| Verter said:
Sorry about the huge post. That was one reason why I stopped posting in VGChartz: I usually ended up writing (a lot) more than I initially wanted, and so I spent more time here than I wanted. "Those are supposed to be the investments you make so that your tools actually work. Without it, Unity simply has no value and it is actually already monetized by the value it procures to unity." But where do those investments come from? That was my point: Oracle and Microsoft can afford to offer JRE and .NET (respectively) for free precisely because they have other products that aren't free. Also, Unity isn't exactly the same kind of product than JRE or .NET, so I don't think it's a 1:1 comparison (Unreal Engine is). In any case, Unity Technologies doesn't have other products or services that aren't linked to Unity, so it has to make money from it if it wants to keep existing. The reality is that the value that the company gets from Unity becomes totally useless if Unity doesn't generate enough profit to be sustainable and remain competitive both on the short and long terms. And let's not forget that Unity is the David of the professional game engines, with Unreal being Goliath. Epic Games is the one company that could easily afford to offer Unreal Engine entirely for free, with no taxes whatsoever, and yet they still decide to charge a fee right from the first dollar you make using its engine. On the other hand, Unity Technologies, which doesn't have anything else to hold onto if Unity fails, still give you 1,000,000$ for free. And as you said, Unity is more stable now (and has more and better features and services), so it's clear that the money they've being making so far has being well spent (at least partially). "The Twitter feed I linked is to the contrary mostly constituted of serious actors that are actually paying license and revenue to Unity. And even for the hobbyist the move is still crappy if they ever had any hopes of maybe..." Inside the spoiler tag, there's a list with the last 70 developers (no cherrypicking) mentioned by that Twitter account (with 632 posts at the moment of searching). Among them there are only 4 midsized companies and 8 other devs that seem more or less serious. The 58 remaining are either starting, or hobbyists, or small unsuccesful or not-too-succesful "companies" (sometimes they are actually constituted as such, sometimes they're just a bunch of friends working together), or just not developers (simply people or small associations supporting them). So your claim about which actors constitute this Twitter account doesn't seem to be true. Spoiler!
Galareteg: 1 person, 3 games (none of them seems commercial).
Bouncyrock: 19 people, 1 early access game. Rahulahoop: he's a lawyer, not a game developer. Falconshield: he's a musician, not a game developer. Yahya Lazrek (UU Soft): 1 person, 11 games (none of them seems commercial) SinKillerJ Tachikawa: 1 person, 1 game Rollthered: 1 person, 0 games. Elden Pixels: 3 people, 6 games. Richie de Wit: it's the owner of a small boutique publisher, he doesn't currently develop games. Supergoodpixel: probably midsized company, a variety of games. Sidequest Ninja: 1 person, 1 game. DMG Toronto: 3 people, 0 games. It's a community that support indies, but there are no games shown on their website yet. Whinsekk Games: 1 person, 4 games (none of them seems commercial). Team Stargazers: 2 people, 1 game. GIC: it's a game conference in Poland, not a developer. Alex Massé & team: 12 people (the original creator has been hiring the other 11 people over time thanks to money from Patreon), 0 games. Still developing their first game (since 2019). TIGA: it's a UK organization, not a developer. Capeling: 1 person. I couldn't find any information, I think he's just a random supporter and not a developer. Interactive Ontario: it's a non-profit association, not a developer. Squirrel Bytes: 4-5 people, 0 games. Still developing their first game. Commuter Games: more than 1 person (but only the original creator is credited), 1 game (and another one published). Sos Sosowski: 1 person, 1 commercial game (and lots of games for jams and the like). Hungry Trolls: 2 people, 0 games. Still developing their first game. Happy Star Studios: 1 person, 4 games (none of them seems commercial). Revolto Software: 6 people, 2 commercial games (and 6 other minor games, including 1 demo and 1 unfinished prototype) Gustavo Almuna: wage earner. Mark Rosner: he's an investor, not a developer. Meierdesigns: he's a 3D artist, not a developer. Kryptic Kralo: he's a artist and streamer, not a developer. Noah Rayburn: wage earner. Mir: he's a digital artist, not a developer (or just very recently starting). Zany Studio: don't know how many people (looks like one creator and other collaborators), lots of small games for children. Anton Hand: he's in Rust Ltd., a studio of 4 people and 1 game (plus another one on hold). Friendly Studios: 1 person and "some friends", 0 games. Still developing their first game. Hometopia: at least 3 people (probably a bunch more), 0 games (1 about to enter early access). They seem to have background in game development. Arnie's Workshop: 1 person, 0 games. Still developing his first game. Starving Fox Studio: 1 person, 4 games (1 of them in early access). Venom Reaper Productions: 1 person, 0 games. Still developing his first game. Robot Gentleman: 27 people (and 1 dog), 2 games (and 1 remaster). Mistgrave: don't know how many people, 0 games. They exist since literally two months ago. Studio Supernebula: 2 people, 0 games. Still developing their first game. Burning Sunset: 3 people, 3 games. Interactive Dreams: don't know how many people, 0 games. Still developing their first game. Shady Corner and Ten Pennyfingers: don't know how many people (the latter looks like 1 person only), 1 game (and some demos and other stuff). CyberStudios PTY: don't know how many people, 0 games (after 8 years of development). AppLovin: software company, but not a gaming one. It seems to me like they're trying to take advantage of the situation to gain customers. breadothy: 1 person, 0 games. Still developing his/her first game. neenaw: wage earner, I think. Re-Logic: midsized studio, 1 game (but quite successful) Mark Webster: 1 person, 0 games. Still developing his first game. Pentadact: 1 person, 3 games. Mad Fellows: 2 people, 2 games. game: it's a German non-profit organization, not a developer. Stefaaan: 1 person, 0 commercial games (and 2 jam games). Alex Darby (Darbotron): 1 person and several collaborators, 11 games. Looks like a serious business. Zeboyd: 1 person and several collaborators, 5 games. made in fairyland: don't know how many people (maybe