I doubt they’ll win back many people that have already migrated to new tools.
Probably the developers who didn’t migrate away don’t care about the fee at all and the one who left would probably think something along the lines of “I learned a new engine and who’s to say they won’t pull the same shit again”.
I didn’t migrate yet because I was five years into a project that I can only work on in my spare time, but you can bet that if I ever start another game, I’m looking at a different engine.
Godot is, because it’s open source. If the maintainers ever wanted to close source it, someone forks it and it continues on.
Gitea just tried that earlier this year (or last). Owners tried to make it for profit, community forked it, created Forgejo, and we continue on under that name now.
Nope, Godot is open source, the current version can never become paid. If someone decided to make the next versions paid the community would just fork it and keep working on the free version. It’s happened with some other projects in the past.
Probably the developers who didn’t migrate away don’t care about the fee at all and the one who left would probably think something along the lines of “I learned a new engine and who’s to say they won’t pull the same shit again”.
I didn’t migrate yet because I was five years into a project that I can only work on in my spare time, but you can bet that if I ever start another game, I’m looking at a different engine.
Plus for most “this new engine is free forever and built by other developers like me”. Why would anyone want to switch back after learning it?
Free forever, until it’s not
Godot is, because it’s open source. If the maintainers ever wanted to close source it, someone forks it and it continues on.
Gitea just tried that earlier this year (or last). Owners tried to make it for profit, community forked it, created Forgejo, and we continue on under that name now.
Nope, Godot is open source, the current version can never become paid. If someone decided to make the next versions paid the community would just fork it and keep working on the free version. It’s happened with some other projects in the past.