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Unity introducing new fee attached to game installs
- Thread starter jshackles
- Start date
_Ex_
Gold Member
Imagine the hubris of charging more for a failing product.
abstract alien
Member
Wait...so not only do they get paid from the licensing fee, which is completely understandable, but they get an extra cut for every time a game gets installed? We are in new territory with that one.
supernova8
Banned
So does this mean developers would have to pay $0.20 per install per month regardless of how much total revenue the game is generating?
So... 100,000 users.... $0.20 per month... => $20,000 per month?
Or is it $0.20 per new install for that specific month?
(or am I getting it wrong?)
Either way sounds shit no matter how you cut it. Should just be a cut of revenue.
edit: applying this retroactively is a massive dick move. Presumably developers created and released their games with a certain business model (ie F2P) based on Unity's revenue cut structure at that time. It would be marginally more acceptable if they said "we're bringing in these new changes next year" but of course if they knew developers would jump ship, they want to squeeze as much cash as possible before the exodus.
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SlimeGooGoo
Banned
By the way, may I ask if could you please unban
Fuz
and
Patrick S.
?I know they joked with a sensitive topic, but they had no prior history of bad discipline. They were good users, and probably didn't really mean what they said.
I respect your final decision, but given a second chance I doubt they would joke with the topic again. Giving them a non-permanent ban would also be acceptable.
Love, SlimeGooGoo
Gambit2483
Member
Unity means togetherness.
No.
Dirk Benedict
Gold Member
Wow. This sack of sleepy shit slinked his was into Unity, eh? Mixed feelings about this one.Ex-EA CEO strikes again
fran.fernandez
Member
My English is not good but I clearly can read AND no?
If I make a shitty game with 1M installs I pay 0.
If my shitty game make 200K us in 12 months , then I start paying for each new install after the 1M . (Passed the installed and money threshold).
Still bad but won’t affect free games .
If I make a shitty game with 1M installs I pay 0.
If my shitty game make 200K us in 12 months , then I start paying for each new install after the 1M . (Passed the installed and money threshold).
Still bad but won’t affect free games .
lyan
Member
I think the bigger issue here is how they force license changes on users. Unreal on the other hand allows one to decline and continue using an older version with the previous license.
Cyberpunkd
Member
No, it should not be. It’s not Unity’s business how much money the game makes, this is similar example to a plumber charging you 3x for the same job because your house is nice and they know you’re rich.
"Sorry we can't give you metrics, here's what you owe us"
Nah
SlimeGooGoo
Banned
lyan
Member
Is the one in my avatar, well I just like that shot in particular.This your waifu?
supernova8
Banned
I don't think your plumber analogy is relevant at all, but if we have to use a plumber analogy:
The plumber came to your house a few months back and fixed a leaky pipe. At the time they charged you a one-time fee of, say, $50. You paid them and you both parted ways.
Few months later the plumber calls up and says "Oh sorry, forgot to errr mention but you need to pay me $5 for every day that your pipe doesn't leak ... oh and that's counting from the day after I fixed it so... here's a bill for a gazillion dollars"
Or something like that. Silly analogy honestly.
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Cyberpunkd
Member
And just like the case of the plumber that revenue model is scammy on the part of Unity. I don’t understand how anyone except them can defend it.
supernova8
Banned
You mean taking a percentage of revenue?
Not sure about scammy, seems pretty widely accepted. Sony does it. Microsoft does it. Steam does it. Epic does it. Apple does it. Google does it.
Plus some retail/shopping centers do it (in Japan at least), whereby tenant businesses don't have to pay any rent if their sales drop below a certain threshold.
Funny thing is while these multinationals are happy to take a cut of total (global) revenue, they are vehemently against governments ever wanting to take a cut of their global revenues (because we know how they shift money around to avoid paying tax
)
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Johnny Concrete
Member
If they want money from free to play/sub based games, why not take a percentage of the total revenue from that game. Including gamepass deals and micro transactions?
That way the developer can take that into account when making such deals or when pricing their ingame stuff.
That way the developer can take that into account when making such deals or when pricing their ingame stuff.
Felessan
Member
It affects small devs, it's pennies for likes of Activision and Mihoyo. They for sure don't use personal license - 5M installs in developed countries will cost 87k, and in emerging markets only 25k, and they will ripoff much much more than install cost from players.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Sounds reasonable. That's really just like a royalty based system. Like for every Disney character mug sold by a licensee, Disney gets 50 cents flat rate per unit or 5% of gross or net sales. Or copying any e-store like Steam or consoles and they only get paid on any revenue achieved. The more they sell the more they get. And if they sell $0, they pay $0.
I'm thinking they dont want to do that because with the endless number of F2P games made from their game engine that costs a lot of money to make (hence the giant losses the company has been doing for years), it'll be a combination of needing to raise more revenue now upfront, too much tracking, too many studios fudging numbers, too many saying forget it you cant see our mtx revenue and too many that make such little money doing that way it's better to do this 20 cents method.
The 20 cent method (whether it's per download, per install, per user etc.....) is a front loaded way of collecting money without worrying about the success or failure of a % of revenue model. The royalty way for F2P makes them money if it's successful and the studio is good with all of the above to pay. But if the project fails and makes no real money across 500,000 downloads, Unity makes no money off it. But their change in strategy is they want to be paid something and not give a shit if the game makes no money or becomes the next Fortnite. Just pay up 20 cents and thats all they are asking for. So for 500,000 downloads above the thresholds in the 20 cent tier they want $100,000.
For the games that make tons of money, the 20 cents per download will end up being peanuts. But if the project stinks, they'll be fucked and be in the hole big.
