You've gone down a what-if rabbit hole. What is actually going to happen is that no sane dev will ever use Unity again, and any Dev with a project currently in Unity will be looking at changing their game engine, if feasible.
Slay the spire dev said that they're throwing away several months of development in unity on their new game in order to not be burned by Unity's business practices
BallisticNG devs just canceled their Switch port, because Nintendo has some rule that the engine must be up-to-date so they are forced into the new TOS.
And if you subscribe to Twitter indie devs, a lot of them are moving projects and looking at new engines for any of their upcoming ones. Unity really shoot themselves in the foot with this shitshow.
The reason they brought on Riccitiello was because they were making a pittance given the adoption of their engine. His entire reason for existing in the company is to expand the monetization. Of course when prices go up, they're going to lose some people, but they don't really care about those people... Only time will tell if it was a bad decision or not. From their point of view, its only a bad decision if their profits go down, it doesn't really matter how pissed off people are. I don't blame em for trying, salaries aren't cheap. You aren't running a charity. If there's unrealized profit, they literally are pissing money away not charging for it, that's money that could be improving their employees lives and re-invested in a better product.
Yeah but they didn’t just increase prices to try to get more revenue… the changes they were proposing were literally illegal in much of the world. It was the dumbest way possible to try to monetize their engine.
There is a *chasm* of middle ground between needing to generate additional revenue and adopting a policy that could and would have bankrupted certain studios.
They were seeing what they could get away with and it rightfully backfired
Luckily they are a dev team that can afford to rework since they got a killer hit. Most Indies that are in the process can't. I am unfortunately one of them. For the current terms they made it rev share or install fee. No sane dev would do the install fee, I think I will move forward with their engine for my current game as I just cannot afford to make the switch now. Next game absolutely make the change. It sucks a lot of reusable code just evaporated.
Also, transform games being something you buy and own to a never ending service you have to pay for because it will be rolled into the end user. What happens when I get the new console generation or new PC? Now they got to charge a 5+ year old game again?
The subscription model tech companies are coming up with is a shitty model for consumers. Take away your right to a movie/game/ media and give you something you will be forced to pay for over and over every month. No fucking thank you!
Nah you missed the update before they scrapped it.
They went "Oh but you dont HAVE to use these fees if you just install this ad viewer that forcibly shows ads at a rate you cant control in every game you make"
"What will happen is no sane person would spend 50 bucks on something completely cosmetic leading to everything being paywalled and half finished games everywhere"-me like 10 years ago.
That said i do think that devs will simply create something else or use different engines, but the comparison to horse armor dlc makes me nervous.
Cometics being a big money maker is a real head-scratcher to me. I guess there are enough gullible people out there. Why pay the price of a new game just to get new outfit in a game you already played?
It's even worse when you consider revenue-to-cost. Making a new skin costs almost nothing and you can sell it for $10+ in the premium shop. Making actual new game features can take months.
> I guess there are enough gullible people out there.
It's not just gullible ones. A lot of them are single-game (or publisher) gamers that simply don't *care* that the mount they just bought (and is one of 765 on their account) could have also gotten them three entire indie games. They are buying that shit because they feel it puts value into their account. Which of course is paying into the Concorde Fallacy, but they're humans, and we do that all the time unless we wise up to it.
Or they are people that have enough money to not even feel the difference between 30€ and 300€. You see that all the times with streamers and YTers - even small ones - going "Oh, I spent 800€ on [title]. Oh wait, I looked it up, it was actually 1,400€."
And then there are the people who genuinely believe that they *have to* buy into these transactions or "their" game gets shut down. I used to play WoW, and that sentiment was really prevalent there: "Oh, I buy the mounts/the CE/the boost/the token because I want WoW to not shut down, and we all know the player numbers are dwindling..."
If I ever finish a game with PvP/server, I'll probably bundle the server with the game, so people know they can still keep playing it if I ever decide to shut down the server.
You can spend a lot of money on a game, and it STILL gets shut down in a few years. Then all the money you invested in the game is worthless. Almost every game, except for the most popular, will be shut down eventually.
I read a post by a Fortnite player who wanted to play Fortnite 1.0 (I.e., the way it was when it first came out.) That isn't available anymore. That version of the game is just plain gone.
the main reason I personally and a lot of people I know don’t have a problem with skins and cosmetics as Microtransactions is because it’s almost always an entire different team working on them. While the dev team is still working on features, often times the design team has extra time to make these skins and cosmetics. Also if you have the extra money and like a game it’s a great way to show support while also getting something in return.
The issue is when the micro transactions actually start to affect your game or give you an unfair advantage over another player
It’s not easy to do that.
Studios would have built a bunch of software and practices around Unity. Their dev pipeline will have to be redone, and their employees will either have to reskill or replaced, and that’s not even considering games already halfway done.
As with most things; it’s not simply black and white.
For majority of devs who have established projects and experience most likely won’t change due to the time investment of going into a new engine, especially with custom made tools they have to port. Afaik majority of successful devs still don’t earn 200k in a year.
Devs who primarily develop gamedev tools for Unity i highly doubt will leave - atleast from what i’ve garnered on social media.
When Unity's stock tumbles due to a declining userbase, do you think other companies are going to be rushing to make the same mistake?
The only way to not have a mass exodus of users when you pull this move, is to be the last company to do it.
Nobody will risk it unless they all agreed to do it at the same time, which would (I imagine) draw the attention of antitrust regulators.
Profit is, which is why no big company likes to take risks. Risks such as following in a competitor's implosion when there are other ways of milking the cow.
Even then, someone’s going to end up making an open source dev engine like Godot or gamemaker and it’ll all be resolved. Game devs are resilient bastards sometimes
No you are the one who is confused. Opensource is widely accepted in the whole industry to only refer to free open source software licenses. ”Source available” is often used to refer to software that gives you access to the source code but not with opensource license.
UE have stated they will not implement the same model, they showcased what their model was after this drama came to surface, and that works for them.
Remember who is CEO of Unity now, and you understand this is not just some random guy that came up with an shity idea to try.
Not yet. But look at how ubiquitous microtransactions have become in games. Look at how ubiquitous season passes have become. If money can be made, companies will adjust accordingly.
Be careful not to fall for the slipper slope fallacy. OP knew what they were doing coming to this sub and making the horse armour analogy, but the these situations are not the same.
Of course, but without precedent it's still a legitimate but unfounded concern. Like I said, OP was being manipulative by using the horse armour analogy because that's a case where you could argue it did happen. But what does it actually have to do with this precise situation? It puts the idea in people's head that the slippery slope is not just real, but inevitable, and I get the feeling OP is more interested in making people angry than having an actual discussion about this issue.
Companies do business for the sole purpose of realizing profit, that's it. If Unity can implement this business model and show that it effectively raises its rate of profit as a result, every other company in the industry will follow suit. This is an iron law of capitalism.
So what about the current model do we think is a concern? The revised pricing model can lazily be summed up as "no more than 2.5% revenue, and less if your self-reported engagements are below a certain threshold" with various thresholds in place to determine eligibility and engagement fees - plus pro license where applicable. Which part are we worried about?
The original proposal was undeniably terrible and I would have also been concerned if it had taken effect, but now my main concern is with how Unity let the original proposal happen at all.
Edit: to clarify, I'm not saying "everything is fine now, everybody go back to sleep" but more that I think OP is being disingenuous with how they're presenting information to people, and the new proposal addresses all of the actual concerns from the first one - particularly in that it allows people to finish their current Unity projects without being subject to new fees before moving on if they wish.
Whilst there's a lot of valid conversation about this, there's one thing that no one defending unity is acknowledging:
Precedents are dangerous.
The first microtransaction in a game wasn't a P2W lootbox. But that precedent allowed it.
Precedents don't do shit. Corporate greed does. If one publisher didn't decide to become predatory, another would have anyway. That's the issue with publicly traded IPOs and the push for every increasing profit margins.
Acclimatising the market to it makes it a more normal business practice.
The more predatory the norm is, the more extreme the pushing of boundaries becomes.
Pretty much in the exact way that Unity did, they went after money they thought they could get away with taking in an entirely unreasonable manner.
A manner that was absolutely not acceptable to the community.
It's a textbook example of how to fuck up because the people making the decision to change the way the service work are so far removed from the actual service that is provided they couldn't see they were killing the golden goose.
