Agreed. The crux of the matter is that the $8.5mil investment (NOT a donation) is explicitly for the development of W4's products. To assume the investors don't know where their funds are meant to go is incredibly naive, as well as the assumption that any W4 funds would or should be funneled directly to Godot. There's a good chance W4 participates in the teased fundraising effort anyway. W4 does financially support Godot as a sponsor but that's obviously not its main purpose, and it would be better if Godot picked up steam and became less dependent on it.
@@wordsandletter That's a good analogy. I also know other warning signs about Godot that a lot of Godot users are not aware of. For example, Juan has already broken his assurance that Godot will never become a "hybrid" organization. With Godot, W4 Games, and other syndicate companies governed by members of Godot PLC in the same person, it is definitely hybrid now. Those investments seem too good to be true. They may be part of a larger scheme to lure in unsuspecting investors. Notice how Godot leadership carefully cherry-picked venture investors who have expertise in Open Source, those who Juan can fully trust for his scheme and/or knows how to allure them (since Open Source investors are more susceptible to indoctrination).
Investors have no fucking clue what people are doing with their money. Look at Disney. They have been lying their asses off about their losses for years now. The investors are only just noticing what's been really going on and are finally suing Disney. All companies have to do is lie and Investors can only wait until they figure it out for themselves or the lie gets too big to maintain.
@@wordsandletter well then it's on the investors to do their homework on where they're putting their money... if Godot was a scam... going open source seems like a really stupid way to go about scamming people...
@@wordsandletter yes they knew, there were plenty of people telling everyone it was a scam since day 1, cos her claims were against laws of physics, lil bit of a difference with open source soft
I don't understand how people can be so brain dead about the situation, it was laid out clear as day what their intentions were, in multiple places on the website and in videos, yet people still want to flip out over nothing.
@@kmouratidis Most valid criticisms boiled down to, "I saw it, just believe me," and, "You're a cultist," and, "Play my competitive product I created by forking Godot's source code."
I'm a CPA, Corporations really don't work the way that people on twitter think they do. Maybe I should put my hat in the game. Also 8.4M is peanuts in company land.
after reading a handful of their posts on the thread, it was actually frustrating to read both the forum managers posts and some of the responses. Going so far as to target Juan's Linkedin for being barebones and calling it a "nigerian prince" styled profile and having THAT as one of their basis to call Godot a scam? It just discredits them and clearly seems like an over reaction. Godot encompasses much more than just Juan, its a community driven open source engine. Juan doesn't and CAN'T own godot. aka, its drama, even worse its TWITTER drama. ty for your level headed take on all this
This is weird since it's a pretty standard way to make money with a open source project via something like a private consultancy company. If enough code contributors feel the open source project isn't being managed correctly it can just be forked without all the drama and the better managed version will win out.
The real issue is Godot's hypocrisy and broken expectations, not necessarily whether they make money out of it. They have stated that there is no company behind Godot, but you can discover several other companies founded by Godot's leadership, including W4 Games, Lone Wolf Technology, Ramatak Inc., Prehensile Tales B. V., etc. Ask yourself: why would they need to proclaim that Godot has no company behind it and assure users that it's never going to become a hybrid organization when de facto it is hybrid now?
Thanks for breaking down the situation and not choosing to opt for a clickbait title like a lot of other channels are doing right now to capitalize on the drama.
I'm just starting and have no idea what is going on. From the sound of things people are frustrated, because they dont fully understand what is going on either. So thank you for your view on the topic. Godot is licensed under the MIT license,, so worst case, people just fork it and continue development themselves.
Even if the creators of godot take the money and run (which I doubt they will) being an open source project, new developers can just pick up where they left off. One of the perks of FOSS style development. Thanks for putting this out here, I didn't know why the forums were down and this informed me.
It's what I always say. Off course it is worth it to invest my time into learning and building my job around a opensource tool. If it is open source, then it is a tool that belongs to everyone and nobody can take it alway from you.
Recently I was interested in learning about programming in rust, but when I tried to lookup beginner guides I kept finding negative drama videos from rust RU-vidrs about seemingly unimportant issues. But because of these videos, I didn’t really felt comfortable about my decision with learning rust. Clickbait in tech circles is ruining the chance of potential new users to their favorite platforms.
as newcomer branding those people concern as negative drama and dismiss their concern is too hasty, probably just keep silent and learning the language.
Here is what I think, if you let things settle down and simmer in the pot the big picture will present it self. I noticed the OP of the Thread started posting their own Game Engine while calling Godot a Scam, remember there are two sides of each story, sometimes there is more depending on how you look at it from an angle. People MikeCL made a big point in that post thread. People are throwing blame because of bugs, its open source if you have the talent then fork/pull request and contribute. Hell I've messed with Unity and its still has bugs that cross over to newer releases. Biggest downfall for me not using Unity is projects can take long periods of times to open back up and unexpected crashes even on LTS versions. I would like to see Godot become very successful just as Blender had its big turn around
People here complain about the "scam" wording, but the entire "Blender of Game Engines" is a catchphrase to attract new Godot users in the first place, a catchphrase specifically designed by Godot leadership to begin with, for Godot followers to repeat. That doesn't mean it will become one. Wishful thinking does not help if appropriate actions are not taken.
To be frank, the explanatory post by the forum operator comes across as inexperienced. Claiming three whole years of contributing - that is in fact very little time in game dev cycles. Citing tweets at the project founder, holding them personally accountable for bugs or features, misunderstanding corporate structure. It is not just foolish, but illegal, to move funds invested in one corporation to another, but a lot of enthusiasts erroneously wrote articles implying the Godot project raised the investment, so maybe some confusion is warranted. It would be unfortunate if the forum operator just needs the hosting costs for the forum covered (they do mention this cost in the very beginning of their post), and maybe a bit of help. It is okay to ask for such things.
