Picture taken from their Twitter

  • @Comment105@lemm.ee
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    732 years ago

    Yeah fuck Unity, I’d love to see devs abandon them altogether whether they revert the changes or not.

    • @Serinus@lemmy.world
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      1492 years ago

      Because changing the engine in an existing project is a huge pita that requires many, many hours and possibly in some cases a full rewrite.

      This also applies to games that would be released in 2023 or 2024.

      Nobody should be considering Unity for a new project, but it’s understandable to make either decision for many existing projects.

      Ripping out the engine of your game isn’t a trivial thing.

      • @cozycosmic@lemmy.world
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        52 years ago

        I agree, although a lot of the work going into a game is the game design, art, and iteration, and not just the programming and rigging. And it may actually be a catalyst to rewrite parts better

        • @TechieDamien@lemmy.ml
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          12 years ago

          I agree for a specific scenario: if you don’t use many unity specific packages or assets. Then, perhaps you are correct, still I don’t blame anyone staying even in that case, as it is still daunting to take on such a task.

        • my_hat_stinks
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          2 years ago

          Strongly disagree. While a lot of work does go on to art assets which should be simpler to migrate, the code is absolutely what makes the game. There are tons of very successful games with low quality or stock assets, there are very few popular games with broken code.

          Even then, it’s still a lot of effort to check every asset you’re using to ensure they work as expected in your new engine.

        • @terny@lemmy.ml
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          42 years ago

          I don’t know how you could change the engine without rewriting the entire thing basically from scratch.

          • @mee@programming.dev
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            2 years ago

            It really depends on how modular their codebase is. The Doom 1/2 modern ports they did in 2019 use Unity. But it’s actually still the original Doom underneath and just using Unity for input and output to make porting easier

    • @cjthomp@lemmy.world
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      342 years ago
      1. It’s a significant effort to change engines
      2. Even though it’s just one dev, they’re giving Unity a reason to revert. If you just say “Yo, I’m OUT!” then they’ve already lost you and they have no reason to revert on your behalf.
    • Alimentar
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      2 years ago

      Cause it’s probably not worth it for them to migrate and learn/train on a new engine unless Unity goes forward with their plans.

      But you’re right, this completely destroyed Unity’s reputation. Even if they revert, who’s to say they won’t try something like this in the future.

      • @HerrLewakaas@feddit.de
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        22 years ago

        This is the classic tactic of doing something just to see if people will accept it. Even if they backtrack, they absolutely WILL do shit like this again. It’s just like EA and micro transactions

  • SkinnyTimmy
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    322 years ago

    Slay the Spire is currently -66% on steam… just saying

  • William
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    292 years ago

    I would love to know what they would port to. UE and Godot seem like obvious candidates.

    • drphungky
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      422 years ago

      Unreal could do the exact same thing. Obviously preaching to the choir on a Lemmy instance of all places, but open source is the only way to be safe for the future. If you’re already making the switch because Unity forces your hand, you might as well go with the long runway.

      • Pxtl
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        82 years ago

        Not only can UE do the exact same thing, but Epic doesn’t need small indies as much since they have a more diverse clientbase of heavy-hitters. Epic is much more able to absorb the damage if they make a pricing change that loses them the indie market.

    • @simple@lemm.eeOP
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      82 years ago

      If it’s a 3D game, UE is a safe choice. If it’s 2D I’m willing to bet they’ll go with Godot.

    • Turun
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      412 years ago

      I read rust as the programming language for way too long reading that article, lmao.

      • EtzBetz
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        82 years ago

        Ohhhh me too, right until “Rust 2 won’t be a Unity game”

    • @LeadSoldier@lemmy.world
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      42 years ago

      I’m buying rust and a few other games that I am probably not going to have time to play in order to support these companies.

      Fuck unity! Unite!

  • Oha
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    2332 years ago

    Is it just me or are all big companies killing themself right now?

    • @paddirn@lemmy.world
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      142 years ago

      Not just companies, but countries too. We’ve apparently reached the Age of Idiocy where everyone that got big is just doing these epic face-plants. I don’t know if it’s desperation, arrogance, greed, or a combination, but so many shitty decisions coming out left and right all over the place.

