Gamesta.com reports that game engine Unity has succesfully registered its product to over one million users. A quarter of that growth appeared in the last several months and could be correlated to its recent giveaway.
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.
You know for an engine called Unity, it sure does keep alienating and distancing developers left and right. In their latest misguided attempt to nickel and dime their customers, Unity has decided that they will start charging developers everytime someone installs a game.
Understandably, this has left developers seriously perplexed. Basically, with what Unity is proposing, it means that bad actors can now just mass install and reinstall games in order to financially cripple a company. It’s like Unity looked at review bombing and asked itself “How can I make something like that even worse?”
Live-action Looney Tunes moment, for once I'd love to be a fly on the wall for this entire greed convo honestly, who the fuck says let's charge these developers PER install so I could just be edgy and uninstall/install.
Like Geoff says, what a joke.
Including all the legacy titles that have used the engine.
This has to be one of the most blatant and disgusting corporate greed move I've ever heard off.
Even if unity backtrack on the decision which they will, if I was a dev I'd never the engine again.
Yep, I agree with the article that if they are going to do something like this today what will they do tomorrow. Figures that the CEO is from EA's greediest time too
I've jumped ship to Unreal late last year, despite many people telling me that Unity was much better suited for the scale and budget of my project. Best decision I've made.
The CEO of Unity is an idiot and the writing was on the wall that he's gonna do something incredibly stupid like this sooner or later. I feel for the developers that are too far along in their project too migrate to another engine.
With the scale of the current backlash I can't see them going through with it in this current form, but even if they backpedal now, the trust in the leadership is probably irreparably damaged. At least it should be.
Just wait. I'm sure we'll see articles today written up about how this is a smart move.
lol yep
https://x.com/tkexpress11/s...
People all over the place with this, some want to stay, some don't sounds like a divide to me
Right on character for john riccitiello to find new scummy ways to squeeze the industry
"It's an absolute f*cking catastrophe".
Unity has announced dramatic changes to its Unity Engine business model which will see it introduce a monthly fee per new game install beginning on 1st January next year - a move that has drawn considerable criticism from the development community.
Also, according to Yahoo, last week "Unity Software Inc's President and CEO John Riccitiello Sells 2,000 Shares".
It continues: "The insider transaction history for Unity Software Inc shows a clear trend: over the past year, there have been 49 insider sells and no insider buys. This could be a red flag for potential investors, as it suggests that those with the most intimate knowledge of the company's operations and prospects are choosing to sell their shares."
* https://finance.yahoo.com/n...
@Palitera - Yep, that's the world we live in. If you're rich and powerful, the law doesn't really apply to the wealthy the same way it does normal folk. Then there's the bond system. Any rich person that goes to jail, they just get to pay some pocket change and get to be let free thank to the bail bond system! It's so nice that if you have money, you can walk around free regardless of your crimes.
He's the same sleazeball who said this in a shareholders meeting years ago when he was EA CEO,
"When you are six hours into playing Battlefield and you run out of ammo in your clip and we ask you for a dollar to reload, you’re really not that price sensitive at that point in time,”
There will be fees for installing game demos that let you buy the full game, early access and betas... Epic must be celebrating in anticipation of everyone moving to Unreal.
Yes, I feel sorry for companies that have stabilized businesses and will have to TRY to shift focus.
For premium games, the fee is not that relevant, but for small, free mobile or free web games, this is a big strike.
The balance between revenue per user and user acquisition cost is usually very tight, and now it has been severely broken.
And if you think “screw F2P and small games”, remember these are the companies and devs that might make the indie gem you might love.
if i were them I just look a way to move it into another engine, this thing unity is doing is super abussive, if it doesnt cause problems it will do for us by them increasing the price, it was also coming to gamepass i believe, imagine if people download it multiple times 🤦🏻
It’s all uncertain right now.
Unity said Microsoft would be charged in Game Pass games.
The thing is: the contracts usually have clauses that push extra costs forward to the devs.
So, if Unity keeps the policy, either MS accepts the hit alone or the costs will be forwarded to consumers or devs.
And that is why engine consolidation is the issue that it is. It allows the company that operates the very few commercial options available to do whatever they want and their consumer base can only shallow it.
Yeah, but the alternatives aren’t even close. Hopefully this will put Unreal as lead for III, AA and above, and Cocos/Godot for smaller titles.
That is not hopeful at all. That is still engine consolidation, is just transferring the power from Unity to Epic and Godot. Sure the latter is open source and therefore much safer, but the issue remains especially with Epic and the Unreal engine, those guys already partake in some real shady stuff with their store. The last thing they need is more power over development.
I agree, but, in the current state of game development, there aren't many options. It's not like we can choose to have a FOSS engine taking over right now.
Corporate greed continues to evolve in unexpected ways. I was wondering how this will work if devs choose to move onto another engine and stop subscribing to Unity. Will they have to delist games to prevent new downloads? Will Unity prevent access to the games we purchased if the devs no longer want to pay them?
Can they hamper access to games that could be technically called grandfathered in
