[IshKebab]

Yeah case in point - how many people actually pay for Visual Studio? You're supposed to if you're using it for commercial purposes but I don't think I've ever seen a commercial license used (though I don't do a lot of Windows work tbf).

[samplatt]

VS is actually one of the cheaper tools in our stack; Unity (the game engine) is probably the most expensive one at the moment, and it's going to get much more so with their recent changes to licensing structure for embedded hardware.

[Joel_Mckay]

Unity has always had janky shaders, the fact people still use it over Unreal Engine or even Godot is completely baffling.

Unity is getting way too cheeky considering how they started out. =3

[wongarsu]

For anything smaller than AAA, C# is just generally much more pleasant to work in than C++. That's Unity's edge. And Godot is the "new" kid on the block

I'd agree that between Unreal and Godot, Unity doesn't look very attractive right now. But inertia will carry them for a long time

[samplatt]

Programming semantics is a large part of the equation, but it's a secondary part. Unity is just too damn EASY for spinning up a prototype and gluing other modules onto it. C# is a part of that but simple implementation is so much easier and powerful than other engines.

This goes out the window for polished end products but that's a different argument... but by then the ship has often already sailed and you're already using Unity.

[Joel_Mckay]

A few of those Unity store Assets are Copyright submarines. Where the original rights holders work was slightly tweaked to avoid detection for royalty fees in some jurisdictions.

Those assets end up being a liability later after publishing, can get your content DMCA flagged, and a firm sued (you will 100% lose in court if you don't settle.)

The Unity store does not prevent this issue, and kit bashing fun became dangerous to a publisher on the platform. It was impossible to determine what is safe with the new LLM tools, so the board banned the platform and engine.

Firms do make this mistake everyday, or just license generic Reallusion content. =3

"There is a bear in the woods. For some people, the bear is easy to see. Others don't see it at all. Some people say the bear is tame. Others say it's vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who's right, isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear? If there is a bear." (Hal Riney)

[electroly]

In the late 90s/early 00s, I worked at a company that bought a single license of Visual Studio + MSDN and shared it with every single employee. In those days, MSDN shipped binders full of CDs with every Microsoft product, and we had 56k modems; it was hard to pirate. I don't think that company ever seriously considered buying a license for each person. There was no copy protection so they just went nuts. That MSDN copy of Windows NT Server 4 went on our server, too.

This was true of all software they used, but MSDN was the most expensive and blatant. If it didn't have copy protection, they weren't buying more than one copy.

We were a software company. Our own software shipped with a Sentinel SuperPro protection dongle. I guess they assumed their customers were just as unscrupulous as them. Probably right.

Every employer I've worked for since then has actually purchased the proper licenses. Is it because the industry started using online activation and it wasn't so easy to copy any more? I've got a sneaky feeling.

[andyjohnson0]

> In the late 90s/early 00s, I worked at a company that bought a single license of Visual Studio + MSDN and shared it with every single employee.

During roughly the same time period I worked for a company with similar practices. When a director realised what was going on, and the implications for personal liability, I was given the job of physically securing the MSDN CD binder, and tracking installations.

This resulted in everyone hating me, to the extent of my having stand-up, public arguments with people who felt they absolutely needed Visual J++, or whatever. Eventually I told the business that I wasn't prepared to be their gatekeeper anymore. I suspect practices lapsed back to what they'd been before, but its been a while.