Why I Still Use Unity
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2024
- Sharing my perspective on Unity and switching game engines
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I'm happy to hear my stuff has been so inspirational to you ❤ We're all in a weird situation now, with a company mismanaging an engine so many of us love, but like you said, they've definitely felt the pushback. I was in conversation with marc whitten (head of games) both in meetings during the, uh, cataclysm, as well personally at unite 2023 afterwards. I got the impression he genuinely cares, and is fully aware of just how bad this turned out. They're in a rough spot, which, I guess we can tell from all the layoffs. There seems to be a bit of a political divide internally among management (roughly, those who care about games vs those who care about Growth™), but, it gives me hope that there are some people who are genuinely trying to make a change for the better
I agree with Paridot. You are hugely inspirational to me and many that I know and good at teaching to boot. Thank you for that! Also your z-fighting tip on [the social media platform formerly known as twitter] is *chefs kiss*
AHH my video reached you! Thanks for giving your perspective - it’s reassuring to hear that you’ve been in contact with Marc and that he seems concerned. It’s hard to know how to feel when all you see from execs are heavily curated messages and videos, so knowing they have some normal human interactions with creators like yourself is comforting.
All we can do is keep our fingers crossed that they have enough positive influences inside and out to push them in the right direction. I’m optimistic that they do.
Anyways, thank you Freya ❤️
I played with a few engines when I first got into game development, including Unity. I settled on Godot myself, and it was easy to feel like I dodged a bullet when the initial pricing changes were announced. Even though I don't use Unity, it's nice to hear some calm level headed thoughts about the engine now that the dust has settled a bit and everyone is in less of an uproar. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on why sticking with Unity works for you, and 100% agree that everyone should use what's best for them and their current project.
I am more of a hobbyist and was using Unity for roughly 2years before the controversy last year. My day to day job is software engineer, but making games in my spare time is a true passion. I am also very sensitive to the political face of the gaming industry. A lot of my buddies work in triple or double A companies, and I've heard terrible stuff happening in there, either through them or when I was researching vg in social sciences doing interviews with game devs. And it's the number one reason why I won't make this more than my hobby (unless by a strike of complete luck I happen to make a game that actually sells).
So even though I'm not impacted at all by the decision, it was for me the cherry on the cake of the very bad vibe that the general handling of the engine, it's evolutions sent in recent years. So I switched to Godot and probably won't come back to Unity. And by chance, I actually love Godot way more than Unity, now that I'm using it more seriously (to the point I'm almost sad I didn't switch way earlier because it feels like the engine for me in terms of UI/UX).
I think your reasons are very understandable, but personally the company trying to screw over professional users out of nowhere, AND retroactively at that, was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Everyone should use whatever tool they feel most comfortable with. That said, I initially had a bit of trouble getting over Godot calling everything "scenes" but now that I have, it feels WAY more accessible to me than Unity did. Things just seem to come together so much easier, even if Unity's documentation was better. I totally understand people not ready to jump ship just yet, though. But within a couple of years, Unity is gonna have a hell of a fight on their hands to keep their spot. At the very least, in the eyes of smaller independent devs, Godot will be THE standard. It's so good!
Especially once they manage to make 3D performance outperform Unity
After all, Unity superstars like Hollow Knight and Cuphead were 2D anyway, which Godot does faster
Until major studio use it or mid size companies, I dont think anything going to change too much. I am in favor of Godot but I will learn Unity and Unreal when the times comes.
@@revimfadli4666and lethal company
@@computernerd8157 Is Sega major enough?
@@mbg4681 No Sega is not major enough by my book. Wayforward more major then Sega these days. Wayforward is mid size.
I agree 100% with your assessment. And I find it comforting that someone else came to the same conclusion in the end. When this debacle first happened, I dove into Godot for a month and found it lacking. The I went back to Unreal. I stayed with the engine for quite some time before throwing in the towel. I think Unreal is a great option if you are really good at programming and you have been in the industry for many years. But for a low level indie developer, Unreal is not very accessible and doesn't (yet) have the same community you spoke of. I will continue to use Unity but they are on a tight leash. To be honest, I think the company will recover, but it will no longer be what it was.