It does sound like a misunderstanding between the person who runs the forums and Juan. I hope the forum owner can find an income stream to keep the forums up.
Ridiculous twitter drama. Thanks for doing an overview, but imo it shouldn't even be a question... the worry on the money being mismanaged is totally unfounded.
Fully agree with all your points, but I'd even like to add one more point: W4 Games as far as I'm aware right now isn't making any money, they're still in their startup phase without a ready-to-market product. And as such donating money as the company would be even more harder/complicated to justify (to investors). Simply donating part of the money to the engine project would actually equal to that potential idea of Juan or Remy driving off into sunset with a new Ferrari. They can't do either. They're legally obliged to not do so. Once the company makes money (i.e. has a product on the market), I can absolutely see the company donating back to the project, even for unrelated things (i.e. as promised, donating money that can fund anything). To anyone still questioning this, I think you can just think it in a different way. The Godot Project is asking for money. If you're currently building a game based on the engine you want to sell later, do you currently feel obligated to donate a four to five digits number to the project, because you might profit off from it in the future? The answer probably isn't an instant and unconditional "yes!" and that's the same situation W4 Games is in right now kind of.
Regardless, you must admit, Juan can no longer have an "Open Source Saint" title that he's been projecting onto the Godot community for the past decade. 🙃
@@ClockworkGearhead Thanks for your suggestion, but it's impossible to sell "Waiting for Blue Robot" which is available for free... Here's an idea for you: film a video exposing me as a former member with a personal vendetta against Juan. Save Godot before it's too late! Become a hero to Juan, and he will reward you generously! 🙃
I know the moderator for the godot forum is upset and closed the forum completely, which is too bad because it was a really good forum with helpful people, but only one person was financing the site and he decided to close it down, which is his right. I hope someone will start a new forum but I know I don't want to do it, and I know it can get expensive. It appears to be down for good, though.
What people need to understand is that 8million, for a startup is barebones. It doesn't go far. Do the math, some premisis and a few staff, and you probably have capital to run for a few years at best. It's not mismanagement. it's just really expensive to run and employ staff while not making money.
Thanks for this video. I am currently investigating using Godot as my engine and had heard the scam accusation and some of the attacks on the engine and the people running it. This helped me feel better. As have a couple of other posts that I've read. While I think it'll be a while before Godot is as fully feature packed as say Unity, I think its current features are very good and also I think it has the road map and the funding to get there. For now I guess everyone is Waiting for Godot to get there... I hope it actually does ;)
Ironically, Unity's new weird licensing terms drove a lot of game developers to Godot and contribute to the Godot Development Fund. The monthly donations went from 25k euros to 50k euros. I think its's safe to expect a faster pace in development soon.
I've been watching your videos for a long while now, and this is the one that made me subscribe. Level-headed, thorough, and clear while also not using click bait to lure us in. I respect that. However, a lot of points that the owner of the thread made are valid, accusations aside. I have recently moved back to unity, because Godot is having way too many growing pains right now. I can't even use it for more than an hour without it crashing since the 4.0 update. Idk if that's because I'm using the Steam version or what, but I got fed up with it. Plus, the documentation for 4.x is bare bones, almost non-existent. For people who know what they are doing, this is a non-issue, but for people like me who use the engine for its accessibility to beginners, it is a barrier that is tough to overcome. Not that it is impossible, but the time I spend trying to understand what a certain undocumented feature does or how to use it could be spent getting actual work done. Do not get me wrong. I believe in Godot. It's just hard for me to recommend it as a mature game engine. I also think that a service like Untiy Learn would be beneficial
"all it needs is people to be enthusiastic about it and wanting to improve it" *This* right here is the problem: they rely on this very fact. For them, it doesn't matter if Godot needs money, because they know any rando will eventually implement what needs implementing in the engine, so the engine, in theory, never needs money to exists and be improved upon. You should never underestimate the power and the significance of the contributor-developers (the people who actually implement the features requested and used by the community), who are starting to see right through this bullshit, and soon there will be no talent left to improve the engine: I implemented the new lighting/tone mapper used in Godot 4 and I also back-ported it to Godot 3 which, we all agree, is a fairly significant contribution. The previous tone mapper used in Godot was the subject of ridicule whenever a discussion about engines was brought up online, and the community was clamoring for a replacement for _years_ . I'm a game industry veteran and I brought it upon myself to go on and implement a next-gen one to give it parity to Unreal Engine 5. The change was lauded by the community, and to this day, this is still one of the PRs with the most reactions of Godot's GitHub. And yet, they did not even have the decency of adding my name to the list of contributors. I understand that they cannot possibly add _every_ single contributor to the list, but according to the rule set, allegedly, they only add contributions that they deem "significant". I reached Rèmi in order to clarify that maybe that was just a mistake and they just forgot, and I was shocked to learn that my message was left on read. I guess that for the board, a brand new, next-gen-looking tone mapper is not a significant enough contribution. Which gets me to the next point: they only add to the list of contributor-members who are close friends with the core board... well, unless you consider just changing the name of a few variables to "min"/"max" a "significant" contribution... Because of this behavior which is antagonistic to the spirit of open-source software development and so egregious that it would make the RedHat project team blush, I just "silently removed" myself from the project to not steer up any drama. I have not contributed since and I won't be contributing to the upstream project anymore. Imagine donating your spare time to work on someone else's project and receiving _nothing_ in return, not even an small acknowledgment in the footnotes of a large list. Now, imagine that the couple of people running said project are receiving MILLIONS, while I donate my time to receive _nothing_ in return. This is why many talents are leaving. They seriously have not implemented per-pixel motion blur yet? My personal, private branch of Godot has that since 2021!
