Unity will charge devs 20¢ per install after a threshold is crossed

[drahkon]

Stolen from ResetEra:

Quote

* Unity will charge a one-time fee per player based on them installing (and initializing) the game
* Fee scaling is dependent on revenue thresholds. $200k/200k installs for Personal, $1M/1M for Pro
* For Pro/Enterprise, the cost scales downwards to $0.02/$0.01 per install, but for Personal it remains at $0.20
* Unity Plus is getting retired, the 100k rev limit on Unity Personal is being replaced with the payments above

Official Source

Some devs already pissed:

Gonna be a real shitshow in the upcoming days/weeks

Greed will ruin this world (it already has)

[Jonnas]

Seriously?! That's crazy.

Like, nevermind greed, this is some stupidity of the highest order. The sort of thing that ends a company's reputation (and likely their revenue) overnight. Their engine is used by indie developers and major publishers alike, and they're not even a monopoly (the only type of business that could get away with shit like this).

Unity is either run by amateurs who cave in to every investor demand, or some venture capitalists who are willing to burn the company to the ground to fill their personal pockets. Likely the latter.

[Dcubed]

John Riccitiello does what John Riccitiello does best 

[Dcubed]

Great job John.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Dcubed

[Ashley]

For a company that has made numerous stupid decisions over the years, this really is the biggest. It's just regressive, an abuse of position and ill-thought out. They know review-bombing is a thing and so they're going to create a new form of abuse. 

I see this going one of the following ways; they back down soon and later come back with something less shit but still bad (a "key" fee for each time a game is purchased), they stick to their guns for now but back down further down the line when a lot of people flock to other engines if they can* or they never back down and burn out. The fact it's per install and they've been trying to court the Hollywood VFX market for a while suggests perhaps that's what he wants; to move from games to movies. 

If Epic is smart they'll offer some huge discounts, deals and migration support to ride this self-inflicted bad press. 

 

*The fact some studios are essentially stuck with it for the time being (if they can't move engines due to size, or they're releasing updates etc) and it will affect games already released AFAIK is particularly pernicious 

[drahkon]

4 hours ago, Dcubed said:

 

As if I needed any more reason to have Unity on my shit-list. I wanted to see Mega Crit's game sooner, rather than later
Thankfully, Slay the Spire is not based on Unity so even if their BS goes through I won't have any issues re-installing it (I do that quite often on my phone and PS5 ).

59 minutes ago, Ashley said:

If Epic is smart they'll offer some huge discounts, deals and migration support to ride this self-inflicted bad press. 

Indeed.

Godot is now also on the rise (I think it's open-source).

Resignations already incoming at Unity:

...

[EEVILMURRAY]

Games in only 1 game Humble Bundles coming soon

[Cube]

How exactly are they tracking installs? None of the data on our computers should be going straight to Unity. Will offline installers get banned? 

And with their updates: how are they going to detect installs from bundles? How do they know a second install is one the same computer without collecting private information? 

[EEVILMURRAY]

26 minutes ago, Cube said:

How exactly are they tracking installs? None of the data on our computers should be going straight to Unity. Will offline installers get banned? 

And with their updates: how are they going to detect installs from bundles? How do they know a second install is one the same computer without collecting private information? 

Maybe they'll have something that pings when you click to accept all the terms and conditions you never read?

[Ashley]

Apparently they have rowed back/"clarified" that multiple installs on the same machine count as one.

Multiple installs across different machines though...

[Dcubed]

The craziest part about this move is that Unity are doing this when they’re in a position of weakness.  They’ve been continuously losing ground to Unreal for years, and recently the likes of Godot, Construct and GameMaker Studio have been eating their lunch… so now is the time where they start acting like Mr Big Balls?

Genius.

[bob]

Maybe that's why they are trying to claw back some money? They're worried about losing market share, and profits are falling.

[Ashley]

A planned town hall meeting has been cancelled due to death threats. 

All going well at Unity. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-14/video-game-company-unity-closes-offices-following-death-threat

[Ashley]

Just wanted a GVG video about some of the updates (including they're now applying a percentage cap) and they made a good point; they're not backtracking, they're negotiating. Doesn't seem like they'll be changing anytime soon. 

Plus while charity bundles will be excluded they consider organisations like Planned Parenthood as a political group and will not be excluded 😮‍💨

[Ashley]

Unity has rolled back a lot of stuff:

- Unity Personal subscription plan will no longer be charged the new fee and their revenue cap has been increased to $200,000 (and as with the current setup, at that point they'd go onto the next tier)

- Any game that makes less than $1 million in 12 months will not be subject to the fee

- The fee will only apply to any games made with a version of Unity to be released next year

- They'll no longer track installs and instead rely on self-reporting (for clarity's sake, they don't currently but their announcement suggested they would but never explained how)

- Reversed an unrelated but still contentious change that meant users were obliged to follow the current terms of service, instead now they follow the ones related to the version they are using

- And in terms of the actual fee: "For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5 percent revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month.” 

There's still questions about the latter point and it remains to be seen if this will go any way towards recovering their brand reputation and trust amongst developers

[Dcubed]

Yeah, Unity is done.  They really just don't get it.

Wonder if Nintendo's partner studios will also ditch the engine now as well...

Edited September 23, 2023 by Dcubed

[Choze]

12 hours ago, Dcubed said:

Yeah, Unity is done.  They really just don't get it.

Wonder if Nintendo's partner studios will also ditch the engine now as well...

Yeah they are making a huge mess of this.

[Ashley]

And John Riccitiello is gone: https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/9/23910441/unity-ceo-president-john-riccitiello-out-retire