Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.
I think the worst part of it all is the trust that is irrevocably broken now.
This is obviously a moronic scummy decision driven by greed, but it also goes directly against past decisions. As per this reddit post, Unity actually had a TOS in action that protected Developers against retroactive changes like this. Specifically, it stated that you could choose to continue using old versions of the engine and comply to the old TOS if an update to the TOS that you disagree with ever happened. This specific part of the TOS was deleted last year.If they actually try to enforce this new crap on already released games (that accepted an older version of the TOS) then it would seem blatantly illegal (I’m not a lawyer though).
Even if they revert everything by tomorrow, the whole fiasco still shows where Unity’s current interests are, and make the company a liability to deal with for any game developer.
Unity actually had a TOS in action that protected Developers
No it didn’t. It just had words that pretended tk protect developers. TOS are meaningless for anyone other than the service when they can change at will.
Yea, they are useless when being changed at will, but what if the TOS specifically said “You can disregard future TOS versions and still abide by this old one under certain circumstances” ?
You would still be complying with the Terms of Service, by not honoring the new Terms of Service.Obviously, this is still a terrible situation regardless, but I am thinking about if the old TOS won’t give already released games a way out of this BS, or even better, may keep a usable Unity version alive for the future. Long term obviously, as many people as possible should ditch unity entirely, but for right now, it looks like a lot of developers will have big trouble starting in just 3 months.
This specific part of the TOS was deleted last year.
Yeah that’s fine, what could possibly go wrong?
the trust that is irrevocably broken now
Irrevocably for the next week or so, maybe. People not only put up with but eat up heaps and heaps of BS and never change, so the BS never changes. Oh, Unity’s corporate shite. “Shut up, it’s fine!” Oh, Unity’s being evil. “Shut up, it’s fine!” Oh, Unity hired the fucking EA guy. “Shut up, it’s fine!” Unity removed protections for devs. “Shut up, it’s fine!” Unity wants to charge the fuck out of everycritter per-install. “Oh woe!” … but any day now it’ll be back to “Shut up, it’s fine! They just want money, that’s what companies are for! It’s just capitalism broooo gotta make money, they can’t just give stuff away!” like that justifies literally anything.
Blah blah blah. I guess I’ll never understand how people can think for-profit companies that repeatedly abuse them are their friends. Maybe that’s just me being a clueless lefty free software hippie or whatever, unaware of the benefits of being exploited and shat on then going and white-knighting for the damn companies against real people anyway.
wanders off yappyranting into the void
Unity saw how Reddit killed off free users by raising prices to absurd rates, and how Reddit was largely unaffected by it as a whole. Not going to be surprised to see other types of platforms also follow suit.
Reddit largely unaffected
So they might say. However the post 3 up from this is an article about how their posts and comments have dropped 50 to 90% across major subreddits.
That’s what happens if you piss off the 10 percent of your users that provides 90% of the meaningful engagement.
Fuck Reddit
This is the way.
I’ve read that this started with easy loan money drying up after the First Republic collapse.
Easy money ending too quickly caused the First Republic collapse. Not the other way around. The Fed did a half a decade of rate hikes in a year.
Feb '22 rates were 0.08% by Feb '23 they were 4.57%. A 5700% increase in 12 months. First Republic collapsed on May '23.
An aggressive but responsible rate increase of 0.25% per quarter would have taken only 4 years to implement but would likely have led to zero bank failures.
The inevitable outcome of propietary software.
It’s crazy how these companies could manage to lose their goodwill overnight one by one these 2~3 years. It’s almost like they have some secret any% fiasco RTA competition or something.
Wizards Of The Coast: Ha, it will never affect us if we change our licensing and hurt the little guy. End consumers don’t care and no one reads these things anyway. “We have an announcement about changes to our EULA!”
Internet and DND community revolt, Pathfinder 2 sees a massive boost, and content providers are scared now.
Unity: Surely nothing similar could happen to us if we change our licensing? “We have an announcement about changes to our EULA…”
I’m not a huge conspiracy theorist, but considering the c-level execs pulled their investments before all these announcements, it’s not out of the question that they could tip people off to short the company as well.
