I wonder why Godot and Unreal are getting so much interest today

Charging per install has to be the most out of touch insane choices they could have made.

There is zero rationality behind the decision, especially given that it’s retroactive and there’s no language in their decision that handles unique user versus multiple users versus multiple accounts.

I’ve had two gaming PCs over the last ten years. On my last one, I replaced the hard drive twice, and I’m on my second hard drive on the newest one. With each hard drive replacement, I’ve had to reinstall all my games. I’m not paying for all of them again with each install but just getting the same files off Steam and installing again. According to this decision, the devs of these games would have had to pay Unity four extra times just due to my hardware upgrades. How is that on the developer at all, and Lord help us if Unity tries to run some BS where players have to pay for each new installation.

The entire gaming industry, even from the “disc era”, doesn’t work with a cost per install model.
- Someone claims here that if you use Unity's internal Ad API then you will make that money back, giving people who put ads in their games a free pass.
  
  If true, Unity is trying to force indie devs to enshittify their products.
- How can be retroactive?
  
  I mean legally. The devs agreed to a contract, it can't be changed with different economic terms later
  
  If someone published an Unity game 4 years ago, has now abandoned the project, doesn't release any update, why needs to pay a per install fee "for supporting the runtime"? The version is now ancient. I could understand if it was "from version xx.yy"
- They actually explicitly stated as such:
  
  Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs?
  
  A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data.
- Not to mention that it's such a sudden announcement. I mean, sure, they gave people 3 months notice in advance, but when you consider the scale of many games probably take longer than 3 months to make the decision AND actually make the switch (or make up for the switch), it's cause for quite a bit of harm.
  
  Granted, the majority of people may not be affected by it due to needing to meet a requirement of like earning $200,000 and 200,000 installs at a minimum, but I feel like the once you reach that, it's just downhill from there.
  
  In addition to your example of costing the devs for reinstalling the game, you now have to consider the possibility of a user (or group of users) maliciously reinstalling their games to financially damage the developer. Sure, Unity says they'll have fraud detection for stuff like that, but then it's literally up to the people you owe money to decide whether you should pay more or less money to them.
- This feels so wrong to me that I feel like they must be going against some law, or they need to be sued to set precedent. I'm not a lawyer, I just think this smells completely like a giant corporation scamming people.
oh no stop, please, don't make John riccatello tell us to hold his beer. think of his track record at EA. the out of touch competition isn't even at full stakes yet. I have a feeling more is coming before the IPO.

I can't believe Godot surpassed Unreal in interest. Astonishing moment.

I really hope Godot becomes the Blender of game engines.

This is a funny analogy because Blender was a game engine at one point and failed.
- It was decided that game engine development was over complicating the goal of Blender. It detracted from actual 3D software development resources and trying to make all blender features seamless with it was nearly doubling potential work.
- did it really fail? I was under the impression it just became too much to maintain for a FOSS community, in addition to an already robust 3D modeling software suite. I don't know how many people actually used it.
  
  it is interesting to see unreal go a different route, they are making 3d modelers and even audio/video editing tools in house to try and make it so you never have to leave the engine.
I have a hypothesis: People have heard of Unreal but haven't heard of Godot, they see folks talking about it and go "What's that" and google it.
- It would be great if a portion of them decided to dip their toes into game development too since it's free.
- You just described what I did just before reading this comment.
I mean if you just got fucked over by a proprietary engine then why go for another one. People are delusional if they think Unreal is a safe option.

:D

Godot updated their pricing policy too

And we are sure it would stay that way thanks to libre licence. Godot is a collective project, but even if it wasn't and charge for copy/support/assets, we still would own our copy and could just get someone else to work on it if they screw up.

People switching to Unreal are like the ex-Twitter users who went to Tumblr and Threads.

