[HN Gopher] Unity plan pricing and packaging updates
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Unity plan pricing and packaging updates
Author : aschearer
Score : 336 points
Date : 2023-09-12 13:55 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.unity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.unity.com)
| matt3210 wrote:
| Using small sandboxes with randomized hardware IDs, a malicious
| actor could really mess things up
| jsharpe wrote:
| Charging a monthly fee on game installs is absolutely wild,
| considering that most games on Steam are one-time purchases. The
| personal fee (for first world countries) is $0.20 / month. If you
| charged $10 for the game, you'd be losing money after only 50
| months (around 4 years).
| [deleted]
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| It looks to be per-install, not per-month-installed.
| delfinom wrote:
| Yea there seems to be some moronic wording on Unity's part,
| either they actually intended to originally charge per month
| or some other nonsense.
|
| It seems they will just bill monthly on the net gain in
| installs.
|
| They still avoid the topic of defining how a install is
| tracked (do reinstalls count?) and so far on their forum have
| not replied to it.
| tapland wrote:
| It seems pretty clear in the "Detailed FAQ"
|
| > We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that applies to
| certain Unity subscription plans based on per-game installs
| across any Unity-supported game platform.
|
| > An install is defined as the installation and
| initialization of a project on an end user's device.
|
| > Each time a game is downloaded, Unity's runtime code is
| also installed. The Unity Runtime Fee goes towards the
| continued investment in that code to support the billions
| of devices served every month.
| kwanbix wrote:
| So if BuyerX installs the game, I get charged, he then
| re-formats his hard drive, and re-install, I get charged
| again, if he goes to another of his machines and install,
| I get charged again? Crazy.
| subsistence234 wrote:
| And a weirdo who hates a developer could keep auto-
| reinstalling (or just re-triggering the "new install"
| signal to unity servers) 1000 times per day, every day.
| gambiting wrote:
| They will most likely use hardware ID to track installs. So
| if you reinstall the game on the same machine it won't
| count, if you install it on a different one it will. Unless
| they let you bind it to some internal ID and track it that
| way.
| nullifidian wrote:
| >if you install it on a different one it will.
|
| Making the developer pay for user's hardware upgrades is
| still insane.
| gambiting wrote:
| On PC the only upgrade that would generate a new hardware
| ID would be a complete mobo replacement and that's
| somewhat rare. Upgrading your CPU/GPU/RAM does not
| regenerate the hardware ID.
| nullifidian wrote:
| >Upgrading your CPU
|
| On the recent Intel platforms upgrading your CPU required
| upgrading your mobo too, and there are many people who
| upgrade almost every generation, i.e. 1-2 years.
| Burdening game developers with this is unjust. The engine
| fee should be tied to the game's purchase, or game
| related purchases(DLC, other paid content).
|
| AMD also promised (iirc) that the AM5 will only be good
| for 2 generations.
| gambiting wrote:
| I'm aware. Yet I am prepared to wager that the number of
| people who upgrade their own mobo(instead of buying a
| whole new pc/laptop) is absolutely insignificant on the
| scale of the market.
| optionalsquid wrote:
| That makes me wonder: How would they count legitimate vs
| pirate installs? Would the developer be on the hook for
| both?
| yalok wrote:
| Accessing those identifiers violates App Store and Play
| Store rules for some categories of apps (kids app eg)
| gambiting wrote:
| I was talking about PC specifically. Android and IOS
| don't have that problem because you'd use the app
| store/play store token to verify installation.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > They will most likely use hardware ID to track
| installs. So if you reinstall the game on the same
| machine it won't count
|
| Pretty trivial for a malicious user to spoof, but I
| wouldn't be surprised if it's something that calculates a
| new hardware id for trivial changes as we see so often
| with "don't install this on more than 1 computer" DRM
| implementations.
| hightrix wrote:
| There was some clarification on twitter, I couldn't find
| the direct link to the tweet without a login.
|
| https://forum.unity.com/attachments/upload_2023-9-13_1-49
| -36...
| duped wrote:
| Unless you get crafty, machine identifiers aren't stable
| on Windows and will change with updates. So if you update
| windows and reinstall an app, a lot of naive software
| will detect that as a fresh install on a fresh machine.
|
| That would really suck for a small Unity dev to get
| screwed by a Windows update that forces reinstall of
| their users' game libraries - which isn't that uncommon.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| I still refuse to believe that's the right interpretation.
| That can't be real. Are you really going to owe more to Unity
| every time a user uninstall/reinstalls your game? If they
| want to play in their main PC and their Steamdeck?
|
| Completely abolishes the incentive of pushing free updates
| too. You don't want to make new great features that would
| push people to re-download your game.
