The Godot Situation

EDIT: I have been a fool.

I jumped the gun a bit with this one. I only verified some of the information myself.

The person who banned the GitHub users is seemingly Remi Vershedlde - one of the core contributors to Godot. Not the community manager.

He claims he blocked 5 accounts that were creating issues that could be classified as harassment.

If the screenshot I saw is real, then I have to agree - it’s warranted (they are creating issues with malicious intent).

I also didn’t verify that blocking users on GitHub blocks them from downloading the releases or source - he claims it doesn’t

I apologise for going off half-cocked. I’ll be more careful in the future.

My main point still stands, and I’ll leave the article unchanged, below.

In case you aren’t aware. The Godot engine project has been taking flak the last few days.

Why? The community manager, using the official Godot X account (@godotengine), started blocking people for wrong-think.

The Godot Foundation has released a statement claiming that the blocking of individuals was accidental. They have taken “full responsibility” and asked people who may have been blocked to fill out a Google Form so they can review their case.

I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just unblock everyone… It’s a game engine brand account - they don’t need to block people.

Furthermore, users have been blocked from accessing the GitHub repository. Now, this is not a huge deal logistically, as it’s a public repo and anyone can make a 2nd account and clone it.

But, let me put this forward: What do you think the intent behind blocking people on GitHub is? Do you think, if given the chance and capability, the person blocking these users would make absolutely sure they couldn’t use Godot? If the Community Manager could somehow block access to Godot on every device they own, would they? I think they would - that’s the intent I assign to this action.

Luckily for the people blocked, Godot is free and open source and has no DRM-like capability built-in. It’s only by virtue of distribution that these users retain control of their projects.

I previously wrote about Unity and the runtime fee fiasco. Briefly, they attempted to introduce a fee for games made in the engine that would charge the developers $0.20 per install. This was to be applied retroactively and would have bankrupted many studios.

Unity recently announced they cancelled the fee (after a year?). My suspicion is they will wait until a more favourable climate and then try it again, or something similarly slimy.

There was some information floating around that Unreal requires you to agree with their politics - but as far as I can tell, that’s for writing code for the engine, not for making games in it.

We live in a world where your political beliefs can get you removed from services or barred from particular products. It’s always been this way. We passed laws that are meant to prevent this, but the law only works if people are willing to uphold it.

This kind of situation is why I advocate for self-reliance. Not just building your own game engines, but in every way you realistically can. Learn to fish, cook, grow food. Learn how to do CPR, learn to lift weights, learn how to learn, and how to think.

That’s all for this week. Next week we’ll be back to some technical / design topics.