Comment on Report: Unity's Runtime Fee quietly gave exemptions in launch rush
echo64@lemmy.world 8 months agoTo where? Godot isn’t there yet (sorry, maybe in five years, it’s impressive and on the right track. Not today). And unreal is under the same pressure.
You know what else isn't there yet? Unity, Unreal, Source, CryEngine... literally every commercial game engine requires development if you're actually looking to push hardware limits. They're just toolboxes.
Godot is no different, except that developers are going to be much more likely to release their changes publicly.
Godot is fantastic, it’s where blender was in 2007-8 and it’s super exciting.
It’s nowhere near the same level as the contemporaries yet. You can’t even build for console right now and have to hire third parties to port.
Keep in mind that the console makers likely don’t want too much of their SDKs to become part of Godot’s open codebase. They license it to publishers who promise them that they won’t divulge important IP.
keep in mind that unreal engine is also open source. Epic just has a system where if you get the go-ahead from a console maker, and they can confirm that, then you get access to the parts of the engine that connect to the console SDK’s
if you are an indie dev today, you can get the go-ahead from sony/nintendo/whoever and launch your UE/unity game on those platforms without much fuss. if you have a godot game you have to contact a third party porting house and ask them to port the game to those consoles. those companies have already made the godot hookups into platform specific SDK’s but you still have to contact, and licence them to do this, if they accept working with you.
Whats missing?
beefcat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
i don’t think unreal is under the same pressure for three reasons:
they already have a reasonable revenue sharing model. they make a lot more per licensee than unity does because they take a cut of your sales rather than charging a per-engineer license for the dev kit.
epic’s headcount is not nearly as horrendously bloated.
the company is still privately owned with Tim Sweeney the majority owner.
points 1 and 2 mean epic is actually profitable, and has been for decades at this point. meanwhile, the publicly traded unity has struggled to break even for most of its existence
echo64@lemmy.world 8 months ago
If you think point 3 is a real point, then I have a bridge to sell you. Point 1 is literally the new model for unity.
It’s the same pressures.
beefcat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yes, point 1 is the model they should have adopted in the first place. The whole problem with their original announcement was that it was a) retroactive, b) structured in a way that would significantly hurt f2p and indie games, and c) based on installs rather than sales, meaning you could get charged multiple times for the same sale. If Unity had come out and said (starting with Unity 2024, we will be switching to a revenue sharing model", a lot of people might have still been upset, but it would have not caused nearly the same shitstorm and they would have had a better path towards sustainability.
Point 3 is absolutely real, because when you own your company, you no longer have legal obligations to public stockholders. Companies turn to shit all the time when they go public, because the pressure for immediate quarterly returns outweighs the pressure to maintain long-term sustainability. I think it’s exactly why platforms like Steam have avoided enshittifying, because their owners know they can make more money long term by building a sustainable platform that people like rather than burning their users to make a quick buck and juice their next quarterly report.
wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 8 months ago
If you dont think point 3 is a real point, Im curious if you even know what a bridge is.
Legal obligations to shareholders drastically change the company meaning of profitable.
echo64@lemmy.world 8 months ago
point 3 was suggesting that because tim sweeney holds 51% of the company, he has no obligations to those who invested.