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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

#81

Post by hx8 »

high_5 wrote: post #12

> Meanwhile, time-spent-centric business models mean that games are not competing with just games (like they once used to), but with other entertainment propositions for the limited 24 hours of the day. Interesting. Theoretical "(number of people) x 24h/day" is the max limit for attention economy. Has it already hit the ceiling?

> Interesting. Theoretical "(number of people) x 24h/day" is the max limit for attention economy. Has it already hit the ceiling?

Everyone is always paying attention to something or they are asleep. There's increasing competition for what people are paying attention to, but the amount of attention is directly tied to population.

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

#82

Post by mcpackieh »

mortenjorck wrote: post #56
mcpackieh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indie devs actually selling their game should be fine right? If it's just the devs of F2P / adware crap that will be sunk, then maybe Unity's new pricing policies will be the unexpected savior of gaming. Imagine a world in which we're not racing to the bottom with ad-ridden shovel-ware but instead people try to make the best possible product and sell it for what it's worth... radical. Or maybe I've misunderstood some…

A semi-forgotten but viable and healthy business model (with roots in the Shareware tradition) for mobile games is the free-with-unlock. Not F2P where the IAPs are different quantities of “gems” or “coins,” but a single “unlock” IAP that gets you the rest of the game if you enjoyed the free content. The per-install fee instantly makes this model unviable.

Great point, Unity should add a free demo exception then.

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

#83

Post by gambiting »

bitvoid wrote: post #75
gambiting wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Microsoft will stop you from downloading the game if it's installed on too many devices - it will tell you to deauthorize it on another device or sign it out entirely.

>> I figured that the game is tied to my account, not some hardware ID

Because it is. These platforms still use hardware ID matching for account bans and other functionality.

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

#84

Post by ralferoo »

ysavir wrote: post #21

Has there been any explanation, from Unity themselves or anyone else, as to why Unity thinks it deserves a cut based on install count? Do installs have to connect to Unity servers to download something? Anything like that? Everything I've seen so far points to no baser an explanation than Unity realizing it had an avenue of attack and deciding to employ it--and an attack is exactly what it is, a raid on other people'…

> Has there been any explanation, from Unity themselves or anyone else, as to why Unity thinks it deserves a cut based on install count?

The simplest is that by using Unity, the developer reduces their development costs compared to creating a game without using an engine and the tooling that comes with it.

If they don't think the advantages that using Unity gives them is worth $0.20 per copy, they should probably work out how much it'd cost to hire more developers to do the extra work they'd have to do to create their game without Unity.

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

#85

Post by hx8 »

epolanski wrote: post #64
terribleperson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe (with no evidence) that infinite-scrolling social media sites have already consumed most available attention. To get a share of attention you now have to compete with them, instead of simply being an alternative to boredom.

To be honest if games can't compete with doom scrolling they are either crap games or the social media doom algos are too effective. No part of me thinks "I'd rather scroll my social feed" rather than doing pretty much anything more fun.

If that's the case why are a significant number of people scrolling instead of playing?

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

#86

Post by gambiting »

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #71
gambiting wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Microsoft tells you if you install the game on too many devices.

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

Uhm, no, that's how it's implemented but it isn't required.

>> what stops me from spinning up VMs or emulators repeatedly to attempt to install bomb?

Nothing, but it would be very time consuming and very easy to detect.

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

#87

Post by Stealthisbook »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #20

Meh. Half true. Capitalism requires up-and-to-the-right progress on stock performance. The main ways to achieve this are through legitimate innovation and/or squeezing existing innovations. Unity finds itself becoming an ad-tech company. There aren't a lot of technical innovations in that space, so they're left with squeezing their users. If their business model had stayed more focused on monetizing the sale of their…

While there might not be much innovation available in the ad tech space, there's plenty to address in gaming (and ad tech may have lots of arbitrage given different legal regimes)

If Unity made their engine just more usable, much less more capable, than UnReal and others they would gain market share. That's ignoring the other lucrative arenas games engines have entered like movie vfx and vr.

The CEO going full tilt into enshittification is just a symptom of terrible leadership

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

#88

Post by starburst »

imbusy111 wrote: post #77
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.

I certainly hope that at least, legally speaking, they would be forced to back down on games built using older version of the unity engine so that previous and upcoming projects aren't affected.

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

#89

Post by smitty1110 »

Airsinner wrote: post #38
starburst wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it could have been planned all along, the damage done seems irreversible. No one is going to propose Unity ever again for upcoming projects even if the fees are actually a much better deal than the competitions (like Unreal 5%). The audacity of asking everyone who have built a game using their engine (completely disregarding the TOS at the time) to be potentially on the hook to receive monthly bills fro…

If Unity is the best by a mile it works.

