• The Super Mario All-Stars Celebration Event has begun! We're commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Super Mario All-Stars and the upcoming release of Super Mario Bros. Wonder with Famiboards' biggest event yet. From July 14 to September 14, aim to collect 60 badges or land a place on the High Score Tables - lucky participants will have a chance to win one of a few prizes!
  • Hey Famiboards, Episode 4 of the Famiboards Discussion Club is now live! WestEgg, Irene, and VolcanicDynamo discuss Princess Peach: Showtime, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, F-Zero 99, and the rest of the September Nintendo Direct! Check it out here!

Discussion Unity introducing new fee attached to game installs

Reader mode
paranoodle said:
I still think adding an x% royalty fee on future sales (and let's say, specifically future sales of games not released before 1/1/24, to make it as "fair" as possible) would've been met really negatively, because 3 months is very short notice in game development and the whole thing would've still felt like extortion.

But it... wouldn't have been met quite as badly as what's happening now, that's for sure.
Click to expand...
People will always be upset when prices go up, as they should be. There's a difference in people being upset because prices went up, and people saying "this is so bad it would be cheaper to port my game to another engine".
 
Tentacle-tropes said:
Click to expand...

Glad to see I wasn't the only one who was instantly reminded of that scene from The Dark Knight :LOL:

Especially now with the whole update about "Microsoft will have to pay fees for GamePass releases"

paranoodle said:
I still think adding an x% royalty fee on future sales (and let's say, specifically future sales of games not released before 1/1/24, to make it as "fair" as possible) would've been met really negatively, because 3 months is very short notice in game development and the whole thing would've still felt like extortion.

But it... wouldn't have been met quite as badly as what's happening now, that's for sure.
Click to expand...
Also, I don't think it's just about the price hike or rather, it's not the main issue. It's about Unity going full "I've altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further" on their customer base.
 
Unity is going to get burned to the ground by big pubs. There’s no way any of their crap pricing proposals will hold up in court.
 
0
paranoodle said:
I still think adding an x% royalty fee on future sales (and let's say, specifically future sales of games not released before 1/1/24, to make it as "fair" as possible) would've been met really negatively, because 3 months is very short notice in game development and the whole thing would've still felt like extortion.

But it... wouldn't have been met quite as badly as what's happening now, that's for sure.
Click to expand...
The correct move (imo) is to charge x% royalties for games released on a version of the engine that has been published after 1/1/24, and maybe if they want to be greedy, up the subscription fee for the older versions of the engine.
 
0
GtEtL7X.png


yeah they are fucked
 
You know, I have had the thought recently that game engines were becoming a bit too centralized, but this is not the greatest way to shake up that situation.
 
Remarkably stupid decision and I can't imagine there isn't either a 180 in policy happening after this shit show or outright lawsuits from the bigger publishers this was also probably sprung on with little warning.
 
0
I've read in the Unity Forums that the WebGL policy change is a result of a dev threatening to sue for damages. If that's true, it shows how little thought went behind this pricing model.

The biggest question around this fuckery still remains unanswered: How are they going to count (this should be the term to use, not "calculate") the number of installs? Right now their answer is "we'll use our ad model as a starting point to figure something out in 3 months". How is any install number they produce going to support any kind of scrutiny when brought to court? There are 2 possible situations here:
  1. Big developers or storefronts (as they want to charge those too) straight refuse to pay or bring the issue to court. Unity may threaten with court first, though I doubt it as they won't be able to support their claim.
  2. Small developer gets threatened with court by Unity if they don't pay, so they pay up to avoid a costly trial for which they may not have the means.
It's clear that Unity is not going to get anything from the big fish and even lose big money in trials. And I don't think they're so delusional as to think that they will pay without trying to put up a fight. So then, the only strand of benefit will come from squeezing the small devs, which is not a sustainable path as devs will go under and have no more money to pay, or end up moving to other engines. Plus, if they pursue this path the influx of new Unity users will surely disappear. It really looks like a way to try to get as much money as possible as quickly as possible while crashing the ship.
 
