Trying to figure out what Epic's incentives are here (contributing to a competitor that doesn't make them money in any roundabout way I can see)
Edit: Here's a weird theory, maybe Epic doesn't see Godot as a competitor to Unreal, but does see it as a competitor to Unity, and hopes it'll spell doom for Unity (which is Unreal's only real competitor)
Godot is no threat at all to Unreal, at the high end of AAA development you really need the dialed-in horsepower of either an in-house engine, or something like Unreal, which has been increasingly consolidating market share over the last decade.
Godot competes squarely with mid-market stuff: Indie, so-called "Triple-I" (high budget """indie""") and AA development, where Unity is the dominant engine. Unity has very little penetration share among the big AAA games.
Godot and other open source engines squeeze Unity from the bottom, and Unreal squeezes it from the top.
Particularly when it comes to 2D games development! Fracturing that space is far more beneficial for Unreal than it is for Unity. Unreal, at least from my understanding, is awful for 2D. I'm playing around with 2D game development in Unity now and it's insanely easy to get started. I think the same goes for Godot where 2D dev work is a first-class citizen.
How long until every tech company pours massive and substantial investment into Godot to turn it into the Blender of AAA games and film? It's almost to the point now.
Amazon will ditch Lumberyard for Godot. They have deep interests in games as a part of their vision. Twitch, Luna, in house game studios, prime gaming, etc.
Apple will absolutely do it. They're building their own metaverse and VR. Although I'd also gamble on them acquiring Epic Games. Apple wants to own the future of content creation.
Google's significant investment in WebGPU is going to make Godot a more attractive platform. Google is indirectly contributing to this.
As Godot gains more and more mindshare and economic activity happening atop it, it will achieve the activation energy required to take on AAA rendering and workflows.
Companies will see Epic as a tax. And the entire world will be submitting patches to Godot. Godot is already spawning an ecosystem of support companies and console SDKs.
That's worryingly close to the same story high-end Unix providers told about Linux. If there is an open source engine that does 99% of what a proprietary engine does, then it's very likely we won't see that proprietary engine last for much longer.
Important to note: the contributions in question are a $250k megagrant. Throwaway money for Epic, but major for the small Godot team.
$250k for good PR and not being viewed as anti-competitive is an exceptional deal when you consider Google is doing the same to the tune of $400 million for Firefox.
Also in the short term Unreal's dominance matters, but in the long term it really doesn't. Epic has spent the absurd levels of Fortnite money trying to establish itself as additional integral layers for developers/creators so that even if Unreal stops generating any revenue it'll be fine.
I.e. people use Godot to get started and "learn" gamedev. Many will stop there and not progress beyond Godot, but some will want more/latest features or want to use a "proper" engine and so move onto Unreal.
The alternative starter-space is Unity, and that is more of a competitor for Unreal since there is a lot of starter materials and tutorials, and unity can make commercial quality stuff (three Unity games that come to mind are Two Point Hospital, the Outer Wilds, and Rust)
Also: Amplitude (the Endless Series, Humankind), mihoyou (Genshin Impact), Developer Digital (Fall Guys, ironically published by Epic Games), Paradox (Cities: Skyline), Kerbal Space Program.
Godot is (becoming) a very good competitor to Unity. Godot pre-4 was not ready for prime time, but Godot 4 is almost there. I'm pleasantly surprised by the leaps-and-bounds they've made over Godot 3/3.5, and Godot 4 has surpassed Unity in a number of areas (though in some cases, they've been assisted by Unity shooting itself in the foot, such as with Unity's non-existent networking functionality and chaotic approach to render pipeline development).
However, Godot 4 still has a ways to go before it's competitive with Unity in the AA space (meaning, for example, games by studios like Paradox, Amplitude, or miHoYo). Mostly, the asset pipeline still needs a great deal of work. Hopefully the Epic investment will let them reach parity (or exceed) Unity on that front.
Tim Sweeney has been a big proponent of open platforms for over a decade. See also: the whole Apple vs Epic thing which was definitely not a good business decision at all. I think it’s possible this isn’t really about “incentives” and is just about sticking to certain principles.
I don't think that's him sticking to a "certain principles", he's just doing whatever it takes to make people think Epic is the "good guy", as long as he's doing the opposite of the competitors.
For example, take a look into his take about blockchain games. At first he was against NFT games [1], then after Valve banned NFT games, Gabe Newell talked about it [2], Tim suddenly was OK with it [3]?
He fought with Apple because he thought he could win it, so his Fortnite could avoid 30% transaction fee. They clearly had a lot of discussion, strategies before suing Apple and thought it was a good idea, they could have won big. It's not a bad business decision if he can win, but they didn't so it looked bad.