      • @pyr0ball@reddthat.com
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        232 years ago

        Late stage capitalism. You can’t expect year over year growth for eternity without running into a resource cap. Profit growth is all the shareholders care about because it’s literally written into United States economics laws that investors get paid first. All these dirty tricks and bad decisions are coming from CEO’s with limited understanding of the effects of their policies, trying to push for an extra 2% on top of their already obscene margins

        • @andy_wijaya_med@lemmy.world
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          22 years ago

          It’s time we move away from capitalism. :( It was obvious years ago that it’s not a sustainable ideology in the long run…

    • @Knusper@feddit.de
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      1512 years ago

      Yeah, inflation rate is high, so central banks are trying to counteract that by basically slowing down the economy, so that our normally scheduled inflation countermeasures kick in appropriately. Well, and the usual way to slow down the economy is to make it more costly to loan money, i.e. increase interest rates. Which means investors can’t just pump money into any company anymore, they want that money to actually pay out to cover those interest rates. And that means companies need to actually be profitable to get money to finance their operation.

      • gila
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        152 years ago

        This would make sense if Unity increased their fees, but it doesn’t make sense to invent a new revenue stream based on a metric you can’t even accurately measure. That’s profit-seeking.

        • @TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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          82 years ago

          I’m guessing it’s their last ditch effort to remain in good solvency. A board member making trades before a big change is almost always a sign of the rats abandoning the ship.

          • gila
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            62 years ago

            Why can’t they remain solvent by adjusting their fee schedule though? It’s the same boilerplate terms other engines seem to make ends meet with. There are many different ways to correct course in the scenario presented, but the action taken doesn’t suggest that’s the scenario they’re in. Corporate profit-seeking is the primary driver of the inflation in the global economy - I think the above commenter has put the cart before the horse.

            • @TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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              32 years ago

              Why can’t they remain solvent by adjusting their fee schedule though?

              Likely they’ve been remaining solvent through private equity, which has probably dried up. Their fees were probably just enough to entice further investment, but most of these companies operate on paying loans with new loans until they can become profitable in the long term.

              Usually when a price hike that doesn’t make sense happens, it’s because they’ve failed to get a new injection of capital to remain in solvency. So they have to speed up the fee schedule to make their payments to the investors.

              Corporate profit-seeking is the primary driver of the inflation in the global economy - I think the above commenter has put the cart before the horse.

              It’s a public IPO, they don’t have to be profitable, they just have to appear as if they will be profitable to increase share price. This kind of hike is not something that a public IPO would do as it will assuredly drop stock price, which is illegal unless there is no alternative.

              • gila
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                22 years ago

                Without providing any basis for their charges, and without a way for devs to independently validate them, I can’t see how the charges could even be considered valid legally, let alone pull them out of insolvency. A dev fee per fingerprinted installation doesn’t have any precedent in the SaaS space to my knowledge. I don’t think it would be illegal for an IPO to do this if it was truly meant to increase longterm profitability - e.g. price speculation that’s happened today could similarly happen for any reason at any time on any stock. But the point is it won’t work without a monopoly they don’t have - they’ll have to go back on it (at least with regard to games already released), or end up in costly litigation

                • @TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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                  12 years ago

                  Without providing any basis for their charges, and without a way for devs to independently validate them, I can’t see how the charges could even be considered valid legally

                  Ehhh, it very well might not be. But service providers have an awful lot of control of their platforms and who and how they allow access to it, and for how much. A lot of the interpretations in IP courts when it comes to the digital service seem to be about 5 years behind the actual industry. Add on the fact that a lot of the people running the IP courts barely know how to operate a computer, let alone the ins and outs of digital media and we usually get an environment that’s skewed towards the industry.

                  A dev fee per fingerprinted installation doesn’t have any precedent in the SaaS space to my knowledge.

                  I think it would be interpreted pretty close to what reddit did with their API access. Technically it’s just a different type of service fee, and it’s backed by a pretty simple logic of offsetting the cost of the involved traffic.

                  I don’t think it would be illegal for an IPO to do this if it was truly meant to increase longterm profitability - e.g. price speculation that’s happened today could similarly happen for any reason at any time on any stock.

                  The main sticking point would be that you would have to prove that there is a logical path to long-term profitability that surpasses or offsets the resulting devaluation of pursuing a completely different profit model.

