Should you use Unity 6 to develop your Game?

Unity 6 is slated for 2024 this year and given everything that's happened with all the controversy and everything surrounding the company and the engine itself this video serves as a refresher as to the new features improvements and where we stand with the runtime fee so far I also want to discuss whether any of these changes they're introducing mitigate the controversies that they have built up and while that's heavily subject Ive we'll get to that later in the video so let's get down to Brass tax what is the finalized runtime model at the point of this video the runtime fee is only considered for Games built using the new version of unity Unity 6 Unity personal will remain free with no runtime accured with Games built on that license and the splash screen requirement has been terminated yes God the unity Pro license threshold has been increased from $100,000 to $200,000 and is not subject to any runtime fee keep in mind you do have to pay for the pro license and so are technically paying a fee of some kind but that's for the license and not at all for the runtime so only games that earn $1 million over 12 months and 1 million initial engagements are subject to the new runtime Fe of which you can calculate if you're even legible for that in the runtime fee calculator that I've put in the description again like I've said before it is important to remember that if you are reaching this level your game's doing very well uh and so are you uh but also it's not just the runtime fee that you'd be paying you'd also be paying for the Pro or Enterprise license that the whichever one is eligible for you the phrase initial engagement little little bit vague uh so Unity have defined it as the moment that a distinct end user successfully and legitimately acquires downloads or engages with a game powered by the unity runtime for the first time in a distribution Channel essentially if an end user engages with your game or product uniquely at any point whether it's to download install whatever not reinstalls it's important to remember this doesn't C reinstallations keep in mind that here it does say distribution Channel if you don't know what that means essentially if you buy the game on Steam and then buy the game on Playstation or Xbox then it's subject to individual runtime fees uh they're not all collapse into one thing and only considered for one of them cuz it's one person each of these instances are considered reinstalls or not buying it from different distribution channels is thanks to the whole terms Fiasco we now have terms linked directly to the version of unity you're using so if you're using 2022 uh you'll be subject to the terms of that version six you're the subject to the terms of that version they they have promised or committed that they will not be retroactively changing the terms of previous versions to benefit them which they sort of in the direction of doing if not we going to do um they've already covered that that they're going to not do that anymore it's happened before just be cautiously optimistic so you've realized you're now in a position where your game is subject to the runtime fee what does that mean well games subject to the runtime fee are charged at 2.5% Revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of people engaging with your game each month this is your choice voice and it's self-reported and you'll build the lesser amount between the two in the sense of how does unity help you report these things it's not 100% clear they say they have some proprietary model of calculating like how users engaged with their games and stuff like that I don't know what that means I don't think anyone really knows what that means until it's fully out Unity 6 isn't even out yet so we won't know until it starts happening essentially so to clarify you're either paying nothing brilliant you're either paying a license fee Unity Pro or Enterprise or you're paying a license fee Unity or Enterprise and the runtime fee so it's either one of these three um statistically a lot of people will be in that first one paying nothing again you can see what that would look like by going to the unity fee calculator that they've created it does say it's in beta which I'm not quite sure what that means I sort of feel like that's a little bit to uh cover their own backs who knows but if it's anything like the preview packages I'm sure it'll come out in the next 10 years but please check out the details yourself I've left uh links in the description for you to look over all the important links that you need regarding the runtime fee things could change between now and whenever Unity 6 releases so just to be sure depending on how long it is since the video is uploaded you're watching this do your do do your own due diligent I can't say it I've said it so many times you know what I mean and just check the links out now the elephant out the way let's talk about something cool new features first up a new urp template scene to get to grips with the pipeline and its new features the template scenes are great um for checking out how one a team creates certain things in in the in an engine but also the features that they've created are actually implemented and used like officially uh so happy to see this uh there's three template scenes to choose from and they look pretty cool so very excited to check those out when it releases now for what they like to call the big four nobody calls it that I call it that GPU resident drawer GPU occlusion calling spatial temporal postprocessing and AP the resident drawer is an optimization