I'm a co-author of Godot Engine, and a former maintainer of it. You may be interested in reading my free book titled "Waiting for Blue Robot". If you'd like to provide your testimony as a contributor, I can add you to the list of other users/contributors who expressed something similar to what you said. However, if you decide not to do this, that's understandable. In either case, you are not alone. Cheers!
@@MrXrayez I would love to have my testimony added! And I''m so sorry to hear that this issue is so prevalent in the Godot community. The elitism of the board drives away the talent required to make Godot succeed.
oh this is very unfortunate, hate to see drama in this community. forum admin if you're reading this, please relax and realize this isn't professional conduct
I get that people are upset that Godot isn’t getting as much attention, since leading W4games takes time and attention. It should be noted that W4games needs that money to pay Nintendo and Sony, so they can port Godot games to their consoles. W4G needs Godot developers to be successful, so it’s entirely in their interest that Godot flourishes.
W4's first big project is rewriting the rendering code into directX because Xbox wont support vulken. Given Reduz the head of W4 and founder of Godot is the only one with intimate knowledge of the renderer, I find it frustrating that starting W4 and rewriting to directX was prioritized at the same time we got loads of promises about Godot 4 features that mostly rely on Reduz because they are the rendering dev. Maybe its just me but, I feel like the render pipeline leaves A lot to be desired(stencil buffers), and the promises of Godot 4 just haven't happened yet. The community is stagnating, the "waiting on Godot" joke is getting A little more than old when the project is simply too slow for even A solo indie dev to just work around its issues and hope their fixed *in A few years* by launch. The thing we need is contributors, and hearing the lead dev is busy elsewhere is not inspiring. Also, why is W4 A private company? I get it has to be A legal entity to allow for licensing proprietary console librarys, but couldn't it have been A non profit that simply passes on the cost of providing the services rather than A for profit entity that will have to include an additional cost to make back the money they promised to investors? Was it so important that we get console capability's right now? In the middle of the move to Godot 4? I should acknowledge that others in this comment section have pointed out that W4 has allowed Reduz to move to A better part of the world and get A better quality of life, and that's A great thing! I am learning Godot specifically because I want to make open source games, and Godot, and by extension Reduz are going to allow me to do exactly that! But that doesn't make "waiting on Godot" any easier.
What I personally didn't like was people criticizing me and calling me brain dead when I asked questions about the whole debacle. Not all of us are on twitter or reddit to understand what it is. So, thanks for actually explaining the situation instead of treating me (and others) like a dumbass for not being in the know.
i think people are also overestimate the amount of funding dev got. 8 million IS NOT a lot of money (especially after taxes) for such thing. They should get much more money than that. We've got such amazing releases in a very short time(worth 8 millions for sure). We should be grateful for that. Being toxic is a bad idea, that harm community and devs. which may slow down or ruin development.
Like $45 billion in Roblox Corporation used to have? By the way, one of Godot's co-founders, Ariel Manzur, is an employee at "The Mirror", the next Roblox. What would you say about it?
I didn't quite understand the Matter : If it's Open Source, that means godot is owning by everyone right ? That's what i read, that i could do anything i want with that program ; it's mine, it would be like i built it, like i am its creator and owner .... Didn't quite understand,
Open source projects are free for anyone to use and change, depending on the license. Godot is not "owned" by the Godot foundation, or anyone else. However, Open source projects will often have a company that supports it, which is what the foundation is for. They have full time developers working on the engine and contributing to it, creating helpful resources, promoting it, etc. If the foundation goes extinct, then the software is still there for everyone to use, but it likely wouldn't get developed nearly as quickly as it is now.
@@yc5117 According to Juan, lead developer of Godot, the engine is owned by its contributors. However, a lot of contributors don't perceive ownership over Godot, ironically. This is not surprising anymore, since Godot is de-facto a hybrid organization now, contributors have little to no power over the project.
One thing: the management of Godot != the community of Godot. When you say they are, a lot of issues can occur, but most important: If Godot turns out to be mismanaged you're essentially saying the entire community mismanaged Godot even though they had no involvement in its management. It is wrong to generalize things to larger groups if the issue is because of specific people. I do agree with the rest of your sentiments. And again, Godot is an open-source software so even if Godot's current management fails the community somehow and stops recieving funding, my hopes are that other more competent developers can pick up the engine and continue to make it a better software.
The community does not hold any decision-making power in Godot. Therefore, if there were ever a significant difference in vision between the community and Godot's leadership, the community would not be able to overthrow the leadership. Instead, the community would need to create a separate version of Godot through a fork. This is the only viable solution in such a scenario.
@@Lambent7 Note: I don't necessarily disagree, but I just wanted to address a common misconception hidden in your original message that way, whether consciously or not. So, let me elaborate further, in case of misunderstanding. In the eyes of the majority of Godot followers, **the possibility of a fork does not exist**. While it's the only viable option in this toxic state of Godot, they are unable to recognize it. They still operate under the unrealistic perspective that Godot functions as some kind of democracy, thinking that they can allegedly vote for features, leading them to falsely believe that they can influence Godot's leadership or even overthrow it if ever needed. However, in analogy, Godot is more akin to a failed democratic state. You have to realize that overzealous fans of Godot view attempts to create a fork as sabotaging the Godot project and would do everything necessary to undermine its success: write bad reviews, label authors as conspiring against Godot leadership, etc. Some of them may go a step further and follow this kind of strategy: "If you can't beat them, join them" (and ruin from within). They fear that a fork may fracture the community instead of recognizing it as an effort to provide an alternative for Godot. Therefore, it's not wrong to generalize this to a larger group because, unfortunately, the fish rots from the head, especially when such a group exhibits cultish behavior as perceived by outsiders. In fact, if someone wishes to create a fork of Godot, I strongly recommend completely disassociating from Godot, its community, and everything related to it, to the extent allowed by Godot's license. This is because any fork that has a chance of succeeding would be seen as a threat to Godot's existence. In other words, Godot followers would not want to experience an existential crisis that could potentially result from people adopting a fork of Godot over the original project. I'm providing my perspective as someone who has dedicated 5 years of my lifetime to using, contributing to, and even maintaining Godot. I abandoned Godot a year ago, and I no longer use it. I know the situation from the inside-out perspective. I'm a co-author of Godot, by the way. You can find my name in Godot's "About" window.
