| I've been 50/50 on this change. Their messaging was idiotic, they've very understandably harmed trust with a demographic that matters to them, etc. but the underlying was not unreasonable: Unity is still incredibly cheap considering the value it provides. And while they pissed away money in the past on useless acquisitions that I wish they hadn't, but they've made significant enough technological progress in the last few years to justify raising more money. They're just in the unfortunate place that their largest competitors make more revenue off non-game engine products than they do in total. _ I think people forget before Epic's hit games (which include a $26 Billion golden goose...) Unreal Engine was downright unaffordable for mere indies trying to do anything commercial. UE2 was $350k + $50k per platform + 3% on revenue. In the UE3 days their UDK indie option was 25% royalties while capped at 250k revenue. Above 250k you needed a traditional UE3 license, which wasn't openly shared but usually slipped out to being around $500k-$1M per title + 5% royalties I mean even physic engines were going for $25k per-title. _ Unity played a large part in the democratization of game engine middleware for commercial use. Unfortunately they never went all in on the in-house studio concept, so they didn't make out like Epic, and they never hit big like Valve on distribution. Everyone's pointing to the IPO but it was inevitable that Unity would need to do something. They got cheaper over the years, while going against competitors who make more revenue off video game skins in a single game than they do in total... I can forgive the casual observer for not getting all this, but at the end of the day if your business is making games, this is the perspective you probably have. That's how you continue working with them as a business. |
> And while they pissed away money in the past on useless acquisitions that I wish they hadn't, but they've made significant enough technological progress in the last few years to justify raising more money.
Being a profitable billion dollar company seems like the wrong starting point for pissing off users and figuring out monetization, no?
> I think people forget before Epic's hit games (which include a $26 Billion golden goose...) Unreal Engine was downright unaffordable for mere indies trying to do anything commercial.
But...that's not the world we're in now. Unreal Engine is cheaper and Unity has been, thus far, similarly cheap.
> I can forgive the casual observer for not getting all this, but at the end of the day if your business is making games, this is the perspective you probably have.
This statement is verifiably untrue. Also personally untrue.