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Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

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Re: Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

#71

Post by LMYahooTFY »

gambiting wrote: post #51
Hemospectrum wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Install bombing is still a problem. Unity, for all its "clarifications," keeps promising it won't be a problem and then refusing to be transparent about any of the ways it could possibly be less of a problem. Either they backtrack on this whole lifetime install count scheme or this blows up even more spectacularly when January rolls around.

I don't understand why this is a worry - they will do it the same way Valve/Microsoft/Epic/Blizzard identify how many machines you have their product installed on - with a unique hardware ID that will make sure you aren't charged twice for installing the game on the same machine. It's not rocket science, it's been used in the industry for ages.

Can you provide examples where this has been used in then industry?

With the examples you listed doesn't it require an account to authenticate first before achieving this?

Furthermore, is this not easy enough to spoof? Without account based authentication (which as far as I know Unity does not use/require?) what stops me from spinning up VMs or emulators repeatedly to attempt to install bomb?

Re: Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

#72

Post by gambiting »

devmor wrote: post #16
gambiting wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It basically entirely ignores how this is going to hurt the small/indie developers the most, who are the main reason Unity exists as it does today. You only start paying if you have 200k installs AND $200k in revenue. Most indie devs never reach anything like those numbers.

When people say "indie" devs, they mean devs that aren't with a big publisher. Not necessarily solo devs. Any relatively successful game is going to hit those numbers. $200k in revenue is barely enough to cover 3-4 months of development for a small studio.

That's not what I mean when I say "indie" and I work in video games. I'm aware of some companies that employ 10+ people who still call themselves "indie" - I find that dishonest.

>>Any relatively successful game is going to hit those numbers.

Sure - and any relatively successful game should have no trouble paying those fees. The only real edge case that's going to be affected negatively by this change are f2p games that rely on having millions of installed copies to make miniscule amount of money from few paying people. Those games should consider switching away from Unity.

Re: Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

#73

Post by imbusy111 »

sickofparadox wrote: post #5
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #2

>Developers unsurprisingly threw their proverbial toys out of the pram following the news. It doesn't get better. Garbage article.

>As a side note, I always find it quite amusing when for-profit companies accuse another for-profit company of being unfair by wanting to make more money. Maybe because most people think you shouldn't announce that you are going to fundamentally alter the way your payment model works for the reason of "We didn't make ENOUGH profits last quarter". Article was written by a soulless mba-style cretin. Into the garbage it…

Why is a perspective from a "soulless mba-style cretin" discarded, if it is presented in a logical way? Unity is a for-profit business after all, and a public one.

Re: Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

#74

Post by traverseda »

belltaco wrote: post #57
ZeWaka wrote: post #6

Not the best article. It basically entirely ignores how this is going to hurt the small/indie developers the most, who are the main reason Unity exists as it does today. Indie games will have lower price points than AAA games, and thus Unity's cut is a larger piece of the ever-shrinking pie. My personal opinion about this whole fiasco is that they'll go back on their original statement to something still quite greedy…

Meanwhile Steam takes 30% of indie devs' hard earned revenue and is a monopoly, but Valve seems immune from any criticism or even mention of it, with the pc gamer community reacting with downvotes(like with this comment) and angry replies if it's ever brought up. Think about it, when did you ever see anything critical of Steam on HN or Reddit? Its competitor Epic store which charged only 12% IIRC was demonized and go…

Yeah, but valve is investing a lot of that into linux and FOSS while unity is investing a lot into ad-tech and user tracking.

Steam is taking a big cut, but they've never tried to fuck me over as a consumer.

Re: Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

#75

Post by bitvoid »

gambiting wrote: post #51
Hemospectrum wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Install bombing is still a problem. Unity, for all its "clarifications," keeps promising it won't be a problem and then refusing to be transparent about any of the ways it could possibly be less of a problem. Either they backtrack on this whole lifetime install count scheme or this blows up even more spectacularly when January rolls around.

I don't understand why this is a worry - they will do it the same way Valve/Microsoft/Epic/Blizzard identify how many machines you have their product installed on - with a unique hardware ID that will make sure you aren't charged twice for installing the game on the same machine. It's not rocket science, it's been used in the industry for ages.

Are you sure? As far as I'm aware, I'm able to install a game I own on multiple machines for all of these platforms. I figured that the game is tied to my account, not some hardware ID. Why would they need to make sure I'm not charged twice based on installing the game to a machine rather than just seeing if my account owns it? I have never been charged more than once for a game I own that I have installed on both my desktop and my laptop, even after replacing those machines.

