>> While Unreal engine currently does not have terms like Unity’s, there’s nothing stopping them from doing something similar. In fact if Unity manages to get away with this it seems likely they will follow suit.
Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change this.
Tim Sweeney explicitly mentioned this often + the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's.
But what about Godot? He says as if "it's open source so no issue". Yeah but what if the devs stop supporting it? This "community will continue to work on it" is BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work.
So if Godot devs stop working on it you're stuck with a project with zero support. Good luck developing it further instead of focusing on your game.
> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's.
Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate.
> BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work.
Over the last week, Godot had 32 authors pushing 52 commits. Over the last month it had 135 authors. This is not "one or two guys".
> So if Godot devs stop working on it you're stuck with a project with zero support.
Guess what, if a closed-source company decides to stop working on their product you're also stuck, but now you're even more stuck because you don't have access to the source to make your own changes!
> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart
Tim Sweeney founded Epic and wrote the Unreal engine himself. John Riccitiello’s whole career is in management. Even if they’re both entirely motivated by profit, they have different perspectives on how to get there.
Also, Unity is a public company, while Epic is private. Even though Tencent owns a considerable share of the company, Sweeney still holds over 50% ownership. That gives them very different incentives.
Sometimes we forget that executives are people too and they have their own personalities. Tim Cook famously[0] told climate change denialists in a shareholder meeting that “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock”. Sure enough, shareholders are also not solely motivated by profit, and voted with Cook on that occasion. It’s useful to remember that cynicism isn’t the same thing as realism.
If Tim Cook had calmly said what he did, I’d believe it was just toeing the party line. The fact that he actually got angry, though? He doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who’d fake that, I don’t think that’s the image he wants if nothing else.
He doesn't have to fake it. Dude probably believes that there's no connection between right to repair, unsustainable consumption, and planetary destruction. That might be worse than faking it.
iPhones have long support cycles. iOS 17 supports the iPhone XS/XR, which were released 5 years ago. So iPhone users don't have to replace their phone as much, reducing environmental impact. Plus with the recycling and other stuff used to make iPhones in the first place, their environmental impact is going to be lower than some other options on the market. Combine these two things together (longer device life, smaller impact for making a new device) and I can believe iPhones have the smallest CO2 footprint.
Phew, there I was thinking Apple do their best to make sure customers buy the new phone every year, but glad to hear it's not happening thanks to Apple.
I mean, Apple should just release a new model every five years and really get that footprint down...
Eh. Part of apples brand is “doing the right thing” and “being the good guy”. I would wager Apple’s brand would be hurt more by not being a green company. ROI is more complicated than simple fist level cost. Going green and doubling down on recycling has generated a much larger ROI than doing nothing.
Further more, Tim is bound by law to do what is best for the shareholders. Simply put, if Tim favored environmental concerns over profit he would be removed.
"Best interests" is deliberately vague. Is it in their "best interests" that you fire the CEO and call the cops because he raped an intern? Or maybe that you agree to accelerate his $40M "bonus" if he agrees to resign without saying why? Or maybe it's in their "best interests" that you pay PIs to develop evidence that the intern has a drug habit and "leak" this "shocking revelation" to the media if they go public?
You can argue almost anything meets this criterion, in some egregious scenarios a court won't buy it, but they will give you enormous leeway.
People write this sentence seeming to imply it means "CEOs and management have a responsibility to be as ruthless and sociopathic as possible to deliver the highest returns, and any consideration of the people or communities they trample beyond legal requirements is itself borderline illegal."
There is a lot - A LOT - of room for ambiguity and debate on the specifics of shareholder value and "best interests." The "legal constraints to act in the best interest" is not some set of corporate rules and KPIs codified into our legal code write large. It's not about maximizing a specific KPI over a fixed timeframe.
Not to mention Sweeney is the majority shareholder in Epic's case.
It’s a private company… to whatever theoretical extent he’s beholden to the majority of the shareholders with potential board of directors and shareholder meeting shenanigans … that majority of shareholders is himself… and I’m pretty sure he’s ok with his own decisions…
"Further more, Tim is bound by law to do what is best for the shareholders."
