Man, what a week! If you don’t live under a rock, you might have heard about all the backlash against Unity Technologies due to the new subscription changes and the “runtime fee”. Yes, it’s bad. Even if you feel that it’s not going to affect you, it’s hitting hard on successful studios that are important pillars for the industry.
Around 2011, I decided to switch from Flash to Unity to work/make for mobile and consoles. Unity felt like what we needed after Flash was killed by the rise of smartphones and Apple’s hostility towards it.
Unity helped lots of developers have a career in technologies in general, allowing growth for multiple studios with lots of successful titles.
It’s sad that they didn’t manage to make Unity profitable and put unfair fees, and it scares me that they track all user installs (is that even legal?). I hope the affected studios and professionals can manage this situation and survive, and I wish Unity would consider taking a step back.
Computer software has a lifetime, and like Flash, Unity could be reaching its end. Luckily, we have many affordable options that even have moving guides for Unity users:
- Unreal Engine. Older than unity and perfect for Consoles & PC [guide for unity devs]
- Godot. A rising open-Source engine with a bright future [guide for unity devs]
- Game Maker. The indie’s favorite for 2D games [guide for unity devs]
Yatsufusa
The Unreal Engine, while very established, belongs to Epic Games, which in turn is owned by Tencent (40% at the time of writing, according to Wikipedia). Tencent is _very_ close with the Chinese government, even for Chinese standards.
Like with Unity, the situation for Unreal developers might change on a dime. :/
Whatever the future brings, any aspiring game devs would be well-advised to listen to multiple video game journalists/news sites they can trust, so they can get a feel for how fishy the forces of the games industry behave. He might be no Bobby Kotick, but John Riccitiello did not exactly strike me as somebody one should trust when he first popped up on my radar 8 years ago (Podquisition Episode 32 - Mysterio D*ck Paint). Since then, the situation did not improve.