                  I think it really depends on how big the devaluation will be at the end of everything, and if they loose large clients specify their reasons for leaving.

                  It’s all pretty complicated, but Im still guessing theyre having solvency issues, just by looking at their IPO price since the last quarter of 2021 they’ve lost about 50% of their value without any real signs of recovery.

      • @there1snospoon@ttrpg.network
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        932 years ago

        So does that mean all these businesses were always doomed to fail anyways, just living on borrowed money/time, and now the bill comes due, they’re all fucked?

        • blargerer
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          232 years ago

          Eh. Most of these companies were profitable. Just not seeing the exponential growth that the stock market dictates when interest rates are high. Unity, not so much, but its revenue was always fine, its just a really poorly run company. Who knows where they piss the kind of money they are pulling in to.

          • @chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org
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            22 years ago

            I find it interesting how common it is to blame executive greed/stupidity, as if we all merely got super unlucky when companies were picking their CEOs. Every CEO is different, yet the outcome is almost universally the same: when company longevity and quarterly profits come into conflict, profits win.

            The CEO of the modern public corporation embodies that conflict of interest, which is perhaps why they are so hateable – the job is inherently two-faced – but at the end of the day they’re just a face, a name, and a bundle of core competencies. No matter how many CEOs we go through, there will never be one who could satisfy the unending hunger of the public stock market. You will never find one who is not ultimately enthralled. The fundamental concept of know-nothings owning everything is just outright broken.

            I don’t know if I think we should burn it all down, but one thing I’m sure of is that the problems won’t stop until we bring the people with investment money into close alignment with the long-term interests of the corporations they own (and/or oust/eat them)

        • @TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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          182 years ago

          A lot of the wealth created by venture capital and the service economy were only ever possible with the help of what is essentially free money. With the increase in interest rates and the collapse of a major venture capital bank, those corporations dependent on low interest payments are going to collapse as well.

          As interest rates climb and venture capital dries up, the companies who were just scraping by, or dependent on debt loading during development have had their runway cut short.

          We are getting to the point where companies aren’t going to be utilize fronting a huge amount of debt as a strategy for long term growth.

          Unity looks to be one of the companies who wanted to utilize the slow boil tactic perfected by the likes of Google or Amazon. Where they front the cost of tons of free and convenient services, hoping that companies become dependent on them, slowly creating fees over time until they become profitable.

          If I were a guessing guy, they’ve hit the end of their run way, and have failed to secure a new injection of capital sufficient enough to make the payments on their loans. Likely their options have come to find a way to make your payments, or you’ll be giving your entire operation to a bank.

        • @cryball@sopuli.xyz
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          2 years ago

          I’d guess that companies that failed to turn profit when money was cheap are most likely doomed. However not all of the hype companies are like that. Some could be barely profitable, but shareholder pressure might push them to heavier monetization practices.

        • @Pansen@feddit.de
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          502 years ago

          Simplified: If you can borrow 1 Million USD for 0% apr and earn 1000 USD with that, you have 1000 USD in profits. Now change the apr to 5% and you are 49,000 USD in the red.

        • @vagrantprodigy@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
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          612 years ago

          Kind of. In the past investors were willing to be more patient, and company values were artificially high, because they were based on potential profits rather than actual profits. That’s shifting a bit as interest rates go up.

      • @Resonosity@lemmy.ca
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        12 years ago

        And it’s most costly to increase interest rates not because those directly affect the investors, but because those interest rates affect the borrowers since the borrowers will need to make more and more money to be able to pay back the initial injection + interest.

        If borrowers don’t think they can pay back, then they probably won’t borrow in the first place. If they do borrow but don’t make enough to pay back those loans + interest, then the investor loses out.

        And if borrowers don’t borrow in the first place, then investors sit on their money when they could theoretically inject it into other businesses so they can earn on what they own, and not just let their assets stagnate (or decay). To investors, this might also be perceived as a loss.

        Do I have that right?

        • @Knusper@feddit.de
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          12 years ago

          In principle, yes, although two things to note:

          1. Borrowing isn’t always the active part. When a company is listed on the Stock Exchange, then investors play the active role by buying or selling their stock.

