Glad my buy-orders went through Friday when it broke into the $31/share territory. This'll make for a tidy flip.
Insightful comment
Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing
#32I think the damage is already done. Going with a game engine is a long term commitment - investment in learning and assets etc.
Given clean slate would you really pick these guys for your new game? Knowing they’re keen to pull a fast one on you for profit and may well have a 2nd go at it.
Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing
#33> Are games distributed through subscription services, streaming services, or as WebGL applications, required to pay the Runtime Fee?
> Yes.
I guess that ends Pro or Enterprise users publishing web games or interactive content. It's also going to hurt GamePass publishers.
Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing
#34So they rolled back the most abusive aspects of the new fees but are still going forward with some fees... Seems like they win on the end. Looks to me like the good old strategy of we'll start with a very high proposal then come back with a more watered down version thst people will accept as being more reasonnable than the initial terms. But they still get to charge more and seem reasonnable doing so.
Downvotes notwithstanding, the reality is that Unity is not profitable . They desperately need a revenue stream. And sure, they should have gone with plain old revenue sharing from the get go ("we get X% of your sales, so if you sell nothing, we get nothing, and if you move 2 million units, we get an amount you can quite easily part with"), instead they came up with a batshit insane plan, and their CEO should have be…
Unity having financial trouble is like a shovel-factory going bankrupt during a gold rush. It means they screwed up /pretty/ bad on the business side... You likely don't need 7000 people to build a top-notch game engine, and likely invested way too much in side-bets which haven't panned out.
Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing
#35So they rolled back the most abusive aspects of the new fees but are still going forward with some fees... Seems like they win on the end. Looks to me like the good old strategy of we'll start with a very high proposal then come back with a more watered down version thst people will accept as being more reasonnable than the initial terms. But they still get to charge more and seem reasonnable doing so.
Our Unity rep has been applying a ton of pressure to purchase more licenses and I've heard similar stories from other companies. I think Unity has some bad financials right now and are pressing every part of the business to generate more revenue. I don't think this was some grand scheme - I think they're panicking about money and acting without thinking through the long term consequences of their actions.
Unity recently forced us to upgrade to their Industrial tier. We had to cut back on the number of licenses we use because our costs went up at least 10x.
Fortunately the rest of their pricing changes don't affect us, but it's still a real pain in the ass
Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing
#36I think the damage is already done. Going with a game engine is a long term commitment - investment in learning and assets etc. Given clean slate would you really pick these guys for your new game? Knowing they’re keen to pull a fast one on you for profit and may well have a 2nd go at it.
they have definitely given everyone the impression they're now a scummy advertising company that happen to own a game development product.
Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our Unity rep has been applying a ton of pressure to purchase more licenses and I've heard similar stories from other companies. I think Unity has some bad financials right now and are pressing every part of the business to generate more revenue. I don't think this was some grand scheme - I think they're panicking about money and acting without thinking through the long term consequences of their actions.
Unity recently forced us to upgrade to their Industrial tier. We had to cut back on the number of licenses we use because our costs went up at least 10x. Fortunately the rest of their pricing changes don't affect us, but it's still a real pain in the ass
> Fortunately the rest of their pricing changes don't affect us
For now. Reminds me of "first they came" [0]
Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing
#38That's good - it means they listened to their customers and the community. Now we are waiting for Hashicorp.
Listened, or got beat into submission?
Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing
#39I'm glad to see Unity finally choosing to play to its strengths here from an economic standpoint by offering rev share. It's an insurance business model, which a game engine is uniquely able to offer due to its horizontal reach.
There's big financial risk inherent in game development for which studios naturally would "pay" some sum to hedge against, in the format of trading away some upside in the success case for a lower cost in the failure case. In fact, risk aversion, which at least in aggregate often models much real world behavior, dictates that studios would be willing to pay generously, entering into a deal that yields negative EV in exchange for flattening the risk curve. On the other hand, underwriting the risk on Unity's part is basically risk-free because of its horizontal reach across studios. Because of the asymmetrical risk, there's considerable economic surplus to be captured in a way that leaves both parties better off.
Of course all of this only works out if Unity only sufficiently benefits from the big successes. To that end, while generous, the choice to let developers pay the lower of rev share vs. per-install fee seems perplexing to me. When customers can pick after they already know whether their game is successful, Unity fails to set up an effective insurance business and ultimately will lose out on the surplus. The winners will no longer automatically subsidize the losers, Unity may have to raise the costs of both deals to cover its operations, and this all just becomes a more convoluted price increase.
Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing
#40This and the apology post [1] are probably industry's (any industry's) first in how concise, to the point and with no bullshit they are. Goes to show how deeply Unity screwed up that they couldn't even corporate speak their way out of this. [1] https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee
I feel that it's lacking in accountability, like what the hell happened that made them go through with these plans despite them being obviously poorly thought out? Who was responsible for this scheme and how do they ensure it will not happen again.
Games take such a long time to develop and you have to be able to trust that your engine won't change the terms of service when you are like 3 year into development. They have shown that they either don't care about or understand that, neither of which is great.
Like what is to say they won't pull another one of these in like 3 years.