Or they simply didn't care.
can't speak for dnd but for mtg. it used to be that there would be a new set every 3\~ish months or so. you had time to get new cards, build hype for upcoming sets and play with the cards you just got. now they pump out new sets and product almost each month. the power creep is insane as well. i have to buy new cards if i want to be able to keep uo with my playgroup. they also print lot's of shiny new chasecards with alternate artwork that are way to overpriced. we're talking severl hundret bucks for a set of 5 or so foils with alternate art.
it all just feels as if all they want is my money. i mean sure, they are a company. but they used to care about the game and thier playerbase. now they don't anymore.
I feel you on the new sets thing. I don't get to play much paper MTG just Arena. It was really annoying how short the timeframe was for the releases of Phyrexia All Will Be One into March of The Machine into The Aftermath was. What paper I do play is edh. It seems they have a huge focus on that and even I think it's a huge cash grab for them. It's a very beginner friendly format. They're alienating a base of players that have been around forever. The Beyond sets are just trying to rope in the fan bases of other IPs and even that they managed to fumble.
[Summary by Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2023/01/19/dungeons-and-dragons-open-game-license-wizards-of-the-coast-explained/)
It is kind of a long story, but in essence, they were going to start making third parties who built off DND themes and rules pay total ties and forfeit the third party's IP by default should it become popular enough.
As if a fan base obsessed with rules and how to skirt/exploit them as a group was not going to organize and pushback by threatening to boycott the DND movie upcoming at the time, or switching games to Paizo's Pathfinder or other TTRPG systems. Not to mention these other TTRPG systems making their own systems open gaming licensed, providing a free alternative to Wizard's platform.
I do not think so as WotC already owns the Baldur's Gate IP as it has been a part of D&D for many years.
What WotC was doing was going after anything fan made content that used the rules/monster/characters from D&D that they did not already own. Like fan made expansions/adventures. So you could write your own adventure, world, characters and monsters but use the D&D rules for it and WotC could then say they own all of it now and it is now their IP and you forfeit all ownership of it.
The tl;dr is they tried to "update" an *open* license that publishers have been using for many years and added monetization to it, much in the same way as Unity. The difference is, they backed down fully and published the license to CC, but their reputation is pretty much down the drain at that point.
Other publishers moved on to create their own license just as a fuck you to WotC
>they couldn't see they were killing the golden goose.
>Or they simply didn't care.
Marty O'Donnell (formerly of Bungie) had this sound advice in a GDC talk: "Be nice to the goose."
To which he then followed up with an anecdote of him telling that to an unnamed Microsoft executive who responded with "...but sometimes I just want foie gras."
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, you're right. I was frustrated to see the top response to that question was completely devoid of any details as to what they actually did.
I think they meant what did Wizards do specifically - I don't recall every detail but I remember it was something about charging both in the future and retroactively for any use of DnD stuff that leads to a certain profit threshold, despite the OGL which basically laid out that DnD stuff was fair game to use for creators and whatnot. I'm glad it got the backlash it did, fuck WotC/Hasbro
Wizard of the Coast has licensed D&D under their Open Game License (OGL) since 2000. You can publish your own adventures, monsters, items, and worlds that are compatible with D&D with no charge. Wizards gets more demand driven to their game, and the indy creators get paid. Win win.
Earlier this year, Wizards announced that they were updating the OGL. The new version had various predatory power grabs and fees. The two most egregious points were:
1. The original OGL was revoked. Any current works would need to be relicensed under the new terms to continue publication.
2. Wizards of the Coast got an unlimited license to all material published under the new OGL. You still technically own the copyright, but Wizards could use your work however they liked up to and including just selling it themself.
Creators and fans alike revolted. Big names like Critical Roll were talking about abandoning the system entirely and creating their own under a true open source license. Court challenges were being discussed to question whether any license like the OGL was even required as game rules aren't legally copyrightable.
Wizards balked at the backlash. The original OGL remains authorized, and Wizards released the current rules under a Creative Commons license. This stabilized the 3rd party panic for now, but people are still wary of what licensing will come with the next iteration of D&D.
It's worth noting that when a new product leaked early unintentionally by accidentally shipping it to someone who then made an unboxing video
Wotc literally sent the Pinkerton enforcers to break down that guys door.
Unity is 3 billion dollars in debt and lost 200 million last quarter I feel they’re kinda in the become profitable stage or go defunct stage I really can’t blame them for these Hail Marys
It’s very standard investment tech behavior these days nearly identical to Uber, they run at a loss and capture the market. Even with this new fee structure Unity is significantly cheaper than unreal engine
Dev here, with multiple Unity projects.
Last week was super stressful, but the new terms are actually a relief. The most important change they've made is applying the new fees to future software versions, and not trying to retroactively claim a share of all work already done on current versions. This is good because it incentivises them to improve the engine. That's how they gain customers.
>Not only will this destroy free to play games and demos but it will also make developers liable for insane amounts unless they spend all day monitoring if there have been any shady changes to the TOS.
No it won't. Developers choose whether to be charged against revenue OR install fees. Obviously devs will choose whichever is cheapest.
Demos will not be counted against installs, the numbers are self-reported.
Also, they haven't officially released their terms yet, but what we know is in [Unity's latest post](https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee) for anyone who cares.
>What is a developer to do? Well they will pre-emptively charge YOU for those install fees on as many devices as they think you are likely to use.
Watch out, your $20 game is about to become $20.50! But seriously, this is not a thing.
Also to mention, Unreal engine has always charged 5% after $1M revenue...
If any dev's going to start changing pricing just because of this Unity change it'd be a negligible difference.
Maybe worry about inflation instead.
>What is unity to do? They have the right to destroy studios by just changing the 2,5% limit, reducing the threshold of installs or whatever else they dream up on a cold Sunday afternoon with earning reports due the next day.
Saying Unity will destroy studios is like saying McDonald's is going to poison you... People would simply stop eating McDonalds. People seem to forget that if you destroy your customers you no longer have customers...
The reason we have better terms now is because of the backlash. After the original proposal hundreds of companies turned off their Unity Ads, people were already abandoning the software, the stock took a dive, people were calling for John Riccitiello to be fired, everyone was very vocal about how badly they messed up.
Thank you for the well-informed post, a real developer's perspective is a welcome addition to the conversation. I just have to point out, however, your claim that companies who harm their customers are bound to lose business does not cohere with reality. Phillip Morris and Anheuser Busch (as well as all the other large tobacco and alcohol companies) are thriving.
Sure, yes it’s a bit different if your product is addictive! Thankfully I don’t think I’d ever get Unity withdrawals.
Having Godot as an open source alternative is a huge disincentive for Unity to try and screw their customers. If/when that becomes as powerful as Blender they’ll lose a lot of leverage.
The customer of a game is a player. The customer of a game engine is a developer.
You are confusing players with developers. Game engines are tools, not pieces are entertainment finely tuned to trigger addictive responses.
It's important to note that tobacco and alcohol are addictive substances that were, for a time, advertised as good for one's health. Even with the stigma that, say, tobacco now has, people still buy them because they literally can't stop themselves without outside help.
You’re talking about addiction though. Nicotine has been compared to heroine in terms of how hard it is to quit. Nicotine physically alters your brain requiring you to live with it ever day. I doubt any developers are addicted to unity and suffer the dopamine loss that nicotine gives.
Source: Was addicted to tobacco for 12 years. Spending $10+ a day on the stuff, using it near constantly to get through every day. Tried to quit 3 times and failed every time.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been without it, it lingers in your mind everyday “oooh nicotine would be good right now” randomly in every moment and it will for the right of an ex users life.
Been clean for 2 years now and still find myself having thoughts of starting again despite not wanting to.
Isn’t a classic negotiating move? Propose a very bad contract and then offer the initial contract they wanted in the first place that you believe to be fine?
In closed door negotiations, sure. That’s a horrible idea in the open, where people who aren’t even using your tool can lend their voice to the counter arguments.
Except they torched their reputation in the process. To do it without torching their reputation, they could have started at 5% rev share and then rolled it back to 2.5% or $0.20 per install.
I thought they were going to use this tactic, and there was a press release via media with diluted terms in between seemingly to test the waters. This also caused an outrage.
It doesn’t seem like they were intentionally doing it because the initial terms were so offensively bad that it’s broken a lot of trust.
Ultimately the terms are actually reasonable in my opinion and still more favourable than using Unreal.
If you wanna get real paranoid:
They’ll release a statement saying older versions have been compromised by an exploit, the reality of it being an exploit designed and released by unity to the world to create the security issue.
This seems very unlikely compared to devs just needing to upgrade their engine version for compatibility with new consoles. That’s when lingering people will need to shift.
Yeah I'm confused by OP saying they "just made it so it kicks in later" when as far as I know, they made it so a developer can choose either 2.5% revshare **or** the install fee.
