Modern Gaming is Destroying Itself + Unity Backlash Gets Worse 

Thank you for watching, yes the title might sound mean at first but it makes sense as you watch. The human cost of entertainment is being disregarded, predatory practices are aplenty & now Unity is trying to usher in a new meta that will SCREW US ALL if it goes through. PLEASE don’t let it happen, or you thought games were expensive now? 🙃 Instagram: endymionn Twitter: EndymionYT

As a software engineer i can tell you managers using "agile" means them using devs as asswipes and pushing for bad technical decisions for short term profit.

This whole Unity situation sounds like it's going to create one of the largest class action lawsuits in history if Unity actually intends to go through with this insanity

Unity's CEO is a former EA, who once said that ''every FPS gamer has to pay 1$ every time he reloads''. Lol.

The sad fact is there are too many brain dead people out there that give these companies, who make these money leeching games, the opportunity to keep making them. If people didn't buy said games, these greedy corporations would cease to make such s***.

I’m honestly getting sick and tired of the Microtransactions and Battle Passes in modern gaming. Which is why I’ve been going back to games from the past. Lol

Corporations have ruined the world and now even our virtual ones.

At this point I'm more terrified than excited for the future of gaming...

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1028">17:08</a> What is worse is that you don't need to be an angry consumer to do this mass install punish either. You could be a spiteful opposing company/developer wanting to take out someone you don't like or opposition. Like if you see a lone developer create their first hit game, but you get jealous of it, you could just set up a bot to do uninstall and reinstall endlessly against them or any developer to ruin them. Some people may even do it because they want to see the world burn and you can't stop them!

As a 90s kid, i miss the golden era when games came physical complete as they could and thats it ❤, no extra predatory greedy practices like what plague current modern gaming 😢

What people aren't asking is what if Unity increases the price of "per install" at a later date...

“Not to mention having a girlfriend, having to feed that thing so it doesn’t turn it to a werewolf that kills you” 🤣🤣🤣🤣 shit Endymion you had me DYING of laughter

The explaination for the acting of Unity could be, that John Riccitiello (an former CEO, from EA) is the actual head of Unity Technologies.

2022-23 has been a horrible year for everything

I am convinced now that we are about to head into a second video game crash if Devs keep doing shit like this.

I grew up in the great time for gaming the 90s too early 2000s. The amount of great games, metal gear, tomb raider, final fantasy,gran tourismo and so many more.

At this point, I intend to replay way earlier games that don't reflect the corrupt customs plaguing the industry today. Even on emulators.

Well, I guess Unity, EA, and Activision now form an evil trinity of gaming.😅

I love how Unity's data tracking is literally just "trust me bro"

The Unity thing makes them look like LITERAL organized crime bosses. Like they just woke up one day and went: "We have decided...that you owe us more money."

Unity's new policy isn't just a tax per download, it's also a tax per install. Meaning they double dip. Not only do they double dip, but the tax per install means that they charge the developers every time someone pirates the game. It's like an owner charging the cook a fee every time someone walks out of the diner without paying.

It seems that game producers and publishers need to fall before studios with a soul can collect our attention and interest from their ashes.

I hope the situation that Unity reverses their decision or becomes a class action lawsuit. The very concept is, as you said, Endymion. I lean more and more on Indie games now than ever and download and reinstall games all the time. Because of that, it can now potentially punish the good people who come out with good games. It's insane.

I'm sick and tired of live service games. If you miss one season or fall behind you will never catch up. Which shame because I love Destiny.

Imagine buying a hammer. You use that hammer to build furniture. The seller keeps track (somehow) of how many furniture you have built with "its" hammer. When you sell those, the seller send you an additional invoice. Moronic, of course, but that same idiocy seems to be what Unity has done.

Gotta love the money men running the gaming industry into the ground.

Every decision Unity makes is targeted at the mobile market. I think they're moving towards surrendering the PC/Console fight (to the extent there was one) to Unreal. Which is going to be interesting, when it leaves Unreal with essentially a monopoly on PC gaming engines. (Big devs are even giving up on their in-house engines and turning to Unreal instead.)

Sales may be up but the impact most of the releases have had, have been fleeting for the most part.

This is what happened to the movie industry. Everyone was profiting and everyone wanted a bigger slice of the pie and in the process damaged the way the way they made the big pie so now they’re all just snapping on smaller and smaller pies till now they’re in a full reset where everyone customer, producer, artist suffers.

