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September 22, 2023, 04:32:24 AM

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TIGSource ForumsPlayerGeneralUnity run time fee
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Alex N.
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« on: September 14, 2023, 01:55:02 AM »

I suppose a lot of you here got seriously screwed by Unity's dumbest decision ever to charge per installation.
I'm curious what are your plans moving forward?
Luckily we're in the prototyping phase, even if we have some of the code done. But for sure I won't accept this crap, so we might have to migrate to another engine ASAP, which is another headache to deal with...
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Schrompf
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« Reply #1 on: September 14, 2023, 10:12:20 AM »

Yeah, Godot or Unreal are good options, if you haven't sunk a lot of work into your project, yet. And being the stubborn old fart I am, may I suggest writing your own tech?
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Alex N.
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« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2023, 11:42:09 AM »

"may I suggest writing your own tech"
I think that's a good step for when people already have at least one "successful" game out. It's a smaller chance to have invested all of that time for nothing.
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Lance of Longinus
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« Reply #3 on: September 15, 2023, 06:29:05 AM »

It doesn't surprise me. They've merged with a malware company last year
and they generally seem to be moving in a direction where they only care about short-term profits.

https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-is-merging-with-a-company-who-made-a-malware-installer/
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J-Snake
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« Reply #4 on: September 15, 2023, 04:24:09 PM »

If you want longevity and plan to create games for many decades to come, and if it is within your ability, it is wise to roll your own tech on the side. The reason is that you can never rely on big corporations, as they are never your friend in a capitalistic system. So you want to keep dependencies as low as feasable. For that, you should also employ an engine agnostic programming style. When Unreal is no more viable next, you can port the code to another engine without much hassle, including your own. This is especially true if the game is rather code heavy above anything else, having many custom systems in place. But the custom tools can still remain tied to Unity, as using those is not what you are going to be charged for (or could you? Tongue)).

One major advantage of game-engines is cross-platform compatibility, of course. But that should be covered by upcoming SDL3 (except for consoles, I gues). It effectively upgrades SDL2 by a cross-platform vertex/fragment-shader. That's plenty of power for sophisticated visuals.

Personally, I have a bit of investment in Unity, to see how the games are assembled according to the "industry standard", and to evaluate if it is a good fit for a bigger project. I preferred Unity over Unreal because of the purity of its architecture; you start with a clean slate. And I would like to stay with Unity for now, but I can switch engines and check Unreal next, always knowing I can fallback to my own tech as the majority of systems are custom code anyway.

Having that said, I understand if you are an artist, or if you want to include cutting-edge features only that one engine X offers, then that's the risk you have to carefully evaluate.
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J-Snake
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« Reply #5 on: September 16, 2023, 05:49:09 AM »

And being the stubborn old fart I am, may I suggest writing your own tech?
I guess this isn't considered an "old fart"-opinion anymore, as people now learn the hard way about the dangers of engine-dependency.

If I would be heavily invested (and dependend) in Unity, I would still continue using it and wait with premature decisions. In the worst case, chances are Microsoft will buy them.
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michaelplzno
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« Reply #6 on: September 19, 2023, 11:18:26 PM »

I legit don't mean to be a troll, but for a game that sells 200,000 copies at lets say, $10 a pop, the game would net 2 mill, of witch Steam would take $600,000 and Unity would take a max of $0.20 cents a copy which comes to $40,000 but for some reason Unity is the spawn of Satan and Steam is the Heavenly Host?

Also the price gouging only seems to affect devs that are bringing in literally millions of dollars, and yet we are fighting the power about this?
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Schoq
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« Reply #7 on: September 20, 2023, 05:06:15 AM »

the way games are sold and distributed now it's gonna come down to a whole lot less than $10 per average install is the thing (one of the things)
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J-Snake
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« Reply #8 on: September 21, 2023, 01:26:02 PM »

The increased cost itself isn't the main problem here (and the "low revenue per install edge cases" could be ironed out). The problem is that it is based on install count, not purchase. Each time someone installs the game on new hardware, it's a new install you pay for. And it is impossible to accurately predict this number in general, Unity could just make numbers up since it is a black box to everyone else. That makes the cost unpredictable even when the revenue variable is known.

Unity is selling their engine to a business, and a business has to have clear information about the cost of a licence. The obvious fact is that this profound necessity is not respected, which renders Unity an unreliable business partner. That is why so many are leaving this ship. I personally think that as long as competitors like Unreal are around, Unity's licence has to stay attractive. But it is still important to raise the voice and actions against predatory practices, otherwise they will find acceptance and become mainstream.
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michaelplzno
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« Reply #9 on: September 21, 2023, 04:19:47 PM »

I agree about business being the goal here, but if that is the case, why would you launch a game on a platform like steam that is deliberately opaque about how their visibility algorithms work? It doesn't make business sense to put your launch in the hands of a company that keeps your user data and doesn't tell you clear methods you can use to get your game seen. Unity is bad, but steam is worse imo.
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