Re: Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

#76

Post by m_0x »

belltaco wrote: post #57
ZeWaka wrote: post #6

Not the best article. It basically entirely ignores how this is going to hurt the small/indie developers the most, who are the main reason Unity exists as it does today. Indie games will have lower price points than AAA games, and thus Unity's cut is a larger piece of the ever-shrinking pie. My personal opinion about this whole fiasco is that they'll go back on their original statement to something still quite greedy…

Meanwhile Steam takes 30% of indie devs' hard earned revenue and is a monopoly, but Valve seems immune from any criticism or even mention of it, with the pc gamer community reacting with downvotes(like with this comment) and angry replies if it's ever brought up. Think about it, when did you ever see anything critical of Steam on HN or Reddit? Its competitor Epic store which charged only 12% IIRC was demonized and go…

Your comment makes it sound like Epic Store was demonized because they charge 12%. I bet that's the only thing they did not get demonized about.

Their shady practices such as forcing exclusivity to Epic Store and suing Apple is what brought them shit all over them.

Developers are free to submit their game to Steam and release their game in any other platform. Epic handcuffs the devs to the Epic Store for a while.

> when did you ever see something critical of Steam on HN or Reddit?

Jesus are we forgetting EVERYBODY hated Steam when it got released? You know what Valve did? They fucking fixed their platform. They listened to consumer's feedback.

Now it's the best PC game store out there. That might change at some point, but today it's the best one.

Re: Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

#77

Post by imbusy111 »

dwallin wrote: post #66

It’s not the fact that Unity wants to make more money from its engine that has gotten people so up in arms about it, it’s the way it was structured. If they simply took a percent of revenue, everyone would have shrugged, you might have had some indies complaining, and the world would have kept on turning. Instead, they made a couple of compounding missteps. An install based fee creates a massive amount of uncertainty…

I can see the reversal of previous terms of service getting challenged in court. But that's a lot of effort, of course. Maybe IGDA can take on the challenge.

Seems obvious, that if you did not agree to the ToS, you cannot be held accountable.

Re: Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

#78

Post by gambiting »

foota wrote: post #40
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean every time something like a dev tool starts charging, or there is some tax or regulation, someone arrives and says it's gonna hurt the small indie devs, but who cares? If they can't contribute to anything and require the whole society worse off, then its likely that they'd better do something else

Pragmatically, many people enjoy indie games as much (or more) than AAA games. AAA games are more oriented towards making money and mass market appeal, and if we don't provide a market for indie games then we lose out on the specialty and variety of them.

But....there is a thriving market for indie games, even with this change. If you make a fantastic little indie game and release it for free = nothing changes, you pay nothing. If you make a little indie game and sell 100k copies = nothing changes, you still pay nothing. If you make a little indie game and sell 200k copies - you will now have to pay a small fee per install, but if you reached 200k sales you are way out of what I'd consider "small indie dev". I think dev tools should be provided for free or cheap to people experimenting or starting out, but there is a point where people are taking the piss if they sell 200k copies and they still think they should be able to use the tools for free(or nearly free).

Re: Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

#79

Post by AnotherGoodName »

belltaco wrote: post #57
ZeWaka wrote: post #6

Not the best article. It basically entirely ignores how this is going to hurt the small/indie developers the most, who are the main reason Unity exists as it does today. Indie games will have lower price points than AAA games, and thus Unity's cut is a larger piece of the ever-shrinking pie. My personal opinion about this whole fiasco is that they'll go back on their original statement to something still quite greedy…

Meanwhile Steam takes 30% of indie devs' hard earned revenue and is a monopoly, but Valve seems immune from any criticism or even mention of it, with the pc gamer community reacting with downvotes(like with this comment) and angry replies if it's ever brought up. Think about it, when did you ever see anything critical of Steam on HN or Reddit? Its competitor Epic store which charged only 12% IIRC was demonized and go…

Steam scares me. The 30% cut isn't the thing that scares me though. What scares me is that the lack of a monthly subscription fee on top of that is not because of any legal framework that says steam can't charge an exorbitant monthly access fee. The lack of the fee is due to Gabe Newell being more or less a benevolent dictator.

One day steam will be bought out by private capital that seeks to massively increase returns. The 'just buy it on steam so it's in your steam list' will inevitably one day be a curse not a blessing.

Re: Unity’s pricing is a symptom, not the cause of tougher times for the industry

#80

Post by fidotron »

It's not only games. Docker and Arm are two other companies with highly visible challenges, and many more will have them less visibly.

Life is so easy when you can throw money around. When you suddenly can't you end up learning what it means to make tough decisions about values.

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