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

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

#181

Post by Timon3 »

foota wrote: post #169
Timon3 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I perfectly understand what revenue is, thank you. I am not talking about a revenue based percentage system where you lose money on every sale. Please explain to me how a developer…

I don't want to get in to deep. But they said "lose money on each sale" not that the fee would be greater than your revenue. If you make $1 in revenue, pay 90 cents in various fees, and then 20% (20 cents) to unity, you've lost money on the sale, despite them taking only a percentage of the sales revenue.

And my point is: you make 1$ in revenue, and it's possible for you to owe more than 1$ to Unity. That is the problem with the per-install fee, and it's the reason it's not comparable with a cut of revenue.

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

#182

Post by wkat4242 »

BoorishBears wrote: post #163
anonymousab wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of years ago the CEO called game developers "big fucking idiots" effectively for not extracting the most possible revenue out of the industry. There was the classic "well I actually meant [more innocuous but still dirtbag thing]" walkbacks, but we all knew what he meant. It now makes a lot more sense when you view it from the perspective of Unity wanting to rip much more revenue out of devs and games using t…

He was saying not thinking about monetization during the creative process is idiotic in context of developers wanting to to do monetization . As in don't tack on monetization at the end of spending years building out your big creative dream. Which is bluntly true, you're going to be in a world for pain.

Yeah that was the walkback

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

#183

Post by BoorishBears »

wkat4242 wrote: post #182
BoorishBears wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was saying not thinking about monetization during the creative process is idiotic in context of developers wanting to to do monetization . As in don't tack on monetization at the end of spending years building out your big creative dream. Which is bluntly true, you're going to be in a world for pain.

Yeah that was the walkback

No. The exact words he replied to:

> "Implementing monetisation earlier in the process and conversation is certainly an angle that has seen pushback from some developers."

It really doesn't get any more cut and dry than that.

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

#184

Post by JuanPosadas »

hx8 wrote: post #85
epolanski wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest if games can't compete with doom scrolling they are either crap games or the social media doom algos are too effective. No part of me thinks "I'd rather scroll my social feed" rather than doing pretty much anything more fun.

If that's the case why are a significant number of people scrolling instead of playing?

I think there are people who like to do things, and people who like to do nothing.

Next, there is an effort threshold between these choices for some people. For me, IRL activities and mouse/keyboard means that I "do things".

At a moment I'm bound only to a touchscreen (phone, ipad, android tablet, etc.) with no access to better activities, I will likely read or watch YouTube videos. You can categorize those activities as doing something or doing nothing if you like, but the effort threshold for my regular keyboard/mouse activities is just too high to accomplish on a phone on-demand.

I think in the general case, there are varying degrees of laziness and varying degress of inaccessibility for better activities in the general population.

I hate tiktok, but I understand why you would watch pointless 30 second clips for an hour when the perceived alternative may be a pointless microtransaction farmville clone.

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

#185

Post by 0x457 »

devmor wrote: post #161
kemayo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To mostly agree with you, note that the etymology is that "indie" is a shortening of "independent". It does tend to carry connotations of small teams in video games, but that might just be because the margins in the industry make it super-hard for large studios to remain independent. Note that I think Valve would count as an indie under a pure independence metric, thus making things like Half Life an indie game. Whic…

Valve would not count as an indie because they are themselves a large publisher.

Valve is absolutely indie since they're self-publishing. Great example of "indie" not meaning "small". CDPR is another example.

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

#186

Post by 0x457 »

Jensson wrote: post #179
kemayo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that's still not them being affiliated with someone else. We'd probably call someone who self-publishes an indie, for instance, and that's what they're effectively doing...

To me indie means that there is no outside stakeholder that wants ROI, its all funded by the development team or customers. This would then also include every public stock company and every company where the owner no longer works on the games in addition to having outside publishers. This would disqualify almost every bigger teams. There are still some big indie teams, but very few. All the bad things that comes with…

Well, a publisher is essentially a very hands-on and loud investor. Private or public, many have 3rd party investors that expect ROI. The difference is how much say those 3rd parties have.

Having EA as a publisher, for example, comes with having to use their engine and tools and in some cases it makes no sense (see ME: Andromeda and Frost Bite). Having some equity firm X as an investor comes with "you gotta make $$$"

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