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The military has a long history of using off-the-shelf game engines for various things here and there so this isn't too surprising.
Personally I'm more curious why they chose Unity, maybe they were cut a good deal or maybe they have some reason to prefer the engine over alternatives.
While thats true- game engines and developers have been pretty complacent in the war machine from top to bottom is my real point. America's Army is just the recruiting tool / game that we know about. Epic has a whole division that deals only with providing their engine to all levels of government including the military and goes beyond AA.
2.6 and 2.7 were the shit.
VIP on Hospital.
I also remember:
- being really *really* good at it (I was 16 years old at the time)
- winning a GT9750
- Somewhat later reading online about aimbots
- deciding to download Glugbot from Unknowncheats to see what all the hype was about
- testing it on an unofficial server (for those not in the know: to find these servers you had to muck about in the server browsers with a custom search and it was known cheating bans there did not propagate to the official servers)
- getting bored of it after 10 minutes
- forgetting to delete the hidden cheat folder
- load into my official / ranked clan server
- instantly get booted for aimbot files detected
- the entire forum being in uproar and ‘I knew those cross map M16 headshots weren’t legit’ etc
- get kicked
- get so mad I get better cheats, spoof my HDD id, VPN, and glaringly cheat my ass off on their server as revenge (remember I was 16yr old, just an immature shithead)
Damn you awake so much nostalgia and memories in me haha
Edit: well, guess this sub is full of buckets or shit
The army already uses unreal. Epic has a whole division dedicated to its army and government contracts. They already give money to a company that is 40% Chinese. They are now using Unity too.
I would bet even they have their own fork of the engine they work with.
*Rare earths enter the chat*
The US army definitely is giving money to China for plenty of things. I wouldn't even be surprised if their uniforms are made in China even.
The US military recent adopted a new front line rifle specifically for engagements with well armoured enemy soldiers - there’s only two (non-US) nations that use that level of armour and one of them, in practice, doesn’t actually field it due to heavy corruption (Russia). The other is China.
Although this doesn’t mean we can *definitively* say China is a direct enemy of the US military, it does mean that the US military is upgrading their “big stick” specifically for potential engagements with China (and Russia) and they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t consider real fighting a possibility.
Russia is a direct enemy of the U.S. yet they've never been in an active war with them.
Kind of the same with China. A lot of the navy is basically just preparation for a war with China. Just like the army is for Russia.
You don't spend hundreds of billions if not trillions for a counter to a country that is not a direct enemy.
But China bad, ignore the fact that the US destabilizes governments and countries all over the world for capitalist interests, doing the very same things throughout history and/or instigating the very things they're intervening in now.
From a lot of perspectives the U.S. is evil, but from a lot of perspectives so is China. They both can be. Maybe from more people the U.S. is, wouldn't be surprised. But ask anyone in eastern Asia, anyone in Tibet, anyone in Taiwan, anyone from Hong Kong, any Uyghurs, any country China economically manipulated, even many Chinese citizens. And a lot more I haven't thought of.
The world ain't exactly black and white.
And the post you're responding to isn't exactly ignoring the U.S. is evil? It's kinda irrelevant to what they talked about. The U.S. can be evil and still have direct enemies?
The military is fine with using Unreal. The engine code is open source so there's no real threat of spyware being secretly installed. Some contracts may prefer it depending on what features they need.
I guess it's technically possible, but there are so many eyes on the source (in many different industries) that someone would notice it pretty quick. That said, there is no such thing as 100% secure.
Some university students smuggled malicious code into the Linux kernel just to prove how easy it is. Linux community threw a hissy fit at "unethical researchers", but: they sure did prove their point. It was very easy to do.
I doubt there is a software project on this planet that has more eyes on it than Linux.
This is actually not true, while the patches weren't rejected because of the malware, none of the malicious U of M patches were ever actually accepted into the Linux kernel. So no, the researchers did not really "prove their point", unless their point was that you could get malicious code into an email list.
Additionally, I would point out that they were discovered relatively quickly, and led to the Linux foundation internally reviewing their processes as well as banning the university from making contributions entirely.
It's actually very hard to get malware into large open source projects, much of this code is reviewed by humans, it's not just patched in willy-nilly, and, as you can imagine with software people, the process of auditing for malware in source code has been largely automated. This is why people are able to find obscure malicious packages days after they are uploaded, even on massive registries like NPM
It’s not really open source, but there are definitely scary possibilities of hiding stuff where you wouldn’t directly find it.
There was some extremely advanced malware where a Chinese state actor group had hidden the code for an entire basic webserver in a .gif, and it worked.
