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[justiceiro]

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[ShadyAcshuns]

 

[Belthazar]

I wonder if it's even legal to apply this to games already released as seem to be their intention. It's probably gonna end up in a very big lawsuit that Unity will lose.

 

[Belthazar]

So they are applying retroactively, so they will make a ton of money only from Mihoyo games (Genshin impact and Honkai Star Rail)

I doubt any of those companies will pay anything. They haven't agreed to those terms when they released the actual games so... it's not something that can be legally enforced after the fact. They'll sue and win.

That's like Unreal suddenly deciding they'll get 80% of the revenue of every single copy sold from any game that uses their engine, regardless of when it was released. It just won't hold up in court.

 

[ResilientBanana]

Got to remember Unity is losing a lot of money for years. They are basically subsidizing all the studios making games where the current licensing fees and extra software tool fees (I had to google it) arent enough. Thats why they are adding this 20 cent fee.

By the sounds of it, it seems like before this new fee a studio can use Unity for free as long as you dont hit a certain threshold of sales. But once you hit a higher tier or add on premium services then you got fees. It looks like whatever revenue they get now isnt enough. The company has been losing $100s of million per year for years.

If this new fee isnt a good idea, what other ideas are there to raise more revenue to offset costs while keeping this service widely available for free or cheap for devs?

Make an impressive Fortnite clone to finance your engine.

 

[Fbh]

Unity clarified aspects of their new policy. I found this bit interesting:



I wonder if MS, Sony, etc. are onboard with this and, if not, what could Unity do about it?

I don't know if this would even be enforceable.
I get it if Sony/MS are actually publishing the game, but they are expected to pay for every third party Unity game they put on their services?

This is as if, I don't know, Avid went to streaming services and demanded 20 cents every time someone watches any content that was edited on their Media Composer software, even if it's just a third party show/movie that the company just paid to stream on their service.

Normally I'm all in on supporting devs... however in this case I'm not entirely sure the meltdowns are actually warranted.

The fees charged are pretty miniscule outside of mass volume cases, and if you're using a third-party engine I don't think its unreasonable for devs to actually pay something for it. I mean, I agree that its ill-thought out in terms of how poorly worded the new system is in terms of describing situations where exclusions* are warranted, such as charity bundling, demo's etc.

That being said, it is a decent deterrent for situations where the dev is actively gaming Unity's system to line their own pockets. Its bad for asset flippers for instance so they can't just shit out zero-effort trash without paying for the only part of the work that is of value. Similarly it appears to close a loophole wherein devs can sell a game as f2p and attempt to make cash from aggressively predatory monetization that the middleware provider has no share in.

I know I'm probably going to get roasted for this, but fuck it. I think a lot of modern indies simply do not understand how easy they have it compared to devs of yesteryear. Sure, kick Unity to the kerb if you don't like the deal, but given these payments don't kick in til over a million units and go from $0.15 per install down to $0.005 on the "emerging market monthly rate" it doesn't seem that extreme versus the cost of rolling your own multi-platform engine and tool-chain.


*The unity page specifically mentions discretionary exclusion is possible.

It doesn't sound like devs want the engine to be completely free though.
It's just that charging based on installs is really dumb as explained by multiple devs. What about bundles, demos, giveaways, subscription services, users installing the game on multiple devices or uninstalling and reinstalling later?

I don't know what the issue is with a basic "pay a X% royalty based on revenue" like unreal uses. That would still kick in IN the case of a F2P game that makes money through microtransactions instead of direct sales, it still kicks in when the dev gets a good deal from a subscription service too.

Also I don't know how much effect this will have on asset flippers since it only kicks in once games have made more than $200.000. How many of these lazy asset flip games are actually making that much money?

If this new fee isnt a good idea, what other ideas are there to raise more revenue to offset costs while keeping this service widely available for free or cheap for devs?

Well first one would have to look at their internal systems and structure and see what they are spending money on and why they loosing money.

 

[March Climber]

It is not illegal ?

Not if you’re rich enough.

 

[Sorne]

hahahahaha. Get fucked Unity, please go down in flames. Time for all the Indie Unity Devs make the jump/migrate their games to UE5.

This is such an ignorant take. Please educate yourself.

 

[Elder Legend]

This is such an ignorant take. Please educate yourself.

