• Doc Blaze@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    The harsh truth is even if they lose half of their current users they will end up making more anyway, even with the amended changes. They planned to lose a large chunk of their user base, regardless. The “seats” model is dead now that AI is changing how game development is done from the ground up. And they needed to do this because they were never profitable (the engine’s development costs hundreds of millions of dollars) and couldn’t really compete with unreal when it came to the type of customers they could actually pay for the engine from

    • fluxion@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      2 years ago

      Sure, but if they’d implemented the revised changes they wouldn’t have lost so many users. And despite their messaging, they did already speak to some devs who’d already told them this would be a disaster, but they tried it anyway, and in a retroactive way that completely disregarded prior promises regarding changing EULA agreements, so there’s no faith in this not still changing.

      They fucked it up. Plain and simple.

    • probablyaCat@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      2 years ago

      Nah this went really bad for them. Even if they do make more, it will almost certainly be short term. Godot got so much free advertising. It firmly sat itself next to unreal as far as who should be choosing it, but it is definitely the inferior engine if you are making AAA. It’s going to get cut from the high by unreal and the low from Godot, defold, and even gamemaker.

      I don’t get this weird apologist attitude. Let us not forget Unity just spent over $4 billion less than a year ago buying the malware ad service ironsource. They are not profitable because they make bad business decisions. This was one more. And in all likelihood we will see the sale of unity before too long. And it will probably be less than the $20 billion offer they had prior to the ironsource purchase.

      • Doc Blaze@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        80 percent of unity users don’t pay and a large percentage of the 20% remaining don’t pay close to enough to maintain the engine. they did this on purpose, so it’s their fault, but it is the truth. most large studios these days that actually hit the numbers to pay unity are doing more with AI so they are paying less and those who the changes actually were attempting to make up lost revenue from. as I said, either way the “seats” model is dead regardless.

        honestly as shitty as the changes were (and of course they were trying to make profit) they were actually attempting to help devs at least financially. For many use cases the install fee would come out as less than a 1% rev share. It was the other shit that made it worse, the install counting malware proposal, and the uncertainty behind the legitimacy of the numbers. (demos, piracy, repeated reinstalls)

        if you’re interested in the insight from a tech investor who is familiar with the situation from the inside, but remains unbiased as someone not employed by unity, check this link for a good breakdown of what Unity’s leadership was actually thinking when they cooked this insanity up.

        https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1702054746411221386.html

        (ironic considering we’re talking about unity but you may need to scroll thru the shitty ads to be sure you can read the whole post).