Unity Union

gsokol

Ok so my last post here was about Unity as well, but:

http://unity3d.com/union/

freakin' awesome.

Basically you make a game using Unity, package it up, send it to them, and they'll try make you some cash.

Apparently they also have a QA team that will test your game, and will offer help porting to different hardware.

PatrickL

So basically, lose 20% of your revenue so they can handle the easy parts? Can't say I'd take part, but I imagine this is a god send for many smaller, less ambitious teams. Cool service nonetheless.

WarrenM

Not condoning or condemning this idea, but I really don't think that marketing/sales is the easy part of indie game development. It's a hard problem to crack for a lot of guys. Getting eyeballs to look at you and making downloads happen is tough.

Justin Meisse

I've always heard that it's kind of hard and mysterious getting your game on steam - you send your email into the void and a few months later you'll get a "no thanks" email back from valve. So if they can negotiate through that mess it might be worth it.

Michael Knubben

To me it sounds like they'll place the game on online stores such as Steam as well, in which case this could be a good deal. From what I know (devs aren't supposed to talk about this) Steam's percentage can be negotiated, which is clearly something indies can do less effectively than big publishers. Aside from that it can be hard to even get in touch with them, and it sounds like Unity Union will take care of all of that. Don't underestimate how hard this part can be!

Richard Kain

Marketing and advertising are not easy or quick. And most importantly, they are very time consuming. Time that could be better spent developing.

Would I be willing to "spend" 20% of potential profit on getting a leg-up in those areas? Yeah, I might actually be willing to do that. Keep in mind that Unity doesn't even charge for their most basic engine licencing. So that 20% would be the entirety of my overhead. And that's still a better margin than what most other services give you. If this Union program could potentially double my sales, the 20% cut would be a wise investment.

Ben Apuna

Wasn't there a thread about this already?

I don't know about Steam but:

Ben Apuna wrote: »

They put up a video about Union, watch it here:

http://vimeo.com/17098272

From what I understand the point of Union is not to get your game into easy markets like the web, iPhone, or Android but instead to help you port and sell it to other emerging game platforms like Nokia Symbian, set top boxes, the splashtop OS you find when first turning on a netbook, and HP Palm.

Farfarer

Justin_Meisse wrote: »

I've always heard that it's kind of hard and mysterious getting your game on steam - you send your email into the void and a few months later you'll get a "no thanks" email back from valve. So if they can negotiate through that mess it might be worth it.

A few years back we'd gotten investment to turn our mod into a retail game. Valve were really great about it all, gave us a great deal, had phone conversations about the engine and getting stuff on Steam. The getting-the-game-on-Steam bit was probably the easiest of the entire process. Perhaps there's just a lot more stuff trying to get on Steam these days...