Develop-online writes: We look at the first PSN title built with Unity's popular engine
Unity Technologies says it will charge Microsoft, Sony, Apple, and Netflix for Unity Engine games included in their subscription services.
It's easy to blame Unity and being a cool gamer on internet by saying they are doing the wrong thing. But when Unity started its business model, they innovate allowing people to develop and publish their games for free, without paying for the engine only if the developer starts to making money. I know myself at least five people that started game development because Unity allow them to.
However, the game subscription model came and change all the business landscape for game publishing. Now, selling your game is one of the ways to monetize, not the only one anymore. Unity is not an engine focused on big triple A games. Most developers are small and indie ones. They are the ones most likely to sold their games to subscription services.
What Unity should do? Keep bleeding money on business model made for a landscape that doesn't exist anymore? Ask for a ludicrous price and sell their engine alienating small developers and students? Or ask for those giants selling games and getting a 30% cut or paying little money for games of their subscription?
For me the answer is easy. But to be cool with gamerz we always need to simplistic and made everything a game about good guys and bad guys.
I have a game made in Unity that I’m removing from the app store by Jan 1, because me paying a fee to Unity every time someone installs my game is just not sustainable.
I read there’s even the concern if someone repeatedly abuses that mechanic & installs-reinstalls the game causing a large amount to have to be paid to Unity. Apparently Unity has no answer to that, wow!
I have another game on the app store made in Godot & guess what, I gladly pay to Godot on Patreon because of all the good the engine has to offer, for free, & using the engine is a breath of fresh air, i.e: by the time I launch Godot try some changes, compile & run, Unity hasn’t launched yet!
Unity had the opportunity over the years to do good by developers but every decision they made was stupider than the previous one, it got them exodus after exodus. Look at the number of devs leaving & going for other game engines.
Do you have any idea how destabilizing this last decision is when it comes to an indie-dev that has a game they’re trying to launch or run.
What about Unreal Engine? Why don’t they implement such anti-dev practices? & guess what Unity is as heavy to launch as UE, but UE is way more professional & in terms of the available toolset & what you can do with it.
It’s almost like Unity are doing it on purpose so they can short their stock in some crazy insider trading scheme.
But I guess I’m one of the cool gamerz.
Loco and Victor you both make valid points and are correct. Unity paying for runtime for specific streaming services should be something they can do, after all that's them charging big streaming services as the facts pointed out by Loco.
And Victor is correct in that they shouldn't charge per download if it's a free game anyway, or if the subscriber or purchaser is downloading the title for a second time after purchase. It should be if its free to play, then IAP percentage should go to Unity in some form. Or if it's pay to own, then the initial purchase should go to them as a percentage.
Why are you defending a guy that wanted to charge 1$ for reloading guns on a videogame (battlefield)... this guy greediness is just play evil at this point it doesnt even has to do with Unity bleeding, this CEO is just awful and should be thrown out, while youre correct on some things, charging for download is super evil, trolls who are mad for w/e reason at a dev using unity could just make a script for redownloading a game making a small dev go bankrupt.
Maybe they should slightly increase the licensing prices of using the engine instead of tacking on a whole new fee that starts an entirely new pricing model. 🤷♂️
Literally the worst take on this issue I've seen yet. Take the boot out of your throat. You're advocating the destruction of indie devs/publishers because you think that Unity deserves to employ a more predatory business model.
@VictorMaje
But don't you have to have a million installs anf earnings over 200.000$ before the payments trigger?
Thought the issue was one of trust for the most part. That thet retroactively changed their tos without warning. And that they made an overly complicated system that makes it hard to predict your costs.
@Mr
Yes, that’s one of the main concerns remaining.
Still, economically, they’re almost killing one of the biggest gaming markets (F2P), because the usual margin is not enough to put another 20 cents in (or a very expensive top version, for discounts). You might hate F2P, but the market is huge and important for the growth of companies and professionals.
Also their system to accurately counting installs and avoid counting pirate installs is a full black box, which some sources even claim do not really exist how they are saying it does. Recently they also admitted “two machines = two installs”, so yes, a script kid can generate thousands in fees very quickly for anyone.
In the first and second statements, they were still holding the even worse “reinstall” fee and the webgl fee, which they waived later.
But yes, the damage is done. Unity became open to investors in 2020 and went downhill from there. The trust is completely gone and most of us (dev here) think that, even if they backtrack even more, another backstab is due at any time.
Unity is seen now as a liability for companies.
Yeah when Unitys own ceo sells his shares prior to the announcement questions should be asked
https://gamerant.com/unity-...
This smells of insider trading to me but what do I know I'm just a cool gamer on the international apparently.
By regulation, they have to sell shares every now and then (though its always possible they can time certain actions based on when their next batch sale is happening)
Based on the actual % of shares sold by him and some other people, this seems the more likely scenario and the sites reporting it were just looking for clicks by making a more sensationalist story. The CEO for example sold like 0.06% of his shares….
That said, everything else happening is pretty scummy from Unity and I would expect to see some major legal action from Nintendo, Sony, etc
@Onilink I agree what they are doing is pure shite but the insider trading thing is flimsy as hell.
Ultimately this will all get absorbed by the price we pay as consumers in subscription fees.
Sucks for everyone but Unity.
Apple, Netflix, Sony and Microsoft are way larger than Unity. They could all likely drop Unity titles from their subscription services without heavy negative impacts.