This stupid meme needs to die already. There is no such obligation, he only has a fiduciary duty to not trash the company and spend the earnings on cocaine. "companies are legally forced to maximise profit" has never been true and this piece of misinformation has been going around for ages now.
And, insofar as such an obligation to “maximise shareholder value” might exist, that obligation doesn’t necessarily translate into “maximise profit”.
The shareholders of a theatre company might care more about breaking even while getting an interesting assortment of plays produced with a great cast than they do about making a bunch of money out of the venture, so an executive who makes a bunch of money by running productions of uninspired cash grab shows won’t actually be maximising value. Likewise, I’m sure that Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds care more about Wrexham AFC’s managers getting good athletic results than they do about making a bunch of money.
>And, insofar as such an obligation to “maximise shareholder value” might exist, that obligation doesn’t necessarily translate into “maximise profit”.
And even where it does translate into "maximise profit" because it's what shareholders of a particular company may want, there is no timeframe for it, and there is no way to tell whether any particular decision by the CEO runs contrary to the goal of eventually maximising profits.
Companies can spend all their revenues plus a constant stream of new capital on growing market share or revenue, on charitable activities or the happiness of employees, on huge research and development projects or on restructuring after restructuring and still credibly claim that all of it is ultimately meant to maximise profits.
The point where CEOs and CFOs have to be careful is when the company faces solvency issues. That's where legal limits of freewheeling decision making kick in, because it's where it's no longer about shareholders but about creditors.
There's still argument about this. The oft mentioned Dodge v. Ford Motor Company 1919 covers much the argument for and against. But it's clearly not straightforward.
My (IANAL) reading of it is that maximising shareholder value is probably the law, but it's practically unenforcible. Being practically unenforcible doesn't stop CEOs and boards from using it as a guiding principle.
Dodge v. Ford Motor Company was a Michigan State decision, so even if one thinks it means maximizing shareholder value is the law (it really didn't say that, broadly), it only applies in Michigan.
> "companies are legally forced to maximise profit" has never been true
It's more like too hard to be proven in any way. Unless you live in an simulator it's really hard to say which set of decisions is better than another. People often say it is obvious or in hindsight but fact is there are no such hard proofs.
Even then, if the shareholders approve of trashing the company with ice cream parties (had to get rid of the illegality of cocaine for this point) there's nothing inherently wrong or illegal with that.
As long as the executives are behaving generally how the shareholders want, it's not a problem.
Cook isn't bound by that true enough, because he remains the majority stakeholder, but that is increasingly not the case as it becomes more and more regular that companies bring in new CEOs from entirely different companies if not entirely different industries, who do not own that much stake. In those cases, the board and shareholders can and do exert a lot of influence, up to and including firing them if they do not do their jobs correctly, which to shareholders is invariably some form of "make line go up."
And that's just civil influence, there are legal mechanisms indeed in place if a CEO "trashes a company" and what that means is different depending on the company.
> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate.
Holy straw man! And there’s certainly no self-interest involved with me using their engine without giving them a cut under 1 mill right?
You can make this argument about literally anything.
Godot must have no self-interest in releasing their engine for free and making $30k a month to develop their project.
Who cares what the motivation is if it gives real benefits to devs. If anything it tells me they’ve picked a business model that’s mutually beneficial unlike Unity
While you can make this argument about literally anything, it seems apt to make it about a multi-billion dollar company chasing a trillion dollar company.
It's fine to support them while they are the underdog and are saying and doing the right thing, but don't pretend like they will say and do the right thing forever.
I don't think the parent was ever saying they'll be good forever. More that if they do become evil, their licensing lets you continue using a revenue structure that made sense at the time you chose it (even if new versions have super awful terms).
> Who cares what the motivation is if it gives real benefits to devs.
