Unity to charge developers $0.20 each time a user installs (not buys) their game

PolyHertz

So apparently now if you make a game that sells over a certain amount, every time a user installs (not purchases) your game you will be charged $0.20.

Some articles:    
gamedeveloper.com
gamesradar.com
gameinformer.com
engadget.com
ign.com
finance.yahoo.com

Also, about using older versions of Unity: 

https://twitter.com/ThatRobHuman/status/1701796403645706280

sacboi

That's fucking rude, should think unity at least do the professional thing and insert an opt out clause for pre-existing contracts/accounts, prior to the introduction this...well tax! rather than operating like a bank :thumbs down:

myclay

chatgpt tell me how to quickly deploy and automatically set up 1 million* Amazon EC2 windows instances, set up a routine to silent install/deinstall Games ad infinitum.
Bankcrupting gamestudios has never been easier.
*you can do it with even far less instances if you time it right and can gauge how much liquid reserves/credit those devs have when they have released their mandatory public disclosures of their annual financial statements.

Edit;
They could have said; "unity technologies is discouraging subscriptions services like game pass and PS Plus and wants some of their income streams."

I also wonder what happens with the resurrecting of game streaming services like Stadia since it acts a bit like the amazon EC2 system.

MikeF

This is truly disgusting and completely screws over my future in game development. I've been using unity since the first version that was available for windows, i've built a massively successful studio around it and now I'm lost. What do i do now? learn a whole new engine so that it can happen again when a greedy CEO decides to parasite it? fuck this industry

Alex_J

As much as I like unreal, it would be better if they had more serious competition.

Don't think anybody can legally be charged for sales in the past. that's a breach of contract. But I'm not a lawyer. If unity tried to send me a bill for game that sold in past though and court held me to it, definitely I'd be learning to make bombs.

Neox

Alex_J said:

As much as I like unreal, it would be better if they had more serious competition.

Don't think anybody can legally be charged for sales in the past. that's a breach of contract. But I'm not a lawyer. If unity tried to send me a bill for game that sold in past though and court held me to it, definitely I'd be learning to make bombs.

they are not getting charged for sales in the past. but it will apply to any unity game, made whenever, starting 2024.

i wonder how this will be done when games are in services like a gamepass, where it might get installed a bunch, but not played at all.

PolyHertz

Just ran across this:    

https://twitter.com/hallandsohlin/status/1701969654174843114

zetheros

so I guess we'll be seeing them backtrack all of this soon huh

myclay

PolyHertz said:

Just ran across this:    

https://twitter.com/hallandsohlin/status/1701969654174843114

That probably won't work? The moment you update the client to use the old version(s) or go on their website to login, or agreed otherwise like simply using it further after 01.01.2024, they can sneak/force you into the new TOS/EULA.

Only working solution is to mass delete/take off old games made with unity from stores and to switch to alternatives.

Some responses of Unity Developers;


image source in higher quality; https://www.reddit.com/r/unity/comments/16i5fev/you_know_you_fucked_up_when_your_shitty_decisions/

zetheros

yea I've never seen so many statements in one place, people are hella pissed lol

PolyHertz

An employee has now made a bomb threat against the company, and Unity offices were temporarily closed as a result.
Also apparently you can get out of the new fees if you let them put adds in to your games.

Leinad

Anytime I see a fee structure that feels overly/unnecessarily complex I get nervous. Intentionally designing systems that are hard to understand makes it more difficult for me to audit and trust.

The question I would ask the people who created this new pricing model, how does this make Unity a better experience for developers/users?

