Its not just Unity.
Dx11 is slow and bad, the game should run on Dx12 or Vulkan.
Another boost would come from a DLSS 2 / 3 implementation.
Just watch Baldur's Gate 3 with default setting (Dx11) and then on Vulkan setting.
The difference is huge.
Unity was the right choice at the start of development.
Too bad that Unreal 5 is now way ahead of Unity, but i think Unity is still better for budget and smaller teams. They just need to improve it.
Anyway, they cant switch now and have to make the best out of it.
I look forward to the day when a very talented team with the resources and size can make a game showcasing the power of Unity. Money is the reason that so many decsions are made to streamline development of Pantheon, not the game engine.
Folks comment with this undertone of Unreal being a real choice for free, indie development back in 2013 when that was not the case. It's unfair to use 2023 knowledge to understand what the situation was like in 2013. This was the best choice for a small team with no money. If you did superficial research on game development during 2013 you would understand more.
I wonder if this Unity development will have any impact.
Vandraad said: I wonder if this Unity development will have any impact.
My guesstimate is that VR currently doesn't have over 1000 official installs yet, from all the PA testers plus all the Devs. If I read the article right and my math isn't off by decimal places, the new fee for that only adds ~$200 a month.
When Alpha finally gets here and possibly adds 10,000 new installs, that cost would go up by a factor of 10.
The way I read the article it seems like it's total number of installs, not total number of users. Each time someone re-installs it counts as a new install (right?). Feels strange to me that they count it that way rather than how many different machines it's installed on.
Ranarius said:The way I read the article it seems like it's total number of installs, not total number of users. Each time someone re-installs it counts as a new install (right?). Feels strange to me that they count it that way rather than how many different machines it's installed on.
That appears to be the way of it. There's a lot of unhappy developers at the moment. Bellular had a pretty good breakdown of it. https://youtu.be/JQSDsjJAics?si=ysGQd_MsEZ7WkdAZ
I think it's mostly to target the free to play mobile games. It should have little to no effect to Pantheon. But I don't know what I'm talking about, this is just speculation based on the talking cat that lives in my neighborhood, but it was right about the aliens in Mexico, those things look like crap and if thats what aliens look like we need to invade and take their gold, and kibble, says Lord Fluffy.
Never argue with Lord Fluffy - it will not end well for you.
So much depends on how Unity does whatever it does. There are legal constraints as well. They have contracts with game developers already - I doubt very much that they can just change their model and make it impossible for someone that has been paying them for many years to actually *use* what they have paid for already. Courts at least in the United States generally recognize implied covenants and conditions in contracts regardless of the actual wording - and a common one is that the seller will not do anything to make it impossible for the buyer to use what is being purchased in the way that any reasonable seller would understand is the intention.
Which is exactly why charging someone to re-install something feels off to me. The customer has already paid for the product, re-installing it should not be a thing...but I know things are changing and maybe when you buy a product these days you aren't actually buying the product, you're buying the rights to install it ONCE (?).
In the past when you bought a physical CD, for example, you then owned the rights to that game and you could install it as many times as you wanted. As a recent example, I still have my original Warcraft 3 CD with the CD Key. I sent Blizzard a message saying "I'm not paying to install Warcraft 3 on my computer just because you made the digital version $20 and also made it impossible to play the CD version now." They honored that after I gave proof (my CD key) and gave me the digital version "free." I agree, legally it would not be held up in court for them to stop allowing people to play who bought the physical CD. (I realize the example is slightly different and may not translate to what Unity may be attempting to do).
Unity was obviously a mistake even back in 2013, as it's renown for having very poor netcode, which is why few mmo's have been completed with it.
The irony of the 20 cent/download change is that it's fine for AAA companies and terrible for the smaller companies that unity attracts, like VR. E.g Unreal engine charges 5% of revenue, which comes out to over 20million/yr for a game like WoW, where's it's less than 1 million on Unity. The reverse is true for smaller games that get around 300k-1 million downloads.
Ranarius said: Which is exactly why charging someone to re-install something feels off to me.
