Taking a firm stand against what Unity have been doing, Terraria developer Re-Logic announced today they've begun funding Godot Engine and FNA with a big donation to each and ongoing funding.
Announced in a statement on X (Twitter), it reads as follows (copied into text, as it was an image statement):
The team at Re-Logic has been watching the recent events surrounding Unity with both interest and sadness. The loss of a formerly-leading and user-friendly game engine to the darker forces that negatively impact so much of the gaming industry has left us dismayed to put it mildly. While we do not personally use Unity (outside of a few elements on our console/mobile platforms), we feel like we cannot sit idly by as these predatory moves are made against studios everywhere.
We unequivocally condemn and reject the recent TOS/fee changes proposed by Unity and the underhanded way they were rolled out. The flippant manner with which years of trust cultivated by Unity were cast aside for yet another way to squeeze publishers, studios, and gamers is the saddest part. That this move was wholly unnecessary pushes things into the tragedy category - a cautionary tale the industry will not soon forget.
We do not feel that a simple public statement is sufficient. Even if Unity were to recant their policies and statements, the destruction of trust is not so easily repaired. We strongly feel that it is now equally important to get behind some of the other up and-coming open source game engines. Lighting some candles in an otherwise dark moment.
To that end, we are donating $100,000 to each of the open source engines listed below. Additionally, we are sponsoring each of these projects with $1,000/month each moving forward. All we ask in return is that they remain good people and keep doing all that they can to make these engines powerful and approachable for developers everywhere.
Re-Logic has always been supportive of game developers and indie studios that do things the right way. We feel that our actions in this moment are the best way to carry that mission forward - by accelerating and strengthening competing open source game engines, we hope to empower and assist studios that are struggling with how best to proceed given these recent events.
It's amazing to see so many people in the industry come together like this. Looking across X (Twitter), there's been a big wave of developers trying out and attempting ports to game engines like Godot so even more backing for it and other open source projects is fantastic. Hopefully this continues to be a wake up call for the industry to rely a little less on proprietary software.
Since the initial uproar over Unity, we've seen the Godot Engine funding go from around €25K per month to €44K, which is a change from around 438 members to 1,119 members.
You can buy Terraria on Humble Store, GOG and Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Linux_Rocks Sep 19, 2023
7 Likes, Who?
Something tells me Ethan Lee is going to be super busy
or take a weeklong vacation for once.
9 Likes, Who?
Wow, talk about putting their wallet were their mouth is. Just bought Terraria to show my support for this kind of attitude.
20 Likes, Who?
Wow, talk about putting their wallet were their mouth is. Just bought Terraria to show my support for this kind of attitude.Hm. Yeah, I've been sort of thinking I'm in the mood for a Terraria kind of game. Maybe it's time.
Edited to add: Bought it.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 20 September 2023 at 1:18 am UTC
11 Likes, Who?
The other opensource game engine that should get support is Blender's game engine, whose current iteration is called UPBGE.
Long term UPBGE is probably the most promising game engine. Because no matter what other open-source or proprietary engines do or say, they don't have the sheer convenience and production efficiency for artists that being integrated into a modelling and animation tool does. With the other major modelling and animation tools being privately owned, they won't be turned into game engines.
Licensing for closed source games with UPBGE is simple. It just requires having the stand alone Blender game player load an external blend file which can be under any license : https://upbge.org/docs/latest/manual/manual/release/licensing.html#standalone-games and https://www.blender.org/support/faq/#gnu-gpl-2
Godot's engine license is MIT, meaning that a company can come along and take massive amount of contributions to the Godot engine from the more social companies, and then build on it without releasing the engine tech in return : https://godotengine.org/license/ . Crytek suffered from this when they licensed CryEngine to Star Citizen - Crytek had a deal where, in exchange for opening the source code and assistance, they'd get access to bug fixes and optimisation improvements made by Star Citizen. But Crytek was in financial trouble and sold a copy of their engine to Amazon, who released it for free with an unethical anti-competitive restriction (that games that uses it have to rely on Amazon's Twitch / AWS integration IIRC). Star Citizen got away with not giving code back by "switching" to Amazon's copy : https://bit-tech.net/news/gaming/crytek-sues-cig-rsi-over-star-citizen/1/ . Star Citizen eventually settled out of court with Crytek, presumably when they got enough money to cover damages. The popular Apache licenses pushed by big stock exchange companies have similar issues to MIT.
