- cross-posted to:
- gamedev@programming.dev
- technews@radiation.party
- hackernews@derp.foo
I can say, unequivocally, if you’re starting a new game project, do not use Unity. If you started a project 4 months ago, it’s worth switching to something else. Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted.
It’s on developers to sort through these two types of costs, meaning Unity has added a bunch of admin work for us, while making it extremely costly for games like Vampire Survivor to sell their game at the price they do. Vampire Survivor’s edge was their price, now doing something like that is completely unfeasible. Imagine releasing a game for 99 cents under the personal plan, where Steam takes 30% off the top for their platform fee, and then unity takes 20 cents per install, and now you’re making a maximum of 46 cents on the dollar. As a developer who starts a game under the personal plan, because you’re not sure how well it’ll do, you’re punished, astoundingly so, for being a breakout success. Not to mention that sales will now be more costly for developers since Unity is not asking for a percentage, but a flat fee. If I reduce the price of my game, the price unity asks for doesn’t decrease.
- PonyOfWar ( @PonyOfWar@pawb.social ) 33•1 year ago
Really sucks to be a Unity developer right now. I’ve been working with mostly Unity for around 10 years now, and while I’m not directly affected by the recent changes, it really feels like the engine has been dying a slow death for a few years now. Hopefully Ricitello will leave eventually and they can turn this around, otherwise many of my skills will be useless in a few years…
- Icalasari ( @Icalasari@kbin.social ) 12•1 year ago
Nintendo has a few games made in Unity
Noteably, one of the Pokemon games is made in Unity
I don’t think that CEO will last long once Nintendo realizes their biggest cash cow gets hit by this
- rastilin ( @rastilin@kbin.social ) 15•1 year ago
If I were running a Unity project, I’d be tempted to just jump to Unreal. No matter what promises Unity makes you don’t have any actual guarantee that they’ll keep them while Unreal has the “non-retroactive” clause directly in their contract. However painful the switch is, you’ll only have to do it once.
- Tarte ( @Tarte@kbin.social ) 1•1 year ago
“non-retroactive” clause directly in their contract
I also wonder how Unity‘s approach will work in countries where that is the legal default. I have a feeling that we will be seeing quite a few lawsuits next year, if they actually go ahead with their plans.
- InfiniteLoop ( @InfiniteLoop@lemm.ee ) English6•1 year ago
are unity and unreal so different that your 10 years of experience in one isn’t helpful for the other? i’m not a game developer but I had assumed it was similar to web frameworks - definitely high switching costs for porting an existing project, but as a developer looking for a job there are still many portable skills.
i’d guess it also depends on what parts of the engine you are working in?
- dingleberry ( @dingleberry@discuss.tchncs.de ) 1•1 year ago
That dead eyes smile tho…
- ExLisper ( @ExLisper@linux.community ) English0•1 year ago
Correct me if I’m wrong but lots of game developers simply do bootcamps or short courses where they learn Unity. They don’t have background in software development and switching tools/languages will require lot of learning from them. They will only switch when using Unity will actually become unaffordable. Bigger studios that can afford to retrain people/hire new experts can change tools like that, smaller studios will just keep using Unity.
- SkyeStarfall ( @SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 1•1 year ago
Sounds like those game developers are about to become unemployable without further education
Also, I don’t really know how one can be a good developer without that necessary foundation. Maybe you can use a tool, but how would you know what to do with it…?