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by fragsworth 1002 days ago
> DynamoDB, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, AWS Lambda, Azure, AWS, Azure Devops, SqlServer, Oracle, etc.

At least with these individual tools, it's usually not your entire codebase written around that thing. For instance, you can generally switch from one database to another if they decide to overcharge you. You can even switch from one cloud service to another. In other words, they (usually) don't have you nearly as locked in.

With Unity, it is a much bigger ordeal to switch to something like Godot and Unreal and most people who have already finished their games can't even really consider it as an option. This is why it was so egregious.
2 comments
JackMorgan 1002 days ago
Of course you can switch databases, but in practice it is extremely expensive. That's a big reason why it is pretty rare. Why use a closed source tool and take on that risk when great open source ones exist?
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fragsworth 1002 days ago
Usually the only good reason is because you already have developed lot of experience with with it.

I'm just saying it's not as bad because it's quite a bit easier to switch a database than to switch a game engine.

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dan_mctree 1002 days ago
For a lot of companies, switching databases is effectively impossible. Perhaps not quite as impossible as switching game engines, but certainly impossible enough that it would kill the business. A lot of companies use database specific functionality that's far from trivial to replicate in another database. A lot of that database specific functionality can also be legacy that no one really understands anymore. Migrating without an option to keep these poorly understood but critical systems will set you up for unexpected data loss, corruption or availability issues. And that's after spending a year on your migration. If Oracle pulls anything like Unity here, this will kill off a lot of companies
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bgirard 1002 days ago
It took Amazon several years to migrate away from Oracle: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/migration-complete-amazons-...
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BlueTemplar 1002 days ago
Yeah, also that's why the article's Word and Google Docs example strikes me as weird : you shouldn't be using these either, for similar reasons !
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johnnyanmac 1002 days ago
Yeah, but LibreOffice is the perfect example on why people pass up on Open Source projects.
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BlueTemplar 1001 days ago
What do you mean ?
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zymhan 1002 days ago
> it's quite a bit easier to switch a database than to switch a game engine

_presses X to doubt_

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johnnyanmac 1002 days ago
>Why use a closed source tool and take on that risk when great open source ones exist?

in the case of servers: because open source servers literally can't support your scale of business. That's one of the few places where Open Source can never truly succeed: when you need a lot of hardware and the operating costs exceed any income coming in.

By that point it is a lot better to roll your own servers. But that is of course crazy expensive. Even other multibillion dollar corporations choose to leave some server management to places like Amazon/Microsoft.

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pastor_bob 1002 days ago
I've heard (sarcastically) that MongoDB's business model is relying on companies who have it entrenched via tech debt and can't get out.
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