I didn’t say anything that would suggest that though. And I said it might be a very small minority that do. But it’s still a valid point, no matter how few.
I think Unity’s user base has plateaued for a while now. Their attempts to break into other industries have been… funny.
With this kerfuffle giving a pretty decent boost to the competition, we will soon have more viable options for people to go to.
I don’t know how many people left, but I know there are many actively making exit plans. If the userbase starts shrinking, Unity will do more price hikes (I mean, they pretty much told us Pro sub is getting an increase soon), more price hikes will increase the rate people leave.
I’m making a lot of assumptions and conclusion jumping, but I honestly think this may be the beginning of the end.
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You’re not a fool for paying for what was the only option at the time to remove it. I do wish they would have offered a partial refund for anyone who bought it as one of the options.
We also don’t know who all will be leaving in the coming months. I imagine the fee will also slowly increase with the subscription slowly eliminating any cost savings it might have over the competition. It’s likely why the subscription is being kept at this point as removing it would mean a less competitive revenue share out of the gate.
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I’m burned out on Unity drama, it’s been nothing but bad news for the past few years and technical issues on the engine side are common. Reporting bugs is pretty much useless, if it’s getting addressed at all, it’ll happen 6-9 months later. And even if the technical side wouldn’t suck so bad, emotionally I don’t want to deal with Unity’s leadership being inept for the N-th time in a row.
I think a lot of people are fed up with the state of Unity and are actively exploring other options. I had a great time today in another engine, I can’t remember the last time I felt like this about Unity. So if clients are not requesting Unity specifically, I will avoid it as much as possible until I can leave it for good. My Twitter algo shows me similar sentiment, but I assume twitter has put me in a bubble for engagement so it’s hard to gauge the general situation.
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One thing is for sure: Unity staff has demonstrated an inability to manage a change in Unity’s rules and conditions of such a level that it seems incredible that they could be responsible for the company. Not even a first-year law or economics student would be capable of making that many mistakes.
That tells us one thing: as long as that board of directors remains at the helm of Unity, we will not be safe. Therefore, a change in that board of directors is essential. Because one more attempt at something like that and the company will definitely go to hell. If he hasn’t already left.
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Someone on reddit pointed out that it was very telling that they had the engine team lead (Marc Whitten) making the announcement rather than anyone from the C-suite.
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I agree about bug reporting. I’ve spent hours in reporting bugs and detailing steps to reproduce, etc. They get confirmed and later never fixed. What a waist of time.
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I can see people walking away from Unity.
I can see people currently on 2022.x not moving up to 2023.x.
And for those two reasons I can’t see how this will do any good for Unity as a business plan.
But then again, I read that they are paying the CEO $16M/yr while they are losing money, which was something I couldn’t see coming either, so there’s that…
Besides Godot and Unreal, are there any other options that I can look into for a serious shooter game?
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I think the mobile market is not Tim Sweeneys main concern. If he wanted he can priorize C# tools, or better mobile templates etc. … Dont think he activ fight Unity.
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If you want to stick with C# take a look at Unigine.
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An article or docs entry showing how to decrease the footprint of a build would be great all on its own.
This is a very important point!
Unity once again used misleading language by saying the new install fees only apply to the LTS version released in 2024, which is in fact current year Unity 2023 version. Intentionally trying to mask the fact it’s a violation of the original TOS.
The more carefully you look into anything Unity says, the more it all reeks of subterfuge.
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And that they selected an interviewer who would be nearly the friendliest interviewer this side of CodeMonkey.
And that Marc Whitten’s appology was one of the least convincing enunciations of the word “sorry” I’ve ever heard.
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Unigine is great!
Especially their Landscape tech and rendering!
It was my top 2 choice after Unreal when I decided I’d switch.
The only dealbreaker for me was the UI system and lack thereof.
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A about two years ago i got an interview with a nice gaming company. At the time all their projects where Unity only but I wasn’t too decided to jump in (personal projects, mid contracts with clients, etc). So i told them maybe in the future. Few months ago, I chatted again with the boss and he told me half of their projects now are Unreal and they where doing internal Unreal training to anyone desiring to learn Unreal (basically, you get paid to learn unreal). I decided to join this time and boy oh boy, all their PC/consoles projects are unreal, Unity’s being left only for mobile games.
Long story short, I asked them why the move. He just told me, “Unreal is really made for games”.
While I can’t speak about the projects, I can tell you, they are not big A-AA projects. They are really small games that could be done with Unity and a very small team of devs, but they are completely feed about Unity direction.
And with all recent fiasco, I believe it will accelerate the adoption a lot more.
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What are the chances (legally or realistically) they will pull something bad with people who will stay on the current TOS with 2022LTS? Most likely it’s going to be my final game on Unity and I don’t want something ominous looming over my head while finishing it.
Them adressing the TOS thing is what made me somewhat optimistic about the whole deal, but I’m not really good with legal stuff.
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We’re presently at 100%. That probability goes down from there the more board members lose power over the direction of the company either by leaving or by having it taken from them by a union.
They’ve told us who they are and what they intend to do. They’ve clarified this is ‘the new direction the company will absolutely be taking’. Nobody was forced out because it was ‘the wrong call’. Nobody will be, because the only thing that ‘went wrong’ is that developers refused to be a doormat. So now they’re switching tactics, putting everybody into a pot, and obviously intend on slowly turning up the heat until we reach ‘boiling’ (read: back exactly where all this began because that’s precisely and exactly what they want and they will not back down from it)
As things stand, it is a matter of when and not if.
ed: As you say you’re not very versed in legal stuffs, I’ll put it in plain english. Unity was asked point blank ‘what hard guarantees will you give that this won’t happen for the third time; not unconfirmable promises of future you being “better” but things that cost you a lot of money (for instance severing clients from any financial obligations to you should you do this again) or et cetera’ and answered ‘none. take it or leave it’.
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This is already happening with Godot which will become a serious rival in a few years ironically all thanks to Unity.
This has also been a major eyeopener for many developers and publishers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if more free and open source alternatives to both Unity and Unreal don’t start picking up steam in the next few years too.
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Just curious. Did he say why they didn’t move mobile to Unreal as well?
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That’s the thing. They didn’t address TOS at all. It’s like it was without any new protections. So legally there is nothing new to what it used to be, and you saw how that turned out to be. If they are serious they’ll have to put some legal protections in place, not another promise.
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