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| Their FAQ page makes it crystal-clear
| Nullabillity wrote:
| From the FAQ:
|
| > We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that applies to
| certain Unity subscription plans based on per-game
| installs across any Unity-supported game platform.
| Creators only pay once per download.
|
| > An install is defined as the installation and
| initialization of a project on an end user's device.
|
| The FAQ clarifies absolutely nothing.
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| I wonder if it actually applies to updates. I doubt that.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| No, but people might reinstall en masse when you have a
| nice free update.
| dmoy wrote:
| It's not monthly, but it is worded terribly in the table.
|
| Still bonkers for a cheap mobile game.
| tiptup300 wrote:
| Anyone else miss XNA?
|
| There's MonoGame, but man, it's really a mess, they're still
| using Microsoft.XNA.Game;
|
| And I always have a hell of a time getting it hooked into Visual
| Studio.
|
| Recently started a C# project that renders using DirectX onto
| Windows SDK window.
|
| Hopefully I can continue along with that.
| pavlov wrote:
| Last year Unity merged with IronSource, a mobile app ad network.
|
| The writing was on the wall then. These "pricing upgrades" today
| are designed to drive more adoption of Unity's ad network.
| Popular free games will have to start showing ads via Unity to
| pay for the new runtime distribution fee.
| nugget wrote:
| Most of the talent from IronSource has left or checked out, and
| they started to slip in competitiveness and lose clients as a
| result. This pricing model seems designed to slow those losses,
| but if it increases developer adoption of Godot or another
| rival platform (other than Unreal), it seems like Unity is
| playing with fire here.
| Kerbonut wrote:
| They are literally disincentivizing installation of games made
| by their engine, hilarious.
| BonitaPersona wrote:
| Well, this is in line with their wonderful incentive for devs
| to pay to REMOVE the mandatory Unity logo.
|
| This has made +10 years of high-quality, unforgettable, GOTY
| games made in Unity to not have the logo, while all the
| humble, low-quality, full of free-asset-store assets,
| practice projects of newbies, show the Unity logo first and
| foremost.
|
| Literally attaching your brand recognition to the projects
| exactly opposite of the ones you want your brand to be
| recognized with.
| Explore3003 wrote:
| Between this and the 30% commission charged by Game Stores, is
| there any profit left in gamedev anymore?
| BonitaPersona wrote:
| If you want income, either you
|
| - cross your fingers for a deal with a major (Xbox game pass,
| Epic exclusivity) - cross your fingers for a deal with one of
| the smaller ones that will do proper guidance and marketing
| (devolver, deck13, new blood, Annapurna, team17, etc) - cross
| your fingers for big streamers to dedicate at least a few hours
| to your game - make an extremely niche, moated game that will
| for sure attract a specific fanbase that buys everything on
| that niche. And cross your fingers that a competitor doesn't
| launch around the same date. - make an addictive gachapon
| filled casual mobile game, and burn money in ads
|
| Only one of these doesn't have you crossing your fingers. (I'm
| half joking please don't take this too seriously)
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I am not a fan of Unity, but this pricing style don't offend me.
|
| Per install fixed cost is a good way to avoid the race to the
| bottom and then the F2P nightmare that still plague the mobile
| gaming market.
|
| Before Apple invented the $.99 pricing tier, most mobile games
| were sold for $7-$20 and it was, IMO, a much better market.
| gs17 wrote:
| If it only applied to games sold for profit (or with
| microtransactions) it would be okay, but basing it on installs
| leads to things like that a Unity developer should avoid
| including their game in a charity bundle unless they mostly
| want to donate to Unity. E.g. Fanatical's Stand With Ukraine
| Charity Bundle would have cost each developer ~$2000 if they
| were on a Personal/Plus plan. It's not a huge amount, but Unity
| does not deserve it.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Was this true? I recall back when the first wave of App Store
| games were coming out, the general feeling among mobile players
| was "You buy your $40 game, and I'll buy 40 $1 games and we'll
| see who has more fun." So I think mobile games were always dirt
| cheap.