Make gaming great again

it sucks that a lot of devs were fired. i hope they were able to network with other devs to start their own game studios

Knowing that endymion having 2 dogs and a werewolf gf is heartwarming for some reason.

if players were smart they could hit hard on the industry with their wallet according to what they are doing to the video gaming quality. But no, everytime there is a new videogame trailer I read people saying "take my money" etc etc so obviously this makes industry after the look of a game instead of gaming quality. We always should remind ourselves that industries pays people to study the mind of consumers so they can trick them for more profit

It's *still* a good year btw, despite the Unity situation. -Hrot just went out of early access and is getting tons of praise -Turbo Overkill, also getting praised -Amnesia: The Bunker released, also praised -Quake 2 remaster released, also praised -Apocalyptic Vibes released, praised -System Shock remake, praised -Trepang2, praised -40K: Boltgun, praised -Blasphemous 2, praised -Hi-Fi Rush, praised Oh right, they're not as popular. Okay.

I work in software outside of gaming. The production of software as a whole is becoming more and more about milking the most money from customers and providing the least value. My company used to be very customer focused but now everything we do is about profits at the expense of product value and our customers.

I was surprised to hear that games are doing badly this year, but then I remembered that "Oh yeah, the triple-A industry still exists!"

Aromored core 6 has been such a breath of fresh air. Played through it 3 times and am now going through trying to s rank missions. Shame the rest of industry (aside from indies) won't follow the example of a complete experience without live service bs.

Unity needs to be held accountable for their greed.

I just watched Bellular News about the unity issue, it seems that if a game is reinstalled on the same device it won't count but if it is installed on a new device it will be counted. Of course the question was raised is how can the program accurately know what counts and what doesn't count. Since their are question about about pirated installs and unity games that are completely free to install.

While there are a LOT of bad games and practices currently At least there's still some good games to look forward to.

Hell, and I was literally just thinking about switching to Unity to develop my game. Holy crap.

What's amazing is that anyone could be at a studio for 25 years, especially with most of those after an EA buy-out. Nobody lasts long at an EA studio. If you don't get laid off you'll get out on your own.

One of the consequences of Unity new predatory businesses scheme is that devs will be forced to spec even more in quantity over quality, since it will be more profitable to make 2 games that makes 100 grands each, than one that make 200 grands.

Download bombing isn't even the main problem with Unity's download fee. If it truly works on reinstalls as well, what's to stop Unity itself from creating a bot farm of downloaders. EZ revenue. What an insane decision to make if that's how the fee is charged

What you mentioned about BG3 is spot on. No padding. No fetchquests. No backtracking and no grind even if you would want to. Every creature and situation in the game is unique. It always pushes forward. Its filled to the brim with stories and content without repeating itself. Playing it was a revelation after doing the same thing in the same location oooover and over again in D4.

Great channel, I'm glad you are covering videogames, and tv shows/movies, please cover anime news as well, if you're into that.

Alt title: “How Endymion makes the same video for the millionth time”

I’m so old I remember when you bought a game you got the whole game.

Endymion. I’d love to talk to you sometime because I’ve been involved with the business of gaming and can confirm its outlook is pretty dreadful from the inside too

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="367">6:07</a> 100% dude! The Mass effect series ( at least the first 3 games ) really pulled me and to a new world of what games can be. The choice and consequence system combine with you being able to carry over your saves from previous games to reshape the starting point of the sequels was just brilliant. Bioware and Remedy are so amazing.

Maybe its time for us gamers to create our own game engine for the community by the community.

Been learning Unity for years, really liked it, now I'm looking into Unreal as of today.

The games have become “prison food“. It could be a lot better but why would they bother.

New to your channel... really enjoyed your takes on these messes. You're saying everything I'm thinking. Subbed!

These game companies are going to run themselves out of business.

Porting VR into older titles would make me happy. That is why Flat to VR are the real legends out there.

1980’s gaming crash, we need it to happen again.

The real problem was the lack of gatekeeping. I worked with people who would buy games for the sake of saying they spent X amount of money on games. One guy BRAGGED about how much he paid for benefits in a game. Like gaming is about spending money. This is the behavior of the normal people who do dumb things like buy vehicles that don't suit their needs because it's flashy and expensive. They do not see gaming as a hobby where you enjoy playing a game, they view gaming as another outlet to prove their status. This needs to stop and it only stops when gamers stop burying their head in the sand and buckle down on their purchases. And for those wondering what is happening with Unity and what it will look like. Look no further than the American healthcare system. Taxed multiple times on multiple fronts with massive fines to "protect the little guy" mean to offset the costs an extra price hike is necessary for any and all procedures. Do you really think it's greed that makes doctors charge 3k to examine your hand? That literally CANNOT legally be the case because price gouging is persecuted by law. Yet so many socialists want you to think that's the case because it makes them look bad when you realize socialist policy is the reason our incredibly advanced healthcare system is falling apart at the seams and hasn't seen a medical breakthrough in decades now. Other countries are touted as being superior yet they maintain 60% failure ratios on average and haven't even HEARD of some of the technology or doctrine we use in the United States. You all focused so hard on getting the government out of the bedroom for the freaks only to be turned on by said freaks and have it crammed into your games, healthcare, education and even cuisine. Enjoy the betrayal that every "hater" warned you about when they told you not to trust commies. You brought this on yourselves.