Last edited:
0
Impossible to emphasize enough that Unity is already dead as a game engine/license, like it literally does not matter what they do from here, they're done, cooked. They should of course still backtrack, because it's the right thing to do, and it will save themselves from the threat of a massive counter-suit, but nothing they do now can save them.

What corporate suits failed to understand here is that Unity is not selling an engine, really. They were selling the convenience and security of a reliable license to a common engine. And now they've pressed the self-destruct button on that, and you can't un-explode yourself. The very most basic thing a licensee needs is to know that they can trust the license they purchased, and Unity just proved you can never, ever trust them.

It's the exact same mistake Wizards of the Coast made when they detonated their Open Gaming License earlier this year. And just like will happen with Unity, the OGL is effectively dead, despite WotC backtracking. The difference is that WotC still has D&D (and Magic, and all their other properties) to fall back on. WTF does Unity have? Pointless, greedy, moronic corporate suicide. Hopefully all the engineers who actually did the work can quickly find new jobs as their employer implodes and shrinks into nothingness.
 
I'm actually wonder if anyone thought at all of how they plan to track installs in a GDPR compliant way, too, because that feels like a pretty heavy roadblocker here.

This feels like a decision a very detached board of directors made without actually wondering neither if it was a good idea nor if it was actually possible.

Or, you know, insider trading scheme.
 
7threst said:
If this is true, I wonder if Unity will recover from this. Time for Riccitiello to get that stupid smirk of his face I guess.
Click to expand...

He's been cheerfully selling over a $100,000,000 in stock since the IPO, and will be investing that money in a new yacht when the company shutters. Then he'll probably get hired as CEO of Ubisoft.
 
Tangerine_Cookie said:
I'm actually wonder if anyone thought at all of how they plan to track installs in a GDPR compliant way, too, because that feels like a pretty heavy roadblocker here.

This feels like a decision a very detached board of directors made without actually wondering neither if it was a good idea nor if it was actually possible.

Or, you know, insider trading scheme.
Click to expand...
I suspect they think that using aggregate data is GDPR-compliant, because you can't trace back the data to the individual users. It's not, because just getting the data they need from the users is already violating GDPR, what you do with it after that step is irrelevant.

Or they haven't really thought about it or listened to anyone who has told the decision-makers that this was impossible.
 
Last edited:
catonkatonk said:
He's been cheerfully selling over a $100,000,000 in stock since the IPO, and will be investing that money in a new yacht when the company shutters. Then he'll probably get hired as CEO of Ubisoft.
Click to expand...
Hopefully gets investigated for insider trading seeing as he sold a bunch more a week before this announcement.
 
Unchecked capitalism is sound and good. Thank god for thoughtful people like Riccitiello and all the other executives having all the power what would we ever do without them.
 
Its still ridiculous. Went the CEO of Unity just mad (or madder) to let this slip? Anyone with a bit of knowledge about game development or law would just they "no" when someone makes such a suggestion.

Perhaps it is some sort of scam? Unity was on a downward spiral anyway. CEO & Co sold most of their stock before this announcement. So they ruined the company intentionally because a ruined company has not to pay severance pay for laid off workers? Or something shady like that.
 
0

BREAKING: Unity canceled a town hall this morning and closed two offices due to what CEO John Riccitiello said was a credible death threat, according to people familiar. This comes in the wake of a controversial price hike from the video game tech maker
Click to expand...
 
Tentacle-tropes said:
Click to expand...

I can't believe we still have to deal with stuff like this everytime someone ruins someone else's digital toy.

EDIT: Before this gets out of hand. Yes, this time it's more than just digital toys, I get that and I didn't mean to diminish the issues at hand.
However, my point still stands. The amount of times we get news that some studio boss, developer or even journalist merily reporting on video games has to deal with death threats as reaction is absurd and it shouldn't be a thing in the first place.
 
Last edited:
oomoepoo said:
I can't believe we still have to deal with stuff like this everytime someone ruins someone else's digital toy.
Click to expand...

