One of the big winners of the Unity debacle is the free and open source Godot Engine, which has seen its funding soar to a much more impressive level as Unity basically gave them free advertising.
My wife has a few things on YouTube she made with Godot, and she has noticed a significant increase in traffic, since Unity made their blunder.
Godot really deserves their increased popularity and donations, it’s absolutely amazing what they have achieved as a true Open Source project that is absolutely 100% free to use, and gives 100% control to game developers.
Yeah, now I’m concerned this might happen with Unreal Engine, even though they’ve given no indication that it will. Once Godot works out the kinks with level and texture streaming, and has a landscape editor I will be going back to Godot.
Proprietary software can never be truly trusted. You are always at their whims.
Unreal is completely open source, you can compile it yourself.
It is source available, under the terms Epic licenses to you. Not Open Source
When did the term “open source” start including specifics about licensing terms? My understanding from the past few decades was that “open source” meant the source was available for people to look at and compile.
Open source has always meant under a free license. Being able to fork and publish your own versions is integral to the open source philosophy.
Being able to fork and publish your own versions is integral to the open source philosophy
No, that is an enumerated freedom of the free software movement, not open source
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. from Wikipedia
The same article also talks about the difference between open source and source available:
Although the OSI definition of “open-source software” is widely accepted, a small number of people and organizations use the term to refer to software where the source is available for viewing, but which may not legally be modified or redistributed. Such software is more often referred to as source-available, or as shared source, a term coined by Microsoft in 2001
Ideas started in the 70s, Free Software Movement happened in the 80s, the term Open Source from the 90s as an alternative to “free” to be more clear.
It always meant this.
It is source available
Yes, open source.
Not Open Source
You mean free/libre? Open source literally just means you can see the source.
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code,[1] design documents,[2] or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration.
And then later on…
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design.
Unreal Engine is technically open source, because it’s source code is made available to the general public. But it is licensed under a restrictive EULA instead of any of the normal licenses you’d expect for an open source project (MIT, Apache, GPL3, etc).
This is definitely pedantic, but “open source” is a colloquial term, not a technical one. Most people mean FOSS when they say open source, but the terms aren’t exactly equivalent. The license that governs the code is really the only part that actually matters.
Let’s just call it OpenSource+ at this point ;)
Long-term I think corporate tech as we know it is screwed. Their explosive growth from the pandemic making everyone terminally online is drying up as more and more people go back to touching grass, so now the bill’s coming due and it’s only a matter of time now before Unreal also does something stupid we can’t even imagine for a quick buck
People were terminally online well before 2019. It exacerbated the problem but we’re not going back. I don’t really think that’s a problem, technologically it pushed us further ahead which is always a good thing.
You’re right in that we are starting to rediscover what it means to be physically social again. I think that’s a good thing, too. People that got away with shit before aren’t getting away with it any more.
The problem is that interest rates have gone up after being extremely low ever since the 2008 crash, so investors lost their endless supply of debt-fuelled free money. They can’t pump money into companies operating at a loss anymore, so suddenly those companies have to find a way to turn a profit.
Nice, it’s been 6-7 months since I used Godot. Glad they got a terrain editor ported over.
The biggest thing about Epic is that it is NOT a publicly traded company.
It doesn’t mean that it’s not subject to the “Infinite Growth Disease” but look at their biggest investor: Sony and Tencent.
Both Game companies that SHOULD be more interested in having access to a good game engine than to make every dollar’s possible.
I’m donating $5, not much but I love to see companies like Unity burn.
Unity’s take is 2.5% past $1m in revenue.
I’m never, ever going to hit those numbers, but if do, I’d rather willingly commit that 2.5% to Godot.
Unity’s take is 2.5% past $1m in revenue.
Is that before or after they backtracked?
The point isn’t even whether the terms are acceptable anymore. They tried to change the deal retroactively because they felt they had a strong position in that game developers are already invested into their ecosystem.
They may have gone back to saner terms for now but unless the entire management structure resigns, there’s no reason not to say they won’t try again in the future.
You can’t go good business with bad people.
It doesn’t even matter of their management as a whole changes. No matter who it is, what matters are their actions going forward. The only way to get out of the hole they dug themselves in is years of sitting around being good.
They tried to change the deal retroactively because they felt they had a strong position
I’m honestly surprised that I have not seen by now a meme pic of Darth Vader telling Lando that the deal is being changed, but the face of Darth Vader is instead the CEO of Unity.
Oh man, this is so beautiful to see. Unity can get fucked.
FREE POP CORN TO WATCH UNITY BURN IN THE DUMPSTER
Very nice. This money will enable them to make it better. One day when I might start learning how to make games I hope that Godot will be one of the best choices out there.
That’s impressive and amazing. Let’s hope they will put it to good use and speed up the development.
Unity’s recent fuck up is a massive boon for them, I really hope they can capitalize on it. This is one of those moments that only happens once, if they push their development and marketing over the next 12 to 18 months they can snag a really significant share of the market and use it to vault themselves to the next go-to engine.
thats impressive
as a life long gamer who has had to ‘grow up’ and learn trades to survive and pay bills. it would be hella fun and possibly cathartic to mess with a free game engine. I’ve been playing games for 30 years. Maybe it’s time i take all that knowledge and frustrate myself on a passion project. Thank You Unity for showing me GODOT.
You don’t have to pay for Unity/Unreal either
I’d recommend just using mod tools if you are looking to play around because it covers a lot of the work
The power of open source!
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Are the people who run unity best mates with musk?
Not by our own accord. Unity is the seemingly cool, weed-sharing guy with shady friends who wanted to introduce you at a party one day and decided to grope your boob to tell Musk how laid back you were and they both laughed.
This characterization disgusts me but it’s a perfect analogy.
It’s run by the ex CEO of EA.
Blaze your code
Removed by mod
Lessgoooo
No love for Stride?
What’s stride?
Glad you asked. It’s another open source 3D game engine that may feel a bit more familiar to those who are used to Unity. This is their website.
I’m still just starting to learn it myself, and it can really use some more features, but I think it’s pretty cool. I like the UI more than Godot’s, and I like working in C#.
Looks interesting. Shame the editor doesn’t run on Linux and the engine doesn’t target Linux at all. Valve is pushing Linux gaming hard and people are hating Windows 11 every day more and more. Anything exclusively C# will always have a Microsoft shackles issue.
Microsoft has wisely moved a lot of C# development into the .NET Foundation which also promotes the .NET Core Framework for other OSes including Linux, and the Roslyn compiler for C#.
I believe it does currently have Linux support. At least that is one of the build options. I’m not sure what might prevent it from working in Linux, unless the FBX import package isn’t compatible.
I haven’t tried it myself yet, though.
The only comment is a marketing text that claims “experimental support” for Linux. There’s no mention of Linux at all in any of the tutorials. And on the manual it looks very finicky, they only support an old LTS version of Ubuntu and reading the GitHub issues, it looks not only experimental but very rough. As barely working, lot of workarounds, rough. On Godot at least, Linux is a first class citizen, not an afterthought to qualify for grants.
I’ll need to play with it some more when I get a chance. In any case, my impression is that it’s still developing and still has some way to go. I’d be kinda shocked if Linux doesn’t get decent support eventually.
You can work in C# with Godot too.
You can, but I think I read somewhere that it works better with GDScript.
It depends on what you mean by better. GDScript is better integrated into the IDE, with C# really requiring that you use an external code editor currently, but both languages have very similar capabilities.
I found the thing I read earlier: https://popcar.bearblog.dev/unity-to-godot-what-to-expect/
It doesn’t sound too bad, really.
I’ve been waiting for this.