Motivations matter, because they will decide in which direction a project moves over time, or if situations change. Epic is the "good guy" now, but only because they are an underdog. If they become the dominator, they might become the predator which Unity tries to be at the moment.
But if we are honest, such uncertain possibilities don't matter if they are so far in the future. This might be a problem for future games, 10, 20 years down the river..
It's hilarious that their arguments for the commercial engine are somehow both "you can use one version forever" and "you might be forced to use one version of something else forever."
If you understood the problem then you’d know that their argument is about how Unity’s new pricing change is retroactive, affecting all Unity versions and charging fees to devs for games made years ago.
Unreal uses perpetual licenses for their versions meaning this kind of bullshit behavior is not possible
Perhaps it is you who doesn't understand. We all get that part, and it makes sense in isolation. Yes, that is better.
Then it's goofy af to say Godot might make a license change that necessitates using one version in perpetuity-except a version you and others are allowed to modify and distribute.
Epic is mainly owned by its founder. They are not primarily corporate though they are influenced by it. They are 100% more trustworthy than Unity or other corporate game companies.
Until Tim Sweeney sells the company, or dies, or whatever. Enter any contract you like, but know that those contracts outlast the people who executed them.
EDIT: To elaborate, this is an article about a company fucking users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase. Your response is yes but this other company would never fuck users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase.
Watching this industry for a long time, I've learned that I can never trust a company. Companies are made up of people but the people within them change, and their incentives change. This is very much the case with Unity.
People, on the other hand, I can trust. Not often, but in cases where a person has made a long series of decisions over a decade or more, you can get a feel for what their value system is. Tim Sweeney is in this category. He was involved in Unreal back when I was in undergrad, more than 20 years ago. So I sort of put him in the same category as Gabe Newell and John Carmack: relatively enlightened game business leaders that understand the true value that gamers and developers derive from the ecosystem. None of them are in to make another dollar in the next quarter: they are focused on long term success and the are passionate about games themselves.
So it's not that you're wrong, it's just that your argument applies cynicism uniformly, and I'm not sure that's fair given the history of those involved.
> Your response is yes but this other company would never fuck users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase.
Well, Epic didn't do that when it went through it's aggressive growth and the last time it dumped it's business model. Instead, they changed their licensing to lower fees, and when you look at what they did across the board, made things better for customers and game developers.
> Over the last week, Godot had 32 authors pushing 52 commits. Over the last month it had 135 authors. This is not "one or two guys".
Yeah, right now (and I hope it keeps increasing thanks to the Unity news).
I got burnt once (and almost twice) from this in the past. cocos2d-iPhone used to be huge, and Zynga even contributed to it. I released two games using it, and started another one. And then it stopped getting updated (and Apple keeps breaking things like Apple likes to do), so it died on the vine and I had to port to something else.
Currently making a game in Monogame, and while it did get a significant update a little over a year ago, it's had very little activity on it since then and no other releases besides a hotfix shortly after, and zero communication about what's going on with any of their official channels at least. Not great especially since there seems to be spotty support for .Net 6 outside of Windows still, and I keep running into various issues with its 3D support (which it is mainly supposed to be a 2D game, but it does support 3D to a certain extent).
Also while it claims to support platforms like PS4 and Switch, I see almost no documentation on it, and very little documentation on getting Steamworks working with it (I have some basic things working, but I'm having to figure things for Unity first and then porting that knowledge over). Also most of its multiplayer libraries seem outdated, at least the ones I looked up. And the forums/Discord still have some activity on them, but not a ton. Also I'd love to make a game that supported VR (almost switched to Unity just for that alone).
I actually compared its Github activity to Godot a week ago, and Godot looks SO much better supported than Monogame at this point, that I was already considering either porting or making my next game in Godot before this Unity news was announced. But maybe that's just me hopping onto another platform that will have the same problem in 5 years after I've gotten pretty invested into it.
I also know Unity (worked on a game professionally years back) and considered switching to that for my game too, but that mostly got killed by this announcement.