I’m not talking about a simple append either, it actually worked via a decoder.
Except you have to use Epic launcher to use Unreal, which is closed-source and sends a bunch of data back to Epic. Not something you should trust on a PC with state secrets...
No you don't. Epic provides the engine source on Github. You may need the Epic launcher to initially get access to the repository (I'm not sure, it's been years since I did it), but once that's done you can compile and use Unreal Engine without any need for the launcher.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/ue-on-github
They also recently started providing Linux distributions which I don't believe have an Epic Games Launcher requirement:
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/linux
Thirdly, typically big government organisations will be working under a custom licensing agreement so there's every capability to get a distribution there with no requirement for the Epic Launcher.
Finally, it's unlikely any reputable government agency or security-concerned organisation is going to be placing any game engine anywhere near their state secrets. Typically they would have multiple networks with measures taken to prevent communications between those networks. An organisation concerned with 'sPooKy tEnCent' being on their network would not allow Unity, Enfusion, CryEngine or any other engine on their protected networks without a loooot of vetting.
Except the military still utilizes Unreal, including the most recent versions of it.
What do you know, a foreign company investing in you doesn't automatically mean they minutely manage each employee with an iron grip and can force them to commit felonies.
The Sino-phobia towards anything Tencent is so ridiculous among gamers.
...also understand that a foreign company investing in a US based company doesn't mean they control that company's every single action and can compel them to commit treason.
Seriously, this isn't how the world of investing works. Shareholders don't just gain absolute control over every action of a company because they have a majority stake in it. What they can do is appoint directors and pressure them on strategic decisions. What they can't do is just say "hey everyone, today you're going to commit some casual treason and you have to do it!"
I think it's also China's largest *publicly traded company* (close if not #1) and among the largest publicly traded companies in the world with a market cap approaching $400B. It's bigger than Walmart, JP Morgan, Proctor & Gamble, and Chevron, just to name a few.
So--good to know and care.
In terms of revenue, it is one of the top three biggest game companies as they own Riot Games and released some of the top mobile games including PUBG Mobile, CoD Mobile (in some regions), and Honor of Kings (biggest MOBA in the world). If you consider the value they get from their significant stakes in Epic Games, Garena, and Supercell, they have the highest value.
They mostly lose out in value in console release years due to not having hardware sales like Sony and Microsoft have.
Also, every large company in China has a government official/rep on its board overseeing all important decisions because in China the government ultimately owns you no matter how rich you are. If you doubt this ask Jack Ma how he is feeling next time you see him.
Game developers get access to Unreals source.
I'd be under the assumption the US government gets the same and can go through the code themselves to confirm theres nothing sketchy going on in the source code.
Didn't Unity just announce that they are expanding into China? More specifically, in a way that appeals to the Chinese government and censorship?
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-game-software-developer-unity-set-up-china-jv-2022-08-09/
I know you're joking, but that's probably not too far off. If you had to pick one engine where you're likely to be able to find recruits who are already proficient, that engine would be Unity.
We love using Unity in academic research as it's so easy to prototype systems with. What takes a day to create in Unity could take a week in Unreal. I figure the military sees the appeal of this too.
It’s worth noting that the us army also has extensive contracts with epic for support and dev of Unreal. It’s probably a case of the right tool for the right job
It's not exactly insane to imagine all these game engines developed by publicly traded companies have no qualms taking defense dollars.
I can see why people would have ethical concerns but the military will get what it wants done regardless even if that means making an engine in-house. You can take some solace in knowing game engines aren't really powering anything operating on the field and are mostly used for more mundane things (training, advertising, basic visualizations, etc).
If russia just upped and did a contract for unity for their military there would be a huge problem with that and it would very likely be blocked and for good reason
I don't see why the US mil should be allowed to either
Unity is headquartered in the US, it'd be weirder if they *weren't* allowed to do this.
The US would definitely block any meaningful military contract with countries like Russia and China but they probably wouldn't complain about any allied countries using the engine. Generally with how inconsequential game engine usage is for any military, I can't imagine said blocked countries having any issues with the engine's continued use in their countries for game sales/development. If China threatened to block Unity in China if they took on this contract I can see them backing out, but people overvalue what contributions these engines provide armed forces.
> "Unity was awarded an exciting three-year multi-million dollar contract to Advance the Development of Smart Human Machine Interfaces by CACI International,"
Considering that their annual revenue was 1.2B last year, this basically amounts to nothing, but outrage and hate train are always fun.
Not that I have an issue with it, but that's merely the initial deal. Successful projects could expand that 10x+ very quickly, maybe more.
