Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
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Cool. Native Linux support from a big name like Unity likely means they see Linux as a real player in the market.
Now if only Unreal would do the same, but we'll have to wait for Tim Sweeny to get his head out of his ass first.
That said, fuck unity for trying to pull some bullshit with their licensing before the deserved shitstorm. Godot all the way. I hope they expand on the 3D capabilities.
Fun story, I know some of the engineers who worked on that exact Unity item. They were trying to make a very flexible billing system, so that it could be configured by business/marketing at a more personal level, and built it in a way that hopefully it would make it easier on users of Unity. For engineers here, think a purely config/DB driven way to bill, so if they wanted to say apply discounts or anything it would be a flip of an admin panel. It was a rules engine that you had any number of data points that you could use. From an engineering standpoint, it was a noble goal.
However, they handed it over to business, and yup, you guessed it, the MBAs and marketers saw it and immediately went to worst case scenarios. Engineers had no idea it'd be used that way. Installation was one of many metrics that billing could be tied to but it was never designed to. It didn't matter. The rest of the story is known. Those in charge took something that was meant to ease things for small developers and decided to use it against them. Unity lost all credibility, and my friends, the ones who helped build it, were all laid off.
Moral of the story. If you're an engineer, never go above and beyond. Never build more than what you are required to. You may have the best intentions, but there are people who will only see the worst ways to use what you build.
Moral of the story. If you're an engineer, ~~never go above and beyond.~~ stop working for fucking corpos, otherwise you don't get to act surprised when corpos do corpo things.
Moral of the story. If you're an engineer then expect enshitification through all available means.
Fascinating insight. I do wonder how many of those mba/marketers were influential vs.... fucking John Riccitello.
Riccitello smelled money and no matter how many people explained in small words and crayon diagrams it would kill them, he pursued it anyway.
They will, but they have a lot fewer people and they need to deal with slop PRs now. I do not envy them.
I strongly suspect over the long term a smaller team is going to get more shipped than what unity was flailing at - for all the things that get delivered how much is implemented accessibly (ecs etc) or rolled back because it never worked? For example, their URP consolidation on the unity side.
Also, would predict Bastiaan is going to deliver more XR stuff on Godot than Unity will manage in the next few years as well.
The slop contributor problem is real but my money is on Godot long term.
Now if only Unreal would do the same
UE hat excellent Linux support. They need it for VFX production because that world runs on RHEL. Epic and their licensors just don't care for Linux games.
Both UE and Unity have supported both native Linux builds and developing on Linux for as long as I can remember. Has something changed recently? It's been a couple years since I've done this.
I've been doing my VRChat avatars (Unity 2019 and now 2023) on Linux for years. Not sure what changes here as Unity Editor had a Linux native version for quite some time, as well as being able to make Linux native games
we'll have to wait for Tim Sweeny to get his head out of his ass first.
You'll be waiting a while.
I'm literally using unreal on Linux daily my dude. And you can see export on Linux package from the windows editor too.
Btw Tencent has a 40%(and other companies) in Epic Games so its not just Tim Sweeney.
He's explicitly been against Linux adoption. Tencent has not made any aggressive comments against Linux that I'm aware of, but it you know of any, do share!
i think i also seen Tencent not allow Linux users to play their Video Games(through Riot games)
I hope both engines rot.
Works for me, but I'd also like to see more Linux adoption, and Unity offering native support might mean businesses will shift away from Microsoft.
I agree.
Great for users but still a bad company. Use Godot
I think Unity is pretty much dead. I don't know who would trust them after pay-per-install drama
I wish that was the case. Half the game dev scene in my area I use still use it and give all sorts of excuses about why.
Godot isn't there yet.
I understand every game is different but this is a very funny sentiment with the Slay the Spire 2 launch
godot really isn’t there yet for every kind of game
Yes I can imagine that to be true
Unity games always seem to run my hardware excessively hot and hard. I think I would rather see new games built with more efficient engines.
I agree. But also the more Linux support we can get the better. Makes Linux more legitimate by the day.
Yeah, even if you don't like Unity this is a good thing. It will encourage new engines to also include better Linux compatibility.
I think it comes down to developer skill more than the engine itself.
There are a few indie games that run great and you wouldn't even have known they used Unity until you looked for it. The Hollow Knight games and Ori games are well-known examples that even manage to run on the 2014-era pile of underpowered crap that is the Nintendo Switch. Even some 3D games like Gunfire Reborn or Risk of Rain 2 (before Gearbox took over) run well on older hardware.
Shitty devs with better engines can still produce horrible, unoptimized games. More alternatives to Unity are great, but we also need devs who aren't pushing out half-baked slop.
I would rather see Video games (even Proprietary) be built with more open source engines.
Or custom engines.
Middleware like FMOD is okay.
Havok(only in Source its okay)
Bink(only if its the first version of Bink Video since FFMPEG can easily decode it)
I really like how slay the spire 2, one of steams biggest launches ever, is made in Godot.
The best part is Slay the Spire 2 started development as a Unity project, but the devs switched to Godot in response to that Unity runtime fee fiasco a few years ago. Unity lost out on any royalties from one of the biggest indie games ever and Godot got a ton of visibility because of their idiocy.
Oh wow I didnt know they switched because of that. Thats amazing! I've already got like 20h in the EA release, the game is fantastic.
Edit: the game is even featured on their homepage in the hero section!
Why is Havok only okay in Source?
Because I think any game in Source with Havok, you dont pay any money since 2021 and i dont think Microsoft cares since its old too.
Agreed. I have a love-hate with it. Love it makes some games possible. Performance can leave much to be desired. Perhaps it eases development.
The overhead is fine and not noticeable in most games. It allows smaller dev teams to make much more ambitious games which I love.
Closed source pile of trash.
Really hyped to see Linux getting some attention. So, Epic and Adobe are the one's that are still not in linux?
Regardless of the quality of these companies and their products, it's really important for them to exist here so people can even consider Linux as a viable os. Once they get onto linux it's easier to switch to better foss alternatives. Better than nothing.
For a second I forgot that Riccitiello is now out, (RE: The "runtime fee" controversy) because every time I see the word "Unity" I have a gut reaction of nonstop expletives.
Didn't they cancel it?
They did, and they effectively kicked his ass out, BUT that doesn't strip the memory from my mind. He wasn't alone in the idea.
Hell nah.
(Just saying hell nah cause Unity)
I hate how:
Most video games uses it and causing a near Monopoly. (Alleged i think)
Poor optimization (alleged)
Owns a spyware company (ironsouce)
Unity doesn't have nearly the share that Unreal Engine does. It's a big engine, but not that big.
Cool, but Unity is slowly dying.
I personally switched to Godot when Unity started being greedy piggies, fucking over small developers. So happy i made the change. It is actually kind of mind-blowing how much better Godot is.