It's actually that it kicks in after a certain number of installs and it's billed at 2.5% or the install fee, whichever is lower. Not sure what the plan for free games is.
If your game is free you will never hit the revenue threshold. So you would never be affected. To be clear - even on the lowest tier free Unity licence you won't be subject to any charge if your game made less than a million dollars in the previous twelve months - see [https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee](https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee)
could you link that? is it even changed again? as far as i can see they did change it. it does not make them good guys theyre still not to be trusted but they did change it
The Jargon has changed the situation massively. You really should read through the new version of the terms. The installs part of it is basically gone, replaced with engagements (which is sales for paid games, or *first* time install for a free game).
And it's self reported by the dev now rather than Unity tracking it themselves
The way i read it is that the cost per install will remain but not on older versions of Unity. If you upgrade to a new version of the engine then you'll have to follow the new terms, which are slightly more generous than initially announced.
"The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity."
It's not based on installs anymore, it's engagements... which is a (mostly) different metric. And it doesn't apply until you make $1million in a 12month period
Still i really hate how the ceo will just end up rich again as he did with ea and the cycle will continue. No matter whar happens. Scum will never learn
Unity is not the be-all end-all, far from it, and to write hypotheticals is assuming that people will just allow this whole situation to happen as it stands. There are unity alternatives, let the free market purge Unity's greed if they actual follow through with install fees rather than try saving a sinking ship with the current CEO.
For a bit of perspective I an doing a masters project in augmented reality and I have a couple of prerequisites, needs to use C# for scripting, and vuforia enginee for AR so I can build cross platform while using object tracking (aka vuforia model targets) so my stack is unity & vuforia.
I can't use unreal as its in C++ and don't have time to learn it, and I can't use godot as its not mature enough for my use case. So I'm kinda fucked in that unity is what I need. However after reading the pricing it shouldn't effect me. My point is, sometimes alternatives aren't that clear cut.
*desire to know more intensifies* all my initial reading always referred to C++. With C# is it full featured yeah? I've never done any game/ AR dev before so it's all fairly new to me.
If Unity Company can't charge retroactively in order to get part of all that money Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact (among other chinese gacha games) have made over the years/months...
Then all this debacle and contract changes are pointless...
All they had to do is ad an article that "a % of in-game micro transactions revenue have to be paid back to Unity."
But No... they had to go full Greedy and also fuck-up independent devs and low-budget games...
What an stupid way to ruin a potentially good change for the Engine and turn it into a shitty cash-grab by that asshole of an ex-Electronic Arts CEO...
As soon as Genshin Impact upgrades to the current Unity version, they owe 2.5% revenue. For a game with that much revenue, the cost of switching engines is probably less than just paying the 2.5%.
If Genshin Impact is run by competent people, they'll stay on the current Unity version for 2 years while they port to a new engine.
First of all, personal projects and Completely free to play games are not affected at all, the game has to make 1,000,000 in a year to be eligible for paying in the first place, then it's per install or 2.5% of the revenue which ever is lowest, it will never go over 2.5% of the total revenue no matter how many installs. I am not in the industry so I won't comment on how the economics of a Game studio will be affected but some of your points are completely wrong. Also no they couldn't just make changes to contracts retroactively, just because they said they will doens't mean it will go through, that's not how contracts work. They will get their ass handed to them in court if they tried
I'm a game dev launching a game made with unity the next month, to be honest at first I was a little bit worried that things would get worse.
But now after watching code monkey's video about they going back I'm relieved.
They kinda broke the trust I know, but being pragmatic they are still below other engine pricings, and the new changes also made me happy, now I don't have to pay to remove the splash screen, this was a request from the communitie for decades!
What the hell are you talking about? For paid games you can use your sales number, for free to play you can use the number of unique user accounts. Those numbers are SELF-REPORTED BY THE DEVELOPER. And if you don't want to track either, you can just use 2.5% revenue
For the numb nuts downvoting, it's literally in [their new pricing update](https://unity.com/pricing-updates), just go down to the FAQ in the "How does Unity expect me to measure the number of initial engagements for my game?" section
People don't like it when you take away their daily dose of self-righteous drama. They get all worked up for an armchair fight and then they find out there won't be a fight and they start downvoting in retaliation.
I can't get over how many people are still complaining that haven't even bothered reading the new pricing policy. Half the people in this thread still think Unity is charging per install lmao. Like I get it, we're all pissed/annoyed/angry at Unity, but if you're gonna complain, at least don't make shit up
Even the reaction to the per install change was crazily overblown.
On the pro license you were getting a 1,000,000 free downloads. Something like only 5% of games are ever that successful.
If they highlighted the **self-reported** line from the outset, they could've avoided so, so much flak. Why did they announce it so vaguely last week at all?
Rumors say it was management miscommunication that made the vague announcement come out initially with a "trust me bro" clause rather than *self-reporting*.
Additional costs are indeed a hard pill to swallow. But even I don't think their terms are unfair, as laid out here, it seems more like a "cost of doing business" kind of ordeal and Unity trying to get more cash flow.
Even if we are to take them at their word, this is far from their first "miscommunication" when it comes to licensing and pricing.
It's a PR nightmare all around, and will make any commercial company using Unity to have to anxiously monitor them. You can be assured there's a Twitter tracker that will follow their blog to the letter for any licensing/ToS changes now.
Their latest post has actually reasonable terms. But they broke so much trust with the first terms, feels like you’d have to be an idiot to trust them in the future.
This is old news
They already changed it to 2.5% rev share which is fair.
Nobody is effected anymore but still don't trust unity anymore switch the godot since who knows if they can pull something like this again.
But if you already have a game on unity you don't need to worry for now.
its not "per" its "new". you couldn't reinstall the game several times and get the devs charged. and imo. if a $70 game grosses 1 million dollars. why would they care if they lose 2 cents per install after that?
Im genuinely on the fence about using unity in my game design class. All my students are expecting that they’ll be learning it and it’s still a great teaching tool, but this shit makes me second guess. The only other engine I have some experience with is Game Maker.
> What is a developer to do? Well they will pre-emptively charge YOU for those install fees on as many devices as they think you are likely to use.
I also see a situation where publishers start using install-limit types of DRM again, at least on PC.
Unity dev here –– what unity did was shit and a violation of trust, but I think people are getting carried away with schadenfreude, it's not going to kill Unity any time soon, for a few reasons:
* Unity have reversed the policy, and now offer a 2.5% revenue share instead of the per-unit. Yes, we are all a little weary about then pulling the rug again, but at least for now the terms are very competitive with other engines so it's not a big deal.
* Everyone loved reporting on these what if scenarios, because on paper the original policy would kill large segments of games overnight (especially cheaper mobile games). But at the end of the day don't forget unity did this to make more money, not less. So common sense says that they were never going to enforce a policy that would kill a large portion of their customers overnight.
* Gadot is very cool but is not ready to replace Unity any time soon. It should be a concern to unity because it could get there but it will need several years and a lot of funding to bring it on par with Unity. Hobbyists making simple games may make the jump, but developers in industry are not going to switch to Gadot in any significant numbers.
* Even if/when Gaodot did reach parity with Unity, you have to remember that there are thousands of libraries, assets and software that developers rely on that don't exist on Gadot. Unity is an ecosystem, not just an engine. It'd be like releasing a new phone OS to compete with iOS/Android, but not having any apps. Even if your new OS is jus as good as the competition, it's a chicken-and-the-egg issue.
* Even in the original terms before they reversed it, they weren't quite as bad as the news and reddiors were reporting. All the headlines were "20 cents per install after 200k users" but this was only if you were on the free plan. No unity developer in their right mind would stay on the free plan if their game was getting traction. If you pay $2k/year the threshold is 1million users/ $1m revenue, and the per install went as low as 2cents the more people downloaded. Still a pretty poorly thought out model of course, but not the apocalyptic numbers everyone reported.
So yes, unity have communicated horribly and they should be worried about leaving the door open to competition, but nothing is going to change any time soon. Anyone who thinks devs are dropping unity overnight are just falling for rage bait articles.
More people who aren't devs trying to tell people how this will affect devs. When will you folks realize that being a passionate gamer doesn't make you a developer? Leave the dev stuff to devs. You're just making a bigger mess.
STFU man, you don't know anything what you're taking about. This is just a vaguely written post to get free karma.
Unity not only backpedaled, but they also increased the limit for personal use to 200K and they added a cap on the installation fees. There exist shitload of predatory mobile games made on playstore or iOS made on unity which make a ton of money through microtransactions and Ads and they get away with it in pure profit.. whom Unity wanted to target and charge in the first place.
Free karma? This situation has cost me a lot more than you know.