 

[Kataploom]

Normally I'm all in on supporting devs... however in this case I'm not entirely sure the meltdowns are actually warranted.

The fees charged are pretty miniscule outside of mass volume cases, and if you're using a third-party engine I don't think its unreasonable for devs to actually pay something for it. I mean, I agree that its ill-thought out in terms of how poorly worded the new system is in terms of describing situations where exclusions* are warranted, such as charity bundling, demo's etc.

That being said, it is a decent deterrent for situations where the dev is actively gaming Unity's system to line their own pockets. Its bad for asset flippers for instance so they can't just shit out zero-effort trash without paying for the only part of the work that is of value. Similarly it appears to close a loophole wherein devs can sell a game as f2p and attempt to make cash from aggressively predatory monetization that the middleware provider has no share in.

I know I'm probably going to get roasted for this, but fuck it. I think a lot of modern indies simply do not understand how easy they have it compared to devs of yesteryear. Sure, kick Unity to the kerb if you don't like the deal, but given these payments don't kick in til over a million units and go from $0.15 per install down to $0.005 on the "emerging market monthly rate" it doesn't seem that extreme versus the cost of rolling your own multi-platform engine and tool-chain.


*The unity page specifically mentions discretionary exclusion is possible.

I was in the same boat until I learned it was per install and not per sale. Unity can take a cut in sales like unreal, they deserve it, the engine is incredible and they have to monetize, the problem is the side effects of this method that are plenty and way too drastic.

What if you release a game now, game sell around 100k copies, it never gets passed 200k so you don't pay the fee, then release another game the following 2 years while the first one sells would 100k copies in steam sales, then you announce a sequel to the first game to release 4 years after that one, people get hyped and start downloading your game to play it again plus another 20k copies sold to new players who want to get in the bandwagon, that's already more than 200k installs far from release window that will hit your small company pocket "out of nowhere" with a $40k+ debt.

Kinda edge case but this is an example of what a dev can fear, it's being charged for a game you made before and isn't reporting nearly the same income for people installing your game after released. You know sequels trigger replays of previous entries, that will probably hurt the developers those are factors that devs cannot control.

They could delist the game temporarily to prevent it from selling more that 200k that year, but they'd be losing on sales too.

 

[KungFucius]

As you may expect, this has turned into a mini-shitstorm quick, and got Unity trending on twitter, with devs sounding off:

Holy shit, what kind of greedy, ignorant, piece of shit company does this? Fuck Unity. Fuck Today's shitty version of capitalism because I see so much of this innovation by adding fees bullshit. Was their CEO a former banker or something? Trash. And even after clarification they do intend to charge if a user installs a game they bought on multiple systems. I.e. if they install on a new PC years later or on 3 PCs in their house that use the same account. What a shitty concept. I wish I could charge these assholes for installing such shitty ideas in my mind for a few minutes and every time I see this thread title when it reinstalls this shit.

 

[CamHostage]

Is there an alternative for Unity aside UE?

Hudo went into details about Godot, so that's worth looking into to see what state that's in these days. (Other games/ports apparently use it quietly like versions of Deponia and the PC Sonic Colors Ultimate, but there are finally some games which promote being Godot-based that you might recognize on the Godot Showcase page like ExZodiac and Cassette Beasts.

Another option could potentially be O3DE, which is an offshoot of Lumberyard (and distant cousin to CryEngine), contributed by Amazon to the Linux Foundation. O3DE is free and open-source, and it should be capable of high-end 3D work, but it doesn't seem to have caught on at all (and stories about Lumberyard being a burden are out there,) so support is only from the few who use it or are backing it, also it's not even ready to deploy iOS releases much less console titles. Even Denis Dyack pulled his long-in-development (vaporware?) project Deadhouse Sonata from it, despite being one of the launch advocates and early adopters for O3DE. So, eh...

Then Blender sort of has an engine based on its 3D design toolkit called UPBGE (it disappeared for a while but then had a relaunch,) Uninige has some games on it, Stride is out there (it's based on Xenko, an engine originally produced by the Silicon Studios, whose own middleware Orichi engine line is I think a gonner now?), other stuff I don't know much about, lots of 2D options and HTML5 tools like GameMaker and GDevelop and Construct... Uh, you can make and distribute a game with Roblox?

