fire7side They mainly do that to escape paying taxes. They are basically a successful company. At some point they will have to start showing a profit. As far as being down 70 percent this year, that's not much different than most tech companies. It's a very bad year. Worst in over a decade for drop in stock prices.

Aye, this is the correct assessment, for companies like this they operate in heavy losses while they perceive themselves to still be in their growth phase. Which they will remain in until their investors finally give them a hard kick to finally start producing them their profits(edit: by that I mean the dividends). In other words, if such a kick hasn't happened yet and their investors are still bankrolling them then it must be that their investors still agree with the assessment that they have growth potential.

    Unity came out on June 6, 2005. So that is over 17 years ago. If their business model isn't sustainable now, it will never be. I mean, how many game developers are there in the world, and how many of them are already using Unity? The market is pretty much saturated at this point. The only thing they can do is increase their revenue stream without losing users, which means increasing the cost of the engine significantly, or doing a revshare like Unreal, or providing additional services that developers pay for (but they have already done this, and it hasn't made money). So I doubt they will ever turn a profit. At some point the investors will say enough, and Unity will raise the prices, and then everyone leaves for Unreal or Godot or whatever.

      And yes, I think the whole tech industry is a bubble and these "valuations" are imaginary.

      I mostly have respect for it, though it's not very good for newbie devs who are just trying to make a player jump. Perhaps they've gotten better in the teaching department, but I learned most of my stuff from when they offered a really expensive set of courses for free due to Covid. Honestly, it did not have to be so expensive, everything in there seemed like more basic aspects- no inventory systems or anything, just basics with physics, game designing, and game mathematics. I learned as much stuff in as I felt I needed to get started, then left before it got expensive again. Awful? Maybe, but otherwise I would've still been struggling and given no help- if it wasn't for the academy. Heck, that was a lifesaver, until Unity had some major problems. Now I wish I spent my years studying elsewhere.

      I'm hoping the switch from Unity to Godot is smooth, as I have hit a few speed bumps. I'm still looking at very basic stuff and working on fully mastering them, but in Unity, I was already researching inventory systems, XP and skill systems, advanced enemy AI... I've lost a lot by making the switch, but hopefully it's for the better.

      It's sort of why I stress about open world concepts- a lot of my game worlds would've been considered as such, s it was so easy! Unity just automatically set it up for the user. It deactivated things that were not within a given range.

      cybereality Unity came out on June 6, 2005. So that is over 17 years ago.

      But they only went public in September 18, 2020.

      cybereality At some point the investors will say enough, and Unity will raise the prices, and then everyone leaves for Unreal or Godot or whatever.

      Perhaps. But that's speculation.

            Megalomaniak Perhaps. But that's speculation.

            Correct. I don't have a crystal ball. But it seems like a reasonable guess to me.

              The Software Freedom Conservancy, an organization I have a lot of respect for, is advising people to leave github. I've already pulled my code from github for personal reasons, but if I hadn't this would make me sit up and take notice. Fortunately, I doubt if my minetest code helped their click-to-program service much. 🙂

              I'm not sure it's that big of a deal, to be honest. I use private 3rd party Git servers for my work, I just Github to share publicly. It's the biggest site for open source, and everyone is on it. Same reason it's unlikely another social network will beat Facebook anytime soon or ever.

              Also, Github is not Git. Git is completely free and open source. You could easily run a Git server on a second computer in your apartment and have it setup in 1 hour. Or get a VPS server for a few dollars a month and create your own cloud. Or just use any other 3rd party site, that is not owned by Microsoft, like I do.

              I use Github for free. I have never paid them anything and never will. So, if anything, me using their service is wasting Microsoft's money. I'm okay with that.

              The problem they have with it is that microsloth's automated programming service essentially copied itself from projects that are licensed as free software. It's reasonable to question whether copying pieces of free projects for closed projects is ethical, even if the end-"programmer" isn't aware that they're being copied.

              It's clearly a violation of the license, just like you can't steal people's images and use it for machine learning. Though the image thing I believe stood up in court. No one has tried the AI programming yet, at least not on this level, so it has not been legally tested. But if the FSF does a lawsuit, they will surely win.

              That said, most of my code is with permissive licenses, and I would be okay with anyone learning from it, people or machines. I mostly put the license to avoid legal liability, otherwise I would do public domain. I really don't care what anyone does with my code.

              My code isn't worth being preserved for the future, but neither is MS's. Leaving as soon as I find the time. Don't need their services anyway. But what do firms do that really put the inventive stuff there, like Unreal (well, not free), Blender, ... ?

              I personally never understood at all why people flock to social networks. Problem for software like Godot is, they don't have much of a choice if they want to bee heard and seen. Alternatives are rare, and setting up own servers has become out of fashion, and possibly out of financial reach.

              What I find so pathetic about this is the secrecy MS keeps about their products (which are obviously pretty holey but it is hard to know to which extent in comparison to open source software) but the freshness which which they violate other licenses, with the usual tactics of the dishonest to discredit the honest to justify the own violations. The mindset spans from business right up to genocide.

              (personal opinion)

                Are there any good links for noobs in networking/marketing anyone can think of?

                Hehe, haven't touched Windows since 7. I ran a Windows computer until last September, only because drivers for my telescope stuff were not available for Linux. Since Windows was out of updates it ran in relative quiet. Now that all is under lava that cheese is eaten.

                Yeah, that's the right question. If you want to make money, where to go. Apple lets you pay, which leads in the wrong direction, Google spies out your gut flora, Steam isn't much better, can't judge GOG, only that their Linux scripts need overworking because they use blanks in filenames rolleyes.

                Unity has a shop for such things, Godot seems to develop one, which are all good ideas. Maybe some very basic QA would be necessary. For my part the question is moot as long as I don't have much to show off. The usual problem, much fuzz in the head but not the time and power to realize ;-) :

                Unrelated: the emojis don't work for me, i only see A,B,C, ... (Firefox 91.10) ?

                  Pixophir Blender, ... ?

                  Blender Foundation does what it's always done. It stays self sufficient and hosts it's own services. It's also a non-profit in a wealthy developed country tbf and it's probably got access to decent grants and what not.

                  cybereality Honestly, I think Windows 11 is really DOS with a skin.

                  Always has been. 🔫🧑‍🚀

                  Pixophir Unrelated: the emojis don't work for me, i only see A,B,C, ... (Firefox 91.10) ?

                  you need to type something like :astro to have the autocomplete find you something. or try :smil

                        Programming is like tightening in a screw: after tight comes off :-/

                        I'm sorry to change be so far off topic, but does anyone happen to carve wood and happens to be near the Pacific Northwest?

                        My first attempt at an actual plugin. Seems gif is too big. Basically it's a basic terrain generator where a Bézier curve defines the shape. Pretty much only useful for simple platforms or basic level block out and is pretty jank, but might interest some.

                        https://github.com/Bimbam360/Curve_Terrain