And can as easily pass the cost on to us without heavy negative impacts. People complain and stocks drop temporarily until the credit card recurring charge shows up and life goes on as before.
Maybe this is part of the reason why there was a price hike that Sony and Microsoft just did to their subscription services.
Lol developers are ditching Unity for their future project. Unity needs developers more than developers need Unity.
@crazyCoconuts
My hope is that the devs would rather learn to adapt to a new engine than allow themselves to continue being screwed over by Unity. I do wish the devs affected by this land on their feet but at the same time i would like to see Unity crash and burn for doing this.
@crazyCoconuts
They are good and will get much better now, and I think much much better things will come out of this in the close future. I'm betting on Godot, which is what the community is heavily leaning to.
The thing is... Unity was a jack of all trades. Unreal is worthless for mobile, for instance.
For small games, Godot, Cocos, Defold, Construct, GameMaker etc.
For medium games, Godot, CocosCreator.
For big games, mostly Unreal.
This will crush indie dev's , which is why you're going to see developers abandon unity .
Ps plus gets hooked up by $20 out of nowhere with zero explanation or extra benefit to us. Coincidence?
Based on my own spending patterns I'm guessing they were losing a lot of potential sales based on the overly generous/ too cheap plans they had. That was probably reason enough imo
What's to stop these companies from barring games developed in Unity to their platforms? If I were them, I would do it in a heartbeat.
They wouldn't want to remove games like Genshin Impact they're likely going to sue first
The cut of profit they make from Genshin would easily cover any install fees they're on the hook for. Many other games without that monetization built in, not so much.
Subscription prices were always going to go up. Just like all other subscriptions in history of subscriptions.
do they realize they AREN'T the only game engine in town? oO
these people are crazy
They're known for being accessible for new game developers. I think it's more than just the game engine, it's like the whole package. I've never played with it though so I could be wrong
They "were" known for being the go to engine for new devs. They haven't been for years now. Unreal stepped up and they're just as good if not better for new devs, they certainly are now. There's also Godot which is rising very quickly in popularity and is seen as a free Unity alternative.
Interesting. Doesn't Unreal charge 5% of revenue straight up though? Is that any better than Unity at that point?
That 5 percent is only after you earned more than 1 million dollars. And yeah that 5 percent is much better than Unity's model.
Unity about to be screwed and I'm going to enjoy this with my popcorn while backlash will be displayed on my lacrima vision.
What I'd like to see come from this and it'd be pretty cool , if Sony, ms, Nintendo, whoever help these devs learn a new engine, it would just be an extremely good gesture and help out 100 if bot possibly thousands of people and good karma lol. Sort of like when a studio closes and they hire up some of the devs. Fk unity(the company)
Could this be the reason the PS Plus prize got jacked out of the blue without adding any value to the gamer? 🤔
I don't know. That's just how it goes around here. There's no way big corporations are putting up with these charges out of the kindness of their hearts. They are going to recoup that money somehow....
Why would Sony put the burden specifically on PS Plus subscribers? Games made from Unity engine can be bought/accessed by anyone and majority of the ps consumers are not even subscribed to their ps+ services.
lol so they're going after the big guys now.
they could easily just drop all of the games that run on Utility
Just because they are damanding money that doesn't mean they have any right to it. I can't imagine those massive companies all were dumb enough to sign a contract allowing for this.
Fat chance of taking on those behemoths and not expecting to get shot to death.
Playstation need the good pr they need to say reasons like this is why the price hike took place blame Canada
If no one else, MS will for sure throw its weight around as it seems this could disrupt the gamepass model. Unity hasnt got a prayer.
Well this sounds like they are trying to destroy their own company.
Trying to Double dip (charging devs and platforms) after the fact they offered it for free is madness. I see a lot of court cases coming and most likely Unity is going to die off.
Another reason why GOG helps publishers.
I want to actually own my games, not be loaned them by Sony or MS. And I definitely don't want to be responsible for a revolving door of Unity fuckery over use of streaming services for gaming.
Lol. I want to see unity try it. This must be the shittiest move i ever see in the industry.
MS, Sony, Apple, etc. won't allow this business model to operate and will probably forbid future titles made with Unity if that would
The reasoning is quite simple: if they accept Unity pricing then you will see all other devs' tools utility updating to the new norm.
Unreal Engine 5, Dolby, Godot, Gamemaker2, etc...
Why won't unity just put in contracts a fee for selling your game to subscription, like a flat percentage or $ fee of the amount generated from the sale to the sub service? Seems like they are better ways to address the issue, but I'm not an expert on the subject
As someone who know nothing about game development where does Unity rank as a game engine? Is it #2 after unreal or pretty comparable? Would this make them more expensive then unreal?
So this new tos seems to be retroactive despite having statements in the tos at the time to the opposite.
The whole thing is kind of a mess and has lead to a few games being pulled from digital stores. One thing I'm curious about will be if it's retroactive and they somehow legally get it allied to projects from 2015 what happens when a user buys a disc based game installs that and the company has pulled the title from digital storefronts or company is defunct for example I know yooka laylee was a unity based game and had a physical release but what would happen if team 17 said no we don't agree not paying.
Unity Technologies is laying off 284 people, the company confirmed today. This is the second round of layoffs for Unity in less than a year.
Game developers will be able to publish their games across multiple stores in a more efficient way through a single hub. Uptodown will increase the visibility of video games in countries where it is highly influential such as Brazil, Mexico, the Middle East, Indonesia, Russia, and India, among others.
There are PSN games? Where?