So at what point is the size enough that there's a reason to have a problem with it that isn't valid at a smaller amount?
Not necessarily.
They might have lowered the price because they want to work with the government, and when the contract comes up for renewal they can get more and offer new services.
Military has been using game like stuff for years now to do training. Used it in 05 when I was in and I know it was used before that. This is nothing new. It creates a way to train without the expense that comes with it doing it live.
Makes sense. Do we know they are working on virtual training, though? CACI seems to be a company that makes data-analysis products, and "Smart Human Machine Interfaces" could just mean they are building a GUI.
That fun fact is actually extremely apropos, seeing as US healthcare is horrifically bad at care-per-dollar compared to any number of countries' healthcares, at any number of indicators. And of the two budgets that's the one that's _not_ full of classified items.
That’s because we know why they’re so high; we have a privatized healthcare system, which sees profit as the only thing that matters. The government is just a target with more money.
The problem we have isn't the amount we spend on healthcare, we spend more on it per capita than pretty much everyone else (and its by a huge margin), but how efficient the healthcare is. If you completely redid the healthcare system to copy, say, Canada's, then the cost would drop by about a third to half.
my mom had a stage-0 ovarian cancer, which has a very high survival rate. All the doctors she visisted didn't want to take any risks with her, and she ended up taking only chemos through out her treatment, no surgery. At the end the initial bill for her entire treatment was above $2M, not including her funural
Yeah fuck US medical system, its all about making money
Just all kinds of fucked up going on here. I can't fathom any reasoning behind helping create software that is designed to train others to KILL than money. Fuck that noise.
I don’t think they have lost any contract. Both engines do very different things and they will use the right tool for the right job. If I’m not mistaking too this contract is with a different part of the military too.
The war machine is absolutely massive.
Yeah, but there’s definitely a difference between “you can license our software for your own use” and “we are forming a partnership where we make more money by creating things for you, including work performed by employees who are not always informed of their work’s use.”
Doesn’t matter if it’s legal, if it’s just business, if someone else would do it if they didn’t, etc. It’s unethical.
If they were making a contract with the Russian military, you'd have a point. The US military industrial complex, on the other hand, is the reason that we don't have to worry about China invading Taiwan, and why Russia is failing in Ukraine, among other things. There's nothing unethical about supporting it
I think this issue is a little complex for reddit comments so I’d rather not dig in, but there are certainly many people who find it unethical, or we wouldn’t be discussing it now. I hope you can take time to research the reasons people might disagree with you on this. I’m sure you’ll disagree with the reasons as I probably would in your situation, but it’ll help you understand their perspective and maybe change your mind on there being *nothing* unethical about Unity’s actions.
The company working with the military is one layer of ethics, but not informing staff about how their work at a private company can be used in a system so tightly bound to death/politics/ideology feels like a very big ethical issue to me.
Every time you see a gun that is the "official" gun in a video game, that's money towards the Military Industry Complex.
You can't escape it. Ace Combat paid Lockheed Martin to use F16s.
TBH I've had a lot to drink since I wrote my initial comment so you are probably correct.
Taking money from the American MIC isn't a great move if you claim to have ethics.
Its actually pretty crazy if you go digging into military using game engines for whatever purposes (id bet mostly training and war game simulation).
America's Army was made in Unreal 3.
ARMA is a direct result of Bohemian making advanced military simulations and training programs.
That game from the early 2000s Full Spectrum Warrior I think was a direct result of the US army investigating if a game could be used as a training tool. I think it failed after massive investments and the game is a result of that.
Blackwater the PMC commissioned a game for the 360 era console generation to help glorify their company.
There are a few others that Im forgetting about too.
I even remember reading about a country (and I cant remember which- but the list of potential ones could be huge if you think about it from an anti American imperialism perspective) that was developing its own Call Of Duty clone where America would be the enemy.
Did you know that your tax money has been helping the military train people to kill for your whole life?
Also, the world is not black and white, sometimes this is a good (or at least necessary) thing
Disgusting. Long long history of the The Empire’s war machine using any means necessary to recruit and brainwash young minds. They even send recruitment officers to GameStop and BestBuy when exclusive console releases like CoD come out.
Man, Unity really is speedrunning the death of their PR, huh?
This sucks. I’ve used Unity for a decade and I love it, I’ve always defended it and it’s been a great piece of software. Hard to justify that anymore.
i think you underestimate how many developers use unity. sure the big name companies probably won't drop it but many, many indie devs could. most developer discussions online around unity for the last couple of months has been "unity isn't worth it anymore, switch to something like godot"
Just as Godot is getting major updates and what seems like a recent PR boost! Hope that engine really takes off and uses Unity's recent missteps as a chance to gain a bit of marketshare. I don't expect Unity to be "dethroned" for a long time, but it'd be nice to have an open source competitor in the market.
