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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

#161

Post by jarsin »

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…

Even if you do reach 200k in revenue all you have to do is pay 2k a year and then you now pay nothing else until you reach $1m in revenue.

I personally think its dumb for Unity to even have the $200k install pricing. It's created a ton of bad examples and drama.

Should just be upgrade to pro at $200k revenue then only after $1m do they do install pricing.

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

#162

Post by zulban »

isaiahg wrote: post #123
nhinck wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't though, if any developer had the means to take it to court it is incredibly likely that Unity would lose. While TOS are rarely worth the toilet paper they could be printed on, I'm curious about whether arguments could be made about whether existing subscribers from 2019 could now sue for breach of contract and costs associated with (re)development.

Do you have the money to fight it because I sure don’t

That's what class actions are for.

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

#164

Post by pdpi »

objclxt wrote: post #29
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 like Unity's. Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. > BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work. Over t…

> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart

Tim Sweeney founded Epic and wrote the Unreal engine himself. John Riccitiello’s whole career is in management. Even if they’re both entirely motivated by profit, they have different perspectives on how to get there.

Also, Unity is a public company, while Epic is private. Even though Tencent owns a considerable share of the company, Sweeney still holds over 50% ownership. That gives them very different incentives.

Sometimes we forget that executives are people too and they have their own personalities. Tim Cook famously[0] told climate change denialists in a shareholder meeting that “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock”. Sure enough, shareholders are also not solely motivated by profit, and voted with Cook on that occasion. It’s useful to remember that cynicism isn’t the same thing as realism.

0. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook...

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

#166

Post by hcks »

koolala wrote: post #119

If you don't own your engine then you don't own your game. Games are unique like that - music and other art is interoperable - software isn't.

Companies also have to pay for Microsoft Excel. Does it mean they don’t own their businesses?

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

#167

Post by zulban »

unsigner wrote: post #45

Unity was a dream, or a lie, the lie that you can make games without a somewhat competent software team. Now TFA gives hope to another dream, or a lie, the dream that magical open source fairies can let you keep getting away without a competent software team. It won't. Find those programmers, build a team, build a company where this team has a place, adjust your business model (i.e. raise your prices) to where you ca…

Thousands of game studios have collectively made billions of dollars using Unity over the past decade. Strange comment, friend.

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

#168

Post by andrepd »

kaliqt wrote: post #65
objclxt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's. Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. > BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work. Over t…

Epic is mainly owned by its founder. They are not primarily corporate though they are influenced by it. They are 100% more trustworthy than Unity or other corporate game companies.

I find your innocence touching.

EDIT: To elaborate, this is an article about a company fucking users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase. Your response is yes but this other company would never fuck users over after an aggressive growth / dumping business model phase.

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

#169

Post by hcks »

Havoc wrote: post #158
jarsin wrote: post #144

Wall St. Analyst are coming out with positive notes and upgrades on this pricing change. $U upgraded to Buy from Neutral @ BofA; PT raised to $56

Doesn’t matter what your pricing is if you no longer have clients

Absolutely. Remember last summer when everyone fled Reddit because of the API price hike and they shutdown?

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

#170

Post by hcks »

alpaca128 wrote: post #125
phkahler wrote: post #60

Why not charge $1 for your game? Problem solved. If you're making a game with a fancy commercial engine I would hope what you're offering is worth a buck. Let's get some quality in this world.

With $1 paid to the developer the player only needs to (re)install the game 6 times on their computer to cost the developer more than they earned. This pricing is per install , not per player. Installations are an unrestricted functionality which can be abused. If you care about quality games: this pricing causes the opposite.

They literally stated it would not affect reinstalls.
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