That was their own fault though. They tried to cheat and got done for it. Should be no sympathy for them.
All these companies are frigging terrible, but I have some respect for Epic for creating actual impressive tech that will allow for the creation of cool stuff. Everyone else, Unity included here for the past several years, are finding new ways of closing the market and stifling competition, which Unreal would of course love to do themselves. It’s very much a pick your poison situation with game engines right now.
Unreal currently are and have done what you say when they bought out exclusivity for tons of games for their useless store front on their back of their Fortnite money. Exclusives are nothing new in games, but it was very much a case of “We’ll give you unreasonable amounts of money to take your game off Steam and GOG, etc, to only be on our storefront”. The Factorio devs were one such dev they tried to buy out but were denied.
That’s pretty much doing the same thing you’re crying foul over Unity about, just with games as opposed to technologies.
Right, at no point have I argued Unreal are perfect darlings. The only thing I said is they aren’t as profitable as they could be due to other companies leveraging their monopoly against them. I’m not here morally justifying anything they’ve done other than to say “at least they produce good tech still”.
And my point was this isn’t true. No one is leveraging their monopolies against them, they just tried to cheat and got a deserved kick in the nuts.
To say “they aren’t as profitable as they could be” is absurd considering how much money Fortnite rakes in. They were making tons of money and tried to make yet more money on top of that. This isn’t going to ethics behind how they make said money. Cough cough class action lawsuit cough cough
Unity buying up companies to add to their portfolio’s is just… normal business stuff in all honesty.
I’m not going to derail this thread, but a cursory glance at the monetization schemes behind Unity’s AI tools and the subscription models they were planning through their cloud services reveal some questionable monetary ideas coupled with their recent terms of service debacles. To say nothing of Apple’s practices and production methods of their products. I’m not even sure what we’re arguing about. Unreal isn’t allowed on the Apple store and the monopolistic practices of modern markets is having massive impacts on bottom lines is all I said. I’m not entirely sure why Unreal is in the crosshairs here as other companies have abused far greater power over a far longer period of time.
Again, my point was that the reason they’re gimped is because they tried to cheat. Sure they’re at a disadvantage now, but they did it to themselves. There should be no sympathy for the position they’re in.
Yes the other players are all monopolies in one way or another. But in this instances Unreal brought the ire upon themselves. Same way Unity brought the heavens down on themselves with the runtime fee policy.
This is debatable, from my understanding Apple is just as much in the wrong, if not moreso while enjoying huge profits dominating and gatekeeping the market.
Anyway, wasn’t looking to turn this thread into a flame war where we pick our favorite evil corporate entity and shill for all their monopolistic maneuvers. Unreal has far and away the best realtime rigging and animations today bar none, and I hope it generates them profit as in a healthy marketplace engines that produce quality tools should do well. I do not want unreal to make money because of more questionable monopoly and user exploitation.
There’s a difference between what’s happened with Unreal and Unity being on its fifth round of layoffs in two years.
4 Likes
I just hope this didn’t affect the Weta realtime team who are working on the gpu driven rendering in Unity.
here is some info: https://twitter.com/kechogarcia/status/1729678204749631950
2 Likes
But also people generally seem to agree unity is much bigger than it needs to be 
The entire games industry is currently in turmoil, and 2023 is proving to be a particularly difficult year. It seems to be a downfall following the peak in 2020 or 2021. A significant portion of this crisis is attributed to the unsuccessful Embracer deal that occurred earlier this year in my opinion.
2 Likes
This tweet was deleted, but for context it was one of the formerly Weta people saying they weren’t fired.
It’s likely a reorganization, people seem to forget layoffs also correlate to hiring. I doubt it’s the whole weta team but at least the people who worked on the stuff at unite still work there.
That said, they probably didn’t want to appear to speak for the company, and unity will likely make an announcement soon (once again not preparing news in advance).
It is, but remember how a massive round of earlier layoffs involved firing the entire Gigaya team? You know, a bunch of engineers and developers, something that the engine probably needs more than the people who tend to stick around?
1 Like
Yes but this time the weta people don’t seem to be gone, at least not from what I can find.
I think you’re looking for them at the wrong place. The WetaFx deal got cut, with that, all those people, who worked on it. I’m guessing, New Zealand office or something. They may get hired by WetaFX again or form a new Fx studio to support WetaFx. who knows. Those are possibilities. They got booted after a big business transaction, that’s for sure.
Some of the tech shown in Unite is by Weta people, and from what i can tell those people still work there is what i mean.
Also you’re mixing up names isn’t Weta Digital the unity side and Weta FX the movie stuff. I’ve also heard it called Weta Realtime.
No, I do not. Unity’s Weta had a deal with WetaFx (Peter Jackson’s company, remained in his hands) to support them. This deal has been cut by Unity and the personnel involved will be laid off, according to the news. This is the news above and I was talking about this. I did not mix up names.
Unity’s Weta: what you’re talking about is Weta Tools and it’s just a brand encompassing the Weta software and know-how they bought and put in Speedtree and the Ziva stuff too). Weta Tools will stay (at least not affected this time as far as we know).
I often think about it.
What if Unreal Engine provided some form of C# cross-transplier for developers who are accustomed with the Unity scripting C# language?
What if they had “C# Blueprints”?
This is all fascinating. to me
1 Like