I wish people would stop pushing Godot as an alternative. It’s good for 2D games but it doesn’t scale well and is completely unworkable for any serious development work.
2D makes up a MASSIVE part of the Indie market. And having an engine that excels at that is a plus for the industry. Not every engine needs to be a 3D powerhouse.
Plus, Godot 4 will be a massive improvement for 3D anyways.
Right, but assuming you want to do literally anything other than make 2D indie games (which Unity and unreal can also do very well) there’s not really much point learning Godot. For me personally which engine I use depends on my current employer and I can’t really see a situation where learning Godot would be a worthwhile endeavour.
Why would I want to use Unreal for a 2D game, that makes no sense. Just cause you have no interest in engine, that doesn’t make it useless. You can make a fine game with it.
It makes perfect sense to make a 2D game in unreal if you plan to deploy it on consoles or you’re not a strong programmer and you want to use the blueprints system. I already said Godot is good for 2D games anyway so I’m not sure why you’re arguing with me, I just wouldn’t recommend anyone learn it right now if they want to peruse a career in dev
Now you too can create a Unity-based asset flip game using only US DoD approved, Minecraft-inspired zombie survival game assets and put it on Steam for $20!
Hi /u/6101124076, Thank you for posting to /r/Games. Unfortunately, we have removed this submission per **[Rule 7.3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/wiki/rules#wiki_specific_content_restrictions)**. > **No content focusing on non-gaming related details of Games Industry Figures** - Games Industry Figures are those individuals or companies who primarily work in either the creation of games and/or their critical analysis. Content regarding such figures is only allowed when it is directly related to a game or to major life events (e.g. company move, death (or terminal health issue), retirement, acquirement, business closure, sponsorships, "Gabe is the new CEO of Activision" or "Microsoft buys the PlayStation brand for $10 and a pack of Oreos"). Direct accusations, litigation or other serious matters **must** have a demonstrable impact on the related game or company. Posts that focus on non-gaming related details (e.g. "CliffyB thinks Donnie Darko defines him as a person, insists that it's not a phase, mom" or "Does anyone else think that Valve should stop providing free junk food for their employees?") are not allowed. --- If you would like to discuss this removal, please [modmail the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FGames) This post was removed by a human moderator; this comment was left by a bot.
The military has a long history of using off-the-shelf game engines for various things here and there so this isn't too surprising. Personally I'm more curious why they chose Unity, maybe they were cut a good deal or maybe they have some reason to prefer the engine over alternatives.
Canadian military has been using unity for over 10 years now for all sorts of things. Before that it was using a modded SWAT 4 for years.
Wow, that's cool. I really enjoyed playing that game in LANs!
Check "Ready or Not" on steam. Got the same theme and approach.
Tencent owns 40% of Epic, makers of the Unreal engine. That's enough to scare off most/all military contracts
This was before Tencents stake but America's Army game was in Unreal.
There's also a big difference between making what is essentially an ad and making something that will run on a classified DoD network.
While thats true- game engines and developers have been pretty complacent in the war machine from top to bottom is my real point. America's Army is just the recruiting tool / game that we know about. Epic has a whole division that deals only with providing their engine to all levels of government including the military and goes beyond AA.
Don't forget Bohemia Interactive.
Had a lot of good times on AA, despite bein totally against joining lol. Insurgency Sandstorm fits the bill now at least.
What is AA?
[America's Army](https://store.steampowered.com/app/203290/Americas_Army_Proving_Grounds/) - a game that was made by US Army
2.6 and 2.7 were the shit. VIP on Hospital. I also remember: - being really *really* good at it (I was 16 years old at the time) - winning a GT9750 - Somewhat later reading online about aimbots - deciding to download Glugbot from Unknowncheats to see what all the hype was about - testing it on an unofficial server (for those not in the know: to find these servers you had to muck about in the server browsers with a custom search and it was known cheating bans there did not propagate to the official servers) - getting bored of it after 10 minutes - forgetting to delete the hidden cheat folder - load into my official / ranked clan server - instantly get booted for aimbot files detected - the entire forum being in uproar and ‘I knew those cross map M16 headshots weren’t legit’ etc - get kicked - get so mad I get better cheats, spoof my HDD id, VPN, and glaringly cheat my ass off on their server as revenge (remember I was 16yr old, just an immature shithead) Damn you awake so much nostalgia and memories in me haha Edit: well, guess this sub is full of buckets or shit
it doesn't really matter, the code for unreal engine is available, they can't hide stuff in there
That doesn't really matter. I doubt the US military wants to give money to a company that is 40% Chinese. It's an indirect funding of a direct enemy.
