Terraria developer bashes Unity, donates $200k to open source alternatives
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https://twitter.com/Terraria_Logic/status/1704227519027651016?t=Kq5QYNJjkAGWO6D5CEv27Q&s=19
https://twitter.com/Terraria_Logic/status/1704227519027651016?t=Kq5QYNJjkAGWO6D5CEv27Q&s=19
Considering FNA and Godot, $100K is gonna do wonders to both projects, specially with the additional $1K
They might even better afford to have developers working full-time at the engines, or deal with stuff like infrastructure, licensing, hosting and other costs
It won’t change Godot.
Epic donated $250,000 in 2020, Kefir donated $120,000 in 2021. Godot Devs started W4 games and raised $8.5m of which their goal is to support Godots growth.
$100,000 is nice and will allow them to continue but it’s not “league changing” money or anything for them.
It's crazy how successful they've been off just making and selling a good indie game. They're still doing free updates AND they can afford a $200k donation?
Terraria is like the anti-modern game. They absolutely refuse to evilly monetize their game at all. The playerbase is almost on their knees, begging them to move on from Terraria and make something else (not because Terraria is bad, but they've been at it for over a decade!) and they continue to churn out updates. The fanbase voted for a set of features to appear in Terraria 2, which they then turned around and scrapped, and added it as an update to Terraria. And all their updates are always free. And can't forget about their amazing mod support.
And redigit is just, like, the man.
The playerbase is almost on their knees, begging them to move on from Terraria and make something else (not because Terraria is bad, but they’ve been at it for over a decade!) and they continue to churn out updates
dont worry, im sure update 1.4.5 will be the final final final final final final final update, and then they will move on.
I love how they keep saying they will have a final update, and then they just keep updating it regardless. It's really impressive.
Also their game is literally $10 USD on Steam, compared to all the $70 ones that have been coming out lately.
Tbf it takes a significantly smaller team to develop a 2d platforming game like terraria. The overhead for art and design is mush simpler too than something like a Cyberpunk 2077
Nooo you don’t understand they’re just a small indie dev with less than 20 employees. They don’t have a bunch middle managers to pay exorbitant salaries to, or a team of underpaid artists churning out assets they can sell to players at basically infinite markup! They don’t need a whole team of programmers to build and update an in game cash shop, or a battlepass, or pointlessly integrate the product with blockchains, AI, and metaverse. They don’t have to call an all hands mandatory overtime crunch to fix all the bugs they had at release because it was shoved out the door early to juice some quarterly financials report.
If you were smart you’d realize that had game prices had kept up with inflation they would have been $70 like 10 years ago! No this doesn’t mean they were massively overcharging 10 years ago, the cost of production changed but only in a way that justified raising the price (which they never did until recently, out of generosity), never lowering it.
I don't game at all, but I now feel like buying the game just to show my support to these awesome devs.
Same. I do game, just games like Terraria aren't my taste, but I'll still buy the game on my accounts to show my support to them.
They came out around peak indie craze, 14 or so years ago. I believe they were just behind Minecraft in terms of success. Total lifetime sales for their game have it outselling Skyrim.
It's time to dust off Terraria and go on a nice run again.
Edit: I will, of course, be first in line to buy any new games they release. They donated $100k to a FOSS project I use and love, thus to me as well indirectly, I can give some of my disposable income back to then.
Out of curiosity can you define "no boring intrusive story"? Because personally I'm big on storylines, so if they nail that part then that takes the game to a whole other level
I tried playing Terraria but gave up after an hour or so, precisely because I expected at least some kind of story and there wasn't. It was also very awkward to control with a mouse and keyboard, I think it's really supposed to be played with a controller. I might try it again now that I've got one, and less expectations
In some games storyline matters, in others... not so much. Games with a storyline trend to be less replayable in my experience. One exception I can think of is This War of Mine, that game is really depressing.
You know they're legit when my nephew just built a PC and is excited to finally play terraria.
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Re-Logic
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.
Godot Logo FNA Logo
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.
What an incredibly kind move by the Terraria developers. This is part of why Terraria is awesome!
Re-Logic have always been my favorite group of devs in the industry. This is yet another item to add to my long list of reasons for that.
Putting their money where their mouth is.
This reminds me of a time when the blender fund was opened and at some point a bunch of companies jumped to donate money (steam, epic, google, AMD...) this was way back when 2.8 was getting in shape. Years later we saw the fruits of that labor with the 3.x series bringing nice improvements and refactors that were done over the course of many months and years
We probably won't see a huge push in godot's quality in what's left of this year, but maybe in 2024 and later
Really good of them. I wish some others developers do the same, it'd be really great for the open source engines.
I love the part where they're like " we don't even use unity except for some random assets", just a nice fuck you cherry on top.
200k is a false number: They donated $100k and 1k per month to Godot.
Edit: yeah - didn’t actually read the whole article. You guys were right.