There's not a shortage of ways for developers to make games, but Unity and Unreal are at a usage share ratio for good reasons. Will be interesting to see if this price change opens a door for any competition, but from what I can gather, there may not be a minor player ready to step up if Unity is kneecapped by this.

 

[Kataploom]

Holy shit, what kind of greedy, ignorant, piece of shit company does this? Fuck Unity. Fuck Today's shitty version of capitalism because I see so much of this innovation by adding fees bullshit. Was their CEO a former banker or something? Trash. And even after clarification they do intend to charge if a user installs a game they bought on multiple systems. I.e. if they install on a new PC years later or on 3 PCs in their house that use the same account. What a shitty concept. I wish I could charge these assholes for installing such shitty ideas in my mind for a few minutes and every time I see this thread title when it reinstalls this shit.

This man: John Riccitiello

 

[Kataploom]

Hudo went into details about Godot, so that's worth looking into to see what state that's in these days. (Other games/ports apparently use it quietly like versions of Deponia and the PC Sonic Colors Ultimate, but there are finally some games which promote being Godot-based that you might recognize on the Godot Showcase page like ExZodiac and Cassette Beasts.

Another option could potentially be O3DE, which is an offshoot of Lumberyard (and distant cousin to CryEngine), contributed by Amazon to the Linux Foundation. O3DE is free and open-source, and it should be capable of high-end 3D work, but it doesn't seem to have caught on at all (and stories about Lumberyard being a burden are out there,) so support is only from the few who use it or are backing it, also it's not even ready to deploy iOS releases much less console titles. Even Denis Dyack pulled his long-in-development (vaporware?) project Deadhouse Sonata from it, despite being one of the launch advocates and early adopters for O3DE. So, eh...

Then Blender sort of has an engine based on its 3D design toolkit called UPBGE (it disappeared for a while but then had a relaunch,) Stride is out there (it's based on Xenko, an engine originally produced by the Silicon Studios, whose own middleware Orichi engine line is I think a gonner now?), other stuff I don't know much about, lots of 2D options and HTML5 tools like GameMaker and GDevelop and Construct... Uh, you can make and distribute a game with Roblox?

There's not a shortage of ways for developers to make games, but Unity and Unreal are at a usage share ratio for good reasons. Will be interesting to see if this price change opens a door for any competition, but from what I can gather, there may not be a minor player ready to step up if Unity is kneecapped by this.

My problem with Godot is 3D support isn't nearly as good as Unity and UE.

I'd like to try UPBGE but it's basically community maintain with no investment put into it. I could try and contribute to it with code but then I'd be working in the engine and not in games.

I have a 10k+ lines of code project with custom patterns and whatnot I've worked on since last year, it would be a hassle to port that project to UE since it also counts with Scriptable Objects and is based on monobehaviour components so it would just be impossible without wanting to give up since I'm alone lol.

Riccitiello must go, he's better managing a grocery store or a fucking bakery, he's not a right fit for big leagues, all he does is basically typical government-like of corruption in these big companies.

 

[Clear]

I was in the same boat until I learned it was per install and not per sale. Unity can take a cut in sales like unreal, they deserve it, the engine is incredible and they have to monetize, the problem is the side effects of this method that are plenty and way too drastic.

What if you release a game now, game sell around 100k copies, it never gets passed 200k so you don't pay the fee, then release another game the following 2 years while the first one sells would 100k copies in steam sales, then you announce a sequel to the first game to release 4 years after that one, people get hyped and start downloading your game to play it again plus another 20k copies sold to new players who want to get in the bandwagon, that's already more than 200k installs far from release window that will hit your small company pocket "out of nowhere" with a $40k+ debt.

Kinda edge case but this is an example of what a dev can fear, it's being charged for a game you made before and isn't reporting nearly the same income for people installing your game after released. You know sequels trigger replays of previous entries, that will probably hurt the developers those are factors that devs cannot control.

They could delist the game temporarily to prevent it from selling more that 200k that year, but they'd be losing on sales too.

To be honest I'm doubtful about exactly how they'd track multiple installs of the same download. I mean on a console the tracking will be bound to the license on the storefront and I'm doubtful they have the ability within that to log the number of installs. Seems unlikely to me that its actually possible without online activation, and if they demand that... that's a whole other can of worms.

My assumption is that "per install" isn't meant that precisely, maybe its a cover-all for when a title gets included as part of an online service maybe? Because that would fit with them talking about the distributor paying the charge?

