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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

#141

Post by johnnyanmac »

stuckinhell wrote: post #19
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.

Square enix spent millions on their in house engines (luminous engine). They have a good report on how and why it wasn't a great investment (10 year delays on projects). They've switched to unreal for everything now.

I mean, not everything. It was criticized all over but Forspoken was still a 2023 release for Luminous.

On top of that, FF16 is using some custom engine as well. People assume it's a fork of FF14's engine, but nothing official.

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

#142

Post by johnnyanmac »

pjc50 wrote: post #27
linuxftw wrote: post #15

I had a feeling some detail like this was missing from previous reports (most of which I did not read entirely). This is the right move. It represents an opportunity to dethrone google in the ad display market, at least for gaming.

There really shouldn't be a gaming ad market. There are no good ad-supported games, it's more corrosive to the gameplay than even gatcha.

We're well past "shouldn't be", unfortunately. Mobile tried premium games and it didn't work. They became free to play and there's only 3 real ways to monetize: ads, subscriptions (which include battle passes), and MTX.

Gabe Newell is always quoted for saying "piracy is a service issue". But it turns out it's a issue you can eliminate if you keep all your content on a server and the app is just a free, thin client. Mobile found its own way around piracy, and it found new markets even when "core gamers" left.

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

#143

Post by johnnyanmac »

hutzlibu wrote: post #53
linuxftw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of free to play games supported by ads that are fun to play. It's also a great funnel for converting a non-paying user into a paying user to disable the ads.

It is also a great way to hook up kids as early as possible to get the best tracking data and condition them to whatever it is, that you want to sell them. With paying for games, the cost is clear. With ads, it isn't.

The market already got hit hard last year over this issue. I think they are or already have worked around the "collecting minor's data" issue.

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

#144

Post by freeAgent »

xref wrote: post #115
Figs wrote: post #95

Am I misunderstanding something here? This seems like a racket scheme! (As in a "shame if some 'hacker' on 4chan were to 'install' your already shipped game a million times a second racking up our new fee... unless you do what we want" type of extortionary deal.) Has anyone called the FBI about this?

They claim to have developed “proprietary technology” to detect this, but of course the better it works the worse their income would be…

Yeah, I’m sure it works, but not /too/ well.

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

#145

Post by hakfoo »

alex_lav wrote: post #71
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…

> 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 You'd be incorrect. It's a huge business. Less ads in general more paid install services as a result of ads for games, but both are huge businesses tbh.

It's a huge business, but it feels like it's much more of a commodity business.

Changing out the ad network is probably a matter of a fairly simple swap out of highly componentized components. I'm sure devs bounce from network to network fairly quickly chasing better revenue or support experiences.

Changing out a game engine is much heavier plumbing.

From that perspective, Unity might be going for a tail-wags-the-dog approach: making their ad platform stickier by tying it to something sticky, but then you'd expect to see something more direct towards that goal like "we don't allow use of other ad platforms in Unity projects".

They also went for a lot of splash damage on non-mobile scenarios-- ad-supported games don't really exist on the desktop (yes, a modest exception for some casual titles, typically stuff like Facebook-based games)

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

#146

Post by dahdum »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #128
deciplex wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least with revenue share the amount you owe is bounded by the revenue you've realized from sales.

If we are being real, and not assuming abuse, at ~$5 or up, you are going to be better off at .20 install than 5% of revenue.

$0.20 is the minimum, you pay for every device they install on every time. Anytime they offload and reinstall, you pay again. Every additional device, upgrade, or replacement, you pay again. You’ll also pay then current rates, whatever Unity decides those are.

No abuse needed to lose money with this, I’ve probably installed the same games 20+ times over the years.

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

#147

Post by minimaxir »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #134
ceeam wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly I haven't seen a (semi)professional, serious, 3D game made in Godot yet.

Sonic Color's remaster. But it's not a good example when talking about stability. I feel half of it is on the engine and half on the fact that they were porting a Wii game to modern consoles (despite being gen 7, the Wii had ancient techniques for lighting and textures. Which is where many issues of the port came from).

The Sonic Colors Remaster had an infamous strobing issue on the Switch before it was fixed. Cassette Beasts, a great game on Godot (https://godotengine.org/article/godot-showcase-cassette-beas... ), had weird performance issues for a relatively simple graphics game.

Godot on consoles isn't as seamless as Unity, unfortunately.

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

#148

Post by tacotacotaco »

cratermoon wrote: post #2

Buried lede: AppLovin tried to buy Unity last year: https://www.wsj.com/articles/applovin-proposes-combination-w... LevelPlay is Unity's rebrand of IronSource's mobile game monetization platform. IronSource bought/merged with Unity about the same time, a move criticized by some: https://www.thegamer.com/unity-criticised-for-merging-with-k...

Unity may have damaged themself enough with this that AppLovin might get another chance to buy. Unity’s stock price has dropped 8% since this was announced.

Another fun fact, the Unity CEO and several board members sold some of their stocks a few weeks ago. [1]

[1] https://kotaku.com/unity-developer-fee-installs-john-ricciti...

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

#149

Post by thowfaraway »

dahdum wrote: post #146
WillPostForFood wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are being real, and not assuming abuse, at ~$5 or up, you are going to be better off at .20 install than 5% of revenue.

$0.20 is the minimum, you pay for every device they install on every time. Anytime they offload and reinstall, you pay again. Every additional device, upgrade, or replacement, you pay again. You’ll also pay then current rates, whatever Unity decides those are. No abuse needed to lose money with this, I’ve probably installed the same games 20+ times over the years.

That's not what Unity is saying - they are saying reinstalls do not count. From their faq:

Does a reinstall of an app on the same device count towards the Unity Runtime Fee?

No, we are not going to charge a fee for reinstalls.

https://unity.com/pricing-updates

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

#150

Post by thowfaraway »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #131
WillPostForFood wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many apps are successful enough to meet the revenue thresholds (over $1mil), but are sub $1 ARPU, and aren't ad revenue driven? I'm sure there are some, but that's going to be a small number, and there likely can be some carve out for them.

Those thresholds are just the point when you'll be net negative. There's still a large range above that ARPU where you're making less money than before or with a different engine. Cult of The Lamb has already announced they will delist their game, and the Slay The Spire dev team have announced they're halting development on their new game to port it to a new engine.

Those are exactly the types of games that would be much worse off under an Unreal style royalty.

Cult of the Lamb is $24.99 on Steam

Unreal royalty is 5%, so $1.25 per sale

Unity is $0.20

So royalty is ~6x more

If there was a reasonable way to count installs (I don't think it is technically possible), install fee is much better than royalty for most devs who are not F2P apps.

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