|
| Nowadays, of course, the $40 game is $70+Battle Pass+Digital
| Deluxe Upgrade+Day 1 DLC and the $1 game is free but contains a
| hypnotoad that will mind control you into spending $400 a month
| gambling for jpegs.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Mobile gaming was not a big market but it was already there
| before the iPhone. My company and quite a few others were
| making games for this market.
|
| Dirt cheap games appeared "thanks" to Apple.
| ncr100 wrote:
| So you feel this applies healthy economic pressure, and his
| appropriate for applying across all markets?
|
| Like I kind of get where you're going... Increasing
| expectations so products must be high quality and guaranteed to
| be profitable. Although that's still a little wishful. And so
| it might not be realistic.
|
| I personally think this will actually suffocate certain
| segments of the software market. It's like the insurance donut
| hole here in the United States where if you're between certain
| ages you don't qualify for Medicare and you still are paying
| for it and so you risk going into extremely high insurance cost
| zone, just because your age happens to be like 58 years old.
| matt3210 wrote:
| People keep saying this is not a monthly charge per install. The
| header clearly says "standard monthly rate" with various per
| install charges. An I not interpreting this correctly?
| dcow wrote:
| Billed monthly for net gain in installs.
| starburst wrote:
| It is bad phrasing, I think they meant each month you need to
| pay X for the installs of the month. You pay only once per
| install.
|
| Also what is an install? Why not go with "user", someone
| installing the game 5 times is gonna cost 1$?
|
| Terrible communication all around form Unity.
| gs17 wrote:
| Not just "what is an install?" but "how do they detect
| installs?" Does every Unity game have always-online DRM
| included now? Will pirates count, so Unity demands a share of
| money you didn't make? If you give out an open beta to the
| public, do those development versions count as installs?
|
| Unsurprisingly, the FAQ does not answer much.
| starburst wrote:
| Or what about games made on previous version of the engine?
| They certainly didn't include a phone home to Unity but
| still according to the pricing on January 1st any new
| installs of old games is going to have a cost at that
| point...
|
| Web Games? So every single person that open the web page is
| going to cost me 0.20$?
| gs17 wrote:
| >So every single person that open the web page is going
| to cost me 0.20$?
|
| That's what they're saying, "each time a qualifying game
| or app is downloaded by an end user". And they have an
| incentive to count multiple downloads as multiple
| "installs".
| [deleted]
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Boy, this is demoralizing. Unity needs to make money, but they
| just gave folks a great reason on the lower end a reason to
| switch to the completely free Godot which: - Will soon reach
| performance parity - Now supports C# - Is less bloated - Is FOSS
|
| Unity did have some great and useful libraries for doing things
| like animation rigging and editor customization. RIP
| gsuuon wrote:
| I wonder if this is an attempt to motivate Unity developers to
| produce higher quality (or at least, higher retention) games?
| This seems to heavily favor desktop experiences that are paid
| upfront and mobile games with high retention, while it would more
| or less kills hyper-casuals with low retention.
| moogly wrote:
| https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1701679721027633280
|
| "I got some clarifications from Unity regarding their plan to
| charge developers per game install (after clearing thresholds)
|
| - If a player deletes a game and re-installs it, that's 2
| installs, 2 charges
|
| - Same if they install on 2 devices
|
| - Charity games/bundles exempted from fees"
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Oh boy. Anyone remember a decade ago when Adobe tried to charge a
| revshare for cross-compiled 3d engine code on Flash Player and it
| pushed everyone out of Flash development and to Unity?
|
| Also, this continues my pet peeve of disguising bad news with
| neutral headlines. If they had made anything cheaper they would
| have put it in the headline. "Updates" means "price increases".
| [deleted]
| bnewton149 wrote:
| I've enjoyed using Unity for the last 6 years but this is a deal
| breaker. It's just wrong and makes one wonder what other policies
| they're considering.