If there is a clear positive impact with this new system, then it would have been much better if this was effectively communicated right from the beginning.

iam717

Hmm, sucks, i heard its bad to start "engines" from scratch but then these things happen when you are stuck and attached to "main stream" clients, being at the whim of their changes & ideas.  Feeling like everything is being funneled tighter and tighter as if... mmm can't go there but yeah, starting to look strange, with every studio,organization,company,business following the same trend, of let's make "bad" decisions. (perhaps its another issue, like pay attention to the world some people are exceeding their "positions", maybe pay attention to that instead of this, kind of a moves by concerned CEO's? to me, idk.) Oh well back to art, all the best everyone involved, i thought it immediately concerning and strange when unreal engine, went into some signup b.s. after being available to everyone with out that extra step for double digit years, maybe even triple.(didn't check)

Shrike

The thing is that unity signed the deathwish and there is no going back now
Even if they fully retract, nothing can ever repair the breach of trust and nobody with brains and money will invest in new unity things for the future after this move. They can maybe fire the CEO and some others and hope people will buy that they might be better in the future but overall its a done deal. It was a surprise how so much mismanagement even got that far, but that is unfixable.
It's future was just killed off literally. Unity is dead.
This will also put Unreal in a monopol position which is also quite bad for the industry.

Just when I thought all the time spent on the unity codebase is about to pay off, "yeah LTS and everything is buggy but after it works, its not going anywhere once its stable" this happens.

myclay

Shrike said:

The thing is that unity signed the deathwish and there is no going back now
This will also put Unreal in a monopol position which is also quite bad for the industry.

Looking forward to fresh new rhymes of the RenderWare situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKpDFIWK1DI

poopipe

I guess congrats are due to the Godot devs on their lottery win. I hope they don't forget to thank the Unity execs for giving them a practical lesson in what happens when hubris overtakes ability. 

Shrike

Godot is kind of enticing but its not proven yet and the rendering is too far behind right now imo

You have a choice,
between making your own codebase from scratch on a lightweight and clean engine but having almost no featureset on Godot
Or using a extremely bloated and heavy engine which has everything you could ever want in Unreal

Which are a bit too polar opposites. There is definitely a middle ground missing. (Unity was never really a good middle ground however)

ZacD

I'm curious how many Unity devs were already unhappy with Unity and just needed a push or an excuse to jump ship to UE5 or Godot, and how many were content with it before the license/ToS changes.

PolyHertz

The Terraria devs just donated $100K to Godot, and another $100K to FNA (a re-implementation of the XNA framework):

https://twitter.com/Terraria_Logic/status/1704227519027651016

kanga

Screen space and micro transactions.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpPE85Jogjw

And now the real Nolan Sorento:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le79j1ZSfKk

....ring any bells?...

littleclaude

zetheros said:

so I guess we'll be seeing them backtrack all of this soon huh

Yep, didn't take long! 

 Unity apologizes to devs, reveals updated Runtime Fee policy

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/unity-apologizes-to-devs-reveals-updated-runtime-fee-policy

This is really damaging for the trust in Unity, surly the management needs a shake up, I really can’t understand how this one got the thumbs up? It's got to be one of the biggest blunders in recent history. 

Imagine all the devs that has been in development for a few years and you were about to release and then you got this news, you would never want to go near Unity again after this cock up! wow!

 

zetheros

a change in management would definitely be good imo. If the CEO was previously doing this at Electronic Arts, hopped over to Unity and still hasn't learned anything...

Also we need competition against Unreal Engine, keeps everything healthy - ideally Unity makes it through this

littleclaude

zetheros said:

ideally Unity makes it through this

I believe Unity hold the market share of the industry, mainly due to mobile and tablet being 60% of the games industry. I found this, it will be interesting to see how this latest news effects them.  https://program-ace.com/blog/unity-vs-unreal/

Eric Chadwick

Just heard our local Boston Unity Group (BUG) is dissolving itself, the first official Unity user group in the world. 
https://bostonunitygroup.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/index.html

Neox

Eric Chadwick said:

Just heard our local Boston Unity Group (BUG) is dissolving itself, the first official Unity user group in the world. 
https://bostonunitygroup.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/index.html

littleclaude said:

can someone translate this diagram for me? 62% of ... what?

62% + 47% = 109%

all this together adds up to 177%

pior

This "blog post" has no listed author ... 

Alex_J

also would be interesting to see the numbers translated to money, though I dont think its possible to make such a measurement.

but what I mean is, people often say "well unity has the most games" but for every gears of war if there is 10,000 flappy bird clones that make a few dollars with ads, does that amount to anything meaningful? I guess if it did, unity wouldnt be in the red, though wouldnt be surprised if unity had the capacity to be profitable except for the fact that an enormous tick is attached to its head.