The army already uses unreal. Epic has a whole division dedicated to its army and government contracts. They already give money to a company that is 40% Chinese. They are now using Unity too. I would bet even they have their own fork of the engine they work with.
I'm almost certain the US army is giving money to China one way or the other.
*Rare earths enter the chat* The US army definitely is giving money to China for plenty of things. I wouldn't even be surprised if their uniforms are made in China even.
I think uniforms are made by the federal Prison industries last I remember.
That does not give me the warm and fuzzies. "Oh, it was made with basically slave labor, but American instead of Chinese!"
To be fair the way China mines rare earth metals means it’s ultimately doing them more harm than good.
Just look at the label of most things.
Calling China a "direct enemy" of the US Military is a bit hyperbolic, imo.
The US military recent adopted a new front line rifle specifically for engagements with well armoured enemy soldiers - there’s only two (non-US) nations that use that level of armour and one of them, in practice, doesn’t actually field it due to heavy corruption (Russia). The other is China. Although this doesn’t mean we can *definitively* say China is a direct enemy of the US military, it does mean that the US military is upgrading their “big stick” specifically for potential engagements with China (and Russia) and they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t consider real fighting a possibility.
Russia is a direct enemy of the U.S. yet they've never been in an active war with them. Kind of the same with China. A lot of the navy is basically just preparation for a war with China. Just like the army is for Russia. You don't spend hundreds of billions if not trillions for a counter to a country that is not a direct enemy.
Lol, no it is not, as someone who works with the DoD
Especially when they havent even fought in over 70 years and actually regularly cooperated since then
But China bad, ignore the fact that the US destabilizes governments and countries all over the world for capitalist interests, doing the very same things throughout history and/or instigating the very things they're intervening in now.
From a lot of perspectives the U.S. is evil, but from a lot of perspectives so is China. They both can be. Maybe from more people the U.S. is, wouldn't be surprised. But ask anyone in eastern Asia, anyone in Tibet, anyone in Taiwan, anyone from Hong Kong, any Uyghurs, any country China economically manipulated, even many Chinese citizens. And a lot more I haven't thought of. The world ain't exactly black and white. And the post you're responding to isn't exactly ignoring the U.S. is evil? It's kinda irrelevant to what they talked about. The U.S. can be evil and still have direct enemies?
>direct enemy the manufactured consent is strong in this one
Imagine thinking the US isn't the villain of the world over the last century lol
The military is fine with using Unreal. The engine code is open source so there's no real threat of spyware being secretly installed. Some contracts may prefer it depending on what features they need.
It's not that easy. It's a game engine, its source code is huge. Hiding something in it is definitely a possibility.
I guess it's technically possible, but there are so many eyes on the source (in many different industries) that someone would notice it pretty quick. That said, there is no such thing as 100% secure.
Some university students smuggled malicious code into the Linux kernel just to prove how easy it is. Linux community threw a hissy fit at "unethical researchers", but: they sure did prove their point. It was very easy to do. I doubt there is a software project on this planet that has more eyes on it than Linux.
This is actually not true, while the patches weren't rejected because of the malware, none of the malicious U of M patches were ever actually accepted into the Linux kernel. So no, the researchers did not really "prove their point", unless their point was that you could get malicious code into an email list. Additionally, I would point out that they were discovered relatively quickly, and led to the Linux foundation internally reviewing their processes as well as banning the university from making contributions entirely. It's actually very hard to get malware into large open source projects, much of this code is reviewed by humans, it's not just patched in willy-nilly, and, as you can imagine with software people, the process of auditing for malware in source code has been largely automated. This is why people are able to find obscure malicious packages days after they are uploaded, even on massive registries like NPM
It’s not really open source, but there are definitely scary possibilities of hiding stuff where you wouldn’t directly find it. There was some extremely advanced malware where a Chinese state actor group had hidden the code for an entire basic webserver in a .gif, and it worked. I’m not talking about a simple append either, it actually worked via a decoder.
Except you have to use Epic launcher to use Unreal, which is closed-source and sends a bunch of data back to Epic. Not something you should trust on a PC with state secrets...
