Warning All unity creators

icevsfire

New Member
Feb 10, 2018
12
48
Godot didn't waste time
I'm glad they are thinking about more ways to improve cause I already seen people wondering if they have a job since they only know how to use unity.
 
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hu lover

Forum Fanatic
Jul 27, 2022
4,132
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I'm glad they are thinking about more ways to improve cause I already seen people wondering if they have a job since they only know how to use unity.
I agree, improvements are paramount and should be focused on. :)
 

RNGeusEX

Goodbye Eternity
Game Developer
Sep 2, 2018
251
3,680
It would be the best thing to do, but Godot isn't currently the most suitable game engine for visual novels. It has plug-ins, but you still need a very good dev to get the same functionality as Renpy.

But I'm glad I opted for Godot when I changed my game engine (and I've got a very good dev, so everything will go smoothly :) ).
 
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rhaxe

Newbie
Dec 13, 2017
25
35
Ugh, two of my favorite games are made with Unity (Robin Morningwood and Lust for adventure), one of them have to be uninstalled-installed everytime an update comes, I wonder if this will impact them.

Oh, and I revoke my decision of learning Unity in the future. Godot/Unreal, here I go!

Heh, the day that twine/sugarcube starts being paid, I will be so fucked lol. But I'm going to join their patreon sometime in the next year, they deserve it.
I was lucky enough to buy the rpgmaker mv at 11$ and get a professional course for free, so I will take it as a divine sign.
 

danasavage

Member
Game Developer
Mar 9, 2020
133
252
It would be the best thing to do, but Godot isn't currently the most suitable game engine for visual novels. It has plug-ins, but you still need a very good dev to get the same functionality as Renpy.

But I'm glad I opted for Godot when I changed my game engine (and I've got a very good dev, so everything will go smoothly :) ).
There's some third-party assets for Godot, just in case anyone is wondering about this kind of thing ...

- Rakugo (not sure how active the development still is, but it was working for Godot 3) is basically "Ren'py for Godot"
- Dialogic is an actively developed dialogue/cutscene handler that works for Godot 3 & 4
- Nathan Hoad's Dialogue plugin (which I use in my own game as a dialogue tree for NPC conversations) has a similar scripting language to Ink/Inkle but requires some more setup on the part of the user

I'm not in any way saying it's super easy to make a visual novel in Godot, but my game Girl Games is a sandbox/visual novel style game, that tries to build in the things I liked most about Twine and Ren'py, but with the added freedom of basically knowing I could add in whatever other fun stuff on top - mini games, shaders, etc.

Not sure how relevant all this is to the rest of this discussion, when it's not Twine and Ren'py that are the main points of discussion, but I guess I just wanted to gently vouch for Godot as a viable alternative (to Unity i guess), if someone was on the fence about using it for a more text-heavy/visual novel style game project and unsure if it could handle it.
 

Studio 781

Member
Game Developer
Aug 3, 2020
344
1,705
This is either.
1: Not as bad as it is, just poor communication.
2: Actually what it seems.
3: They drop the news and are just watching if people its Ok with it (Yeah, companies are that delusional).
I think the damage is done, they can't un-screw this unless they pull this down completely.

That being said, the runtime is absolutely awful, not only the griddy part, is how they will track the player installing each game, how much this would invade privacy and how easy would be for anyone to boycot a developer, an user who hates a game could download the game and then uninstall and reinstall a ton of times to trigger this fee, maybe there will be a very deep invasive privacy software to make sure this won't happen, but there will be workarounds to keep the boycot and the most affected users will be the legit ones, just what Denuvo does.

I don't know is this will go fully through, I'm reading people online claiming that this is illegal but either way, if this pass or not, everyone will untrust Unity. Because if this fail, they will try again unless they got punch really hard this time.
 

Queen Rat

Newbie
Jul 5, 2021
27
15
There are two aspects to this, the actual impact and the message it sends. As for the first, it will affect very, very few (any?) of the developers here on F95. In order to trigger the monthly rate, the game needs to have earned $200,000 in the last 12 months, and even if your game is a breakout success, you can always upgrade to Unity Pro as your revenue approaches that threshold.

As for the message it sends, Unity appears to be moving towards a more aggressive (predatory) revenue model, they don't care about flirting with privacy issues through runtime tracking, and they are piss poor at communicating and engaging with their developers. As an Unity game developer I'm upset about these developments and the way it was handled, and since I've only recently started my project I'm seriously considering moving the whole thing to Godot or something. Same goes for new developers, I'll think long and hard before starting anything new with this company. For developers of existing games, I'll remind myself that not much will change, but I'll hope like hell that these sucky moves don't become a trend.
 

hurrdurrderpderp

Active Member
Apr 4, 2020
852
3,140
You know what the funniest thing would be if they really double down on this change?
Devs will be forced to distribute their own games ahead of time, cracked, to pirate sites just to avoid being tracked by Unity and their aggressive monetization scheme.
Also I have noticed that this change doesn't targets devs who push mediocre same-looking hentai/AI-gen candy crush clones.
In fact, the more of those games dev makes the less chance there is of one being a target for monetization.

