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As an update to the ongoing saga between Improbable and Unity in regards to SpatialOS, Epic Games have now jumped in to take advantage of it. To be clear, I don't consider myself biased in any way towards any game engine, especially as I am not a game developer.

As a quick overview of what happened:

- Improbable put out a blog post, claiming Unity overnight blocked SpatialOS and made Unity out to be a real bad company. Improbable then open source their Unity GDK.

- Unity made their own response, mentioning that they told Improbable a year ago about the issues. Let's be real here, revoking the Unity licenses of SpatialOS wouldn't have been a quickly-made decision. Unity have also mentioned repeatedly now about making their TOS (terms of service) a lot clearer.

- Epic Games and Improbable team up to help developers switch game engines.

To assist developers who are left in limbo by the new engine and service incompatibilities that were introduced today, Epic Games and Improbable are together establishing a US $25,000,000 combined fund to help developers transition to more open engines, services, and ecosystems.  This funding will come from a variety of sources including Unreal Dev Grants, Improbable developer assistance funds, and Epic Games store funding. 

See the full Epic Games blog post here.

I can't help this feeling that Improbable and Epic Games somehow planned this, it feels a little off. To secure a partnership with Epic for rather a lot of money and so quickly, feels like a pretty big PR stunt. Frankly, I feel bad for the folks at Unity as it seems like they've been played here.

Unity does have a lot of issues (especially often on Linux) but this whole situation feels like a made-up farce to make Unity out to be worse than it is. Their terms of service have been pretty poor though, Unity certainly aren't angels and haven't helped themselves.

Again though, this only highlights some of the dangers of using proprietary game engines for your projects. I don't consider myself a zealot in any way towards absolutely preferring open source game engines, especially when closed source alternatives can do a lot of things better, but it should be ringing some alarms bells for developers as a reminder of how they're not really in control.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial, Misc
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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Faattori Jan 11, 2019
Sputnik_tr_02 Jan 11, 2019
Epic is playing dirty right from the beginning with their store. I have avoided commenting about Epic when the news about their store appeared here because I did not want to sound like a Valve fan boy but it should be clear for anyone now that even if their store were to suppor Linux there is nothing will benefit the end user here. What they are doing (Exclusive titles and so on) is utter disgusting IMHO.
scaine Jan 11, 2019
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Since Unity do go to some lengths to support Linux, while Epic pay the barest of lip service, I know which engine I'd rather "wins" here. Plus, Tim Sweeney - urgh. Constantly flapping his gums about Microsoft not playing nice... and then they pull this stunt.

Not that Unity are angels, as the article notes. But still.
tonR Jan 11, 2019
Ahh, thanks again Tnct. Now I found another better way to sorting out whose developers not worth my support. You know, the best voting paper is my banknotes.
ageres Jan 11, 2019
So, Epic Games added SpatialOS to this list: https://twitter.com/flibitijibibo/status/1079575301485723648
cRaZy-bisCuiT Jan 11, 2019
Whats the point? Unity fools their customers with their new licenses. Now someone takes advantage of that... What's the problem?

Maybe I just don't get it because my English sucks...!?


Last edited by cRaZy-bisCuiT on 11 January 2019 at 12:40 pm UTC
kuhpunkt Jan 11, 2019
Oh yeah, this stinks.
rapakiv Jan 11, 2019
When one's eyes are bigger than one's stomach.

I personally don't understand all this thing about fortnite, I personally consider it a not that good of a game to have so many player base. But when a new thing arrives and the fashion trends move to another place seems like epic will have a shallow grave.
[email protected] Jan 11, 2019
Guys.

It's called the Chinese revolution.
x_wing Jan 11, 2019
Quoting: Sputnik_tr_02Epic is playing dirty right from the beginning with their store. I have avoided commenting about Epic when the news about their store appeared here because I did not want to sound like a Valve fan boy but it should be clear for anyone now that even if their store were to suppor Linux there is nothing will benefit the end user here. What they are doing (Exclusive titles and so on) is utter disgusting IMHO.

From the very beginning they've been always creating store features for publishers/game devs, which most of them were basically the removal of user features. It's quite clear that epic is playing hard to take over the market with their engine.

From Valve side, I think that the best answer for Epic would be a Half Life 3... just saying.

By the way, I don't think that an open source engine would have make any difference with the current license situation. From my point of view, even if Unity was open source they could have block the SpatialOS as they did with their license modification.
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