Personally I prefer code-based development (I don't like using an editor too much), so if Monogame was better supported and had much better 3D support I'd probably just stick with it. I thought I was going to when I first started using it seriously three years ago. But I hesitate to keep dumping time into it if they don't maintain it.
Also I made a small game with Phaser.js and was going to do more with that, but even that creator is pretty much the only one maintaining it and they got sidelined by life for about six months (which is fine, but get someone to help keep it going if you can! I know that's hard though). Phaser at least is already close to what I want from it, and doesn't seem to need much else for the foreseeable future.
You can access the source code to unreal engine when you get a license, but the terms are not by any stretch of the imagination open source. You wouldn't be able to freely share your modifications for instance.
You don't have to get a "license" (at least in the sense of paying anything), IIRC you just connect your EGS account to your Github account, accept an EULA (which technically is a "license" I guess) and then have read access to the Unreal Engine GH repositories.
(currently there seem to be around half a million users with access)
I'm hailing from an era where "getting a game engine license" involved several in-person meetings between top-level management of both companies, followed by multiple technical meetings between engineers from both companies, followed by exhaustive due diligence investigations from both sides, followed by intense haggling and shady backroom deals for several months, and finally signing a proper "contract", handing over absurd amounts of money upfront and then paying equally absurd amounts of royalties after release.
That's basically what I understand as "getting a license for a game engine" (this is also why Unity got popular in the first place, because they skipped all this nonsense).
OTH I accept probably 5..10 EULAs a week without thinking or even reading the text (most of them are not enforceable anyway).
AFAIK in Germany the TL;DR is that if there's anything in the EULA which violates "German Civil Code (BGB)", then either parts or all of the EULA are invalid. I remember that in Germany an EULA cannot prohibit reselling the software to somebody else, or making your own backup copy (kinda tricky nowadays though where everything is just a "service").
"AFAIK in Germany the TL;DR is that if there's anything in the EULA which violates "German Civil Code (BGB)", then either parts or all of the EULA are invalid. "
There is nothing unique about German law here. The same is true in the USA and most other countries. If a EULA or any other contract (whether agreed verbally, signed physically, digitally, or via a "click") violates the law, it can be considered invalid/unenforceable. It has nothing to do with how the agreement was agreed to, but with what the agreement contains. (There may be some legal theory that may carry some weight that a contract agreed to via a "click" is more likely to be unconscionable that one agreed to with a physical signature, but that does not automatically make all "click" agreements unenforceable.)
I was going to comment that it’s viewable by anyone on their GitHub, but you are correct: you have to be part of the Epic GitHub organisation to access the repo. Getting access is easy, but you do have to agree to their licensing terms to do so. So yes, what you said.
I used to work for Epic so I have some inside knowledge, but modifying the engine and sharing it with other licensees (via the UDN forum usually) Its actively encouraged too.
You're contradicting your own points. If it is not a problem that Unreal can change their license for next versions because you can use the old one (which is now unsupported and not worked on) that is fine.
For Godot, if we were to stop developing it (and I'd like to note that Godot is one of the most active projects on Github right now) you would still have the version you have now.
What is the difference between Epic not working on a game engine you use or an open source project not working on a game engine you use? Except that with Godot at least you could work on it yourself if you wanted to.
> Except that with Godot at least you could work on it yourself if you wanted to.
let me play the devil's advocate - unreal's source is available (despite it not being actual opensource licensed). This means if Epic ever abandons unreal, you could theoretically also just make the changes you need to support whatever your project required - as long as you didn't distribute those changes (except perhaps the run-time? Not quite sure how unreal engine and the runtime are licensed).
If unreal decides to abandon all older versions support and development, to just focus on something new that requires payment, I don't think you can keep fixing or updating the old unsupported code, even if you have the source
You just can't redistribute the source to anyone else but using it internally for your own projects to build executable that you share (and sell as long as you pay the royalties to Epic) is fine.
The last UE3 game released in 2021. UE4 came out in 2014 and UE5 in 2020.
