Unity Tax & Engine Alternatives

[60Points]

In my particular case, confidence in the engine was quite broken, I will continue with the development of my current project (First compilation on the day of the runtime fee announcement hahaha). And then I will migrate, over the weekend I was testing several engines in a little more depth. Godot for 2d is more than fine(cons, only windows), for 3d if you want to keep c# with Stride and Cryengine i had very good visual results with quite good performance (Multi-threading is a little more complicated than in Unity, but it is possible), cons? There are practically no assets.

If you like c++, or visual scripting, definitely unreal, but it's a resource sucker (And I couldn't achieve multi threading).

 

[Glorified_ignorance]

Imagine devs making/sharing games that would skip installation step and be "pocket/portable" version instead.
Won't work with steam tho

Something like godot needs to grow ASAP, I like the devs that are making it.
Clearly not rotten and tainted people is gathered there.
They are clearly on the spotlight at the moment.

I'm curious to see where all of this unity charade will head.
It's sad to see devs suffering from it and are lead to make hard decisions.

Man I wish Techland shared their Chrome Engine, one can only dream

 

[xRoguex]

I think this explains pretty much everything.
People like going in crazy mode so much

 

[Hagatagar]

Imagine devs making/sharing games that would skip installation step and be "pocket/portable" version instead.

Probably won't matter, because an install doesn't necessarily mean it needed to be installed. There just needs to have been an initialization (i.e. game start).
So a game will probably check if it ever ran on this device (e.g. saved logs or in the registry changes at game start).
After all, before they changed it, browser games (WebGL) and streamed games also counted towards the install runtime every time they were reinitialized (tab refresh).

 

[Glorified_ignorance]

Probably won't matter, because an install doesn't necessarily mean it needed to be installed. There just needs to have been an initialization (i.e. game start).
So a game will probably check if it ever ran on this device (e.g. saved logs or in the registry changes at game start).
After all, before they changed it, browser games (WebGL) and streamed games also counted towards the install runtime every time they were reinitialized (tab refresh).

What about on top of this, what TheDeviant wrote earlier, about blocking any connections with internet through firewall? Obviously non tech savy people wouldn't know how to do such thing, but there scripts that could be implemented to do that for you instead I don't see anywhere mentioning from unity that devs cant do this.

It's not like that much porn games needs "internet connection" in first place, and for casual steam games, there aren't that mass of those either.

Wouldn't work for all of the games, but tis still a possible solution?

 

[Count Morado]

What about on top of this, what TheDeviant wrote earlier, about blocking any connections with internet through firewall? Obviously non tech savy people wouldn't know how to do such thing, but there scripts that could be implemented to do that for you instead I don't see anywhere mentioning from unity that devs cant do this.

It's not like that much porn games needs "internet connection" in first place, and for casual steam games, there aren't that mass of those either.

Wouldn't work for all of the games, but tis still a possible solution?

That would violate their ToS and most likely result in a cease and desist at the minimum, and a lawsuit claiming damages and loss of revenue. So, no.

Before you say "how would they know?" They wouldn't necessarily need to find everyone who is doing it. But just a few. Would you want to be the developer who is one of the few? Also, there are ways to find more than a few.

 

[Hagatagar]

What about on top of this, what TheDeviant wrote earlier, about blocking any connections with internet through firewall?

Could work until Unity adds an online requirement. I already had a few Unity games (offline, single player, no server needed) that didn't work when blocked.

Obviously non tech savy people wouldn't know how to do such thing, but there scripts that could be implemented to do that for you instead I don't see anywhere mentioning from unity that devs cant do this.

What Count Morado wrote, unless it's an inofficial script, which is basically a crack.
And that would be more serious than a "hopefully Patreon won't find out that this unofficial incest patch actually came from the dev" case.

 

[Glorified_ignorance]

That would violate their ToS and most likely result in a cease and desist at the minimum, and a lawsuit claiming damages and loss of revenue. So, no.

Before you say "how would they know?" They wouldn't necessarily need to find everyone who is doing it. But just a few. Would you want to be the developer who is one of the few? Also, there are ways to find more than a few.

Well fight fire with a fire as they say...

Wouldn't be surprised if those willing to stay would go for something like this....

London bridge is falling Down, falling Down... *hums away*

 

[Xenon-San]

View attachment 2938753

I think this explains pretty much everything.
People like going in crazy mode so much

>Shlomo Dovrat
Of course. Every single time.

 

[trylater]

The main-point is not an Adjustment of fees. That´s ok. For me it is more this "We wil even charge all downloads that have already been carried out in the past" idea.
That's like the landlort ist telling you about a rent adjustment from 2024 on and, oh by the way: Also for the hole previous rental period. cg to that business model.

