Discussion Unity introducing new fee attached to game installs

[JazzPotatoes]

I imagine what's happened is that some chucklefuck on the board is playing absolutely hard ball that run time fees need to be a thing, but the absolute car crash that is the last week has allowed saner heads within the company to push a revenue share option as the obvious and sane choice, while still keeping the runtime option there to please the fucko board members.

Given that it's all self reported now, and Unity's purported magic reporting tool appears to have fucked off into the ether, I can't imagine in what scenario a dev would be more comfortable trying to work out what they owe in installation fees, rather than just going with the 2.5% once they reach the required revenue amount of 1 million dollars.

Unity needs to start turning a profit, and I get that there current rate that they've been losing money is not sustainable. However, a better avenue to profitability might have been simply not throwing money away buying companies like Weta Digital, focusing on improving the core product (consensus is that the last few years of support have been terrible), and if nothing else maybe making an inhouse game to act as a showcase of the engines best features.

The last few weeks didn't need to happen, and saner company management from the higher ups would have avoided this whole debacle.

 

[Pokemaniac]

so it seems like everything's fine? all the games currently released or in development on the current versions of unity see no change, and for the new versions you pick between (self-reported) 2.5% revenue share or install fee, whichever is lowest?

The worst case monetary and preservation scenarios appear to have been avoided, but I don't think the reputational damage will be so easily repaired.

 

[Candescence]

If they had gone with this the first time around people this wouldn't have been such a massive shitshow. People would've grumbled but 2.25% revenue share is still less than half of what Unreal is asking for.

But the fact that Unity came out of the gate with the original idea that was completely insane with no prior consultation with devs and the community, the fact that it took this long for them to back off and revise their plans and they're still doing with the "Runtime Fee" idea is completely fucked and they've lost basically all trust. I expect it'll take longer for mobile and XR/VR devs to move, but I imagine Unity's market share is gonna contract significantly over the next few years.

Seriously, this is a spectacular fuck-up.

Edit: Also, I should note that the fact that they're still keeping the runtime fee is a massive red flag and an indication that the C-Suite has no intention of compromising on that particular detail. Blindside on ResetEra does a better job of wording that than I do:

Any plan that includes an install fee in any form is far from risk free, and kind of serves to prove my point:

This announcement is a Trojan Horse.

The 2.5% rev share limit and self-reporting are there to distract from the fact that per-install fees still exist, still have a shifting definition, still do not have an actual, accurate way of being tracked, require legally and/or ethically terrible implementations to even do estimates, and can still fuck you over the next time they change the policy -- which they almost certainly will once people stop paying attention.

Again: keeping install fees means that it is a question of when, not if, they will be implemented. And given that they are a potentially unlimited liability, it would be foolish to assume that Unity will simply let that time bomb sit there forever.

If nothing else, this proves that C-Suite wants that fee at any cost, and are unwilling to do any policy that doesn't include it. Ergo, until the C-Suite gets purged, you cannot trust Unity leadership, or Unity itself as a business partner.

(Side note: I'm a bit disappointed in Rami's response to this. Leaving the install fee as a Chekov's Gun is not "super acceptable," it's a red flag telling you to migrate engines before the gun goes off.)

...

The FAQ makes it crystal clear: this isn't a reversal, it's a stalling tactic. It's an attempt to get the Internet to stop paying attention, and to lull developers into a false sense of hope -- when really the fact that they're still going with install fees tells you everything you need to know.

If they really wanted to do just a rev share, they would have. That they haven't speaks volumes.

Good thing I have absolutely no intention of touching Unity ever again.

 

[Warlord]

Even with these changes, no one will touch unity in a few years when versions prior to 2024 become somewhat obsolete. Big companies will start creating their own engine, while smaller devs will move to other more convenient engines.
Unity truly shot themselves in the foot.

 

[manfromthedam]

These changes turn the actual new TOS into something non-cataclysmic. However, the leadership that made the horrible decisions last week is still there and thus I wouldn't feel comfortable staying with Unity for the long haul.

Expecting devs to finish their current Unity projects - under the old TOS, which Unity now admits are still applicable - and then either migrate to UE/Godot/Etc. for new projects or keep the old Unity versions alive as long as possible.

If they want to completely regain trust they're going to axe a few board members, but looking at who's in charge at Unity nowadays... Yikes. Those folks are vultures. Never take your company to the stonks. It'll get ruined. This is the rot at the root of Unity, and the company will remain to be eaten.

 

[Candescence]

Even with these changes, no one will touch unity in a few years when versions prior to 2024 become somewhat obsolete. Big companies will start creating their own engine, while smaller devs will move to other more convenient engines.
Unity truly shot themselves in the foot.

If I were a betting man, I'd actually say roughly half or more of the big companies will start moving towards adopting Unreal instead of rolling their own engines. Creating a AAA-ready game engine takes years, requires skilled and specialized programmers, etc. Why do that when a seriously mature and well-used engine is already out there? If a big publisher already has a certain studio working with its own high-quality engine, they might opt to just standardize that across all of their studios, like EA did with Frostbite.

Though, as the Frostbite thing demonstrates, the engine needs to either be general-purpose or quickly retooled to be able to be usable across a variety of game types, as demonstrated by the fact that Bioware basically had to recreate their whole toolchain and workflow from scratch when forced to use Frostbite, and all of the support for Frostbite was being occupied by projects deemed "high priority" by EA, nevermind people skilled at using Frostbite being pulled away to other projects because of that exact reason.

 

[correojon]

These changes turn the actual new TOS into something non-cataclysmic. However, the leadership that made the horrible decisions last week is still there and thus I wouldn't feel comfortable staying with Unity for the long haul.

Expecting devs to finish their current Unity projects - under the old TOS, which Unity now admits are still applicable - and then either migrate to UE/Godot/Etc. for new projects or keep the old Unity versions alive as long as possible.

If they want to completely regain trust they're going to axe a few board members, but looking at who's in charge at Unity nowadays... Yikes. Those folks are vultures. Never take your company to the stonks. It'll get ruined. This is the rot at the root of Unity, and the company will remain to be eaten.

I think this is the main problem going forward. For years people have been complaining about the path Unity was following, with many new functionalities that were abandoned shortly after release to pursue a new one instead of polishing them and making them fully functional. The engine has been gradually cluttered with stuff and this whole fiasco has exposed that management has no interest at all in addressing this: The priorities are being set by people who only speak in $. For them Unity is not a company built around a game engine, it's a service company for mobile games, that's what needs to grow and the rest is side-stuff you can sacrifice to help the primary goal.

This story has also shown how mismanaged Unity is, no one can understand why they have a headount that double that of Unreal for example, or why they have spent so much money in buying other companies. It's not just management has priorities other than the engine itself, it's that they may truly be an incompetent bunch. They may have got what they wanted, don't forget that THE RUN TIME FEE IS NOW PART OF THE TOS, but just look at the damage they've caused to the engine: In a few years I'm sure that we'll look at Godot or other engines and remember how this the moment they started to catch-up with Unity.

To me, it's pretty clear that the current CEO and board are going to run Unity down, either by greed, incompetence or a mixture of both.