Rui Carmo
I was going to finish work and watch the Apple event, but then I came across this and am now watching the game development community taking up pitchforks and torches in droves (HN thread).
The notion of charging for a runtime fee for installs is, IMHO, spectacularly misguided in this day and age, and even though it sort of aligns with what Unreal Engine does, the thresholds are all wonky (and not at all advantageous for Unity, especially since it looks like it is going to apply to legacy installs).
Also, the Adobe-like license enforcement is going to make things really iffy: “Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity.”
Update: News has come to light that Unity will waive the fees if developers switch to its ad service, which makes things look even worse (and legally grey).
The fact that this plays right into the hands of the Godot community-driven model feels like a reenactment of what drove people from the commercial 3D modeling market to Blender, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it had exactly the same effect–turning Godot into an even more popular tool and boosting its ecosystem.
Update, 10 days later: A fair chunk of this was walked back, with the runtime fee deferred to the next Unity LTS release. However, given the massive community outcry and indie studio statements regarding migration to other engines–and a massive uptick of interest in Godot, this feels like a net loss for them trust-wise.