Not GOG specific, but in general:-
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_use_Unity

I understand my own frustrations with programming quite well the last 25 years; And I see the bigger picture. I also helped someone make their own shaders in UE4 (and that was littered with #ifdef blocks, thankfully function calls and not OOP).

My specialty isn't in making game engines or 3D, it's in making tools processing specific types of data that run at full speed and doesn't have a time-frame to finish. I can't wrap my head around trigonometry so i can't code 3D. These are limitations i know of myself.

But as i have said, i think you vastly underestimate how difficult the scope of a useful game engine; I'm assuming using today's hardware, software, OS, threads, API and other interfaces. If you go super super simple maybe you can do wireframe or solid colors and make something that works, but likely won't build a game around it.

Question: Why doesn't every car manufacturer build his own tires?
Answer: What for? There are good tire manufacturers out there, let's use what they have and don't reinvent the wheel every time.
The same analogy can be used for many other components in the car. Why use standardized ignition coils and not build our own? ...

A game is also a construct of many technologies. There's a reason why we call it software engineering, we build things, more often than not using parts created by others.

There are reason why technology is licenced for games. And these reasons are that not every company can put 300 programmers to work just to create what others already have created.
Unity and UE are a constant development, there are a lot of programmers that develop it and improve it all the time.
Now let's assume that we need the same amount of programmers for every friggin game who are just there to create the same thing over and over again.
And we are not only talking about graphics. Let's talk scripting for a moment, let's build our own typescript or java script engine for every game for all the things happening in the game. Next is positional audio, facial animations, physics ...
The era when a single person could create a complete game without using any foreign resources is over, or better: It was over 50 years ago.Even in the 70s people would use code created by other people.


Just ... no ... in several aspects.

First of all ... you are aware that there are more GOTY games then years, right? That means, that 'GOTY' just means that i's some sort of complete collection, including season pass or similar DLCs. not that it's actually a good game. It usually is, since they managed to sell several DLCs for it, but that's nothing to take for granted.
https://www.giantbomb.com/game-of-the-year-edition/3015-3825/

And no, many games that were released as GOTY use foreign engines.
Usually a game has several engines for different purposes anyway, UE or Unity provide a framework where you have access to a collection of engines, not just one.

There's also https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Unity/

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There are plenty of "games of the year" that use third-party engines. Not to mention, holding up Skyrim as any kind of positive example of writing your own engine is laughable. The engine is probably the worst part of Bethesda's games and they've received mountains of (justifiable) criticism over the years because of their technical deficiencies. From what I've read, Starfield isn't exactly running great either, to the surprise of nobody.

Indeed. It's stunningly ignorant to think that not writing your own game engine means you don't know how to make games. The engine itself is only part of the process for making a game anyway, and there are countless good indie games that would never have been made if the requirement for "knowing how to make a game" was to write the entire thing from scratch, instead of saving potentially thousands of hours by using an existing engine. Heck, let's all go back to using assembly. Or better yet, write the OS from scratch too, because clearly you don't know what you're doing otherwise.

Back to Unity, I do wonder how that will affect multi-platform games if significant numbers of developers drop it, given that one thing it got right was to make publishing to different platforms stupidly easy in most cases. Instead of having to learn all the quirks of every platform yourself, and scatter #ifdefs everywhere, you just program for Unity. No having to bother with Direct3D/Metal/Vulkan/etc. (unless you really need a feature for a specific API and write a custom shader specifically for that). There are significantly fewer Unreal games that have Windows/Mac/Linux versions compared to Unity. Not sure offhand how well Godot handles it, but I see ∆V: Rings of Saturn covers all 3 platforms, and that game gets updated very frequently, so I assume it's not too burdensome.

That is true, Godot is going to se an increase in their user base for sure, but you can't develop more complex titles with Godot. All the AA and AAA devs using Unity so far are going to make the switch to Unreal.

Well, RIP Unity I guess.

Honestly, if one engine is to be dominant, I'm fine with it being Unreal. The only good thing about Epic right now is the engine.

How kind of one of the main competitors to kill itself. At least Unreal's pricing remains very fair and honestly what I would expect. You get it fully featured for free for personal use and small scale projects and only pay royalties from sales if you go large. No "per install" BS and what not.

Not to mention it looks miles better than Unity.

Lol! I hope EPIC pulls the same move when unity devs move to unreal thinking one corporation wouldn't do exactly the same thing the other did when they got the chance.

They would if they were desperate like Unity. But Epic has no reason to do it as the engine is not the sole thing keeping them afloat, unlike Unity. They are drowning in Fortnite money so much they actually plan to operate EGS at a loss until at least 2027.

And it's not like Unreal Engine doesn't make money. 5% from any sale past $1 million is not nothing.

As long as these fees don't apply retroactively every released game should be fine, but damn way to murder your own engine, hopefully the backlash will be *so* brutal that others won't even think of trying the same shit
I wasn't the biggest fan of unity (from a consumer perspective) but this is just nasty

Just read that the dev only has to pay if a certain number of installation was reached and their annual income using that engine surpasses a certain amount, so it might not be all that bad.

OpenGL and DirectX aren't that high a level; you still have to worry about many low-level details, like how data is presented to the shader, to use them. There's no default shaders, and there's a fair amount of boilerplate involved sometimes.

Vulkan (and DirectX 12) are lower level than that, with tons of boilerplate code for simple tasks (note the 1,000 line triangle example here).

Anything that allows you to only worry about the "important" things that you mentioned would have to be higher in level than that, something like a game engine.
There's Ren'Py for all your visual novel making needs.

I've heard that Unity has a lot of features that they stopped really developing, and therefore there's some code rot there. Also, Unity is apparently not really improving over time the way other engines (like Godot) have been.

Godot lets you export to Windows, Mac, Linux, web, Android, and I believe iOS.

Also, Godot's editor is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and (interestingly enough) web.

Aunt Wiki says:

Licensing:
During its first ten years as a product, the paid versions of Unity were sold outright; in 2016, the corporation changed to a subscription model.

Unity has free and paid licensing options.
The free license is for personal use or smaller companies generating less than $100,000 annually, later raised to $200,000, and the subscriptions are based on revenues generated by the games using Unity.

The paid option, Unity Pro, had been required for developers that had over $200,000 in annual revenue, but this also could have been provided for console developers through a Preferred Platform License from the console manufacturer.

The Unity Pro keys would have been part of the other SDK from the console manufacturer that the developer paid for.
In May 2016, Unity released "Unity Plus", a mid-range tier between Personal and Pro that provides tools and benefits oriented towards "first-time commercial developers"

Runtime fee:
On September 12, 2023, Unity announced changes to its licensing model that will take effect January 2024.
Games using the engine will be subject to a "runtime fee", calculated per-installation and charged monthly, if they reach specific revenue and installation thresholds:

for Unity Personal and Plus [...], this will be $200,000 over 12 months and 200,000 installations, with the runtime fee set at 20 cents per-install.

For Pro and enterprise this will be $1,000,000 over 12 months and one million installs, with runtime fee beginning at 15 cents per-install and decreasing with scale, and discounted in territories designated as emerging markets.
Unity states that monetizing the runtime in this manner is required to "[allow] creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement."
++++++++++

That's a lot of necessary revenue, resp. installs.

Edit: attachment.