          2. Most investors don’t just have tons of money laying around. They have property, which they can list as security when borrowing money from banks. And then they lend that borrowed money to companies seeking(/allowing) investment. That means:
            a) With high interest rates, investors do have a need for their lent money to pay out, too. As do the banks, because they borrowed it from the central bank.
            b) Ultimately, lots of money will be given back to the central bank. The money is effectively removed from the economy then. If you’ve ever heard that inflation comes from too much money being in circulation, that’s how that ties back in.

          I’m no expert either, though. I’m just summarizing what makes sense to me and what I’ve learnt from making this post a few weeks ago: https://feddit.de/post/2514573

          • @Resonosity@lemmy.ca
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            22 years ago

            Oh I see, so it’s like a merry-go-round, and everyone wants to have their money returned with more than they borrowed so that not only can they have some left over for themselves, but to also pay back those they themselves borrowed money from in order to lend in the first place. Recursive lending/borrowing up until the central banks, like you said.

            Risky stuff. If any single entity along that lending/borrowing chain/network flops, it can send shockwaves to everyone else, all the way back to the central bank.

            Thanks for the 2 cents.

    • @Gamey@feddit.de
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      42 years ago

      Well, with the current happenings around the world loans got a lot more expensive and that’s basically what internet companies run on since the start, many of them never made a profit but even others will run their buissines to the ground during inflation and shit!

    • @Bread@sh.itjust.works
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      372 years ago

      Corporate suicide is so hot right now, all the cool companies are doing it. Are you really even trying if you can’t feel the pain of the bullet in your foot?

    • JokeDeity
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      982 years ago

      I’ve said this for about a decade now: I firmly believe this world we live in now is the inevitable, unavoidable result of having every company run by people with business degrees and no passion for the businesses they run. When your entire education was focused on how to extract one more penny from customers and how to psychologically make addicts out of everyone, this is what we end up with. I fucking hate it. Everything is enshitified and it sucks.

      • @whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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        52 years ago

        I disagree. This is all the system working as expected. There is no such thing as infinite growth and yet we are conditioned to always need it or else it’s a failure.

        We are on an ever accelerated race to the bottom.

        The definition of success is woefully broken.

        • @FlowVoid@midwest.social
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          32 years ago

          The system may be failing, but “infinite growth” is the natural result of inflation which is intentionally targeted to a positive number.

          If you think your salary should keep up with inflation, then you too need infinite growth.

      • @stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca
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        32 years ago

        Sort of but not exactly, the recent shift is because money has gotten expensive and now investors are wanting to take a profit rather than tossing money around hoping to get lucky. So now these business types are scrambling to do anything that makes the business profitable when their entire business plan was unsustainable without the constant influx of money keeping them afloat under the guise of “growth”.

      • dinckel
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        2 years ago

        We just live in a dystopia. The leadership will milk you dry, for pennies, for short term profits. When you’re this greedy, you can’t see more than a day into the future. It’s just another reminder than corporations aren’t your friends

      • @tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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        72 years ago

        result of having every company run by people with business degrees and no passion for the businesses they run

        You’d think that even soulless business ghouls would’ve learned somewhere along the way to put a price tag on things like long-term customer loyalty and the soft power of your brand. So either they’re too dumb to take all the variables into account or they’re looking only at short term gains.

        • JokeDeity
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          82 years ago

          Short term gains, every time. These people will take a dollar today over ten tomorrow every chance because they have tunnel vision and only focus on immediate profits happening RIGHT NOW. Ironically the people most likely to drone on about investments are the least likely to really understand their functionality and what investing time or money into something is supposed to mean and accomplish. Most companies these days feel like their just trying to gobble up enough cash to survive their impending failure, it feels so bleak.

      • greenskye
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        212 years ago

        Agreed, VC have poured free money into excellent, but unsustainable businesses trying to chase ‘growth’ long enough that they can sell out just before everyone realizes that it won’t make money. It’s just a scam of rich people preying on other rich people.

        Instead of trying to build a self sustaining company to begin with (which requires hard work to balance revenue against customer needs and desires) they build ‘free’ products that people love, but can’t make money, only to switch the company to crappy products that people hate, but now are trapped into using.

        Our entire digital economy is built on these bait and switch companies and it sucks

      • @Zink@programming.dev
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        22 years ago

        I think I disagree a bit. It is the owners of the companies that have no passion for what they do. They just want that particular position in their portfolio to appreciate or spit out dividends.