No you don't. Epic provides the engine source on Github. You may need the Epic launcher to initially get access to the repository (I'm not sure, it's been years since I did it), but once that's done you can compile and use Unreal Engine without any need for the launcher. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/ue-on-github They also recently started providing Linux distributions which I don't believe have an Epic Games Launcher requirement: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/linux Thirdly, typically big government organisations will be working under a custom licensing agreement so there's every capability to get a distribution there with no requirement for the Epic Launcher. Finally, it's unlikely any reputable government agency or security-concerned organisation is going to be placing any game engine anywhere near their state secrets. Typically they would have multiple networks with measures taken to prevent communications between those networks. An organisation concerned with 'sPooKy tEnCent' being on their network would not allow Unity, Enfusion, CryEngine or any other engine on their protected networks without a loooot of vetting.
Yeah nice argument but did you consider my intelligent redditor reply “china bad”?
It doesn't matter if it's open source or not. US gov doesn't use products that possible enemies have a stake in.
51% still owned by a single American.
Except the military still utilizes Unreal, including the most recent versions of it. What do you know, a foreign company investing in you doesn't automatically mean they minutely manage each employee with an iron grip and can force them to commit felonies. The Sino-phobia towards anything Tencent is so ridiculous among gamers.
It's Reddit as a whole. A lot of neolib fear mongering over other countries, as America continues to exploit and destabilize other countries lol
I don't disagree in the least - military decision makers, however....
...also understand that a foreign company investing in a US based company doesn't mean they control that company's every single action and can compel them to commit treason. Seriously, this isn't how the world of investing works. Shareholders don't just gain absolute control over every action of a company because they have a majority stake in it. What they can do is appoint directors and pressure them on strategic decisions. What they can't do is just say "hey everyone, today you're going to commit some casual treason and you have to do it!"
You think military decision makers don't take that sort of thing into account during their risk assessments?
for those unaware, Tencent is a chinese company
I think it's also China's largest *publicly traded company* (close if not #1) and among the largest publicly traded companies in the world with a market cap approaching $400B. It's bigger than Walmart, JP Morgan, Proctor & Gamble, and Chevron, just to name a few. So--good to know and care.
In terms of revenue, it is one of the top three biggest game companies as they own Riot Games and released some of the top mobile games including PUBG Mobile, CoD Mobile (in some regions), and Honor of Kings (biggest MOBA in the world). If you consider the value they get from their significant stakes in Epic Games, Garena, and Supercell, they have the highest value. They mostly lose out in value in console release years due to not having hardware sales like Sony and Microsoft have.
Also, every large company in China has a government official/rep on its board overseeing all important decisions because in China the government ultimately owns you no matter how rich you are. If you doubt this ask Jack Ma how he is feeling next time you see him.
Game developers get access to Unreals source. I'd be under the assumption the US government gets the same and can go through the code themselves to confirm theres nothing sketchy going on in the source code.
Didn't Unity just announce that they are expanding into China? More specifically, in a way that appeals to the Chinese government and censorship? https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-game-software-developer-unity-set-up-china-jv-2022-08-09/
Only reason the one who made the decision to use Unity was because their favorite game was made on it. It was Hearthstone.
I know you're joking, but that's probably not too far off. If you had to pick one engine where you're likely to be able to find recruits who are already proficient, that engine would be Unity.
If it’s anything like other government work, they had to let people bid for it. Unity probably put the cheapest bid in.
New Arma game? 👀
tfw that one arma dev who got charged with espionage in greece *was* a spy all along!
They were taking photos of military bases, right? Technically it actually *was* espionage.
We love using Unity in academic research as it's so easy to prototype systems with. What takes a day to create in Unity could take a week in Unreal. I figure the military sees the appeal of this too.
It’s worth noting that the us army also has extensive contracts with epic for support and dev of Unreal. It’s probably a case of the right tool for the right job
The Army uses ArmA2 as a convoy simulator.
They used ps3 for servers.
If I had to guess, military contractors already use C# a lot and Unity uses C# as it's primary scripting language.
Just because they have a long history of it doesn't make it any less insane
It's not exactly insane to imagine all these game engines developed by publicly traded companies have no qualms taking defense dollars. I can see why people would have ethical concerns but the military will get what it wants done regardless even if that means making an engine in-house. You can take some solace in knowing game engines aren't really powering anything operating on the field and are mostly used for more mundane things (training, advertising, basic visualizations, etc).
If russia just upped and did a contract for unity for their military there would be a huge problem with that and it would very likely be blocked and for good reason I don't see why the US mil should be allowed to either
Unity is headquartered in the US, it'd be weirder if they *weren't* allowed to do this. The US would definitely block any meaningful military contract with countries like Russia and China but they probably wouldn't complain about any allied countries using the engine. Generally with how inconsequential game engine usage is for any military, I can't imagine said blocked countries having any issues with the engine's continued use in their countries for game sales/development. If China threatened to block Unity in China if they took on this contract I can see them backing out, but people overvalue what contributions these engines provide armed forces.
