I made a video to help Unity devs quickly navigate things before they make decisions. Watch is not necessary I copy paste my video description below with all the links I shown in video. If you like to hear my thoughts or opinion then watch I don't mind, I don't use youtube video to make a living.
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This is not tutorial video, also not video to tell you to use UE. It is a video that tell you the information you might need to start and make a decision for yourself. There are plenty of other better tutorial content creator than me, feel free to search for those.
TL;DW: Just click through the links if you don't want to spend 30+ mins hearing me talking about it.
1:06 Migration Doc: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/unreal-engine-for-unity-developers/
2:18 License Portal: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/license
Standard License: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal
EULA Change Log: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula-change-log/unreal
8:16 UE Features: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/features
9:46 Setup Visual Studios: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/setting-up-visual-studio-development-environment-for-cplusplus-projects-in-unreal-engine/
10:46 D3D Crash: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/how-to-fix-a-gpu-driver-crash-when-using-unreal-engine/
14:04 Good Sample Projects to start
17:42 Show Lyra, talk about Blueprint, C++, making your thing in plugins
20:35 Convert Blueprint Project to C++ project.
21:15 Create your own plugins
24:24 Deal with Experimental, Beta features
27:07 Market Place free content and restriction
29:00 UEFN: https://dev.epicgames.com/community/fortnite/getting-started/uefn
30:28 Show UEFN, example island UEFN Doc: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/uefn/starting-out-in-unreal-editor-for-fortnite
32:41 Verse Doc: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/uefn/learn-programming-with-verse-in-unreal-editor-for-fortnite
34:27 Creator Economy 2.0: https://create.fortnite.com/news/introducing-the-creator-economy-2-0?team=personal
I did support Blender Foundation from very early on and basically first batch of subs when they launched blender cloud(10 Euro per month for my current sub billing, starting 2014. I've also supported many older Blender film before the subs.) I will support Godot if it has similar foundation that drives/keeps the integrity of Godot's development. Godot is MIT and can be abandoned if the main devs are hired and can no longer contribute to this engine per their work contract agreement.
Now, let's talk about real world situation. There are patents, copyright/IP laws, DCMA, etc. Godot engine without a big backing like Epic or Blender Foundation is in a risky position. Basically, if any capital big enough file a law suit challenging that Godot contains some 3rd party code that some people stupid enough to copy paste something from other licensed contents. The repo and people use it with the "contaminated" branch can not protect themselves from lawsuits or patent trolls. It could take months of efforts to remove codes just to comply with a take down or audit process to prove that you are clean, and in the mean time anyone that used that branch is on the hook for collateral(especially if one game that use Godot goes viral and thus became target of patent trolls.)
I did not see anyone talked about this part and hope there IS a solution to this issue.
On the other hand, if you develop your own engine, it's the same issue if your game goes viral without any fund to defend yourself it's not even a joke. Studios/Manufacturers do go down from lawsuits in the past.
Using engines/tools owned by big corps though, you are on the hook for royalty subscription, etc, and maybe sneak unity move like this one. BUT, it is much easier to defend yourself in this situation(if unity devs kept their original TOS and present to court). And if patent trolls tries to sue your game for the tech you use, Epic/Blender/Adobe/Autodesk become your first line of defense since you use licensed tech and are not responsible for such infringement. They will have to win against them and settle before they can come after you. And if the provider did found something wrong, they will either pay or purge the infringed part from their tech.
Real world legal stuff is very harsh and you need trusty allies when you are fairly small and easy to pick.
Similar to Blender, Godot is backed by the Godot foundation: https://godot.foundation/
They also recently opened their own fund page if you want to drop a few dollars: https://fund.godotengine.org/
Thanks for the link and I will review the content and make decision later.
I reviewed the foundation webpages today, but did not find anything useful to explain their "actual" budget or spending plans. The foundation is really new and consist of team member and contributors. So I will wait until they have actual financial reports and then decide if I can donate to them.(that as non-profit has to do yearly to the gov.)
List of open source or related org I donated before:
A lot of non profits like this do have lawyers on staff, or at least on retainer. Ao3, which hosts fanfiction, has a small army to deal with issues
Also currently in the US you cannot copywrite bits of code, so copy pasting lined off stack overflow is not a legal issue
Also you and I both know the big Corp will try and blame anyone else for the issue and try their best to make it the devs problem anyway, at least with godot you can maybe get some community support or media pressure behind you
I am not sure if you understand the difference between sharing the code(UE allows you to share code snippet for discussion etc under 30 lines) for discussion etc, compare to paste into your code base and claim it's your creation. Epic sure was not shy away from suing in the past. And there are other examples, ie. Betheda(ZeniMax) sues Oculus that results in settlements. All from codes/tech implemented.
Community support or media pressure means very little when you are served with legal notice, as much as I despise the world's current legal/patent/copyright system works, that's currently the rules everyone follows.