this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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The cynic in me says nothing significant enough changed.
Not all Unity devs are small. Especially the ones Unity is prominently targeting this for. A good example is Niantic. They made 650 million in revenue last year.
Unity has a market share of 75% in mobile. Many major mobile titles with hundreds of millions in revenue are Unity. Plus a vast number of big publisher funded "indies", however the revenue to gain there is chump change in comparison. Ranging anywhere from 0-200k depending on annual sales and number of installs.
Unreal's business model is taking 5% of your revenue, which is more than Unity's new cap of 4%. Which only activates at 1 million in annual revenue.
One might argue even that small indies are not small if they reach 1 million in annual revenue. While not neglible, it's still just 40 000 if you managed to get like 200 000 installs.
Obviously it's understandable why devs would rally to the barricades. It's their money to lose. Unity's value proposition is in how much development time they save. Which is often than not worth a lot more than 40 000 dollars given the amount of time it takes to develop an engine.
I think Unity also offers a wide array of added value services compared to Unreal in the form of easy-to-implement IAP and ads. Both are the cancer of mobile games, but also the de facto business model on the platform.
Their initial plan was poorly communicated and shit, but the adjustment is fair.