Unreal Engine license are per engine version and perpetual. This is something Sweeney has been pointing out for years. And again a few days ago when Unity started this shit storm. And as Sweeney points out the big studios/publishers usually negotiate even better terms.
Yes you can. But unless you're a AAA developer studio, it's ridiculously infeasible. At least for Godot, there would be a community effort to maintain it. Such a community would be impossible with any closed-source (even if readable) engine.
In general one very rarely upgrade engines after release. Even during development you usually don't upgrade if there isn't a new feature in the new version you really need.
Really it is only an issue for new projects and at that point if the license of the newest version is not to your liking pick a different engine.
Also the last UE3 game I know of (Them and Us in 2021) was made by a small indie studio not some big AAA studio with massive publishers backing. At that point the engine had been in "end of life" state for 5+ years.
If you'd amended the source, then it wouldn't be the same version and the license would be invalid. If you want to use the perpetual license, you can't do anything with the source.
> Epic grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to privately use, reproduce, display, perform, and modify the Licensed Technology in accordance with the terms of this Agreement (the “License”). This means that as long as you are not violating this Agreement or applicable law, you can privately use the Licensed Technology however you want. If you want to share the Licensed Technology or anything you make with it, Sections 3 and 4 below address when and how you can do that.
In section 3/4 it goes to that you can compile your game and give the output to outsiders if you pay the roylaties when applicable or share them royalty free on epics github (basically you make a pr to merge your stuff upstream) or on unreal marketplace (sell it)
I'm not intending to be defensive (I'm sure there's loads of people on here with more knowledge about licensing terms), but usually a corrective post is something that we can learn from. Just saying something is wrong with no more info seems against the spirit of HN.
>This means if Epic ever abandons unreal, you could theoretically also just make the changes you need to support whatever your project required - as long as you didn't distribute those changes
No it doesn't, you still don't own the code so you can't just modify it and use it to develop games.
IANAL but I am fairly certain you are legally allowed to modify the source code of proprietary software and use that modified version, so long as you do not distribute it (as you couldn't distribute the unmodified version either).
The key difference between proprietary and Free Software is not actually that you can or cannot modify the source, it's that you are guaranteed access to the source in order to modify it or not. Since you usually cannot access the source of proprietary software, you usually have no legal way to modify the source for your computing.
It all depends on the license. There’s no umbrella ability to modify the source code of a software binary, open-source or proprietary, unless explicitly allowed.
> Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change this.
If I understand correctly, Unity had that too. And then they changed it anyway.
I don't know the details, but apparently Unity maintained their license in a git repository for the explicit purpose that everybody could easily track changes to their license. Just before the license changes, they removed that repository, and later put it up again, but without the clause that you could always use an old version forever without new restrictions applying to you.
> 4. How You Can Share the Licensed Technology When It Isn’t Part of a Product
> You may only Distribute Licensed Technology (including as modified by you) outside of a Product as expressly permitted by this Section 4.
> a. Sharing of Engine Code
> i. Sharing Engine Code with Another Licensee
You may Distribute Engine Code (including as modified by you) in Source Code or object code to a third party who is separately licensed by us to use the same version of the Engine Code that you are Distributing.
>Any public Distribution of Engine Tools (e.g., intended generally for third parties who are separately licensed by us to use the Engine Code) must take place through a marketplace operated by Epic such as the Unreal Engine Marketplace (e.g., for Distributing a Product’s modding tool or editor to end users) or through a fork of Epic’s GitHub UnrealEngine Network (e.g., for Distributing Source Code).
Yes you can but still need to mention the original licence and copyright notice. But your end product can be proprietary, or released under other license such as the GPLv3.
But you own the modifications of your code so you can still license your derived work as closed as you want as long you as you obey the original MIT license terms which consists only mentionning it and keeping original copyright notice.
That is what all company selling proprietary products that include MIT and BSD licensed codes do. Usually the jist include a file called "third party copyright notice" with the product ad well as an entry in the "about" section of their gui.
It does matter, since the license of the fork you can make has a huge effect on the long-term sustainability of that fork.
