this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023

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Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off (www.theverge.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off::Unity has announced that starting on January 1st, 2024, it will implement a new pricing model that will charge developers based on how many times a game was installed.

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[–] [email protected] 125 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

From what I understand this change will retroactively apply to games released in the past as well. I think that's a rather scummy move on Unity's part. "I've altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."

And it's not like game devs have been using a free product. They already pay for it through expensive licenses per developer.

If the justification on Unity's part is true, that for each install of a Unity game the runtime environment needs to be downloaded from their servers, then maybe they should look into fixing that rather than nickle and diming their customers for each individual install (customers in this case being the game developers)

[–] Shiggles 32 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If by “scummy” you mean “questionably legal” (obligatory IANAL), then yeah.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

I also do anal!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I'm no legal expert, and I have no familiarity with Unity's licensing terms. So I didn't want to outright call what they are doing illegal.
For all I know they did technically have a clause in their licensing agreement that allows them to do this. But that wouldn't make it any less of a scum move imo.

It'll be interesting to see what the lawyers will make of this.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

I read in a other thread, that they're not doing it retro actively on paper. Its part of the new terms for new licenses.

But since their licenses are perpetual and need to be renewed constantly, it will affect everyone when they hit the next cycle. Everything released afterwards is then affected. This even includes current projects in the works and even finished ones when you want to do a bug fix. That way, they seem to be "safe" to do that legally.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

By why fix a problem when you can just charge more for a solution!? Jeeze it's like you've never done a capitalism before.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nothing is downloaded from Unity servers. This is an attempt at recouping money from developers making over 1M per year.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's not recouping if they were never owed it... This is a shakedown, pure and simple.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is not the point I was trying to make. Replace "recoup" by whatever term you see fit I don't think they are owed this money either. They are trying to cut on their quaterly losses tho, which are massives.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

According to the article, it's not retroactively charged, but still bad if your game is about to come out and you haven't accounted for this.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-reveals-plans-to-charge-per-game-install-drawing-criticism-from-development-community

Other articles I have been reading on the topic do mention it:

Unity has also clarified the changes are "not retroactive or perpetual", noting it will only "charge once for a new install" made after 1st January 2024. However, while it won't be charging for previously made installs, fees do indeed apply to all games currently on the market, meaning should any existing player of an older game that exceeds Unity's various thresholds decide to re-install it after 1st January, a charge will still be made.

When I say that it applies retroactively, I mean that it applies to games released in the past.
It's true that they are not retroactively charging devs for past downloads. That would have been even worse.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So if i want to ruin a developer, I only need to install and deinstall all day?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Unity walked back from charging per installation earlier today. Now they will be charging per device it is installed on.
It doesn't solve the core problem, but it at least prevents install-bombing like you are suggesting

https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-backtracks-slightly-on-plans-to-charge-developers-for-game-installs

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'd be interested to know how they're going to track this? They'd need to create some sort of fingerprint for each device, and store it together will all already installed games / software in some sort of database in perpetuity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Saw this screenshot on Mastodon. They won't tell how they're going to track it exactly but it sounds like some weird estimation work.

2b75c0c16828af54

[–] Sethayy 9 points 11 months ago

My 100 VMs are just ripe with anticipation

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Well, it makes it a bit harder to inflate the rates but not impossible.

[–] [email protected] 97 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Time to learn Godot.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It's not perfect but is the best we have. And it keeps improving nicely.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago (1 children)

But with the new interest it will improve much faster. I hope it will be on the same level as Blender.

[–] Sethayy 5 points 11 months ago

And if you're a moderate to professional programmer, tbh its better than unity or unreal already because how much you can hack into it.

The editor itself was made simply using Godot primitives

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

Waiting for Godot 5.0

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Keeping an eye on it.. there's no embedding right now so we couldn't use it, but I'm sure it'll get added given the pace of development.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Cruelty Squad uses Godot.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Many games use Godot. Sonic Colors Ultimate also uses Godot

[–] Klear 3 points 11 months ago

Or check out Defold. Lightweight, fast, open source. It's amazing especially for 2D stuff.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 11 months ago (2 children)

They expect Game Pass titles to have their bill footed by Microsoft.

There's kicking the nest, and then there's kicking the fucking queen bee.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Honestly the most credible theory I can come up with for why Unity is doing this is that it's an attempt to force MS to acquire them to stop the effect this BS will have on gamepass and C#

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Microsoft isn’t in a position to acquire any other significant gaming companies in the near term, imo.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Yeah, Microsoft isn't going to blow up its shaky, but actual money maker Activision deal for a loser like Unity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

That's actually an interesting theory, I don't believe it, but would be cool. Feel like Microsoft would have enough backing too off against Epic.

Though, they are funding o3de right now.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago

Either microsoft buys them, or they simply stop putting unity games on gamepass.

Can't see them paying it (or on what basis, since MS don't have a contract with unity in the first place).

[–] [email protected] 54 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can't wait an indie developer to go bankrupt because the super secret algorithm counted updates as new installations and the developer gets billed multiple times for their whole player base.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Or a rival developer, troll, corporation, etc just runs a script to uninstall/reinstall someone else's game over and over and over again costing them an insane amount of money.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Why bother actually installing? Just use a packet sniffer to find the data being sent to Unity and replay it in a loop. You could probably hit somewhere in the range of 100k-1M "installs" per minute.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I don't get it...Unity just forced the entire development community to use Unreal. The pricing structure isn't even close between the two.

At 200k downloads at 1$ a pop, unreal is still free...Unity is $40k.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Or CryEngine

Or Godot

Or O3DE (a CryEngine fork ... that's from what I understand heavily diverged)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

That's a 20% cut....on top of Apple/Google's 30% cut. You only get 50% of the sticker price. That's fucking criminal.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

Well, glad that I switched away from Unity in 2016. The competition by the Unreal Engine caused some really weird business decisions back then.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Popular video game engine Unity is making big changes to its pricing structure that’s causing confusion and anger among developers.

“We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user,” the company shared on its blog.

Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.”

Additionally, there’s the concern that malicious actors could use this information to run up charges by continuously downloading and redownloading games as a form of protest or griefing.

All those fears were seemingly confirmed when Stephen Totilo of Axios tweeted that Unity stated it would indeed charge a developer each time a game was redownloaded or downloaded to different devices.

An additional tweet from Totilo stated that Unity would implement fraud detection tools and allow developers to report potential cases of abuse.

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