Blender's license forces companies to share the tech, and prevent countless professional lifetimes worth of work re-inventing wheels. The success and domination of middleware engines shows the value of not duplicating work. And even Unreal Engine shares code these days, but doesn't require companies to share back what they build on top.
The only way people who actually make games in the game industry will be more free of corporate greed and share holder manipulation is to have tech under Open Source licenses. And to do a Valve and get rid of shareholders taking money out of the company by acting as more of a group of developers and distributing revenue based on peer assessment of contributions - while doing game funding through Early Access or other crowdfunding.
Epic, the owners of Unreal Engine, eventually sold out to the dark side, and a bunch of senior figures left in disgust : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games#Games_as_a_service_and_Tencent_shareholding_(2012%E2%80%932018)
Unity got taken over by a former EA CEO : https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-ceo-sparks-fury-by-saying-developers-who-dont-consider-monetization-are-fing-idiots/
It's just a matter of time until proprietary middle-ware companies let you down.
Last edited by Nim8 on 20 September 2023 at 12:57 am UTC
Long term UPBGE is probably the most promising game engine. Because no matter what other open-source or proprietary engines do or say, they don't have the sheer convenience and production efficiency for artists that being integrated into a modelling and animation tool does. With the other major modelling and animation tools being privately owned, they won't be turned into game engines.
Licensing for closed source games with UPBGE is simple. It just requires having the stand alone Blender game player load an external blend file which can be under any license : https://upbge.org/docs/latest/manual/manual/release/licensing.html#standalone-games and https://www.blender.org/support/faq/#gnu-gpl-2
Godot's engine license is MIT, meaning that a company can come along and take massive amount of contributions to the Godot engine from the more social companies, and then build on it without releasing the engine tech in return : https://godotengine.org/license/ . Crytek suffered from this when they licensed CryEngine to Star Citizen - Crytek had a deal where, in exchange for opening the source code and assistance, they'd get access to bug fixes and optimisation improvements made by Star Citizen. But Crytek was in financial trouble and sold a copy of their engine to Amazon, who released it for free with an unethical anti-competitive restriction (that games that uses it have to rely on Amazon's Twitch / AWS integration IIRC). Star Citizen got away with not giving code back by "switching" to Amazon's copy : https://bit-tech.net/news/gaming/crytek-sues-cig-rsi-over-star-citizen/1/ . Star Citizen eventually settled out of court with Crytek, presumably when they got enough money to cover damages. The popular Apache licenses pushed by big stock exchange companies have similar issues to MIT.
Blender's license forces companies to share the tech, and prevent countless professional lifetimes worth of work re-inventing wheels. The success and domination of middleware engines shows the value of not duplicating work. And even Unreal Engine shares code these days, but doesn't require companies to share back what they build on top.
The only way people who actually make games in the game industry will be more free of corporate greed and share holder manipulation is to have tech under Open Source licenses. And to do a Valve and get rid of shareholders taking money out of the company by acting as more of a group of developers and distributing revenue based on peer assessment of contributions - while doing game funding through Early Access or other crowdfunding.
The loss of a formerly-leading and user-friendly game engine to the darker forces that negatively impact so much of the gaming industry..In the long run successful privately owned tech Companies eventually get brought up by stock exchange giants. Well intentioned CEOs and managements aren't worth much in the long term, as eventually they get bored, retire, or otherwise move on.. and you get less ethical management as replacements.