on static batching and mesh instancing essentially moving the CPU bound workload over to the GPU and all the improvements because of that in the unite 2023 keynote in the fantasy Kingdom scene that they were demonstrating we saw a 90% reduction in batches and an increase in fps by 150% GPU aosion cing is similar to resident drawer in the sense of it's moving the workload onto to the GPU and so the CPU and the improvements from that are extremely beneficial to occlusion coling something interesting that they did mention uh in the keynote about using the GPU resident drawer and the occlusion calling so using the GPU resident drawer and GPU occlusion calling together we went from 18 19 frames a second to 44 frames a second and so with both of these together it's almost like having a go fast button for your game objects which is very interesting right uh to to say it that way moving on to spatial temporal Pro processing it's basically a new method of processing postprocessing specifically there's a new upscaler better performance and image consistency again in the unite 2023 keynote fantasy Kingdom scene that they demonstrated STP saw an increased FPS by 76% and dropped the number of pixel work by half in heavy postprocessing performance scenes and the last of the four biggest features in my opinion that I'm super excited for uh this one is my favorite is APV adaptive probe volumes as the name suggests it introduces a volume of which light probes can be dynamically and automatically placed if you ever worked with light probes and unity before you'll know that it's boring it is fiddly there's a lot to it just a bit annoying again in the unite 2023 keynote in the fantasy Kingdom scene again Unity showed off APV handling global illumination at dynamically lighting entities as they moved about the scene without the need to bake beforehand keep in mind it doesn't mean that you don't no longer need to bake Your Light Maps you do if you want to take advantage of the AP the really cool feature of APV which is cross fading or transitioning I should say uh between different light baked light scenarios which is bloody brilliant you can literally now have a baited bait light situation of day night cycles and it's just really cool for different scenarios and it takes a lot of the performance away from having being forced to have real time lights um just to achieve uh a day and night cycle because otherwise you couldn't move the Shadows but with this even the Shadows it's just brilliant it's just this is my favorite uh feature of unity 6 next we move on to the new web GPU back end which allows developers to upload more intricate games onto the web and play from the browser increasing the reach to larger potential player base it can run within a web app context or a browser while introducing rendering features that allow higher Fidelity games to be played than a previously expected now for the features AI I'm not going to waste too much time on this because it's more aib BS while it sounds useful don't get me wrong I'm not entirely sure where I sit with it yet I mean there's a lot of AI stuff that sounds useful but just isn't ethical and I just but anyway here we go Unity centis is an AI game integration which it allows you to put an AI model into your project one of the more interesting examples that they showed off at the keynote was the Sci-Fi robot taxi detective vertical slice thing where the guy was literally just talking into the microphone to the robot cuz he's a detective and all all Noir esque and he he was like I don't suppose you know I don't know why he's a pirate I don't suppose you know where ye detective suspect is going the robot was like I'm going to steal all your art he was the suspect it was him he did it at the keynote they said you can embed AI models in the unity runtime in your game or application enabling enhanced gameplay and other functionality on end user devices they they say that you can use this model to influence gameplay branch and stuff like that all all the keywords all the keywords that anyone's flogging AI will flog um but that's what it is it's a flogging while at the end of this demo they showed the AI buggering off to a different direction because they oh no reroot to sector 66 or something like that and they did it uh it's it's obvious it's a proof of concept it's obvious that that didn't actually happen it's probably not actually affecting the game it's probably just changing it's just changing direction but it's a proof of concept and it could happen but like the amount of work and effort to get that to happen isn't quite clear and unity Muse uh this is unity's actual AI tooling right to help you with your workflow um AI generated content and um chat gpts which is quite interesting since it's literally being force-fed spoons full of unity stuff which I think would be the end of stuck overflow and all the saky answers over there Unity State we're so confident and how we're training our models that we're committing to supporting Muse content in production in the unlikely event of copyright challenges we'll partner to defend you but just something interesting when I was doing a bunch of research for this video in order to give you the most upto-date content um in the chat of the live stream that Unity had on YouTube somebody made a saki comment imagine all the trash games being made with AI Muse right Veronica Belmont stated it's about prototyping games so based on that alone they're seeing it more as a way to prototype games rather than using them 100% in the game that isn't going to happen people will end up using that for