As much as I detest Apple’s 30% tax, I’m spooked by Epic’s behavior here. I’m re-developing an already successful tool with about a million users across all platforms. I had originally started in Unity, but migrated to Unreal because quality scaling across platforms is much better, where Unity forces you to choose render pipelines ahead of time.
So I’m a couple of months into development in Unreal, and now I suddenly don’t feel like I can trust Epic to keep supporting Unreal on Apple platforms. My project is not a game, so I have to think in 10-year time scales. I’m spooked that Epic is playing pattycake with this. Why did they put everything into the same Apple account? Why are they taking no steps to protect the ridiculous investment many of us are making in their engine? Don’t they understand that a small studio having to change engine suddenly will lose a million dollars from it and will probably go under? Why are there no assurances about their commitment?
It’s not reassuring that iOS and Apple are such small platforms for Unreal. Suddenly everything looks like they’re willing to walk away to play hardball, and every developer that needs to be cross-platform and that has invested in Unreal development is just being left out to dry.
We’re a couple of months in, and this is the last chance to change horses back to Unity. Then I’m only throwing away a couple of months work, which is a lot better than throwing away two years of work in two years.
I feel like Epic has a responsibility to their customers here. This is completely reckless. Just the fact that they’re even playing hardball like this (with us being the ball), sounds like they can’t be trusted again, even if they work it out with Apple in the short term. If someone threatens to kill you and then takes it back, can you really ever trust them again?