If you’ve remotely been online lately, you’ll have gotten wind of the fiasco currently going on in the gaming community with Unity’s recent pricing changes. If you haven’t, here’s a quick breakdown, the popular video game engine Unity has recently announced some massive changes to its pricing model. The company would be implementing a pay-per-download pricing scheme that would charge developers a flat fee anytime a game using Unity’s game engine is installed.

In a blog post, the company stated:

We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user, We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also, we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Unity

Rightfully so, a lot of gaming companies and developers have come out to voice their objections. Here are some of the notable memes.

Beyond memes, what are developers doing? Some developers have opted to look for unity alternatives and change game engine. In this blog post, we’ll provide a list of top unity alternatives.

How to Choose the Best Unity Alternative Game Engine

Image by Carole Reed on medium.com.

The first step in choosing the right game engine is to understand your priorities. Do you want a game engine with out-of-the-box codes? Game mechanics? Great visuals? supported platforms? Documentation or general support? Once you know your priorities, you can select a game engine that best suits your needs or an alternative to Unity.

List of Unity Alternative Game Engines

Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine, made by one of the lagest gaming company, epic is a video game development tool used to build simulations, edit videos or sounds and render animation. It has been used to create some of the most popular games out there such as Final Fantasy, Fortnite, Batman Arkham Knight and much more. It’s one of our top unity alternatives because of its ability to create a hyper-realistic environment, versatility, increasing community sharing knowledge and experiences and pricing model. This engine faces its shortcomings in its steep learning curve. 

• Pros: Platform support, hyperrealism and pricing.
• Cons: Steep learning curve.
• Platforms supported: iOS, Android, Windows, Playstation and Xbox.
• Pricing: Free to use till you reach $1M in revenue then a 5% royalty fee is applicable.
• Market segment: Medium to large companies.

Godot

The Godot engine is a free, all-in-one, cross-platform game engine that prides itself on making it easy for developers to create 2D and 3D games. Some of the notable games created using this engine include Lumencraft, Rogue State Revolution, Tail Quest and much more. This engine has been the go-to for most developers after Unity price updates due to it being open source, i.e., you can understand what is going on, write extensions and possibly modify its engine to suit your needs. Some of the other notable advantages include, it has an active and friendly community, its own dedicated 2D engine, lightweight executables and much more.  Godot faces its shortcomings when dealing with 2D physics, inconsistent terminology and a lack of blockbuster games (this may change). A great unity alternative.

• Pros: Open source, community friend, lightweight and dedicated 2D engine. 
• Cons: Poor 2D Physics and inconsistent terminology. 
• Platforms supported: Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS and Android.
• Pricing: Free 
• Market segment: Small to medium-sized companies.

CryEngine

CryEngine, designed by Crytek is a game engine that prides itself as the complete solution for next-generation game development. Some of the notable games created using this game engine include Far Cry, Hunt: Showdown, Ryse: Son of Rome and much more.  Some of the reasons why CryEngine is a good unity alternative is that it comes with a lot of features right out of the box e..g, networking, game modes, character etc. The game engine also allows for a fast iteration process, and high-fidelity visuals, handles rich environments (open world, vegetation-rich environments) really well, is easy to learn and has good community support. This game engine faces shortcomings due to its financial woes,  poor documentation, and not being artist-friendly. A good Unity alternative but a lot of its developers have moved to UE4.

• Pros: Comes with rich features out of the box, fast iteration and decent community.
• Cons: Financial woes putting the engine at risk, poor documentation and better alternatives. 
• Platforms supported:   Windows, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Oculus Rift, OSVR, PSVR, and HTC Vive.
• Pricing: Use CRYENGINE for free. A 5% royalty applies when you ship your project. Your first $5K annual revenue per project is royalty-free.
• Market segment:  Small to medium-sized companies. 

GameMaker: Studio

GameMaker is a series of cross-platform engines originally created by Mark Overmarsk and further developed by YoYo Games. The engine prides itself as a game engine that makes games easy to design regardless of background or skill level. All you may need is an idea. Popular games made using GameMaker includes KatanaZero, Hyperlight Drifter, Forager and much more. It’s a great unity alternative if you are in the market for beginner-friendly features. The downside of this engine is that it offers less support for diverse functionality, poor 3D and VR support and little to no industry presence. 

• Pros: Easy to use.
• Cons: Low industry presence and poor 3D and VR support.
• Platforms supported:  Linux. Android. PlayStation 5, Amazon Fire. Xbox One.
• Pricing: Some elements are free to use, subscription starting at $4.25/month may be required.
• Market segment:  Small.

Cocos2d

Cocos2d is an open-source game development framework for creating 2D games and other graphical software. The company prides itself as the top lightweight, efficient, cross-platform digital content development platform able to meet different needs for 2D, 3D, AR&VR and more. Some of the notable reasons why this is a good content for being a unity alternative is that it is an open-source game engine meaning you can modify it to suit your needs. The downside of this game engine is that it has a small community and requires extensive knowledge to get started e..g, less ready-made assets, visual scripting etc.

• Pros: Open source making it customisable, ease-of-use and hot update.
• Cons: Low community support and requires more coding from the start.
• Platforms supported: iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, HarmonyOS, OpenHarmony and web platforms
• Pricing: Free.
• Market segment: Small to medium-sized.

Spring Engine

Spring Engine prides itself as a versatile 3D real-time strategy game engine. The engine extensively uses Lua for scripting game-specific code to make nearly every aspect of the engine customisable from GUI, to unit and pathfinding. Some of the notable games created using this game engine include Zero-K, On the Endge and much more. It’s a good unity alternative if you are in the market for an open-source RTS game engine. The game engines face its shorting due to their lack of functionality, graphics, poor physics support, small community and much more.

• Pros: Good unity alternative for RTS games.
• Cons: Poor community and extensive features.
• Platforms supported: Windows & Linux, MacOSX in progress
• Pricing: Open source
• Market segment: Small.

Panda3D

Panda3D is an open-source free-to-use game engine for real-time 3D games. The library is C++ with a set of Python bindings. Being commercial (e.g., scene graph browsing, performance monitoring, animations, optimisers and more) first game development, the game engine prides itself on speed, completeness, power and error tolerance but faces its shortcomings in documentation, support, community, tools and features. Some notable games created using the engine include A3P, Air blade render and more. A weak unity alternative but something to consider when looking for open-source games.

• Pros: Strong emphasis on performance, speed, power and error tolerance.
• Cons: Not a beginner’s tool, small community, small readily available assets/documentation compared to other game engines mentioned here.
• Platforms supported:  Windows, macOS and Linux
• Pricing: Panda3D is completely free to use with no royalties, license payments, registration or costs of any sort—even for commercial use.
• Market segment:  Small game developers.

Defold

Defold is s completely free-to-use game engine for game development on desktop, mobile and web games.  The engine prides itself on being the go-to for high-performance cross-platform games. Notable games made using this game engine include Perkly Little Things, Void Scrappers and much more. Defold is a good unity alternative if you are in the market for open-source technology, coding in Lua and easy setup.

• Pros:  No setup, cross-platform, custom configuration and much more.
• Cons: Small community compared to others on the list which may lead to developers having fewer resources.
• Platforms supported: PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, macOS, Linux, Windows, Steam, HTML5, Facebook Xbox.
• Pricing: Defold is released under a developer-friendly license derived from the popular Apache 2.0 License. The license grants you the freedom to develop games without worrying about paying licensing fees or royalties on your earnings.
• Market segment:  Small to medium-sized developers.

We hope this gives game developers a quick overview of unity alternatives. On the market to find the best ad network? Check out our top ad network.