Hacker News Reader

Comment by adanto6840 | Hacker News Reader

I get why Epic probably funds this, and I love to think how great Godot could be in another year or so (and how they could surpass Unity, etc). What I don't really understand, though: Why wouldn't Unity just implement this now, too?!

It's open-source & MIT-licensed; if it's better than Unity's GI -- and it IS better, because Unity does not currently have ANY realtime-GI solution in their latest versions (they stopped licensing Enlighten for current/2020.x+ versions) -- so why wouldn't Unity just implement this, too?

There's nothing that appears to be stopping them from doing so, other than pride perhaps; part of me really, really hope that they'll do exactly that, though I've yet to dive into the code to see how viable it may or may not be given Unity's current SRP situation(s).

View on HN

It can't be that easy. Given Godot's completely different architecture, I presume that porting this feature over would require an almost complete rewrite.

> I get why Epic probably funds this

Is it just to fuck over Unity?

You're getting downvoted, but Epic is extremely anti-competitive. This is likely the reason.

Epic's store offers a cheaper alternative to a near monopoly on digital game distribution on PC. How are they anti-competitive?

  The enemy (Godot) of my enemy (Unity) is my friend.

Is essentially what this thread is talking about.

At this point (ie. Epic sitting on truck loads of cash), lost revenue for Epic Games competitors is almost as good as revenue for Epic Games. That is what people are talking about when they say anti-competitive. It's another form of a price squeeze.

So Unity is suffering because a rich competitor is funding more competition? Having used Unity and Godot I don't think the former needs to sweat this modest sharing of the wealth with the latter.

If anything well regulated markets might tax oversized competitors to fund upstarts to maintain a balanced, competitive landscape. There's room for more than just two game-making tools.

People like being able to buy their games in a single online store. They don't like having 5 different stores just to play their collection of games.

Therefore, Epic's exclusivity deals rub some people the wrong way.

The friction of having another store has a cost. I still got my copy of Borderlands 3 on Steam sale, I didn't even know it was initially an Epic exclusive. I think I'm not alone.

Epic paid obscene amounts of money to studios to force them come to their store and force exclusivity on them.

They basically exploited their Fortnite money-making machine to try to become a monopoly on PC.

How is that not anti-competitive?

For reference, Steam has never forced exclusivity on partners to distribute their games.

As for cheaper, Epic didn't become they couldn't charge the same. As simple as that.

How is obscene amounts of money forcing anything?

This sounds good for developers all around, and a minor inconvenience for gamers who are free to buy from as many stores as they like on PC. Yet could benefit gamers long term as it motivates Steam to be more competitive.

Anti competitive would be buying up competing battle royale franchises to reduce consumer choice.

> How is obscene amounts of money forcing anything?

Indie game studios have a very hard time surviving.

Giving them instantaneous access to a huge pile of money that allows them to declare success even before releasing a project is something most people cannot reject.

> Anti competitive would be buying up competing battle royale franchises to reduce consumer choice.

That is what they are doing but with game stores. They are effectively buying everything to dry the rest of the stores, reducing other stores choice of customers.

> This sounds good for developers all around

Not really. Devs get money, but they lose the product. Indie devs are not independent anymore. Etc.

If Epic had success building the monopoly, everyone would have suffered, not just devs.

What monopoly? There is a monopoly today; it's called Steam. It has an immense userbase and plenty of user loyalty; it's not going anywhere. If Epic succeeds, there will be two major stores rather than one.

Steam isn't a monopoly though. They don't force exclusivity on their games and many Steam games can be purchased elsewhere (like on GOG).

Network effects make Steam a practical monopoly. And it's probably no coincidence it has lower rates for AAA studios since Epic has gained a foothold in the market.

Yeah, but that is a monopoly for the publishers dealing with Steam, not for gamers which don't care as long as it is not broken.

Like Walmart or Amazon, the problem is for devs, not customers.

>Steam isn't a monopoly though

Are you a pc gamer? Because if you are, I don't understand how you can't see Steam as a massive monopoly.

Perhaps you don't because they have done almost all GOOD with their monopoly power. Offline mode, library sharing, massive sales, etc.. but they are quite a monopoly.

If 99% of my library is on Steam, why should I bother buying somewhere else? It's just an inconvenience to me. Ok I can buy off GOG and have no DRM.... how does that really help me? I can already play it on steam with no problems, my friends can play the shared game on steam, I don't have to worry about multiple platforms etc..

Anyway- steam is a massive monopoly and we are lucky they use their powers for good!

The statement is from the perspective of the studios, not customers (studios want to sell in every store they can, customers only buy the game once).

Epic does not want to be a major store. They want to be the only store.

That is why they have been forcing exclusivity. That is the point: they are anticompetitive.

Steam has plenty of money and users. It also had little serious competition before Epic. While I'm a fan of well regulated markets, I don't think punishing Epic would benefit anyone except Steam shareholders.

Except gamers do not care about Steam being a monopoly (they are just a distributor and does not set prices), but would really be hurt if Epic and exclusivity of titles starts to take hold.

Intel vs AMD in the past is a typical example on how money + exclusive deal could almost kill off a competitor.

Then Intel would enjoy a monopoly and instead of being stuck at Skylake for 4 years, we may have been stuck at Core 2 for 10 years.

Or maybe ARM, MIPS, Power or Itanium (!) would have had better opportunities to catch up with x86 and would be the dominant CPU.

Who knows, but AMD dying would have not benefited anyone who was stuck on x86.

Except Intel was the behemoth in the case. Here Steam is the one with marketshare, mindshare, and no serious competition before Epic. These exclusives are also usually time limited. This isn't Facebook buying whole studios and locking up content indefinitely.

Basically yes. Godot’s main userbase (hobbyists/small indie developers) aligns more with Unity than Unreal. Although Unreal has also appealed to some indie devs recently, it is still a heavy, bulky, monstrous beast of an engine that appeals more to AAA gamedevs and high-profile indiedevs.

I've been following the discussion in Twitter with Tim Sweeney and Godot, about the MegaGrant that Epic gave Godot. Have seen Tim many times commenting about the good progress they have made, before even granting the money.

I've got the picture that Tim actually likes the software, not just because they want to squash their competition. But of course they might have motivation to take users away from Unity, who knows.

In my books, Godot is a really nice engine that will get closer to AAA -engines when the 4.0 release comes out, their open source policy is really nice and you have access to all the source code, which can help a lot while developing your apps, so It's all positive and everyone who wants to develop games or 3D apps will gain from this if they choose to put their time into Godot, not just Unreal.

Surely the current SRP situation is exactly the reason. It's a bit of a mess right now with many basic features missing, like the absence of Ambient Occlusion out-of-the-box with URP.

"Unity does not currently have ANY realtime-GI solution in their latest versions"

Not 100% true; there is ray-traced GI.

I take this back. I tried it. It's completely fucking unusable. Editor crashes every couple of minutes, can't get it to work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com