I am curious to hear why you have found Godot lacking? Are there specific features you needed that Godot did not have?
I just started with it, and it feels ok so far.
As developers we have one mission: Make a good game players will enjoy. The engine, tools, languages, whatever, doesn't matter! Players don't give a flying you-know-what about the behind the scenes, they just want to play a fun game!
A lot of developers shot themselves in the foot by switching engines at an inopportune time out of fear, when in reality nothing changed... I personally know a few that had a great project going in Unity, but switched to Unreal and now they are floundering. Never let yourself fall into the drama. Lots of those "Unity is Dead" videos were made purely to capitalize on the trend and gain views.
1000% true
can confirm.
we kinda missed all the drama CAUSE WE WAS BUSY /MAKING GAMES/
aint got time for that shit.
we heard about it afterwards a month later... nothing changed for us.
but our games are free so 🤷♂
@@tophatsntales Exactly! Get busy and stay busy. All the drama is for procrastinators!
@@darkmattergamesofficial basically :D we miss a lot of the drama in places... but its all unimportant so 🤷♂
@@tophatsntales it would of changed for you if they didn't change back their stupid pricing, you would get demolished by having free game and would of had to pay them which they might do it again in the future cause they can. Good luck in using this pathetic company engine.
I think the pricing structure is completely justified. Most people kicking up a fuss about it will never even get to the numbers required before it affects them. Unity runs at a loss, it only succeeds when developers do with most of their income coming from established companies using their software. What they ask for once you start earning enough to even cut them in is completely reasonable. Granted the wording and lack of clarification on how reinstalls and piracy was handled left a lot to be desired. I chalk that down to poor PR and upper management. Its something that usually happens with every company.
I know a lot of people tout Unreal as 'THE BEST ENGINE' but as someone who spent many years working with Unity before UE4 dropped and has worked with both engines I still prefer Unity as my personal engine of choice. Not only do the devs seem passionate about actually making real improvements to the engine with long term goals like ECS but the documentation as you pointed out is stellar. Unreal still has a very long way to go to even come close to the level of quality Unity docs has.
I can't really explain it but there is something about Unreal that just puts me off. I find I spend more time fighting the editor then I do actually creating anything.
>> I think the pricing structure is completely justified.
Then you are wrong, otherwise the metric would have been sales instead of installs.
im almost recommending u to give a shot at godot, its vicious~
I think that what unity made is actually better for some game engines to grow, for example, defold and godot have been so much popular since what unity made, this also applies for some frameworks like phaser and love2d.
sorry for the awful english and my limited vocabulary
If developers actually ended up having to pay, I'd be a lot more upset, and less forgiving. But Unity listened to the comunity, and readjusted. Companies rarely do that until it's too late. I think that makes Unity an even better company than before.
If that were true, they would have immediately rolled back all of Riccitielo's "bad" decisions the millisecond they fired him.
I completely agree! Unity needs us to make money so if they make everyone leave, then they won't make money. Plus if they try to do something retroactively they would face a lot of lawsuits.
I agree. Drama aside, Unity is a fantastic, jack-of-all-trades, make-any-game-you-want, engine. I see no compelling reason to switch at this point.
I'm finishing my already published game in unity, and I already started making a new game in godot... And I'll stick with godot from now on... and Sebastien and Freya are pure legends!!!
You're not wrong; but that same amount of community knowledge/support/content could (and probably should) be invested into a safer engine for LONG-TERM security (and games preservation). Unity's market constraints (shareholders) will always push them towards enshitification--hence the recent debacle. If the current and new generation put get behind a new, open source, king we may never again have live under Unity's Sword of Damocles.
Everything is fine for today... But for how long? Stock price number gotta go up right? That's not necessarily the best thing for us little people and our families.