|
| After taking some time to mourn I plan on looking into Godot. I
| expect to take a big productivity hit but at least I won't be
| continuing to invest my time into working on a platform that is
| so anti-dev.
| ncr100 wrote:
| What's super crappy about this is all the plugins, I've
| invested mega money in c# Unity specific asset store assets and
| now switching platforms is extra painful, vendor lock-in and
| all that. Foolish me.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I'm looking into chatgpt to convert my libraries to godot.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| Is that working? I'd pay for an automated tool to help
| convert my unity stuff into Godot right now.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| It's not automated, but I'm able to make surprisingly
| progress while not knowing much about godot.
|
| You'll need to do some prompt engineering and must have
| chatgpt4 to get good results.
| raytopia wrote:
| Similar to when GameMaker: Studio switched to a subscription
| model Unity is about to shed a lot of users but will probably
| make mire money then it ever has.
|
| Also this seems to be targeting the mobile market more than other
| markets because of how large install bases are on that platform.
| 100M+ users for each popular mobile game * 0.01-0.02 = a lot of
| money for Unity.
| matt3210 wrote:
| This is effectively a 20% charge on a 1$ game. I'm sure the
| studios will pass this charge on to the customers so it won't
| matter much to them.
| dns_snek wrote:
| If their sales margin is the same, but fewer users buy and
| install their game because it's now 20% more expensive, that
| reduces their overall profit which definitely matters to
| them.
| hanniabu wrote:
| TIL you pay more the more your game is used. I thought these were
| just normal subscription pricing. I guess it's only a matter of
| time before this type of thing will be introduced into code
| editors like VSC and you need to pay based on how much your
| program is used. Middlemen rent seekers are a cancer.
| ponytech wrote:
| Godot is announcing a new funding program on the same day!
| https://godotengine.org/article/godot-developer-fund/
| Coincidence?
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| We were paid a fixed price by Microsoft to be in Gamepass and at
| the time we had no idea how many installs there would be.
|
| We had over X million downloads of Void Bastards.
|
| I wonder how many people are scrambling to pull the game out of
| Gamepass right now :)
|
| Update: I updated my comment to hide the install numbers in case
| there was some rule that prevents developers sharing those
| numbers.
| matt3210 wrote:
| Does this apply to existing games? I can see a lot of companies
| running on margins going it of business here.
|
| I wonder if this entire fee will be passed directly to the
| customer
| [deleted]
| 6581 wrote:
| According to the FAQ, it does apply to existing games.
| matt3210 wrote:
| Ouch
| matt3210 wrote:
| If we save 0.2 per install by having Unity ads, does this mean
| the other ad sources drive less income? This effectively means
| the saved amount by using Unity ads is offset by the lost income
| from the no longer used original ad source.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| The blog post: https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-
| packaging-updat...
|
| You are likely already paying a recurring cost to Unity, as per
| https://unity.com/pricing: Excluding the free Student & Personal
| tiers, the starting list price is $2,040 per year per user (for
| Unity Pro), going up to $4,950 per year per user for the top tier
| (Unity Industry).
|
| So, this is a new charge, which becomes active when the following
| conditions are met for a particular game:
|
| * # of installs, over the life of the game, passes 200k
| (Personal) or 1MM (Pro/Enterprise). * Revenue, over the last 12
| months, passes $200k (Personal) or 1MM (Pro/Enterprise).
|
| Once both of those thresholds have been met, then you get charged
| a flat fee per install over the threshold. So, if you meet the
| Revenue amount, and you've had 200k/1MM installs, your next
| install requires you to pay a fee to Unity.
|
| This is all covered in the table at
| https://unity.com/sites/default/files/2023-09/NewFeeTable.pn...
|
| For games that are not being distributed through a channel
| (Steam, GoG, console/app store, etc.), this is going to be really
| annoying to track and report on. This is also going to be
| annoying for games that are distributed through multiple
| channels. Unity's probably going to get into the auditing game at
| some point; a la Microsoft, Oracle, etc.
| crtasm wrote:
| > this is going to be really annoying to track and report on.
|
| I imagine they could expand on their existing analytics
| platform, which I believe is already forced into any release
| from Unity Personal?