There’s 2 game engines listed. Both for $100k and $1k/month.
So the $200k is correct and a further $1k/month on top of that.
And another 100k and 1k monthly to the FNA engine. I wasn't aware of that engine until today, but it looks like I have a couple of games that run on it.
Well, I like playing video games and this will affect the video games I like playing.
I'm not a game developer, but if Unity got everyone to roll over with that TOS change I'm sure that devs would use this as a new justification to increase costs for games or higher subscription fees for services like Gamepass.
It's important to be invested and informed in the things that matter to you.
Yeah, but through like two to three layers of abstraction. I like beer, but I don't give a shit about the contractual details of malt distribution. Games are still gonna be made, this is just something for people to project their impotent rage at.
I'm not a game dev but I'm a dev so I can easily see how this can affect them.
If you're uninterested that's fine, no need to insult those that do.
Well shit. Some people actually care about the people who produce whatever it is you consume. It's crazy, I know. If the people who are growing the malt for my beer, or processing it, or delivering it, or whatever... are getting screwed over I would be equally concerned. But by all means, continue to be a consumer pacman just gobbling up whatever it is that falls in front of your face. That's what the world is trying to mold you into anyway. Why fight it?
Oh please get over yourself. If you consume games you are already actively supporting the screwing over of people in like five different industries the world over. This price hike in one piece of software is just your "thing" to get righteously mad about this week.
I just set myself a timer for a month to remind me to ask you about your opinions on this topic. I'm sure you'll still be heavily invested by then.
We live in a society. Everything affects the consumer, doesn't mean I have to care about everything. Distribution of malt is your problem, not mine.
Wow you're so detached and cool bro... like you just don't care.
Wow bro that's so cool of you how you don't care about things, can I suck you off or do you not care about that either
Except it becomes your problem if beer suddenly starts getting priced higher and higher and higher over time to the point where you can't afford it anymore?
If the contractual details of malt distribution were going to affect the quality of beers you were getting then you absolutely would care. Unity's pay scheme will lead to studios shutting down if there isn't pushback. Studios switching to a different engine like Godot will make their games feel different for better or for worse and efforts to help fund these alternate engines will help tip the scale towards that being "for better".
But most importantly of all, this is a company using toxic and predatory practices. Regardless of the industry (yes, malt distributors too), if we don't push back against toxic business practices, then companies in many different industries will see avenues they can take advantage of to make extra money. These ideas don't hang in isolation. If Unity's scheme works, other businesses will learn from it. This is the reality of capitalism. Whatever methods can turn a profit without generating negative attention will be employed. It's in the hands of consumers, competing businesses, and the government to keep those toxic practices in check. I mean, why the fuck are we on Lemmy? Ultimately Reddit's actions are not going to affect the majority of users on their platform. Most of us came here to protest shitty business practices.
I'm here because I'm permad on reddit. And reddit will be fine, we can stop pretending that a bunch of Linux nerds jumping ship makes a difference.
I like coffee, but I prefer to source my beans from places I can trust. People lost trust in Unity so they ain’t gonna use the engine anymore. Blown out of proportion? Yeah maybe, but I agree with the core concept
Yeah but YOU consume the beans. The only difference the engine makes is the logo on startup.
...what. He just made an analogy about not consuming unethical beans. That's literally his point. So no, he does not consume the beans.
This is not a great comparison tbh. Unity are not distributing a resource, you could rather compare them to a company building the motor for the car you use. Even as the end customer, their product is clearly perceivable and distinguishable from competitors' products. You don't need to build cars to have an opinion on Unity motors and the ethics of their business. And if they fuck every contractor over and abuse their power in the market to retroactively charge additional fees for every time someone starts a car with their motor in it, of course you would be directly hit with the consequences as a customer. Therefore, it is justified to not leave this discussion to car manufacturers, but to 1. let unity motors know that they can go fuck themselves and 2. to support more ethical motor manufacturers in the future by buying cars built with them.
I read today that about half the games are made with unity, imagine if most of those pulled the games you purchased so it can’t be installed again. That is a huge hit to gaming.
7 Days to Die, Escape from Tarkov, Wasteland 2, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Cities: Skylines, Dungeons 3, Cult of the Lamb, Endless Space 1 and 2, Outerwilds,
Well they obviously won't. It's always the same with these things, they either come to terms, or the producers will pay up, or the reports are overblown or whatever. Just like reddit didn't lose half its userbase after the API switch, or Youtube doesn't crumble because everyone throws a fit when they add another commercial slot and swears to move to "pipetube" or whatever (lol). But thank god we're all really really invested in something that is essentially corporate politics.
It's not corporate politics if it's going to have an effect on the end users. You'd be surprised at how big of an impact this will have, if they don't backpedal this and cancel it entirely, and even if they do it could still an impact.
Yeah? Even ignoring how the results of this will determine how companies try this is the future (because they WILL), this shit is like classical Greek drama, watching someone fall because of their hubris.