You can make the same argument for Microsoft and Windows, yet the majority of games are still developed for Windows.
yeah, dont use anything else you use in your daily life that belongs to a company, oh wait you would need to go and live naked in the middle of the desert
also, take note that Paridot completely missed the fact that Unity basically sucked hard from the very beginning, but it was just the only solution that was available at the time. It still does suck, and it sucks even more and more with each iterations (built-in vs LRP/URP vs HDRP, DOTS/ECS, shader combinations problem, current C# "support", pseudo-LTS "strategies", the amounts of bugs, plugins and assets getting outdated and requiring migrations really quickly etc.) - while "it's good for me because it's good for me" is a valid rationale, it makes 0 sense to use it to convince people of anything.
Also, new CEO and current tech managers are exactly as shitty as the ones before, they just learned to lie better. The layoffs didn't help either.
@@warcinm3210 Not sure, if Unity sucks so much, then why is it used so much at professional commercial level?
@@SnakeEngine "professional commercial level"? You're joking, right? Unity is mostly used by small indie studios and students. Check the actual usage stats of game engines for big studios and AAA games, and then I'll happily continue this discussion further.
That aside, one question from me: why the most watched UA-cam video is "Baby Shark Dance"? :)
ha, i dont have this problem.
I like to code in low level.
So the win-api and openGL or Vulakn
IMO, Godot has to grow up more to be equally useful to me. If people making smaller, less complicated games move to Godot, maybe they will get there.
I'm hoping we will see Godot evolve similar to Blender.
@@xmasb3596 Probably, never will be. The godot maintainer is incompetent and lame guy, unlike blender
@@user-on7ed4bc5z more competent than unity devs lmfao.
@@renisrrenis9225 both are not good. Sad, but true
>> IMO, Godot has to grow up more to be equally useful to me.
In what ways?
>> If people making smaller, less complicated games move to Godot, maybe they will get there.
So is Godot already there or not? Or do you not consider Sonic Colors Ultimate, Cassette Beasts, Domekeeper, Lumencraft, Halls of Torment, and Road to Vostok "smaller less complicated games"?
the thing is it's not the first time they made bad decision and they tried to hide this by changing the TOS. i just feel like you can't trust them even after they back paddled. it happend twice so why not try it a third time in the future? i agree that unity has the most tutorials out there but many of them are also very outdated. freyas tutorials are mostly math as you said so that is not a clear point for unity. Godot, Gamemaker, and Unreal have great tutorials out there as you said yourself. also other engines have shader editors too (i know godot has one and i bet unreal has one too but i don't know that).
you have good points but i feel like they are not really a reason to stay with unity. the only reason to stay with unity is that you have a lot of knowledge working with unity and that is fine.
personaly the risk is way to high to accidently make a million dollar hit and then get skrewd by unity. just by saying your goal is not make a 200k game will not solve the problem in the future.
good TED talk though. Thumbs up
Godot is not a replacement for Unity, its open source nature does not mean that Godot development is completely democratic, the Godot foundation leads the direction. Of course if you don’t like that direction just don’t support the foundation.
The 3D alternatives for Unity are Flax engine, Stride engine and Godot, where Godot is the probably the weakest 3D contender so far (especially if you use the default physics engine).
Flax and Stride also seem to be more accommodating for C# developers. Godot does support C#, but from my observations it seems flax+Stride have a workflow similar to Unity. Flax also have console support out of the box.
I liked your video, but I would like to give a tiny bit of criticism.
Your voice is a tad grainy/grating, consider recording while standing up or slightly increase the tone of your voice.
It’ll probably also make your recordings less harsh on your throat.
On a positive note on your voice, you don’t have a ‘sibilant S’, which many UA-camrs (even big ones) struggle with. Or not really struggle since they don’t seem to notice it… to be fair I only know what a sibilant S is because I struggle with it.
Agreed 100% with this. Plus out of Unreal, Godot and Unity, the latter just is the easiest to go from idea to final product. It's the product with less friction during development, godot I'm sorry but it's still too incomplete, and unreal is way too over complicated and heavy to run (for devs and players). Unity is the tool that lets you do everything very well, you can either push the limits of graphics or go for a more retro 2D look, I really value how the workflow is that flexible. Hell you can even build apps on it if you want. And works the same on all major platforms, of course there's always some tweaks to be made but it's nothing like the mess Unreal is with cross platform development, and godot is still a limited on that regard.
