Sooo - recently another game engine (COUGH Unreal) ‘bought/joined forces’ with Quixel, this was HUGE news to me. At first I felt a little shock (although I’ve seen so many acquisitions over the years it never really surprises me anymore), then sadness (as I felt their megascans/etc slipping away) and finally acceptance (such is life - and death). Now, I get that Quixel still work with Unity - but to have all their assets available for free in another engine… grrr.
So what can/should Unity do? There isn’t a direct equivalent anymore (after Substance went to Adobe). I don’t believe Unity can quickly make their own version - But… I can suggest a few things.
Setup ‘Unity Scans’ - a dedicated integrated repository for any/all to contribute to. Similar to the asset store but rather than packaged assets - an in-editor feature which allows you to browse and import scanned materials and meshes. And Moderate/oversee this to give a basic Quality Assurance. Plus develop in house tools for using/editing these scans - INVEST into this and it will encourage the community to scan/sell direct into Unity - a win win imo.
Unity could Acquire other tools soon (before they also get snapped up elsewhere). If possible I’d suggest Reallusion… Unity HDRP is now released, but ‘our’ tools for character creation are very limited [again Unreal (COUGH) have their digital humans project and Microsoft now have Ninja Theory ('loved Hellblade btw)] . Reallusion have developed some great tools over the years and a similar Unity integrated approach (to my first idea) would be a huge benefit - Not only would we have great character tools, but by integrating it with Unity’s engine - clothing/mods, could be brought directly/easily into the engine as well.
These two idea should encourage developers to create scans/clothing and make it easier to use these items in Unity - this would give an incentive for developers to create ‘assets’ and for Unity to take a commission.
Well,. that’s a quick ramble - 'thought I’d put it out there and… I’m curious if you have any other ideas.
What else can we encourage Unity to ‘acquire/develop’?
While there’s still time.
The sky isn’t falling and Epic buying out Quixel lead to prices being halved across the board. Unity doesn’t need to buy things out because Unity is built around being an extremely generalist engine.
I would love if Unity bought or made something like Mesh Baker - I use it a lot lately and it can have a massive effect on performance in your game.
“While there is still time?”
Well it really depends what kind of projects you make. UE purchase of Quixel didn’t impact my workflow at all, but it’s true that I’m more of a programmer than anything else…
This. Some people are looking at this as Epic having a major advantage over Unity, but to me this looks like Epic pulling a publicity stunt and having to give away free resources to stay competitive. When is that ever a good sign for a company?
It makes more sense for Unreal to buy Quixel, because it looks like most people who use Unreal engine are making “that” sort of game ;). As people already mentioned, Unity is a more general-purpose sort of engine. If they had bought-out Quixel, I might have thought “Hm, that’s oddly specific.”
You realise they’re only $20/mo to access anyway, right? If it’s worth being shocked over then surely it’s worth paying $20/mo and getting on with your project.
I’m not dismissing the fact that it’s nice to have a bunch of neat assets made available to you for free, but it’s small fries in the context of building a whole video game.
It makes sense for unreal to buy Quixel as they’re targeting AAA studios with big budgets and open world games. Unity not so much.
There are of course many other options. Even with blender if you was to set aside around $500, which isn’t that bad considering ppl spend £2,000+ for a decent unreal game dev machine.
I think its now $20 per month on the lowest tier versus being $270? a year. So ever so slightly cheaper than it was, but for more assets, since they also raised the number of credits you get per month while lowering the cost in credits of the actual assets.
But then Im sure this was all already said in the other Quixel thread. And maybe the Substance one too, I think it drifted onto the Quixel acquisition as well.
Unity should acquire twelve billion usd of networth. Not sure how, though.
If my memory serves me right, Epic Games is valued at 15 billion usd, unity technology is valued at 3 billion usd, and, for comparison steam games is valued at 3 or 4 billion.
Higher value gives epic games more leverage, and they’ve been spreading money around. And that has been working.
Meanwhile I still recall the interesting experiment with Unity Connect, which was never hidden under the rug.
What’s more as a single user you probably can’t really encourage anything, unless you can throw a check with with 9 zeroes on it at the company. So a decent idea would be enjoy things you have now without thinking too hard about what’s to come. As the situation is largely beyond your control, and for now the sky isn’t falling.
From unity side, the smart thing they could do is buying out promising assets and assimilating/incorporating them as parts of their engine. That would attract more people, but won’t quickly close gap in networth. They were mostly doing that. Another good idea would be to finally create a C++ api, but judging by past experience, this won’t be happening.
In the end, engines, tools and technologies come and go and no matter what you use now, it is highly possible that 5 or 10 years from now you’ll be using something completely different. So, enjoy the moment, take care of your saving’s account, and know that “this too shall pass”.
No, I don’t think it is skewed. The important thing is assets and leverage they offer, and not what industry segment is used to obtain those assets. Also it is “Valve Software”.
Look, it is business, not sport. One could talk about “fairness” and the “same weight category”, but the thing is if a lone indie with a net worth of, say, $50k will try to take on Microsoft (net worth one trillion usd), then Microsoft is not going to say “Oh, sure, for the sake of healthy competition we will only spend 50k per year on competing product”, as it would be absurd. Instead they either crush the indie or buy him/her out. Because they have means to do that, and they are going to use those means.
Heck, if we’re talking about industries, Nintendo started as a card trading company, had taxi and love hotel chain at some point. And see where they are now.
Basically you can’t say “it is unfair, as they’re not pure engine development company”, because “they” will still have more assets.
This information is probably correct, as Valve largely takes cut off the sales instead selling their own tech, plus they had invested into several projects like Steam Boxes, Valve Index, Steam Controller, and so on. They also were said to have flat company structure in the past, which is going to be inefficient. However, they’re privately owned company, so exact state of affairs is unknown.