Hey, more people installing the Epic Games Launcher is probably the win. Platform neutrality, or its specter, probably wins for us.
It’d be much more offensive to our sensibilities if it were like the situation on iOS where Amazon is available, but “no way will we let you buy a Kindle book unless you reopen the store in a web browser.”
(Because yeah… apple sells all the books I want to read, in their very cool bookstore that I haven’t seen in more than half a decade.)
At any rate. Anyone serious about godot is probably compiling it or getting the official release artifacts. This seems like something Epic probably couldn’t justify turning down as window dressing for the unreal store. I’m for it anyway.
Edit: more optimistically, if the GUI framework were slightly easier to use, Godot is a very attractive tools development platform. Maybe that factors in.
Perhaps for end-user tooling, like map editors. Obviously Epic is motivated to keep devs inside Unreal for as many internal dev tasks as are feasible.
This is about them distributing the engine itself on the store (and apparently even contributing to it), not just allowing games made with the engine on the store. Presumably you could already do that
Every time I open Unity these days it I hate it a little bit more. Everytimy I open Godot I love it a little bit more. The bloat vs the transparency. The frustration vs speed of development. Godots catch phrase should be: Godot gets out of your way! Unity may have democratised game dev but Godot made it fun again.
Godot and Blender share the same space I feel in regards to getting a tremendous amount done within such a contested space, all without falling prey to the usual open source traps. Exceptional projects
I feel the same way. I haven't actually completed a full game with Godot but it was a joy to use when playing around with it and making some simple proof of concepts.
Ever noticed that Epic does a ``good deed'' right about when they get a bad PR hit?
Call me cynical, but I'm sure that Epic would really like for everybody to talk about something else than the quarter of a billion dollar penalty they just got from the FTC for exploiting children etc.
The very same Epic that would really, really like to be able to bypass any kind of app store safeguards and review processes, no matter how flawed and self-serving those processes might be.
Yep, it does seem like it's time for a few warm fuzzy PR events to get people's attention diverted.
It's a little hilarious you consider Godot launching on the Epic store getting anywhere close to enough press that the FTC fines get. The fines have hit every news org, including airtime on CNN and MSNBC. I don't see them covering this bit of news about Godot launching on EGS.
Actually now that we mention it, they got huge bad press regarding the FTC situation twice. They got a lot of bad press in December too for the first FTC fine.
So I'm not entirely sure your cynicism is logical here, Epic isn't doing anything ATM to counter bad press, certainly not to the point an effective PR team would.
When we're talking about big companies, never turn your cynic mode off. They shouldn't be judged on human terms, but rather on psychopath/sociopath terms.
Every action they take is based purely on utility and they would never add a competitor, no matter how insignificant, to their store unless they judge it to be good for PR.
> Starting today, you can choose to use EGS to download the engine and keep it up to date with every release
Curious the level at which they auto-patch and update the engine. Most games that I'm aware of are very sensitive to their engine version, and don't update major or minor versions completely freely.
I wonder if they patch a base installation of some kind (think: a core project selector / launcher) and then individual projects contain a copy of the engine at time of creation?
While it will inevitable be larger in the future, Godot's current executable size is so small something like this could actually work.
At the very least I would want something like Unity Hub which can manage both projects and engine/editor version installations. Being locked into whatever version of Godot Epic Store considers to be "current" sounds like a nightmare.
yea a big selling point to me using godot is downloading the binary of the exact version im building with and stashing it away. i dont want even minor vers to be automatically applied and dont really see the gain here other than exposure
Is this just Epic Games looking at Godot like "hmmm yeah, definitely not even close to being a threat to UE" hah. I suppose they're right, with how buggy 4.0 still is.
No this is Godot publishing on the store because they recently released self publishing tools on the store. EGS already has non-game apps like Spotify and Opera available so they're really open to whatever that isn't adult rated or abusive.
Oh how I wish “Godot as a Library” was a thing in the same way that Unity may be embedded into another project. Dealing with Unity as our AR runtime has not been great.
Readit News
Edit: Here's a weird theory, maybe Epic doesn't see Godot as a competitor to Unreal, but does see it as a competitor to Unity, and hopes it'll spell doom for Unity (which is Unreal's only real competitor)
Godot competes squarely with mid-market stuff: Indie, so-called "Triple-I" (high budget """indie""") and AA development, where Unity is the dominant engine. Unity has very little penetration share among the big AAA games.
Godot and other open source engines squeeze Unity from the bottom, and Unreal squeezes it from the top.