>> out of Unreal, Godot and Unity, the latter just is the easiest to go from idea to final product.
Or maybe you just know Unity better.
@@mbg4681 I tried really hard to switch to Unreal, but overall it just feels made for big teams. Trying to build for mobile was a mess, I just felt like I needed an experienced engineer to get stuff working (android builds only worked 1 time) Also iOS I just couldn't get it working without having a full Apple Dev account, which is possible on Unity and Godot. Plus cause C++ is a mess, and Visual Code is just slower for me to work, plus is a tiny bit less optimized. Graphics optimization was impossible for low end PCs, and the engine itself occupying 97GB is just stupid. Removing plugins to make the engine lighter wasn't that intuitive, very easy to break stuff. Ofc I liked some features like the chaos car physics and tools for open world games. And most important of all, I could barely get the engine running on my PC, it's wayyy too heavy.
Now for Godot I just felt I needed a person to build me the base graphics to make it look as good as Unity in URP. Also on mobile 3D lightning was very limited which was one big downside for me. And there is not much resources for Godot yet, be it assets or guides. It can get better in the future, sure and I hope so, but I need a tool that works for me now.
Unity is the only engine where I feel I can get the most production quality without needing a team, you don't need to be an expert on shaders or code engineering to get a very high quality result, all the complex stuff is handled for you. But ofc Unity (as a tool) has its share of issues XD, but it's minor stuff (worse is the company itself, I hope it gets better fr).
That's my experience, I heard very good things about Unreal and Godot but in reality they don't work for me atm, it's up to each person to see what suits their needs better!
@@mbg4681 that is true.
Unreal I tried really hard to learn (also in the past), and it always felt way too complex and unstable, I felt I needed an experienced Unreal engineer to get shit done. Godot I really liked how you start from zero and build up from there (similar to Unity), but the limited 3D lighting on mobile was one big downside, plus since there aren't yet many resources online I would have a very hard time trying to match the graphics quality of Unity URP by myself, I felt I needed an experienced graphics programmer to have something look really good.
On Unity I can achieve an high production quality product all by myself, the engine itself and the resources available are super helpful! That's why I say it's very easy to go from idea to final product! Not just prototyping, for that any modern engine is easy. And ofc Unity as a tool has it share of problems, specially the future of it being very uncertain unfortunately. But I need a tool now, and now Unity is what works best for me!
Unity is probably fine for 99% of the users that used this before or start making games to learn game dev.
The trouble with this is the sinking ship effect. People who stay need to be convinced enough people will also do the same keeping the engine afloat.
Making a game is a long commitment, and a lot of engine-specific effort can go to waste if the company maintaining the engine you are using stops doing so. Thus, you need others to "feed" the engine while you too are using it for the decision of staying stay to make sense. Or at least have the *perception* of this feeding taking place.
The same snowball that perpetuates Unity as a very popular choice can turn into a negative one, were enough people leave for the engine to start limping, so the engine gets worse, which in turn makes more people flee and so on and so forth. When they went on their money pinching attempt, many people took it as a sign of the engine not being profitable, so basically a start of that negative snowball, which made many people angrily leave out of fear of potentially wasting effort
Most of the game devs will abandon gamedev anyway, so doesn't matter what engine they will use... or try to use.
Mainly the tutorials you can g back 5 years and its still useful, i figured unreal would have less so..
"Devs will not be quiet when they are unhappy" thats the reason I decided to pick it up after they back pedaled and ousted the ceo. (I was not a unity user or heavy engine user at the time, just dabbled here and there with everything). I'm now developing my first title, and at the very least I'm confident that if they spring something again, devs will put them in their place 😂
Yeah. The solidarity amongst developers definitely influenced Unity course-correcting on the pricing change.
>> thats the reason I decided to pick it up after they back pedaled and ousted the ceo.
So their door-in-the-face technique worked.
had to convert to unreal for work. Documentation is hell compared to unity. find a cool sounding plugin, developed by epic in the plugin browser? wanna find out more about it? to bad, 90% of the plugins have no documentation to it. some of the that have, have no link in the plugin browser.