Been a great year for indies and AA games.

The foreseeable backlash of Unity: - Devs & Companies are now encouraged to never use that engine ever again - Future Devs will simply pirate it like Photoshop Unity wants to die as a company, this is the fastest way to do that. Also, lets not forget the numerous lawsuits they could face for this really dumb decision. Unity is also not the only game engine out there, and its certainly not one of the best.

I actually liked the side quest for 16 it expanded on the world and world building i liked the calmer atmosphere thay these quest were

Coming on to the Unity problem - it is a problem for some places, a LOT of universities use Unity, which is fine because they get student licences for Game artists, Game designers, Game programmers etc. But the problem arises when companies decide you need a subscription to use the product. For example as a game artist, unless you are a student, you have to pay for a subscription to Adobe to access the substance packages, which you use to texture assets, As well as Photoshop. Furthermore, you have to pay for a subscription to Autodesk for software like Maya and 3ds Max. It is only a matter of time before Unity and Unreal paywall you to use their software (which you need in order to display your assets, to prove you are capable of making game ready assets). So not only does the unity situation have ramifications on developers who make games currently, but it also sets a precedent that students who want to start pursuing the game industry as a career, may be locked out of the opportunity because of paywalls. Students who want to become a junior artist, game designer, etc, are already locked out of packages due to their prices, such as Adobe, Autodesk and Zbrush - if game engine companies introduce paid for content to use their engine, fresh talent that want to pursue their passion for the industry will come to a complete standstill.

Hopefully things will eventually start to get better in the future.

I'm just over here downloading old games without launchers still...

you should give sea of stars and crosscode a shot if you get time you might like em in your liked chained echoes

Extra bits of info: - This was done by Unity's CEO, John Riccitiello, yes, THAT Riccitiello - Just days before this went live, he sold 2 thousand shares - There are talks about this been a huge inside trading scheme.

I'm at a time in my life where I'm financially stable enough to purchase as many games that I could possibly want. However, I actually purchase fewer games now due to the "quantity over quality" dilemma that we're experiencing. This might actually be my last console generation and it sucks.

This is why I argue to my friends that it really is the dark age of gaming. instead of people taking risks to make new and innovative ips (which stems from things like cancel culture that devs are scared to upset ppl and form them into hateful mobs) they opt to live service garbage, remakes/remasters that have very little to no soul of the originals and unfinished messes that you have to drop a full price for and then pay for the quote on quote dlc that finishes the crap show. I am way more careful and selective of my games now more than ever and barely buy any new games at all. Normally I just wait till a game goes on a great sale or a couple of years for it to drop in price to finally play something I might be interested in. I understand people arguing that gaming is more popular and mainstream now than ever but at what costs mind you. I just miss the 90s to early 2000s of gaming but times change and so must we. I just play smart with my wallet and I will admit it helps me go back and appreciate the classics more.

It's not enough that wokism is infecting our entertainment, whether it's games or cinema or streaming, but now Unity is pushing a new greed model? In this day an age, when corps copy the worst trends off each other, I expect Epic Engines to follow in Unity's shitty footsteps. Let's hope Unity come their senses and realize what they're doing.

what is next? Logitech secretly recording the amount of key press you used to create commercial product of any types and charge you for 2 cents per 100 keystroke?

Like most massive changes in TOS, there's usually a grandfather clause, meaning the download tax cannot and should not be applied to Unity games released before the change, logically. Of course whoever came up with such a disgusting tactic would also be scummy enough to try to retroactively tax older games. Silver lining to all this is, there are huge games made in Unity, such as Genshin Impact, which it's Studios would have a vested interest in fighting this new rule. Here's hoping.

The only way you’re gonna get good games again and more Friday is to get rid of the big publishers who can’t make games anymore

Only good game this year was BG3, but you'd never have known that from the advertising. Why they chose to go with "bear fukkin" as the main draw is beyond me.

Starfields side quests are great. You don’t have to explore empty planets if you don’t want to

Unity has basically set up a Doomsday scenario for small game developers.

