I can say, unequivocally, if you’re starting a new game project, do not use Unity. If you started a project 4 months ago, it’s worth switching to something else. Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted.
It’s on developers to sort through these two types of costs, meaning Unity has added a bunch of admin work for us, while making it extremely costly for games like Vampire Survivor to sell their game at the price they do. Vampire Survivor’s edge was their price, now doing something like that is completely unfeasible. Imagine releasing a game for 99 cents under the personal plan, where Steam takes 30% off the top for their platform fee, and then unity takes 20 cents per install, and now you’re making a maximum of 46 cents on the dollar. As a developer who starts a game under the personal plan, because you’re not sure how well it’ll do, you’re punished, astoundingly so, for being a breakout success. Not to mention that sales will now be more costly for developers since Unity is not asking for a percentage, but a flat fee. If I reduce the price of my game, the price unity asks for doesn’t decrease.
To an extent I can apply my knowledge to other engines, sure. I’m working on my third Unreal project currently, and while it’s not like starting from scratch, I’m definitely way slower working with it. It also doesn’t replace Unity completely. It’s great for high-spec 3D stuff, but almost useless for mobile 3D/AR apps, which is a lot of what I do (not making games but mainly industrial interactive 3d applications).
Hey same here, although I’m just getting started in the industry. I’ll look into Unreal soon I guess, been wanting to do that for a while anyways, and maybe also experiment with godot