Godot doesn't compete with Unreal. It competes with their largest commercial competitor: Unity.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And when they want to "upgrade", Unreal is right there, and they already have an Epic account.
Amazon will ditch Lumberyard for Godot. They have deep interests in games as a part of their vision. Twitch, Luna, in house game studios, prime gaming, etc.
Apple will absolutely do it. They're building their own metaverse and VR. Although I'd also gamble on them acquiring Epic Games. Apple wants to own the future of content creation.
Google's significant investment in WebGPU is going to make Godot a more attractive platform. Google is indirectly contributing to this.
As Godot gains more and more mindshare and economic activity happening atop it, it will achieve the activation energy required to take on AAA rendering and workflows.
Companies will see Epic as a tax. And the entire world will be submitting patches to Godot. Godot is already spawning an ecosystem of support companies and console SDKs.
$250k for good PR and not being viewed as anti-competitive is an exceptional deal when you consider Google is doing the same to the tune of $400 million for Firefox.
Also in the short term Unreal's dominance matters, but in the long term it really doesn't. Epic has spent the absurd levels of Fortnite money trying to establish itself as additional integral layers for developers/creators so that even if Unreal stops generating any revenue it'll be fine.
I.e. people use Godot to get started and "learn" gamedev. Many will stop there and not progress beyond Godot, but some will want more/latest features or want to use a "proper" engine and so move onto Unreal.
The alternative starter-space is Unity, and that is more of a competitor for Unreal since there is a lot of starter materials and tutorials, and unity can make commercial quality stuff (three Unity games that come to mind are Two Point Hospital, the Outer Wilds, and Rust)
However, Godot 4 still has a ways to go before it's competitive with Unity in the AA space (meaning, for example, games by studios like Paradox, Amplitude, or miHoYo). Mostly, the asset pipeline still needs a great deal of work. Hopefully the Epic investment will let them reach parity (or exceed) Unity on that front.
> introduce 3rd party exclusivity on PC
I don't think that's him sticking to a "certain principles", he's just doing whatever it takes to make people think Epic is the "good guy", as long as he's doing the opposite of the competitors.
For example, take a look into his take about blockchain games. At first he was against NFT games [1], then after Valve banned NFT games, Gabe Newell talked about it [2], Tim suddenly was OK with it [3]?
He fought with Apple because he thought he could win it, so his Fortnite could avoid 30% transaction fee. They clearly had a lot of discussion, strategies before suing Apple and thought it was a good idea, they could have won big. It's not a bad business decision if he can win, but they didn't so it looked bad.
[1]: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/144251952287594906...
[2]: https://www.ign.com/articles/gabe-newell-nft-steam
[3]: https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/144914631712989593...
It’d be much more offensive to our sensibilities if it were like the situation on iOS where Amazon is available, but “no way will we let you buy a Kindle book unless you reopen the store in a web browser.”
(Because yeah… apple sells all the books I want to read, in their very cool bookstore that I haven’t seen in more than half a decade.)
At any rate. Anyone serious about godot is probably compiling it or getting the official release artifacts. This seems like something Epic probably couldn’t justify turning down as window dressing for the unreal store. I’m for it anyway.
Edit: more optimistically, if the GUI framework were slightly easier to use, Godot is a very attractive tools development platform. Maybe that factors in.
Perhaps for end-user tooling, like map editors. Obviously Epic is motivated to keep devs inside Unreal for as many internal dev tasks as are feasible.
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Call me cynical, but I'm sure that Epic would really like for everybody to talk about something else than the quarter of a billion dollar penalty they just got from the FTC for exploiting children etc.
The very same Epic that would really, really like to be able to bypass any kind of app store safeguards and review processes, no matter how flawed and self-serving those processes might be.
Yep, it does seem like it's time for a few warm fuzzy PR events to get people's attention diverted.
/cynic mode off
Actually now that we mention it, they got huge bad press regarding the FTC situation twice. They got a lot of bad press in December too for the first FTC fine.
So I'm not entirely sure your cynicism is logical here, Epic isn't doing anything ATM to counter bad press, certainly not to the point an effective PR team would.
Every action they take is based purely on utility and they would never add a competitor, no matter how insignificant, to their store unless they judge it to be good for PR.
Curious the level at which they auto-patch and update the engine. Most games that I'm aware of are very sensitive to their engine version, and don't update major or minor versions completely freely.
At the very least I would want something like Unity Hub which can manage both projects and engine/editor version installations. Being locked into whatever version of Godot Epic Store considers to be "current" sounds like a nightmare.
Simple case of direct download fixed it. Godot doesn’t even need an installer.
Godot is also available on Itch and Steam.
Unreal is pretty notoriously buggy as well
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