Can they tell the differences between installs or can’t they? Either way, they’re definitely lying to their users.

  • @toxic_cloud
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    1321 year ago

    Even worse, https://unity.com/pricing-updates is posted on their site:

    “We leverage our own proprietary data model and will provide estimates of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project – this estimate will cover an invoice for all platforms.”

    Estimating how many copies you sold based on your own ‘data models’ which is impossible to track? Isn’t that like a giant red flag for laundering money?

    • @mind
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      371 year ago

      deleted by creator

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I don’t understand how that works. Will that even stand up to a lawsuit? Wouldn’t they have to give up stuff in discovery if a game company sues to find how they were billed?

    • datendefekt
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      191 year ago

      I think it’s crazy that they want to write invoices based on estimations. Why didn’t I ever do that? “Oh yeah, I estimate that I worked about um… 2 weeks on that feature.”

  • @leo85811nardo
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    1 year ago

    In my opinion, it’s bad either way for different reasons

    If they do tell the difference, then there is some tracking built into the machine that runs the engine, which is bad for the application user

    If they don’t tell the difference, then there will be exploits for intentionally reinstall multiple times, which is bad for the application developers

  • @carbonara
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    1021 year ago

    Don’t try to find a meaning in this, just switch to something FOSS. Look at how the 3D modeling world is since Blender became a real competitor.

    • @yanyuan
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      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

      • R0cket_M00se
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        111 year ago

        Do the different ones have separate use cases? Or are they all pretty similar in terms of intended functionality and user knowledge requirements?

        • @yanyuan
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          • Ignotum
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            51 year ago

            Haven’t tried any of those other ones you mentioned, but i can vouch for Godot, it’s pretty amazing (granted, i’m not a professional developer, but Godot has worked great for my hobby projects)

  • ryan
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    761 year ago

    This whole thing is absurd and overcomplicated - they could have just copied Unreal and slightly undercut them.

    It isn’t too complicated, but for example, a game which made $2 million in gross revenue would owe Epic Games $50,000, because it would pay 5 percent of $1 million, keeping the first million entirely—minus whatever other fees are owed, such as Steam’s cut.

    There should also absolutely have been a grandfather clause for games already released.

    I get Unity needs to make money. They’ve never been profitable. But they’ve seriously overcomplicated the whole thing and gotten people angry at them.

    • @marcos
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      421 year ago

      I’m not even sure this is a price increase. It probably is, but I think a lot of people will pay less.

      They are just reserving the right to bankrupt you, at random, without any previous warning, because they want. There’s no good reasoning anywhere.

      • @[email protected]
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        71 year ago

        I agree. I think a price increase can totally make sense. Shit’s expensive nowadays, we get it.

        They seem to want to create a new revenue stream from games published on Unity retroactively.

  • @epicsninja
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    651 year ago

    I guarantee they put zero thought into how this would actually work, and have just been making stuff up as they go.

    • @[email protected]
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      191 year ago

      Sounds like the idea came to Riccatello in a dream. Damn CEOs are so used to getting their way they just think and it will manifest bullshit.

  • IzzyScissor
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    641 year ago

    Do installs of the same game by the same user across multiple devices count as different installs?

    We treat different devices as different installs. We don’t want to track identity across different devices.

    Jesus Christ. A single user can freely install the game repeatedly and bankrupt a creator.

  • @MrPoopyButthole
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    341 year ago

    I may get downvoted to hell for this, but besides the shady business practices, Unity sucks as a game engine. You can just feel the engine eating resources for no good reason and the gfx don’t come close to UE5.

    • @marcos
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      191 year ago

      Oh, I don’t think anybody will disagree that Unity is completely unoptimized and barebones compared to Unreal. It is also hard to learn and confusing compared to Godot.

      There used to be a huge amount of people that wanted exactly something easier to learn than Unreal and more featureful than Godot. But those two improved in a way that this niche may not even exist anymore. Anyway, currently Unity has that unbeatable marketplace, and I really don’t know if there’s a good enough replacement somewhere, but I don’t see any other reason to use it.

      (But then, I’m not really a game developer. I’ve used those here or there, for fun.)

      • @BassaForte
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        1 year ago

        Not quite. Unity isn’t poorly optimized, but it’s not great either. Unity also is very easy to learn, hence the number of really shit games put out from it.

        Source: have been using Unity for the past 10 years

    • ArrowMax
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      21 year ago

      From a hobbyist dev who dabbled with Unity for several years: The worst part about the engine imo is the fragmentation of the entire ecosystem.

      • There are three major rendering pipelines (HDRP, URP, Legacy), each with their own specific quirks, configurations and dependencies, which are entirely incompatible with eachother.

      • Foundational packages (input handling, networking etc.) change/break way too often or have been deprecated for years without replacement (uNet) and rely on 3d party packages.

      And don’t even start with the documentation for any of the above. Multiple times have I found documentation for a rendering callback or ShaderLab parameter claiming it would be compatible with URP only to find that the documentation was supposed to be for HRDP.

  • @[email protected]
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    251 year ago

    Wow, a proprietary quasi monopoly changes their business model into something extremely exploitative and hostile. I am totally surprised! Shocked even! Blimey!

    Seriously, why spend years of your life learning to work with some technology that can at anytime be made instantly obsolete or impractical to use when some random asshole you don’t know decides something dumb. If there’s a FOSS alternative, always prefer that.

    • @bouh
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      21 year ago

      Is there a Foss alternative to unity?

        • @[email protected]
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          71 year ago

          The other cool kid on the block right now is bevy. It’s less of an engine for people who just want something to write their game in, though, but more of a framework for people looking to write their own engine. There’s practically nothing you can’t customise or replace in that thing, it’s built to be both flexible and performant.

      • XYZinferno
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        411 year ago

        Godot is a good example of a free and well-developed open source game engine. It’ll probably see a sharp rise in adoption following this controversy from Unity.

          • XYZinferno
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            131 year ago

            LMAO

            I work with C# daily and even I didn’t realize I made a pun there xD

            Maybe it’s just embedded in my subconscious at this point…

          • 📛Maven
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            31 year ago

            Yo, is C# named that because a # is made of four plusses?

            • @droans
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              31 year ago

              Yep, it’s supposed to mean C++++.

              The sharp symbol also resembles a ligature of four “+” symbols (in a two-by-two grid), further implying that the language is an increment of C++.

              That’s specific enough that I have to assume you already knew that, though.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          I’ve looked into Godot for 2 hours and I already am learning how to write shaders. I feel like the available assets are going to skyrocket.

      • transigence
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        -161 year ago

        Or because they got bigger than they can currently support and they don’t want to lay off their employees.

        • @[email protected]
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          121 year ago

          Then they’d use an actually sensible payment model like, gee, say taking a cut of the revenue made from unity games?

          This is like being charged every time you eat off of a plate rather than just charging for the fucking plate.

    • @Russianranger
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      51 year ago

      They announced a new business model effective next year. It’s plastered all over the net, just look up “Unity news” and you’ll get a ton of hits on it. Lots of coverage on YouTube as well.

  • metaStatic
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    101 year ago

    They could promise to pay the developer a fee per install and it wouldn’t matter. You can’t trust them anymore.