101–110 of 186 posts
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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?
Yet gaming is winning, it surpassed film and music combined over the last few years.
I've been thinking about this a lot the last few days because it doesn't make a ton of sense. They're charging the people who make the least money the highest fees (past a relatively low revenue threshold). Normally you'd do the opposite because the biggest customers have the most to lose and cost the most in maintenance resources.
And the other way to make money is to innovate and create products that create more value for your customers, but they're giving them away for free with the new model. That's tacitly admitting they suck (or suck at selling them).
The explanation I can think of is that they're hemorrhaging money and the C suite is going to lose their jobs if they don't have cash flow ASAP
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>Steam ... is a monopoly >Its competitor Epic
To be fair "monopoly" is so abused now it basically means "entity that controls the market". eg. "amazon is a monopoly" despite the fact that there are obviously other e-commerce sites, "uber is a monopoly" despite the fact that there's other ride-hailing apps, "google is a monopoly" despite the fact that there are other search engines.
Almost every big US publisher has their own platform (i.e. Origin, EGL, whatever the hell Ubi is doing nowadays) for distribution.
There is also GoG, but I feel like that is not a good option for Indies. Still, they get a huge shout out because of their retro collection and friendliness to that subgenre.
For indie developers, there's always Itch.io with the option to try Steam or somewhere else later. As it stands I still have more options from where to buy a given game than 10, even 20 years ago.
Not to say this current course is sustainable, of course...
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How much does it hurts them? What's the cut? I see this being repeated over and over, but I'm not really understanding, say an indie Dev makes 500k in revenue in one year, how much is it going to unity? If it is anything below 50k it seems to me like a sweet deal for all the things Unity offers to devs. There's no shortage of free and good game engines out there, but I guess Unity does offer a lot that those free opt…
That's the thing: it's not possible to answer this question, since the cut Unity gets is not tied to the revenue of the developer anymore. You pay per user install. In the absolute worst case of people trying to abuse this structure, it would be possible for the developer to owe more than their revenue!
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True, but it does hurt the indie darlings that 'get noticed,' who showcase the Unity engine as a platform for small developers to make their game. Examples of recent indie games like this: Among Us, Valheim, Phasmophobia, Rimworld, Hollow Knight,... Here's a whole list: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39750107-Games-Made-W... Other than the 'extremely' popular games, you'd be surprised who surpasses those numb…
How much does it hurts them? What's the cut? I see this being repeated over and over, but I'm not really understanding, say an indie Dev makes 500k in revenue in one year, how much is it going to unity? If it is anything below 50k it seems to me like a sweet deal for all the things Unity offers to devs. There's no shortage of free and good game engines out there, but I guess Unity does offer a lot that those free opt…
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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 ou…
You have completely misunderstood the discussions if you think the issue is indie devs wanting to use the engine for free. If it were just a percentage of revenue, few people would complain. Instead the pricing structure is explicitly made in a way that puts small developers at risk if their cheap small game happens to go viral.
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True, but it does hurt the indie darlings that 'get noticed,' who showcase the Unity engine as a platform for small developers to make their game. Examples of recent indie games like this: Among Us, Valheim, Phasmophobia, Rimworld, Hollow Knight,... Here's a whole list: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39750107-Games-Made-W... Other than the 'extremely' popular games, you'd be surprised who surpasses those numb…
How much does it hurts them? What's the cut? I see this being repeated over and over, but I'm not really understanding, say an indie Dev makes 500k in revenue in one year, how much is it going to unity? If it is anything below 50k it seems to me like a sweet deal for all the things Unity offers to devs. There's no shortage of free and good game engines out there, but I guess Unity does offer a lot that those free opt…
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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.
> unique hardware ID This is vastly more difficult than you think. For example, if you try to use the standard method, which is hard drive serial numbers, it's incredibly easy to spoof AND all prebuilt computers from Walmart share the same serials. Non-starter.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47603786/where-do-window...
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That's the thing: it's not possible to answer this question, since the cut Unity gets is not tied to the revenue of the developer anymore. You pay per user install. In the absolute worst case of people trying to abuse this structure, it would be possible for the developer to owe more than their revenue!
That only applies to F2P games essentially thought, right?
> 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. Yet gaming is winning, it surpassed film and music combined over the last few years. I've been thinking about this a lot the last few days because it doesn't make a ton of sense. They're charging the people who make t…
I guess it is still better than going even deeper into debt short term but the thing is that there is so many more ways they could have done that, yet they seems to have picked the one that ensure them in practice no future at all.