@@MrXrayez 👍 I wholly agree, but saying let's make a fork is a lot easier than doing. If a serious fork of godot were to ever be made and open to the public they too would need a strong management behind it or people would be hesitant to support it. I also admire your experience in the field and more specifically your work towards the Godot Engine as I only started solo game dev with it 2 weeks ago and appreciate your insights.
@@MrXrayezyou are that high in godot? I know i bashed you for talking very aggressive and this is a very late reply but tbh i am curious to elaborate further. Did you quit or you got theown away 1 year ago?
honestly it just seems they spoke before they actually thought about it. while none of us can really promise that the W4 duo will run off and desert Godot, i think it's a bit naive to instantly come to the conclusion that because they're involved with Godot and they're receiving investments for their W4 products, they are mismanaging money or not prioritising the right things. The two entities are merely intertwined due to sharing team members, and the investments for W4 are strictly for the development and products created within W4. Godot is dependant on it's community, the enthusiasm of games developers using it and willing donors who wish to contribute to its upkeeping. money isn't being mismanaged here, and quite frankly transferring funds for W4 towards Godot is most likely illegal. i feel the author of GodotForums just needed to actually consider the implications, rather than make bold alegations over a misunderstanding via a targetted emotional outburst.
As I've mentioned in my comment. Donating part of those 8.5 millions to the engine project itself would kind of equal to either of them buying a Ferrari and drive into the sunset. They can't do either due to the very same reasons.😉
some people is just too stupid to realize that most OSS projects have a company attached to provide PROFESSIONAL services, I myself worked in OSS projects being paid by private for-profit companies, and guess what? those projects still asked for donations because so few companies paid for developer seats, on one of the companies we even hosted the wiki and repos (before github offered basically everyting). If they are so hurt by this they can fork godot, or more easy, do not donate, instead pool money into bounties for the features they want. The drama only shows how little o null professional experience in the field they have.
This leads me to think that Open Source could be exploited just as a mere ideological label by some projects. I may be thinking that source-available projects may act in a much less hypocritical way. However, Godot is the most hypocritical OSS projects out there, to say the least.
A lot of the confusion seems to come from the difference between legal separation and colloquial separation. - Legally, W4 games and Godot engine development are separate entities. - Colloquially, they are not separate. In-fact, they closely related because the same people are involved in both. The people within W4 are using, and in fact they must use, the legal definition. If they go around saying that this for-profit company is connected tightly integrated with a not-for-profit company they are going to be in legal trouble and the rest of us are going to loose this careful balance of an open source engine being managed by a not for profit while also having console porting for said engine.
@@MrXrayez How is that excuse making? That's literally how non-profits work. You can't intertwine the two, or you lose that status. Godot is not a "hybrid organization," they're a non-profit. The for-profit company W4Games is specifically for making console ports, which you can not do with a non-profit FOSS company. This is common practice all over the United States.
@@yc5117 This is because whether or not the two entities are legally separate does not change the fact that they are closely related in practice, and could be seen as red herring in this context because the real problem at hand is not their connection, but rather their hypocrisy. They had previously claimed that there was no company behind Godot, yet have since formed several (W4 Games, Lone Wolf Technology, Prehensile Tales, Ramatak Inc.), contradicting their previous statements to the public. All of these companies were founded by members of the non-profit Godot PLC (Project Leadership Committee), who still retain their seats in Godot and are able to collectively veto decisions regarding the use of donations/funding in non-profit Godot, forming a syndicate of sorts to minimize the possibility of facing a lawsuit. If you do not consider such deceitful and hypocritical behavior to be problematic, then there may not be an issue for you. We should always consider what happens de-facto. Godot is a hybrid organization because: 1. Godot PLC founded commercial companies specifically tailored for Godot, sharing the same mission. 2. They have control over all funding between for-profit companies and non-profit Godot. If ownership and control are closely intertwined, we are talking about a hybrid organization here. The solution? Members of Godot PLC must resign and give power to the do-ers in Godot (the community of contributors), or stop misleading contributors. Most if not all final decisions are exclusively made by Godot PLC nowadays regarding Godot's development direction, not contributors/maintainers. In my opinion, I don't see much issue with commercial open-source (COSS). However, if Godot PLC engages in dishonest schemes, why not simply operate as a for-profit or public benefit company from the beginning? There exist many for-profit OSS projects that do not claim to be non-profit. Therefore, the decision to become a non-profit doesn't make sense in Godot, other than they are using this status to attract unpaid labor and gain an unfair economic advantage, which is illegal of course. Ask yourself: would Godot be able to reach its current level of popularity if they were to proclaim to be a for-profit company from the beginning? I highly doubt it, take a look at inconspicuous and insignificant Godot 1.0... Additionally, Godot is based in the EU, not the US. It wouldn't be surprising if the European Anti-Fraud Office investigates these companies. There are no financial reports on Godot Foundation either... The cornerstone of Godot’s existence has been hinging on the notion of it being a “pure” open-source project. Simply put, if you were to mention the word “Godot” to Godot followers, the immediate association in their minds would be “Open Source” first, and only secondly as a game engine. However, when Juan and other Godot PLC members decided to provide commercial services through W4 Games, Prehensile Tales, Lone Wolf Technologies, and Ramatak Inc, all under the same person, they can no longer use the “Open Source” label as an ace card. I assure you, you will see more scam accusations like these in the future because they are not baseless. Although Godot remains open-source, its value as an open-source project has “diminished” to a level more akin to source-available engines. I put the word “diminished” because the entire notion of a tool being open-source or not is questionable since Open Source is not a magic pill, it has the same number of downsides as commercial software, just manifesting in other aspects. What’s important to emphasize here is that Godot’s leadership decision has undermined the trust of their followers, regardless of the fundamental beliefs about the perceived benefits and downsides of Open Source. They cannot be trusted. Period.