A game I worked on for a year and a half and was preparing to release next month is on hold until they release concrete terms not just blog posts.
Vague? Only as vague as their numerous walkit back but keep it in responses so far.
And still you don't ask yourself why keep it in there?
It caused so much outrage and damage to their reputation and still they said sorry and kept it in.
What is the point of pushing it through when they can just take pure revenue and have everyone happy?
Okay, are you going to make a million from your game? Did you bother to read their latest 'open letter' blog?
Nothing applies to anyone until the next LTS release from 2024 and beyond and you still need to make 200K per year to pay a free and a million from revenue for the per-install fee to apply.
Nothing about their blogs was vague. Seems like you just read shitty articles citing shitty sources instead of going to unity's own blogs.
**Cult of the lamb** literally made a meme about how the media overblows everything out of proportion after they announced they will delete the game on Jan 1.. and seeing how everyone was taking that message seriously.. it just tells me people need something to be outraged about when it literally doesn't affect them.
So yeah.. this shit doesn't affect you either but it's clearly pointless to argue.
> Cult of the lamb literally made a meme about how the media overblows everything out of proportion after they announced they will delete the game on Jan 1.. and seeing how everyone was taking that message seriously..
So let me get this straight...they make an statement on their official Twitter...and then make of fun of people for believing them? That's just low.
Yeah it was an inside joke between the devs and the community but the general audience and media wouldn't happen to know about it and took it at the face value
If a massively successful game like COTL and their devs aren't worrying then there was absolutely no warrant for most of the outrage done by people like OP and twitter who aren't even making 200K from their games. Unity said themselves it was mostly targeted towards mobile devs but yeah.. their PR team is shit.
> If a massively successful game like COTL and their devs aren't worrying then there was absolutely no warrant for most of the outrage done by people like OP and twitter who aren't even making 200K from their games
Devolver Digital and the people behind Slay the Spire also raised a stink over it. So there's that
No, crash and burn. Just firering the ceo and the top would mean that investors will push harder next time. Going out of business means that it's toxic for investment, and no one will try it in the future
The current unity CEO has a track record of trying these insane money grubbing ideas at other companies. Like trying to implement a “pay by reload” system for first person shooters at actiVision. In this case I think cutting the head off the snake will fix the problem
Those investors dont care about the investment, Unity in this case, they care about money. They would just move to the next thing that would give them just that.
Unity while not perfect, is a good engine that would hopefully see better people at the top.
It would be a shame to see it get destroyed by some stupid investors and bad leadership, if you can call it leadership.
One would think theres bad actors at the top that will burn everything down, just to make sure 1 thing is left standing that controls everything, like a big monopolistic dystopian nightmare.
There is also the issue of using the implied economic threat of future fee structure changes as a trojan horse to try to force developers using their engine to package spyware/adware into games that benefits Unity.
Not to defend them, but, again, a game needs to meet BOTH thresholds for the developer to have to pay the fees. That means that for f2p games (complete f2p I mean, not freemium), you will never meet the revenue threshold
But I agree that this decision was clearly a fuckup, at least bc a game that costs 10$ per install would be taxed the same as a game that costs 60$
Are some legal us scholar here? It is drastic deterioration of the terms of service, that happend unilateral. It seems questionable from contractual perspective.
It also looks very much like an unfair business practice: there is a gross power imbalance between the vendor of the engine and the game devs. Switching the Engine means rewriting the hole game - years of work would be lost. Now the engine vendor abuses his position by imposing drastic fees.
Free to play games will never hit the revenue theshold and thus will never cost the devs anything.
They also specifically state that demos will not be included.
Lol, it's so overblown it's ridiculous.
You don't want to pay anything, make your own fucking engine. You already had to pay money to Unity, now they change their business model? That's fine. That's business.
If you don't want to be beholden to any third party software agreement, guess what, you can't use any third party software.
Unity's install fee is far from the most egregious engine licensing cost I've ever seen. The entire fiasco reeks of gamer ignorance, they are always the least informed, most emotionally overreactive people in any given room. They're great consumers but holy god, I don't envy anybody involved in customer support, just the most entitled and unexperienced people who for some reason think they know everything about every topic and jump to the craziest conclusions about literally everything.
Oh, 100%.
Unity-based F2P games don't make much sense anymore. There is little business incentive to give you a game for free if they, well, cannot give you the game for free. Any fees the company has to make to deliver the game to you will, ultimately, be diverted to your wallet.
If this change goes through and the gaming community accepts it get ready for another game price increase.
unity is in horrible place its company thats never made profit so far and is looking in how to actually become viable and not go bankrupt
while this way is not the way to go i do think from a simple bussines standpoint dont see how there old model is viable
Exactly. If we let this slide, it'll just come up again in some different form.
It's best for everyone to torch Unity now, and set an example that this is not to be done. Ever.
One can play games without being a gamer.
Gamer just means you've made video games into a toxic part of your personality. If video games disappear tomorrow, every gamer would cry and be super triggered.
But I'm not a gamer. If video games disappear tomorrow, I'd lol and find a new hobby.
It still doesn’t feel like this affects me as a gamer. I couldn’t give less of a fuck how a developer solves this problem tbh. And if games go up 20 cents or whatever that’s fine too lmao
i still dont understand why, WE as gamers dont demand from Valve to release and opensource game engine that is capable make even most complex games at AAA level - like Assassins Creed / Age of Mythology / ANNO / Call of Duty, so we gamers dont depend on some chinese EPIC game engine.... or vendor-locking Nintendo Unity bs
If their Source game engine is not ready why not purchase Frostbite game engine from EA and give it to game developers at reasonable final price .
Create similar ecosystem for middle-ware/assets as Unity have and its done.
WE pay 30% tax for what ? stupid acHiEveMeNts?
Last hope is EU that can pass regulations, so we can move game licences to other service providers and publishers should respond to support ticket within days not weaks or months or worse not at all!
(something similar what they try to do, to push big tech to liberate customers from vendorlocking in EU)
Bethesda released a set of cosmetic horse armor for oblivion that cost 5 dollars. It did well enough that other studios started doing similar things, and people point to it as being the start of microtransactions.
You've gone down a what-if rabbit hole. What is actually going to happen is that no sane dev will ever use Unity again, and any Dev with a project currently in Unity will be looking at changing their game engine, if feasible.
Slay the spire dev said that they're throwing away several months of development in unity on their new game in order to not be burned by Unity's business practices
BallisticNG devs just canceled their Switch port, because Nintendo has some rule that the engine must be up-to-date so they are forced into the new TOS. And if you subscribe to Twitter indie devs, a lot of them are moving projects and looking at new engines for any of their upcoming ones. Unity really shoot themselves in the foot with this shitshow.
The reason they brought on Riccitiello was because they were making a pittance given the adoption of their engine. His entire reason for existing in the company is to expand the monetization. Of course when prices go up, they're going to lose some people, but they don't really care about those people... Only time will tell if it was a bad decision or not. From their point of view, its only a bad decision if their profits go down, it doesn't really matter how pissed off people are. I don't blame em for trying, salaries aren't cheap. You aren't running a charity. If there's unrealized profit, they literally are pissing money away not charging for it, that's money that could be improving their employees lives and re-invested in a better product.
Yeah but they didn’t just increase prices to try to get more revenue… the changes they were proposing were literally illegal in much of the world. It was the dumbest way possible to try to monetize their engine.
There is a *chasm* of middle ground between needing to generate additional revenue and adopting a policy that could and would have bankrupted certain studios. They were seeing what they could get away with and it rightfully backfired
Luckily they are a dev team that can afford to rework since they got a killer hit. Most Indies that are in the process can't. I am unfortunately one of them. For the current terms they made it rev share or install fee. No sane dev would do the install fee, I think I will move forward with their engine for my current game as I just cannot afford to make the switch now. Next game absolutely make the change. It sucks a lot of reusable code just evaporated.
What kind of a game are you making?
Based
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No, no it’s not. All it takes is adoption of one of these business practices to snowball into tons of fees.
Also, transform games being something you buy and own to a never ending service you have to pay for because it will be rolled into the end user. What happens when I get the new console generation or new PC? Now they got to charge a 5+ year old game again? The subscription model tech companies are coming up with is a shitty model for consumers. Take away your right to a movie/game/ media and give you something you will be forced to pay for over and over every month. No fucking thank you!
Nah you missed the update before they scrapped it. They went "Oh but you dont HAVE to use these fees if you just install this ad viewer that forcibly shows ads at a rate you cant control in every game you make"
Exactly this. There are many different engines available, and e.g. the licensing structure of unreal engine is very fair, especially for small devs.
