This might be a poor PR move for Unity in relation to game developers. Many will read it as a cash grab with more monetization shenanigans lurking on the horizon and decide to switch to engines like Godot Engine. Unity might've actually hurt itself if it loses too many client developers.
It doesn't help that there have already been some recent stories of developers being given the cold corporate treatment,[0] and the recent issue with Improbable.[1]
I've been building a game part-time in Godot[0] and I contribute to the code on occasion. For the most part it has been a pleasant experience[1]. It currently does not have the same feature set or stability as Unity and Unreal, but it IS close and it IS getting better every day. And probably more importantly, it is funded and has smart people on its payroll.
If you are a hobbyist or you are making 2D games, Godot is fantastic right now and I highly recommend that you check it out.
If you are a professional game studio or you care about 3D, Godot might work for you right now, but you will probably hit some rough edges. These edges get smoother every day and now is a fantastic time to help Godot reach the next quality bar, either via donating[2] or contributing code[3].
The whole industry will benefit if we have an open-source toolset without licensing terms and fees. Godot seems to be our best bet right now. There are SO many talented developers in this space and right now most of their efforts go into improving ecosystems that they are PAYING to use. If even a small portion of that group redirected their efforts to improving the commons we would have a top tier product in no time.
While Godot is great it's not really a competitor to Unity with the vast array of use cases that Unity has today, not to even mention the workflows built around the engine.
I would rather bet on Unreal or similar engines with equal features.
As a hobbyist game developer I can attest to the quality and ease of use of Godot compared to Unity and Unreal (note: I've only dabbled with making 2D games). It "clicked" much quicker for me and I can quickly prototype ideas (most of which are terrible, but that's not the engine's fault).
Godot doesn't have authoring tools like ProBuilder, support for FBX, Arnold, Substance Painter (all made impossible do to the licensing put forth by these companies, granted), and poor documentation. They aren't prioritizing design tools the way Unity has. More funding and talent would help Godot on this front. Its changing, but still, nobody outside of hobbyists are taking Godot seriously.
This is almost a standard feature for game engines\game frameworks, Unity, Unreal, Godot, Game Maker, Construct, RPG Maker, Pixel Game Maker and a bunch of other smaller more niche frameworks and engines like Pico-8, Raylib and Oryol all support HTML5 export.
Agree with this - having used Godot and Xenko both are good but with a significant gap between then and Unity/Unreal both can be used to build games/apps and make a living with.
Godot is more polished and excels for 2D and 3D is quickly evolving. Godot also has a great community. Xenko is better for high end graphics and large complex scenes - especially if pushing the edge in VR etc. Since going open source its evolving slowly but steadily. While It is missing some features compared to Unity and Godot it has an incredibly capable foundation and its very easy to build on. The Community is very small but active and it has a lot of promise.
Isn't Xenko done 100% in C#? There is a mentality in gamedev circles, that only C/C++, and maybe Rust are viable for a game engine. Unity supposedly avoids it by the fact that while gameplay code is C#, the engine underneath is still C++. How's Xenko on the performance side?
Yup its C# and then calling through to respective APIS for Directx 11/12/Vulcan etc and via xamarin for mobile. Coming from a C/C++ engine developer background I was very pleasantly suprised how performant Xenko is. It easily gives Unity a run for its money, C#7 is a nice scripting environment and the renderer is a thing of beauty both architecturally and in terms of output.
If you are a hobbyist or you are making 2D games, Godot is fantastic right now and I highly recommend that you check it out.
If you are a professional game studio or you care about 3D, Godot might work for you right now, but you will probably hit some rough edges. These edges get smoother every day and now is a fantastic time to help Godot reach the next quality bar, either via donating[2] or contributing code[3].
The whole industry will benefit if we have an open-source toolset without licensing terms and fees. Godot seems to be our best bet right now. There are SO many talented developers in this space and right now most of their efforts go into improving ecosystems that they are PAYING to use. If even a small portion of that group redirected their efforts to improving the commons we would have a top tier product in no time.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxW4PcX0fa8 [1] The 3D asset pipeline and renderer are my biggest pain points right now. Both of these are being addressed as we speak. [2] https://www.patreon.com/godotengine [3] https://github.com/godotengine/godot