        Then they put the MBAs in charge to get the most efficient use of capital.

    • @XEAL@lemm.ee
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      282 years ago

      The poor guys just want to fulfil the infinite company growth expectations of their stakeholders.

      Eat the rich. ALIVE.

      • @assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        112 years ago

        What really bugs me is that it’s not even infinite growth they’re after. What they want is as high growth as possible as soon as possible. Planning a sustainable long term profit business would mean great employee benefits to attract and keep the best, a ton of funding for new product development, and building things slightly more expensive so that they last longer.

        There is no financial analysis that would say cutting safety measures is a net positive to your money in the long run. The bill will come due and you’ll lose an extraordinary amount of money when things blow up or derail. If I make a change that raises my risk to 1% over a year to have a safety incident which would cost me 5 billion, I’d have to save more than 50 million each year with that decision for it to make me more money. Plus it would take 100 years for the realized savings to cancel out the event. If it happened before 100 years, I’m at a net negative.

        All of that is to say that the stakeholders aren’t just greedy bastards, they’re also dumb as fuck. But that’s not surprising – the type of person with that much money didn’t get it from consistently working over time. They think playing fast and loose will work in their favor always.

    • Natanael
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      52 years ago

      “activist investors” of the worst kind has forgotten what makes the companies valuable and want quick money

    • Dudewitbow
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      82 years ago

      Publicly traded companies*

      Private ones dont always have CEOs chasing every penny looking for only short term gains.

      • Trebach
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        22 years ago

        Depends on if they still have private investors propping them up.

        If they’ve not paid back their loans to the private investors yet, said investors are looking for their loans to be paid back and then some.

  • @nul9o9@lemmy.world
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    4592 years 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.

      • @SupraMario@lemmy.world
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        152 years 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

    • JJROKCZ
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      1282 years 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

      • @Godnroc@lemmy.world
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        682 years 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
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          362 years 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
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            332 years 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.

            • @assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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              142 years ago

              There’s no way this is legal unless it’s already in a contract – and even then, it might still be illegal. The notion of charging people more money because you’ve raised your prices after they’ve already bought something just breaks economics completely. You’d be able to sell a bunch of a product for cheap, and then later say sike and charge everyone a lot more.

              I’m sure companies would love to do that, but no company exists in isolation. Every single company is buying something from another company to sell their product. If they could do this to their buyers, then their suppliers could do it to them. It would probably end up cancelling any gains you’d get.

              I’m guessing this was a move their executives made without any consultation with legal, because it’s the kind of idiotic move only they could think of.

            • JJROKCZ
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              112 years ago

              I feel like any company with a legal department would surely check with them before announcing something like this. But maybe unity is so poorly ran they don’t have a legal team or didn’t check idk

              • @zaphodb2002@sh.itjust.works
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                192 years ago

                I think you overestimate how much they care about doing illegal things. They will try it, and if someone can prove it’s illegal, they’ll pay a minor fine and stop, maybe. Otherwise they’ll get away with it. That’s how corps look at laws.

              • @assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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                62 years ago

                I mean you’d think so, but look at how often companies get into lawsuits for clearly illegal shit. Plenty of places will still try to enforce arbitration/NDA clauses that have no actual legal basis or consequence.

              • @frickineh@lemmy.world
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                22 years ago

                I would think so too but this entire decision has felt like the company is shooting itself in the foot, so who even knows anymore.

    • @Gamey@feddit.de
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      1002 years ago

      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!

      • dog
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        4
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        2 years 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.

        Edit: 'course, exceptions exist like if you wrote everything using their proprietary coding language, instead of using something universal.

        Edit 2: It MAY still be possible that a translation/compiler exists that’ll run as a plugin in a proprietary engine, and converts it into something universal.

        • @AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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          102 years ago

          The surface area is huge. This is not an SQL database where you can just change the ORM’s backend.

          • dog
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            12 years ago

            Depends how it’s built.

            • @AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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              122 years ago

              If you don’t use anything from the engine itself, implement everything from scratch, only using the engine as an entry point that launches your own code, and pay unity two thousand dollars per year per seat for that privilege - I guess porting should be fairly easy.

