Unity Engine - Up For Sale?

CNet has news the popular Unity Engine that is used in vast amount of indie games, and kickstarters is up for sale. Is this good, or bad news what do you all think?

Unity is part of a growing trend in the technology industry, aimed at making it easier to create code. The company doesn't just let game developers make programs easier and faster. It also offers developers a way to produce apps for many different platforms without a lot of extra hassle. That's key since many mobile game makers are made up of small companies with just a handful of employees and limited resources.

Game industry executives say it's probably too soon for developers to worry about Unity's future. But if a sale happens, it will spur debate about where Unity is headed and whether it can remain the most popular engine for making mobile games.

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More information.

The link points to a completely different story. But it's hard to see how this can be good news.

Link is fixed it was my mistake.

As far as I'm concerned, Unity is a pretty lackluster engine anyway. I'm tired of games looking like they came out of 2002 but ramping up modern day gpu temperatures into the 70 centigrade range. If a sale does occur, one can hope a better, more optimized architecture will take its place. Or, hell, perhaps even Unity itself will get overhauled by their new owner to not be so godawful.

If I had the money, I'd buy it and destroy it.

Those are really idiotic remarks.
Most of the games made with Unity Engine are running fluently and only some greedy and obscene developers publish bad optimized and unfinished games, and that can trash this excellent piece of software?

griniaris said:

Those are really idiotic remarks.
Most of the games made with Unity Engine are running fluently and only some greedy and obscene developers publish bad optimized and unfinished games, and that can trash this excellent piece of software?

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We're talking about the real world, though

Here is the real world, you'd be surprised

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_Engine_games

Depends on who buys it.

A friend of mine who uses GameMaker noted how much that engine has improved since it was sold - far beyond the capabilities of the original developer (who focused mainly on its use as an academic tool - a way to learn game development). Sure - some people with complain. They do. Loudly. The free version of GameMaker is a bit more stripped down than it used to be (at least in comparison to the premium versions - which are SIGNIFICANTLY better than they once were).

Whoever buys Unity is going to have to be able to fight off encroachment from the GameMaker side on the low / 2D end, and serious encroachment from Unreal on the high end. Unity's got a huge install base, and huge capabilities, but it's got a squeeze coming.

griniaris said:

Those are really idiotic remarks.
Most of the games made with Unity Engine are running fluently and only some greedy and obscene developers publish bad optimized and unfinished games, and that can trash this excellent piece of software?

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I must just have bad luck because every Unity Engine game I've played ran like crap. I highly doubt those games are like that because the developer was greedy and obscene.

Bundyo said:

Here is the real world, you'd be surprised

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_Engine_games

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Why would I be surprised? I have a very high-end rig, and I've played pretty much every single big Unity title there is. We're talking at least ten high-profile games.

They've ALL had subpar performance considering what's going on and my hardware. The only real exception would be Endless Legend, where the developers have done a lot to avoid the pitfalls of the engine.

Now, it's a fine engine for amateur developers who just want to create something quickly - just as long as you don't care about great performance.

Games like Shadowrun and Wasteland 2 only work because combat is in turn-based - and even on a high-end rig, you can see the games struggling on occasion. If those games went with real-time action stuff - they'd bog down severely.

Now that the Unreal engine has gotten much less restrictive in terms of licensing, I think some of the more experienced developers should seriously consider that one instead. It might take more work for the game logic, but the visual engine seems to be a hell of a lot more optimised.

I understand why developers use Unity, but I still cringe every time it is mentioned. It must be very cost effective to use, but performance wise it is an absolute dog. Even something like MMX got significant slow downs in some of the over world areas.

And that's why, even with a reduced budget, they have gone to Unreal engine for H7 instead.

Unity seems to be accesible and good for not demanding games, but yes performance doesn't seem to be their strong side.

Thank goodness for unity. And not because it is a great engine. Thank goodness its changed the way engines are licensed and the result is that more developers can access a professional engine and that more games are being made.

JDR13 said:

I must just have bad luck because every Unity Engine game I've played ran like crap. I highly doubt those games are like that because the developer was greedy and obscene.

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You are really in bad luck if you haven't play games like Rochard, Cognition etc.

Unity is for developers who value their time. There are several totally free engines out there like Torque, Ogre or Irrlicht but saving $1500 x # of devs is better than fighting low end usability. It also has a asset store to buy stock items. Crytek and Unreal might be somewhat cheap to license relatively now they almost require a full team to use. So Unity is that sweat spot in between currently.

Anyway, lock in your license now if you are a dev as I wouldn't be surprised by either it increasing in price or being shut down depending on the buyer.

I'm not a big fan of Unity. Most games I have that use it either perform poorly for what the game is or have some kind of quirks or UI suckiness. Some of it is probably on the devs, but since it's a common theme thru the majority of Unity games, some of it is likely Unity too.

It doesn't matter to me if Unity is the greatest thing ever in games I don't freakin' play.

Unity is a mixed blessing. It lets smaller devs and/or devs who can't afford a more expensive engine or who don't have time/money to create their own engine get a lot of cool games made.

But tradeoff is lower overall tech for the most part both due to the simplicity involved and the cross platform element (when the engine has to work on inferior platforms it pulls it down).

I personally don't care about mobile anything, and don't care about getting games running on inferior fringe operating systems. I care about high quality PC gaming.

I have to say I cringe every time I heard Unity is the engine for a game because I pretty much know something will be off about it, either performance or UI or SOMETHING.

Anyways. Doubt much changes if it does get sold and maybe changes would be for the better. Doubt price goes up because that would just defeat the purpose. If quality goes up that would be good.

I think it might not be too bad if Google picked up Unity because they'd be likely to maintain its industry-wide appeal. But a company like EA or Microsoft would probably kill its value, one way or another.

Unity shouldn't be to blame here. It's those that use it. Its strength is also its weakness. You can prototype something incredibly easy, but that means there's a ton of wannabe developers that just throw in a bunch of assets and call it a game. None of them know the first thing about draw calls, batching, the complexities of different types of lighting, or really anything about optimization. Just because someone can download Backtrack, doesn't mean theyre WiFi hackers. Unity is not the greatest solution to every problem, but it's still a great solution for some. Let's see how some upcoming games do, Shroud, Pillars and Ghost of a Tale.

Caddy said:

Unity shouldn't be to blame here. It's those that use it. Its strength is also its weakness. You can prototype something incredibly easy, but that means there's a ton of wannabe developers that just throw in a bunch of assets and call it a game.

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Pretty much. Not hiring as many experienced/expensive programmers, and/or not having them spend as much time on optimization, means people can get a game out (1) quicker, (2) cheaper, and/or (3) with more money spent on actual gameplay or content. So, yeah, maybe the framerate isn't as good or a few people with ancient computers can't run it, but it may mean we get a better game in more important areas. Which is fine with me. Don't get why anyone would want it to be harder to make games.