seems like advanced incompetence to me rather than being a scam. disorganization, improper handling of PR's, creating a conflict of interest with a new company being run by the same person, the confusing situation people can get trapped into donating to w4 while thinking the money is going to go to godot.. yeah. it's human stuff. it's not a great sign that juan's argument for godot being financially independent, (the case w4 uses to convince investors to support it) is essentially that godot can rely on the charity of others and may or may not start an asset store. Seems like he's starting to expect donations as a responsibility or obligation of the community. "Godot is 100% a product of love, so let's make this mutual!" doesn't read right once you realize it implies a requirement of loving godot is donating.
Honestly, though, it was very clear that anything that went to W4 went to W4 and not Godot. Cyber was bleeding money to keep the unaffiliated forums running and decided that putting the blame on W4 and Juan was the cheapest way to exit. That backfired on him.
They were crystal clear that dontations to W4 were not donations to Godot. It takes money to run a company, even if you're a non-profit, which relies solely on donations. Its FOSS software, so if the Godot foundation were to topple tomorrow, the engine stays around and continues getting developed. But with money behind it, progress will be much faster. Donations aren't a requirement for Godot to continue to function, but if you want a development team working full time on it, then donations keep that functional. Otherwise you'd have to charge for Godot, and it would have to move to a proprietary engine.
@@yc5117 Money != progress. They can generate millions of investments but produce suboptimal, unpredictable, unreliable results. Donations aren't a requirement for Godot to continue to function, that's correct, but Godot doesn't present themselves as good as Open Source citizen with their actions anymore. Contributors stop trusting its leadership and go picking other engines eventually. If I were to stumble upon a video like this, completely unaware of what Godot is about, I would not have trust in the project, and I'd never consider contributing to it. So, I'd like to thank the author of this video for posting it, because it gives a hint to what I've personally experienced in Godot. 🙃
It's a mixture of both incompetence and Godot being a highly sophisticated grift. The more they try to delve into commercial realms, the more they put themselves in a position of having to devise a dishonest scheme. They would not be able to reach the current level of popularity without Godot's contributors and overzealous fans. Remember that Godot has been licensed (sold) to various clients in Argentina prior to being open-sourced, via their for-profit Codenix company. In either case, it does not present the project in a good light. Additionally, you mentioned "love + money". Did you know that it's a typical manipulation done by narcissistic swindlers? 😁
That's true... and instead of seeing this as something bad is a great example that Godot Engine can be used in companies or personal business to make money. That way we can keep the Godot Engine as a great tool in the future. And as you said, is Open Source, it will keep alive if all put 1 gr of sand contributing, making content, games and apps with this engine... instead of making drama to burn the most powerful component of Godot... the community
I think saying that Godot is a scam because the Manager of Godot is a CEO of a company that makes for-profit products based on Godot is just not understanding the situation correctly. *HOWEVER* there are a few more things to consider: 1. If W4 really takes off, then the FOSS structure of Godot may come into conflict with the for-profit company. Since the CEO of W4 and Godot is the same person called Juan, he may decide to _slow down_ Godot's development for W4's own interests. 2. Since W4 is the biggest sponsor of Godot, they also have the greatest leverage over the direction into which Godot develops. So a lot of other corporate sponsorships might be alienated by this, and may leave. If this happens then W4 will be the sole sponsor of Godot with the exclusive command as to where the engine goes. And since W4 is for profit, Godot may start developing for AAA studios and not indie devs and teams. This will be the death of Godot as we know it. Accepting money to do develop specific functionality is not scam. However lets not fully ignore and declare a false alarm just yet.
The cornerstone of Godot’s existence has been hinging on the notion of it being a “pure” open-source project. It would not reach its level of popularity without its contributors and portrayal of it being an Open Source, allegedly community-driven project (otherwise, there's no point in switching to something like Godot, especially since there exist more established game engines such as Unity that are not hypocritical about making profits). In contrast, W4 Games is building upon the free labor of Godot's contributors, while claiming there's no company behind Godot. Your concerns about Godot's direction are valid. The creator of Rim World said the following about Godot, quote: "This lack of decided focus manifests as IMO mis-spent effort on things that almost no serious indie should be using".
That's a lot of (unfounded) if's and maybe's. "And since W4 is for profit, Godot may start developing for AAA studios and not indie devs and teams. This will be the death of Godot as we know it." I'm not even sure what you mean by that? Godot is open source. You mean they would integrate functionality for AAA games? How would that kill Godot, this would also only benefit indie studios.
@@artxiom Godot is not an AAA game engine. They have already attempted to attract AAA investors (but not AAA developers to work on Godot because they trust only those whom they consider part of their inner circle). They are betraying existing users who enjoy the hobbyist experience. Since it's impossible to have your cake and eat it too, it means that they will neither succeed as a hobbyist engine nor as an AAA engine because they lack vision, philosophy, direction, etc. If your argument that "Godot is Open Source" means that someone out there will make a fork of Godot, ask yourself: Who is going to maintain it? Don't base your decisions on the scenario of someone making a fork (an "if", as you say), because you give up your locus of control to someone else. No need to be fanatical about Godot either: there are plenty of game engines available out there, which may or not have a steeper learning curve, but at least you'd be using a robust engine once you manage to learn one. In other words, if you want Godot to become an AAA engine, you are essentially requesting that Godot's leadership betrays its user base. And they will gladly do so to fulfill your request, simply to attract millions in investments while putting in the minimal amount of work on the engine to sustain those investments, enticing others with the so-called "bright future" of Godot. And they will constantly say to you: "Godot is not here, but promised to arrive tomorrow". This is a trap. The community division is already underway, though...
