Unity reveals plans to charge developers per game install - plans revoked and CEO fired, lol

[*-*/\--/\~]

Why the fuck do they keep pulling in the IQ 67 EA dingleberries?

 

[negator2vc]

Unity ... Unity never learn!

 

[Tacgnol]

Why the fuck do they keep pulling in the IQ 67 EA dingleberries?

Senior leadership in business is probably the one area that you can consistently fail upwards.

 

[ADL]

https://unity.com/blog/unity-is-canceling-the-runtime-fee

After deep consultation with our community, customers, and partners, we’ve made the decision to cancel the Runtime Fee for our games customers, effective immediately. Non-gaming Industry customers are not impacted by this modification.

Over the last 20 years, we’ve partnered with brilliant designers and developers, artists and engineers, publishers and platforms, to build a world where great games could be built by anyone, for everyone. We called it “democratizing game development,” and it remains our core mission today.

However, we can’t pursue that mission in conflict with our customers; at its heart, it must be a partnership built on trust. I’ve been able to connect with many of you over the last three months, and I’ve heard time and time again that you want a strong Unity, and understand that price increases are a necessary part of what enables us to invest in moving gaming forward. But those increases needn’t come in a novel and controversial new form. We want to deliver value at a fair price in the right way so that you will continue to feel comfortable building your business over the long term with Unity as your partner. And we’re confident that if we’re good partners and deliver great software and services, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what we can do together.

So we’re reverting to our existing seat-based subscription model for all gaming customers, including those who adopt Unity 6, the most performant and stable version of Unity yet, later this year.

Here’s what you can expect:

• Unity Personal: As announced last year, Unity Personal will remain free, and we’ll be doubling the current revenue and funding ceiling from $100,000 to $200,000 USD. This means more of you can use Unity at no cost. The Made with Unity splash screen will become optional for Unity Personal games made with Unity 6 when it launches later this year.
• Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: We’ll be modifying subscription pricing and the qualifying annual revenue thresholds, effective January 1, 2025. These changes will apply to all new and existing Unity Pro and Enterprise customers when you purchase, upgrade, or renew a subscription on or after this date.
  • Unity Pro: An 8% subscription price increase to $2,200 USD annually per seat will apply to Unity Pro. Unity Pro will be required for customers with more than $200,000 USD of total annual revenue and funding.
  • Unity Enterprise: A 25% subscription price increase will apply to Unity Enterprise. Unity Enterprise will be required for customers with more than $25 million USD of total annual revenue and funding. A minimum subscription requirement may also apply. Because this set of our largest customers have unique needs and use many of our products and services, we’ll be contacting everyone in the days ahead to discuss customized packages.

From this point forward, it’s our intention to revert to a more traditional cycle of considering any potential price increases only on an annual basis. Our commitment remains that if we change the Editor software terms in ways that impact you, you may continue using your current version of the software under the previously agreed terms as long as you keep using that version. We updated this commitment last year on our GitHub repository and at unity.com/legal. You can read more about all the details of our 2025 pricing changes here.

Canceling the Runtime Fee for games and instituting these pricing changes will allow us to continue investing to improve game development for everyone while also being better partners. Thank you all for your trust and continued support. We look forward to many more years of making great games together.



– Matt

 

[RobotSquirrel]

The Made with Unity splash screen will become optional for Unity Personal games made with Unity 6 when it launches later this year.

Only good thing they did IMO because the unity brand is something most developers don't want to be associated with (meanwhile Godot people willingly put the logo on their games even though its not required).

The difference in $100,000 revenue is bugger all when you consider most devs will either not even come close or in the extreme circumstances exceed that limit by a huge amount.
Increasing the subscription cost is some Adobe tier stupid business decisions. This is just going to make people abandon the engine faster.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Its still a crap engine.

 

[Lacrymas]

It is a crap engine. I don't understand why devs keep using it.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

It is a crap engine. I don't understand why devs keep using it.

I guess that it's just the one that a lot of them are most familiar with and know how to tweak to serve their purposes if the need arises. The much better alternative would be creating their own engine from scratch, but not every studio is willing (or able) to make that investment.

 

[Konjad]

It is a crap engine. I don't understand why devs keep using it.

Ease of use and abundant documentation?

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

It's because it's an amazing engine and you fags are full of shit. I wish a portion of my income taxes was deducted to fund unity development.

 

[thesecret1]

The much better alternative would be creating their own engine from scratch, but not every studio is willing (or able) to make that investment.

I don't think people who say this really understand the scale of what they're suggesting, or the implications. We're talking about a project an order of magnitude larger than any video game, one that requires a different set of skills than making games (and thus means hiring dedicated employees) and that will, most likely, turn out to be total shit.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

The much better alternative would be creating their own engine from scratch, but not every studio is willing (or able) to make that investment.

I don't think people who say this really understand the scale of what they're suggesting, or the implications. We're talking about a project an order of magnitude larger than any video game, one that requires a different set of skills than making games (and thus means hiring dedicated employees) and that will, most likely, turn out to be total shit.

