News about Unity, will it affect SotA?

I just read a news article about Unity and how it will be charging devs a per install fee after certain thresholds are met. https://www.ign.com/articles/why-un...urring-massive-backlash-among-game-developers . I am now wondering how much that will affect SotA, if at all? Should SotA switch game engines, if that is even possible at this point?

 

This is why I support open source tools like Godot.

 

Not sure if this will work out till 1.1.2024 and if they can try to hold their announcements. This opens so big gates for trolls that it is unlikely that it will hold.

 

Godot still needs time in the oven, but it's getting there.

 

Just in case some people read the original article, there was an addendum made to the article on 9/12/2023 at 6:29 PM.
The addendum provides some additional info.
Without knowing the final details of Unity's install fees, it will be difficult to determine how the policy may impact the developers of unity-base games.
Here are some of my thoughts based on the information I found so far (and assuming this information accurately reflects what will be in the final policy):

• The addendum states "...the fee will now only apply to the initial installation of game..." - so it should not cost extra to download a patch to a computer that already has the game installed.
• Will there be a download charge for users that downloaded the game before the policy's effective date?, or will the fee only apply to games downloaded after the policy effective date? - I am not sure, I did not see an answer to this question.
• The article states "Unity also said it will track installs with its own proprietary data. Speaking to Axios, Unity also confirmed that if a player deletes a game and re-installs it, that counts as two installs, and two separate fees." - So, it seems it will cost extra to reinstall the game on the same computer (e.g. complete reinstall to resolve corrupted files) and to move copy of the game to a new computer (e.g. a user purchases new computer, deletes unity game from old computer and then installs it on new computer). Why not just issue a single-computer unity license to the user? (this would allow the user to have one working copy of the game, and would not cost extra to re-install or switch the game to a different computer...I dunno, maybe user licenses would be too much work for the developer to keep track of).
• The article states some of the download and sales criteria that the game must meet for the fees to go into effect, but I have no idea if SOTA meets those criteria. Also, the addendum states "Unity executive Marc Whitten claims only 10 percent of developers will be impacted by the fees." So, there it is certainly possible that the policy will have no impact on SOTA.
• I seems that this policy could make many "free to play" unity games into games that are "fee to download, then free to play".

I guess we'll wait and see how this policy ends up impacting the both Unity and SOTA.

 

another interesting tidbit from the Axios article is this:

• As for Game Pass and other subscription services, Whitten said that developers like Aggro Crab would not be on the hook, as the fees are charged to distributors, which in the Game Pass example would be Microsoft.

i would think this also means fees will be charged to Steam, Google, and Apple since they are the distribution platforms? this is all so confusing what a mess.

 

I doubt it would apply to Sota as they give numbers:

 

200,000 USD/yr is only 3 people's compensation, assuming nothing else.
If SotA isn't making $200,000 a year... that's a bad sign for the release of the future chapters.
the lifetime install count is only 200,000 installs, and that includes reinstalls. So, if you rage-quit and uninstall, then decide to reinstall later... that's two installs.

 

It's pretty solid right now. The only thing it's missing is streaming.

 

Well, they're still working on FSR 2.2 support. Godot 4.2 (currently in release candidates) should bring the last precursor to that.

Now that the 4.x line is going, they are making impressive strides with non-breaking releases.

 

As SotA has demonstrated, the strength of an engine like Unity or Unreal is the store, Godot has one, but it is pretty paltry compared to the big names in the field. In addition, the tools that it does offer through its store are often of such quality that you'd be better off coding your own. I was trying out an idea that involved panning and zooming across some 1000 sprites on a flat plane, Godot, using the pan and zoom camera plug in from their store, crumbled under the load, I can't imagine it'd fair better with something like SotA.

 

Fact is that SotA should move to Unreal Engine 5.3, should have happened years ago.

 

And they would probably do that if you handed them a few million dollars to get that little task done. Aren't they still working on migrating to a somewhat more current unity version? That is orders of magnitude less work.

 

We would have to get four million dollars, that's what Nitrado gave to snailgames for the wild card studio

 

Yeah. And there are threads like a decade ago that told them not to use Unity. This was a bad design-decision in the first place. But well - now we have to live with it.

 

And they're still stuck being beholden to a company that has demonstrated a willingness to throw users of their engine under the buss whenever it suits them. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Not to mention the costs of actually doing the port. If you want to put up the funds for that, feel free.

 

I sense a company currently panicking over their 'communications' so waiting is both sensible and entertaining while we watch them scramble - https://www.ign.com/articles/unity-...licy-and-says-it-will-be-making-changes-to-it

 

What would prevent say Unreal Engine from pulling the same kind of shenanigans?

 

Don't they already? Unreal has a royalty fee and Unity doesn't. Unreal has always had a royalty fee, as far as I recall at least. Unity's big draw over Unreal, at least in the early days, was that it was royalty-free, you paid for your licenses and you were good to pump out all the shovelware you wanted without worrying about tracking sales to pay your royalty fee.

 

There's nothing preventing Unreal from changing their license.