The API documentation is a joke, edge cases, typical use cases and alternatives? all remain not explained or mentioned whatsoever.
Also UE has SERIOUS usability issues. I have a large list on my work computer, where the editors UI just feels like some alpha version of an actual tool. Also editor scripting the simplest tools (custom assets (WITH custom icons)?!) is a serious undertaking. And then them not even supporting their own types like TOptional and TVariant fully in their editor, even though you can reconstruct the functionality (with some drawbacks and inconveniences) on your own (but lose the convenience on the code side)....
TL;DR: Unity is a great engine to work with. You can get your shit done and they are constantly improving it. yeah not all their decisions have been great and yeah the engine has issues. But the alternatives are not better. it's all trade-offs.
imo unity put out the flames quite nicely, however the whole thing is still very charred and needs lots of rebuilding and cleaning up.
yea.... m2....
i tried switching to godot...and hated their gdscript and their c# event that have to link to their engine.
so i then tried unreal engine...
i hate blueprint for having too much dragging, and can't copy code like i did in c# from other online source. even if i find a solution in blueprint, i have to drag every node one by one...
so i then try using c++ in unreal...and the experience is horrible...
i have to recompile.... not just my code... but the entire engine from time to time..
if only UE could switch to c#.... that would be the best engine out there...
cuz UE have the best Editor environment and everything just come out of the box.
so.... after hustling for 2 months .... i went crawling back to unity.. begging for mercy.
Unity is a good choice still, but it does seem like they are a sinking ship. I would recommend using Stride engine, it is much more usable after using Unity compared to Godot or Unreal.
the new ceo gained my trust back so i'm also staying with unity
Fool me once, shame on you.
So the door-in-the-face technique worked on you, at least.
Is it not hypocritical to hate a company on the basis that they're publically traded and for profit, while using their products for your own profit?
I think its reasonable to be upset for changing their monetization model, but thats a different conversation.
depends on how badly they mess up with that. some devs estimated net total loss due to the changes they proposed
Seriously, why do people use proprietary game engines in the first place!? They can do stuff like this on people whenever they want! Use Godot, you will never get screwed over on an open source game engine!
I feel like if you have to validate your points by saying "Let's make the uncomfortable assumption that the thing which is frankly HEINOUSLY, immorally bad, ISN'T bad...." utterly undercuts any of your points. It doesn't matter that Freyja is awesome (she is). It doesn't matter that Unity as an engine is awesome (it is). If you cannot trust the contract between developer and client, then EVERYTHING you do with the tool will always be on unsteady ground. You can't realistically do business this way. Being a good manager is ultimately about increasing predictability as a metric in as many parts of your business as possible. Trust is not abstract! It's absolutely not something you can just wish away as your video has done, as it is a key part of predictability! Contracts CAN NOT just magically change, otherwise they're not contracts, are they? I wish you only the best, but these are poor decisions on your part as a business owner.
Shills aside, I'm astonished that richly earned mistrust isn't the default position towards Unity.
this was hard to listen to, dude, clear your throat!
The vocal fry is indeed quite painful.
As a UE dev I never understood why people reacted so crazy on the unity changes. So many Unity devs are now on the UE side just because of what unity did. I mean epic could try the same thing. It's epics tool and they can decide what ever they want. If you like the tool, stick with it. Unity changed their price plans after the negative feedback which is a good sign to me. I mean they will not try that again I guess. I am on the opposite, I have years in UE but I would love to code in C#, so I always watch unity videos to see if I am ready to switch or at least try unity. But then I see how hard it is to make multiplayer games and UE shines again 😂.
Unity's planned pricing changes weren't even bad for small devs, people just completely misunderstood the changes and spread false information about it. Small indie devs were complaining about it while it would not have impacted them at all because they don't have over 200k sales anyway. Less than 5% of games releasing on Steam get over 200k sales and only a handful of those are indie games.
The only devs who would have been realistically impacted by the change are small devs trying to make easy money by churning out low quality mobile games with ads & in app purchases. I think people wouldn't have cared as much about the changes if Unity didn't push for a new pricing model (per installation), people are much happier with a flat % revenue share even if it costs them more than the prior planned changes (you'd pay more at a 5% revenue share than 1mil installs).
