Check out our Monthly Survey Page to see what our users are running.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

The fallout from Unity's recent ridiculous pricing changes and terrible communication continues, with developer Robot Gentleman now waving goodbye to Unity and joining up with Godot Engine. Robot Gentleman created the popular 60! series like 60 Seconds!, 60 Parsecs! and 60 Seconds! Reatomized.

In a statement posted on X (Twitter) they said (copied into text, as it's an image):

The recent Unity runtime fee license change and the way it was introduced has been a shocking development for all of us at Robot Gentleman. The predatory nature of this misguided decision poses a significant threat to the work and independence of many game developers, including ourselves. We do not accept this, and we cannot simply stand by, watching this outrageous violation of trust.

We are bidding adieu to Unity. For good.

Our next project, which has been in development for 4 years, will be migrated to the Godot Game Engine. Furthermore, all our released games from the 60! series will be ported away from Unity as soon as possible.

But there is more. We have been supporting Godot financially since July 2022. We have now decided to increase our support to 1500$/month, effectively redirecting the value of our Unity licenses to Godot. Our engineers will also contribute to the development of the engine, as we pursue our next and future projects in Godot.

The chosen direction is challenging, but in the face of Unity's conduct this was the only decision to be made. This change is likely to introduce a few twists and turns and cause delays in our ongoing projects. However, once we navigate this transition, we believe we will find ourselves in a much better space to continue our independent journey.

There's a lot of developers looking at alternative game engines and tech now to move away from Unity. This seems to have been a wake-up call for many on how the rug can be pulled from them when relying on proprietary software. Like how Terraria developer Re-Logic just donated $100K to Godot + FNA and will continue funding monthly.

Expect more of this to come. Even if Unity change their tune — the damage is done.

You can check out the games from Robot Gentleman on GOGHumble Store and Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
40 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
37 comments
Page: «3/4»
  Go to:

CatKiller Sep 21, 2023
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: Pyreticthe developers themselves are saying that the traffic has been far bigger than ever.

Yeah, sorry, I have to keep looking up the documentation.
const Sep 21, 2023
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI'm actually starting to feel sorry for some other open source projects that don't have as much name recognition and momentum as Godot. Everyone's reacting by supporting Godot (and in Terraria's case, FNA, which is cool) but Liam had an article listing quite a few other alternatives, some of which are both open source and seem pretty neat, and I hope some of those get a bit of love too.
Godot is simply the most feature-complete alternative we have with a license that attracts developers, especially those who were hurt by Unity. FNA also has a clear target with legacy game support. If I was a dev considering porting old Unity games to anything else in the future, Godot would be kind of obvious.
Let's hope the timing is right. Like always, Godot is currently working on some critical areas that aren't just nice to haves. The new physics plugin shows great potential, but is not really ready for prime time. Performant VR with Godot is an art in itself (though Unity itself wasn't up with Epic, either). In short term, all the money could even stall development while figuring out new staff and priorities.
nlborlcl Sep 21, 2023
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Those fleeing Unity for Godot specifically might be doing it because of the C# support (albeit partial/limited). When those developers start a new project, they might search farther, due to perhaps not liking C# as much. There appears to be a wave of project conversion scripts coming in, and not just from chatGPT. It should be more fanned out to other FOSS alternatives in the coming months, years.
const Sep 21, 2023
Quoting: Marlock
Quoting: PhlebiacHopefully these devs (and others) make an effort towards native Linux versions as part of their switch to Godot.
AFAIK it's much easier to make a linux version of a game with Godot than with Unity3D.

At the very least there will be less linux-specific bugs in the native linux versions of games that opt for it. Unity was notoriously terrible in this regard and while the situation improved over the years it never got solved entirely.

IIRC Godot made also made it pretty easy to pack up android versions of games for testing and final deployment (I read an article once a couple years ago about how it works and why it was unusually easy), so mobile game devs might enjoy jumping ship more than they expected.
From my experience, it's not even comparable. Godot always handled Linux as a first class citizen, pretty much everything was always the same. Unity on Linux? Patched up system, horrible error messages and even if a dev has a Linux environment for QA, debugging a Linux build is not straight forward at all.
Also, Unity is hardly used as a vanilla environment. Additional middleware has always been it's strength and a lot of that middleware is not or badly supported on Linux.

Thinking about it... I wonder what Unity middleware devs will do now..
elmapul Sep 21, 2023
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: dziadulewiczCould this really be the start of Godot's triumph? it is totally free, open source and Linux is number one. Just think about that.
actually this might be the opposite.

i think unity had more chance to compete against Unreal than godot.
and i think godot had more chance to compete against unity than against unreal.
I'm not sure I believe that, and I don't think that likely works that way.
me neither, that is why i said:
might
elmapul Sep 21, 2023
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI think it is quite plausible to say Godot is in the process of reaching that point, where it has enough momentum that it will become very hard to stop it from eating closed competitors.

i agree with everything you said, but your forgot one thing:
unreal is "source code avaliable" i read their terms of use for the code, and its so restrictive that it might as well be completely closed source, but they can always open source it.
now, dont get me wrong, that still is a win in my book, it dont matter why the winner is open source, so long as it is open source, and i doubt godot would completely disappear even if that was the case, unless they find an way to make unreal so confortable to use as godot is, got grow in size to become more heavy weight while unreal grow in features without growing too much in size (more optimized code) and the hardware that general people have grow faster than the game engines to the point that we dont care anymore about needing to have "64GB of ram to run unreal".
hell, even godot might be heavy if you have an potato pc.

if this last scenario happens then godot might die, but it wont matter at this point.
Purple Library Guy Sep 21, 2023
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI think it is quite plausible to say Godot is in the process of reaching that point, where it has enough momentum that it will become very hard to stop it from eating closed competitors.

i agree with everything you said, but your forgot one thing:
unreal is "source code avaliable" i read their terms of use for the code, and its so restrictive that it might as well be completely closed source, but they can always open source it.
Technically, yeah, but we're talking about Epic here.
benstor214 Sep 21, 2023
View PC info
  • Supporter
Quoting: constThinking about it... I wonder what Unity middleware devs will do now..
I hope they won't starve...

Anyway, should I install Godot from Steam or from the repository?
CatKiller Sep 22, 2023
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: benstor214Anyway, should I install Godot from Steam or from the repository?
There's no "install," it's just a bare binary, so you can just grab it from the website Windows-style if you want.
Pyretic Sep 22, 2023
Quoting: benstor214
Quoting: constThinking about it... I wonder what Unity middleware devs will do now..
I hope they won't starve...

Anyway, should I install Godot from Steam or from the repository?

Either is fine but you might want to select a specific branch if you're installing from Steam (go to Properties and look at the Beta) as installing major updates always carry a risk of breaking your projects.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.
Buy Games
Buy games with our affiliate / partner links: