81–90 of 170 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We all learn the value of free software one way or another. For many of us, including myself, it was through similar pain and suffering due to a proprietary platform.
The issue here isn't just with free users, it mainly affects users who are already paying fees to Unity
Does this mean the engine will phone home every time a software which contains it is installed? How is that compatible with the GDPR which has been interpreted by courts in a way that it forbids sending any network packets to the USA, no matter if the user consented to it or not? For reference, see the rulings which deemed Google analytics illegal independent of consent.
"Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes." Source: https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricin…
The old story... Be friends to the community, get everybody to believe you then increase prices when everybody is locked in. This time we have an answer: Godot.
If I had to guess, Gogot is also the reason why they are scrambling to cash-out before it's too late.
On 4chan it immediately sparked a crowdsourced effort to make scripts that repeatedly install/uninstall games in creative ways (VMs, MAC spoofing) with the specific intention to hurt developers. This is definitely one of the dumbest choices I've seen a company do. Props to Unity for speeding up their own death.
I wonder if this could be used as a way to target civilians as part of a larger cyber war, like in the Ukraine conflict?
> 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…
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…
Unity isn't doing what Unreal did and asking for a cut of every sales. That would be surprising, that would be impactful, but that would be a manageable amount of money.
Unity is asking for a fee on every _install_ of the game, even if it amounts to one single sale of the game. Quoting their FAQ[0]:
> Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs?
> A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data.
That means that if you sell a game for $1, and if a user reinstalls it 6 times over the course of their ownership of the game (changing computers, just uninstalling/reinstalling to free up space every now and then, adding or removing mods, etc...), and you made more than 200.000 sales... You now owe Unity $1.20 for that user. And you only earned $1 from that user. Sure, you can pay Unity 1500/year/developer to rise the threshold to $1 million and lower the fee to $0.15 per install, but that's not a "deal". That's a racket.
This is absolutely, completely unsustainable. And not like "this will cost some money to companies" unsustainable, more like "it will be cheaper to hire people to port our game to another engine" unsustainable, as the person handling the business side of Among Us stated yesterday[1]:
> This is legit the kind of math I'm doing too. I've learned that Unity's fee won't be retroactive which is delightful, but also Among Us gets enough dls per month that I could just hire two whole people to port AU away from Unity instead of them taxing us for 0 added value.
And that's not accounting for business models like bundles or game passes. AGGRO CRAB, the developers behind the upcoming "Another Crab's Treasure" game announced earlier this year and coming out early next year, has stated that they are unsure whether their GamePass release will be sustainable for them[2]:
> This means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If only a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.
To be more exact and add some context, as reported by journalist Stephen Tottlio[3], Unity executive Mark Whitten stated that the fee would be sent to Microsoft:
> As for Game Pass and other subscription services, Whitten said that developers like Aggro Crab would not be on the hook, as the fees are charged to distributors, which in the Game Pass example would be Microsoft.
This will, however, deincentivize Microsoft to publish games made by studios who use Unity because Microsoft would be potentially publishing at a loss, which of course they don't want to do. So, not the exact same impact to developers, but the same difference for them.
And of course, that's not accounting for all of the "freemium" models here and there. And I don't mean microtransactions, I mean games that lock part of the content behind a paywall but propose access to most of the game for free. That business model, sustainable so far, is now literally going to end up with Unity asking for more money than you earn a year. (and yeah, this is a real risk for some companies. Anduo Games, the company behind the NSFW game Third Crisis, is still wondering if they're in that exact situation and what they can do about it[5]).
This move is just bonkers. Like, it's a business model where just using a game engine means that you can end up owing more money to a company than you earned over the lifetime your game.
And this is why people are not happy about this move.
[0] https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packa...
[1] https://twitter.com/forte_bass/status/1701696983617180010
[2] https://twitter.com/AggroCrabGames/status/170169103683230926...
[3] https://www.axios.com/2023/09/13/unity-runtime-fee-policy-ma...
[4] https://itch.io/post/8572430 (the link is to a comment and is fully SFW, the game this comment is about isn't)
Is there any software that is sold by installation ? I find that crazy even if I will never be concerned
Windows
so it's very different.
The old story... Be friends to the community, get everybody to believe you then increase prices when everybody is locked in. This time we have an answer: Godot.
An alternative engine (no matter how good) doesn't solve vendor lock-in. Gamedev is a cutthroat business. You can't afford a rewrite. Even for new productions, you can't throw away engine experience and start retooling. I expect backlash.
The old story... Be friends to the community, get everybody to believe you then increase prices when everybody is locked in. This time we have an answer: Godot.
An alternative engine (no matter how good) doesn't solve vendor lock-in. Gamedev is a cutthroat business. You can't afford a rewrite. Even for new productions, you can't throw away engine experience and start retooling. I expect backlash.