Hence why most game devs don't get to have their own engines (and there's nothing wrong with that).

 

[Inec0rn]

You cripple your ability to hire talent.
Anyone hired has to learn new engine, making it difficult to ramp up and down production.
Staff leave and create massive knowledge gaps / key man risk.

It's mostly relevant to AAA where 9/10 are straight garbage. It makes sense CDPR dumping RedEngine as it's going to significantly lower cost of development, even Valve were considering using Unreal not too long ago. Don't forget 99% of customers are happy with slop and don't give two shits about the engine, good lighting, animations, AI or anything else that has been stagnant 2 decades.

 

[what am i doing]

The much better alternative would be creating their own engine from scratch, but not every studio is willing (or able) to make that investment.

I don't think people who say this really understand the scale of what they're suggesting, or the implications. We're talking about a project an order of magnitude larger than any video game, one that requires a different set of skills than making games (and thus means hiring dedicated employees) and that will, most likely, turn out to be total shit.

In-house engines (which 27% of AAA studios do still use) are nowhere near as big an endeavour as general-purpose commercial engines, and their cost amortizes as they're reused for the studio's future games.

 

[thesecret1]

The much better alternative would be creating their own engine from scratch, but not every studio is willing (or able) to make that investment.

I don't think people who say this really understand the scale of what they're suggesting, or the implications. We're talking about a project an order of magnitude larger than any video game, one that requires a different set of skills than making games (and thus means hiring dedicated employees) and that will, most likely, turn out to be total shit.

In-house engines (which 27% of AAA studios do still use) are nowhere near as big an endeavour as general-purpose commercial engines, and their cost amortizes as they're reused for the studio's future games.

Even specialized ones are a massive endeavor, the ones in use by AAA mostly hold outs from times past that are gradually being abandoned, as seen most recently with CDPR. The cost doesn't amortize because the expenses never end - you don't "finish" an engine. It's an ongoing effort that you improve upon over the years. If you decide to stop this, you will just be left behind by the competition and faced with the prospect of either investing a large sum of money in an attempt to catch up, or switching to a commercial engine.

That's not to mention that the cost of developing the engine isn't the only one. Since your engine is in-house, nobody outside your company is familiar with it. What that means is that you need to teach every new hire how to use it, and that there is no support to be found outside the company - no online tutorials, no troubleshooting, no tips on how to make the best use of the engine, nothing.

 

[duskvile]

Can you make a whole game in Unity looking like Enemies demo? I haven't seen much studios go for this artstyle. Only maybe Nobody Wants to Die but is made in Unreal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXYUNrgqWUU

 

[flyingjohn]

It is a crap engine. I don't understand why devs keep using it.

Mobile. There is no alternative.
Indie to AA production, there is no alternative.
Godot is a joke and Unreal is designed for a very specific genre and big budget games.

In-house engines (which 27% of AAA studios do still use) are nowhere near as big an endeavour a

Where are you gonna find the programmers to do this willing to work for peanuts?
How are you gonna budget the game since now you have high salary programmers and dev time being wasted on engine production?
How are you gonna deal with people leaving and not having a easy ability to rehire since you have to train them on your new engine?
No, it is not a easy endeavor. Unity and Unreal have the money and time to do what they want, game devs don't.

 

[Odoryuk]

Its still a crap engine.

All available game engines are crap. The ones which are not available to the public are crap also.

Can you make a whole game in Unity looking like Enemies demo? I haven't seen much studios go for this artstyle. Only maybe Nobody Wants to Die but is made in Unreal.

Technically you can, but it will be very demanding on your art team and on tech reqs for players who still rock RTX20s and expect all games to run decently, especially the ones with such level of fidelity

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

and Unreal is designed for a very specific genre

That was true in 2013.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Its still a crap engine.

All available game engines are crap. The ones which are not available to the public are crap also.

There are decent libraries and frameworks. I also know of some engines that are not bad if you aren't building a bloated 3D game.

 

[what am i doing]

The much better alternative would be creating their own engine from scratch, but not every studio is willing (or able) to make that investment.

I don't think people who say this really understand the scale of what they're suggesting, or the implications. We're talking about a project an order of magnitude larger than any video game, one that requires a different set of skills than making games (and thus means hiring dedicated employees) and that will, most likely, turn out to be total shit.

In-house engines (which 27% of AAA studios do still use) are nowhere near as big an endeavour as general-purpose commercial engines, and their cost amortizes as they're reused for the studio's future games.

Even specialized ones are a massive endeavor, the ones in use by AAA mostly hold outs from times past that are gradually being abandoned, as seen most recently with CDPR. The cost doesn't amortize because the expenses never end - you don't "finish" an engine. It's an ongoing effort that you improve upon over the years. If you decide to stop this, you will just be left behind by the competition and faced with the prospect of either investing a large sum of money in an attempt to catch up, or switching to a commercial engine.