The problem is that the people who run these companies end up being the people from the marketing department because as a company makes more sales, the people who attribute directly to the sales become more meritocratically link to its success, not the people who created the content itself. It is what happens when you over simplify things, part of why the notion of "Simplest answer is probably the correct one doesn't always work or shouldn't be what you always strive towards" and part of that is due to a certain phenomenon concerning organization, structure, and the direction of power itself. The people who should be linked to a company's success are the content creators and the managers who work with or oversee them in tantum. This is a division of capitalist thought concerning idea capitalism, the management of ideas in a company or an economy towards maximization. We are concerned with solely financial capitalism rather than any other type and we don't balance it with the other types. This is why we call labor capitalism, socialism, which it is but it also stresses that socialism isn't bad, no more bad than any other form of capitalism. From my studies and long existence beyond the identity and life I have shared in this decades that I am more familiar with you need to balance pragmatism with idealism. Right now businesses are behaving too pragmatically and are losing their value in ideas. This is why innovation, talent and just good values in the market are gone. This is often done because the people who do have talent tend to be quite outspoken in a way that the political culture doesn't like. There is a means to deal with that without hurting yourself, have a debate. Promote a debate between Social Justice Warriors, the people completely against them and the people down the middle. We should be having debates on a regular basis and finding common ground so we can see each other as brothers despite our differences. We are all ultimately cousins whether we want to accept it or not and the more you think without hearing the otherside and being heard by them, the more your thoughts become an echo chamber leading to further hostility in the future. Humans are a social organism, we are supposed to socialize with each other even if we are fundamentally distinct.

What did you expect? Unity's CEO is a former EA exec. It was only a matter of time.

The Unity thing needs to be legally challange. Hell devs should get together and form a class action lawsuit against it. If nothing else at least ensure its not applied retroactively. This is literally Spore and their "You can install this game only 5 times before it locks you out" bullshit, but worse coz this will destroy the Indie scene. And considering its been mostly Indie scene that kept creativity and new non predatory games going for last 5+ years, this should worry all of us. Now with this, yes a competitor to Unity will eventually spring up, but it will take a while and in the meantime many small studios might get destroyed but hateful fanatics who dislike their game for whatever reason.

with the whole unity thing. What ever happened to contact law? Show me where it is legal to retroactively modify an old contract without both party's consent.

Everyday we come closer and closer to a dystopia, if we are not already

With the amount of woke content being pushed in gaming nowadays it's time for another Gamergate-like scenario to happen so that this content can be ousted from what was once a great gaming scene ~10-20 years ago

The reason for this 'greed' in every profitable company/industry is nearly always due to a few individuals high up (exes or ceo's) that end up making immoral & greedy decisions in order to generate more profit for the company/shareholders. ie. the person(s) who decided making loot boxes (gambling) in games which hugely negatively effects people, kids especially, but this makes more profit, the person(s) who decides to cut back on pensions on their employees or outsourcing the workforce to foreign sweat shops in order to make more profit, the person(s) who decide to slash safety budget on their oil rigs/tankers in order to make more profit. In simpler terms, if you have a tribe of a 1000 people and 1 person in that tribe is immoral and decides to eat/steal more food during the winter, most likely they will be discovered and the overall harm is minimal, but if that 1 person is the chief of the tribe, it could wipe out most of the tribe, so people in position of power, depending on their choices & actions can cause serious negative effects.

The good news if you want a successful game then make it like BG3. Not the quality aspect but the choices to not have micro transactions or always online. I don’t buy games that do anymore.

“Continue to hold ourselves to the highest standard of quality” that’s rich coming from EA. Also the Unity Engine is one of the biggest for mobile games

Baldur's Gate 3 feature complete. Lol, lmao even. Tell me you never finished the game (or even got to act 3) without telling me you never finished the game.

This is why I stick to older games. I built an expensive pc just to realize how stale modern gaming has become. Baldurs gate 3 was the first new game I've bought in 2 years.

Unity sees the decline of AAA studios, and knows a rise in the indie market is coming. I'm actually very glad that they've done this. I want the crash to be total. I've enjoyed the fruits of my hobby being both popular, and unpopular in my lifetime. I can assure you, the fruit was sweeter without the crowd of people milling about my orchard, demanding changes, and never actually trying more than a couple bites of the fruit.

I am 💯% sure Starfield is gonna become one of the most played games in 2-3 years. The Reason you may ask : The Modders and the community. That's also the reason why games like Minecraft, GTA 5, Skyrim V never died, and has a massive concurrent player base still now, if we ignore the fact that those games were well made from the get go...