Unity has made some posts to clarify their new policy (a good idea for sure).
They have made it clear that "you only pay the runtime fee on new installs.... we are not going to charge a fee for re-installs. " https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/page-99#post-9307844
We should also note that the fee only applies to those companies with over 200,000 "life to date" installs of their game. https://massivelyop.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/screenshot_011767.jpg
So this fee should not affect VR until at least release and even then only after they get a boatload of new subscribers.
Perhaps a bigger issue is how this will all affect Unity as an operating company. I don't believe all I read - heck I don't believe much that I read. But supposedly many employees objected to these changes and were unhappy with how they were imposed. Some have left - more are leaving. A group of web-based games have moved to cut off advertising revenue for Unity if the changes aren't modified or reverted and are seeking more companies to join this effort. If all of this weakens Unity as a company and reduces its ability to actually develop and expand its engine - not good.
dorotea said: Perhaps a bigger issue is...
I had that same exact thought myself. Then I remembered how VR had a small, special pledge drive some years ago to hire a dev or two from a Gaming company that suddenly let a bunch of people go (or maybe closed down, I don't remember). If Unity gets to looking like it might have problems continuing, maybe VR will find a great Dev on the market who would be the 'Unity guy' at the company while adding more talents to the team.
Jothany said:Ranarius said: Which is exactly why charging someone to re-install something feels off to me.Unity has made some posts to clarify their new policy (a good idea for sure).
They have made it clear that "you only pay the runtime fee on new installs.... we are not going to charge a fee for re-installs. " https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/page-99#post-9307844
We should also note that the fee only applies to those companies with over 200,000 "life to date" installs of their game. https://massivelyop.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/screenshot_011767.jpg
So this fee should not affect VR until at least release and even then only after they get a boatload of new subscribers.
True. But it also appears that this is tracked by device. While it might not impact Pantheon, it will have impact for games ported to multiple platforms, and gamers who play on multiple devices. The guy that plays a game on his PC, his MAC and his XBox won't see any extra charges. But the dev will get popped for three installs.
There's also a huge gap in understanding how Unity plans to track all this. So far it's been, "trust us" and "we'll work with you". But given that the current CEO is the same a**hat that used to be CEO of EA and ushered in the era of loot boxes....
dorotea said:Perhaps a bigger issue is how this will all affect Unity as an operating company. I don't believe all I read - heck I don't believe much that I read. But supposedly many employees objected to these changes and were unhappy with how they were imposed. Some have left - more are leaving. A group of web-based games have moved to cut off advertising revenue for Unity if the changes aren't modified or reverted and are seeking more companies to join this effort. If all of this weakens Unity as a company and reduces its ability to actually develop and expand its engine - not good.
This 100% is what will eventually happen. Avarice is destroying the quality of products and always has; the moment a company puts profit above quality, the product suffers... every time. Passion is replaced with greed and greed promotes corner cutting to save here, penny pinching to save there and over working personnel to maximize profits with nearly total disregard for the quality of the product... Hiring underqualified people... or worse, people that have no real desire to work there just because the people that were passionate about working there have moved on.
Edit: To address the O.P., I don't think it was a mistake to use Unity... but I do think the quality of development of the engine will suffer in the distant future.
RedGang said:Unity was obviously a mistake even back in 2013, as it's renown for having very poor netcode, which is why few mmo's have been completed with it.
...
Agreed. And the recent licensing fiasco has demonstrated as a company, Unity is capable and willing to make shockingly bad decisions at the expense of end users and developers.
They had no way to know that Unity would implode and destroy its brand in 2023. This feels like more of a funding issue. Developing MMOs is incredibly cost, time consuming and difficult. Unfortunately, it just feels like they ran out of time and money to accomplish what was an incredibly ambitious goal.
Hello,
they are paddeling back:
https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee
But the damage is already done. I guess, no one will start a new project with Unity.
Cheers
Larirawiel said:Hello,
they are paddeling back:
https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee
But the damage is already done. I guess, no one will start a new project with Unity.
Cheers
I wouldn't trust them to not try and take another bite at the apple down the road.