That's not to mention that the cost of developing the engine isn't the only one. Since your engine is in-house, nobody outside your company is familiar with it. What that means is that you need to teach every new hire how to use it, and that there is no support to be found outside the company - no online tutorials, no troubleshooting, no tips on how to make the best use of the engine, nothing.

One company abandoning their engine is not a trend (Perforce's survey shows 10% in-house overall in 2021, 15% in 2022, 15% in 2023, and then 27% for AAA vs 10% for indie in 2024, which does not suggest a declining trend to me, at least in recent years, though it's not a long time span and I would like to find some other sources). The cost of an engine does amortize over time because you are not remaking the entire engine every time - that's the point of making an engine rather than programming each game from scratch; code reuse. On future games you'll probably update your engine - improve rendering, maybe new mechanics - but this is much less than the base effort of making the engine, and the bulk of it will remain unchanged. Consider also that depending on genre you may be facing a significant workload when using a commercial engine anyways due to it not coming with engine components needed for the type of game you are making.

It's true that new hires will need to be trained more on your engine compared to people who already know Unity/Unreal, but the flip side is that your own people who worked on the engine for years will always know it better than they could ever know a third-party engine, which is probably why the best video games are almost always made with in-house engines. Of course, if you're a penny-pinching MBA-run shovelware studio and you don't want to pay your programmers a decent wage and thus face constant turnover, I could see why a commercial engine would make more sense.

 

[thesecret1]

The cost of an engine does amortize over time because you are not remaking the entire engine every time - that's the point of making an engine rather than programming each game from scratch; code reuse. On future games you'll probably update your engine - improve rendering, maybe new mechanics - but this is much less than the base effort of making the engine, and the bulk of it will remain unchanged. Consider also that depending on genre you may be facing a significant workload when using a commercial engine anyways due to it not coming with engine components needed for the type of game you are making.

It doesn't matter that you don't remake the engine every time – you still need to maintain and expand it, you keep the people dedicated to it on your payroll. The argument about the commercial engine not coming with some components is also rather irrelevant – you'd need to write such components yourself with an in-house engine too (as part of making the engine).

It's true that new hires will need to be trained more on your engine compared to people who already know Unity/Unreal, but the flip side is that your own people who worked on the engine for years will always know it better than they could ever know a third-party engine

Hahahahahahahaha. No. Sorry, but absolutely not. Have you ever worked on a software project?
"Hey man did you write this?"
"Let me see... Yeah, I did."
"How does it work?"
"Dude it's like... a year since I wrote that. I don't fucking know."

which is probably why the best video games are almost always made with in-house engines

I assume you refer to the 90's or 00's when everyone had an in-house engine, rather than anything recent, since games representing in-house engines today are Fallout 4 (shit), Asscreed (shit), Witcher 3 (shit), Crusader Kings 3 (shit)...

Of course, if you're a penny-pinching MBA-run shovelware studio and you don't want to pay your programmers a decent wage and thus face constant turnover, I could see why a commercial engine would make more sense.

Every game studio faces constant programmer turnover, and it's virtually never because of the wage. Most video game programmers I know never worked for any company longer than 2 or 3 years

 

[what am i doing]

The cost of an engine does amortize over time because you are not remaking the entire engine every time - that's the point of making an engine rather than programming each game from scratch; code reuse. On future games you'll probably update your engine - improve rendering, maybe new mechanics - but this is much less than the base effort of making the engine, and the bulk of it will remain unchanged. Consider also that depending on genre you may be facing a significant workload when using a commercial engine anyways due to it not coming with engine components needed for the type of game you are making.

It doesn't matter that you don't remake the engine every time – you still need to maintain and expand it, you keep the people dedicated to it on your payroll.

Alright well I already explained that that is incorrect, the workload of maintaining/updating an engine is minor compared to creating it. If you're still of the opinion that the cost of an engine doesn't amortize over time then so be it.

 

[thesecret1]

Alright well I already explained that that is incorrect, the workload of maintaining/updating an engine is minor compared to creating it. If you're still of the opinion that the cost of an engine doesn't amortize over time then so be it.

You create it over the period of a couple years with your team. Once that's done, you don't get rid of the team, you keep them on your payroll because you need them to update and maintain it. They won't need a couple years to do an update anymore but, say, a couple months, but you still need them. You need to keep paying them. It's an ongoing cost.

 

[what am i doing]

Alright well I already explained that that is incorrect, the workload of maintaining/updating an engine is minor compared to creating it. If you're still of the opinion that the cost of an engine doesn't amortize over time then so be it.

You create it over the period of a couple years with your team. Once that's done, you don't get rid of the team, you keep them on your payroll because you need them to update and maintain it. They won't need a couple years to do an update anymore but, say, a couple months, but you still need them. You need to keep paying them. It's an ongoing cost.

You need programmers either way, but when the bulk of the workload in creating the engine itself is done they can focus on other things. Do you think they just sit around twiddling their thumbs otherwise?