 

[SHA]

Best Unity game so far, Math Riddles.

 

[NickFire]

It would seem perfectly fair to charge a fee for each purchase or initial installs if that is part of the licensing costs. Charging for every install, as opposed to an initial one for an individual account, seems unfair though. Why should the dev have to pay every time someone deletes and redownloads, etc.?

 

[Wildebeest]

They chose 20 cents per install because that is what their stock is going to be worth by the end of the year.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Rust devs have provided this update on the whole Unity price changes fiasco.

Unity can get fucked

Yesterday Unity announced that starting next year, all games that use their engine will pay a tax per user install. The tax has a high-profit threshold before it kicks in, which I think they assumed would make it okay.

Over the last 24 hours there have been many reasons pointed out why this is a bad idea. Tracking installs is messy. Piracy, reinstalls, new computers, giveaways, bad actors. There are a lot of reasons why it isn't feasible.

It makes you wonder how they could think it's a good idea. And maybe it is a good idea if you think of Unity as a mobile game engine. If you view it through that lens maybe it makes sense to them.

Maybe they forgot about PC gaming. Again.

The Cost​

Let me be clear.. the cost isn't a big issue to us. If everything worked out, the tracking was flawless and it was 10p per sale, no biggy really. If that's what it costs, then that's what it costs.

But that's not why we're furious. It hurts because we didn't agree to this. We used the engine because you pay up front and then ship your product. We weren't told this was going to happen. We weren't warned. We weren't consulted.

We have spent 10 years making Rust on Unity's engine. We've paid them every year. And now they changed the rules.

Broken Trust​

Unity has shown its power. We can see what they can and are willing to do. You can't un-ring that bell.

If you'd have asked me last week whether it was in Unity's power to start charging us PER SALE of our games, I'd have said that was crazy and no.

Surely that's not possible.

That would be like Adobe charging all users of Photoshop per image view.. and trying to invent a system in which they can track and invoice you every month. And not only the new images, but all the images that you created over the last 20 years. Then automatically invoicing you every month.

But that's what happened. And now we know they can do that, and that they're willing to do that. Unity is the worst company to be in charge of the Unity Engine.

The trust is gone.

Retrospect​

It's our fault. All of our faults. We sleepwalked into it. We had a ton of warnings. We should have been pressing the eject button when Unity IPO'd in 2020. Every single thing they've done since then has been the exact opposite of what was good for the engine.

We had 10 years to make our own engine and never did. I'm sure a lot of game companies are feeling the same today.

Let's not make the same mistake again, Rust 2 definitely won't be a Unity game.

Unity can get fucked

Yesterday Unity announced that starting next year, all games that use their engine will pay a tax per user install. The tax has ...

garry.net

 

[skit_data]

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

cryengine making a comebackkkk

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

There's not a shortage of ways for developers to make games, but Unity and Unreal are at a usage share ratio for good reasons. Will be interesting to see if this price change opens a door for any competition, but from what I can gather, there may not be a minor player ready to step up if Unity is kneecapped by this.

The problem is that realistically there is no much profit in maintaining engines. UE gets slack due to Epic generating revenue from Fortnite, but that's not the case with Unity. So even if there is a minor player in the future, I don't see it going further away than some kind of open-source.

 

[Kataploom]

The problem is that realistically there is no much profit in maintaining engines. UE gets slack due to Epic generating revenue from Fortnite, but that's not the case with Unity. So even if there is a minor player in the future, I don't see it going further away than some kind of open-source.

Maybe they should not cancel game projects and actually release them. Unity canceled a first party game that was be used as an example of best practices in the engine, for some reason. This is why I think the company might be bleeding money of the wrongs reasons.

 

[Bradamante3D]

I've been using Unity since 2012 in my hobby time, so I have seen some changes come and go, including some they had to retract. Now, the Unity execs are not as stupid as some people in this thread apparently think they are. Unity is losing money and has always refused to be bought. So then they probably saw all those free to play mobile titles with giant user bases and were looking for a way to monetize the 99% non-whales.

But this still seems rather out of touch to me. If you are releasing a f2p game a big install base is what you what, and here you are getting punished for it.

Additionally, I think some of this is bad wording. I am pretty sure they don't want to punish a developer twice for a pirated copy - with the lost sale once, and with the fee twice. I am pretty sure they want a fee on purchases, not installs.

