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.

  • frog 🐸@beehaw.orgEnglish
    14·
    1 year ago

    I heard from a friend that, allegedly, Riccitiello sold a load of his shares in Unity last week, almost like he knew those shares would be worth less this week… No idea if there’s any truth to it. You know how rumours can be.

    I’m starting a game design degree on Monday, and I know Unity is on the syllabus (though not until later in the year). Guess it’ll be interesting to start the term with a conversation about how useful knowledge of Unity will be long term. Since the majority of graduates from this university go into or start indie studios (due to geography), how Unity treat smaller developers is definitely going to be relevant.

    • Piers@beehaw.orgEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      The reality is that it’s a lot of fuss for a game development company to switch engines but for an experienced individual developer it’s not a huge deal to switch engines. If you learn game development and design today using Unity then 100% of the game design knowledge is exactly transferable and 80-99% of the game development knowledge (depending on exactly what you’re doing) will transfer to Unreal or Godot or whatever else you might need to use later.

      It’s like a musician switching from one audio production suite to another. The musical theory stays the same and while the exact details of how to make each bit of software do stuff is different, the actual stuff you’re making it do is broadly the same.

    • Benign@kbin.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      I don’t quite get how the changes are so bad for indies. You must have both $200k revenue and 200k installs before the fee starts ticking on the excess installs. Do indies really sell that kind of numbers?

      I can see how the flood of ad-based mobile F2P games are hit, but I don’t feel sorry for those that run that kind of model.

      • Wirrvogel@feddit.deEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        Do indies really sell that kind of numbers?

        Some do and can you risk to be one of them if Unity takes that much after the first week?

        Terraria, a game that got fresh content for years, meaning people were each update reinstalling the game, installing it on multiple platforms etc.

        During its first week of release, the game sold over 200,000 copies. That number increased to 12 million by June 2015. As of the end of 2020, the game has sold over 35 million copies worldwide. Read more: https://www.tuko.co.ke/421556-top-20-selling-indie-games-time-out.html

  • ExLisper@linux.communityEnglish
    4·
    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@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      7·
      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…?

      • Piers@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I think the game “development” industry is run by people who don’t understand the difference between a game designer and a game developer. As such there’s lots of people who only know as much about game design as the average developer does being tasked to do game design work and vice versa.