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Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

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Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#111

Post by JCharante »

progx wrote: post #54
ThinkBeat wrote: post #47

This is written based on my quite poor understanding of the game business. I am sincerely wanting to learn more about how it works and how the new license structure impact developers. My questions below might be idiotic. (but not intentionally so) I have no idea how many apps reach above 200.000 installs total or $200.000 income per year. How common is it for apps to meet the minimum requirements when the fees kick i…

Look at the millions of free to play games in the App-Stores. Normally you have 98% of free playing users paying nothing, 2% pay. Imagine now you have 1 million installs. 2% (20.000) pay you 200.000 / year. 980.000 players pay nothing. Now Unity want 1.000.000 x 20 Cent = 200.000, you made ZERO with your game... crazy. That is an uncalculatable risk for a small company.

So maybe it’ll force companies to stop making freemium trash that only targets the 2% whales and actually make good games?

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#112

Post by doikor »

orly01 wrote: post #90
chii wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that with Godot at least you could work on it yourself if you wanted to. let me play the devil's advocate - unreal's source is available (despite it not being actual opensource licensed). This means if Epic ever abandons unreal, you could theoretically also just make the changes you need to support whatever your project required - as long as you didn't distribute those changes (except perhaps the run-time? N…

If unreal decides to abandon all older versions support and development, to just focus on something new that requires payment, I don't think you can keep fixing or updating the old unsupported code, even if you have the source

Yes you can.

You just can't redistribute the source to anyone else but using it internally for your own projects to build executable that you share (and sell as long as you pay the royalties to Epic) is fine.

The last UE3 game released in 2021. UE4 came out in 2014 and UE5 in 2020.

Unreal Engine license are per engine version and perpetual. This is something Sweeney has been pointing out for years. And again a few days ago when Unity started this shit storm. And as Sweeney points out the big studios/publishers usually negotiate even better terms.

https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/170161922085161792...

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#113

Post by alpaca128 »

popmatrix wrote: post #82

The author seems to misunderstand the new pricing model (as did many others; this is Unity's fault) [1] The $0.20 is not retroactive, nor do you need to hope your users see 10 and impressions to cover a cost to the game developer -- you need to earn $200,000 _and_ have 200,000 installs. A free game would not be charged, and if you don't believe you can muster 10 ad impressions per user (to cover the unity install cos…

Basing the fee on number of installs instead of number of buyers is a problem, it's an unpredictable cost that developers have no control over as it also counts repeated installing of the game. Their FAQ suggests that malicious "install bombing" is something they cannot prevent automatically but instead have to resolve via their support. In other words you depend on them having good support while they profit from bad support, all while their CEO is the kind of manager who wanted Battlefield players to pay for each weapon reload.

If Unity just counted number of buyers they wouldn't have to deal with malicious installs and users of their engine would have more predictable costs. But for some reason they don't want that, and that alone is suspicious.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#114

Post by worble »

chii wrote: post #41
TMM2K wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're contradicting your own points. If it is not a problem that Unreal can change their license for next versions because you can use the old one (which is now unsupported and not worked on) that is fine. For Godot, if we were to stop developing it (and I'd like to note that Godot is one of the most active projects on Github right now) you would still have the version you have now. What is the difference between Ep…

> Except that with Godot at least you could work on it yourself if you wanted to. let me play the devil's advocate - unreal's source is available (despite it not being actual opensource licensed). This means if Epic ever abandons unreal, you could theoretically also just make the changes you need to support whatever your project required - as long as you didn't distribute those changes (except perhaps the run-time? N…

>This means if Epic ever abandons unreal, you could theoretically also just make the changes you need to support whatever your project required - as long as you didn't distribute those changes

No it doesn't, you still don't own the code so you can't just modify it and use it to develop games.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#115

Post by brookst »

NotGMan wrote: post #4

>> While Unreal engine currently does not have terms like Unity’s, there’s nothing stopping them from doing something similar. In fact if Unity manages to get away with this it seems likely they will follow suit. Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change…

> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas

That’s a very unique take. I would call a company that lets others take startup a buildout risks and the uses the courts and regulators to swoop in with a low cost competitor a pirhana.

It’s a good strategy (for Epic), but it is extremely predatory. It’s no secret they have their eyes on the console market next; let HW makers popularize platforms using a business model of low margin HW and high margin SW, then get governments to mandate alternative stores so Epic can undercut the SW.

Low risk, low effort, high return. It’s a solid business strategy but if it’s not pirhanic, I don’t know what is.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#116

Post by troupo »

TMM2K wrote: post #93
flohofwoe wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to get a "license" (at least in the sense of paying anything), IIRC you just connect your EGS account to your Github account, accept an EULA (which technically is a "license" I guess) and then have read access to the Unreal Engine GH repositories. (currently there seem to be around half a million users with access)

What do you think clicking the EULA is?

"Clicking EULA" might not be enforceable in many countries.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#117

Post by ireallywantthat »

switch to godot(http://godotengine.org/), gamedevs. you reap what you sow. it's better to support open source projects like godot instead of unity whose control lies with the company whose actions probably might not lie with you/your companies' interest. There are hundreds of instances in the past where open source projects replaced corporate projects(ex: blender, git). so, better use godot imo.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#118

Post by reedf1 »

popmatrix wrote: post #82

The author seems to misunderstand the new pricing model (as did many others; this is Unity's fault) [1] The $0.20 is not retroactive, nor do you need to hope your users see 10 and impressions to cover a cost to the game developer -- you need to earn $200,000 _and_ have 200,000 installs. A free game would not be charged, and if you don't believe you can muster 10 ad impressions per user (to cover the unity install cos…

No, it is different - and it crosses line. There is DRM built into the Unity engine that informs Unity (the company) of an install, and companies pay via this Unity derived number. Not reported game sales, or even self reported game installs.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#120

Post by thenerdhead »

TMM2K wrote: post #80
thenerdhead wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of projects doing this today with dual-license models(Permissive/Commercial). I'm not a lawyer and have no idea if they hold up in court/can be enforced but it absolutely is a thing today. https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/5599/any-succ...

These are a little different. So these "dual licensed" products work like this: You get a GPL version of the code, which is free and nobody can charge you for, ever. If you want to use the software in a way that is not GPL compatible you can opt for the other, paid for, license. This works in some cases, but in the case of Godot (assuming we were to do something like this) is the MIT license, which already gives you…

Here's an example:

https://github.com/SixLabors/ImageSharp/blob/main/LICENSE#L2...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33301518

Again, nothing stops someone from forking and maintaining.

Are you saying this is not legally enforceable?

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