 

[DeepEnigma]

EA CEO trying to MTX devs with engine installs.

Gaming man, I swear.

 

[SlicedBread3]

Unity clarified aspects of their new policy. I found this bit interesting:



I wonder if MS, Sony, etc. are onboard with this and, if not, what could Unity do about it?

Makes me wonder if this could have played any part in Sony raising PS+ prices.

 

[CamHostage]

Maybe they should not cancel game projects and actually release them. Unity canceled a first party game that was be used as an example of best practices in the engine, for some reason. This is why I think the company might be bleeding money of the wrongs reasons.

I really liked the Gigaya project, (both as an internal sample project to help Unity experience their own tools and provide feedback internally and externally, and also as just a cool-looking game which sort of reminded me of Jak & Daxter.) However, it was never going to be a major release for the company. It was going to be free, it was going to be limited in scope, and it wasn't going to have any monetization tail to hang a billion dollars of GaaS onto for Unity to make all the money imaginable. It was just one of those good ideas for when a company has a little money to throw at out-of-the-box experiments for creatively exploring technology development and developer relations. And it didn't work out in time to finish and ship.

 

[Banjo64]

As someone who hasn’t got a clue about game engines really, can Sony and Microsoft not allow indies to use their propriety engines or would they be too difficult to grasp quickly?

 

[Clear]

Makes me wonder if this could have played any part in Sony raising PS+ prices.

Well....

At some point in the last couple of hours they've updated the info page with more detail and... well if anything its muddied the waters even more!

FYI: Page is here

Couple of quick observations:

Its very obvious to me this is about Unity getting more money from streaming, because now the unequivocally state that streaming counts as an install!

They really stress the point that install count continually ramps and cannot ever be reset for their book-keeping purposes, however if this means that every streaming session (per play) counts as in install, then offering any unity title via streaming opens up somebody (likely the streaming provider) to a kind of pay-for-play levy, that is also applied against the developer?!?

I cannot, CANNOT, imagine this will be in any way acceptable to anyone, unless the install counts PER USER. As in, say a gamepass subscriber downloads a game on their Xbox, and plays a few sessions via XCloud on their phone, the sum total of all those events being just a single "install fee" bump up for the developer. Because if not, a title distributed in this way is going to burn through the thresholds (and charges) vastly quicker than say an equivalent purchase of a copy on PC or whatever.

That said, based on what's written, I'm unclear (lol) on which way this is going to work. Which makes it a pretty horrendous messaging fuckup, and deservingly creating mass consternation on the part of devs using the engine.

 

[Mikado]

As someone who hasn’t got a clue about game engines really, can Sony and Microsoft not allow indies to use their propriety engines or would they be too difficult to grasp quickly?

Sony did have a royalty-free engine available for licensed devs (PhyreEngine). And devs with access to it were free to port it to anything they liked.

They stopped active development on it a few years ago however though devs were free to continue their forks of it, just without official support.

 

[CamHostage]

The problem is that realistically there is no much profit in maintaining engines. UE gets slack due to Epic generating revenue from Fortnite, but that's not the case with Unity.

Sure, the success stories in middleware engine/development suite licensing (Unreal, Renderware, IDtech, CryTech, Source, etc.) all came from developers looking for a second commerce value for their technology systems.

Unity is the outlier that it really doesn't have much of a story of game development behind it... although it did start with one game, but I don't remember if that was just a test game for the tech or if the tech came out of making the game? That title is now incredibly obscure game trivia of "What was the first Unity Engine game?" (Maybe it's called Blob-something? Bump Car-something? I'm trying to not look it up...) Obviously, whatever that game is didn't establish any second pillar of business for Unity.

So even if there is a minor player in the future, I don't see it going further away than some kind of open-source.

