Unity U-turns on controversial runtime fee and begs forgiveness

Re:Unity U-turns on controversial runtime fee and begs forgi... by valianteffort on Tuesday September 26, 2023 @12:00PM (#37661289)

Major developers are too focused on things that hardly matter like cutting edge graphics, and hardly interested in things that do like gameplay. Indie is where people are more forgiving, and keeping as much profit matters. Thus in house engine development is a more viable strategy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Unity U-turns on controversial runtime fee and begs forgi... by SXX on Tuesday September 26, 2023 @12:43PM (#37661966)

I am co-founder of indie game company. Like in any business there is tons of things you have to deal with: hr and managing people, making good game prototypes and pitches, finding funding or publisher, negotiating contracts, crunching for milestones and release.

In case of majorify of indie games you only can only get $100,000-500,000 of funding total for one game with development time of 6-18 months. And like 50%+ of this money will go into creating art assets especially if we talk of pixel art.

Go look what is the salary of senior C++ programmer with experience working with graphics, audio and little bit of everything. And one person can hardly create anything close to game engine tooling unless he work for several years.

Making own game engine is the last any game developer gonna consider.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Unity U-turns on controversial runtime fee and begs forgi... by valianteffort on Saturday September 30, 2023 @04:21PM (#37719369)

Thing is you only have to make the engine once. Most publishers just tweak their engine to fit the game over the years.

[ Parent | on HN ]