Random video game news... Games are the most elevated form of investigation

[MrBrown]

https://www.egdf.eu/egdf-unitys-install-fees-are-a-sign-of-looming-game-engine-market-failure/

[Keyrock]

I'm not a fan of Unity's change in pricing policy, but death threats seem a tad excessive.

[melkathi]

The death threat sounds blown out of proportion.

It seems more like an employee venting.

 

Mind, my family has been receiving death threats since before I was born, so I have a different attitude towards the subject.

[Lexx]

What did they do to get death threads. That's not exactly a normal thing to happen.

 

I'm really curious which engine is going to replace Unity in the long term. I'm still baffled at this stupid decision. Especially since their current plan is impossible to realize and they can pretty much just invent fantasy numbers and there's nothing you can really do against that as a developer.

[melkathi]

Putting it in Spoiler tags, as my family history isn't game related 

My father was the secretary for the left wing youth organisation during the military dictatorship in Greece.

It is a bit weird when you are a teenager and your mother goes "you are old enough now for these things. The friend who is visiting is the one who jumped in front of the knife on that occasion and got stabbed instead of your father."

When I was in my twenties and Golden Dawn (the Greek Nazi party until recently) got stronger, we got fairly regular notifications from the police that my father should cancel his book presentation or appearance at public events because there were credible death threats and they couldn't guarantee his safety. Which would then mean my mother would tell me I had to cancel plans because I had to watch the crowd for suspicious people...

 

And then the threats stopped. During the golden dawn trial we found out because he had gotten put on their "no kill list" of people too public, who's murder could be detrimental to their image.

And now he is old so his influence is not what it used to, so nobody wants to murder him anymore.

 

I have this memory from when I was 7 where I was waiting behind the door with a big Jesus statue, ready to bash the man who had appeared at the front door and was threatening my mom. She was scary enough on her own and didn't need a hobbit to save her

 

anyway, now you got the rundown on why I react strongly to certain subjects

[Sarex]

6 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Putting it in Spoiler tags, as my family history isn't game related 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

My father was the secretary for the left wing youth organisation during the military dictatorship in Greece.

It is a bit weird when you are a teenager and your mother goes "you are old enough now for these things. The friend who is visiting is the one who jumped in front of the knife on that occasion and got stabbed instead of your father."

When I was in my twenties and Golden Dawn (the Greek Nazi party until recently) got stronger, we got fairly regular notifications from the police that my father should cancel his book presentation or appearance at public events because there were credible death threats and they couldn't guarantee his safety. Which would then mean my mother would tell me I had to cancel plans because I had to watch the crowd for suspicious people...

 

And then the threats stopped. During the golden dawn trial we found out because he had gotten put on their "no kill list" of people too public, who's murder could be detrimental to their image.

And now he is old so his influence is not what it used to, so nobody wants to murder him anymore.

 

I have this memory from when I was 7 where I was waiting behind the door with a big Jesus statue, ready to bash the man who had appeared at the front door and was threatening my mom. She was scary enough on her own and didn't need a hobbit to save her

 

anyway, now you got the rundown on why I react strongly to certain subjects

 

Here they would send you to "Goli Otok" to smash rocks if you were a credible threat to the party, or if not the police would just beat you. If you were a threat, then you would have a car accident in which you hit the only tree on a side of a 100km long road.

[Gfted1]

Wow, wild and interesting story!

[melkathi]

13 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Here they would send you to "Goli Otok" to smash rocks if you were a credible threat to the party, or if not the police would just beat you. If you were a threat, then you would have a car accident in which you hit the only tree on a side of a 100km long road.

My grandad was in "exile" on "Makronisos" after the civil war. No thanks, I have heard his first hand account of islands like that - I am happy to not go to any of them whatever the country and name

[Wormerine]

cant wait to plays when it’s on sale on steam in 2027.

 

[LadyCrimson]

18 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

new system requirement are just insane

how many player will have a 3080 to run ultra

I think the cpu bottleneck may be worse for many. It's tougher to upgrade the cpu (mobo compatibility being what it is these days) vs. slapping a new gpu in hoping you can brute force some performance benefit. What these games seem to be doing at the moment is increasing cpu demand by a lot as well as gpu.

But yeah...it's been 4.5 years for me and not looking forward to building a new rig. It's one of those periods where even if you have a lot of spare cash, it's hard to say what will be the most future-resistant. Trying hard to wait at least another couple years.

[Mamoulian War]

WoW, looks like the Riccitiello is not the guy to be blamed for Unity ****storm LOL. Unexpected...

Looks like after Unity went public, three bigger asses than him bought themselves into the board...

 

[Lexx]

Damn, what a twist. Too lazy to look into it deeper, but it does sound like it makes sense.

[melkathi]

Ugh, it all makes sense now.

[kanisatha]

19 hours ago, melkathi said:

I have this memory from when I was 7 where I was waiting behind the door with a big Jesus statue, ready to bash the man who had appeared at the front door and was threatening my mom.

Wow! I had the exact same experience during the ethnic violence of '83 in my old country when I was 16 years old. An armed mob showed up at our home looking for people of my ethnic group to kill. We barricaded the front door and I stood behind it (as a very scrawny 90lbs kid) holding one of those big ceremonial brass lamps from my religion, ready to bash at least one guy coming through the door before I was killed.

