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Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

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Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#41

Post by bufferoverflow »

everyone wrote: post #12

The installs thing doesnt make any sense. But, I've been a professional Unity dev for 10+ years and I have started learning Godot today; the reason is because I am very concerned about how would Unity possibly implement these policies? They would need to put secret analytics calling back to Unity servers in every build + secret killswitch they can trigger if you dont pay up. That is the reason. Tbh I've been waiting…

Why not Unreal? Godot seems like a much simpler engine compared to Unity and Unreal.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#42

Post by eminence32 »

eminence32 wrote: post #17

From [1], it seems they intend on counting "loading a unity game in a browser" as an install: > Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? > A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming inc…

I sometimes use NVidia's GeForce Now streaming platform. I like it because it hooks into my Steam library. Sometimes when I launch a game, it goes through an installation process on Steam. It's almost instant (there's no actual download, so there's something special happening here), but it's definitely hooked into Steam's "install a game" mechanism. If I was a game developer, I'd be very worried about these game streaming platforms.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#43

Post by yetanotherasian »

ilaksh wrote: post #29

It sounds like the WebGL initialization thing is ridiculous. They better fix that. But aside from that, collecting a minimal fee seems fair enough to me. If paying 20 cents per sale of your successful game is ruining your life, maybe consider investing in some of the open source game engines.

Getting fee isn't wrong maybe, but getting a fee by install is. They should instead ask for a percent of revenue. So if 1 billion people install my flappy bird clone but I only make $300k I don't owe them $15 million dollars.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#44

Post by oefrha »

ilaksh wrote: post #29

It sounds like the WebGL initialization thing is ridiculous. They better fix that. But aside from that, collecting a minimal fee seems fair enough to me. If paying 20 cents per sale of your successful game is ruining your life, maybe consider investing in some of the open source game engines.

Per sale would still be very problematic because they consider sale as part of a deeply discounted bundle/subscription a sale, unless it’s a charity bundle.

A fixed fee like that also effectively kills popular $1 games.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#48

Post by MrLeap »

This'll create such insane scenarios I do not see a world where Unity doesn't walk this back.

Imagine Rimworld having to patch in ads or microtransactions because their large playerbase continues to buy new computers.

How do you put a game on sale for a dollar anymore? It's all but guaranteed that your players will cost you more over their lifetime.

We're going to see indie games go "limited edition" when their rev edges near targets.

https://vxtwitter.com/cultofthelamb/status/17017159716634258... more of this will happen.

Lamentable how 1 word is all it's taken to take to make their whole ecosystem too risky to consider.

I've been a unity developer for about a decade, in that time I have given Unity more money than I have any other software company. It's become imminently clear that I need to transition to another engine. Even if they go and change "per install" to "per sale", the canary that Unity would never add untenable risk to the businesses of every one of their customers is dead.

Re: Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume

#50

Post by tavavex »

If this decision stands then I genuinely don't see how any developers will be motivated to use Unity long-term. I know that it's almost customary for companies to start pushing the limits hard as soon as they feel like they got too big to fail, but since the biggest Unity moneymakers are professionals and large companies, they'll probably have higher standards.

The only reasons why someone would possibly consider using Unity now would be if:

- They're already supporting or developing a Unity game

- They have a lot of staff that's only experienced with Unity

- They simply must use one of Unity's features and no other replacements are available

How is this going to be good for them in anywhere but the extreme short-term?

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