The conflicts of interest will continue to pop up so long as the Godot leadership is the same as the one from the private company. In hindsight W4 games was announced as "W4 games raises $8,5 million to support Godot Engine growth." And here's from their own website: "Additionally, W4 Games pledges to support Godot financially with no-strings-attached donations to the project." Based on previous statements, I can see why anyone would believe W4 would support engine growth and provide financial support, you know, because it was W4s own words. It's kind of only now that W4 is claiming it will only send thoughts and prayers to the Godot fund.
it stems from lack of knowledge all the people complaining don't understand the paradigm. W4 is a spearhead that will eventually mean Godot Prospers in the long term. 8.4m is a lot of money but its nothing in a new start up that has legalities and also a projection into its furutre. I think its a good move it means that Godot stays Open source and it stays MIT and that the parent company gets to make money from its hard work while also funneling that into GODOT at some point down the line. Its a good scenario lol not sure why people are getting salty over it. They now have a way to make money that is going to improve Godot's future and making a sister/parent company is the best way to do that because it shows that he cares about the project ethically. MIT means do what you want so he could of easily done what he wanted and just monetize GODOT itself which would be way worse in comparison. It is the needed step forward into Godot's future else it will always just stay a passion project. This is needed to get Godot up towards the UNITY/Unreal empire while keeping GODOT free and open source.
@@justarandomstranger1 The only problem would be if they embezzled that money instead of using it for the company's future. in other words w4 never eventuates into anything really and its proceeds just go into the pockets of a select few at the top. This won't happen because they have investors i am pretty sure. At least it would be unwise.
@@jenkims1953 it would be unwise but some people won't care for their own profit. I switched from unity to godot and then they also have some problem about money here (duh). Now i am not sure whether should i care about the engine i use or not. Money really love to ruin a ton of stuff, but i do have hope in godot because if the management went out of the box people still can fork it out at least. Why should the environment get ton of problem when i start learning game dev haha, should i make game in assembly for 0 money problems haha
@@jenkims1953 i want to use unreal due to it has some kind of competition thing which i think is very good (where you submit your game and the most popular can win money). But c++ is harder and my pc can't handle unreal engine that well. Idk did the engine have some kind of controversy or not before but now i am kinda disoriented. I am still new to learning godot so it's still not late for turning back, i was kinda deep into unity already and still decided to find smt new. Uhh
I'm new to Godot and the community, but the accusations seem very much like an emotional outburst from someone who's become bitter and frustrated over many years and is now lashing out.
Calling something freely available, with source code availble, and being MIT licensed a scam is fundamentally stupid. It's like you don't know what words mean.
I wanted to add the next: Godot runs on monthly donations. It's the stable revenue they use to pay for the developer's job. "Running out of money" in this case means that the cost of development is higher than said revenue. And it's not only ok, but necessary for Juan as manager to address this issue, even if they have those 8 millions in the bank. It's not okay for any kind of business to rely on limited bank. Godot development should not only be self sustainable, but also have room for expansion in the future if we want nice features. There are really no issues in here. My only wish is that this message would be properly delivered by Godot's management because it seems like some people still confused
The thread is deleted by the new owner of the forum. This confirms that the Godot community is not acting in good faith against those who raise concerns. Censorship only makes it worse.
@@MrXrayezI did my own research and found out you and cyber are salty little crybabies who can't handle others using a free engine, cyber finally realized there error and grew a brain but I guess you didn't receive that memo aye?
Kinda ridiculous. Even if I earned a few million - whether I want to use that on a FREE OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE is my choice. Unless - despite that huge earning, they still "beg"/"request" for donations which would irk me a lil, I could care less what they actually do with that 8mil - even if they "pocket" their OWN MONEY.
The Godot forums yes But if you're referring to the Q&A site being down, thats an issue at the hosting company that is turning out to be fairly tricky to solve.
I mean I would contribute to the engine because I do really like it but I have no idea what I'm doing with making game engines or even c or cpp for the matter. If godot is made in c or cpp
Godot is a mixture of C++ and C. However, if your primary goal is to make games, I would advise against working on game engines. Don't get into this trap. Remember, you are not obligated to contribute if you use Open Source software. You don’t owe anything to anyone when it comes to using software with permissive licenses, other than what a license requires you to do. Any attempts by project leaders to guilt-trip you into “contributing back” (which is a peculiar phrase that implies an obligation) should be seen as a red flag, and it’s best to avoid such projects. If you feel like you want to contribute, take a moment and contemplate your deeply-rooted motivations: do you want to contribute to improve software, or just gain a superficial level of recognition by your peers? Answering these kinds of questions will help you to build and follow your own path.
How could a person run if there a lot of money. There will be a lot of hate. Funding is not easy. You need to pay for rent, bills, staff and other things. If there nothing produce money mean they could reduce hardware and hosing. Don't forget you need to pay to keep the game engine running by those dev. Nothing is free in this worlds.
That's dumb. My goal in life is finding ways to sustain myself while creating everything for free and then passing those ways onto others in an effort to reduce the impact money has on people choices of goals in life. My first task is open source gaming, hence Godot. Anyway, I think its lame that W4 was created as A private company when the necessary charge that publishing on console entails could have gone entirely to Godot instead of investors even if making console ports took more time. Speaking of which, why was this made A priority right in the middle of moving to Godot 4? Reduz is both the head of W4 and the lead *rendering* dev on Godot. W4 is currently rewriting the new vulken *renderer* to directX because microsoft wont let open standards like vulken on Xbox. I think that's also lame.