              • dog
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                12 years ago

                If you ask me engines should be free for most indies (UE, Godot?), because they’re not making millions. But yeah. I get it’s not feasible for most new devs especially, and senior devs have better things to focus on.

                It’s more a code principle you’d stand behind.

        • @BURN@lemmy.world
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          222 years 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
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            22 years 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.

            • @BURN@lemmy.world
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              162 years ago

              Assets are safe, but they often need to be re-rigged or re-formatted. It’s still a non-trivial task though. Levels will need to be rebuilt, open worlds have to be started almost from scratch, and a lot of other things I can’t think of off the top of my head.

              The real problem is underlying systems. Unity often handles networking, render engines, game logic and most other things. The reason Unity was so popular was because it was easy to use (and free). Game code will need to be at minimum heavily refactored, if not rewritten, as anything that interfaces with the engine needs to be changed over. Just like you can’t just port c++ -> c# without major changes, you can’t port a game engine without major changes too.

              Unless theyve built everything as a separate code bundle, only interacting with the engine at a bare minimum, there’s no way to change with minor impact. It’ll be a huge project that will also require the engineers to learn a new stack that behaves differently, further slowing down the process.

        • @Overwrite7445@lemmy.ca
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          252 years 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
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            32 years ago

            Not downplaying the effort, it still takes time. But not impossible.

            How you made it all matters in situations like this.

        • Natanael
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          102 years 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
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            22 years 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.

            • @bane_killgrind@lemmy.ml
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              52 years ago

              The things you are suggesting are adding complexity and therefore cost.

              It does take a higher level of expertise to adequately abstract away engine specific limitations and requirements.

              It’s again an even higher level of expertise and therefore expenditure to account for performance issues with these abstractions.

              • dog
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                12 years ago

                Not untrue, but it helps to adapt your future projects if done in such a way.

                It does require more expertise, and it takes more time, thus it’d have to be the first thing done for the project, not something you do after everything’s done already.

        • @Cypher@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          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
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            12 years 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
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          82 years 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.

  • @paddirn@lemmy.world
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    852 years ago

    Just the latest in a wave of companies that seem to be looking for ever-more scummy ways to take advantage of their customers in search of the Holy Dollar.

    This is hardly a comprehensive list, there’s so many recently, but this is just what I could remember off the top of my head:

    • Wizards of the Coast
    • Adobe
    • X-Rite/Pantone/Danaher
    • Monotype
    • BMW
    • Netflix
    • Reddit
    • morriscox
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      2 years ago

      Evernote. Mentioning adding AI is code for incoming price hikes and limitations.

    • @WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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      72 years ago
      • Wizards of the Coast

      The OGL stuff and the Pinkerton incident, right?

      • Adobe

      They’ve been pretty shitty for a while now. What have they done recently? (I don’t use any of their stuff.)

      • X-Rite/Pantone/Danaher

      Don’t even know who these guys are.

      • Monotype

      Something font-related?

      • BMW

      This is the heated seat subscription, right? Anything else I’m not aware of?

      • Netflix

      Account sharing?

      • Reddit

      No explanation needed there.

      • brianorca
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        162 years ago

        Pantone suddenly decided to assert copyright and licensing to the literal names of colors in a way the broke art files going back decades.

    • @SYNOPSIS@lemmyf.uk
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      32 years ago

      Add sony to that list for the recent ps plus price hike and google for their new invasive ad tracking feature in chrome and their youtube ad changes.

    • Wilker
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      172 years ago

      the “just don’t do it” argument ignores the problem. it’s like replying “just don’t buy Apple products” to people complaining about right to repair. the key part is that regular people won’t know beforehand until they need to notice. by that point, it’s profitable enough to show other companies like Samsung and Motorolla that restrictions are profitable, so jumping around brands will also never work when the intention is to have your phone for a long time.

      back in the context of game dev, add that to the part where not only people don’t anticipate the retroactive changes of a license they have to rely on when choosing an engine, but there’s the added weight of having to learn an entirely new library and oftentimes even an entire new programming language, so you have to commit to it if you want to make a commercial product or else you risk losing literal years of development just from rewriting the same thing over and over.

      not to say that there’s a reason why a lot of people chose Unity. Godot may be in development since 2014 but they are still relatively new in popularity. not only they have less total instructions resources from the community due to it obviously being smaller than Unity’s, but people also look for already known games as one of the first factors when choosing something, which is something Godot is still catching up on. knowing legal jargon to even comprehend the difference between free and proprietary is the least of their worries when someone wants to jump into game development and build stuff with it.