Their adjustment where you pay the lower of the 2 pricing models (per install or flat 2.5%) will help people understand that per install isn't actually all that bad when your game isn't very popular.
Godot is just.. bad, its physics engine has many breaking issues that have been around for the past 2 years, I don't think it will ever be a realistic competitor of Unity/Unreal.
its not just price they are concerned about. the effect was supposed to be based on per install. which is.... very abusable. not sure how they could ever do that without something like DRM, which is another issue
"...sales and only a handful of those are indie games."
screw the handful of indies i guess
"Godot is just.. bad, its physics engine has many breaking issues"
jolt
"I don't think it will ever be a realistic competitor of Unity/Unreal."
unreal, most likely not. but unity, its close enough
@@RenderingUser jolt is custom extension, there's no guarantee it won't break next update.
@@Capewearer >> there's no guarantee it won't break next update
If you don't like there being "no guarantees" "next update", wait until you learn about Unity...
@@mbg4681 then why would I take Godot if it's worse than Unity?
@@Capewearer "Begging the question" fallacy, unironically.
Unity is the best. Their new pricing is very,very encouraging for newcomers.
They aren'y going to rehire you, John.
Unity is the Steam of game developing.
Unreal is the Epic Store of game developing...yaknow. bloated. messy and incomplete.
Godot? Godot is that kid tugging at the adults pants wanting attention.
i've used all 3. Unreal is a mess you have to fight the engine its self more than not. also... C++ soyaknow.
Godot? I could see it getting there. but its still too early. Unity was bad in its early years too. give Godot like... half a decade or a decade and itll be up to snuff, but currently? its good for small or easy projects. theres a reason you havn't seen anything massive of quality done in Godot...
Honestly, Godot is just a million times BETTER and NICER and FASTER. I had to open a simple Unity project from a student yesterday and it took over 5 minutes to load. Build to Quest took 10 minutes!! Then my computer ran out of hard disk space. Unity is not a game engine. Its a virus.
As I see it, people did not understand the whole situation. The changes were actually good for low\medium-caliber devs (which is like 95%) - the 200k download limit made the engine completely free forever for almost everyone except some gacha-devs and AAA.
I'm sure people wouldn't whine "I was betrayed" if the changes were clearly positive. It's just that no one understood these changes, there's also blame on Unity - they could have explained it better right away.
the issue with the first announcement wasn't really with the pricing, it was an issue of trust (retroactively springing this on existing games) and privacy/tracking concerns (tracking installs has a ton of privacy issues, as opposed to tracking sales)
@@acegikmo As I said, no one would have mentioned trust if the changes were perceived as good, retroactively or not.
The privacy concerns at this stage, when Unity has been embedding biometric data into every executable file for the last 5+ years are laughable. It's just a realization of this system.
@@acegikmoyou report your installs once you reach the threshold, they don't track anything.
One more thing to encourage you guy to read your "terms and conditions" and such
@@redragon1229 There were a lot of people who misunderstood and misrepresented what the runtime fee was, I agree. But, of course nobody would care or criticize them if they retroactively made a change for the better, because that wouldn't affect anyone's business or livelihood negatively. I'm not sure why you're pointing that out and I'm not sure what that has to do with my argument. Epic games did a retroactive change for some of their rev share that gave money back to developers, why would anyone take issue with that you know?
As for the privacy stuff, "the bad thing is fine because they're already doing a similar bad thing" isn't an argument against the bad thing, it's just that some people might not have realized until now, which, you're welcome to find stupid if you like, but I'm not sure why that would justify any prior or current bad actions of the kind
@@fallegapyro yes, which is a result of the revised version of original plan (which was much more egregious) that they released, that I personally was in conversation with unity with to clear up and fix. I don't need "my guy" to read the terms and conditions when I was part of shaping those very terms and conditions thank you very much lol
"Although it is a for profit company" making a profit is a good thing, if you think otherwise then you must be a follower of marx.
a good thing.... for the company, at times, at the expense of the users, all the while there being systems that treat users better (i.e. open source)