Darwinianevolution said:
This is only going to stop the bleeding in the short run, mostly for companies that have their Unity game halfway done. Once their projects are done, noone is going to trust Unity to not pull this stunt again. They are going to need a lot of time (or another company fucking up in equal measure) to recover. |
This is also what I think will happen. Going forward Unity will be viewed as a certain liability, the existing team will be weighing the risk of pursuing development with Unity vs. the complexity and investment it would incur to switch engines.
It will be very hard next 12-24 months for Unity as:
- They already operate at a loss.
- New teams will have a harder time choosing Unity vs. alternative because of the stigma left. (This might be mitigated by an extension of benefits in the newly announced package though)
- Some existing teams will still go forward with replacing Unity as they announced.
- The newly added revenue is now pushed back from January 1 to sometime later as the new major update rolls out.
- They raised the awareness of their main competitor big time especially Godot which is 100% free and open source and can use C#.
However in the end it is very hard to envision Unity half-ass a new fee going forward, this thought might make it somewhat easier for certain teams to allow themselves to trust Unity one lat time. Riccitiello leaving will certainly be for the best in all scenarios.