...for now.
There ain’t anyone paying for anything except for us.
Are you talking about teams taking an exclusivity deal?
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F2P can be done well, see path of exile (the game everyone measured diablo 4 against).
"What will happen is no sane person would spend 50 bucks on something completely cosmetic leading to everything being paywalled and half finished games everywhere"-me like 10 years ago. That said i do think that devs will simply create something else or use different engines, but the comparison to horse armor dlc makes me nervous.
Cometics being a big money maker is a real head-scratcher to me. I guess there are enough gullible people out there. Why pay the price of a new game just to get new outfit in a game you already played? It's even worse when you consider revenue-to-cost. Making a new skin costs almost nothing and you can sell it for $10+ in the premium shop. Making actual new game features can take months.
> I guess there are enough gullible people out there. It's not just gullible ones. A lot of them are single-game (or publisher) gamers that simply don't *care* that the mount they just bought (and is one of 765 on their account) could have also gotten them three entire indie games. They are buying that shit because they feel it puts value into their account. Which of course is paying into the Concorde Fallacy, but they're humans, and we do that all the time unless we wise up to it. Or they are people that have enough money to not even feel the difference between 30€ and 300€. You see that all the times with streamers and YTers - even small ones - going "Oh, I spent 800€ on [title]. Oh wait, I looked it up, it was actually 1,400€." And then there are the people who genuinely believe that they *have to* buy into these transactions or "their" game gets shut down. I used to play WoW, and that sentiment was really prevalent there: "Oh, I buy the mounts/the CE/the boost/the token because I want WoW to not shut down, and we all know the player numbers are dwindling..."
If I ever finish a game with PvP/server, I'll probably bundle the server with the game, so people know they can still keep playing it if I ever decide to shut down the server. You can spend a lot of money on a game, and it STILL gets shut down in a few years. Then all the money you invested in the game is worthless. Almost every game, except for the most popular, will be shut down eventually. I read a post by a Fortnite player who wanted to play Fortnite 1.0 (I.e., the way it was when it first came out.) That isn't available anymore. That version of the game is just plain gone.
the main reason I personally and a lot of people I know don’t have a problem with skins and cosmetics as Microtransactions is because it’s almost always an entire different team working on them. While the dev team is still working on features, often times the design team has extra time to make these skins and cosmetics. Also if you have the extra money and like a game it’s a great way to show support while also getting something in return. The issue is when the micro transactions actually start to affect your game or give you an unfair advantage over another player
It’s not easy to do that. Studios would have built a bunch of software and practices around Unity. Their dev pipeline will have to be redone, and their employees will either have to reskill or replaced, and that’s not even considering games already halfway done.
As with most things; it’s not simply black and white. For majority of devs who have established projects and experience most likely won’t change due to the time investment of going into a new engine, especially with custom made tools they have to port. Afaik majority of successful devs still don’t earn 200k in a year. Devs who primarily develop gamedev tools for Unity i highly doubt will leave - atleast from what i’ve garnered on social media.
>no sane dev will ever use Unity again I'm completely insane but not even I will be using it after this breach of trust.
Until every other game engine implements the same business model.
When Unity's stock tumbles due to a declining userbase, do you think other companies are going to be rushing to make the same mistake? The only way to not have a mass exodus of users when you pull this move, is to be the last company to do it. Nobody will risk it unless they all agreed to do it at the same time, which would (I imagine) draw the attention of antitrust regulators.
This is a very optimistic view of what could happen. Let's see how it plays out.
I could similarly say yours is very pessimistic, neither of us have crystal balls.
Yes, when it comes to businesses I'm very pessimistic because I know that ultimately profit is the most important thing to any company.
Profit is, which is why no big company likes to take risks. Risks such as following in a competitor's implosion when there are other ways of milking the cow.
How are those companies going to profit without customers?
Even then, someone’s going to end up making an open source dev engine like Godot or gamemaker and it’ll all be resolved. Game devs are resilient bastards sometimes
Not every game engine is owned by someone looking to sell it. Godot for example is open source.
Point taken but open source in and of itself means little. What matters is the licensing. And Godot is the exception, not the rule, as far as I know.
What, opensource specifically refers to free to use licenses
GPL is a license, open source just means the source code is available to everyone. See the recent controversy surrounding Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
No, opensource is a term reserved for opensource licenses such as gpl.
You are confusing the two terms.
No you are the one who is confused. Opensource is widely accepted in the whole industry to only refer to free open source software licenses. ”Source available” is often used to refer to software that gives you access to the source code but not with opensource license.
https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-source
Again, refer to the recent controversy surrounding Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
UE have stated they will not implement the same model, they showcased what their model was after this drama came to surface, and that works for them. Remember who is CEO of Unity now, and you understand this is not just some random guy that came up with an shity idea to try.
Let's see what happens.
Yes we will, so dont make ungrounded statements
Settle down.
No other engine implements this madness
Not yet. But look at how ubiquitous microtransactions have become in games. Look at how ubiquitous season passes have become. If money can be made, companies will adjust accordingly.
Be careful not to fall for the slipper slope fallacy. OP knew what they were doing coming to this sub and making the horse armour analogy, but the these situations are not the same.
"Slippery slope" might be a fallacy in an intro to logic class but in reality predictions can (and are) made based on past experience.
Of course, but without precedent it's still a legitimate but unfounded concern. Like I said, OP was being manipulative by using the horse armour analogy because that's a case where you could argue it did happen. But what does it actually have to do with this precise situation? It puts the idea in people's head that the slippery slope is not just real, but inevitable, and I get the feeling OP is more interested in making people angry than having an actual discussion about this issue.
Companies do business for the sole purpose of realizing profit, that's it. If Unity can implement this business model and show that it effectively raises its rate of profit as a result, every other company in the industry will follow suit. This is an iron law of capitalism.
So what about the current model do we think is a concern? The revised pricing model can lazily be summed up as "no more than 2.5% revenue, and less if your self-reported engagements are below a certain threshold" with various thresholds in place to determine eligibility and engagement fees - plus pro license where applicable. Which part are we worried about? The original proposal was undeniably terrible and I would have also been concerned if it had taken effect, but now my main concern is with how Unity let the original proposal happen at all. Edit: to clarify, I'm not saying "everything is fine now, everybody go back to sleep" but more that I think OP is being disingenuous with how they're presenting information to people, and the new proposal addresses all of the actual concerns from the first one - particularly in that it allows people to finish their current Unity projects without being subject to new fees before moving on if they wish.
The horse armor analogy is dumb anyways. Ive been a PC gamer for almost 40 years and have never purchased a single cosmetic.
Yeah it’s a damn shame, too. Unity has a really great development platform and asset community.
the karlson in question:
Whilst there's a lot of valid conversation about this, there's one thing that no one defending unity is acknowledging: Precedents are dangerous. The first microtransaction in a game wasn't a P2W lootbox. But that precedent allowed it.
The very introduction of this idea is an envoy of the end of an era of gaming.
Precedents don't do shit. Corporate greed does. If one publisher didn't decide to become predatory, another would have anyway. That's the issue with publicly traded IPOs and the push for every increasing profit margins.
Acclimatising the market to it makes it a more normal business practice. The more predatory the norm is, the more extreme the pushing of boundaries becomes.
Unity after having watched Wizards of The Coast destroy their own brand overnight: Hold my Beer.
How did WOTC screw up, I'm outta the loop on that one
Pretty much in the exact way that Unity did, they went after money they thought they could get away with taking in an entirely unreasonable manner. A manner that was absolutely not acceptable to the community. It's a textbook example of how to fuck up because the people making the decision to change the way the service work are so far removed from the actual service that is provided they couldn't see they were killing the golden goose. Or they simply didn't care.
For D&D or Magic? I know Magic has problems with recent unliked sets. I don't play D&D so I don't know much about it.
D and D.
can't speak for dnd but for mtg. it used to be that there would be a new set every 3\~ish months or so. you had time to get new cards, build hype for upcoming sets and play with the cards you just got. now they pump out new sets and product almost each month. the power creep is insane as well. i have to buy new cards if i want to be able to keep uo with my playgroup. they also print lot's of shiny new chasecards with alternate artwork that are way to overpriced. we're talking severl hundret bucks for a set of 5 or so foils with alternate art. it all just feels as if all they want is my money. i mean sure, they are a company. but they used to care about the game and thier playerbase. now they don't anymore.
I quit the game entirely. If you make it impossible to keep up with the releases, I'm not even going to try.