If Unreal screws you, then you can fork it to build some features you need for your current project. If Godot screws you, then you can fork it to build some features you need for your current project, cooperate with others on the features they need which also help you, and start a community for Engine-formerly-known-as-Godot-v2 and invest in it as a thriving basis for projects 10 years down the road.
> Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change this.
Isn't part of the current furore that unity used to have similar terms and they removed them?
> So if Godot devs stop working on it you're stuck with a project with zero support. Good luck developing it further instead of focusing on your game.
Exactly I'm glad someone is pointing out the problems with these piddly open source projects. Companies are too reliant on open source software, I mean it's not like open source tooling has ever taken off. Except for Emacs, and Vim, and VS Code, and maven, and ...
But seriously though the over reliance people have on open source projects is staggering, I mean really what happens when the guy who maintains Linux gets bored and wanders off, everyone is boned.
Therefore I agree with OP all open source projects are inevitably doomed to failure and can never work.
In an age of locked down mobile OSes and forever changing graphics drivers and such, I don't think "FOREVER" is very long any more.
It's like a perpetual license to a specific version of JetBrains Rider. It's sold as if I own a general purpose tool FOREVER and can opt out of an endless subscription but no, it doesn't mean much at all. It will not work with the next runtime update and past runtimes are obsoleted after a couple of years. They have managed to outsource their subscription lock-in as the release cycles of a third parties while pretending to be holier than thou. If they shipped the volatile parts as open source plug-ins, I would feel differently.
I gave you the alternative: plug-ins that could be maintained by the community. They already have the module system but all the version sensitive .net features are in the core.
For Unreal, I don't think there is a solution to closed platforms if it requires a large/sophisticated team to maintain compatibility. We can only point out that any notion of "forever" is a fiction - you have got in bed with a commercial dependency you may come to regret if they choose to change the rules.
> Exactly. Blender still isn't the first choice for most animation and VFX jobs
And it doesn't need to be, it just needs to be a viable alternative. Everyone always looks at these projects like it's a winner takes all scenario, but it's not. There can be multiple programs that accomplish the same thing, some open-source, some not, so long as they're sustainable and have something unique to offer that's not a problem.
Sure, if we were living in my ideal fantasy all software would be fully open and free, but in this reality I'm just happy we have alternatives that are actually sustainable and don't feel like you're actively gimping yourself.
Depends on the market, for making the next pixar movie probably not (yet). However blender usage is way, way up and my game studio (Prehensile Tales) has no difficulty finding extremely talented blender users.
An open source project doesn't have to be the very most used thing from the beginning in order to eventually eat everyone's lunch :)
I have lived from my VFX freelance work for 4 years and worked soley with Blender for the 3D and much of the 2D part.
Blender has some parts where it is the best (the tracker for example easily beats all commercial trackers I have ever used) and other parts where it doesn't shine as much (e.g. fluid simulation — which is a non-issue because it integrates well with other tools).
I have been coming from 3dsMax and Maya and never have been looking back. Blender also has been getting so much in the past 5 years it feels ridiculous and makes you wonder what the likes of Adobe and Xo are doing with all their money.
> Exactly. Blender still isn't the first choice for most animation and VFX jobs.
It doesn't really need to be; being self-sustaining while being open-source beats Unity's model of being funded to cover operations while being closed-source.
TBH, it's only a matter of time before Blender is a choice for most animation and VFX, and then only a little more time before it's the first choice.
I'm afraid not. Its not as simple as that. We have a heavy competition in automobile industry but when it comes to gaming industry, it is(I mean was) mostly unreal or unity despite decades of technological advancement. The reason for this is because using a game engine to make games is no where as simple as driving a vehicle. It takes a lot of skill, knowledge(sometimes things are engine specific only to make things even more annoying) and the time to attain both of them with the engine they are working on to make good games.
