This is really exciting to see. Enshittification is generating increasing backlash against incumbent monopolies, and encouraging more movement toward sustainable open source software.
See Blender, too.
I love how unity went from “we have a tech that can distinguish pirated copies with 100% accuracy, and also we exploit android and iOS sandboxing with 0-days to track reinstalls without fail, trust our numbers” to “we have no idea about the install numbers, you need to tell us”
They can’t be trusted.
The execs probably went from „how hard could it be?“ to actually talking to their r&d department.
Honestly, one thing I’m seeing frequently in comments about this is a bit frustrating. That is, people saying that they vow never to buy any games in Unity ever again on principle.
Vendor lock-in is a real thing, and part of the reason they actually tried this play. Many of these developers likely want to switch to a different engine, but don’t have the time or resources to do so. Honestly of all people hit by this situation, they probably need the help most.
Incidentally, if you are one of those devs reading this and feel you don’t know anything other than Unity, go learn something else. Diversify your portfolio. Learning a new engine isn’t hard if you know the fundamentals.
Also, can we get more love for Bevy. :P
Unity dev here. Will switch on our next game, but don’t have the choice for the current game that we’ve already invested 4 years into.
Also, bevy looks nice code-wise but it desparately needs a proper editor and GUI to make it artist friendly