a thing here, so thanks for the reminder.
I mean it should and they didn’t set a new standard, they just brought back a old standard of having a developer and publisher actually giving a fuck about making a good, complete game.
This is the perspective that is totally forgotten and missed by most engaging in the discussion. Not to diminish Larian’s achievement, but they literally busted out the old playbook. Credit where it’s due, but BG3 shouldn’t be controversial - it should be the standard because that’s what the standard used to be.
That’s what the standard used to be, because it used to be much cheaper to satisfy. For indies, if you try to do a quarter of what Larian achieved there in production value, and your game doesn’t sell, your studio is dead. For AAA, you’ll have to fight execs/management endlessly trying to shoehorn microtransactions and/or dlc to “justify” the costs.
I’d love it to be the new standard, but this only happened because Larian is basically a huge indie imo. Which unfortunately is an anomaly.
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