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![L*][*N*K](/data/avatars/m/842/842515.jpg?1696510303){kind=avatar}
L*][*N*K
Banned
Allow me, it is greed. some idiot came up with it at the 9:00am morning meeting and the other idiots nodded, nothing else.
Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
Things are starting to move pretty fast.
Kataploom
Gold Member
It would be weird if this wasn't the case, they're changing the rules of the game without noticing and affecting businesses to the point it can even ruin them perpetually.
This should apply only to new games released after 1st January and it shouldn't be charged for lifetime installs because it makes a it too expensive over the time and completely unsustainable, it should only charge per year installs.
Even then they better find other ways to monetize because they're already being eaten alive lol.
Now... what would happen if a dev doesn't pay Unity? Will they make the game impossible to install or run to new customers?
winjer
Gold Member
But even if it would only be for games released after the 1st of January, it would still affect most studios.
Games take years to make, so there are many games that are now half way trough development, that will be released after that date.
The other option is to scrap a ton of work and switch to Unreal or some other game engine.
Pejo
Gold Member
Big advantage to Unity over other engines is that it's basically the most accessible to port your games back and forth between PC/Console and Mobile. So depending on what kind of game you are making and what you want your audience to be, it's the best option.
Also while Unity suits are being total fucking dickwads right now, I shudder to think about a single engine marketplace. Last thing I want is for Tim Sweeney to be in charge of the only option for 3rd party game engine.
Pejo
Gold Member
They're gonna have to do a cutoff date for previously released games before anybody is gonna be willing to deal with this. Like any game released after 1/1/2024. For devs that basically gave away their games and have little to no revenue, it's still gonna be a giant black hole for finances for previous games. I can't understand how legally they can alter the contract to be effective prior to this announcement. Seems fucking silly.
Bernardougf
Member
Yes... its always like this .. always .. and thats why (for example) that I trully wanted this gamepass failed model to die .. the future is exactly this. Start paying less and End paying more (and owning fucking nothing)
RoadHazard
Gold Member
But you need to cross both the revenue and install thresholds before you have to start paying, so games that don't make money shouldn't be affected.
Pejo
Gold Member
Is it self reported when you hit these thresholds? I am just wondering how they will gather this data. There's a lot that's changed already since yesterday and a lot that probably will change still but this whole plan of theirs was incredibly poorly thought out.
Guilty_AI
Member
They can't. In fact, they may be even breaking their own terms of service.
It was this dumb of an idea.
Jack Videogames
Member
Holammer
Member
I was just about to post that. Will be interesting to see if it or any other existing games will migrate to another engine.
Preferably a free one which does not call home.
Guilty_AI
Member
Things that they could do to improve on this fee:
>Make it per download, not per install.
>Make it one time only per user (seems they're already onto to this).
>Make it only elegible for games released post 01/01/2024, maybe with some exception clauses for GAAS games or games that receive large updates after the date.
>Adjust these sales threshold and fees to better monetize high-profiting games like Genshin Impact.
>Forget this idea, abandon all that subscription shit and just start taking sales royalties after certain thresholds like Unreal.
>Make it per download, not per install.
>Make it one time only per user (seems they're already onto to this).
>Make it only elegible for games released post 01/01/2024, maybe with some exception clauses for GAAS games or games that receive large updates after the date.
>Adjust these sales threshold and fees to better monetize high-profiting games like Genshin Impact.
>Forget this idea, abandon all that subscription shit and just start taking sales royalties after certain thresholds like Unreal.
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Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
I genuinely don't know how their contracts are structured to enable this... there's no doubt a clause that says that Unity can make a material adverse change without notice to the other party, but whether or not that's enforceable in this case is pretty dubious. It's also interesting that they will be going after Microsoft and Sony for their cut for games that are on Gamepass/PS+. How, exactly, does that work? There's no privity of contract there, and I hardly think Unity has the clout to hold anyone's feet to the fire and say they'll refuse to ship features or something like that. And then there's the privacy questions, and how they're tracking installs - how much data are they actually mining from end users?
So, I've got to commend them. They've managed to piss off literally everybody, perhaps irreparably, in less than a day. Having worked with some of the leadership team who signed off on this on their side in a previous life, I'm completely and utterly unsurprised... and yet, somehow disappointed.
So, I've got to commend them. They've managed to piss off literally everybody, perhaps irreparably, in less than a day. Having worked with some of the leadership team who signed off on this on their side in a previous life, I'm completely and utterly unsurprised... and yet, somehow disappointed.
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Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
I would guess that it's partially due to the way Unity wants to track this. Platforms don't report sales data to Unity, and game devs obviously won't with this change. Unity claims to have a proprietary way to figure out how many installs a game has had, so that's probably their best avenue for determining usage. They're also going to charge devs twice if a game is installed on a second device, so there's probably a little bit of additional revenue to be had there (though not much)... though the original plan they outlined would've charged a dev every single time a game is installed and reinstalled, which is peak insanity.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Seems like a workaround for revenue-based sharing. i.e. that devs cannot claim that they made $0 from a million installs because it was f2p, despite their entire business model making a fortune from MTX.
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
Nah - if it was revenue-based sharing, it'd be set up so that Unity gets a cut of base game sales AND MTX. Ie: Unity succeeds when their devs succeed. But noooo. They want to be punk rock.
Gambit2483
Member
Interfectum
Member
I don't think I've ever seen a tech company blow their brains out in a spectacular fashion like Unity has here. I mean, who the fuck in their right mind would use Unity knowing they could possibly bankrupt you into oblivion?
Gobsmacked is the only word I can think of for this.
Gobsmacked is the only word I can think of for this.
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