Unity skated by on their freemium pricing and easy programming languages. Unreal has been technologically superior for _years_, only held back by the high revenue split, the footguns the Blueprints came with, and how daunting the C++ interface could be.

The real nail in the coffin is less the pricing changes in and of themself, but that they can make it retroactively applicable. This means that this pricing is also subject to change, so devs have no good insight into the future pricing models. IF you';re a solo dev or a small team, ;you simply can't afford that uncertainty.

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

#90

Post by gmerc »

Bad take.

If the author understood games, he would know that the ecosystem just does not have the capacity to sustain tech like margins.

Of course that’s ultimately what Bay Area Companies, especially EA and Unity and their (ex/current CEO) dream off and want to sell their investors but they slept through the part where the tech giants took those margins from the people that initially made them big.

Having run multiple P&L for major studios - it’s just not feasible; it’s not a high margin industry like ads, even in mobile and there are many rentseekeers already leeching from developers on mobile: - Apple - Facebook/Tiktok. CPI is massive and entirely unavoidable in mobile precisely because Facebook and Unity have drive commodisation of Games over the last decade. There’s more supply than demand and Facebook sits right in the middle matching it (and increasingly tiktok), pitting Chinese fake game video ads against serious developers.

Most independent studios in the world are barely profitable, a stunning number of them are reliant on tax credits.

Mobile Gaming is insanely competitive, Apple’s landgrab has destroyed competitiveness of smaller ad solutions who can’t compete with Facebook’s AI powered mitigations. The lucrative China market (China is a mobile gaming exporter and devs are large spenders on ads) has been wingclipped and seen powerful competitors like Tiktok rise.

Unity is out of their mind with this move and out of their class on expectations.

They went with VCs and sold promises anyone with understanding of games knew you cannot cash. It’s a bit driven game and almost every highly profitable hit game (the top 10 that account for the majority of revenue at any time) is using their own engine.

Fun fact: Even in the best times, BioWare’s profitability was highly tied to tax credits. Alberta ramping them down forced during an investment / console cycle for ed the sale to VG Holdings (CEO:John Riccitello) who promptly switched to EA and influenced them to buy his own investment, VG holdings at a 4x ROI.

He then instituted various investor focused profitability drives such as the infamous swipe your credit card to reload your gun in battlefield pitch, the Mobile F2P defoliation of Dungeon Keeper and Ultima forever and eventually got fired and went to Unity where he made various deals, including with Facebook that died the moment he got greedy and asked them for ads RevShare which instantly ended the relationship.

Tons of other ad tech investments and the occasional molestation charges from fellow C-Level executives followed and neither seem to have not paid off (except for Riccitello Pizza in NY who may be puzzled why they suddenly were the first hits globally on the name after reputation management consultants got dispatched) or they wouldn’t have to start squeezing devs.

No, Mr. Riccitello is a very typical CEO on a mission to get very rich as fast as possible by optimizing on short term investor pitches and delusions of joining the ranks of the people he hangs out with in Silicon Valley.

Nothing new, the industry is full of these types at the top and they mingle with the people they want to become (See Bobby Kotik dating Sheryl Sandberg which fits so well with her focus on women given the corporate culture he created at Blizzard ).

The real crux though is the sudden altering of the deal with little communication, care and expectation settings. This happens because they knew it would not be a good sell, especially internally.

Their own people would have rebelled so they black-opsed it without internal consultation of the people actually understanding developers to avoid internal riots and as a result missed every single edge case.

What will happen now is mass abandonment of Unity for new projects. Interestingly, AI is reducing the costs of engine changes rather dramatically right now.

The timing suggests this was a “shareholders won’t like next quarter and must be placated” emergency ripcord, especially coupled with the stock sales by insiders that have been going into overdrive recently.

Low interest party is over - and VCs may find it hard to find a bag holder for Unity. Games is a fickle business.

Now Unity is under increased pressure to provide their VCs with a bag-holder exit (sell a growth story to institutional investors to con them into taking the sinking stock off the hands of the VCs. Where have we seen the same pattern recently ... ah, yes, reddit. Same symptoms, same disease.

https://venturebeat.com/games/the-ups-and-downs-at-ea-under-...

https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/former-unity-exec-files...

https://www.ign.com/articles/former-ea-ceo-devs-who-dont-foc...

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