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

[Luka-boy]

I know it probably won't happen, but I still hope they don't back down and go through with this just to see the even bigger meltdown.

 

[Azdul]

I'm surprised their share price is only down 7%. I'm guessing investors expect them to rescind. Even still, damage of perception is done. They're looking to pick pockets in some way that they would entertain something this ridiculous.

Or that enough people will pay up to make it worthwhile. If they lose half their customers, but the remaining half pay 10x more, it's a good deal from a financial standpoint.

There is one more side to it - publishers. Devolver Digital announced that they want game engine to be specified in every game pitch from now on.

Even if some developers cannot migrate away from Unity before 2024 - publishers will see investments in games developed in Unity as too risky.

From legal point of view - cancelling all development using Unity before 1st January 2024 and not accepting new licensing agreement is a prudent thing to do.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

years ago i predicted unity would have been the new flash plague, drowning the world in shit games and even shittier games. this suicide move is just a riccitiello manouver to prove me wrong.

 

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

I've felt unity has been lagging behind for some time now, but never expected dumbfuckery of this magnitude.

They will suffer the backlash even if they ritually sacrifice the CEO and backpedal out of the changes, because who the hell would ever trust them again.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Can use their own script language, c# or c++ (I think) to code in it.

There are a few caveats to it however. C# and C++ aren't as developed in the IDE as GDScript so things like auto-completes are either experimental or non-existent. I expect that to change eventually.
But overall Godot is fantastic and I find its better than Unity especially from a visual perspective - the built in shadows look so much nicer than Unity's.

 

[scytheavatar]

https://garry.net/posts/unity-can-get-fucked

As those Rust guys said:

It's our fault. All of our faults. We sleepwalked into it. We had a ton of warnings. We should have been pressing the eject button when Unity IPO'd in 2020. Every single thing they've done since then has been the exact opposite of what was good for the engine.

We had 10 years to make our own engine and never did. I'm sure a lot of game companies are feeling the same today.

No one should be sympathetic of these devs cause there has been a ton of red flags for years that Unity is kill. Anyone who struck to Unity despite those red flags was begging to be fucked over.

 

[Jaesun]

We want to acknowledge the confusion and frustration we heard after we announced our new runtime fee policy. We’d like to clarify some of your top questions and concerns:

Who is impacted by this price increase: The price increase is very targeted. In fact, more than 90% of our customers will not be affected by this change. Customers who will be impacted are generally those who have found a substantial scale in downloads and revenue and have reached both our install and revenue thresholds. This means a low (or no) fee for creators who have not found scale success yet and a modest one-time fee for those who have.

Fee on new installs only: Once you meet the two install and revenue thresholds, you only pay the runtime fee on new installs after Jan 1, 2024. It’s not perpetual: You only pay once for an install, not an ongoing perpetual license royalty like a revenue share model.

How we define and count installs: Assuming the install and revenue thresholds are met, we will only count net new installs on any device starting Jan 1, 2024. Additionally, developers are not responsible for paying a runtime fee on:
- Re-install charges - we are not going to charge a fee for re-installs.
- Fraudulent installs charges - we are not going to charge a fee for fraudulent installs. We will work directly with you on cases where fraud or botnets are suspected of malicious intent.
- Trials, partial play demos, and automation installs (devops) charges - we are not going to count these toward your install count. Early access games are not considered demos.
- Web and streaming games - we are not going to count web and streaming games toward your install count either.
- Charity-related installs - the pricing change and install count will not be applied to your charity bundles/initiatives.

Twitter Post

 

[Ismaul]

Backtracking and damage control already?

Sad times for drama enjoyers

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Fee on new installs only: Once you meet the two install and revenue thresholds, you only pay the runtime fee on new installs after Jan 1, 2024. It’s not perpetual: You only pay once for an install, not an ongoing perpetual license royalty like a revenue share model.

@Unity You've still lost people there. This is not a good thing. The issue is most assuredly trust related, people are afraid of now being EULA locked out of their games. You have now proven to retroactively lock people to EULAs that they do not agree to. This is major major violation of trust and unacceptable. 90% of studios wont be effected but I know one of the studios that will be and frankly it pisses me off knowing you're going to do this. Fuck you Unity.

I jumped ship because this exact scenario playing out scared the crap out of me, and now its happened and justified my move to Godot a year ago (prior to that I was just dabbling in Godot). If developers cannot trust your EULA they will abandon you just as I did.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

 

[Zarniwoop]

come on, that's fake. no one can be this retarded.

It's 2023. People are paying for subscriptions to heated seats and defending Apple for using their shitty proprietary ports instead of USB. They absolutely can be this retarded.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I predicted this yesterday talking to other developers, I said this will destroy curation as studios will begin removing their games permanently.
This is really really bad. My worst case is playing out right now lol. fuck. This sucks. I know they're probably joking but I know Team Cherry sure as fuck aren't, new Holowknights probably getting canned - this is so bad.