      • morriscox
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        52 years ago

        I’m reminded of a post recently where someone asked how to get rid of a dialog in Windows and got swamped with replies saying to install Linux. It’s like getting a check engine light in your car and being told to buy a truck.

    • @npz@lemm.ee
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      622 years ago

      I think many would agree that it’d be great for FOSS engines to get more attention and contributions, but this is the most asinine way to get that message across

      • @cryball@sopuli.xyz
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        2 years ago

        They are technically correct in that it’s the developers fault that they tied themselves to a proprietary game engine.

        In the other hand Godot was nowhere near mature when the slay the spire devs most likely started development. They would be dumb if they used unity for their next game 🤷

        • Captain Aggravated
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          52 years ago

          2014: “You guys should be careful building your industry around proprietary tools, you really should think about open source-” “Blah blah blah stop your moralizing, open source software isn’t 100% ready to go right now so we absolutely can’t use it, instead we’re just going to pay money for this turnkey solution.”

          2023: “Help! The proprietary turnkey solution we’ve been paying for this whole time is enshitifying! Subscription models, mandatory cloud services, more and steeper fees!” “Open source tools are still a thing, you know.” “Yeah but we’ve spent a decade telling an entire generation of talent to learn the proprietary stuff so it’s hard to migrate, and we didn’t contribute any code or money to FOSS projects this whole time so it still isn’t up to snuff.”

          Well I guess you can slide over to Unreal and kick that can down the road a bit waiting for Epic Games to enshitify their product as well, you can use and contribute to Godot, you can develop your own in-house engine, or you can keep taking it up the ass from Unity.

          Just let me ask this: If even a few smaller games, something like Unrailed or Papers Please, used Godot and contributed what they paid to Unity to the Godot team…where would the engine be today?

          • @habanhero@lemmy.ca
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            52 years ago

            It’s a business decision they made to go with Unity, there are risks that came along with it and they are dealing with it.

            I’m sure FOSS options were considered at one point but it’s not really surprising that game devs are generally in the business of making games, and not in the business of spending money and resources to bootstrap FOSS tools or to please the community.

    • Kichae
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      892 years ago

      Unity: Successfully implemented a product strategy that floods the market with game developers that know how to use its product.

      You, an insufferable prick: “Why would they use a product they could find ready-trained developers for when they could use a niche product no one has any skills in??!?”

      • drphungky
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        132 years ago

        The Unity training materials are amazing. I took their beginner programming course and even made a tiny little game of my own afterwards. I had plans to make a real game later for fun. It’s awesome software and they have a great ecosystem for beginners with no experience.

        So it’s a huge loss, but why would I support them now when Godot exists? The only prospective user I can think of now is someone with no experience that needs all the tutorials, so they’re only using them to learn and have no dreams of making a successful game. All the wannabe devs who think they’re going to make the next great indie hit (and trust me based on game dev forums - there are a ton), why would they set themselves up to pay a ton of money to Unity when starting out? The people they’re going to hold onto are those who don’t have the skill or resources to switch, which probably coincides fairly well with those who don’t have the skill or resources to make a commercially successful game. So they’ve limited the amount of money this move makes to existing games they can squeeze some money out of, and maybe some potential breakout hits from people who are pot committed to Unity and not skilled enough to switch. It’s a crazy move.

    • prole
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      442 years ago

      Godot has just recently began to gain steam. I don’t think it was a viable option when StS was in development.

      • Jaysyn
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        132 years ago

        Unfortunately, it still isn’t for console development.

        • RealHonest
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          52 years ago

          On their website it says it is via third party publishers.

    • Electric_Druid
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      122 years ago

      Are people not allowed to change their minds? It’s called progress

    • Jaysyn
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      2 years ago

      Yeah, fuck console sales, amiright?

      @Voyajer is either a jackass or doesn’t understand sarcasm.

      • Voyajer
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        2 years ago

        Buddy you’re at -6 for a low effort comment, don’t get buttmad at me. Why are you going back and checking your reduces so obsessively?