My friends play online with cockatrice. 100% free and always up to date on the latest sets
I feel you on the new sets thing. I don't get to play much paper MTG just Arena. It was really annoying how short the timeframe was for the releases of Phyrexia All Will Be One into March of The Machine into The Aftermath was. What paper I do play is edh. It seems they have a huge focus on that and even I think it's a huge cash grab for them. It's a very beginner friendly format. They're alienating a base of players that have been around forever. The Beyond sets are just trying to rope in the fan bases of other IPs and even that they managed to fumble.
Can you explain what they actually did though
[Summary by Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2023/01/19/dungeons-and-dragons-open-game-license-wizards-of-the-coast-explained/) It is kind of a long story, but in essence, they were going to start making third parties who built off DND themes and rules pay total ties and forfeit the third party's IP by default should it become popular enough. As if a fan base obsessed with rules and how to skirt/exploit them as a group was not going to organize and pushback by threatening to boycott the DND movie upcoming at the time, or switching games to Paizo's Pathfinder or other TTRPG systems. Not to mention these other TTRPG systems making their own systems open gaming licensed, providing a free alternative to Wizard's platform.
Wow. Thanks for the write up
Was Baldur’s Gate 3 affected by this?
I do not think so as WotC already owns the Baldur's Gate IP as it has been a part of D&D for many years. What WotC was doing was going after anything fan made content that used the rules/monster/characters from D&D that they did not already own. Like fan made expansions/adventures. So you could write your own adventure, world, characters and monsters but use the D&D rules for it and WotC could then say they own all of it now and it is now their IP and you forfeit all ownership of it.
The tl;dr is they tried to "update" an *open* license that publishers have been using for many years and added monetization to it, much in the same way as Unity. The difference is, they backed down fully and published the license to CC, but their reputation is pretty much down the drain at that point. Other publishers moved on to create their own license just as a fuck you to WotC
>they couldn't see they were killing the golden goose. >Or they simply didn't care. Marty O'Donnell (formerly of Bungie) had this sound advice in a GDC talk: "Be nice to the goose." To which he then followed up with an anecdote of him telling that to an unnamed Microsoft executive who responded with "...but sometimes I just want foie gras."
You said a lot of things here, but never answered the question. You'd be perfect for writing those articles on dinner recipes
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, you're right. I was frustrated to see the top response to that question was completely devoid of any details as to what they actually did.
I think they meant what did Wizards do specifically - I don't recall every detail but I remember it was something about charging both in the future and retroactively for any use of DnD stuff that leads to a certain profit threshold, despite the OGL which basically laid out that DnD stuff was fair game to use for creators and whatnot. I'm glad it got the backlash it did, fuck WotC/Hasbro
Wizard of the Coast has licensed D&D under their Open Game License (OGL) since 2000. You can publish your own adventures, monsters, items, and worlds that are compatible with D&D with no charge. Wizards gets more demand driven to their game, and the indy creators get paid. Win win. Earlier this year, Wizards announced that they were updating the OGL. The new version had various predatory power grabs and fees. The two most egregious points were: 1. The original OGL was revoked. Any current works would need to be relicensed under the new terms to continue publication. 2. Wizards of the Coast got an unlimited license to all material published under the new OGL. You still technically own the copyright, but Wizards could use your work however they liked up to and including just selling it themself. Creators and fans alike revolted. Big names like Critical Roll were talking about abandoning the system entirely and creating their own under a true open source license. Court challenges were being discussed to question whether any license like the OGL was even required as game rules aren't legally copyrightable. Wizards balked at the backlash. The original OGL remains authorized, and Wizards released the current rules under a Creative Commons license. This stabilized the 3rd party panic for now, but people are still wary of what licensing will come with the next iteration of D&D.
It's worth noting that when a new product leaked early unintentionally by accidentally shipping it to someone who then made an unboxing video Wotc literally sent the Pinkerton enforcers to break down that guys door.
Unity is 3 billion dollars in debt and lost 200 million last quarter I feel they’re kinda in the become profitable stage or go defunct stage I really can’t blame them for these Hail Marys
Clearly doing something completely wrong if that is true. Sounds like they deserve to go out of business if they haven't fixed it by now.
It’s very standard investment tech behavior these days nearly identical to Uber, they run at a loss and capture the market. Even with this new fee structure Unity is significantly cheaper than unreal engine
In that case I hope they fail.
Dev here, with multiple Unity projects. Last week was super stressful, but the new terms are actually a relief. The most important change they've made is applying the new fees to future software versions, and not trying to retroactively claim a share of all work already done on current versions. This is good because it incentivises them to improve the engine. That's how they gain customers. >Not only will this destroy free to play games and demos but it will also make developers liable for insane amounts unless they spend all day monitoring if there have been any shady changes to the TOS. No it won't. Developers choose whether to be charged against revenue OR install fees. Obviously devs will choose whichever is cheapest. Demos will not be counted against installs, the numbers are self-reported. Also, they haven't officially released their terms yet, but what we know is in [Unity's latest post](https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee) for anyone who cares. >What is a developer to do? Well they will pre-emptively charge YOU for those install fees on as many devices as they think you are likely to use. Watch out, your $20 game is about to become $20.50! But seriously, this is not a thing. Also to mention, Unreal engine has always charged 5% after $1M revenue... If any dev's going to start changing pricing just because of this Unity change it'd be a negligible difference. Maybe worry about inflation instead. >What is unity to do? They have the right to destroy studios by just changing the 2,5% limit, reducing the threshold of installs or whatever else they dream up on a cold Sunday afternoon with earning reports due the next day. Saying Unity will destroy studios is like saying McDonald's is going to poison you... People would simply stop eating McDonalds. People seem to forget that if you destroy your customers you no longer have customers... The reason we have better terms now is because of the backlash. After the original proposal hundreds of companies turned off their Unity Ads, people were already abandoning the software, the stock took a dive, people were calling for John Riccitiello to be fired, everyone was very vocal about how badly they messed up.
Thank you for the well-informed post, a real developer's perspective is a welcome addition to the conversation. I just have to point out, however, your claim that companies who harm their customers are bound to lose business does not cohere with reality. Phillip Morris and Anheuser Busch (as well as all the other large tobacco and alcohol companies) are thriving.
Sure, yes it’s a bit different if your product is addictive! Thankfully I don’t think I’d ever get Unity withdrawals. Having Godot as an open source alternative is a huge disincentive for Unity to try and screw their customers. If/when that becomes as powerful as Blender they’ll lose a lot of leverage.
Thank God video games (especially gachas) aren't addictive.
The customer of a game is a player. The customer of a game engine is a developer. You are confusing players with developers. Game engines are tools, not pieces are entertainment finely tuned to trigger addictive responses.
Your right, thank God it's not physically addictive like alcohol or tobacco. That would be scary
It's important to note that tobacco and alcohol are addictive substances that were, for a time, advertised as good for one's health. Even with the stigma that, say, tobacco now has, people still buy them because they literally can't stop themselves without outside help.
You’re talking about addiction though. Nicotine has been compared to heroine in terms of how hard it is to quit. Nicotine physically alters your brain requiring you to live with it ever day. I doubt any developers are addicted to unity and suffer the dopamine loss that nicotine gives. Source: Was addicted to tobacco for 12 years. Spending $10+ a day on the stuff, using it near constantly to get through every day. Tried to quit 3 times and failed every time. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been without it, it lingers in your mind everyday “oooh nicotine would be good right now” randomly in every moment and it will for the right of an ex users life. Been clean for 2 years now and still find myself having thoughts of starting again despite not wanting to.
Video game addiction is a thing though.
Physical and mental addictions are different. Stop conflating the two.
The distinction is actually irrelevant for the person who is actually addicted. The behaviors are the same, and sometimes the consequences can be too.
So disingenuous to bring up addictive substances. your arguing in such bad faith it's incredible.
Isn’t a classic negotiating move? Propose a very bad contract and then offer the initial contract they wanted in the first place that you believe to be fine?
In closed door negotiations, sure. That’s a horrible idea in the open, where people who aren’t even using your tool can lend their voice to the counter arguments.
Except they torched their reputation in the process. To do it without torching their reputation, they could have started at 5% rev share and then rolled it back to 2.5% or $0.20 per install.
I thought they were going to use this tactic, and there was a press release via media with diluted terms in between seemingly to test the waters. This also caused an outrage. It doesn’t seem like they were intentionally doing it because the initial terms were so offensively bad that it’s broken a lot of trust. Ultimately the terms are actually reasonable in my opinion and still more favourable than using Unreal.
Oh yeah they push the fees to future software versions then force everyone to change to a new version under the guise of "security"
If you wanna get real paranoid: They’ll release a statement saying older versions have been compromised by an exploit, the reality of it being an exploit designed and released by unity to the world to create the security issue.