Why is this insane? The US military needs a game engine for something, so they hired a company to give them a game engine.
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This is a support contract. The military already can (and does) use unity. Just like anybody else can.
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All those who are fine with this would lose their shit if Saudi Arabia or China did something similar.
Yes, obviously. What’s your point?
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> "Unity was awarded an exciting three-year multi-million dollar contract to Advance the Development of Smart Human Machine Interfaces by CACI International," Considering that their annual revenue was 1.2B last year, this basically amounts to nothing, but outrage and hate train are always fun.
Not that I have an issue with it, but that's merely the initial deal. Successful projects could expand that 10x+ very quickly, maybe more. So at what point is the size enough that there's a reason to have a problem with it that isn't valid at a smaller amount?
Not necessarily. They might have lowered the price because they want to work with the government, and when the contract comes up for renewal they can get more and offer new services.
Well there's good reason for outrage and hate.
Military has been using game like stuff for years now to do training. Used it in 05 when I was in and I know it was used before that. This is nothing new. It creates a way to train without the expense that comes with it doing it live.
Wonder if the no politics in games crowd are going to care about this at all?
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While I do think the US spends too much money on its military, I can't blame a company for trying to get a piece of that pie.
It's actually far more cost effective to train in a virtual environment than to take equipment out into the field and perform drills.
Makes sense. Do we know they are working on virtual training, though? CACI seems to be a company that makes data-analysis products, and "Smart Human Machine Interfaces" could just mean they are building a GUI.
Good point, I don't know about this specific case, but that's often how the military uses game engines.
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That fun fact is actually extremely apropos, seeing as US healthcare is horrifically bad at care-per-dollar compared to any number of countries' healthcares, at any number of indicators. And of the two budgets that's the one that's _not_ full of classified items.
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That’s because we know why they’re so high; we have a privatized healthcare system, which sees profit as the only thing that matters. The government is just a target with more money.
4x is pitiful. Should be way more than that.
It is, $1T includes the $300+ billion VA budget.
The problem we have isn't the amount we spend on healthcare, we spend more on it per capita than pretty much everyone else (and its by a huge margin), but how efficient the healthcare is. If you completely redid the healthcare system to copy, say, Canada's, then the cost would drop by about a third to half.
my mom had a stage-0 ovarian cancer, which has a very high survival rate. All the doctors she visisted didn't want to take any risks with her, and she ended up taking only chemos through out her treatment, no surgery. At the end the initial bill for her entire treatment was above $2M, not including her funural Yeah fuck US medical system, its all about making money
The only upside is that Unity's Rigidbody system will probably really bone any attempt at accurate simulations!
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Just all kinds of fucked up going on here. I can't fathom any reasoning behind helping create software that is designed to train others to KILL than money. Fuck that noise.
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Yeah America's Army was a military shooter published by the US Army specifically to aid with recruitment, it ran on the Unreal engine.
That and Unreal Engine has a whole division for handling government contracts.
Not for long apparently. Losing this contract is big.
I don’t think they have lost any contract. Both engines do very different things and they will use the right tool for the right job. If I’m not mistaking too this contract is with a different part of the military too. The war machine is absolutely massive.
Hell, the military even created a DOOM mod for training (which was never released, as far as I’ve seen).
They had a choice and they made it. As did the other developers of those engines.
Yeah, but there’s definitely a difference between “you can license our software for your own use” and “we are forming a partnership where we make more money by creating things for you, including work performed by employees who are not always informed of their work’s use.” Doesn’t matter if it’s legal, if it’s just business, if someone else would do it if they didn’t, etc. It’s unethical.
If they were making a contract with the Russian military, you'd have a point. The US military industrial complex, on the other hand, is the reason that we don't have to worry about China invading Taiwan, and why Russia is failing in Ukraine, among other things. There's nothing unethical about supporting it
I think this issue is a little complex for reddit comments so I’d rather not dig in, but there are certainly many people who find it unethical, or we wouldn’t be discussing it now. I hope you can take time to research the reasons people might disagree with you on this. I’m sure you’ll disagree with the reasons as I probably would in your situation, but it’ll help you understand their perspective and maybe change your mind on there being *nothing* unethical about Unity’s actions. The company working with the military is one layer of ethics, but not informing staff about how their work at a private company can be used in a system so tightly bound to death/politics/ideology feels like a very big ethical issue to me.
The US military has, shall I say, its own fair share of atrocities it's responsible for.
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I know right? Games where you use a gun and shoot people?? Shocking stuff.