around 4), 0 games. They claim to have supported Unity for a decade, but they're about to publish their first game. DarkTree Game Studio: 1 person (and "fast-growing"), 1 game (plus 1 demo and 1 prototype) Ash & Fox: 1 person, 0 games. Still developing his/her first game. Fluxo games: 8 people, 4 games. It's a small studio, but looks serious. Joshua Bringle: 1 person, 1 game. Binary Impact: 11 people, 3 games. Sungrand Studios: don't know how many people, 4 games. LuGus: 9 people, many games. Matrix Reliability: don't know how many people, 1 game. Not entirely focused on the gaming space. Die of Death Games: 1 person, 2 games. Pardall Games: 1 person, 0 games. Still developing his first game. Skymill Studios: between 10 and 20 developers, 0 games. Still developing their first game. Mechs Studios: 6 people, 1 game Kevin Ethridge Games: 1 person, 1 game. And, about the hobbyists part, they will have gained 1,000,000$ (minus 2,000 for the Pro license) before they have to actually pay the fee, so this doesn't affect their hopes in the slightest. And, if there are actually some hobbyists claiming that the fee will crash their hopes (which funnily there are), either they haven't given it much thought (at all) or they are just being overly dramatic in order to make it look like the situation for them is worse than it actually is. I mean, seriously, one million dollars (minus 2,000) before you start paying? And you gain that as a hobbyist? Please, where do I have to sign? You're right, however, that among the 230,000 stated by Unity there's probably a lot of hobbyists too. Also, about what is actually representative of the industry or not, there is a huge number of midized and big companies that make casual, hypercasual or casino games for mobile devices, which means that they make the most played games in the biggest segment of the industry, despite being mostly unknown or "invisible" for the majority of people. I could name you dozens of these companies (probably close to 100, because I have them written down) from Spain alone (which is an emerging market), and those are just the ones I know and the ones that had an open offer for a Unity developer job in the last couple of months or so. If on top of that we start counting those that didn't have open jobs lately and from all over the world instead of a single country, we'd probably get thousands of them (perhaps even tens of thousands). And most of them have between 10 and 50 employees, some of them even more, with the bigger ones having thousands. So even if there are more solo developers and small companies in the world than there are these midsized and big companies, the sheer amount of developers working for them is probably way higher than the developers working for the smaller ones. And these are all serious companies, while in the other group there are many who really aren't professional. So, about which is more representative of the industry, maybe both are, but one group has certainly a lot more economical impact than the other, and that is the group that is less likely to abandon Unity and start using other engines that aren't used in trully professional circuits, like Godot. "I find it quite natural that customers will push back when they are at the being exploited phase" Overall, my point was that Unity would not be as negatively affected by this controversy as a lot of people think. Thus, as I said before, the best scenario here is not one in which Unity is severely affected in a negative way, but one in which a different engine (mainly Godot) is positively affected in a sufficient degree. If Godot, for example, starts making its way into the professional space, that's good, because it means more competition. For that to happen, that explosion that you mentioned in the use of Godot should eventually translate into successful games from successful teams of developers, leading them to grow and therefore hire more Godot developers. If that amount of Godot companies is high enough, then this engine could get a few portion of market share in the professional circuits, which is what it is lacking now. And all of that is only possible thanks to people pushing back, so I totally agree with what you said above. I disagree about to what extent the retroactivity would affect existing developers, however, but that doesn't matter now, because Unity has already released its new fee and it's way better than the previous one (not that that was hard to improve anyway): https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee |
For the investment to sustain the runtime, they come from Unity Engine revenue, it serves no purpose to see them as 2 independent products that must be financed separately when they're both part of the same solutions. The IDE cannot live without bundling the runtime with its compiled product and the runtime cannot live without the IDE producing products that make use of it. that's like a padlock company, the key and the padlock itself are 2 products yet they cannot live without always being bundled together and it serves no purpose to try to monetize 1 differently if you don't make enough to cover the cost and sustain R&D on both just raise the price of the package. What Unity had done before reverting is the equivalent of a padlock company charging retailers for every time their customer installs the padlock on a new door/locker/box/... and basing the occurrence of it on a trust me bro proprietary model.
And let's not forget that Unity is the David of the professional game engines
Can't argue with that, although being David in this context is only good as long as people trust you can be a winner, if you do something that breaks that trust it won't be long before they revert to looking at Goliath for its so obvious and reassuring winners attribute.
I know the situation is more complex and can be looked at from dozens of different angles, but the simple fact is Unity is currently operating at a loss and while adding revenue can help, growth is extremely important. The way Unity implemented the new fee at first severely impeded growth potential and more than likely set them on a downward trend. The newly proposed way is certainly better (it's not even comparable) and would it had been proposed this way at first there would have been 0 backlash, yet now even it can't undo all the damage that was done. As a result, unity will be set back years in their quest for profitability and the next few months will certainly be challenging.
In the end, though, I certainly hope your vision is more accurate, as I do want more options not less, and want all Unity employee to retain their jobs in the long run.
Last edited by EpicRandy - on 24 September 2023
