Now that Unity has involuntarily promoted the switch to another engine for many developers, or at least the exploration of such a possible switch, there are some activities where other engines, Godot in particular, are getting a lot of money via donations.
I can’t imagine that so far there have been many developers using Flax that have made $250,000 in revenue in a quarter. I’m really very happy to be wrong here, of course.
We all know game engines have to be virtually free to start with since 2015 at the latest, due to Unreal’s new licensing policy at that time to which Unity had to react at that time, which ultimately led in part to the current disaster.
This business model can only work with a really large number of users, advertising and thus sufficient capital, because among the many free users, there will always be only a relatively small proportion of users who become so successful that they have to pay. The larger the company, the more users are needed. So the goal must be to keep such a company as small, flexible and effective as possible with a low financial burden. I remember a company that went exactly the opposite way and now wants runtime fees.
Ultimately, this decision to offer the game engines for free in the entry is first good for the developers but ultimately bad for the game engine market, which like any other business needs fair competition, as this is in the interest of the customers, in other words, us.
Right now, we developers want one thing above all else: a good selection of game engines that are well maintained and prevent a dominant monopoly or duopoly like Unity/Unreal. S
It’s not uncommon to crowdfund the launch of commercial projects as well. Just look at games.
Since this is in all of our interest, even if Flax is commercially oriented, I am sure that many developers are willing to donate just for this goal and without any other consideration as so often offered in different tiers on crowdfunding platforms. so that this game engine also stands on safe feet and can evolve quickly in these important times.
There are some developers who worry that Flax sort of stands or falls with the main developer and therefore see this as a major risk in switching to Flax. Of course, anyone can accidentally run in front of a bus at any time. In this respect, this is indeed a thought that also occurred to me. Perhaps such a crowdfunding could help Flax to develop faster into a small but mighty team, much like Unity in the 2000s.
And thus perhaps faster form of company in which continued existence is possible even after the founder has left one day. A team from which someone can take over the leadership even in a tragic emergency and the engine code is inherited by this team.
Yes, that’s crazy, but after this Unity disaster you MUST think about such things before you put many years into gaining experience with a new engine again.
After in the thread on the Unity forum I found my own concerns raised by others again, I realized that there is an urgent need for Flax to build that trust in some way, that we have some security when we start using Flax. Because Unity in particular has destroyed trust, so it’s important that we can see a long-term strategy where we don’t have to worry about problems unrelated to the engine itself. Something which, and it was also said so in the Unity forum, is an advantage of FOSS engines like Godot.
Patreon is quickly set up, has many users and a high acceptance. Hardly any effort, great benefit for us all.
