AppLovin’s attempts to acquire Unity last year turned sour when Unity opted for a merger with rivals ironSource instead . Now, in the ongoing shockwave of Unity's unpopular introductio...
Wow well I guess I'll eat crow. I never thought that was possible to automate but given the use of LLMs I guess it is... Excited to see how it turns out
From their GitHub, they use this prompt to ChatGPT:
You are professional Unity engineer who is migrating a large project from Unity platform to Godot 4.1. Migrate code to GDScript, which you are an expert in. Follow the following rules: 1. Output code only, put explanations as comments. 2. Do not skip any logic. 3. Preserve all comments without changing. 4. If migration is impossible leave “TODO [Migrate]” comment. 5. Use GDScript best practices. 6. Convert camelCase variable names and method names to snake_case. 7. Unity namespaces should migrate into ‘class_name’ directive. 8. Unity class should migrate into ‘class_name’ directive.
Personally I find this kind of thing adorable and I hope it works out for them
You are professional Unity engineer who is migrating a large project from Unity platform to Unreal Engine 4. Migrate code to C++, which you are an expert in. Follow the following rules: 1. Always output exactly two code blocks: one with headers and other with implementations. 2. Do not skip any logic. 3. Preserve all comments without changing. 4. If migration is impossible leave “TODO [Migrate]” comment. 5. Use Unreal Engine C++ best practices.
I use ChatGPT for math tutoring occasionally and when I started using the prompt “Suppose you are a professional mathematician,” I got fewer responses resembling those you might get from a classmate and more which were thorough and rigorous.
Because an LLM’s goal isn’t to always be the most correct at answering questions. It just says what it thinks you want it to say. It’s not that telling it that it’s an expert necessarily makes it smarter, you’re just specifying not to give you an answer as though it was an amateur, which otherwise it wouldn’t have any reason not to do.
It does occasionally because it filters out sources which doesn’t fit that pattern, but it doesn’t guarantee anything (for a variety of reasons, like inevitable statistical cross contamination in the model, bad samples like overconfident answers, smaller number of samples to learn from, etc).
The conspiracy theorist in me always thought stuff like this was the result of corporate espionage; a loyal employee of a rival firm joins their competitor’s ranks and works their way up and finally gets the commanding role, only to announce something this dumb and then take it back (losing their reputation without anything in return) and then the guy leaves the company and finds a comfortable position on the board of their original rival company.
But… No? These people really are that stupid and actually did that to themselves.
And these are the people being paid 300x the salary of ordinary, hard working people!
A lot of the time when this type of thing comes from on high it really is actually a good move for the C suite and for shareholders in the short term. I’m saying this as if I know anything about the topic, I don’t, but I have read about this.
CEOs that flight from company to company, brought in to be the saviour and increase profits a bajillion percent just like they promised, often have a bag of tricks of classic moves that aren’t actually all that genius or clever but will, initially at least, appear to improve the bottom line. They may have obvious consequences which is why such an obvious move wasn’t made before, but if they can ride the crest of the wave of initially positive results they can exit just in time to leave the place seemingly better off than before they arrived knowing full well it’s all about to implode.
Epic allows devs to stay under the license terms for specific versions of the engine. If they started charging for installs, devs can just use the older engine versions and avoid the charges.
I keep seeing comments like these on source available nonfree software, but it really doesn’t factor in the fact that older software is NOT going to be used due to bugs, features missing, technical debt, secuity vulnerabilities, etc. So unless it is forked (i.e: OpenTofu), it is as good as useless for everyone but hobbyists.
It’s allowed by a specific clause in their TOS which assigns a EULA version dependent on the engine version. The EULA itself is different for different versions.
The point is that devs choosing to stay on an old version would not be good for Epic, so they are unlikely to directly create the circumstances where that is the logical result.
If we make changes to this Agreement, you are not required to accept the amended Agreement, and this Agreement will continue to govern your use of any Licensed Technology you already have access to. However, if we make changes to this Agreement, you will not be allowed to access certain Epic services or download the Licensed Technology unless you have accepted the amended Agreement.
My understanding is this is fundamentally different to the Unity clause you’re pointing out.
Another thing is that Unreal is open source source accessible. If there’s a bug in 5.0 that is resolved in 5.1 but you don’t want to accept the amended terms for 5.1, it’s possible to fix the bug and build the engine yourself. In the event of a significant change like the one with Unity, I imagine some dev group would just fork it and maintain it themselves.
They do, though. Not only do they offer multiple, flexible licenses, their basic license specifically guarantees that it is irrevocable. In fact, if that basic license isn't good enough, they are open to license negotiation.
