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.
Linux_Rocks Sep 19, 2023
Quoting: beguiSomething tells me Ethan Lee is going to be super busy
or take a weeklong vacation for once.
Quoting: M@GOidWow, 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
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.
QuoteThe 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
Linux_Rocks Sep 19, 2023
ElectricPrism Sep 19, 2023
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.
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