People are having their livelihoods threatened here. This is not digital toys. A bunch of devs might literally go out of business from this thing.

Not saying death threats are great at all, or trying to excuse them, you're spot on there. Just that, this is a bit more serious than that.
 
oomoepoo said:
I can't believe we still have to deal with stuff like this everytime someone ruins someone else's digital toy.

EDIT: Before this gets out of hand. Yes, this time it's more than just digital toys, I get that and I didn't mean to diminish the issues at hand.
However, my point still stands. The amount of times we get news that some studio boss, developer or even journalist merily reporting on video games has to deal with death threats as reaction is absurd and it shouldn't be a thing in the first place.
Click to expand...
At some point people are going to run out of peaceful options for how to deal with these exploitative CEOs/shareholders. If all these strikes going on ultimately fail, and its looking like that could very well happen, I could see why desperate workers might resort to less peaceful options if they feel there is no other way to make a livable wage in livable conditions.
 
I don't have a source on hand because I saw the info a couple hours ago and didn't check this thread until now, but apparently according to local law enforcement, the threat was sent over social media by a Unity employee from another office.

And speaking of Unity's devs, apparently a number of them are either considering quitting or already quitting over this incident, with many of them having fought against it internally and their concerns completely ignored. I haven't gotten any hard numbers on it, but I've seen several (now ex-)employees talking about it.

On the game dev side of things, apparently according to polls in the Unity subreddits (some of which have been locked in protest, while others just redecorated to insult the Unity CEO), around 75% of devs polled have said that regardless of whether the fees get walked back or not, they're migrating away from Unity as soon as they can (whether that be mid-project for some, or after finishing their current projects for others). For me personally, anecdotally that number has been 100%, not a single dev I know who uses Unity is going to stick with it any longer than they have to.
 
Looks like Unity reps are offering to cancel the install fee to some devs if they use their ad platform. Basically, "move to our platform, or it'll cost you". This may have been the end game all along. Smaller devs will have to choose between paying or fighting in court (which may not be an option at all for a lot of them due to the costs), while the rest can just switch to Unity's ad platform and forget all about this like it was a bad dream. Until Unity decides it wants more money and changes things up again, that is.
 
Last edited:
correojon said:
Looks like Unity reps are offering to cancel the install fee to some devs if they use their ad platform. Basically, "move to our platform, or it'll cost you". This may have been the end game all along. Smaller devs will have to choose between paying or fighting in court (which may not be an option at all for a lot of them due to the costs), while the rest can just switch to Unity's ad platform and forget all about this like it was a bad dream. Until Unity decides it wants more money and changes things up again, that is.
Click to expand...

Okay, this would make sense as an end goal... if most unity projects actually used in-game ads.

Like, what about games without ads that are sold as full products, do those have to add ads to avoid the fee?
 
Tangerine_Cookie said:
Okay, this would make sense as an end goal... if most unity projects actually used in-game ads.

Like, what about games without ads that are sold as full products, do those have to add ads to avoid the fee?
Click to expand...
In the Unity forums it's been commented that the focus of Unity management is in mobile games, specifically those ad or microtransaction-driven. Some months ago the Unity and ex-EA CEO said that devs that didn't design their games around microtransactions were "fucking idiots". His history speaks for itself, so it all makes sense now that appointing him as CEO had the intent of driving the company in a very clear direction. Unity ad services are providing more revenue to the company than engine subs (I don't know if they're considering Asset Store revenue as well, but I don't expect that to be significant in this context). So basically, this is a move to focus on those types of games and the rest can be an acceptable collateral damage. It explains why they didn't think about how they would count pirated installs and such: They may be laser-focused on ad-driven revenue and don't care at all about the rest, it's pocket money for them.
 
correojon said:
In the Unity forums it's been commented that the focus of Unity management is in mobile games, specifically those ad or microtransaction-driven. Some months ago the Unity and ex-EA CEO said that devs that didn't design their games around microtransactions were "fucking idiots". His history speaks for itself, so it all makes sense now that appointing him as CEO had the intent of driving the company in a very clear direction. Unity ad services are providing more revenue to the company than engine subs (I don't know if they're considering Asset Store revenue as well, but I don't expect that to be significant in this context). So basically, this is a move to focus on those types of games and the rest can be an acceptable collateral damage. It explains why they didn't think about how they would count pirated installs and such: They may be laser-focused on ad-driven revenue and don't care at all about the rest, it's pocket money for them.
Click to expand...