Eric Chadwick

pior said:

This "blog post" has no listed author ... 

CrunchBase has this contact for the company: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/oleg-fonarov

PolyHertz

CEO of Unity is now leaving: https://investors.unity.com/news/news-details/2023/Unity-Announces-Leadership-Transition/default.aspx

poopipe

Lol

That might just save the company. 

okidoki

That's the (only?) reason why managers get such a big salary.. they have to resign for the stupidest reasons.. and the company can blame them.. and get more money from the investors.. because the investors become calm.. pay another big salary.. until someone else has to resign..  works since ages..  no need to make something better.. maybe even in the first place.. ( and this is now enough with those dotted sentences.. ) 

kanga

okidoki .. they have to resign for the stupidest reasons..

Or for pushing the stupidest agendas. This wasn't his first rodeo. No sympathy here.

 

Neox

kanga said:

okidoki .. they have to resign for the stupidest reasons..

Or for pushing the stupidest agendas. This wasn't his first rodeo. No sympathy here.

 

it's a public company, he is just the face for the agenda, the people who decided this, are likely still in power.

and no need for sympathy. its his job, he knows it, he profited immensely from it over the years.

Alex_J

those positions have nothing to do with the value of labor added by the person...  it's a jobs program for upper class.

okidoki

Ohh (maybe this was/is a misunderstanding ??) i wasn't saying anything about sympathy.. it's just a very (very) unthought  (not to say dumb) idea (whoever had that)  and i wonder why this was "executed" in the first place.  But this seems to be the usual bla-bla in bigger companies ?? Que Sera, Sera. Whatever Will Be, Will Be..

littleclaude

Unity CEO Riccitiello steps down, effective immediately

https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-ceo-steps-down-effective-immediately

thomasp

Oh no...!

Luckily there's the perfect candidate, available really soon. Unity, get on the case!

zetheros

it's Bobby's world and we're all livin' in it!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

littleclaude

Weta Digital is to close as Unity begins ‘company reset’, closure will affect some 265 employees
https://filmstories.co.uk/news/weta-digital-is-to-close-as-unity-begins-company-reset/

I hope this is the last of the crap news from 2023 and I hope Unity mange to start turning things around for everyone involved. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q038yKfdFL4&t=133s

thomasp

As far as I've read elsewhere, they are laying off a group of inhouse software/tools devs who were assimilated as part of an earlier merger, not closing down the entire VFX studio primarily known for the LOTR trilogy and Avatar like that video title seems to suggest. But apparently the studio is nowadays called Weta FX? I wasn't aware - I only knew it as Weta Digital.

At any rate sounds like that whole merger thing might have been another genius move by the Sillycon Valley vulture investment bros. I suppose that means the whole (strange) idea of putting some of Weta's inhouse tools out there as part of some mysterious cloud package for Maya is off the table as well?

Eric Chadwick

fxguide has a nice in-depth article about this, including Weta response. 
https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/unity-software-with-a-company-reset-walks-away-from-film-vfx-and-the-weta-deal/

littleclaude

It’s hard to get my head around the numbers. It looks like Weta got 1.6 billion from Unity for Weta Digital and all the tech development tools that comes with them. Now Unity drop them but it looks like Weta FX keeps the rights to develop the Weta Digital development  tools? 

 

So would I be right in saying Weta was given 1.6 billion and nothing has changed for them other than their own tools got better and most of the staff got rehired by Weta and are sitting pretty with 1.6 billion in the bank. I might not be much of a financial expert but I would say it’s a good deal for Weta, lol! 

 

poopipe

given mr riccitello's apparent desire to utterly destroy unity that sounds not only plausible but also like it might have been deliberate

thomasp

Trying to catch up with the competition quickly sure doesn't come cheap in particular when the stock market is involved. Bold moves required. And their share price will be all they are basing things on.

Well it's a nice sight these days too.