You are grossly underestimating the complexity involved in game engines. It is not like a web app where devs don't have to worry about constraints like memory or frame rate and chill. Things need to happen in real time. A delay of even half a millisecond is not acceptable. And these "Things" involve changing of 3d objects' position w.r.t player's movement, calculating zero or tens or hundreds of NPC AI characters' position and finalizing their animation state, calculating the lighting on all the objects and a lot more. All this just to finally render and present one frame. Yes, hardware has gotten better over the years and memory constraints might not seem like an issue but that is not the case for games. Improved hardware only helps with improving the overall quality of the game. Game now will be able to afford to look better and do more things than games from 2003 and that's it. Games still need heavy optimizations.
Thanks for the better hardware, making 2D games now is neither expensive nor hard. So, Godot being more friendly than unity for making 2D games is quite possible to happen. But that is not the case when it come to comparing Godot with unreal. Unreal is already at a league of its own. I don't think Godot can integrate something like nanite or lumen inside its engine anytime soon. In the past few years, only unreal has been introducing ground breaking computer graphics tech inside a game engine. Unity is having a hard time to even keep up with unreal's tech like meta human. It doesn't matter how many google, amazon or apple contribute to godot, it'd be a big surprise if Godot is at least able to hold its ground against O3DE IMHO.
>Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change this.
Maybe _you_ didn't research how Unity had this same exact clause and decided to just... remove it. The author is implying Unreal could do the same at any point in time.
> Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change this.
> So if Godot devs stop working on it you're stuck with a project with zero support. Good luck developing it further instead of focusing on your game.
>
> The same goes for his very own product.
Unity had the same in its license. But they changed it without notifying and when you updated the engine the new license applies even if it's a minor version so Unreal can do the same thing.
The worst case scenario for Godot is the same as the worst case scenario for Unity: you can keep using the last release that worked for you. As far as I can tell Unreal has no concept of an LTS version, so if you don't like the new license you're not getting any updates at all.
This is where FOSS comes in: If support ends, you can keep using the latest version just like with proprietary software, but you can also fork it and fix pressing issues. It's not even a question of relying on the community continuing to create major new releases. If that fails, your org could fork it alone and patch any blocking bugs.
My company already does this for several pieces of legacy software that we haven't had the time to migrate away from. We don't make any major changes, but we can and do fix things that get in our way. We'd get no such benefit from proprietary software that changes its terms to be unfavorable.
>>>"""But what about Godot? He says as if "it's open source so no issue". Yeah but what if the devs stop supporting it? This "community will continue to work on it" is BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work.?"""
Exactly.
We like to hate corporate greed and lionize the open source developers. I also hold open source devs in high regard.
BUT.
Open Source Dev have to eat too.
If we want to keep the Open Source ecosystem moving, we do need to find a way to pay them. Even today, a lot of open source projects are supported by individual corporations that keep the devs on payroll to give them time, but that can also lead to influence and lock in, and even abandonment if desired.
Any product can end up no longer having work done on it, or the work can start getting bad. Such is life. With open source at least you have an option, if you run into one bug or missing feature, there is a chance you can patch it yourself and get the game done. In the distant past I wanted to use Unity and ran into a breaking bug in the particle system that wasn't fixed for at least 2 years, if ever.
There are already well over one or two Godot devs working on the engine. The community funding is already enough that it supports multiple full time devs salaries. If the current devs quit, this funding would be used to hire new devs. At this point, I think the Godot community is already well over the tipping point where it will continue no matter what the original devs decide to do.
> There are already well over one or two Godot devs working on the engine. The community funding is already enough that it supports multiple full time devs salaries. If the current devs quit, this funding would be used to hire new devs. At this point, I think the Godot community is already well over the tipping point where it will continue no matter what the original devs decide to do.
Yeah. They've reached critical mass to, from this point on, be self-sustaining.
I'm less concerned about Unreal pulling a Unity. The bigger issue is just a lack of attention. The last numbers I saw was that Unreal was pulling in $100m a year for Epic. That's a drop in the bucket compared to what Epic makes off of Fortnite. In my experience, products that matter a lot to the consumer but not the company tend to stagnate. Just look at Google outside of search.
