There's a clause in the new terms that say you can plead your case that some installs are piracy and shouldn't count.
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New Unity pricing
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His games are popular, with 3.5m YouTube subscribers to his channel, and upwards of 40,000 concurrent players, winner of a few "played best with friends" awards for his 2 games, and featured on a number of popular Twitch and YouTube streamer channels.
I have to assume he has found a way to monetize that. The charges do not apply to non-monetized titles, or titles that do not exceed $200,000 in sales over a 12-month period.
I have enterprise licensing for my dev environment, and it's for students to build inhouse titles on a Switch dev console to learn things, so they give us that for basically nothing, so I am not going to ask my rep for what does and doesn't constitute "monetized".
Looking it over I can't help but think this is Unity on the way out, this is coming on top of increases to their monthly subscription fees as they are removing all the cheaper options.
The only upside here is it moves billing for games included in subscription services, or bundles, from the developer to those offering the subscription or bundle services.
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Darunion
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So this means probably with each billing cycle or however its handled you will need to provide total number of sales versus their provided number of installs? Which seems to me like it would be a better model to just base it off sales? Counting installs just seems like a terrible way to do this IMO.
Yeah, this just seems like plain greed, especially since they say they count beta, early access, etc.
On the other hand, maybe they threw that in so they could take it out at the first sign of backlash and get praise from the simps.
Side note, I did just get my email inviting me to configure my Sentis environment and they are letting me know that I now get Asset Manager, DevOps, and Team Administration as part of my bundle, so... I have to see if that is something the classes want and which tools it would replace or augment and if that changes what tools we use in the lab and if so what that does to the costs associated with them.
Crab game has an item shop where you can buy stuff for real money.
So the question for him is does that shop make more than $200,000 a year?
For me, this changes nothing, but I can see a path for this to force developers into bed with Microsoft and Nintendo, or other bundle/subscription services.
Darunion
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Interesting thought, i hadnt thought that this could just be a PR stunt to see exactly how much the companies would allow. I would imagine they did a risk assessment of this move and decided it was worth it, just doesnt feel like it would be in the long run to me and my ignorant opinion lol.
It counts beta and early access, but it doesn't then count those installs after the game goes live, which is something that the current license doesn't do, as it doesn't count beta or early access at all, so if you leave your game Early access for 10 years, and monetize development with an in-game shop, and only really go live with it during the game's swan song, Unity only started charging for launch onwards, and some developers are actively exploiting that with their games never actually leaving early access or beta.
I am conflicted with these changes because I can see how for others it is problematic, but none of the changes affect me, so I am upset on their behalf, but I lack their perspective on certain parts, overall I don't see this as a good thing for small independents it certainly increases their fees, but it also gets them more tools, so depending on their development environment they may come out ahead IF they go full in on the Unity dev tools, but that further locked them into being Unity developers which pidgin holes them, and that isn't good for them either. So this could be good for the fresh startups short term, and the big publishers, but it's kinda bad for everybody in the middle, and really bad for studios who keep their titles in early access for ever.
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LMAO! "Well, we really don't have a good solution right now, so get fucked and pay anyway."
Darunion
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Going to end up requiring an account to install, only way i can think of that working. That wont be popular for anyone
Charging Gamepass installs to MS is only a limited help since MS in turn will either take the Unity fee out of what they pay devs to include their titles in the bundle, or raise the cost of the subscription to cover it. I'd bet on the former being done.
The biggest losers are probably going to be devs who do F2P mobile games. When 90% of installs are abandoned within an hour or two of play and 99% of the sustained player base are only generating a few pennies/month from ads, the per install fees are going to end up eating up most of the revenue from small spending non-whales (ie the player who pays $10 once for a skin, or permanent ad removal pack). I don't think it'll actually kill the business model; but will force devs to be even more heavily reliant on the handful of people spending large amounts of money because they need to be first on the leader boards/etc at all costs.
This may be a silly question but if I were to compile a game, upload it to my own server and have a direct download link (so separate from Steam or other similar services), then how exactly would Unity know how many downloads or installs of that game have been made?
GoldenTiger
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Telemetry built into the executable.
They don't (honor system quite a bit), but in a scenario where it would be a big enough success to go over the threashold, I imagine they would sue and try to discover the game generated income, using their analytics + advertises sales price on the website for a gross estimate.
That can be a good proxy for the game usage, less clear about the money made.
TheSlySyl
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They're baking in some sort of DRM that will use "proprietary technology" to "know" how many installs it has.
This whole thing is fucked, and keep in mind that some of biggest F2P mobile games like everything Genshin Impact related and even Pokemon Go are all Unity.
Hell, all the console versions and now every steam version of Vampire Survivors is unity. 20c is a significant portion of the cost of that game.