 

[Tyranicon]

Starting to think the real 4D chess move is to kill off a large section of indie development.

 

[TwoEdge]

How does Unity know how many times a game is installed? Sales I can understand, it's a statistic the platform can divulge, but installs would require users phoning home, right? This would raise some serious privacy concerns if it was the case.

 

[Azdul]

How does Unity know how many times a game is installed? Sales I can understand, it's a statistic the platform can divulge, but installs would require users phoning home, right? This would raise some serious privacy concerns if it was the case.

According to Unity recent 'clarifications' - they will get some 'aggregate' information that will somehow allow them to predict number of installation. And no - they won't provide details about their proprietary algorithm - but will charge their users according to it.

Apparently - this is the level of trust in Unity that not every publisher is ready for.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

- Fraudulent installs charges - we are not going to charge a fee for fraudulent installs. We will work directly with you on cases where fraud or botnets are suspected of malicious intent.

Yeah I want to see how quick they are at detecting this.

defending Apple for using their shitty proprietary ports instead of USB

Ur behind your times. Apple adopted the innovative USB 3.0 connector in their new industry-leading Apple iPhone 15 to be premiered in a week(using USB 2.0 protocol for the standard version, newer protocols need 15 Pro and secure Apple High Speed iCable).

How does Unity know how many times a game is installed? Sales I can understand, it's a statistic the platform can divulge, but installs would require users phoning home, right? This would raise some serious privacy concerns if it was the case.

They use some kind of weird estimations for it, maybe will add telemetry. Wonder how will pirating games affect it

 

[Cohesion]

I feel like the best move for Unity at this point is do the Wizards of the Coast thing and admit total defeat and rescind everything, revealing them to be pathetic idiots with no understanding of how the law works or any kind of backbone.

I'm still angry I spent two months learning this shit engine.

I'll assume and hope you moved completely away from Unity for your games?

I'd rather use RPGMaker held together with custom code and plugins than Unity.

Hilarious and true.

Dude, I really hope your game will succeed.

 

[scytheavatar]

How does Unity know how many times a game is installed? Sales I can understand, it's a statistic the platform can divulge, but installs would require users phoning home, right? This would raise some serious privacy concerns if it was the case.

That Unity will "work directly with devs" is already a gigantic red flag and suggests they themselves haven't thought through how fucking stupid their plan is.

 

[Caim]

How does Unity know how many times a game is installed? Sales I can understand, it's a statistic the platform can divulge, but installs would require users phoning home, right? This would raise some serious privacy concerns if it was the case.

They'll use their proprietary Dude Trust Me algorithms to make an estimation within an unknown margin of error of how many installs your game has and bill you accordingly.

 

[Lord_Potato]

How does Unity know how many times a game is installed? Sales I can understand, it's a statistic the platform can divulge, but installs would require users phoning home, right? This would raise some serious privacy concerns if it was the case.

That Unity will "work directly with devs" is already a gigantic red flag and suggests they themselves haven't thought through how fucking stupid their plan is.

I'm sure devs would willingly supply info that would allow them to get billed

 

[Dave the Druid]

 

[Azalin]

defending Apple for using their shitty proprietary ports instead of USB

Ur behind your times. Apple adopted the innovative USB 3.0 connector in their new industry-leading Apple iPhone 15 to be premiered in a week(using USB 2.0 protocol for the standard version, newer protocols need 15 Pro and secure Apple High Speed iCable).

That costs only 129 dollars,yes, that's a cable that costs 129 dollars

 

[Aemar]

Unreal, Godot, etc. are closely monitoring the situation. This is godsend.

 

[thesecret1]

Afraid the people ITT talking about devs suddenly making their own engines are fabulously optimistic. It's not the 90's anymore, making an engine from scratch is way, way too expensive for all but the richest few on the market, at least so long as you're going for something that can compete with the likes of Unreal. Not to mention the time required. More likely, this will just further cement Unreal as the market leader.

 

[Trithne]

Afraid the people ITT talking about devs suddenly making their own engines are fabulously optimistic. It's not the 90's anymore, making an engine from scratch is way, way too expensive for all but the richest few on the market, at least so long as you're going for something that can compete with the likes of Unreal. Not to mention the time required. More likely, this will just further cement Unreal as the market leader.

More Unreal, possibly also more Godot and let's see how s&box goes when it releases. There are devs that are opposed to Unreal just on principle, after all.

Maybe Source 2 will see a rise in popularity, who knows.

But you're right that we're not going to be seeing a resurgence of custom wngines, because most dev studios simply don't have that level of talent at them. They're filled with people who know how to make a game, not an engine.

Unfortunately, that kinda plays to Unreal - Blueprints get around the traditional barrier to using it, which was the expectation that devs knew how to actually dev in c++. Expect a wave soon of game dev academy graduates who literally only know Blueprints.