Want to know how Unreal can take advantage of the fiasco that Unity is currently going through? The answer is very simple (and quite effective).
Simply make an announcement that offers a discount on all existing Unity-created games that get transitioned over to Unreal by their corresponding development studios. For example: you could offer a 50% discount on the revenue share, bringing it down to only 2.5% for eligible games. This would strongly incentivize many studios to make the switch.
Better yet: you guys could ditch your current terms entirely, and announce that you guys realize that 5% is a tough ask for many development studios, and in good faith: you’ve decided to adjust that down to 2.5% for EVERYONE, and look for other ways to monetize your product without hurting the pockets of the developers who helped you get to where you are today.
I’m pretty sure that “the first million is free” is discount enough already. They don’t need to add any additional incentive, they already have the best offer in town.
If you have a Unity game, and are not porting to Unreal (or Godot, for simpler games) already, then you’re doing something wrong.
It’s much faster to re-implement a game you already have, than to build a game from scratch, because now you already have all the art, you know what gameplay should feel like, and almost all uncertainty is gone.
You make some good points, though your “best offer in town” comment is subject to vast differences of opinion. What may be best for you, might not apply to everyone or even the majority for that matter.
Unreal may be years ahead of the competition currently, but in terms of software development: things tend to shift and change rapidly. For instance: you might be surprised how quickly Godot could shift gears - especially after gaining a huge influx of developers from this Unity disaster. Also, with the rapid pace of progress that’s being made in the AI sector: some unknown startups could enter the scene and start to offer some real competition in terms of features and offer more attractive pricing and/or leverage the fact that they’re open source or have much more attractive licensing.
If Unreal wants to keep their advantage, they should absolutely try to seize the moment and add as many Unity developers as they can to their customer base while they’re ripe for the picking. They’d be fools not to if you ask me.
I love competition! However, I don’t think a “quick shift” that would let Godot catch up to all that Unreal has, is going to happen. Which is fine – for simpler games, Godot is perfectly adequate.
There’s also the C4 engine, for those who like their C++ a little more classic pure, and faster full-engine builds.
Indeed – the fact that there is competition, is what makes the Unity move so short sighted from their point of view. (That, plus the very real likelihood that they could see class action for trying to change the terms after the fact.)
While you do bring up some more good points, and I fully respect your opinion: these right here are an example of famous last words:
Nobody expected that companies like Uber, Airbnb, Kickstarter, Fiverr, Instacart, etc. would pop up and completely upend their corresponding industries, now did they?
I’m just saying that this isn’t the time for Unreal to get complacent with their current status as an industry leader. Especially with the self-inflicted collapse of Unity happening before our eyes. They have a unique opportunity here to ease a major pain point that drove many developers to Unity in the first place. Namely, that’s giving what essentially amounts to a virtual tools company (basically the same as Stanley, Milwaukee, Snap-on, etc. when compared to the physical world) a huge cut of the revenue that their business makes (an amount normally reserved for the primary investors of their business) in exchange for use of some really cool cutting-edge tools to build games with.
Do you not see the dilemma? 5% is way too much of an ask for what Unreal is providing here - especially considering that they aren’t investing in or putting in tons of work into the projects that are being made with their tools to justify such a high ask. What they’re banking on here, is that game developers don’t make for good businesspeople.
It’s kind of a predatory practice if you ask me, but if they were to cut that back to 2.5% or less, it will make for a much more attractive ask (in my opinion) and more studios would be willing to take that risk.
The best possible thing they could do for developers would be to offer a lifetime royalty-free license for a modest one-time fee (assuming they want to keep their tech proprietary), but I honestly don’t see them ever doing that unless a new law or something passes which forces their hand.
Bottom line: less greed = more trust. More trust = more customers. More customers = more money in the long term. Unreal/Epic need to stop focusing on their quarterly earnings and do what’s best for their business in the long term. Otherwise: they’re just reserving their space in the line towards an inevitable economic failure as their customer base shifts in favor of the competition who are not only able to undercut them in price, but also posses the capability to outpace them in terms of innovation.
Every platform has its investment phase and the extraction phase.
What is happening to Unity, investors are taking their money back + profits. They don’t care if the company is going to die or not, this is extraction phase.
Unity have always been in debt to the capital investments they borrowed to grow the company. They have no option but finding a way to paying it back.
Once identified the investment phase, 10+ years ago, I left Unity because I know extraction comes next and “developers” are the product here.
A lot of folks decided to stay tho.
Btw, I have experience porting Unity game projects to optimized C++ Unreal projects, if anyone is interested in a commercial deal - contact me
It really isn’t. 5% is actually pretty cheap. And if you’re going to make millions, they will negotiate with you and cut a lower fee in exchange for certain guarantees and up-fronts.
Anyway – I think I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to build a game engine, having had that as my main job for 15 years before moving on to other areas. I don’t see a way for Godot to catch up with Unreal anytime soon – and Epic is in no way “resting on their laurels” – they’re forging ahead with things like Nanite, Lumen, Metahuman, PCG, and so much more.
Also, the Roblox team is doing really well; they’ve added type inference to their Lua engine, and their new avatar system with multiple interacting layers of clothing is quite advanced. Plus, when you build on Roblox, multiplayer is “free” because it’s part of their core implementation.
Will Godot catch up with Roblox or Unreal on those areas? I would make a bet on “no.” That doesn’t mean Godot is bad – it fills a very important niche!
They are a publicly traded company; their investors got their payback in 2020 when the stock went public and the investors could sell on the open market.
