Was looking through forums and stumbled upon this:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/update-on-artengine.1320831/
Two years ago:
The desktop app is cancelled but theyâre working on an online version which will be included in a new subscription service containing most of the recently acquired tools.
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I see. Any clue on the subscription price?
No one knows.
For the price it was offered, not surprising.
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Wow, last I heard about this was they accepted the subscription price was way out of line with the market, or more specifically what existing Unity users were willing to pay and as such weâre going to announce new subscription prices that would be far more acceptable.
I was waiting to see what the new price model was going to be and see if it was worth investing any time in, but well, I guess thatâs not happening now, and there is no way Iâm going to pay for a browser/cloud solution that can be taken away at any time, for any reason at all. I mean theyâve literally just killed the desktop version but at least existing users still have the application, cloud solution you have nothing! So this kind of move really doesnât provide any confidence.
This seems to be an area that Unity is constantly failing on. I feel like Art Engine has been the only purchase since TextMeshPro that really interested me and could have provided extra value to Unity. However unlike Epic who buy or create cool tech and bundle it with the engine for free, Unity is obsessed with selling it piece meal to boost earnings
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Theyâre not really comparable. Unity has never been profitable and Unreal is coasting on Fortnite, Tencent and AAA licensing money. They donât have to worry about how to become profitable. Any new Unity acquisitions will inevitably cost more money. The question is only how much extra money theyâll ask and what demographic they are aiming for. The Ziva and Weta stuff theyâre introducing recently costs literally thousands of dollars a month for several new subscriptions and services aimed at AAA and movie industries.
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Yeah all true ( though I might debate that Unity should be profitable from the engine/asset store ),but I guess my point is more the perception it creates, which for Unity is obviously a bad look.
This is even worse when Unity market/blog these new acquisitions as being amazing new developments for the engine or pipelines, when in reality they barely effect the vast majority of users if at all and when there might be some overlap the costs are just unacceptable ( again for the majority of users ).
I canât see myself ever using Ziva or Weta due to costs and not really needing that functionality in my client projects, but I would definitely be making use of MetaHuman, Quixel ( actually had a license before it went to Epic ) and Quixel Megascans if I were using Unreal.
Iâm not even sure I would honestly expect to get this stuff for free from Unity. Reasonable level of subscriptions would likely be enough to invest in some of them ( hence my interest in ArtEngine if they had adjusted the cost ), but I would also have welcomed Unity promoting these acquisitions with some free content, for example SpeedTree.
In summary I guess iâm a bit annoyed of Unity shouting out about these wonderful acquisitions and even some development tech that ultimately does not affect me or my decade of client work, yet in comparison Epicâs announcements have all been appealing in one way or another. So I just wish Unity could move in that direction a little.
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Yea, none of the acquisitions of the past two years have affected my client work either. Meanwhile, exciting things are happening all the time in Unreal and Godot lands. And news relating to those engines almost always are applicable to the work I do or plan to do in the future, unlike Unity with their loud non-gamedev acquisitions and packages that still canât match features from legacy systems that stopped being developed 4 years ago.
And while I can find lots of information about Unityâs legacy systems, anything new in package manager is poorly documented and tutorials often are out of date due to these systems undergoing breaking changes on the regular. Itâs almost like learning a newly developed engine, at which point I question why should I stick with Unity if I could spend the same time learning a different engine that has its priorities on game development.
I feel like Unity 2023 will make or break the engine for me. A lot of forever in development packages should become the defaults by then and maybe itâll be a bit clearer where management is steering this ship.
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So what youâre saying is that Unreal has been profitable off of successful games? Hmm, it seems pretty obvious what Unity should do. Offer this and other software for free in the hopes that it attracts AAA devs and/or allows a dev to create a game thatâs a big hit. Sure, it would take a leap of faith but honestly at this point what does Unity have to lose? Itâs slowly dying anyway . . .
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A very small number of people participate in traditional âUnityâs Impending Doomâ discussions on the forum. If you only listen to those, you might get an incorrect idea about actual situation.
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Iâm not saying that because Epic started with games a long time ago when player expectations, manpower requirements and budgets were a lot lower. In todayâs markets, a newcomer, even with deep pockets, is more likely to flop than not. Just look at all the Amazonâs attempts. They have endless money and also a lot of failed video game projects. The big giants are also failing on the regular even with proven IPs. Itâs a high risk, high reward endeavour and shareholders wonât sign up for the possibility of hundreds of millions puffing out into thin air.
What theyâve been doing so far has been a lot more reliable revenue wise, and theyâre likely intentionally sacrificing short-term profitability for rapid growth, which is common for IT companies like this.
AAA is not attracted by free complementary tools. The few thousand required for Ziva/Weta licenses and services per seat is already within AAA budgets.
If anything, Unityâs growing right now. Especially outside gaming. The only demographic where itâs dying might be a select crowd of indies who donât need any of the new, poorly documented tech Unity have been developing for the past 4 years. Unity is becoming increasingly hard to pick up and stay up to date with. New indies are starting to flock to other, simpler platforms which donât have 4 render pipelines, 3 text engines, etc.
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Fortnite is owned by Epic, all proceeds go to them. This isnât a case of benefiting off the success of others, but rather themselves. The chance that Unity could create a game so successful as to fuel both development and cost in the future is ⌠0,00âŚ1%
Would be interesting to know how much the big companies are charged for using UE. Its stated that deals can be negotiated rather than the flat percentage rate of earnings above the threshold, would be interesting to know the outcome.
Considering Epics financial situation, Iâd imagine theyâll let it go âfor cheapâ just to gain/retain a strong foothold/dominance in the market.
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Fortnite made so much money they were able to sacrifice half of that by nuking one big market, the iOS market, to try and secure longer term return, by trying to strong arm this close garden into opening up.
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You mean that Unity should get 30 years of experience how to make commercial games, and then make one? Cool! Letâs see how that works in year 2052, after the company gets these 30 years of experience.
Iâm slightly exaggerating, but my thinking is that you canât just âdecideâ to make a successful game and do it. That very rarely happens. Epic has literally had multiple decades of game development experience â and you canât quite make up for that by just âhire some people who had that experienceâ â as a company you need to have that experience too.
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Agreed, this is another important aspect that is often missed. Maybe Iâm just getting old ( actually I am ) but its becoming increasingly tiring constantly running just keep up with Unity developments. That might not be so bad, but they rarely seem to offer any tangible benefit for doing so. Its not that new tech in general is bad/hard, but that Unityâs stuff seems to go through never-ending cycles of breaking updates or straight out abandonment.
Perhaps had Unity continued that from the start, they would have at least 15 years of experience by now 
But yeah your main point stands no matter, betting on making a successful game is simply not feasible, even large AAA companies regularly fail to make a game that takes off, even if they get everything right. Still I canât help thinking that perhaps had this been a sub-focus of Unity from the start they may have had a hit.
I still have hope Unity will find a way to resolve all these issues eventually. Having been around for over a decade I remember so many times when they made âanti-consumerâ changes but listened to the community and made changes for the better. I guess time will tell.
Also, you donât need to drive the car that youâre making in order to understand the steering wheel isnât working 
. Its of cause preferable, but listening to customer feedback can still go a long way - then deciding a direction.
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Right . . . I can see how you would draw that conclusion based on the sentence you quoted. But if you wanted to know what I actually meant, you could have just kept reading, because I literally answered my own question immediately afterward.
Now, argue with what I actually said (others have done so and I donât disagree with their points), but please do not misrepresent my words when their true meaning is right there and not open to interpretation.
They donât need experience making successful game, they need experience shipping (complete technically ambitious) game. Even bad games teach you.
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