Live data from Hacker News

“This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

404media.co

41–50 of 170 posts

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#41

> but the fact they are applying this retroactively to every game every made in Unity that also seems like it should not be legal no matter what you put in your TOS, at least in some jurisdictions it probably isn't (in the same way that e.g. conditional auto-termination contracts are no actually auto-terminating in many jurisdictions even if it's written in the contract)

> at least in some jurisdictions it probably isn't

I also don't think "you'll agree to future unpublished terms" will work anywhere in the EU

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no fault of my own You locked yourself into proprietary-licensed solution and invited this upon yourself.

We do that all the time. Modern day smart tech with microwaves, tv, phones etc. And I'd consider it equally bullshit if the brand behind my microwave decided to start charging me for each meal I heated. Or like what's going on with printers. Companies going back and trying to alter the deal is a complete no go.

sony pulled Otheros feature from ps3, and people still use Sony consoles.

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#45
post #28

I don't get it. If someone gives you something that is vital for your product for free, and the license does not guarantee your free usage in perpetuity, and you can't take the source code and maintain things yourself if the vendor changes their mind, ... surely that's on you then? Did you think they didn't need to buy food and pay rent? To me as a complete outsider this move reeks of desperation on their part, not m…

Even if you agree with the overall move, surely you recognise that some of the details — charging developers for users installing the same product multiple times, or even pirating it — are flat-out wrong? Not even just wrong from a moral point of view, but from a "this can't possibly work" one too.

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#47

> but the fact they are applying this retroactively to every game every made in Unity that also seems like it should not be legal no matter what you put in your TOS, at least in some jurisdictions it probably isn't (in the same way that e.g. conditional auto-termination contracts are no actually auto-terminating in many jurisdictions even if it's written in the contract)

In Germany it is not. SaaS apps can be particularly challenging because you cannot just change the terms for existing users and contracts.

Ironically most customers don't know and don't react accordingly. Generally the customer behaviour is that customers get spooked and pay anyway.

... but if they were to sue it would be a problem, which is why typically small companies try to follow legislation and big company with big legal department, don't necessarily care.

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#48
Choosing installs to collect revenue on is stupid because it isn't tightly correlated to revenue for a game:

Demos, bundles, free week-end tryouts on Steam, free-to-play games and other specific cases all lead to high install counts without necessarily generating the matching sales.

It's especially stupid because Unity has good market share on mobile, which is a juicy market but with a fixed price per install, free-to-play and low-priced (0.99$, etc...) games will never choose Unity for new projects, because the percentage of revenue you will lose on those is going to be prohibitive.

A less worse metric to collect on would be actual game sales count, but that's still horrible for promotional sale events and low-priced games (assuming fixed cost per sale).

The sensible and simpler option would simply be a percentage of revenue past a threshold like Unreal Engine and CryEngine for example.

I see two possible outcomes:

  * They stick with this pricing policy, and cash in on the fact that a lot of game studios are heavily invested in Unity at the moment and will take time to move away to extract a shit-ton of money short term in the meantime. Long-term it will probably crash and burn, but they're fine with it as long as they can milk enough before that.

  * They wait for the outcry, say they've listened to the community, roll it back and introduce a more sensible royalty system with percentage of revenue, which the community grudgingly accepts since it's less worse than the initial option.
Post reply on HN