Introduction

It has been nearly 4 years since I started learning and practicing game development with the Unity game engine. I chose that one because I grew up with playing games that were made with that engine and because it was the most popular at the time. I even did a lot of research before choosing my engine of choice, yet it kept pointing at Unity. So I went for it, with all my passion and dedication to finally learn game development. For the first year, I spent all of my free time watching tutorials and applying my learnings on game projects. I also did the same for a good part of the second year. But as things changed in my life, like becoming an adult and my degrading health, the third and almost fourth year have both seen my game development journey go slower. Despite all the hurtles, my passion still endures.

Dissatisfactions

As I used more the game engine and got to be better at making stuff with it, I would more and more realize that there's some things I want to do that are just not possible to do with it. Sometimes it's because of Unity's own limits, other times it's just a general limit in most game engines. While I do use only Unity for my games, it doesn't stop me from taking interest in other game development solutions. It is by learning about things that other engines can do that I realize more and more that Unity is left behind when it comes to innovations. Especially compared to the Unreal engine. For those reasons and others, I have been feeling for a while that Unity has not been satisfying me as much as I'd want it to.

Unity on Linux

When using GNU/Linux there was one main problem that I encountered which was making it really hard to pursue my game development path: the official Linux port for Unity was very unstable! I installed it in many different ways and on many different Linux distros, yet there was always this constant of Unity not working properly, such as very intense UI glitches, frequent engine crashes and even computer crashes. As for the cherry on top, Linux builds of my games would be often broken and crashing at launch. For comparison, Blender would work flawlessly even when stressed to a max (thanks FOSS) with the worse case scenario being the app not responding. I do understand that it's probably no easy feat to port proprietary software to GNU/Linux, but the Unity team seems to have done such a poor job at it. But hey, might just be me! One thing remains though, it left a sour taste.

Bad Changes

In the last year or so, my game engine of choice, Unity, has gotten some changes that leave to desire. From personal experience first, I have noticed Unity being less stable in the editor than it used to be. But then eventually, controversies about the CEO happened, or at least they got heard louder, which a lot of people hated since the guy did not have a good reputation already. There was also something about the way Unity is funded that changed, I think it had something to do with switching to shareholders. I don't really remember, but I know that at that point I was still just hoping for the best. A couple of other controversies came out throughout the year which made me doubt of the competency of Unity's direction.

The Last Straw

The latest controversy of the company is the worst one that I've heard of so far, it is so distasteful that it feels like it was done in bad faith. Obviously it's unlikely to be the case, but the whole situation does put light on the fact that they cannot be trusted. Changing terms of a past agreement the way they plan to do it is just plain unethical and a breach of the users' trust. Unity doesn't feel like it's made for the users, it feels like it is made for the executives, shareholders and CEO to make as much money as they can, regardless of it hurting the community and the game engine itself.

What's Next

Eventually when problems pile up from a single source, it is a strong sign to find a solution or go the radical way and cut ties completely. In the current state of the Unity game engine, I no longer feel comfortable having it as my only solution to put to life my game ideas. The thought of trying other game engines is becoming more intense and justified as the future of Unity keeps getting darker. As soon as I'm in a proper headspace for it, I'll try other game engines.

PS.: The Ink Remains' remaster persists