Bloomberg: Unity Overhauls Controversial Price Hike After Game Developers Revolt
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ProtoByte
Weeb Underling
Not for more profits, if my memory serves. Any profit at all. Unity's been losing money under the current payment structure for their entire existence outside of 1 quarter earlier this year.
Push them out of the market for daring to want to make money, I guess. We'll see how limited options work out for the poor wittle indie devs.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Digital product companies are always in a bind because people expect it to be free or dirt cheap. They think just because it's bits and bytes it should be super cheap while ignoring all the back end dev costs, support and head office overhead. Unity has like 7000 employees. Most people don't even know the company has lost tons of money lately.
Also for sake of critical mass they often seem to need to price it cheap for usage. On the other hand a commercial erp like SAP isn't going to giving it away pennies on the dollar. The customers are big. A unity dev team might be two guys in a basement. So they got to price it low like a bargain dollar shop. SAP will set a profitable price from the get go everyone can live with. And so can a company selling blenders or bottles of mouthwash. Aside from inflation price increases, most products dont have giant changes like a unity paymdnt plan.
On the other hand a $5 Starbucks coffee is literally 50 cents of ingredients including the cup, they make tons of profit and if a coffee goes to $6 nobody cares. Oh well, that's just inflation!
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Dirk Benedict
Gold Member
Imagine confusion on the board of motherFucking Directors? LMAO! Idiots.
VolticArchangel
Member
StereoVsn
Gold Member
I still don't get why they have 7K people. Yes, some are working on their ad platform and so on, but come on, what the hell are they doing.
Also, yes, they should have raised fees long ago but not in a such boneheaded manner. Amateur hour thought the whole operation. Of course that's no surprise considering who is at the reigns.
Also, yes, they should have raised fees long ago but not in a such boneheaded manner. Amateur hour thought the whole operation. Of course that's no surprise considering who is at the reigns.
Kataploom
Gold Member
Honest question... Can the board even be fired?
Bkdk
Member
I would say unity is one of the many symptoms come from the problem for decade long low interest rate, so many companies have been using the growth no matter what cost model, there are so many business now that are just use to losing money, to make things worse, a lot of people have spent years develop skills to operate on a product that is developed by unprofitable companies, with inflation showing many signs of surging upwards thus more and more interest rate hikes, things could get really bad. I think that the whole indie game scene is about to change drastically. If they don't use unity, they would just have to spend even more to hire devs to develop the features they need for their game with other options. Also with unreal the only obvious option left, there will be even bigger price hikes for these devs in the near future. Unreal is not the best option for mobile games that many of the unity devs are focused on either. I have to say AAA gaming could have a bigger market share than ever soon. doubt many would even bother starting their indie game or work for a indie startup studio now.
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rofif
Can’t Git Gud
Don't think so
Tams
Member
This is B2B though, not B2C, so many of the people/organisations paying for game engines know full well that they have upkeep costs.
Now, said people/organisations are very much it to get the best deal, and if one of their suppliers can't run a business properly, then that's said suppliers fault.
And 7,000 employees for a game engine developer?! That's immense bloat, like Twitter, sorry X, was. Only very profitable companies like Epic Games can get away with that.
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supernova8
Banned
#WeHeardYouLoudandClear
Yeah even if there were a successful shareholder proposal to replace the entire board, I'm guessing the company could just ignore it since shareholder proposals are usually non-binding anyway.
Bkdk
Member
The way I see unity now is no matter what board will change, the reality is clear, unity is on the way to bankruptcy already with their current model. Some drastic measures will have to be taken asap, either find a buyer, dilute shares or successful price hike, or just cut most of unity's game engine business and focus mostly on ironsource since that part is profitable. They might fire John and get another ceo for short term pr headwinds but will have to make attempts for turnaround to break even within 1 year at most before bankruptcy with how they lose money. Base on this I think the indie game development scene, especially for mobile games will face massive and unpredictable changes ahead. I think many indie devs are now applying for aaa game development to find some sort of stability now.
STARSBarry
Gold Member
Honestly there is no way this didn't happen. Nintendo are notorious for closed door dealings you don't hear about until much later down the line.
A bit like how the first we heard about the Joycon fixes being free in Europe was when Nintendo announced it. Only for the EU to come out and clarify later that they forced Nintendo to do that. But Nintendo was there battling it for years without a hint to the consumer.
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ReBurn
Gold Member
The board of directors of a public company is elected by its shareholders. If the shareholders don't like the performance of the board they can choose not to elect them in the next election or, if they have enough shareholder votes, they can petition for a recall election ahead of their scheduled election. If a group of shareholders doesn't have enough support for a recall vote they can file a lawsuit and try to do it that way, but that route isn't often successful because it's tough to prove gross negligence or breach of fiduciary responsibility.
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the_master
Member
This are good news.