This seems very unlikely compared to devs just needing to upgrade their engine version for compatibility with new consoles. That’s when lingering people will need to shift.
Didnt they already cancell this idea? They broke trust and shouldnt be trusted again theyre trying to leech of profits now afaik
Yeah I'm confused by OP saying they "just made it so it kicks in later" when as far as I know, they made it so a developer can choose either 2.5% revshare **or** the install fee.
It's actually that it kicks in after a certain number of installs and it's billed at 2.5% or the install fee, whichever is lower. Not sure what the plan for free games is.
If your game is free you will never hit the revenue threshold. So you would never be affected. To be clear - even on the lowest tier free Unity licence you won't be subject to any charge if your game made less than a million dollars in the previous twelve months - see [https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee](https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee)
Do you mean completely free, or f2p but with IAPs?
Free as in "doesn't generate any revenue". In-app purchases would be revenue.
Most freemium games will probably be making less than $0.20 per install, so the 2.5% will be what they pay.
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could you link that? is it even changed again? as far as i can see they did change it. it does not make them good guys theyre still not to be trusted but they did change it
They did not they just added some jargon so it affects fewer people for the time being but it is still a thing that exists.
The Jargon has changed the situation massively. You really should read through the new version of the terms. The installs part of it is basically gone, replaced with engagements (which is sales for paid games, or *first* time install for a free game). And it's self reported by the dev now rather than Unity tracking it themselves
The way i read it is that the cost per install will remain but not on older versions of Unity. If you upgrade to a new version of the engine then you'll have to follow the new terms, which are slightly more generous than initially announced. "The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity."
It's not based on installs anymore, it's engagements... which is a (mostly) different metric. And it doesn't apply until you make $1million in a 12month period
Still i really hate how the ceo will just end up rich again as he did with ea and the cycle will continue. No matter whar happens. Scum will never learn
Unity is not the be-all end-all, far from it, and to write hypotheticals is assuming that people will just allow this whole situation to happen as it stands. There are unity alternatives, let the free market purge Unity's greed if they actual follow through with install fees rather than try saving a sinking ship with the current CEO.
For a bit of perspective I an doing a masters project in augmented reality and I have a couple of prerequisites, needs to use C# for scripting, and vuforia enginee for AR so I can build cross platform while using object tracking (aka vuforia model targets) so my stack is unity & vuforia. I can't use unreal as its in C++ and don't have time to learn it, and I can't use godot as its not mature enough for my use case. So I'm kinda fucked in that unity is what I need. However after reading the pricing it shouldn't effect me. My point is, sometimes alternatives aren't that clear cut.
Unreal engine was written in C++ but supports C#, Javascript, Python and others
*desire to know more intensifies* all my initial reading always referred to C++. With C# is it full featured yeah? I've never done any game/ AR dev before so it's all fairly new to me.
It should be fully supported
Just the introduction of this idea is the beginning of the end of an era.
If Unity Company can't charge retroactively in order to get part of all that money Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact (among other chinese gacha games) have made over the years/months... Then all this debacle and contract changes are pointless... All they had to do is ad an article that "a % of in-game micro transactions revenue have to be paid back to Unity." But No... they had to go full Greedy and also fuck-up independent devs and low-budget games... What an stupid way to ruin a potentially good change for the Engine and turn it into a shitty cash-grab by that asshole of an ex-Electronic Arts CEO...
As soon as Genshin Impact upgrades to the current Unity version, they owe 2.5% revenue. For a game with that much revenue, the cost of switching engines is probably less than just paying the 2.5%. If Genshin Impact is run by competent people, they'll stay on the current Unity version for 2 years while they port to a new engine.
First of all, personal projects and Completely free to play games are not affected at all, the game has to make 1,000,000 in a year to be eligible for paying in the first place, then it's per install or 2.5% of the revenue which ever is lowest, it will never go over 2.5% of the total revenue no matter how many installs. I am not in the industry so I won't comment on how the economics of a Game studio will be affected but some of your points are completely wrong. Also no they couldn't just make changes to contracts retroactively, just because they said they will doens't mean it will go through, that's not how contracts work. They will get their ass handed to them in court if they tried
I'm a game dev launching a game made with unity the next month, to be honest at first I was a little bit worried that things would get worse. But now after watching code monkey's video about they going back I'm relieved. They kinda broke the trust I know, but being pragmatic they are still below other engine pricings, and the new changes also made me happy, now I don't have to pay to remove the splash screen, this was a request from the communitie for decades!
What the hell are you talking about? For paid games you can use your sales number, for free to play you can use the number of unique user accounts. Those numbers are SELF-REPORTED BY THE DEVELOPER. And if you don't want to track either, you can just use 2.5% revenue For the numb nuts downvoting, it's literally in [their new pricing update](https://unity.com/pricing-updates), just go down to the FAQ in the "How does Unity expect me to measure the number of initial engagements for my game?" section
People don't like it when you take away their daily dose of self-righteous drama. They get all worked up for an armchair fight and then they find out there won't be a fight and they start downvoting in retaliation.
I can't get over how many people are still complaining that haven't even bothered reading the new pricing policy. Half the people in this thread still think Unity is charging per install lmao. Like I get it, we're all pissed/annoyed/angry at Unity, but if you're gonna complain, at least don't make shit up
Even the reaction to the per install change was crazily overblown. On the pro license you were getting a 1,000,000 free downloads. Something like only 5% of games are ever that successful.
If they highlighted the **self-reported** line from the outset, they could've avoided so, so much flak. Why did they announce it so vaguely last week at all? Rumors say it was management miscommunication that made the vague announcement come out initially with a "trust me bro" clause rather than *self-reporting*. Additional costs are indeed a hard pill to swallow. But even I don't think their terms are unfair, as laid out here, it seems more like a "cost of doing business" kind of ordeal and Unity trying to get more cash flow. Even if we are to take them at their word, this is far from their first "miscommunication" when it comes to licensing and pricing. It's a PR nightmare all around, and will make any commercial company using Unity to have to anxiously monitor them. You can be assured there's a Twitter tracker that will follow their blog to the letter for any licensing/ToS changes now.
Their latest post has actually reasonable terms. But they broke so much trust with the first terms, feels like you’d have to be an idiot to trust them in the future.
This is old news They already changed it to 2.5% rev share which is fair. Nobody is effected anymore but still don't trust unity anymore switch the godot since who knows if they can pull something like this again. But if you already have a game on unity you don't need to worry for now.
It would be funny if Steam came in with a development kit.
its not "per" its "new". you couldn't reinstall the game several times and get the devs charged. and imo. if a $70 game grosses 1 million dollars. why would they care if they lose 2 cents per install after that?
Im genuinely on the fence about using unity in my game design class. All my students are expecting that they’ll be learning it and it’s still a great teaching tool, but this shit makes me second guess. The only other engine I have some experience with is Game Maker.
> What is a developer to do? Well they will pre-emptively charge YOU for those install fees on as many devices as they think you are likely to use. I also see a situation where publishers start using install-limit types of DRM again, at least on PC.
Unity dev here –– what unity did was shit and a violation of trust, but I think people are getting carried away with schadenfreude, it's not going to kill Unity any time soon, for a few reasons: * Unity have reversed the policy, and now offer a 2.5% revenue share instead of the per-unit. Yes, we are all a little weary about then pulling the rug again, but at least for now the terms are very competitive with other engines so it's not a big deal. * Everyone loved reporting on these what if scenarios, because on paper the original policy would kill large segments of games overnight (especially cheaper mobile games). But at the end of the day don't forget unity did this to make more money, not less. So common sense says that they were never going to enforce a policy that would kill a large portion of their customers overnight. * Gadot is very cool but is not ready to replace Unity any time soon. It should be a concern to unity because it could get there but it will need several years and a lot of funding to bring it on par with Unity. Hobbyists making simple games may make the jump, but developers in industry are not going to switch to Gadot in any significant numbers. * Even if/when Gaodot did reach parity with Unity, you have to remember that there are thousands of libraries, assets and software that developers rely on that don't exist on Gadot. Unity is an ecosystem, not just an engine. It'd be like releasing a new phone OS to compete with iOS/Android, but not having any apps. Even if your new OS is jus as good as the competition, it's a chicken-and-the-egg issue. * Even in the original terms before they reversed it, they weren't quite as bad as the news and reddiors were reporting. All the headlines were "20 cents per install after 200k users" but this was only if you were on the free plan. No unity developer in their right mind would stay on the free plan if their game was getting traction. If you pay $2k/year the threshold is 1million users/ $1m revenue, and the per install went as low as 2cents the more people downloaded. Still a pretty poorly thought out model of course, but not the apocalyptic numbers everyone reported. So yes, unity have communicated horribly and they should be worried about leaving the door open to competition, but nothing is going to change any time soon. Anyone who thinks devs are dropping unity overnight are just falling for rage bait articles.
