To say it’s been a bad week for Unity is the understatement of 2023. First they announced a terrible new Pricing scheme, then their customers revolted, as the week goes on though, it gets worse and worse for Unity, from threats from an employee shutting down their offices, to more studios threatening to leave, to scummy secret changes to their terms of service and back door deals with clients to get around the Unity Runtime Fee in an attempt to bury a competitor.
Anyone know off the top of their head what the price difference is between Unity and Unreal now? And are there Unity engine alternatives that people can seek?
there is no “price difference” they use a completely different pricing model, unity is SaaS, and moving to pay per install. Unreal is free, if you make more than a million dollars then you have to pay 5% royalties to epic.
there is no equating the two
They’re just different pricing models, not different verticals. Unity is still cheaper, but incurs significant risk now. Whereas Epic will take their 5% after $1M, Unity has no revenue split. However now that they’re charging per install, devs need to be sure their marginal profit clears this bar. No one is sure their pricing model works before launch, so I think this risk is unreasonable.
Wouldn’t the new Unity pricing model be somewhat comparable to the current Unreal pricing model?
Not necessarily. Unity says they’re charging per initial install once you break $1M (they walked-back on the “every” install bit), but Unreal takes a cut of your royalties once you break $1M, so it’s still hard to really compare them properly. If you’re making a free to play game, your install number could be dramatically higher than what a non free-to-play game would need to break $1M, for example.
Unity is charging per install (not per sold unit), so technically developers can owe Unity more money than they make.
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Pretty sure godot is pretty up there from what I hear but that’s the extent of my knowledge.
Godot is great at 2D and would be a great replacement for those games but lacks a lot of 3D stuff Unity users would miss. If someone is doing a 2D game tho… Godot is a fantastic option to go with.
Thanks for elaborating.
Is Godot a full engine? I thought it was a UGC platform (like Roblox)
It’s a full engine! It specializes in 2D games but their 3D support is growing rapidly, just not up to what Unity and Unreal offer right now. Here’s a showreal they did for games released using Godot last year: https://youtu.be/UAS_pUTFA7o?si=QuPq6hByt-lve-vg
Today I learned that Cruelty Squad was made in Godot.
Ah nice, I might check it out after my current projects
Godot is a full engine, I would position it in the market somewhere between Unity and GameMaker Studio. It is capable of making 2D and 3D games, though there’s some things Godot lacks, for example the asset streaming capabilities that allow for large seamless open worlds without loading screens, they’re working on that.
Godot runs on WIndows, Mac, Linux various BSDs, and they’re working on an Android port. Godot games can be exported to Windows, MacOS, Linux (and thus SteamDeck), BSD, Android, iOS and the web. Godot games can be ported to consoles, but Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are really fucky about licensing. The way you would go about publishing your Godot game to Playstation, Xbox or Switch is to work with a porting company who specializes in such things.
Fun fact: The Godot IDE is itself a Godot “game.” The Godot editor runs in the Godot engine and is built from UI tools available to end users; this makes it pretty easy to create tools and extensions to customize the editor to your team or project’s needs. It’s also a practical demonstration of how robust Godot’s UI creation tools are; I’ve been toying with the idea of building a woodworking CAD program in Godot.
I have literally no idea. It just pops up left right and center so it seemed it is a competitor.
It looks like it’s a full engine, that’s pretty neat. I might have to check it out, though I’m on unreal ATM so unity drama doesn’t affect me
Thanks for elaborating. Unreal is supposed to be very good. How is their price model?
It’s free until you make a million dollars (so basically it’s free for me, probably forever 😭), after which they take 5%
In that case, it’s a pretty good model. Thanks for elaborating.