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No love lost: AppLovin helpfully releases tool to switch from Unity to Godot or Unreal
(www.pocketgamer.biz)
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Not a chance, and definitely not time soon.
There are certain indicators for enshittification, and Epic (like Valve) doesn't meet any of them.
Now, you may not like Epic for some reason, but they are currently a very stable, reliable, and trustworthy company that is focused on sustaining their business through dedication to quality and reputation. Personally, I respect & trust them every bit as much as I respect Valve.
Yeah... Tim Sweeny hasn't been kind to Linux like Gabe has, but Sweeny has really pushed for increasing developer margins, breaking down monopolizes, etc.
Ultimately, competition is good... even if competition does result in some discomfort from having two major PC game stores instead of one.
Would be great if one of the stores weren't utter shit, didn't work on Linux, and didn't hoard exclusivity deals with game developers.
It's truly a struggle clicking icon number 14 on my desktop instead of icon number 15
According to https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/64901-80, there's over 100 investors in Epic, and of course there is Tencent holding a 40% share.
But those investors are not much of an issue either, because you forgot one important point in your list: Epic is swimming in money (and Unreal is just a side business for them).
I'm not saying it's going to happen. Still there's a chance of stupid COP shits happening when compared to open source.
It's a company, they can just say "fuck it, pay more". It would be weird, self destructive and illogical, but they can do it (like unity did it too.)
The thing is, this could change at any time. The problem with enshittification is that it spreads. A company that's doing great work today could be bought out by corporate profiteers and leeched of its actual value at any point in the future. We've had plenty of companies that started out with a vision and a set of strong principles who've been reduced to predatory business practices that are bad for everyone. You can't assume that because a company seems to have integrity now, that integrity will remain.
Remember Elon Musk 15 years ago? Wasn't quite the same, was it?
To me, sitting in a position of getting started in game development, that makes me want to sink my time and effort into an engine that I know can't be enshittified because it can't be bought out. I want to know that in a few years I'm not going to completely scrub every asset and mechanic that I make for the engine because somebody's pulled some Darth Vader shit.
OSS is not a panacea, especially when there are upstream dependencies. Even things you think are safe can be compromised or enshittified. It happens all the time. The important thing is to take a close look at the indicators.
Right now, as far as I'm concerned, Godot and UE are both very safe bets, depends on your project and business needs. Epic's license is not conducive to retroactive shenanigans the way Unity's was. Epic clearly invests heavily in fostering customer trust.
Unreal is safe now, but there are no guarantees under capitalism. A FOSS license does guarantee that enshittification won't be a factor because it literally can't become the exclusive property of some company with a greedy executive board. Unreal doesn't have that protection, Godot does.
Could Godot be compromised some how? Sure. Can it be enshittified? Not really.