That... would make sense, and would be very in like with how that CEO whose name I can't spell thinks.

Sad state of affairs all over the place.
 
even then, thats shortsighted.

There is a huge developer comunity because its relatively easy to get into unity,
and you dont have to pay early on before you have enough revenue.
This means, that there is a healthy market for development skills in unity.

This will mean that a ton of the gaming industry will move to other engines, unity developers will get rarer and harder to get, and new hires will be versed in other engines, leading to many studios,
even if they made mobile games with unity, moving over to those engines.
 
www.nintendolife.com

Round Up: Developers React To Unity's New 'Runtime Fee' Policy

They ain't pleased
www.nintendolife.com www.nintendolife.com

The announcement also came with some rather damning background information, including the fact that several executives over at Unity, including its CEO John Riccitiello, sold stock in the company just days prior. Now, Riccitiello has sold a substantial amount of stock throughout 2023, so this may be a simple case of poor timing, but it's certainly a bit suspicious considering that additional board members did the same.
Click to expand...

Massive Monster (Cult of the Lamb)
Click to expand...

Massive Monster actually posted two notable reactions to the announcement from Unity, one of which echoes the statements from other studios around migrating to a new engine (along with a rather amusing background GIF), and another that simply states that Cult of the Lamb will be "deleted" on January 1st, 2024.
Click to expand...
 
mobilegamer.biz

Unity boycott begins as devs switch off ads to force a Runtime Fee reversal - Mobilegamer.biz

Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Playgendary and more are turning off all Unity ad monetisation to force a u-turn.
mobilegamer.biz mobilegamer.biz

Mobile game developers are now boycotting Unity by switching off its ad products, mobilegamer.biz can reveal.


The group is trying to force Unity into cancelling its proposed Runtime Fee policy.


At the time of publication, 16 different studios have pulled their Unity and IronSource ads: Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Ducky, Burny Games, Inspired Square, Geisha Tokyo, tatsumaki games, KAYAC, New Story, Playgendary and Supercent.
Click to expand...
 
0
mobilegamer.biz

Unity boycott begins as devs switch off ads to force a Runtime Fee reversal - Mobilegamer.biz

Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Playgendary and more are turning off all Unity ad monetisation to force a u-turn.
mobilegamer.biz mobilegamer.biz
At the time of publication, 16 different studios have pulled their Unity and IronSource ads: Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Ducky, Burny Games, Inspired Square, Geisha Tokyo, tatsumaki games, KAYAC, New Story, Playgendary and Supercent.
Click to expand...
 
Lugia667 said:
I am honestly shocked they haven't backed down, their financial situation must be really bad
Click to expand...
It's the Elon Musk approach. They're waiting for their whole business to collapse as partners pull out so they can say "see, it was a coordinated effort to destroy our successful business!!"
 
chocolate_supra said:
It's the Elon Musk approach. They're waiting for their whole business to collapse as partners pull out so they can say "see, it was a coordinated effort to destroy our successful business!!"
Click to expand...
It‘s only bad that this happens with actual good products which people like to use.
 
this vid goes down the rabbit hole



of course VCbros are somehow behind this and Elon Musk somehow is indirectly involved
 
0
Christer said:
Coincidentally it seems to be orchestrated by his adtech hang-arounds:
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing. Again, this is the fault of unregulated Capitalism going wild. If you have two companies investing in every company they can, running them down and then doing the same elsewhere, we have a problem
 
There is no backing down because profits have plateaud and rent seeking is the next avenue for revenue. This is the inevitable outcome for all corporations when they maximize profit margins. Capitalism can’t allow for companies to not grow constantly.
 
Reader mode
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom