Unity well and truly thought everyone would just roll over on this, and oh boy, were they wrong. They didn’t at all learn from the Wizards of the Coast debacle at the beginning of the year.
WoTC, Reddit, Twitter, now unity. All made changes that their user base said they wouldn’t like, made the changes anyway, then lost a bunch of users. There must be some new business Guru telling everybody to piss off their customers
Unfortunately, they all seem to be working from the techno-feudalism playbook. It started when tech companies realized they could make more by making us rent software instead of selling it to us, and it’s spread.
Fucking Adobe was the first one to rent their suit of applications. It has been downhill from there, even smartphone apps want to rent access these days.
Pretty sure Elon was first to the key, and the rest have followed suit.
In seriousness, though, the primary driver is the VC tap slowing down significantly and forcing long term business strategy to lean much harder into its existing opportunities vs. planning for periodic cash infusion from investors. A lot of these businesses never had to set themselves up for success in the absence of that capital, and it’s led to bad practices and product strategies.
They might experiment with ads and subscription tiers, but the real focus is always on getting users. Look at YouTube, AFAIK, it’s still not profitable (or if it is, it’s barely profitable), and not for lack of trying over the past few years. Yeah, sites like Reddit and Twitter are cheaper to run, but there’s still a ton of overhead and ads aren’t as profitable there.
Now investors want to see a return, and it’s just not happening.
Those sites are still dead, given how low the population is. MySpace still exists, but it doesn’t really have an audience. And you can’t sell ads without an audience.
A stand-up move from Re-Logic. You love to see it when the people at the helm of a lucrative publisher are industry stakeholders rather than the all-too-common quarterly cash extractor types[^1].
[^1]: Yes, I am all too aware that such seemingly altruistic gestures can be calculated PR moves in disguise. I certainly understand that this move will earn them (as a publisher) brownie points with various indie studios who may just so happen to be seeking publisher funding in the wake of an expensive mid-project engine switch. Such is the way of the world; sometimes a move can be simultaneously altruistic and good business.
UPBGE is a fork of original blender game engine. Looks like it’s still being actively developed based on their github. Not sure how it compares to other modern engines though.
I didn’t realize until now that unity’s CEO was CEO of EA. Making a lot more sense now why unity would make such a bone headed decision
Riccitiello returned to EA to serve as CEO from February 2007 to March 2013,when the board of directors accepted his resignation because of the company’s financial performance. Following EA, he worked as an advisor to startup companies and became an early investor in Oculus VR.
You love to see it. Putting their money into these open source engines will hopefully give those devs a better work-life balance and enable them to do even greater things. 🤘
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