Oh hey, look.
The former CEO of EA made a greedy, short-sighted decision to fuck over his entire customer base.
I am shocked, friends.
SHOCKED.
Well… not that shocked.
I’m sure this will give a boost to Godot development.
Unity’s CEO was EA’s CEO too. He is the guy who shaped EA into the greedy company that it is today. I’m literally not surprised
Unity going the way of Reddit
Once [a company] can make more money by screwing its customers, that screw-job becomes a fait accompli.
Well, guess it’s time to learn Godot.
Man I was just getting into game development and learning Unity.
I guess it’s time to pivot into Unreal or Godot or something.
Anybody have recommendations?
Unreal has similar business model, so Godot.
For Unity Personal and Unity Plus users, the thresholds are $200,000 in revenue a year and 200,000 lifetime installs.
The fees also vary, with Unity Personal developers having to pay the most for every install above the threshold ($0.20)
So, if you get 200k lifetime installs but don’t get the 200k revenue a year, you don’t have to pay it?
Existing games built on Unity will also be hit with Runtime Fees if they meet the thresholds starting January 1.
OOOHOOOOO BOY, now, that’s going to hurt a fair amount of people!
Also, what about web play? I guess that’ll only count towards revenue, but not towards downloads?
If their licencing agreement permits retroactive changes like this, that is reason enough to gtfo
Our terms of service provide that Unity may add or change fees at any time. We are providing more than three months advance notice of the Unity Runtime Fee before it goes into effect. Consent is not required for additional fees to take effect, and the only version of our terms is the most current version; you simply cannot choose to comply with a prior version. Further, our terms are governed by California law, notwithstanding the country of the customer.
Yup lol.
What’s funny and sad is that about 3 years ago on r/godot, I had an argument with a Unity fanboy over this exact thing. He was demanding someone give him a reason that Godot should exist, when, in his humble opinion, Unity did everything and did it better.
My take was that you don’t actually own your Unity-made game. You might own the assets and trademark, but as long as you’re licensing the engine, you are subject to the whims of Unity.
Of course that was theoretical, until today.
So… If the Unity’s secret spyware and algorithm suddenly decides to count an update as a new installation, you suddenly get slapped with a huge bill. Especially if you release multiple small patches and your whole player base is counted multiple times.
According to the article only installs on new devices are counted.
Furthermore this only takes efrect after a certain threshold of revenue and installs.
The clarification on Xitter states deleting and reinstalling is 2 charges, the same as installing to 2 different devices. https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1701679721027633280?s=20
Ah yes, because it’s that difficult to spoof a new PC. You can run a tool similar to a kernel level anti cheat “ban bypass”, run the game, and cost the developer up to 20 cents. With a relatively simple script, this can be done many times per hour on a single PC, easily racking up cost for the developers.
This is a bad idea, no matter how you implement it. If it goes through, it will be abused.
This makes sense to me, it looks like it’s $0.20 for each install, only if
- you have passed a threshold of installs
- you yourself are charging for your game
Which, I know Lemmy has issues with proprietary software, but if you are charging for your software and it’s built off this, I don’t think $0.20 is too much to pay them. Unreal takes a percentage I believe, sounds like this is a “keep the lights on” charge.
Charging “per install” as opposed to “per sale” will be goddamn awful. At best it might lead to DRM where you’ll have a limited number of installs before you lose the game you bought.
Welp, guess it’s time to uninstall Unity
That’ll be $10.
You know, at some point Microsoft and Apple are going to enable developers to charge people to uninstall software, and that’ll be the driving force that finally forces the public to adopt Linux en masse.
Nothing is ever going to not happen as much as this.
Oh, I hope you’re right.
This is great news!! For Godot.
