Really though, what were they thinking. Why would anyone risk staying with unity after all their bad decisions, especially when they clearly have no intention to stop being dumb.
I went to a game dev meetup in Seoul last year. Everyone was using Unity.
I went again last month. Half the people were using Godot.
For a bit more context, I used to work in the gaming industry. We used Unity because it was great for making money - drop in ads and tracking, you’re good to go. The Godot ecosystem isn’t as mature for that yet. However, even we were considering switching to Godot. It wasn’t worth switching for a number of reasons (besides the above mentioned ones, Godot is also “laggier” and we have some heavier games), but had we started shop yesterday, it’s safe to say we would have used Godot too.
Unity just laid off 25% of their workforce. That is not a small number. Their days are numbered.
They probably are, but it’s not really about cost, it’s about fear. I fear that while it costs $x to switch to Unreal Enigne now, it’ll cost $x+10 after a few weeks when they do their next decision, and $x+20 a month or so after that.
Also I think there’s a vast majority of crap in app purchase games that will happily pay money to unity as they run their gacha systems. Real, honest developers care about stuff like this, but international game farms (the kind that always seem to be sponsoring YouTubers and streamers) are just running calculations on what it will cost them to keep using Unity.
And now that unity has backed down on pricing those devs are still raking in money, so they, as potentially unity’s biggest customers, and unity themselves, don’t care what more indie devs think as they push forward higher growth targets.
Which signals to investors that there is little to no expected growth. If you aren’t attracting new customers to grow your user base, then you only have the option to milk your existing customers to increase revenue.
That may work short term, but long term it signals a death knell for the company, since as the old customers retire or the studios close down, the new crop of game developers would have been trained on or adopted a different engine so aren’t going to switch to Unity. Eventually they just run out of customers.
I moonlight as a small app developer. This is absolutely correct. I have a handful of legacy apps which uses Unity, and makes so little that moving them would cost more.
That said, if/when I do another project, it won’t be in Unity.
edit: The following is off topic, but I’ll.leave it as a testament to my gray-beardedness. In my defense: Unity isn’t Unity anymore. Don’t get old.
I’ve been using Linux for 30 years now, and for a while I was an advocate for Ubuntu and Canonical (among others, I’m pan-distributive). Then things changed: GNOME 3, Wayland, Unity, something-sonething, Snaps… All too much.
As an advocate, I’m apt not to emerge with favorites, or to yuck others’ yums. Neverthekess, Canonical is a press beyond the pale, many days.
In the end, I don’t recommend Canonical distros. LMDE is solid, as are most of the *bian and redhat downstreams. I don’t recommend the others because I don’t know them, but more importantly I couldn’t help a friend un-bodge a bad installer on them (likewise for "BSD or Darwin).
But really, no love for Canonical. They went to some Dark Side, and I’ll have a hard time forgiving them for it.
I also thought of Unity the DE before reading the article
I understand the confusion. This doesn’t belong to a Linux community. I mean, I see the relation with FOSS but I’m sure there are FOSS communities out there. The article doesn’t even mentions Linux, just Windows and Android.
With ibm working hard to enshittify redhat even faster than newredhat themselves, we should consider avoiding them as a first-class porting and work target.
Look at OpenEL as a successor to the RH and an upstream for the other ELs once RH starts eating from that tasty “free stuff they can sell” trough. Having made bank on TheForeMan without actually making an effort to support it, they have a model they can use for everything.
Really though, what were they thinking. Why would anyone risk staying with unity after all their bad decisions, especially when they clearly have no intention to stop being dumb.
I went to a game dev meetup in Seoul last year. Everyone was using Unity.
I went again last month. Half the people were using Godot.
For a bit more context, I used to work in the gaming industry. We used Unity because it was great for making money - drop in ads and tracking, you’re good to go. The Godot ecosystem isn’t as mature for that yet. However, even we were considering switching to Godot. It wasn’t worth switching for a number of reasons (besides the above mentioned ones, Godot is also “laggier” and we have some heavier games), but had we started shop yesterday, it’s safe to say we would have used Godot too.
Unity just laid off 25% of their workforce. That is not a small number. Their days are numbered.
Small correction they haven’t fired 25% of us yet, it is a work in progress
Good luck. It’s a stressful time. I hope you get yourself sorted in whatever you plan to do.
They’re mostly banking on the cost of change being higher than the inconvenience of staying.
They probably are, but it’s not really about cost, it’s about fear. I fear that while it costs $x to switch to Unreal Enigne now, it’ll cost $x+10 after a few weeks when they do their next decision, and $x+20 a month or so after that.
Like buying a reverse lottery ticket. If you’re unlucky, you suddenly have to pay a big amount somewhere in the future.
That description really fits all kinds of technical debt.
Agreed.
Except, you don’t win a negative lottery prize so much as you take on someone’s loanshark debt and now have to service it at insane interest rates.
Also I think there’s a vast majority of crap in app purchase games that will happily pay money to unity as they run their gacha systems. Real, honest developers care about stuff like this, but international game farms (the kind that always seem to be sponsoring YouTubers and streamers) are just running calculations on what it will cost them to keep using Unity.
And now that unity has backed down on pricing those devs are still raking in money, so they, as potentially unity’s biggest customers, and unity themselves, don’t care what more indie devs think as they push forward higher growth targets.
Which signals to investors that there is little to no expected growth. If you aren’t attracting new customers to grow your user base, then you only have the option to milk your existing customers to increase revenue.
That may work short term, but long term it signals a death knell for the company, since as the old customers retire or the studios close down, the new crop of game developers would have been trained on or adopted a different engine so aren’t going to switch to Unity. Eventually they just run out of customers.
Especially in a competitive market where compelling alternatives exist.
Especially in tech.
And especially in software.
That’s all that matters. The next quarter’s growth is more important than the year-end P/L sheets.
ah the mainframe strategy
The microsoft strategy.
I moonlight as a small app developer. This is absolutely correct. I have a handful of legacy apps which uses Unity, and makes so little that moving them would cost more.
That said, if/when I do another project, it won’t be in Unity.
edit: The following is off topic, but I’ll.leave it as a testament to my gray-beardedness. In my defense: Unity isn’t Unity anymore. Don’t get old.
I’ve been using Linux for 30 years now, and for a while I was an advocate for Ubuntu and Canonical (among others, I’m pan-distributive). Then things changed: GNOME 3, Wayland, Unity, something-sonething, Snaps… All too much.
As an advocate, I’m apt not to emerge with favorites, or to yuck others’ yums. Neverthekess, Canonical is a press beyond the pale, many days.
In the end, I don’t recommend Canonical distros. LMDE is solid, as are most of the *bian and redhat downstreams. I don’t recommend the others because I don’t know them, but more importantly I couldn’t help a friend un-bodge a bad installer on them (likewise for "BSD or Darwin).
But really, no love for Canonical. They went to some Dark Side, and I’ll have a hard time forgiving them for it.
I also thought of Unity the DE before reading the article
I understand the confusion. This doesn’t belong to a Linux community. I mean, I see the relation with FOSS but I’m sure there are FOSS communities out there. The article doesn’t even mentions Linux, just Windows and Android.
You do realize this is about the Unity game engine, right?
I do now. See edits upthread.
With ibm working hard to enshittify redhat even faster than newredhat themselves, we should consider avoiding them as a first-class porting and work target.
Look at OpenEL as a successor to the RH and an upstream for the other ELs once RH starts eating from that tasty “free stuff they can sell” trough. Having made bank on TheForeMan without actually making an effort to support it, they have a model they can use for everything.
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