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Despite not having quite the visual pedigree of the Unreal Engine or CryEngine series of developmental tools, Unity is a world wide respected piece of software that has been used by millions to create thousands of games. However, according to the company's CEO John Riccitiello, the fact that so many people have used it to make their first game, as well as prototypes and other entry level experiences, it's given Unity a bit of an amateur tag.
Of course many great commercial games have been made with Unity, from Cities Skylines, to Kerbal Space Program to Hearthstone; it's an immensely powerful piece of kit. But that doesn't mean that's how everyone perceives it.
“We require free users to employ a Unity splash screen [in their games] but professional users are not required to show off the fact their game was made using our engine,” said Riccitiello in an interview with The Guardian. “Maybe in terms of how the engine is perceived we ought to do that the other way around.”
This screen often accompanies early Oculus Rift demos
As it stands, the Unity logo regularly appears alongside bedroom projects by single, first time developers that show up on Greenlight simply using assets purchased from the Unity store, so much of the world has been seen before. In comparison, as Riccitiello points out, the big name games don't have the watermark, so people aren't aware that they're built using the exact same tools.
It puts Unity in a difficult position, since it wants to provide these sorts of tools for developers to make use of, and indeed starting out in game development can be a lot easier if initially at least, you don't feel you have to focus on every aspect of the game's creation. But that doesn't mean they're ready for a commercial experience.
To prevent a crack down on its own users though, Riccitiello would rather see those running other platforms like Steam police things a little better.
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KitGuru Says: Perhaps, much like the Unreal engine, Unity should offer its services for free to everyone, without a splash screen, only taking a cut when the game is sold. What do you guys think?
They should follow unreals route i think. A huge amount of Unity users switched over when that went free.
I’ll be honest. The amount of crap that people pump out via unity3D makes the entire engine look like crap. There more crap build on top of unity3D then another one Engine, including Unreal etc
I can only think about maybe 5 games at most that dose unity3D justice, Cites : Skylines, The long Dark are 2 that come to the top of my head..
Biggest issue I come across over unity3D is the fact it can’t do physics or networking worth shit… uggg its just bad.
I totally agree. I started using unity years ago and only now I submitted my game to greenlight. Its not special, its early development, but to keep on working, I need feedback http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=474424671
If anything, you want a splashscreen on full, professionally created games rather than on ugly little hobbyist creations. People using the engine badly and slapping Unity’s name all over it makes the engine look inherently bad, whilst all the glorious, professional creations give Unity no credit.
Unity only have themselves to blame. Contant huge rewrites of the software have led to scrappy wrong documentation everywhere on the net. Do a google search for how to do something in unity and you will find hundreds of different ways using different libraries and classes that have since been superseded and now throw errors in unitys compiler. There is no definitive set of classes that you can interface with that you can have confidence that wont change in the next 6 months causing you to rewrite your entire game. This makes me look at unity as an amateur project, and seriously upgrading their customer and brand relationship pushing a more unified and professional image in this area would help them no end. If I go on to code games for a living, I will be choosing unreal or crytek purely because of this impression I have gotten early on.