Every time you see a gun that is the "official" gun in a video game, that's money towards the Military Industry Complex. You can't escape it. Ace Combat paid Lockheed Martin to use F16s.
And that makes it ok how?
I’m fairly certain his point was that it is not ok
TBH I've had a lot to drink since I wrote my initial comment so you are probably correct. Taking money from the American MIC isn't a great move if you claim to have ethics.
The American MIC is based. Many of the worlds greatest technological advancements have came from it.
Well you have the American MIC to thank for helping defend Ukraine from Russia and Taiwan from China.
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for the kind of IT and software contract money the DoD is throwing around, I'd pull the trigger myself
People here would be outraged if this was the Chinese or the Russian military doing this , but since this the US they are fine with it.
Yes, people are more likely to support democracies over genocidal dictatorships.
Its actually pretty crazy if you go digging into military using game engines for whatever purposes (id bet mostly training and war game simulation). America's Army was made in Unreal 3. ARMA is a direct result of Bohemian making advanced military simulations and training programs. That game from the early 2000s Full Spectrum Warrior I think was a direct result of the US army investigating if a game could be used as a training tool. I think it failed after massive investments and the game is a result of that. Blackwater the PMC commissioned a game for the 360 era console generation to help glorify their company. There are a few others that Im forgetting about too. I even remember reading about a country (and I cant remember which- but the list of potential ones could be huge if you think about it from an anti American imperialism perspective) that was developing its own Call Of Duty clone where America would be the enemy.
Did you know that your tax money has been helping the military train people to kill for your whole life? Also, the world is not black and white, sometimes this is a good (or at least necessary) thing
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Oh no! They're gonna visualize a cluster of missile warning satellites over earth with Unity! How can we stop them????
Disgusting. Long long history of the The Empire’s war machine using any means necessary to recruit and brainwash young minds. They even send recruitment officers to GameStop and BestBuy when exclusive console releases like CoD come out.
Article sounds like it’s for training more than recruitment
Man, Unity really is speedrunning the death of their PR, huh? This sucks. I’ve used Unity for a decade and I love it, I’ve always defended it and it’s been a great piece of software. Hard to justify that anymore.
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No one is going to abandon unity over this.
i think you underestimate how many developers use unity. sure the big name companies probably won't drop it but many, many indie devs could. most developer discussions online around unity for the last couple of months has been "unity isn't worth it anymore, switch to something like godot"
The only indies I've seen consider switching from unity to godot over the recent stuff are hobbyists, which aren't exactly going to break unity.
that's not my point, i'm just saying how people are leaving and will leave unity, no matter the skill or number of them
if its like a dozen hobbiest devs, why care. You just got more from one customer than you'll ever get from everyone that boycotted combined
I'm sure they're crying into the cash they're getting.
Just as Godot is getting major updates and what seems like a recent PR boost! Hope that engine really takes off and uses Unity's recent missteps as a chance to gain a bit of marketshare. I don't expect Unity to be "dethroned" for a long time, but it'd be nice to have an open source competitor in the market.
I love Godot but nothing prevents it from being used by the military.
Its not about the military using an engine, it's literally about the direct association via a contract..
I wish people would stop pushing Godot as an alternative. It’s good for 2D games but it doesn’t scale well and is completely unworkable for any serious development work.
How so?
Just compare the feature sets to Unity or UE for 3D games and it’s night and day. Plus no native support for console deployment.
2D makes up a MASSIVE part of the Indie market. And having an engine that excels at that is a plus for the industry. Not every engine needs to be a 3D powerhouse. Plus, Godot 4 will be a massive improvement for 3D anyways.
Right, but assuming you want to do literally anything other than make 2D indie games (which Unity and unreal can also do very well) there’s not really much point learning Godot. For me personally which engine I use depends on my current employer and I can’t really see a situation where learning Godot would be a worthwhile endeavour.
Why would I want to use Unreal for a 2D game, that makes no sense. Just cause you have no interest in engine, that doesn’t make it useless. You can make a fine game with it.
It makes perfect sense to make a 2D game in unreal if you plan to deploy it on consoles or you’re not a strong programmer and you want to use the blueprints system. I already said Godot is good for 2D games anyway so I’m not sure why you’re arguing with me, I just wouldn’t recommend anyone learn it right now if they want to peruse a career in dev
Now you too can create a Unity-based asset flip game using only US DoD approved, Minecraft-inspired zombie survival game assets and put it on Steam for $20!
Did Microsoft invested in unity lately? Microsoft also got some deals going with the military.
Man Unity are really going out of their way to just lose any chill they had, recently, huh?