Report: Unity's Runtime Fee quietly gave exemptions in launch rush
Report: Unity's Runtime Fee quietly gave exemptions in launch rush
Smaller studios would've taken the biggest hits from Unity's Runtime Fee policy, and also helped it retaliate against would-be merger partner AppLovin.
Despite all that's happened, at least one source told the outlet they don't think Unity's moves were made out of complete malice. "They need to do something to make more money. Sadly, it wasn’t delivered well, but the need to make more money is still there."
And that's why every dev (who can) should run as far away from Unity as possible, because Unity will try to screw them some other way.
To where? Godot isn't there yet (sorry, maybe in five years, it's impressive and on the right track. Not today). And unreal is under the same pressure.
i don’t think unreal is under the same pressure for three reasons:
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they already have a reasonable revenue sharing model. they make a lot more per licensee than unity does because they take a cut of your sales rather than charging a per-engineer license for the dev kit.
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epic’s headcount is not nearly as horrendously bloated, even before the recent layoffs.
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the company is still privately held with Tim Sweeney the majority owner.
points 1 and 2 mean epic is actually profitable, and has been for decades at this point. meanwhile, the publicly traded unity has struggled to break even for most of its existence
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You know what else isn't there yet? Unity, Unreal, Source, CryEngine... literally every commercial game engine requires development if you're actually looking to push hardware limits. They're just toolboxes.
Godot is no different, except that developers are going to be much more likely to release their changes publicly.
Whats missing?
They need to do something to make more money
I'm sorry, but Unity is just not a viable entity. They have consistently lost money since 2004, and in 2022 reported nearly 1 billion in net losses. Just close it down!
Well make a foundation to pay your developers then. Problem solved