Epic, the owners of Unreal Engine, eventually sold out to the dark side, and a bunch of senior figures left in disgust : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games#Games_as_a_service_and_Tencent_shareholding_(2012%E2%80%932018)
Unity got taken over by a former EA CEO : https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-ceo-sparks-fury-by-saying-developers-who-dont-consider-monetization-are-fing-idiots/
It's just a matter of time until proprietary middle-ware companies let you down.
Last edited by Nim8 on 20 September 2023 at 12:57 am UTC
5 Likes, Who?
Linux_Rocks Sep 19, 2023
Anyone with Terraria on Steam be sure to also get tModLoader there too. It's free, open source, published in part by Re-Logic, and it'll let you use mods with the game.
8 Likes, Who?
ElectricPrism Sep 19, 2023
This gives me fuzzy feelz.
Also, the modern proverb: `Fuck around and find out` rings the bell.
During these dark times, it's very heartwarming to find hope in these exemplars.
May we all be like them too and say no to tyranny, and tyranny disguised as civility aswell.
There's no place for tyranny in our free world.
Also, the modern proverb: `Fuck around and find out` rings the bell.
During these dark times, it's very heartwarming to find hope in these exemplars.
May we all be like them too and say no to tyranny, and tyranny disguised as civility aswell.
There's no place for tyranny in our free world.
10 Likes, Who?
I used to think Godot might be the most interesting alternative engine only from our Linux perspective. Now it seems it's the one profiting the most from what Unity has done?
1 Likes, Who?
I used to think Godot might be the most interesting alternative engine only from our Linux perspective. Now it seems it's the one profiting the most from what Unity has done?
The beauty of open source licences is that anyone can open up the engine and see whether it's worth it for them to start using it.
Although I imagine Unreal Engine has gotten a similar boost in popularity.
1 Likes, Who?
I used to think Godot might be the most interesting alternative engine only from our Linux perspective. Now it seems it's the one profiting the most from what Unity has done?
The beauty of open source licences is that anyone can open up the engine and see whether it's worth it for them to start using it.
Although I imagine Unreal Engine has gotten a similar boost in popularity.
Yeah, but its less visible, people won't start donating to it. Makes sense! Expectations adjusted. :)
0 Likes
Nice move, sadly majority will gravitate to some other proprietary stuff and will be f*** down the line. More interesting how big player and platform holders silent on the mater, only indie and relatively small studios chimed in.
0 Likes
Terraria team is awesome.
They are engaged with the community, they are patching and content updating a game that was launched back in 2011, got the Labor of Love prize on Steam and now this...
They are truly swimming against the gaming industry waves
They are engaged with the community, they are patching and content updating a game that was launched back in 2011, got the Labor of Love prize on Steam and now this...
They are truly swimming against the gaming industry waves
3 Likes, Who?
Licensing for closed source games with UPBGE is simple. It just requires having the stand alone Blender game player load an external blend file which can be under any license : https://upbge.org/docs/latest/manual/manual/release/licensing.html#standalone-games and https://www.blender.org/support/faq/#gnu-gpl-2
... until you want to do console ports, in which case you have to rebuild the entire thing in a different engine. The GPL is, unfortunately, a nonstarter for commercial game development because of the markets it cuts you off from.
0 Likes
robertosf92 Sep 20, 2023
In the meantime... Microsoft leaks confirm that they plan to continue their assault on individual agency that started with their Open letter to Hobbyist in the 70's with their idea of the future that is basically you being tied to them via "the cloud"
0 Likes
Crytek suffered from this when they licensed CryEngine to Star Citizen - Crytek had a deal where, in exchange for opening the source code and assistance, they'd get access to bug fixes and optimisation improvements made by Star Citizen. But Crytek was in financial trouble and sold a copy of their engine to Amazon, who released it for free with an unethical anti-competitive restriction (that games that uses it have to rely on Amazon's Twitch / AWS integration IIRC). Star Citizen got away with not giving code back by "switching" to Amazon's copy : https://bit-tech.net/news/gaming/crytek-sues-cig-rsi-over-star-citizen/1/ . Star Citizen eventually settled out of court with Crytek, presumably when they got enough money to cover damages.
