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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

#141

Post by kalleboo »

nomercy400 wrote: post #134

How does this work retroactively on released products? Say five years ago, I paid a company to build a house, who hired a contractor to build it and it was completed in a year. Nowadays, I open the door daily. Now the contractor goes to the company, saying that from January 1st, every time I open the door, the company has to pay a small fee to the contractor, because they built the house with the door five years ago.…

It works legally since you didn't buy Unity. You don't own anything. You're licensing the right to use it on an ongoing basis.

It's like how I can't buy a Rolling Stones CD and then play it on the radio for millions of people without paying them. I never bought the music, just the right to listen to it privately.

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

#142

Post by wink »

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…

Also I suppose most people will auto-reinstall everything when they get a new phone via Play, no matter if they will actually continue playing that game.

That seems pretty far-fetched for PC users. Either they copy their Steam library (or the standalone install) or not reinstall everything they own.

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

#143

Post by rishav_sharan »

thatwasunusual wrote: post #139
dgb23 wrote: post #135

The video game market is a feast or famine kind of deal. Few games break even, even fewer make a profit. What Unity probably wants or needs is to take a cut off the large successes. That’s where all the money is. The problem is that they aren’t involved in distribution. This per/install model is trying to solve this by turning Unity into some kind of malware. A completely tone deaf move. Why not build business relati…

> What Unity probably wants or needs is to take a cut off the large successes. That’s where all the money is. The problem is that they aren’t involved in distribution. Isn't the simple solution to just tax the companies a percentage of the revenue? Isn't that what Unreal do?

yep. Unreal has a much better deal. 5% of royalties once your sales cross 1 Million. So if you are an indie dev, you can pretty much use Unreal for free. But if you are a decently sized dev shop, you pay a % of your revenue.

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

#144

Post by prmoustache »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #123
dgb23 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It applies to new installs (from 01/24) of all games, regardless of when they were published.

Well if that is the case it is either a) illegal. b) the developper/studios already agreed on a license that would allow unity to change term and licensing fee on stuff made long ago and screw them whenever they want.

If the answer is b, then I guess those involved should just slap themselves and swallow it instead of complaining.

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

#145

Post by dns_snek »

trinovantes wrote: post #22
birracerveza wrote: post #8

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.

A least now the argument that piracy hurts the developers has some weight

No it doesn't, fraudulent install tracking by Unity could hurt the developers. If pirated copies count as valid installations, that means that the system is completely unauthenticated and will be abused.

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

#146

Post by RantyDave »

Aerroon wrote: post #121
joobus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

How do you lose that much money? How does Unity Technologies employ 7700 people?! For comparison: Epic Games employs about 3700 people. That includes the people working on Fortnite and the Epic Games store. Edit: the stats might be a bit questionable though.

There's a big chunk of "technically unity" that used to be Weta.

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

#147

Post by anonymousab »

bluescrn wrote: post #56
birracerveza wrote: post #8

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.

You don't need to actually install/reinstall games if you can figure out how the Unity runtime is notifying its servers about this install. You could theoretically write an 'install bombing' tool that sends fake install notifications straight to their server (or modify the game executable to do it repeatedly). You can't trust the client, especially when dealing with PC games. Hopefully Unity will anticipate this pote…

It's not currently tracking anything, at least according to some unity devs on their support forums. So in the absence of some network request to capture, scripting the reinstall loop is the current option to be have a "day 1" script ready in advance.

> the same ip address

Unity confirmed that this is part of how they intend to do it. That's why the meme scripts so far make a point to cycle up addresses or use rotating proxies per install.

The other part of the methodology that unity confirmed is "proprietary internal models that can't be shared but are GDPR compliant". Somehow.

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

#150

Post by harimau777 »

nomercy400 wrote: post #137

Why did/can game companies not protect themselves against this possible change of contract? I mean, if you spend millions on developing a game, taking two-three years to develop, surely you try to tackle any risks that might endanger the project. For example, by fixing the price on the foundation of your game, i.e. the game engine. This is a huge change in the way this game engine will be considered for new games. If…

A lot of games don't cost millions to develop. In particular, I associate Unity more with indy games rather than AAA.

Those sorts of devs don't have a lot of leverage.

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