Epic's still remains. Yes, if Epic removes this feature of the license, we can be concerned. But, Epic's license means I can remain on the previous license that has these more favorable terms.
Why would you need godot to be "developed further"? If your game is shipped, it's developed. You can continue doing this. When the source is private and behind a license you are forced to agree to the new terms when the old ones expire, or if you can't agree to them then you can no longer ship the game. These are not equivalent circumstances.
> Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license.
Even if this is 100% legally true, they can absolutely say that they are revoking all old licenses, and then if you used one, it's up to you to take Epic to court to prove that they can't.
> Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license.
Unity also had a similar clause in their ToC, they removed that now and retroactively applied the new pricing model on ALL previous versions of Unity. Unreal can do it too.
This still seems to be an unresolved legal question. Unity will almost certainly be getting sued for this by parties still using versions that shipped with that clause.
> Tim Sweeney explicitly mentioned this often + the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's.
Haha this made me laugh. If you think epic isn’t piranha then you’re living in a bubble.
Yes, unless you build everything from the game engine to the distribution channel yourself, there is a cost to doing business. IIRC Epic Games Store offers a more reasonable 88%/12% revenue split, while Steam uses the same rapacious split as Apple and GOG at 70%/30%.
> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas
That’s a very unique take. I would call a company that lets others take startup a buildout risks and the uses the courts and regulators to swoop in with a low cost competitor a pirhana.
It’s a good strategy (for Epic), but it is extremely predatory. It’s no secret they have their eyes on the console market next; let HW makers popularize platforms using a business model of low margin HW and high margin SW, then get governments to mandate alternative stores so Epic can undercut the SW.
Low risk, low effort, high return. It’s a solid business strategy but if it’s not pirhanic, I don’t know what is.
> the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's.
the Epic games leadership are bribing developers for exclusivity, including kickstarters where i was promised steam or gog
the Epic games leaderhip makes money from free to play grinding/gambling simulators
the Epic games leadership also comes from Tencent that made all their gaming money before trying to get into the western market from asian gacha
The only reason their terms are more reasonable now is because they're the underdog and throwing a lot of money made from free to play crap at fixing that.
Bribing implies an illegal act. Giving money in exchange for goods and services is completely normal: I don't bribe a restaurant for food. Exclusivity is just a way of competing for games, a sign of a good competitive market.
Kickstarter is kickstarter. Half of them probably don't fulfill all their promises. That's the risk you're taking, and why it's not a preorder.
Epic don't have gambling. They've even removed gambling from Rocket League after purchasing them too.
> Bribing implies an illegal act. Giving money in exchange for goods and services is completely normal: I don't bribe a restaurant for food. Exclusivity is just a way of competing for games, a sign of a good competitive market.
It doesn't have to be illegal, merely immoral.
> Kickstarter is kickstarter. Half of them probably don't fulfill all their promises. That's the risk you're taking, and why it's not a preorder.
I don't expect them to finish a project when i back them. I expect them to deliver my fucking GoG key when they finish the project and ask me what do I want it on and i say GoG! I don't expect them to say "Epic paid us a ton of money and you can get it on their gacha financed store".
True story. So long, Julian Gollop.
> Epic don't have gambling. They've even removed gambling from Rocket League after purchasing them too.
They're free to play. That means the game is designed to keep you playing forever and keep you buying IAPs. It is not designed to entertain you.
Releasing on a store is not immoral. Is not releasing on GoG what you believe to be immoral? Even GoG has paid for exclusives, they charge store fees like everyone else. They're a business too at the end of the day.
That sounds like an unfinished feature to me then.
Why are you playing games forever that aren't entertaining?
Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change this.
Tim Sweeney explicitly mentioned this often + the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's.
But what about Godot? He says as if "it's open source so no issue". Yeah but what if the devs stop supporting it? This "community will continue to work on it" is BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work.
So if Godot devs stop working on it you're stuck with a project with zero support. Good luck developing it further instead of focusing on your game.
The same goes for his very own product.