Hell the realist in me sees the fines these guys get and they see it as a cost of doing business.
Installed Godot yesterday and it’s starting to grow on me, I like it. Looking forward to a huge movement of studios over to Godot, which will hopefully speed up the development of Godot through further support. Is there any reliable source of data about which game engines are popular at the moment? I want to see that sweet sweet decline in Unity user base over to Godot.
A friend works for a large-ish company that makes a product on Unity (not a game tho) and he just told me they were moving to Godot ASAP
Definitely waiting for Godot (heh) to step up to the plate, it’s missing some stuff at the moment but give it a year and I’m sure it’ll get there. We’re stuck with Unity for now but things like this mean plans are in place to migrate off it should it become necessary (by and large aren’t hit by this yet because we charge a bunch for the app so 20p isn’t a big deal… although we don’t and likely can’t track installs so no idea how that works…).
Unity guesses how many installs there are an invoices based on their internal guess.
That was a wonderful reference.
Unreal Engine almost has a monopoly at this point. It‘s also very friendly to use for small indie devs, not charging you anything for the first million dollars you make. Their license fees also seem rather fair as of now. But it doesn‘t help competition is flat lining left and right. Epic Games could feel their engine is worth a little more when Unity is gone too so I‘m happy to see many hobby devs give Godot a try first. I hope a company like Valve with their sheer infinite resources will see the shrinking market of Unreal alternatives and give their engine development a serious push. We really need more diversity when it comes to Engines.
Yeah, and Unreal is just one group of psychopathic executives away from pulling similar shit.
Source 2 is so good. Would love to see more games in it.
Did valve ever release it?
Crytek is doing some major work to CryEngine for Hunt Showdown.
O3DE also exists
Half Life Alyx, Counter Strike 2, and I think Dota are in Source 2
I meant publicly (so other devs could use it). Sounds like no :)
Good reason to just use godot
I think the only reason not to use Godot now is console support.
Godot mentions on the website that they partner with publishers for console support, so it’s theoretically possible. It’s not like indie devs working with Unity are getting their hands on Dev kits anyway.
Has anyone used Stride3d enough to recommend it?
No
I’m so happy I never wasted the time to learn this platform. I could’ve but chose not to (mostly too busy). Again, another company that I have no problem watching them fail, along with the Twitters/Teslas and reddits of the world.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That goodwill has now been largely thrown out the window due to Unity’s Tuesday announcement of a new fee structure that will start charging developers on a “per-install” basis after certain minimum thresholds are met.
The newly introduced Unity Runtime Fee—which will go into effect on January 1, 2024—will impose different per-install costs based on the company’s different subscription tiers.
Outside of those countries, an “emerging markets rate” ranging from $0.005 (for Enterprise subscriptions) to $0.02 (for Unity Personal users) will apply after the minimum thresholds are met.
This is a major change from Unity’s previous structure, which allowed developers making less than $100,000 per month to avoid fees altogether on the Personal tier.
Larger developers making $200,000 or more per month, meanwhile, paid only per-seat subscription fees for access to the latest, full-featured version of the Unity Editor under the Pro or Enterprise tiers.
“Gloomwood will definitely be my last Unity game, likely even if they roll back the changes,” developer Dillon Rogers wrote on social media.
The original article contains 506 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Thanks Twitter and Reddit api increases! You started a trend in fucking over your user base and developers!
Unity casually destroying the trust between them and their devs
The world is dying and my only regret is that it won’t be put out of its misery.
Ffs, add twenty cents to the price, fuck it add 50 cents so valve gets it’s cut and you do too. If it’s a good game from an indie developer I’ll buy it.
They aren’t demanding a cost per purchase, they are demanding a cost per install. The abuses this could lead to are widespread and could easily lead to many bankruptcies.
Per install. You got 2 computers and steamdeck? Make that $1.50 extra.
Since youre a fan, how about steam and unity work to make it “fair” and just have the download fee on the store page. That way, you can pay for the game, then pay Unity each time you actually play the thing you own!
What a great deal for everyone, especially you!