Once you hit their arbitrary install limit it's over.
For bigger studio the answer is to either "move" studio to "country with emerging economy" to mitigate costs or change engine - both solution will cost you anyway.
For copy-cats and small devs it doesn't change a thing.
For creative devs with chance of hitting $200k a year - you're royally fucked.

There are two aspects to this, the actual impact and the message it sends. As for the first, it will affect very, very few (any?) of the developers here on F95. In order to trigger the monthly rate, the game needs to have earned $200,000 in the last 12 months, and even if your game is a breakout success, you can always upgrade to Unity Pro as your revenue approaches that threshold.
Example. Your game costs $10 on Steam. It doesn't even doing that hot there so you get pocket change out of it. Someone re-uploads the very same game here on F95 and you can see on gofile page counter going up to 10k in a day - and it's just this one upload service. Even if just half of these people decide to install this game Unity will cook your ass in a day or two. Good luck with filing for about harmful behavior or whatnot, I'm sure the're siding with you on this one.

Anyway, great change!
Not only Unity shat on all of its investors, big and medium sized studios, creative people and aspiring developers but also made the best advertisement for Godot. I kneel.
 
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Queen Rat

Newbie
Jul 5, 2021
27
15
Example. Your game costs $10 on Steam. It doesn't even doing that hot there so you get pocket change out of it. Someone re-uploads the very same game here on F95 and you can see on gofile page counter going up to 10k in a day - and it's just this one upload service. Even if just half of these people decide to install this game Unity will cook your ass in a day or two. Good luck with filing for about harmful behavior or whatnot, I'm sure the're siding with you on this one.
You still would not have made $200,000 in the last year, so you still don't have to pay a cent. Does not matter if your game is downloaded 1,000,000,000 times, you need to hit the revenue AND download threshold before paying.
 

Droid Productions

[Love of Magic]
Donor
Game Developer
Dec 30, 2017
6,747
17,153
You still would not have made $200,000 in the last year, so you still don't have to pay a cent. Does not matter if your game is downloaded 1,000,000,000 times, you need to hit the revenue AND download threshold before paying.
If you're over $200,000 you need a unity pro license anyways, which pushes it to $1M.

Still an absolute *shit* move, and trying to ram this thing back down our throats retroactively is both illegal and immoral. Hopefully some of the F2P giants that rely on installing on hundreds of millions of devices to make money will take this to court. Also... lots of over the last couple of weeks; if I was a retail investor waking up to this shitshow, I'd be quite curious about that...

1694605622229.png
 
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cohenber101

Member
Jun 16, 2018
104
107
I already seen someone making a project decompiler for godot, Maybe Godot are the blender of game engine.
 

aereton

Member
Mar 9, 2018
383
776
It would be the best thing to do, but Godot isn't currently the most suitable game engine for visual novels. It has plug-ins, but you still need a very good dev to get the same functionality as Renpy.

But I'm glad I opted for Godot when I changed my game engine (and I've got a very good dev, so everything will go smoothly :) ).
This would be a prime opportunity to create a Visual Novel suite from Godot with fair pricing.

Godot Engine is released under the permissive (also named Expat license).

This license grants users a number of freedoms:

  • You are free to use Godot Engine, for any purpose
  • You can study how Godot Engine works and change it
  • You can distribute unmodified and changed versions of Godot Engine, even commercially and under a different license (including proprietary)
The only restriction to that third freedom is that you need to distribute the copyright notice and license statement of Godot Engine whenever you redistribute it. So your derivative product may have a different license, but should still state in its documentation that it derives from the MIT licensed Godot Engine (see below).
 

Droid Productions

[Love of Magic]
Donor
Game Developer
Dec 30, 2017
6,747
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Math's off :)
Even for personal licenses it's $0.20. So doing it 10x is $2.

But still, it's a shit move. And there are ways of spoofing your install without 'downloading again'. With a bit of savvy (or a script) you could easily simulate 1000 installs/sec.

Of course, Unity assures us they can know the difference, just like they'll magically know the difference between keys sold and keys given away in charity events.
 
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aereton

Member
Mar 9, 2018
383
776
Math's off :)
Even for personal licenses it's $0.20. So doing it 10x is $2.

But still, it's a shit move. And there are ways of spoofing your install without 'downloading again'. With a bit of savvy (or a script) you could easily simulate 1000 installs/sec.

Of course, Unity assures us they can know the difference, just like they'll magically know the difference between keys sold and keys given away in charity events.
"Just trust us™ that's how you become a smart business!"
 
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