@@nullvoid3545 excuse me for saying so but open source gaming and sustaining yourself by it sounds like a contradiction 🤔 godot was a stealth startup so what - if open source gaming is truly a working concept then fork it to a new engine and continue onward but in practice of course we all know that there is always a key figure in a project that does most of the work and alas: "if you are good at something: never do it for free" - i'm sorry that you have chosen to learn this the hard way😔
@@bobobobos2425 To sustain an open project money is needed for some level of dedicated management, this is true. But the idea that an open project cant make money is simply not true. W4 and its payments for legal assistance with publishing are A great example of the kinds of things that A non profit maintainer of an open project can do to both assist in growing their community but also to acquire funds more fairly by providing A service. My issue is that W4 was instead dreamed up as A private entity with the explicit goal of dividing this valuable part of the ecosystem that could have completely benefited Godot financially far into the future, for the benefit of investors instead of the project. W4 does financially support Godot to some extent already, just to clarify. Ill admit the details aren't fully there but my main monetization method was going to center around server hosting and repository maintenance for A growing library of open source games, with features being implemented by users primarily in the form of "content" meaning A feature that is mostly already implemented and can be made distinct primarily through mostly asset changes rather than code ones. Honestly an open project making money doesn't bother me, if the goal your achieving is distributing equally to users that would otherwise in A profit driven business model be excluded to extract more from the ones that can afford to pay more, which is essentially what an open license ensures. For example A dev team putting the release of an update behind A crowdfunding threshold that allows them to be paid for their hours while making the software free forever once everyone has gotten A chance to contribute however much they feel they can. So to summarize. I mean free as in freedom, not free as in cost.
Well. It depends if the donation the W4 received was intended just for W4 or part of it was intended to help Godot. But even if all was intended to be in W4 side, of course there is a conflict of interest. The W4 governance is a subset of Godot governance. Don't you see it? If you don't means you fool yourself. The transparent way is to be in one OR in another side but not both (as governance POV). But they can still be a contributors without problems.
There is no conflict of interest here. The investments were made to W4, a completely separate company that is for-profit, happened to be owned by same man. Those funds are invested solely and only into W4, as W4 is a for-proft company with an intended purpose: Console support. Later down the line W4 could make donations to the Godot foundation, which is a non-profit, but you can't just take investors' money and throw it at your non-profit for a completely different purpose than the investors gave the money for, thats corrupt, illegal, and would get you sued into oblivion. This is a complete misunderstanding of business practices by those outraged.
@@yc5117 Imagine being an investor in W4 Games. While nobody expects W4 Games to donate all their money to Godot, as an investor, you would expect W4 Games to stand behind their publicly declared pledge and support Godot if there were a dire need to secure the jobs of existing contributors who are hired by Godot to work on the engine either part-time or full-time. This is particularly crucial since the business of W4 Games depends entirely on the success and adoption of Godot. Hence, it would not make sense to portray the situation as if Godot is in dire financial straits and entirely dependent on donations from independent developers, hence the existence of this video and numerous others.
the main issue is that it wasn't clear that donating to w4 was not donating to godot. that's an optics problem. it was a large mistake. Juan holds responsibility for that mistake. calling it a scam? i mean, it could be read that way. ' i'm going to syphon money from donators who think they are donating to godot to fund my startup idea. it'll benefit godot, but it'll work better if i mislead people' is probably as much a scam as 'i'm going to take as much money from people by lying and then disappear with it.' The trouble is that it's also possible to just.. make this mistake unintentionally and just refuse to recognize it as a mistake after the fact, which wouldn't be a scam.
The 8 million wasn't a donation from the community, it was an investment from a hedge fund, they didn't steal any money and they aren't allowed to funnel it into godot directly.
@@WalkerRileyMC it's not that easy to see into the minds of others. Let alone thousands of them. Just because you and the less than one percent of the people you've talked to know the difference doesn't mean there isn't a problem. It's an optics thing. A PR issue. A problem with clarity. A result from being disorganized and not thinking through how things look to the public.
To be honest, you didn't mention a very important point at all. And that is mismanagement. The current status of Godot 4.1 is a disgrace. As a mobile VR developer, I don't have a usable render engine (this also applies to Android and WebXR). The mobile version is completely unusable because of its poor performance. And the old OpenGL 3 engine lacks the basic features that were already there in Godot 3.5. Considering that Godot also received an investment from Meta (the amount was kept secret) for VR, one has to wonder where the money went. In addition, all promises in the VR area have been broken. First it was said that all performances will be solved in Godot 4.0. Then after CES. Then with Godot 4.1. Nothing, nothing at all, was done. In addition, there is a new physics engine, where not even a ball bounces properly on a flat surface. There is actually no part in Godot that is production ready. Render engine, physics engine, multiplayer, video/audio streaming, no matter which part you delve into, it quickly becomes clear that the basics don't work. I don't care what the flow of money is as long as it's invested properly. And please stop thinking of Godot as a romantic community driven open source project. At the latest since Meta got involved, you should say goodbye to it. As always, it's all about the money. There are people who don't make apps or games as a hobby, but have to make a living from it. Have to feed their children. And these people got their asses kicked and their existences destroyed. Here is a Godot victim speaking,
@@kmouratidis You are totally wrong. I'm not a meta hater. But on the contrary. I develop for the Quest2. I've been using React for years. The same goes for Microsoft. I have contributed to Visual Studio Code and Typescript. The problem with many open source projects, which 100% applies to Godot, is the lack of management of such projects. In addition, there is a false self-assessment of one's own abilities and permanent employees. What is painfully obvious when implementing the Vulkan Engine and the new Physic Engine.
