Unity price changes and it's impact

MatteRB26 · 15 Sep 2023 at 20:22

Seems Unity have caused quite the stir with their proposed price changes!

With developers releasing statements on the damage it will cause, what do you think will happen to the games industry if this goes ahead? Will we see developers changing engines? Games dying?

I've opted for.Unity in the past due to their free tier, but used Godot more recently. Starting to like that decision

MatteRB26 · 15 Sep 2023 at 20:31

I can see a lot of developers ditching Unity even if they do back down tbh - it's not like there isn't plenty of other options, though learning a new platform is a big cost.

I think the others could capitalise on this - Epic could make Unreal pricing more appealing, we could see more open source options used and supported?

MatteRB26 · 15 Sep 2023 at 20:47

Tetras said:
If I was epic, I'd be publishing some "how to learn UE4/5 from Unity" videos right about now

They should definitely start releasing some "Moving to Unreal" content!

MatteRB26 · 16 Sep 2023 at 09:59

I do need to try Unreal out again. I've never really picked up C++ but I'm intrigued by the blueprints system.

Unity always made sense to me being C# with its free tier - Unreal was always a very daunting engine.

I do feel that Unity needs to go into damage control mode, even if they do back out of this change. The fact that they've suggested it has broken trust with a lot of developers.

MatteRB26 · 24 Sep 2023 at 08:34

Raymond Lin said:
Nevermind...it's been superceded.

It doesn't matter if they back out now, their shares have plummeted and nobody trusts them anymore. They've got some serious damage control to do.

I know people who have quit Unity over this and have said that internally it's an absolute poop show.

MatteRB26 · 30 Sep 2023 at 07:32

I honestly don't know what they were expecting :cry:

feels like another case of a good, competitive company being destroyed by corporate greed

MatteRB26 · 8 Oct 2023 at 08:23

tyke_ said:
I'm just getting started with using Unity as a hobby, i have no idea what has happened regarding prices, seemed clear to me a few days ago that it's free for people like me. Am i making a mistake starting to learn Unity? Seemed a sensible choice to me

They amended their licensing to charge a fee per install - which for indie company's with masses of installs on cheap games, it'd kill them.

They backtracked (though I believe only mostly? Need to check it again) but there's a lot of trust lost in Unity. I'm pretty sure UE has a free tier? Godot is free forever.