I'm just waiting until Spider-Man 2 comes out And see how the new Assassin's Creed game will be

The layoffs at Bioware are baffling to me, especially with Dreadwolf unreleased. They let go of Mary Kirby too who wrote Varric, one of the biggest and most popular characters in the Dragon Age series. David Gaider was even surprised about it. Personally, I hope all the veterans from Bioware form their own new company and bring back the Bioware magic from Origins.

Well Jagged Alliance 3, Baldurs gate 3 and Armored Core 6 seem to be the games to carry this whole year!

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="654">10:54</a> Larian = 400 employees 1600 laid off 400 * 4 = 1600 Thats like 4 larian size developers laid off

I absolutely loved Jedi Survivor and mine ran pretty good at launch and then got worse and worse with each patch. Its a shame about the performance and it got alot of shit for that rightfully but other than that most people only had good things to say about it

The Unity tax issue feels like the evil triple A developers asks Unity to kill successful indie developers who are winning gamers with quality games.

For the Unity thing, your project has to have over 200,000 downloads for it to kick in and make over $200,000 dollars. If you make over $1,000,000 the cost per install lowers to like 5 cents. Won’t impact the vast majority of Unity developers whose games will be downloaded only a few hundred times and likely never make $10,000 (Steam statistics point to this fact). But yeah, the logistics are very vague and disturbing. I hope they clarify what this means…

Final Fantasy XIV isn't an MMO primarily. It's a Final Fantasy game. A real one. An legit Final Fantasy with amazing music, memorable characters, serious and humorous moments balanced through a memorable story that is arguably one of the best in the entire series. It is also about 98% soloable from Level 1 through 90 to get the entire Final Fantasy single player entry style experience. While A Realm Reborn is a little more sloggish with more "go here, talk to this person" elements, things really kick into gear with Heavensward. The "MMO" aspect of the game is really only there when you finish the game and if you want to explore into that gameplay. Also, the game's free from Level 1 to 70, allowing you to play through A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, and Stormblood for free. Essentially 3 mainline Final Fantasy titles worth of story. And if you want to get a little nitpicky, an MMO's combat of different attacks with cooldowns, it kind akin to the ATB system anyway. I'm not sure what you'd really want from an RPG side quest. You talk to people in RPGs. In the old days, you talked to EVERY SINGLE NPC IN THE TOWN despite only 2 of them having a hint of something for you to do and the rest being just filler text. This is standard RPG stuff, across the genre. People want things more like Elden Ring... how much of that game is wasting your time wandering everywhere trying to find some scrap of something hidden under a log in the middle of nowhere because nothing said anything whatsoever about where to find it? Yet traversal and talking to NPCs is wasting your time? I'll agree they were a bit fetch questy, but what are you expecting a side quest to be? You talk to the initial quest giver and then you just know everything to go fight monsters and when you kill them you just instantly get the rewards from the NPC who is half a continent away rather than having to talk to them again? XVI is pretty much the same as FF 1 through 10 in terms of the gameplay style and approach (combat aside). What RPG elements are missing from 16? You upgrade your gear as you progress, either found/quest reward/purchase/upgraded. Same as 1-10 You unlock new abilities as you progress. Same as 1-10. You talk to NPCs throughout the world and do little side stuff. Same as....general RPGs but actually not same as 1-10 because side quests weren't always part of Final Fantasy. Sprawling story and cast of characters, same as 1-10. So what RPG elements are you looking for? Choice and impact on the world was never part of Final Fantasy or JRPGs. And then there's the fact that every single other genre, from action to adventure to FPS games have cannibalized about 60-75% of the elements that used to be unique to the RPG genre. If there were no side quests, it's too short and too linear. If you add side quests, it's wasting your time. If you have quest markers, it's holding your hand. If you don't have quest markers, there's no indication of what to do and it's wasting your time. This is part of the problem with gaming commentary and criticism. There's such whiplash, it feels like the same commentators don't know themselves what the hell they want in a game anymore. While this may seem like a rant, I actually agree with a lot of your video and you get a thumbs up from me.

Baldur's Gay 3 and Zelda are perfect examples of the awful state of modern game, not exceptions to it.

I have stopped preordering games all together years ago because of this. This has been happening for longer than 2023. With epics dogshit move of owning purchase rights for the first year. I waited the entire year for them. There’s gouging people for money for good content, and then theirs gouging people for money for shit content. Majority of releases are just that.

Sad reality

AAA are just not gaming companies anymore but “gambling” companies with some gameplay around it. Not to gamble for money, but your time.