That’s too broad a question. Is it a viable alternative for 2D/3D games that wouldn’t use a lot of store assets and plugins? I’d say yeah, for most indie games, in fact. There are a few high-profile Godot games around (Dome Keeper, Brotato, Cassette Beasts come to mind) and certainly more to come.
And 100k for Godot might mean a lot of nice features and maybe a kickstart on an asset store of sorts to make up for that side of the Unity experience.
I hope game devs that make games that are not demanding, 2D or 2D with a few 3D elements, they all move to Godot. To Godot or any other, I mention Godot because is the #1 option.
These people don’t need to be hostage by a flimsy company. They need lots of good documentation, and a giant community of other devs, plugins and how-to-solve-problem, but you have to break the chains somewhere. If Godot (or whatever open source engine) become popular, and with that, it gets the community, and with that it gets the good documentation and articles and plugins. Like blender.
Indie devs that need a more demanding engine, who knows, maybe are better at home with Unreal. Even if Unreal one day become evil. You gotta pay, if you make money from making games, is okay to pay a something for it.
“Bobby Kotick to join Godot. IPO in 6mo, say insiders”
2026 headline, probably. 😂
Because they are making PR hay off of Unity’s PR disaster - keeping it in the news, bolstering a competitor and getting more eyeballs on themselves… all at Unity’s expense (which will be literal).
Then somebody would make a fork. Once you get Godot, is yours forever.
Not just that, it’s mostly a community project that would quickly keep going in a fork.
That’s… a picture of Gollum while he was still a hobbit, right? What’s open source, preciousss?
Sméagol. His name was Sméagol. ;)
Modifications to the Runtime fee were announced today, along with an apology:
For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month. Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.
And it will only apply to new versions of the engine, not retroactively to all versions.
point revisions and security updates are likely to make this (important) clarification irrelevant, IMHO
We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version.
Better see the fine print there, otherwise this will continue…
I’m not very smart but…is this good?
This looks significant if I’m reading it right. They got rid of Plus, but also gave its main benefit (no splash) to Personal and raised the revenue cap to $1 million.
Anyone can stick with their existing version and avoid the runtime fee. You can also choose revenue share vs. run time fee.
If this is what they had announced first, I think everyone would have been on board. Now, I think they’ll manage to keep most devs who were already on the platform, but with a big loss in trust.
He did specifically indicate it will apply to Unity 2024 and beyond, so presumably that means one could continue to update to the latest patched version of the Unity 2022 LTS and be fine. Choosing to upgrade to Unity 2024 will come with the runtime fee requirement.
It seems significantly better.
Yes, this is very good.
The self reporting takes away most of tu time fee associated issues, and the 2,5% cap solves the edge cases (I would be surprised if it’s used more than 1% of the time, for users over $1M revenue per game per year -the cap-).
Keeping terms tied to versions also provides needed stability.
But the trust it’s going to take a long time to recover, if it ever does.
This is the big problem now. Those changes were a good thing, but trust is easily lost but not easily rebuilt.
My prediction? Unity will go fine for a while, in great part due to inertia, but if any viable alternative presents itself, it will very quickly be left behind.
I wouldn’t hold your breath.
One lesson from all this is how extremely unprofitable professional game engines are (both Unity and Unreal) even with pretty high fees, so in many, many cases a viable alternative to either is going to have a very steep buy-in. I maaaaybe could see entities Apple or Nintendo going there in an alternative, happier timeline (basically entities so big that profit is secondary to vertical integration).
If suddenly the number of platforms to deploy sinks dramatically, things will be different and the barriers of entry lower significantly, but that’s a different problem.
My guess is studios already in deep development with Unity will stick with it for that game, and look elsewhere for the next one.
Exactly. I think devs may complain about trust for years to come, but if they are facing 2.5% max at Unity (for a major success by indie standards), 5% at Unreal, they will grumble but stick with Unity.
Those that find Godot sufficient for their needs should have switched to it before trust was an issue, as it’s terms are a no brainier if the technology is sufficient.
Unity will also have to really push features in it’s next LTS to draw people to that and the new terms. That’s a good thing for most devs that fall below the minimum revenue threshold - Unity will be in a beauty contest to attract highly profitable devs, and all others enjoy the benefits for free.
Yep. There’s a reason only Unity was left in the mid-range. The margins are basically nonexistent. And the barrier to entry is so high now… the moat is huge. That’s why Unity are raising prices.
