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

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

#101

Post by hayst4ck »

leke wrote: post #53

2nd time I'm saying this...2023 is the year of the greedy CEO.

It's not CEO's doing something wrong. It's workers.

Try "year of the submissive worker" maybe "year of the dominated worker" and see how that tastes in your mouth.

It's workers lack of unionization and enforced professional ethics that means there are no consequences for being "greedy" and that being "greedy" is in fact a winning strategy in the game of prisoners dilemma.

It's convenient when someone else is doing something wrong and they need to change, but if you want change, you need to look in the mirror and ask what you are doing wrong and for most of us, that is failing to unionize in order to get a seat at the negotiating table and therefore being able to check otherwise unchecked CEO/Board power.

Wage is a measurement of power, not value. Wage is capped by value provided, but scales with power.

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

#102

Post by maratc »

jdougan wrote: post #80
loupol wrote: post #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-t…

Best part is you can bet people who don't like the developer of a game (for whatever reason) will "install bomb" the game.

Next step: IBaaS, where you can buy a million install-bombs for a mere $0.1.

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

#103

Post by offices »

jimbob45 wrote: post #9
Sakos wrote: post #7

I think it's absurd that Unity can push a new pricing scheme on existing customers regardless of circumstance and essentially little to no warning. Games are in development for years and they're basically telling people 3 months beforehand. How is this okay? This is something I'd expect when switching to a newer version of a service/product. Not a randomly changing contract for what I've already been using at no faul…

It’s mostly likely an application of the Door in the Face technique where one makes a huge ask followed by a smaller, more well-received ask after the first is rejected. Here, they put forward an unreasonable demand. Later, once the trolling emerges, they roll it back to be only on new devs with old devs keeping the old system. They get to seem like they “listened to the community” and the community ignores their sti…

This at the cost of every customer seriously considering the value proposition of changing engine.

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

#104

Post by zzbn00 »

joobus wrote: post #79
leke wrote: post #53

2nd time I'm saying this...2023 is the year of the greedy CEO.

Unity has lost $455 million dollars in the first 6 months of the fiscal year 2023. They lost $919 million in 2022. I don't think they have ever made a profit. Companies are not charities; they exist to make money, and Unity doesn't by a mile. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1810806/000181080623...

This is the key. Companies that lose money are unreliable long-term partners.

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

#105

Post by dgb23 »

jdougan wrote: post #80
loupol wrote: post #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-t…

Best part is you can bet people who don't like the developer of a game (for whatever reason) will "install bomb" the game.

This may seem weird for outsiders. But it’s one of the first things that come to mind if you know about that subset of entertainment consumer culture.

The target of this kind of hostility is _usually_ mainstream media, but nobody is safe.

It’s a weird mix of entitlement and hate that drives this.

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

#107

Post by Espionage724 »

I never was a fan of Unity. To me it felt like its selling-point was that it could run on multiple platforms, but not at optimal performance compared to other engines (basically like Android and Java). My introduction to Unity was with Hearthstone (the card game), and even then it didn't natively support Linux.

On that presumption, I found it incredibly surprising people latching onto it for VR dev, and considering most Unity VR games all share the same look (cartoon-y; basically look at A Township Tale and compare it to Orbus and Zenith), that further cements my view of Unity not being a serious high-quality capable engine to be using, unless I want to throw quick non-sustainable projects together.

This news about Unity being even more expensive definitely doesn't help my view :p

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

#108

Post by dgb23 »

pech0rin wrote: post #94
dathinab wrote: post #17

> 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)

Not sure you read the article. Unity explicitly states they are NOT applying this retroactively.

Retroactively in terms of previous installs or in terms of already published games?

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

#109

Post by pjc50 »

pech0rin wrote: post #94
dathinab wrote: post #17

> 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)

Not sure you read the article. Unity explicitly states they are NOT applying this retroactively.

Games which are already in development will be affected. That feels retroactive, since the purchase decision to use Unity was made potentially years ago, even if it technically isn't.

It also apparently applies to already shipping games?

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

#110

Post by pjc50 »

hayst4ck wrote: post #101
leke wrote: post #53

2nd time I'm saying this...2023 is the year of the greedy CEO.

It's not CEO's doing something wrong. It's workers. Try "year of the submissive worker" maybe "year of the dominated worker" and see how that tastes in your mouth. It's workers lack of unionization and enforced professional ethics that means there are no consequences for being "greedy" and that being "greedy" is in fact a winning strategy in the game of prisoners dilemma. It's convenient when someone else is doing so…

This is a very hostile way to phrase a pro-union argument, and I can't actually see how it would help here.
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