their games from this comment alone it appears that the mindset is that you use these for prototyping rather than just ripping and stripping notable improvements other than General improvements that just all over the engine uh there's there's some specific improvements that are I think are worthy to mention um such as the improved rendering technology stack essentially just put simply it's better optimized and allows for more complex and busy scenery a lot of that was showcased in the fantasy Kingdom scene you you'll be using it without even realizing the GPU light mapper is finally production ready which is brilliant it has been in preview for ages but now it's officially supported and available as of uh 202 3.2 which is great to hear cuz now you no longer have to sit there and wait hours for your CPU to wake up something that might be more interesting to quite a few people is the improved multiplayer support and development improvements this was a this was a big section of the keynote they talked about toxicity moderation um authentication Etc all these new little features that they they're introducing to make multiplayer even easier for you toxicity moderation was interesting you can now open multiple instances of the player to test and iterate multiplayer games which is going to be so much easier for those who do having made a multiplayer game ages ago it was a b Lake to do cuz I had to keep building it uh I probably did the wrong way though so fax graph got some much welcomed improvements such as onboarding and people getting uh learning how to use VFX graph H LSL blocks for those who desire to add custom Behavior outside of what is currently natively possible and Shader graph got some improvements to productivity globals UI integration Etc nice features to have right there's also deeper XR device support which is which is interesting from from Unity themselves enhancements for rendering lighting and scaling richer worlds with significant performance Improvement the the word dots has been thrown around for a while in unity it's now fully production ready and being released with unity 6 they've also improved the speed trait integration and added build profiles which is just a brilliant idea and the platform browser with various other improvements two features very useful and of course various miscellaneous improvements now with the actual features of the engine out the way let's talk more about the company uh elephant in the room John recel hello no longer in there interestingly at the keynote Jim Whitehurst the new CEO was there on stage he was the first person there already straight away it was good to see and it was a breath of fresh air compared to when when John was there and in previous youits right it was very white colar very formal like I say breath of fresh air uh straight away already a striking difference in like demeanor genuine intention and interest in the company and the product he's piloting uh which is super important for any company I think they need to have some genuine interest in whatever they're doing uh even more interesting actually is that he's very self-aware he came on and he even said look I I didn't come from gaming but the highlight of my career so far was the opportunity to run an open- Source company called Red Hat uh which if some of you may know is kind of a leader in Linux and I have to say I know there differences but the Linux open source community and the unity Community do have a lot in common it's refreshing to see that like the the this new CEO come on and like with the recent actions of unity in the past they've been doing a lot of things that don't look game focused right more more towards like vid uh like video production and uh special effects and all that good stuff don't get me wrong but it's not it's not what the core user base uses Unity for it game developers use it and he came on and he was talking about making games and that was great that was great to see uh very he's very like-hearted but serious when he needed to be and I think it's a nice striking balance he did mention on stage that he he was looking forward to talking to people actually at the conference and he did do that from from what in some insiders have said in their own videos or on Twitter or when talking about the conference he actually did go around and start talking to people and get the concerns and obviously frustration he did actually joke about the runtime fee like like a like a nice joke not not like a joking at you I've been so inspired with the people I've met so far the passion in this community like it's already better than John ratell because that man single-handedly ruined everything oh go watch a video go watch my video like I I like I can't I can't I'm sorry Unity but that guy ruined it dude like and I I I just hope this is such a fresh breath just like a fresh breath of air like even when John was on the stage it was just awful it was just so rigid and so so look at this dude it's like the difference between like I don't know John and who was the guy on OverWatch 2 that was so passionate I can't remember his name now but yeah that's that's what vibe is giving me another highlight of the conference at the very end of the keynote uh the co-founder of unity uh was there which was very novel and very down toe to be honest and you can feel his passion when he's talking about it which makes sense right he's he's the co-founder now with all that out the way should you jump back into Unity the answer you probably expected like any decision it does depend on you it depends on the needs of your project and whether you