Certainly Godot is the safer bet (probably why they are surging so much more right now), but Unreal is nowhere near as bad as Threads. Unreal is open source, and the license specifically forbids Epic from making retroactive changes like Unity just did:

The Agreement Between You and Epic

a. Amendments

If we make changes to this Agreement, you are not required to accept the amended Agreement, and this Agreement will continue to govern your use of any Licensed Technology you already have access to.
- Unreal is not open source, it's source-available. Open source generally gives freedoms like redistribution, yet that is explicitly not allowed by Unreal. To get access to the source, you need to agree to a licensing agreement with them.
  
  That said, source-available is a lot better than most proprietary software licenses.
- I was really confused because from some reason I was thinking that Unreal and Unity were the same.

I could see this encouraging a whole new form of brigading. Imagine if a developer pissed off the community, thousands of people could go about uninstalling and reinstalling the game over and over, driving up the engine monthly bill for the company.

Did they put anything in place with their new rules to prevent this from being abused?

They claim to. Do you trust their software reporting system?
- I trust they did their best.
  I also trust that any sufficiently tech savvy individual will be able to bypass that system. It only takes one person to pull it off and then it's public knowledge. Sure, they'll fix it, and then someone will do it again.
  Small companies can't afford to take that risk and larger companies won't want the hassle.
  
  It's a shame too. I liked Unity more than Unreal. Oh well.

I spent the last 10 hours trying to learning Godot, and I love it! Seems like a mix of the best things from Unity and Blender.

It did just occur to me that the amount of time I've spent over the last few years tinkering with Godot as a hobby just got more valuable.

Well thats another company imploding on itself, really colors you surprised, sinks you, causes your submarine to turn into a crushed soda can.

It's what happens when you make a company public and all they want is return on their investment yesterday.
- That's a leadership issue though. The CEO's job is to communicate expectations to the board and balance long term and short term returns.

Feels like I'm living the Pathfinder 2e boom again, I love it. Could they send the Pinkertons to the Cuphead studios next to perfectly do everything wrong

The nice thing about a company being run by evil people is that you can rely on them to eventually do something overtly evil, and then everyone will be aware they are evil.

Because people learn their lessons only when they get punched in the face

2022: OnlyFans wanted to ban porn

2023: Unity wants to kill free-to-play games
I doubt they will learn from this
- Except this licencing change removes sustainability from all licencing models except the ones that run subscription models or advertising.
  
  Now they say they aren't going to impose this crap over any not for profit or for profit that's earning revenue under 200K. But I have serious doubts that certain scenarios are going to slip through the cracks.
  
  What it is essentially a way to bleed any viral indie game studio dry of their capital, which could force them to declare bankruptcy and sell off their assets.
  
  I wouldn't be surprised if this was a way to build a unity game studio.
  
  Game goes viral and reaches the threshold of 200K+ revenue
  
  Every install and reinstall of the game gets charged, costs start to outweigh profits.
  
  Money drains fast with no way to stop it.
  
  Indie company declares bankruptcy due to cash flow issues
  
  Unity demands payment for unpaid bills in assets - gets the ownership of game title as payment.
  
  Unity opens game studio and continues to sell the game, while employing minimal Devs to maintain it.
  
  Bam! they've a bunch of viral hits completely for free under their umbrella in a bunch of payments. And because they own the engine, they can make money hand over fist while stopping everyone else from doing the same.
  
  That said I'm sure they have separate payment and licencing deals with big AAA companies. So really it's only the indie companies that end up with a viral hit that get screwed.
  
  So the other option is that they do not open a game studio and they're merely just doing big techs dirty work and taking out their competition, while providing IP fire sales for big tech.
  
  That said, once the company goes after a group for failure to pay this money, I wouldn't be surprised if a legal fight ensued in order to declare the terms of service unenforceable and/or anti consumer and have them nullified or forcibly rewritten/reverted. If that happens I'm sure the EFF or other non profit software foundation will end up providing legal funding and or services. Heck it could end up being a class action.