I know I installed my steam version on pretty much every computing device in my general area.
something that big would probably pay a pro license and not your hobbist free version to make it down to 1-2 cent, that made enough money the last 12 month to have to pay but was on the base Unity license scenario will probably be rare, probably enter pay for the pro version territory fast.
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KazeoHin
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"Hm, every day we become more and more insignificant next to Unreal, after it basically took over the world after letting people use it for free and only taking payment from portions of revenue gained from sales of software, guaranteeing the creators only pay for Unreal if they're getting paid first."
"lets not do that at all and alienate our existing long-time users! that will give us back an edge!"
Honestly, this sounds like Unity KNOWS their time is limited, and they're trying to pry as much profit from the few devs locked in in the little time they have left before Unreal becomes the only game in town. No sense fighting against the tide, rake in as much cash before the sun sets.
"lets not do that at all and alienate our existing long-time users! that will give us back an edge!"
Honestly, this sounds like Unity KNOWS their time is limited, and they're trying to pry as much profit from the few devs locked in in the little time they have left before Unreal becomes the only game in town. No sense fighting against the tide, rake in as much cash before the sun sets.
GoldenTiger
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Yep, but it's not like they're going to not check out the pricing online of a game with significant installs
.This, it's tiered.
If you offer deals, difference price by country, the fact price would be public and telemetry if it is big and you say not enough to be in the zone they would sue and try to discover, but if it is on the line it is not like it would be that clear.Yep, but it's not like they're going to not check out the pricing online of a game with significant installs
GoldenTiger
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In a perfect world where installs could be tracked perfectly and not have so many obvious holes, it would come out cheaper than unreal's 5% cut for most projects that aren't f2p mobile with ads being their only income.
However, that's not reality. I disagree unity was becoming irrelevant, but this wasn't the brightest idea they've ever had.
I've been dev'ing with unity for 14 years and some unreal testing. I will be changing over to unreal as I can't have an engine partner that can and will be unpredictable with virtually no warning on huge cost and term changes. I can't base a business on that.
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Hah, funny to read that given Rust's history. I think they re-did the game once at least.
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Cult of the Lamb threatens to de-list from Steam next year.
https://www.ign.com/articles/cult-o...s-to-delete-game-on-jan-1-amid-unity-backlash
They straight upredid the entire game, but it's always been Unity. The original was super jank in all the right ways.
Literally some of the most fun I've ever had gaming.
A I
Limp Gawd
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I think they’re going to have to walk back further to keep people invested in the engine.
Yeah, but now they are promising things that are not technically possible to measure.
The advertising modules phone home.
They operate as part of the update services if I’m remembering correctly.
And there’s other telemetry items in there as well for AI and such.
Disabling it all would gimp what ever you were doing and the personal risks in the form of a lawsuit from Unity would be kinda big.
Why expose yourself and put in all that effort when other engines exist?
It’s really hard to fight that Fortnight money.
sharknice
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I don't think that's it. Unity has been doing fine. They got in with schools and people default to using Unity because it's what they're familiar with even though Unreal Engine often would be a much better choice.
Unity is just looking for ways to make more money.
Unity is run by people with the sole purpose of making as much money as possible with shady backgrounds.
The route they are trying is to milk the their entire audience they do have as much as possible no matter how shady it seems. They think they can get away with it, or calculated how much of a hit it will be to reputation and think they'll end up ahead.
This is in line with other things they've added to their engine like their micro transaction and ads systems. They're focusing on any features they can add to get them more money.
it's a very different approach to what Epic is doing with Unreal Engine.
Video-Game Company Unity Closes Offices Following Death Threat
Unity canceled a planned town hall and closed two offices Thursday after receiving what it said was a credible death threat in the wake of a controversial pricing decision earlier this week, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
From the report:Unity, the maker of tools and technology for video games, set off a firestorm on Sept. 12 by announcing it will begin charging developers a new fee for games made using its software, called the Unity Engine. Beginning Jan. 1, makers of Unity games will have to pay per user installation after a certain threshold is reached. Some video-game makers accused Unity of violating its own terms of service and lamented that the new charges could threaten their livelihoods. Many game studios put out harshly worded statements urging the technology company to reconsider.
Unity canceled a planned town hall and closed two offices Thursday after receiving what it said was a credible death threat in the wake of a controversial pricing decision earlier this week, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
From the report:Unity, the maker of tools and technology for video games, set off a firestorm on Sept. 12 by announcing it will begin charging developers a new fee for games made using its software, called the Unity Engine. Beginning Jan. 1, makers of Unity games will have to pay per user installation after a certain threshold is reached. Some video-game makers accused Unity of violating its own terms of service and lamented that the new charges could threaten their livelihoods. Many game studios put out harshly worded statements urging the technology company to reconsider.
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Limp Gawd
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What is wrong with people, the change sucks, and should be addressed, but this is not the way.