Another issue with a minor player taking advantage to climb the ladder is how entrenched creators are in their ecosystem of choice. Training and hiring and invested time/production elements all make it tough to move out, but also, the new places aren't as stocked in services. We've already talked about developer support and community investment being an issue. Unity and Unreal also each have plentiful marketplaces for assets and blueprints and plugins, and starting from scratch or without most of those resources (no immediate reason for the guy producing cartoon car and avatar animation packs to be as upset about this fee as the end developers since it doesn't affect them unless/until asset flipping dries up) would be daunting. Maybe that'd also be an opportunity, to pioneer fresh land (and so many of these assets are ripped off anyway, so what's to stop an assets hustler from bringing plundered Anime Girls and Military Guns packs to a new marketplace? In fact, on the Godot Marketplace frontpage, there's a promoted tutorial page on how to "Convert your assets from Unity to Godot")

It only works though if the scales totally tilt, and even though there's a lot of familiar elements from one to another, it's a big commitment to make a jump. And it has historically taken a leader inside the project (and a well-funded leader at that) pushing the tools for their own purposes as much as for any external value to tip things in their direction.

 

[CamHostage]

Sony did have a royalty-free engine available for licensed devs (PhyreEngine).... They stopped active development on it a few years ago however though devs were free to continue their forks of it, just without official support.

Hmm, I always thought or was told PhyreEngine was something more of a framework than an engine, same with Microsoft's XNA? (I don't actually understand completely what the difference is between an "Engine" and a "Framework" and such.)

PhyreEngine I believe is fully sunsetted in support or distribution (though recent games have still been made with it, like Unravel and OlliOlli. And then there's also the forks like Codemasters' Ego and the engine Spiders uses for its RPGs.)

XNA is also gone, but the framework was resurrected and evolved to become MonoGame. Lots of games use that too (2D and 3D), like Celeste and Stardew Valley and Streets of Rage 4 and Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4.

 

[Hugare]

I honestly cant believe that someone got paid to make this decision

And worse: many people approved it

How do I get a job like this? Seriously

 

[poodaddy]

hahahahaha. Get fucked Unity, please go down in flames. Time for all the Indie Unity Devs make the jump/migrate their games to UE5.

Yeah let's all just suck off the CCP's teet instead and support one of the most corrupt publishers of the industry in Epic.

Unity sucks ass, it can't be denied, but if everyone just uses UE then we've got a whole nother can of worms, and it ain't good. The truth is there needs to be more powerful competitive engines available for the indie game developer to consider. Capcom should start licensing out the RE engine, considering how quick they put out games and how good they look, it seems an agile and powerful engine, and it'd provide a much needed alternative engine for developers of more limited funding.

 

[Mikado]

Hmm, I always thought or was told PhyreEngine was something more of a framework than an engine, same with Microsoft's XNA? (I don't actually understand completely what the difference is between an "Engine" and a "Framework" and such.)

PhyreEngine I believe is fully sunsetted in support or distribution (though recent games have still been made with it, like Unravel and OlliOlli. And then there's also the forks like Codemasters' Ego and the engine Spiders uses for its RPGs.)

XNA is also gone, but the framework was resurrected and evolved to become MonoGame. Lots of games use that too (2D and 3D), like Celeste and Stardew Valley and Streets of Rage 4 and Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4.

Spent many years working with Phyre for clients, including writing 60fps ports to Xbone/DX12/Switch/Android. It is more of a full-featured engine (compared to something like XNA) with explicit tools for level editing, vfx creation, build pipelines, etc, but it was born in the PS3 era so some of it had a somewhat retro approach to tooling compared to what folks may be used to nowadays.

It's not what I'd choose for my own projects, but it definitely included everything needed to do Sony/PC development out-of-the-box.

 

[NickFire]

Rust devs have provided this update on the whole Unity price changes fiasco.

Unity can get fucked

Yesterday Unity announced that starting next year, all games that use their engine will pay a tax per user install. The tax has ...

garry.net

Wow. I didn't realize they are doing this to companies who have already been licensing fees for a specific project. Figured this would apply to new projects. That is really messed up greedy nonsense.

This is basically the same thing Sony is doing to its loyal customers. Oh, everyone in your house has a PS5 and you invested in PSVR2 as well. As a reward we are adding another 20 annual tax to play online since its probably too late to go anywhere.

 

[Itchy Tickles]

Never had an issue with the Unity engine in terms of game quality, but the former EA and now CEO or whatever is a fucking slug, so fuck Unity.

On the other hand, fuck any developers acting like a victim with their f2p microtransaction filled games. How's it feel to be microtransactioned by a greedy bunch of cunts? Yeah, welcome to the customers side for once.

Seen a developer of some f2p game on Reddit acting all sad about this while saying (roughly) "we make f2p games for kids and our microtransactions are "only" aimed at the parents" .... crash and burn you rotten rats.

