I bet they will do so for their next game but reimplementing a entire game is FAR easier said than done, something like that could very well bankrupt a smaller studio!
nul9o9@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They should honestly just move their engine anyway. Unity has played their hand, and showed they are willing to make changes to their pricing retroactively.
Gamey@feddit.de 9 months ago
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 9 months ago
But not moving could be far worse based on what some devs are saying.
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Not moving is what they’ll do if “changes are completely reverted and TOS protections are put in place”. In such a case, while punishing Unity is still desirable, there won’t be installation fees that justify the costs of rewriting the game.
dog@suppo.fi 9 months ago
I mean it’s easy to reimplement entire games if you’ve built it modularly. Just swap your core game logic to run on another library and the game works the same it did before.
Overwrite7445@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Game Dev isnt just code. Remaking a project from scratch is a massive undertaking. Porting the code could be difficult too especially if relying on core unity libraries.
dog@suppo.fi 9 months ago
Not downplaying the effort, it still takes time. But not impossible.
How you made it all matters in situations like this.
BURN@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Technically you’re not wrong. The work is done, the logic already exists.
But systems like Unity aren’t like other code where you can rip one section out and still have 80% of a working codebase. Game engines are as fundamental to most of their game code as the language it’s written in. It’s not like you can just drop things into unreal or godot, connect a few interfaces and call it good. You still have to write the whole thing from the ground up.
dog@suppo.fi 9 months ago
As I said, it depends on how it’s built. And how proprietqry the engine is.
Unity from what I know supports universal code/mesh/texture formats, but if the devs opted for the “easier to use” proprietary systems- well, that’s a problem.
Now what I don’t know is how easy are scenes to export in Unity. They’re probably built with Blender or something else though in most cases, unless Unity has drastically changed.
Cypher@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Look I’ve written game engine wrappers and converters for all sorts of code and file types.
It would honestly be easier to fire up Unreal Engine 5 or Godot and start again.
dog@suppo.fi 9 months ago
Well I’d say that was true 5 years ago. Is it still? I’d not be so sure.
Small projects might as well start from scratch.
But projects with years of devtime are best ported.
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The surface area is huge. This is not an SQL database where you can just change the ORM’s backend.
Natanael@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
It also depends on how many engine unique features you used, and what optimizations you applied. It’s certainly possible, but doing it without changing any game logic will require very complicated translation layers which will likely cause performance issues. It might very well be easier to treat it as a porting and refactoring project. You might not even realize which behaviors are unique to each engine if you don’t regularly develop in multiple engines.
dog@suppo.fi 9 months ago
This is true, and I vouch for gamedevs to first test other engines to see the differences.
Calculating for the future is extremely important in pretty much everything.
Also I wouldn’t say there would be performance issues, unless you somehow completely screw up coding and compiling said code.
Projects should work on top of a bottom layer, or translation layer as it’s sometimes called; game logic calls for functions from there, instead of directly from the engine. This is also important for code security.
_move_entity might be calling the proprietary unity_move_object with a different reg stack, but when compiled the performance should be +/- 0.
vagrantprodigy@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 9 months ago
Exactly. They should take this as the warning it is, and start work on moving to an engine not run by morons.
SupraMario@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I have a feeling a lot of the engine devs from unity are seeing the writing on the wall and looking for places to jump to. Betting they have a brain drain soon
SkinnyTimmy@lemm.ee 9 months ago
just
ABCDE@lemmy.world 9 months ago
How can it even be applied?
darkeox@kbin.social 9 months ago
This. It's not easy or trivial but as a long term strategy, they should already plan investing efforts into consolidating something like Godot or another FOSS engine. They should play like you calm down an abuser you can't just escape yet while planning their demise when the time has come.
JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yep, they might roll back the changes this time but they’ve shown where they want to be and now we know. They’ll work their way slowly towards it instead of a sudden change now and it will be less noticeable and harder to fight legally when they do that
slumberlust@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They’re cranking the bad PR to 11 so they can dial it back to 9 and point to it as a compromise.
vanontom@geddit.social 9 months ago
The exact same thing was said about Reddit execs like Huffman. They never cared enough to compromise. We’ll see if the Unity execs are similarly terrible people, whose greed will destroy the company. Seems like the trend these days.
slumberlust@lemmy.world 9 months ago
kbin.social/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/455494
There it is :)
Godnroc@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I think most developers can see the writing in the wall there, but switching mid-way through a project will be costly and time consuming. If the changes were fully rolled back, I would still bet many would finish what they working on and then switch for their next game.
JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Problem is that if your current unity game is successful this year, and then they reimplement the retroactive charge next year, you’re still screwed. If you can afford it then it’s best to change now in order to avoid that mess that might mean you have to delist your game
frickineh@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’m not sure it’s legal to implement it retroactively. I’d be very curious to get an attorney’s perspective - seems a lot like trying to unilaterally change a contract after both parties have signed. But I have a hard time imagining anyone being willing to develop using Unity going forward.