There's another side to that too, you can develop for Unity on an overclocked Proctor Silex toaster from the early 2000s as long as it still powers on, Unreal requires some additional resources and actual hardware behind it.
But seriously, grab some old yet serviceable laptops, Intel gen 6-8 does fine, give it 8+GB in RAM, and an SSD or NVME if able, cram the Unity dev tools on there, and have them go to town developing things for a Raspberry Pi 4, very little hardware investment there, and lots of teaching resources available for the teachers and students to do it.
My whole company is considering porting our current projects and not doing any new projects on unity. None of us know unreal or godot, we strictly work in Unity. Taking the few weeks to get up to speed on both is worth the sunken cost than continuing to use unity. My boss is getting ready to get us to make the switch if they don't revert the pricing model in the next week or two. We have an FPS 8 months into development, and three new projects. One just kicked off, two clients just signed an agreement. If this doesn't change, none of them will be made in Unity which is sad but not surprising.
We don't have anything new coming out shortly, but some of our clients have successful mobile games and there's no way we're paying for their install fees. So I'm suspecting some amount of dealing with our clients come time the switch happens will be a problem. It's wild to me they would do this, their stock is going to have major problems in a year or so, there are other successful tools to do the same things unity does. Their tools for getting up and running, in my opinion, are the best. But if this is the route they're taking it's over.
Keep in mind, there are people out there who quit their jobs, and are living on their savings who want to publish games probably over the next 6-12 months they've worked on in Unity for 2-3+ years and now have to reconsider doing so and taking 6+ months to port their game to another engine. Or just start up companies who got funding with the assumption the toolset they paid for would cost what it costs. Indie developers of all stripes are going to have major problems over this decision.
We don't have anything new coming out shortly, but some of our clients have successful mobile games and there's no way we're paying for their install fees. So I'm suspecting some amount of dealing with our clients come time the switch happens will be a problem. It's wild to me they would do this, their stock is going to have major problems in a year or so, there are other successful tools to do the same things unity does. Their tools for getting up and running, in my opinion, are the best. But if this is the route they're taking it's over.
Keep in mind, there are people out there who quit their jobs, and are living on their savings who want to publish games probably over the next 6-12 months they've worked on in Unity for 2-3+ years and now have to reconsider doing so and taking 6+ months to port their game to another engine. Or just start up companies who got funding with the assumption the toolset they paid for would cost what it costs. Indie developers of all stripes are going to have major problems over this decision.
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paradoxical
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One of my companies has an app written in Unity that has 100k+ users. It's a free app that only exists to supplement our hardware sales. The fees are not enough to bankrupt us given our low user count relative to a mobile game or something like that, but it's still an unplanned hit off EBITDA. This honestly might be the push I need to re-write everything in a different language, I am not convinced Unity was the right one to begin with for the type of app we have.
RanceJustice
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Let me say first of all that this is no way appropriate or acceptable, but....lets keep some things in perspective. Call me cynical, but a billion dollar corporation (now run by a CEO and management team known for exploitative, extractive monetization) making a massively unpopular decision, AND who's execs were recently shown to have been selling stock in the leadup to this decision (which may or may not be insider trading) deciding there is a "credible" threat against them tends to be very suspect. It seems like an excuse to get the news cycle off their bad behavior and instead place them in a sympathetic light.
Its a tactic to get them to focus on "oh those outrageous, entitled incel gamers!" and at least tacitly place some association between those who are objecting vehemently to Unity's behavior with the (again, unjustifiable and unhelpful) supposed threat maker. I'd be very interested to watch how social media and certain "game journalists" cover the issue going forward in light of this - in the past, when something like this was said to have happened coverage changed. Now I'm not saying that the threat didn't happen, but in any large group of people its possible to find one unhinged nut online who's going to mouth off. At this point the viability of the threat is only on the Unity management not any external including law enforcement but even the latter doesn't mean its truly credible, such as people being arrested over repeating a meme online with no evidence or plan to engage in actual violence.
The biggest thing that concerns me is that what is "credible" when it happens to big company execs, or even certain social or other media figures and the like wouldn't be "credible" if it happened to the average person who has a lot less resources, private/corporate security etc. You never see these big company execs or public figures on social media ever railing against the privacy laws that made it easy for some random person who didn't like them to find out where they lived, their relatives information, or what is considered "public" giving rise to all of this, instead demanding new, badly needed privacy laws for natural (ie not corporate, legal fiction) persons in an age where people no longer need to walk down to a dank basement 5 towns over in city hall to gain records on your personal information, but instead is all indexed and made available by public and private (often the latter, often for profit) entities. Threats against Unity execs, staff etc.is not acceptable but it would be nice if these companies that clutch their pearls in these cases would put some of their massive wealth towards actually solving the problem of digital privacy and what information is considered "public" accessibility.
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