(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* Doot doo doo... Beetlejuice is trending and I am not going to check why, just going to post that one Beetlejuice pic to my photoblog in case that helps it get more views...

(Spoilers, I did check... I recc that you do not)

* Neil Newbon (Astarion's actor in BG3) has an emote of Astarion hugging his player character on his Discord because he is a giant dork

* Indie gaming is going to take a beating due to the Unity engine fee changes. Most surprise hits of the past several years would not have been financially viable under the new deal. This makes whole parts of the gaming market just straight up not viable. Games currently in development are going to take a hit or be scrapped. The current estimates of this being devastating to over a hundred studios and may lead to over a thousand job losses are honestly conservative considering that the changes are retro-active and will activate on games from ten years ago, meaning companies may have to delist back catalogues.

Also, a few crucial points
- Humble Indie Bundles for promo or for charity, games using Unity wont be able to take part
- Piracy - either because people like the game OR as a sneaky way for gamers to fuck over a studio - just became devastating because it's based on install counters
- Games, including games designed for kids that were supposed to be ad-free, may get pushed onto an ad-heavy platform to still exist

Unity has doubled down the fee changes and them being retroactive, so even if they walk things back a bit devs wont be able to trust them as a platform and that is still going to scuttle games / studios / jobs.

* Even just making a brain organizational post helped me get a lot done, which is impressive as it's been a fuck of a week and I am coming off of a massive migraine due to it

* [edits to add] Good job me, after talking about being more organized I mixed up content from 2 different posts. Anyway, fixed now. But also... wtf, brain? Anyway, I have gotten a lot done and should like zone out or something

Comments

[writedragon]

I'm not a gamer (family members are) but the Unity thing is blowing up all over my social media. A programmer I follow pointed out that for install counters to work the way Unity is doing it, it would require some serious spyware. This same programmer noted that Unity had merged with a known spyware/malware company awhile back so it all comes together as something very ugly and unfortunate all around.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, the initial assumption was that they were sad at not getting a cut of Genshin Impact's billions, because they do run on Unity, but it is looking more and more like they want to shove ads, malware and spyware into games that don't have them, including games designed for kids so they'd have games without being targeted. A lot of studios were quietly being offered a chance to be on their ad run platform 'for free'.

I wont put up with it. Fortunately, I probably don't have to. The few Unity games I am attached to are big successes and the big three games I am very attached to are all on different engines. It's going to suck for some people, thought. The main impact on me and a lot of other games is that sectors of the market are just going to be gone.

[mistressofmuses]

Re: Beetlejuice... fucking embarrassment to my state.

The Unity thing is a fucking trainwreck disaster. I'm horrified at how many games this is going to impact, and how much it will chill indie development as a whole. Particularly if other companies decide to follow suit. Even if they don't, this is a huge loss for current games that may need to delist, or studios that are now not likely to make new games for years, if they do at all. The potential loss of so many projects is just... awful.

I'm sorry it's been a fuck of a week! It HAS been a fuck of week, and I'd like the next weeks to be less fuck.

[olivermoss]

Phas was in development for 3 years before the public beta I was in. The dev cycle on even small projects is so long, they just aren't viable if the engine and it's pricing scheme isn't pricing scheme isn't set in stone. Some indies will be fine, but if this had happened a while back it would have scuttled Phas, Cult of the Lamb and so much more. What would have been the next big things are shutting down. Not to be dramatic, but that's what's happening.

Here's hoping next week is better!

[mistressofmuses]

The dev cycle on small projects - especially *ambitious* small projects - is SOOO long. It really is years and years of work, and the idea of those years not having a viable option for release at the end of them is really terrible. And yeah, even if this particular horrible thing gets walked back, I don't trust some other engine won't try it, or they won't revive this plan in some other format, and I don't imagine that any *developers* will want to trust that either.
While we likely won't ever even know what we lost... the sleeper hits of tomorrow, or the things that WOULD have become beloved cult games, or the things that would have been favorites a few years down the line.... just aren't going to happen, and that's devastating in a lot of ways. It may sound overdramatic, but you're right: it isn't.

I REALLY hope next week is better all around.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, they've made risk management on these projects impossible. People really don't grasp how long development it. World Of Horror is finally getting it's official release this October and I am so excited for the dev! That's been a long project!

Fortunately WoH, Black Tabby Games and a lot of stuff I care about is safe. The problem is all the projects that wont happen now.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? Even if a lot of the big-name Unity projects aren't going anywhere (whether that's because they can weather the fees, or they get some sort of exemption, or Unity walks things back significantly enough that it's a non-issue), the real cost and hurt is going to be invisible, because it's going to be the things that just never happen at all.
Yes, some much-loved games could very well ALSO go away, which is horrible from a lot of perspectives (for those devs! for the fans of those games! for game preservation!), but I think we're likely to miss a lot more things that WOULD have existed at some point, but we're never going to see now.

Like you said, it makes risk management near impossible, it punishes success, and it'll ripple through the industry as a whole because other companies COULD decide to do the same sort of thing. Even if a company says NOW that they don't plan to do that, can a dev trust they won't have changed their minds four or five years down the line, when they've completed work on a project? Ten years, once that project has been out for a few years?

It's such a LONG development cycle! Any uncertainty like this is HUGE!

And I have seen talk about Unity walking bits of it back, while also pretending it isn't a walk-back at all, and other talk about whether game devs could sue over it and whether the Unity plan would hold up if they did, etc., but that doesn't undo the uncertainty they've introduced.