WTF?! Dear Esther moving to Unity3D.

[Kazioo]

Yes, a finished, polished Source game released 2 years ago.

https://www.littlelostpoly.co.uk/dear-esther-and-unity/

To top things off we also received [COLOR=‘orange’]a huge bill regarding the licensing of middleware that had been, unbeknownst to us, included with the Source Engine but not covered in the original License deal. Not only that, but we’d need to pay for a separate license for each platform released. It was a big hit financially, which put us at a loss in terms of the mac and Linux ports.

This was all happening around the time of the departures at Valve, which unfortunately included our main contact for all things Engine related, and subsequently [COLOR=‘Orange’]we spent weeks trying to find someone else who could point us in the right direction.

We also got the underlying impression that [COLOR=‘Orange’]official engine support was not long for this world, making me all the more anxious, not just about the possibility of further ports, but about the future of Dear Esther in the years to come.

I’m posting it here because of its potential meaning for the future of commercial Steam version of Black Mesa.

[Keresh]

I’m not sure why’d you make this thread here though. Moving to tech and gaming.

EDIT: Oops, didn’t read the whole thing. I still don’t thing it has anything to do with black mesa.

[Maxey]

Something’s wrong in paradise.

I wonder if the engine team is going through a bit of a mess right now.

[Kairouseki]

Not too sure about Unity. It seems like a decent enough engine (and probably doesn’t have a lot of the limitations that Source has) but most of the games I’ve played on it aren’t very well optimized. I don’t know if that’s an issue with how the engine is designed, or if it’s all these indie developers making games on a limited budget and workforce/skillset and not physically being able to optimize the game all that much.

Why are they bothering to do anything with Dear Esther though? It’s already out, they’re gonna get billed for all this stuff anyway and I don’t see how this affects much of anything on the consumer’s side, unless them not being able to pay for the engine means the game will be taken off Steam or not allowed to be sold or something.