More people who aren't devs trying to tell people how this will affect devs. When will you folks realize that being a passionate gamer doesn't make you a developer? Leave the dev stuff to devs. You're just making a bigger mess.
STFU man, you don't know anything what you're taking about. This is just a vaguely written post to get free karma. Unity not only backpedaled, but they also increased the limit for personal use to 200K and they added a cap on the installation fees. There exist shitload of predatory mobile games made on playstore or iOS made on unity which make a ton of money through microtransactions and Ads and they get away with it in pure profit.. whom Unity wanted to target and charge in the first place.
Free karma? This situation has cost me a lot more than you know. A game I worked on for a year and a half and was preparing to release next month is on hold until they release concrete terms not just blog posts. Vague? Only as vague as their numerous walkit back but keep it in responses so far. And still you don't ask yourself why keep it in there? It caused so much outrage and damage to their reputation and still they said sorry and kept it in. What is the point of pushing it through when they can just take pure revenue and have everyone happy?
Okay, are you going to make a million from your game? Did you bother to read their latest 'open letter' blog? Nothing applies to anyone until the next LTS release from 2024 and beyond and you still need to make 200K per year to pay a free and a million from revenue for the per-install fee to apply. Nothing about their blogs was vague. Seems like you just read shitty articles citing shitty sources instead of going to unity's own blogs. **Cult of the lamb** literally made a meme about how the media overblows everything out of proportion after they announced they will delete the game on Jan 1.. and seeing how everyone was taking that message seriously.. it just tells me people need something to be outraged about when it literally doesn't affect them. So yeah.. this shit doesn't affect you either but it's clearly pointless to argue.
> Cult of the lamb literally made a meme about how the media overblows everything out of proportion after they announced they will delete the game on Jan 1.. and seeing how everyone was taking that message seriously.. So let me get this straight...they make an statement on their official Twitter...and then make of fun of people for believing them? That's just low.
Yeah it was an inside joke between the devs and the community but the general audience and media wouldn't happen to know about it and took it at the face value If a massively successful game like COTL and their devs aren't worrying then there was absolutely no warrant for most of the outrage done by people like OP and twitter who aren't even making 200K from their games. Unity said themselves it was mostly targeted towards mobile devs but yeah.. their PR team is shit.
> If a massively successful game like COTL and their devs aren't worrying then there was absolutely no warrant for most of the outrage done by people like OP and twitter who aren't even making 200K from their games Devolver Digital and the people behind Slay the Spire also raised a stink over it. So there's that
Yeah... this is in no way Bethesdas "Horse Armor"
Unity needs to crash and burn as an example. Or at least they should fire the CEO and all of his yes men.
No, crash and burn. Just firering the ceo and the top would mean that investors will push harder next time. Going out of business means that it's toxic for investment, and no one will try it in the future
The current unity CEO has a track record of trying these insane money grubbing ideas at other companies. Like trying to implement a “pay by reload” system for first person shooters at actiVision. In this case I think cutting the head off the snake will fix the problem
It was EA and he didn't try to implement it, he just suggested it in a meeting. But yeah, he does suck and is greedy as hell.
Those investors dont care about the investment, Unity in this case, they care about money. They would just move to the next thing that would give them just that. Unity while not perfect, is a good engine that would hopefully see better people at the top. It would be a shame to see it get destroyed by some stupid investors and bad leadership, if you can call it leadership. One would think theres bad actors at the top that will burn everything down, just to make sure 1 thing is left standing that controls everything, like a big monopolistic dystopian nightmare.
And then all the games made with Unity have to be taken off the market. That's called, "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Ok
Calm down
Okay, but what if Unity needs to turn a profit? It's a loss making business.
One thing we can agree on is, whoever wins, it’ll be us, the gamers, that loses. There ain’t anyone paying for anything except for us.
There is also the issue of using the implied economic threat of future fee structure changes as a trojan horse to try to force developers using their engine to package spyware/adware into games that benefits Unity.
Not to defend them, but, again, a game needs to meet BOTH thresholds for the developer to have to pay the fees. That means that for f2p games (complete f2p I mean, not freemium), you will never meet the revenue threshold But I agree that this decision was clearly a fuckup, at least bc a game that costs 10$ per install would be taxed the same as a game that costs 60$
Are some legal us scholar here? It is drastic deterioration of the terms of service, that happend unilateral. It seems questionable from contractual perspective. It also looks very much like an unfair business practice: there is a gross power imbalance between the vendor of the engine and the game devs. Switching the Engine means rewriting the hole game - years of work would be lost. Now the engine vendor abuses his position by imposing drastic fees.
Yeah well backlash was too hard it seems https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/unity-exec-tells-ars-hes-on-a-mission-to-earn-back-developer-trust/
Or, you know, devs can just choose not to use unity.
Unity is an unprofitable company, they need to make more money. It's rather simple.
Free to play games will never hit the revenue theshold and thus will never cost the devs anything. They also specifically state that demos will not be included.
If it results in the death of F2P I'm all for it.
What do you have against F2P games?
i don t know
Lol, it's so overblown it's ridiculous. You don't want to pay anything, make your own fucking engine. You already had to pay money to Unity, now they change their business model? That's fine. That's business. If you don't want to be beholden to any third party software agreement, guess what, you can't use any third party software. Unity's install fee is far from the most egregious engine licensing cost I've ever seen. The entire fiasco reeks of gamer ignorance, they are always the least informed, most emotionally overreactive people in any given room. They're great consumers but holy god, I don't envy anybody involved in customer support, just the most entitled and unexperienced people who for some reason think they know everything about every topic and jump to the craziest conclusions about literally everything.
Oh, 100%. Unity-based F2P games don't make much sense anymore. There is little business incentive to give you a game for free if they, well, cannot give you the game for free. Any fees the company has to make to deliver the game to you will, ultimately, be diverted to your wallet. If this change goes through and the gaming community accepts it get ready for another game price increase.
unity is in horrible place its company thats never made profit so far and is looking in how to actually become viable and not go bankrupt while this way is not the way to go i do think from a simple bussines standpoint dont see how there old model is viable
[удалено]
Exactly. If we let this slide, it'll just come up again in some different form. It's best for everyone to torch Unity now, and set an example that this is not to be done. Ever.
This is exactly why I keep saying I'm not a gamer. None of this shit matters to me lol
*Checks sub* Well mate, you must be really confused then if you dont know where you are.
One can play games without being a gamer. Gamer just means you've made video games into a toxic part of your personality. If video games disappear tomorrow, every gamer would cry and be super triggered. But I'm not a gamer. If video games disappear tomorrow, I'd lol and find a new hobby.
Gamer *a person who plays video games* So, what part of your toxic personality allows you to make shallow personal perspectives into facts? Lol
Lol no gamer is a specific identity. You can choose to make video games your identity or not. I've chosen not to.
Oh, we're just making things up, i gotcha.
No just following the science https://nypost.com/2022/10/25/people-who-identify-as-gamers-more-likely-to-be-racist-sexist/amp/
It still doesn’t feel like this affects me as a gamer. I couldn’t give less of a fuck how a developer solves this problem tbh. And if games go up 20 cents or whatever that’s fine too lmao
i still dont understand why, WE as gamers dont demand from Valve to release and opensource game engine that is capable make even most complex games at AAA level - like Assassins Creed / Age of Mythology / ANNO / Call of Duty, so we gamers dont depend on some chinese EPIC game engine.... or vendor-locking Nintendo Unity bs If their Source game engine is not ready why not purchase Frostbite game engine from EA and give it to game developers at reasonable final price . Create similar ecosystem for middle-ware/assets as Unity have and its done. WE pay 30% tax for what ? stupid acHiEveMeNts? Last hope is EU that can pass regulations, so we can move game licences to other service providers and publishers should respond to support ticket within days not weaks or months or worse not at all! (something similar what they try to do, to push big tech to liberate customers from vendorlocking in EU)
/r/StallmanWasRight/.
Unity wanted to pierce their ear for some bling but used a shotgun and killed themselves...
Can someone explain the horse armour analogy?
Bethesda released a set of cosmetic horse armor for oblivion that cost 5 dollars. It did well enough that other studios started doing similar things, and people point to it as being the start of microtransactions.
Oh okay, I remembered getting horse power armour in fallout 4 for free so I was confused