I strongly recommend reading their basic license. It's already one of the most fair and reasonable "out of the box" licenses in the industry.
There are certain indicators for enshittification, and Epic (like Valve) doesn't meet any of them.
It is a privately held company with no plans for IPO and no dealings with venture capitalists. Conversely, Unity made their IPO in 2020 under the auspices of a notorious EA villain.
It is still lead by one of it's founders.
Said founder is very famously big on equity and pro-developer & pro-consumer policies.
Now, you may not like Epic for some reason, but they are currently a very stable, reliable, and trustworthy company that is focused on sustaining their business through dedication to quality and reputation. Personally, I respect & trust them every bit as much as I respect Valve.
Yeah… Tim Sweeny hasn’t been kind to Linux like Gabe has, but Sweeny has really pushed for increasing developer margins, breaking down monopolizes, etc.
Ultimately, competition is good… even if competition does result in some discomfort from having two major PC game stores instead of one.
The thing is, this could change at any time. The problem with enshittification is that it spreads. A company that’s doing great work today could be bought out by corporate profiteers and leeched of its actual value at any point in the future. We’ve had plenty of companies that started out with a vision and a set of strong principles who’ve been reduced to predatory business practices that are bad for everyone. You can’t assume that because a company seems to have integrity now, that integrity will remain.
Remember Elon Musk 15 years ago? Wasn’t quite the same, was it?
To me, sitting in a position of getting started in game development, that makes me want to sink my time and effort into an engine that I know can’t be enshittified because it can’t be bought out. I want to know that in a few years I’m not going to completely scrub every asset and mechanic that I make for the engine because somebody’s pulled some Darth Vader shit.
OSS is not a panacea, especially when there are upstream dependencies. Even things you think are safe can be compromised or enshittified. It happens all the time. The important thing is to take a close look at the indicators.
Right now, as far as I'm concerned, Godot and UE are both very safe bets, depends on your project and business needs. Epic's license is not conducive to retroactive shenanigans the way Unity's was. Epic clearly invests heavily in fostering customer trust.
Unreal is safe now, but there are no guarantees under capitalism. A FOSS license does guarantee that enshittification won’t be a factor because it literally can’t become the exclusive property of some company with a greedy executive board. Unreal doesn’t have that protection, Godot does.
Could Godot be compromised some how? Sure. Can it be enshittified? Not really.
It is a privately held company with no plans for IPO and no dealings with venture capitalists
According to https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/64901-80, there's over 100 investors in Epic, and of course there is Tencent holding a 40% share.
But those investors are not much of an issue either, because you forgot one important point in your list: Epic is swimming in money (and Unreal is just a side business for them).
That’s because both Unity and Godot use C# while Unreal uses C++ for development. It is much easier to move from Unity to Godot since they use the same language for development. Moving to Unreal basically means starting over.
Yeah exactly, Unity and Godot both use C# the same way React and Svelte both use JavaScript. Definitely some level of transferability, but honestly worth learning GDScript in my opinion because it’s a simple language and a pretty good fit for game scripting, and the one that gets first class attention from Godot.
One of the big reasons to have picked Unity over Unreal in the first place was because Unity was royalty free. Unreal Engine, despite being absolutely amazing, is not.
To preserve your existing business model, Godot just makes the most sense for many former Unity developers, and I say that as an unapologetic UE zealot.
However it’s currently difficult for games made for Godot to port to consoles (XBox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch,… not those non-Switch “gaming handhelds” since they are all just Windows/Linux handheld PCs) while keeping Godot open source since the SDKs, APIs, porting kits of these consoles are proprietary and you have to sign in NDAs. If most of your games’ revenues are from consoles, you don’t have much choice currently.
Hopefully a new generation of consoles based on regular PC hardware takes the market so we don’t have to deal with locked-down platforms, NDAs, exclusive titles, and overpriced games anymore. The Steam Deck is doing great so far.
Unreal Engine royalties only start after you make $1 million from a project. Even then, it’s 5%, and waived for sales done on the Epic Store (whose 13% cut is almost a third of what Steam takes). If you are a small indie dev, you won’t be paying Epic a dime unless you start rolling in some serious dough, and even when you do, 5% of your revenue for using one of the most powerful 3D game engines is pretty fair
Yes! This is why the hate I see for Epic (or non-Steam in general) bugs me so much. Epic has done nothing but right by developers. While they could definitely make their storefront/app better (and they claim they are working on it) for the customer experience, I have nothing but respect for them as a company.
I will still buy games on Steam first, given a choice, but that is only because I am now a staunch acolyte of the Steam Deck, and installing via Steam is much easier than trying to get EGS games running on the device.
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