Reduz THE rendering dev that maintains the core is also one of the 2 that left to start W3 mid godot 4 push. Honestly 8 mil or not, rewriting the rendering engine into A proprietary format needed for the Xbox instead of fixing the biggest issues in the core bothers me. Reduz has every right to go get 8 mil to be the gate keeper of console ports, but were all relying on them. They are still lead dev and he still claims projects like render pipeline customization for portals and other complex effects whenever someone asks on the github for the 600th time. So what? Godot will work eventually but right now the dev with the best understanding of the core has other priority's? Its his choice, but I don't like it.
My favourite part of the video was the extreme lack of basic fact checking and citations. Always good to know video creators are prepared to speedrun the whole 'research' aspect of a video and jump straight to the incendiary gossip phase. That's why a lot of people are talking about crowdfunding this video.
no offense, but would part would benefit from more fact checking? what do you feel is incorrect? your comment was solely attacking the video and it's creator when you don't say in any way how they can improve other than "do more more research because you're wrong". i do agree though that some more citations would really help credibility
@@ma_gician Of course, Godot is not a professional tool. To quote Juan, lead developer of Godot: "We are not here to sell a professional product or make money from you."
To be fair here, I believe W4 could and should support Andres financially. For them, it's not a big thing to give him maybe $10k a year for all the work he already did and will continue to do if he keeps the forum up. It is very much in W4's interest that the forum is up and running and they can't make a new one cheaper, and even if they could, they lose all the history. Whether W4 should also put money into the development of Godot is a different matter altogether, and would depend on how they laid it out to the investors. That said, I personally think they should have planned to do some kind of financial support for Godot, since it would be in their interest as a business.
That's the irony of OSS, you never know who you are really working for; that's why you should always put the effort in the aspects you enjoy and, sometimes, what generates money. The reality is that godot is a very small project and until it has more companies backing it up, it will continue to struggle.
Andres is a separate entity to both Godot and W4. they aren't owed anything for what they did of their own volition really, and while they did help with Godot and partially the community, they also accused the creator and their collaborators of mismanaging funds that were strictly investments for their private video game company. The only connection is that they work on the Godot Engine, Juan and the others are within their right to receive money for their work on their W4 products, which is not directly attributed to the active development of Godot. Andres isn't owed anything from them, and their work is also not directly connected to the Godot team, so really there is no reason they should be given "$10k a year".
That is just a sympathetic pov. Those who can hurt, can kill if necessary. Officials should maintain the forum. The way it has been handled by the forum owner is unprofessional, naive and irresponsible. It has damaged the Godot brand. A simple call and personal chat could solve the issue. Only an immature person can throw such a bold claim without understanding the consequences. A family respects its privacy first.
@@TheInfamousLegend27 godot sure owe them because of their work..let's not dis them willy nilly because the use case is spent..they sure pave the way small amount or not to the creations of W4
@@theman3282 Andres has got nothing directly to do with W4’s products/services or the active development of Godot, and so they aren’t *_owed_* anything mate. it’s funny that you also miss out that Andres only complained about server costs during their twitter outburst, of which happened on the basis of Andres not fully understanding how businesses work and how investment money works in a for-profit entity. Andres is not owed anything by the developers, and if they wanted help with the servers before they would’ve asked, but they didn’t. therefore, i see no grounds on them being owed any form of compensation for their willing volunteer work that promised no reward in the first place
I think the forum owner is right to be upset, regardless of the legal technicalitys. W4 should at least be more transparent with where their money goes given that it really does look like 2 major devs maintaining godot used their connections to the project to convince external funding to give them A very big and valuable key to A very big and valuable gate(console ports). Do they get all outstanding money this company makes personally? Will godot get any? Did the rest of the council have anything to do with with this? Was the community ever asked if setting A massive 8million dollar priority in the laps of 2 of godots most vital developers right in the middle of A push to godot 4 which still requires their specific expertise on godots rendering core A good idea? I just got the news one day that A huge amount of money came out of nowhere so the rendering core can be *rewritten again* to support microsofts proprietary rendering library they require on Xbox. I have concerns that whatever W4 charges for their services will not come back to godot and worse that reduz THE rendering dev has been reprioritized by A huge check to work on A part of godot's rendering that you have to pay *them* and sign an NDA to use. If I was specifically waiting on something like the ability to add inserts to the rendering code to do things like portals and mesh virtualization, something that the final word on has always been that its A reduz task and reduz is busy then id be pissed that his priority's were bought, and I am. The fact that A part of godot that absolutely required making money off of its users was made A personal entity when an organization run by more of godot with the goal of funding godot using the necessary charge that these proprietary ports require could have been, makes it feel like such an option wasn't put on the table. Or maybe I'm wrong and the rest of godot decided they wanted no part in that nasty money stuff, and that they were totally willing to give up such A vital dev to go work on becoming the fee collectors for console ports. Just my take, spoiled as it is.
If sudden all game engine companies become greedy and ask gazilion of money from the developers, then you will need to pick your favorite programming language and find a nice game library and start to program your own engine.
"Godot is doing wonderful"!? "Godot 4 und 4.1 more wonderful". How can you say this? You should know better. Have you ever made a 3d game made with it? The state of Godot 4.1 is a disaster. No usable physic engine, no working multiplayer framework, it's so buggy and so slow. The source code is a mess. Ah I see. Why is your reporting so one-sided? Where is your criticism? Ah, I see you also want to make money with your members.
@@MasterBroNetwork OK. Please show me working Godot 3d multiplayer game. OK. Please show me working Godot 3d multiplayer game. You're on your way to ruin with Godot 4, at least if you want to create a serious 3D game.
