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

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

#131

Post by belltaco » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 6:15 PM UTC

m_0x wrote: post #76

belltaco wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. > w…

> suing Apple is what brought them shit all over them

It was and is strange to see Apple's stranglehold and forced 30% cut from developers being celebrated on HN.

Imagine an extra 18% of indie game developers revenue going to themselves instead of distribution, a good chunk of the 12% is payment processing.

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

#132

Post by dghlsakjg » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 6:15 PM UTC

ralferoo wrote: post #84

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 wor…

But this is a silly way of viewing tooling.

If I sell a million books laid out using Adobe tools, adobe shouldbt get a cut!

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

#133

Post by lainga » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

BudaDude wrote: post #59

jeremyjh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are really good reasons to choose Unity over Godot, but C# isn't one of them. You have to learn a whole new API, framework, workflow, etc. Learning GDScript is the least of the issues.

This isn't always true. C# outperform GDScript. Even GDScript 2. GDScript is great for quickly programming certains events. But if you want to create complicated systems that using require thousands or millions of data points, you will notice the speed difference.

Choose your ~~fighter~~ binding

https://github.com/godot-rust/gdext https://github.com/godotengine/godot-cpp

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

#134

Post by gambiting » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

Timon3 wrote: post #115

gambiting wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I don't think I have misunderstood at all. >> puts small developers at risk if their cheap small game happens to go viral. Please explain how exactly, because I'm really not grokking it. If your small free game goes viral = you pay nothing. If your small paid game goes viral = you pay a small fee per install, but since you are making money on these sales this is functionality identical to perfentage of revenue(ple…

> If your small paid game goes viral = you pay a small fee per install, but since you are making money on these sales this is functionality identical to perfentage of revenue(please convince me otherwise) and I don't see the problem. No, that's the issue! It's possible for you to owe more to Unity than you took in from the sale. It's not tied to your revenue. If a user re-installs your game too many times you will li…

>>It's possible for you to owe more to Unity than you took in from the sale. It's not tied to your revenue

I think you don't understand what revenue is. It's entirely possible for a revenue based percentage system where you lose money on every sale. In that sense this system is the same - under some circumstances you can lose money on a sale.

>> If a user re-installs your game too many times you will literally owe Unity more money than you earned.

I agree that Unity shouldn't be charging per install if the dev can prove all installations were done by the same user.

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

#135

Post by anonymousab » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 6:19 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #108

ZeWaka wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I have no idea why you think it's difficult at all. On windows Microsoft provides you directly with functionality to query the device ID, that's good enough but in reality if you pair it with some kind of online login system it's pretty much all you need. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47603786/where-do-window...

That is trivial to spoof for a malicious user, as are the Android ones.

> if you pair it with some kind of online login system

Unity does not have that and there is no way in hell that they will be able to force all players of all games made in unity to sign up for one.

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

#136

Post by Macha » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 6:20 PM UTC

ysavir wrote: post #116

ralferoo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wor…

Unity definitely deserves to get paid for the value they provide. But why should that value scale with install count? Doesn't it already charge for licenses to develop the game? There is a big disconnect between "We make tools for game developers" and "we should get revenue share of the game developer's income"

I'm sure one of these days the office furniture companies will be coming for recurring revenue shares, since after all, you can't retain the devs you need to make the game if they're sitting on the floor. Think of all the value those chairs provided. Shouldn't the furniture company get a cut of that? It's hard to predict revenue when you don't how long people will hold onto their chairs on a fixed purchase model too. (/s)

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

#137

Post by danjoredd » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

raincole wrote: post #18

madrox wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are indies still Unity's raison d'etre? They may have started there, and they're hardly a AAA engine, but I'm pretty sure they've moved upstream.

Unity has a very long history of obsoleting features before the replacement is ready. Now they're doing the trick to themselves: they obsoleted themselves as an engine for mobile casual games and indies, but not ready as an AAA engine. That's what I call consistency.

I remember Unity web plugin for web browsers was starting to pop off but they axed it a while ago making some games unplayable. Now they have a webassembly option so you can still make 3d games for the browser, but those old games are still unplayable.

Shame because those were some of my favorite online games when I was a teen

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

#138

Post by anonymousab » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

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.

> I don't understand why this is a worry

It's a massive new change and requirement coming into force in only a few months, with basically every single report coming out of Unity internal engineering being that they don't have any systems in place to figure this out and have no idea how they will actually make it work while also still being GDPR compliant.

"Just trust us bro" and "you can file a support ticket if we get the numbers wrong" are not acceptable and are each reasons enough to worry about the potential for (or rather, guaranteed) abuse of this system.

One must assume the worst about any implementation with a system like this, in the same way that once must assume the worst about any implementation of telemetry or of DRM. You'll be right far more often than wrong.

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

#139

Post by anonymousab » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 6:26 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #114

Hemospectrum wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're repurposing an existing telemetry system that already counts installs and cannot distinguish between a new install and a reinstall. They've been using it for at least five years. I only know this because they specifically pointed it out when announcing the new pricing plan.

>>and cannot distinguish between a new install and a reinstall And they've also specifically said they will not charge twice for a reinstall on the same device. So I guess we'll have to see.

They initially said the exact opposite. They changed their mind after being shouted at about all of the above concerns.

They're clearly flying by the seat of their pants with this. There is no reason to give them any rope, any benefit of the doubt. There is no reason to believe that they will be able to do this right.

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

#140

Post by danjoredd » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #34

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…

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

They were already paying for it. The subscription model should be enough. It scales well enough for small devs to make decent amounts of money, and for Unity to get paid.

You act as though indie studios are using this tool for free when that is hardly the case. Past a certain revenue amount, they are required to upgrade to a paid license which is totally fair. Game not taking off? No worries. It is just wasted effort. Game take off and you make lots of money? GREAT! You get to upgrade to a paid model of a tool you already use.

It was a WAY more fair model. If they are that hard up for money, they should have just announced a subscription price increase. Not retroactively price gouging for games that have already been released.