 

[Count Morado]

The main-point is not an Adjustment of fees. That´s ok. For me it is more this "We wil even charge all downloads that have already been carried out in the past" idea.
That's like the landlort ist telling you about a rent adjustment from 2024 on and, oh by the way: Also for the hole previous rental period. cg to that business model.

That isn't the case. The Unity Runtime Fee doesn't charge for all installs in the past. Yes, it counts all past installs (as of right now) against the threshold of the installs for the lifetime of a game, but developers aren't being charged for those installs.

If the Unity Runtime Fee remains similar in its final form as it is now - If a developer hits both the revenue and installation thresholds (for their Unity Plan) on December 31, 2023 - then they will be charged each month thereafter for installs of that previous month.

A developer who made the threshold income on a game in the previous 12 months and has 10,000,000 installs against the lifetime of the game on December 31, 2023 is not going to be charged for 9,000,000 - 9,800,000 installs. They are going to be charged in February 2024 for what installs occur January 1 through January 31, 2024. In March 2024 they will be charged for installs that occur February 1 through February 29, 2024. And so forth.

 

[Michael1957]

Don't worry about what is said legally now.
They have proven do monetize their stuff retroactively. Once they have done that there is no limit on what they will do next.
Even if they retreat now behind the former state, the company cannot be trusted in the future. As their boss is been known to monetize a game as much as possible (even for the ammo you need inside a game - via microtransactions) you won't ever sleep peacefully until you swapped away from that game engine.

A discussion of what is current reality in any legal way is pointless. What is not done yet, may come further down the line!
Boycot them!

 

[anne O'nymous]

What about on top of this, what TheDeviant wrote earlier, about blocking any connections with internet through firewall? Obviously non tech savy people wouldn't know how to do such thing, but there scripts that could be implemented to do that for you instead I don't see anywhere mentioning from unity that devs cant do this.

They can't develop and be offline for more than three consecutive days. So I guess that the interdiction to add whatever in your game that would block the connection, or to, independently from the game, distribute a code that would configure the computer in order to block the connection, is implicit...

Plus, of course:
1) I wouldn't trust a game, or even a third party code that don't come for a well known and fully trustworthy source, to configure for me the security of my computer.
2) What would it configure exactly ? There isn't an universal IP filter/firewall, and running two different on the same computer would lower your security more than it would increase it.
3) If anything that ensure the security of your computer (IP filter, anti-virus, whatever) can be configured this easily by some code run by a third party software, change it immediately, there's a big hole in your security.

 

[anne O'nymous]

A developer who made the threshold income on a game in the previous 12 months and has 10,000,000 installs against the lifetime of the game on December 31, 2023 is not going to be charged for 9,000,000 - 9,800,000 installs. They are going to be charged in February 2024 for what installs occur January 1 through January 31, 2024. In March 2024 they will be charged for installs that occur February 1 through February 29, 2024. And so forth.

Yeah, the issue is more that they'll charge the installs, and not the sales or earning.
They charge what will lead to the biggest numbers of fees, but not necessarily the biggest income, and will in the end impact more small structures than big ones. Whatever if you make 1 millions or 5 millions, if you had 100K installs, you'll pay for 100K installs.

 

[60Points]

If it is for economics, the majority will not reach the values so that it affects them economically, if you do more than 200,000 a year and you exceed 200k installations, you upgrade to Unity Pro and that's it. And if it is for data tracking, the idea would be to isolate the runtime or part of it in a virtual machine (Many cracks do precisely that)

 

[JakaiD]

I've looked into it, and unfortunately Godot (while promising) is in too early stages. It'll need to bake for a few more years still imho.

It depends on what you are working on. After evaluating it a few months ago, by building a project in Godot, I found that it would have worked perfectly fine for the games I've made so far and will work for the one I plan on making next.

It is hard changing from Unity though since I have so much experience in it and own a lot of assets there. Luckily art and sound assets can be ported and it is mainly the editor related and few runtime plugins I'd have to leave behind and find new solutions for. But ya, been meaning to get serious about Godot for a while now and I think this was the final push needed to do it.

 

[Winterfire]

It depends on what you are working on. After evaluating it a few months ago, by building a project in Godot, I found that it would have worked perfectly fine for the games I've made so far and will work for the one I plan on making next.

It is hard changing from Unity though since I have so much experience in it and own a lot of assets there. Luckily art and sound assets can be ported and it is mainly the editor related and few runtime plugins I'd have to leave behind and find new solutions for. But ya, been meaning to get serious about Godot for a while now and I think this was the final push needed to do it.

I've encountered an error that was introduced in the version I was using (latest) and while it's being fixed, that's not good enough yet.

Unity is "baked" enough that I can 2019 without encountering any issue, perhaps for any actual project I should've tried LTS but I heard godot 4 was so much better.