personally feel Unity has redeemed itself yourself or one you back everyone's going to be different it's completely subjective and there's no judgment right like you're you're using the engine because you need to use it um or want to use it if you moved to good do you've moved to good do that's fine unreal unreal some random one oo 3D that's gone now it's entirely project dependent and personal feelings based it you it just is the most important thing to consider is how you you feel I could sit here all day and tell you what I think but at the end of the day um it is all down to you Chief the new CEO the improvements uh the fixes implemented as well as new features it might be enough to make you feel comfortable with moving back to the engine it might it might make you feel that like this is a good trajectory this is a good this is a good initial trajectory and you might want to just jump back in and that's fine again like I say there's no judgment it's based on what you need and what you want and sometimes what you have to do right sometimes a Project's so far in production that you just have to keep using the engine whether that's now beg grudgingly or less so is now based on these new these new pieces of information right personally while I do think these are some good changes and a great great sense of initial Direction controversy runtime model BS and AI BS aside I think I am going to hold off just a little bit longer before I even make any real decision about considering Unity again or be it cautiously optimistically but it's safe to say that this has left some some sort of permanent damage to their reputation and people's decisions with people flocking to different engines uh especially after you I don't know pissed off braies Unity with unity 6 really do seem like they're trying to turn a new Leaf they're they're trying to write some wrongs to finally like Implement features and show that they are committed to actually improving the engine and bringing features and stuff that you actually want and need and have been asking for for years it's trying to turn things around let's start to see more practical changes that positively affect devs and the engine only then can I and many other people actually make a decision as I've said the the new changes are a good sign again personally I'm going to spend this time waiting for for Unity to build a bit more of a track record uh a bit more of a positive one God knows they need a they need it I'm going to see if I can uh use any other engines and maybe see if I can break those too Unity itself is a brilliant and highly influential game engine abused and hijacked by a cor POS that didn't really give a they had no attention or care about games the industry developers all the tooling they just were there for the money but it's good to see that that maybe just about while I was editing This brilliant video apparently Unity has announced its laying off 25% of its Workforce or 1,800 jobs which is absolute bollocks it comes after Jim Whitehurst announcing his the whole company reset in November it's not great I mean also it was announced that iron Source Founders were leaving Unity as well so that's good but the 25% of your Workforce getting booted is crazy I don't know if this has anything to do with the over hiring over covid and now this is suddenly just they can't stop laying off people this video is all about whether you should use Unity there's a huge moral component to it like I've been talking about I've just been editing this part about whether you even agree with supporting Unity like I say it's based on what you want to do if you like the engine if you think the new features are going to benefit your project and if you don't even want to move to another another engine it's completely down to you how do you feel let me know in the comments do you are you going to go back to Unity are you going to do what I'm doing wait off a little bit longer just to see what's happening have you already moved uh have you moved and are now considering maybe coming back if the coast is clear who knows let you do so let me um special thanks to patrons for supporting me if you would like to support me and the channel you can do so by heading over to patreon.com dark Dax and pledge as much or as little or Nothing at All at the end of the day I'm glad you even watched if you missed me in the meantime head on over to X where you can hear Rumblings of a Madman or twitch where you can join in on the fun live and the madness never ends like that should be fine this kid's a nobody we don't even know him there's no point he's an unknown Soul he always will be never won't be like just embrace it there's nothing bad about it You're Just a Nobody little nobody living in Africa having a coconut I don't F like I don't what I don't care if you enjoyed the video or even found it useful leave a like and make sure to subscribe for more things games games Dev and all things dark dags now I finish my behavior tree I don't really know what to do with myself that'll [Music] do

Channel: DarkDax

Views: 39,296

Keywords: game dev, game development, darkdax, game developer, unity, unity 6, unity 2024, unity runtime fee, unity runtime, unity ceo, jim whitehurst, unity new features, unity 6 features, should you use unity, should you use unity 6, adaptive probe volumes, gpu resident drawer, gpu occlusion culling, Spatial-Temporal Post-Processing, unity runtime fee explained, runtime fee breakdown, runtime fee explained, should I use unity

Id: 9P1T8lScG_M

Length: 25min 28sec (1528 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 29 2024