Of course there are developers who used Unity that make a game as a complete item, sell it, and that's it. For them, I do have sympathy for.

 

[Kataploom]

I really liked the Gigaya project, (both as an internal sample project to help Unity experience their own tools and provide feedback internally and externally, and also as just a cool-looking game which sort of reminded me of Jak & Daxter.) However, it was never going to be a major release for the company. It was going to be free, it was going to be limited in scope, and it wasn't going to have any monetization tail to hang a billion dollars of GaaS onto for Unity to make all the money imaginable. It was just one of those good ideas for when a company has a little money to throw at out-of-the-box experiments for creatively exploring technology development and developer relations. And it didn't work out in time to finish and ship.

They could always sell it in their Assets Store, we'd get a full commercial quality game with around 6 hours of content and the source project. Not only they'd make money but they'd help others make money for them

 

[Skifi28]

I honestly cant believe that someone got paid to make this decision

And worse: many people approved it

How do I get a job like this? Seriously

It doesn't seem like they'll have a job for long so don't be jelly.

 

[CamHostage]

They could always sell it in their Assets Store, we'd get a full commercial quality game with around 6 hours of content and the source project. Not only they'd make money but they'd help others make money for them

I'd assume it'd cost more money to finish than it would return in revenue? (Probably they already wrote it off as a loss by now.) Either way, Gigaya would generate pennies compared to the money Fortnite or even old releases of Half-Life generate to support their engine development, and wouldn't really contribute to this financial situation in any significant way.

But I'm with you in wishing that Gigaya could still happen.

 

[simpatico]

Look at Unity's books, how the hell are they losing that much money? What overhead does an engine studio have other than labor, hardware and licensing? It's incredible. Instead of trying to increase revenue, maybe layoff 60% of the administrative workforce and consolidate to a single, reasonable office building. A simple search will bring up pictures of their hipster San Francisco office building. Try Utah with less flamboyancy .

 

[pqueue]

Yeah!!! less pink- or purple-haired-developer "gay cowboys eating pudding" walking simulators clogging up Steam!!!!

 

[alphachino]

There is no bigger buzzkill in gaming than purchasing a new game, downloading it, launching it only to then to find out it's built on Unity.

I'd be far happier if Unity ceased to exist.

 

[jshackles]

 

[laynelane]

I don't know if this would even be enforceable.
I get it if Sony/MS are actually publishing the game, but they are expected to pay for every third party Unity game they put on their services?

This is as if, I don't know, Avid went to streaming services and demanded 20 cents every time someone watches any content that was edited on their Media Composer software, even if it's just a third party show/movie that the company just paid to stream on their service.

That was my thought too. Is it enforceable? Why would sub providers agree to this? Why should Unity be an exception? If they get paid extra, then wouldn't that open the floodgates for everyone else? As well, this policy applies to developers who pay to use the Unity engine:

Developers paying over $2,000 a year for a Unity Pro plan would have to hit higher thresholds and would be charged with lower fees.

Source.

How many times should Unity be paid for developers using their engine? I am very curious about what MS and Sony have to say about this.

 

[Buggy Loop]

They think they can alter the deal Nintendo signed for Pokemon

Nintendo's legal team will Thanos snap Unity out of existence

 

[Sorcerer]

Unity clarified aspects of their new policy. I found this bit interesting:



I wonder if MS, Sony, etc. are onboard with this and, if not, what could Unity do about it?

Refuse to cooperate, have Unity rescind or Unity will bury itself. Unity cannot stand against both monolith corporations and developers. MS, Sony and Nintendo must be having a good laugh over this.

 

[FStubbs]

I think the biggest issue here would be developers getting charged for pirated games.

 

[wolffy66]

Unity clarified aspects of their new policy. I found this bit interesting:



I wonder if MS, Sony, etc. are onboard with this and, if not, what could Unity do about it?

With the negotiation power Sony and MS have they would probably get deals, leaving smaller players at an even bigger disadvantage

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

With the negotiation power Sony and MS have they would probably get deals, leaving smaller players at an even bigger disadvantage

No. With the negotiation power that platforms have, they will 100% tell Unity to go fuck themselves. There is no reason for them to be extorted or tolerate the negative impact these policies will have on their development partners.