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Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

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Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#31

Post by mholm »

TillE wrote: post #21
Pulcinella wrote: post #3

This really does seem like Unity is destroying their business for pennies. Mobile game display ads seem like a very, very low value business to be in and I would imagine rates are going down all the time. Unity may manage to wipe out AppLovin by burning down the rest of their business, but winning king-of-the-hill on top a pile of ashes does not seem to be a high value position. Edit: It's as if Unreal wants to be ki…

There's just no way this change is actually gonna happen. Many prominent indie developers have already announced they'll be switching away from Unity for future projects, and you have to think that larger studios are drawing the same conclusions. The ship is sinking. Unity will retract this. Switch to revenue share or whatever. They'll eat a huge loss of trust because of this idiocy, but they'll remain a relevant gam…

> but they'll remain a relevant game engine For a little while. The problem is that Unity is a public company, merged with a malware company, and (currently) headed by somebody with no understanding of their own customers. But nobody looking to make games right now is going to start using Unity. Many indie developers are going to transition off, and the major players who still use it are likely going to find that Unity is going to start squeezing them to keep any semblance of profitability. Maybe big games like Genshin/Cities Skylines/Pokemon Go stick with it, but Unity doesn't survive that transition.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#32

Post by Cpoll »

TillE wrote: post #21
Pulcinella wrote: post #3

This really does seem like Unity is destroying their business for pennies. Mobile game display ads seem like a very, very low value business to be in and I would imagine rates are going down all the time. Unity may manage to wipe out AppLovin by burning down the rest of their business, but winning king-of-the-hill on top a pile of ashes does not seem to be a high value position. Edit: It's as if Unreal wants to be ki…

There's just no way this change is actually gonna happen. Many prominent indie developers have already announced they'll be switching away from Unity for future projects, and you have to think that larger studios are drawing the same conclusions. The ship is sinking. Unity will retract this. Switch to revenue share or whatever. They'll eat a huge loss of trust because of this idiocy, but they'll remain a relevant gam…

> they'll remain a relevant game engine

I think "loss of trust" is understating it. This is an existential threat for lots of studios, and I can't imagine them placing future bets on the platform.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#35

Post by gabereiser »

Cpoll wrote: post #32
TillE wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's just no way this change is actually gonna happen. Many prominent indie developers have already announced they'll be switching away from Unity for future projects, and you have to think that larger studios are drawing the same conclusions. The ship is sinking. Unity will retract this. Switch to revenue share or whatever. They'll eat a huge loss of trust because of this idiocy, but they'll remain a relevant gam…

> they'll remain a relevant game engine I think "loss of trust" is understating it. This is an existential threat for lots of studios, and I can't imagine them placing future bets on the platform.

This is exactly what’s happening. Studios’ strategies are moving off of Unity. None of the ones I know are going to do any further development in the engine on any future projects. One studio is rewriting their game right now to run on Godot. It’s been the biggest exodus I’ve ever seen.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#36

Post by Renaud »

Wondering if Microsoft shouldn't have bought Unity, It could have made sense, because of its focus on developer, because of its interests in gaming and because it's a huge showcase for C# and .Net as many of the features of unity could have been folded into regular .Net or there could have been an opportunity to have a '.GameNet' version, maybe.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#37

Post by jsnell »

pjc50 wrote: post #28
Pulcinella wrote: post #3

This really does seem like Unity is destroying their business for pennies. Mobile game display ads seem like a very, very low value business to be in and I would imagine rates are going down all the time. Unity may manage to wipe out AppLovin by burning down the rest of their business, but winning king-of-the-hill on top a pile of ashes does not seem to be a high value position. Edit: It's as if Unreal wants to be ki…

Unity want a cut of Genshin Impact and see everyone else as a rounding error.

That explanation makes no sense, because their changes were achieving the exact opposite. Genshin has a high ARPU, $0.01 per install will capture basically none of that. (Yes, $0.01 because the Unity fees are regressive, the fewer installs you have the more you have to pay per install. Genshin Impact obviously will fall into the bucket with the lowest cost.)

If the goal were to get a cut of Genshin while treating everyone else as a rounding error, they'd have changed the contract to be a revenue share. Or they would not have made the install fees regressive.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#38

Post by doublerabbit »

_the_inflator wrote: post #17
doublerabbit wrote: post #4

What I'd like to see is that this fiasco encourages studios to produce their own engines rather than using the pre/existing selection. I'd happily wait another 5-7 years for a new game on a new engine then have a new game in two years that feels identical to others. And then open-source it and let the creativity roam free.

I disagree. It is a lot of effort to build and maintain an engine. To be more precise, there is no such thing as a pure engine, but a platform with tools. Hardly anyone can build these things alone or even with a small team. Most indie games and devs would not exist without Unity and it makes perfectly sense to use services from 3rd parties. We all do, we all rely on others. On the other hand, a steady and trustworth…

It's more the feeling of the mechanics, game-play. Certain aspects carry through regardless of the genre and how modified the engine has.

A game to me modeled in Unreal engine feels like all others created in Unreal.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#39

Post by gabereiser »

Robotbeat wrote: post #7

I feel like there ought to be a really good open source game engine competing with Unity and Unreal, but I’m unfamiliar with any.

There’s quite a few. The biggest one right now is Godot. There’s still MonoGame, Open3D, Unreal, and others. Unity has one thing these others don’t (outside of Unreal) and that’s a healthy asset store. Solo indie devs aren’t necessarily the best artists. We know the math, but lack the eye.

Re: Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay

#40

Post by doublerabbit »

JamesBarney wrote: post #8
armancdev wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. It's not an engine problem if a game look like others. Most of the time, it's not lack of creativity too. It's often, not taking risk and applying what is already working.

And using a game engine lets you take those risks because you can iterate and release faster. Studios will take more risk on a $3m game than a $6m game.

Rightly so, but than the $3m game feels like every other $3m game. Without the risk, you don't get the whole innovated design of a new game.
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