Elderos

Elderos, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

Normal feels like I am controlling the vision frustum (where I want to look at), and inverted feels like I am moving the camera itself, as if it was a physical object. I can play both but I definitely have to remind myself what I am trying to control when making the switch.

I vastly prefer non-inverted, because I like the idea of just pointing where I want to look at. I hope it makes sense. All of this apply mostly for games with orbit camera.

Elderos, 9 miesięcy temu

Must be AI-written.

Elderos, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

Finally an article that goes beyond the drama and misinformation. It is not just about the new fee, which realistically is nothing compared to what you would owe epic for the same level of success.

What sucks is the shadiness and the deceptive nature of it all. I am sure the executives felt really clever and thought it would almost fly under the radar After all, they managed to spin this as not-a-royalty after years of boasting that Unity wouldn’t have any.

The new changes are essentially this :

You’re forced into going with the pro or enterprise license past a certain revenue (which was sort of a thing already).

You’re forced into serving Unity ads, or else you get charged a some royalties, which realistically should still be less than what UE charges.

You’re forced retroactively into it, as they deleted the old TOS behind the scenes.

They’re definitely not being upfront about their intentions, and due to their complete aversion to mentionning the word royalties, they managed to deceptively make up a lie that sounds worst than the actual truth. Even though this is a move targetted at multi-mullion dollars productions, actual students and hobbyist are now worried about being charged per user downloads, which is not happening.

It is sad to see, Unity went from being owned and operated by people who truely cared. I worked there for a number of years and most leaders and employees truely believed they were a force of good in this otherwise shitty world. It is crazy how much the company changed in just a number of years/months. It sucks, and whoever ended up in charge robbed both the employees and the users of something great.

John was a smooth talker, and even as the company was turning corporate and seemingly stepping on old values, he was very good at making sensible arguments and justifying the company transformation. I can’t help but feel deceived now. Ultimately I left the company because I disagreed with so many decisions. Virtually my entire backlog was stuff I disagreed with and I just couldn’t justify waking up in the morning. We’re long past the “Users first” slogan which made Unity so popular with indies.

Elderos, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

Fair enough, this is an atrocious billing system, but I I firmly believe that this is simply a gimmick to get around charging royalties without calling it so. Maybe I am biased, but the people working at Unity are not monsters, and I believe the employee who posted publicly and stated that the people implementing this system made sure that it would be under-reporting installs is speaking the truth. I think there is this misconception that Unity is simply gonna fire an event for every install and charge you directly for each report, but there is no way that this will be this simple. In all likelihood they will use this to keep a list of the popular games, and the actual fee will be based on heuristics like estimated sales and whatever other analytics and ads generated by the game clients. Sure it is a “trust me bro” system, yes it’s bad, yes it could be abused, I think it is fair to call it out and ask for a more transparent system, but deep down I just don’t believe that Unity is evil and did this to abuse the developers.

In all likelihood THEY will be the one forced to under charge, and really they’re doing this to force you into their ecosystem so it is likely that they will reach out the studios individually before incurring the fees. The whole thing is worded in a way that past a certain level of success, they will charge you royalties unless you play ball with them and serve ads and buy in other services. I would not blame anyone for calling it scummy, but I think it is important to understand their motives, they want to force your hand to use whatever they’re selling. The installation fee is just a smoke screen, they have nothing to gain bankrupting studios by making up numbers. Of course, this is just my own take. I think I have a fairly good understanding of how they operate, but I could be wrong.

Elderos, 9 miesięcy temu

That is just reductionism. The post above yours went above and beyond to explain why they can’t just change the engine. For a lot of business it would mean bankruptcy now. So you understand that given the choice between bankruptcy now or maybe being squeezed again by Unity later, the latter is still more an attractive option, right?

Elderos, 9 miesięcy temu

Calm down. It is a shit move and a break of trust but very, very few business will be bankrupted by those actual fees. You guys here are outraged but you have no stake in this, it is easy to claim that you’d burn your company to the ground to get rid of Unity, but there is a reason why only the rich indies are going to ditch Unity short-term.

Elderos, 9 miesięcy temu

So better go bankrupt and lose your business and everything you built right now without trying, right? How pragmatic.

Elderos, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

Too early to tell, but it could signal the start of a trend where developers and game studios at least entertain the idea of having a look at other engine before going with unity.

Don’t underestimate the sunk cost of Unity. The commitment to Unity it big. Unity is taught in game classes, people are formed and specialized in it, and you might have years of in-house tools which you couldn’t re-use.

I can see hobbyist switching and game studios with games that are easy to port, like arcade-style 2d games. For a lot of studio switching is a real risk of bankruptcy, more so than the extra fees. It will take more than a few days for Unity to fall, or even have an “exodus”.

Elderos, 10 miesięcy temu

They’re making mistakes on this kind of stuff.

Elderos, 10 miesięcy temu

Here’s how to monetize 100%% of your playerbase :

Charge a one-time premium to have access to the game forever at a reasonable, region-adjusted price that the average worker can afford, and then fuck off.