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“This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

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Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#51

Post by [deleted] »

keikobadthebad wrote: post #12
Sakos wrote: post #7

I think it's absurd that Unity can push a new pricing scheme on existing customers regardless of circumstance and essentially little to no warning. Games are in development for years and they're basically telling people 3 months beforehand. How is this okay? This is something I'd expect when switching to a newer version of a service/product. Not a randomly changing contract for what I've already been using at no faul…

> no fault of my own You locked yourself into proprietary-licensed solution and invited this upon yourself.

[deleted]

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#52

Post by manojlds »

loupol wrote: post #48

Choosing installs to collect revenue on is stupid because it isn't tightly correlated to revenue for a game: Demos, bundles, free week-end tryouts on Steam, free-to-play games and other specific cases all lead to high install counts without necessarily generating the matching sales. It's especially stupid because Unity has good market share on mobile, which is a juicy market but with a fixed price per install, free-t…

Third outcome - Microsoft acquires them ( given the impact to Gamepass and C#)

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#54

Post by wkat4242 »

I use unity only for free content and I'm glad they still except this from the policy (using the revenue threshold, obviously I don't have any revenue whatsoever). Obviously I can't pay for installs because I don't make any money from it.

I don't think asking professional developers to pay fees is bad in principle. After all they get a lot of value from it. And they use it to make money.

One thing I do find really bad is that they retroactively impose a monthly model on content developed with a once-off business model in mind. I don't think that's fair. If you're going to do this, do it only going forward so developers can incorporate the cost in their business model.

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#55

Post by adamors »

fefe23 wrote: post #28

I don't get it. If someone gives you something that is vital for your product for free, and the license does not guarantee your free usage in perpetuity, and you can't take the source code and maintain things yourself if the vendor changes their mind, ... surely that's on you then? Did you think they didn't need to buy food and pay rent? To me as a complete outsider this move reeks of desperation on their part, not m…

Always this comment on these threads. Unity existed for 18 years in a particular capacity now it's being changed. It is not unreasonable to not be prepared for a change like this or to be upset by it.

> Did you think they didn't need to buy food and pay rent?

Poor multi-billion dollar company Unity Technologies has managed to corner the entire segment of the market in 18 years and now they have to pay for food and rent.

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#56

Post by bluescrn »

birracerveza wrote: post #8

On 4chan it immediately sparked a crowdsourced effort to make scripts that repeatedly install/uninstall games in creative ways (VMs, MAC spoofing) with the specific intention to hurt developers. This is definitely one of the dumbest choices I've seen a company do. Props to Unity for speeding up their own death.

You don't need to actually install/reinstall games if you can figure out how the Unity runtime is notifying its servers about this install.

You could theoretically write an 'install bombing' tool that sends fake install notifications straight to their server (or modify the game executable to do it repeatedly). You can't trust the client, especially when dealing with PC games.

Hopefully Unity will anticipate this potential abuse, and filter out repeated 'installs' from the same IP address. But they don't seem to have anticipated free demos, pirated copies, Game Pass, or charity bundles before announcing this...

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#57

Post by pjc50 »

fefe23 wrote: post #28

I don't get it. If someone gives you something that is vital for your product for free, and the license does not guarantee your free usage in perpetuity, and you can't take the source code and maintain things yourself if the vendor changes their mind, ... surely that's on you then? Did you think they didn't need to buy food and pay rent? To me as a complete outsider this move reeks of desperation on their part, not m…

Unity was not free for all before this, only to a small section of the market. Plenty of the people complaining were already paying.

We cannot have an advanced society where everyone lives and works in tiny self-reliant bubbles that are hugely duplicative of effort because they cannot trust others not to rip them off.

(Think about it, HN: do you really want a world in which nobody ever dares buy any SaaS or ongoing-license product, making those unsaleable and unstartupable?)

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#58

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

manojlds wrote: post #49

Given the impact to Gamepass (seeing tweets of many devs talking about it) and C#, what are the chances that Microsoft acquires Unity?

Are you implying this move is intended to force Microsoft's hand? Because... that would be the most reasonable explanation I can think of!

Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees

#59

Post by fefe23 »

adamors wrote: post #55
fefe23 wrote: post #28

I don't get it. If someone gives you something that is vital for your product for free, and the license does not guarantee your free usage in perpetuity, and you can't take the source code and maintain things yourself if the vendor changes their mind, ... surely that's on you then? Did you think they didn't need to buy food and pay rent? To me as a complete outsider this move reeks of desperation on their part, not m…

Always this comment on these threads. Unity existed for 18 years in a particular capacity now it's being changed. It is not unreasonable to not be prepared for a change like this or to be upset by it. > Did you think they didn't need to buy food and pay rent? Poor multi-billion dollar company Unity Technologies has managed to corner the entire segment of the market in 18 years and now they have to pay for food and re…

Doesn't matter how big the company is. At some point the investors will want their pound of flesh.
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