@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.
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.
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.
@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?
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.
It essentially allows for special closed source builds. These closed source builds can have the engine support for consoles and still be in keeping with Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo's licenses.
So, basically the console manufacturer gives you the SDK, integration code, etc after you sign their NDAs. After that, you can either use what they gave you to port it yourself to that console, or you can pay someone else for their build.
Hey EU. How about lowering that barrier to entry by pumping a couple of million Euro’s into cold-room reverse engineering the API’s and developing an open source alternative that can be distributed freely.
We’ll invite Sony lawyers, Microsoft lawyers, watch them cope and seethe as their framework is made more open…
…aaaand then realising that a lot more people will take the shot to pay for actual licensing. Go figure.
It's still valuable information for those that would seek to load homebrew (unsigned code) onto their systems.
Console security is one of those things where every additional barrier helps. The goal isn't to outright prevent homebrew or piracy but to limit the scope of breaches and delay them as much as possible. Even modern consoles like the Switch and PS5 are not immune
It would be great if there was a guaranteed way to homebrew your consoles, but yeah security and stability is the real thing we benefit from. I don’t think anyone would advocate for more hackers in console multiplayer games, and I don’t want a homebrew game I’m running to crash or brick my system because of their fly-by-night hardware usage.
So, I didn't bring up Xbox earlier, because Microsoft has an official way to run homebrew on Xbox consoles.
All modern Xboxes have access to something called developer mode. This allows people to put whatever code they like on it, but removes the ability to play retail games. The change isn't permanent, however, and switching between the modes is perfectly safe.
This is a big part of the reason why Xbox 1 never had piracy; pirates couldn't piggyback on the back of homebrewers, who simply opted to use developer mode instead of cracking the console.
Interesting, I didn’t realize this. I assumed a dev kit was always required for that behavior, and that’s why Nintendo offering a cheap switch dev kit was such a big deal. TIL
I am not sure this is something other engines even offered at this level, but my issue is bindings support.
3.X had (3rd-party) production-ready bindings, even for niche languages.
4.X, with hopes of improving support for compiled languages, has a new bindings system meaning that all bindings need to be redone as a new effort. This happened with the language that I'm interested in, the group that made the production-ready 3.X bindings abdicated the crown and there have been splintered efforts by individuals to work on 4.X bindings.
So it (3.X vs 4.X) is language vs engine features. When/if 4.X bindings do come out, it is not known how similar they will be so (aside from non-Godot-specific code) that will likely add complication to it as well.
I don't really care about consoles (needing to jump through hoops to develop for it is one reason) so a different potential issue would web export limitations. Both for different languages and for visual quality (AA). Those were issues in the past, though I'm not actually sure where they're at now (the 4.1 docs do say you can't have C# web exports in 4.X).
I’m all for Godot getting better; that said, has Epic, Open3D, or Crytek made similar moves?
(I know Crytek isn’t much of a player currently, but as someone who’s been following them closer in recent years, it really seems like they got their house back in order)
I think epic made their engine more appealing by waiving some Epic Games Store charges for Unreal games. And had a no fee until 1m earnings thing. Not this kind of shit.
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.
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.
“not always possible for other developers”, mostly because they’re busy shitting out rubbish, buggy titles riddled with micro transactions (or whatever nonsense they can get away with to nickel and dime their customers)
People took note of how great BG3 is because it’s just a good game, you’re not be treated as a resource they can squeeze to get extra cash
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.
gamedeveloper.com
Gorące