[Keyrock]

18 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

WoW, looks like the Riccitiello is not the guy to be blamed for Unity ****storm LOL. Unexpected...

Looks like after Unity went public, three bigger asses than him bought themselves into the board...

 

I'm not going to assume this is 100% accurate, I am neither going to assume that it's false and I'm frankly too lazy to do research, but this at least sounds plausible. Either way, threats and harassment aren't appropriate (they never are). As a consumer, my main recourse is to vote with my wallet, which may harm some innocent devs in the short term that might be 85% of the way through developing their game and it's too late/impractical to switch engines now, but will ultimately have the desired effect. If no one buys games made with Unity no one will use Unity to develop games and Unity will go out of business. It's not a perfect course of action but it's the course of action I intend to take.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Keyrock

[the_dog_days]

21 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Looks like after Unity went public, three bigger asses than him bought themselves into the board.

That's usually what happens. 

[Keyrock]

Scumbag move to add Denuvo after the review embargo has been lifted, given that the vast majority of reviewers put out their review the instant the embargo lifts. Puts a bit of a damper on a game otherwise getting glowing reviews. In fact, this is the least positive review I've seen/read and it's still quite positive.

[Gorth]

Split off from previous thread...

I wonder how much this whole Unity debacle is going to affect Obsidian and their games. Time to dust off the Onyx engine again?

 

I wo

[Wormerine]

9 hours ago, Gorth said:

Split off from previous thread...

I wonder how much this whole Unity debacle is going to affect Obsidian and their games. Time to dust off the Onyx engine again?

Obsidian? Most of their biggest upcoming releases moved to Unreal, no? (Outer Worlds, Avowed). I have no clue how it might impact smaller titles. Also is the change in licence apply to previously released titles? Surely not. 

[Hawke64]

9 hours ago, Gorth said:

Split off from previous thread...

I wonder how much this whole Unity debacle is going to affect Obsidian and their games. Time to dust off the Onyx engine again?

Same. Though, Obsidian has been using Unreal Engine for their latest games, except Pentiment, so it should not affect the future titles and cannot be enforceable for PoE and Tyranny (or at least I hope so). Also, I doubt that Microsoft would welcome the proposed installation fees, considering how Game Pass works.

Regarding Cyberpunk 2077. Increasing the already high system requirements is not exactly a user-friendly thing to do and given the size, keeping backups is challenging. Well, downloading and installing it in the first place is challenging - at the moment the GOG version is 112GB and 28 pieces. Shouldn't have purchased, I suppose.

Edit. For some reason, replies don't get submitted on the first attempt. Odd.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Hawke64

[melkathi]

44 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

Obsidian? Most of their biggest upcoming releases moved to Unreal, no? (Outer Worlds, Avowed). I have no clue how it might impact smaller titles. Also is the change in licence apply to previously released titles? Surely not. 

Unity apparently changed the TOS in April, removing the bit that said changes weren't retroactive 

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, melkathi said:

Unity apparently changed the TOS in April, removing the bit that said changes weren't retroactive 

That's sounds like something that should be illegal. Presumably they already got their cut from games that release up to day. Games were developed and sold and revenue split under some kind of licence. For Unity to just say: "Oh BTW on top of the cut we got, now you have to pay us everytime someone reinstalls the game" doesn't seem like should be a thing. Has anyone in the know commented on the situation?

[melkathi]

All I know is what I read in the articles shared here

[Hawke64]

30 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

That's sounds like something that should be illegal. Presumably they already got their cut from games that release up to day. Games were developed and sold and revenue split under some kind of licence. For Unity to just say: "Oh BTW on top of the cut we got, now you have to pay us everytime someone reinstalls the game" doesn't seem like should be a thing. Has anyone in the know commented on the situation?

About the TOS update - https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/09/14/unity-license-terms-github-repo-removed-retroactive-changes

 

[Mamoulian War]

3 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Obsidian? Most of their biggest upcoming releases moved to Unreal, no? (Outer Worlds, Avowed). I have no clue how it might impact smaller titles. Also is the change in licence apply to previously released titles? Surely not. 

38 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

That's sounds like something that should be illegal. Presumably they already got their cut from games that release up to day. Games were developed and sold and revenue split under some kind of licence. For Unity to just say: "Oh BTW on top of the cut we got, now you have to pay us everytime someone reinstalls the game" doesn't seem like should be a thing. Has anyone in the know commented on the situation?

3 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Same. Though, Obsidian has been using Unreal Engine for their latest games, except Pentiment, so it should not affect the future titles and cannot be enforceable for PoE and Tyranny (or at least I hope so). Also, I doubt that Microsoft would welcome the proposed installation fees, considering how Game Pass works.

Regarding Cyberpunk 2077. Increasing the already high system requirements is not exactly a user-friendly thing to do and given the size, keeping backups is challenging. Well, downloading and installing it in the first place is challenging - at the moment the GOG version is 112GB and 28 pieces. Shouldn't have purchased, I suppose.

Edit. For some reason, replies don't get submitted on the first attempt. Odd.

According to this article and Hoeg Law, which commented on it, it might be that big of a case of scumbaggery...

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/wait-is-unity-allowed-to-just-change-its-fee-structure-like-that/