The 3D demos are impressive, and the most recent release added a lot of features for 3D development, such as a Vulkan renderer and a bunch of lighting effects.
I’m no 3D game dev, but from what I’ve seen, it’s ready for smallish 3D games. I don’t think the performance is anywhere near Unreal, but it seems to be capable enough for most indie 3D titles.
Yeah, I love that analogy. When companies deviate from their core business model to try to increase revenue, it’s a symptom that the company is dying. If they’re having profit issues (which I doubt), a healthy company would innovate to attract customers, not to lock them in.
There is an ethical advertising system that works well: opt-in catalogues. I love Costco’s monthly ads, IKEA’s catalogue, Amazon’s holiday shopping catalogue, etc. When I need something, I can browse and create a shopping list.
My problem with ads is that it tries to get me to buy stuff when I’m doing something where I don’t want to buy stuff, like watching TV, browsing the Internet, or playing a game.
A game engine isn’t the right place for ads. Leave that to storefronts and other areas where I’m already looking to spend money.
I don’t think it’s surprising that a sci fi game with exploration elements from a major AAA studio renewed interest in a sci fi survival/exploration game from a smaller studio. If you want more of the exploration part of Starfield, No Man’s Sky is the natural option.
That’s a popular quip, but it’s just not true. If it were, Unity would lay off most of its staff and only do bug fixes. That way they’d save a ton on salary, and they probably wouldn’t lose any customers for a couple years until they fall far enough behind, so their quarterly financials would look great for about a year until they started losing customers.
This isn’t that. This is just a classic example of the leadership not understanding the business they’re in and trying to maximize profit. I think they overestimate the value of their product and what their customers are willing to pay for.
Yes, but it doesn’t rise to the level of “insider trading,” which means using internal-only information to make trading decisions. If they sell these stocks regularly, on a schedule, in the same quantity, it’s not insider trading.
And that’s exactly what they’re doing, you can see their trades, and they’re consistent for about the same amount. So they’re not trading because of changes going on internally, they’re trading based on a schedule, probably because they need cash flow for some reason. My guess is taxes for their stock compensation.
I’m pretty sure you can always modify code for personal use, you just can’t always distribute those changes. In the case of a game engine, this would mean you could modify the engine code in development, but you could not release your game with those changes in.
Unreal allows modification and distribution, but only if you’re a licensed user and only for your combined work, but you cannot distribute your own fork of Unreal, aside from a patch set for other developers.
That’s only true if you’re talking about the goals of open source/free software generally.
If we’re just talking about a game engine and releasing games, being able to modify the engine is absolutely critical when optimizing a large game. So having source available is absolutely a very practical thing when using proprietary software.
So it really depends on what you’re concerned about. Source available is just as good as open source in most cases if your goal is to build closed source software. If your goal is to build open source/free software, it’s awful.
What did I mention that’s not part of the open source definition? Btw, I’m using this one, and only mentioned redistribution, which is the first one:
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
The next big part is able derivative works, which is also not allowed as part of the Unreal license AFAIK.
Or it just means they see it as compensation and are selling for taxes and expenses, not because they are worried about the long term direction of the company.