Actually, as part of the discovery for that particular lawsuit it was found that CIG had submitted all their changes and improvements upstream to CryTek as required by the contract, it was just that CryTek hadn't wanted to spend the engineer time to actually merge the changes back into the main CryEngine sources.
The entire lawsuit was quite the circus; the contract was written in a really odd way, CryTek tried to argue that the contract didn't allow use of the engine for the two games the contract explicitly listed, they tried to redefine legal terms to make an exclusive contract mean that CIG would've been required by law to continue using CryEngine, tried to argue that Lumberyard's license couldn't be used in the ways it expressly permitted, tried to have discovery require information that CIG would've been legally unable to provide, not to mention that discovery showed that several of their claims were false on their face, and the ones that were potentially valid had an explicit clause in the contract preventing any monetary damages - technically making the entire suit invalid from the start.
Absolutely insane from start to finish.
The main reason they finally settled was probably just to avoid throwing ridiculous sums into the black hole that would've been discovery, since neither side would've won anything from the result anyway.
Last edited by Ananace on 20 September 2023 at 9:31 am UTC
4 Likes, Who?
This is so cool, talk about backing up your words with your wallet. Good job.
1 Likes, Who?
(There are plenty of commercial games that don't target consoles. Some won't work as they're suited to complex mouse and keyboard input.)Licensing for closed source games with UPBGE is simple.. : https://upbge.org/docs/latest/manual/manual/release/licensing.html#standalone-games and https://www.blender.org/support/faq/#gnu-gpl-2... until you want to do console ports, in which case you have to rebuild the entire thing in a different engine. The GPL is, unfortunately, a nonstarter for commercial game development because of the markets it cuts you off from.
There's nothing in GPLv2 that UPBGE and Blender uses that prevents it being run on closed source operating systems - GPL code can link to closed operating system libraries which is why GPL is fine on Windows: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#SystemLibraryException . GPLv3 contains an anti-Tivo-isation clause which can go against consoles, but this does not apply to GPLv2.
Things are fine from the GPLv2 side.
If Microsoft and Sony choose to try to prevent GPLv2 software from going on consoles, while allowing completely closed source software that gives others no rights or access to modify, on the basis they can't stand downstream people having the freedom to modify software like a comic book evil character, then that's a matter for the trade regulatory bodies that apply consumer law : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_protection#Consumer_law .
Plenty of art and animation running on consoles were created in Blender, and UPBGE is often used to quickly visualise game levels within Blender (like: [1] or [2] ) before being ported to a closed source game engine. It's absurd if Blender/UPBGE aren't allowed on consoles, so it's a regulatory issue to be fixed.
For example, apparently the console SDK's are distributed only under certain conditions [Edit: i.e. console manufacturers seem to not hand out SDKs with system APIs etc. to people they don't like based on willingness to agree to arbitrary conditions], governed by a non-disclosure agreement. If they don't give the SDKs to people using GPL licenses, when actually it's none of their business who owns the code and who else has rights to it, then it is a matter for the trade regulatory authorities [to stop discrimination based on software philosophy].
Once trade regulatory problems are resolved GPLv2 and Blender/UPBGE will be fine.
Last edited by Nim8 on 20 September 2023 at 4:14 pm UTC
2 Likes, Who?
So far, not that happy with my choice. I can't figure out how to pause, I can't figure out how to access a main/options menu, and I really want to do that because all the UI elements, like what appears to be an inventory thing with like a sword and an axe and stuff, plus stuff some guy has said to my character, are so bloody tiny I can't make them out, and I really hope there are some options that can fix that.Wow, talk about putting their wallet were their mouth is. Just bought Terraria to show my support for this kind of attitude.Hm. Yeah, I've been sort of thinking I'm in the mood for a Terraria kind of game. Maybe it's time.
Edited to add: Bought it.
(also can't figure out how to save the game, also would like to remap the wasd it uses because it also uses the mouse and I prefer to mouse lefthanded)
Maybe if I can figure out how to make it let me play the game, it will be a good game.
1 Likes, Who?
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