|
| https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/com.unity.services.analytics...
| Animats wrote:
| > We will also add cloud-based asset storage...
|
| So your game is dependent on their servers, and they can kill
| your game?
| gs17 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the way they determine installs adds
| an extra layer of DRM that requires an internet connection too,
| killing all Unity games if the company ever goes under.
| droptablemain wrote:
| Does this mean the developer has to pay a license fee if someone
| acquires and plays their game in a "non-standard" way?
| ncr100 wrote:
| Yes, so far there has been no clarification by unity about
| pirate installs or malicious competitors faking the unique
| installation API called to the Unity backend.
|
| Ripe for fraud.
|
| If unity is malicious they could actually set up farms
| artificially inflating installation counts and generating a
| little extra profit.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I am 100% going to do this with an old laptop of mine. Is it
| even "fraud" if I just want to test my SSD longevity by
| constantly installing and uninstalling a game?
| ncr100 wrote:
| Only if there's a contract between you and whatever other
| entity is doing this kind of per install behavior tracking.
| danShumway wrote:
| They're also introducing new DRM requirements for the editor
| (https://unity.com/pricing-updates):
|
| > Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-
| in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into
| the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use
| Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue
| using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come,
| when this change takes effect.
|
| Notably, Adobe Creative Cloud requires you to check in every 30
| days to validate licenses. I feel like it takes some work to come
| up with a DRM scheme for a development tool that is more onerous
| than Adobe's restrictions, but what do I know?
|
| I certainly have never left a demo laptop unplugged for a week
| and then set up a demo quickly without Internet access and needed
| to make a quick change in my engine. That never happens to indie
| developers, so locking down the editor until they reestablish an
| Internet connection totally won't be a problem for them. /s
| Animats wrote:
| > I certainly have never left a demo laptop unplugged for a
| week
|
| Right. I had a demo laptop turned off for most of a year, and
| when I turned it back on, it took half an hour while Windows
| updated. All laptops are now on Linux.
| appplication wrote:
| > Notably, Adobe Creative Cloud requires you to check in every
| 30 days to validate licenses. I feel like it takes some work to
| come up with a DRM scheme for a development tool that is more
| onerous than Adobe's restrictions, but what do I know?
|
| JetBrains license server is 48 or 72 hours and won't even let
| you open the app in any way if you have no connection.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I've resisted moving to Godot because I already know Unity so
| well, but I guess they've finally forced me to switch.
| sytse wrote:
| I think GoDot will become very popular as an alternative and
| started a company around it. Ramatak released the first pre-
| release of their mobile studio for GoDot two weeks ago
| https://twitter.com/RamatakInc/status/1696914278861656397
| j1mmie wrote:
| I will move as soon as possible. Unfortunately I've got a
| two-year old project I'm about to launch. Can't rewrite it
| now. This is really not great
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Don't drop all the eggs you already have. But if you can
| look into a new basket after launch, then Unity sure is
| giving you a good reason to shop around.
| giyokun wrote:
| Welcome to the party!
| danShumway wrote:
| Godot just announced a new developer funding platform today
| for donations, which apparently takes a smaller cut per-
| donation than Patreon does.
|
| It's optional (Godot is free), but if any developers who are
| considering switching from Unity want to see Godot
| development accelerated, consider kicking the project a few
| dollars a month: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-
| developer-fund/
| EA-3167 wrote:
| But wait, there's more!!!
|
| https://twitter.com/JohnDraisey/status/1701620078419251255
|
| > They eliminated Unity Plus subscriptions as of today, Plus
| members are being switched to Pro automatically. Be careful not
| to have auto-renew on your account if you can't afford the
| price. And this is with just 2 people on my team with project
| access.
|
| I mean... Jesus.
| throwaway4577 wrote:
| According to the article, it won't be automatic, and won't be
| a higher price at least for the first year.
|
| > Finally, Unity Plus is being retired for new subscribers
| effective today, September 12, 2023, to simplify the number
| of plans we offer. Existing subscribers do not need to take
| immediate action and will receive an email mid-October with
| an offer to upgrade to Unity Pro, for one year, at the
| current Unity Plus price.
| qwytw wrote:
| That seems unlikely. I mean why would they list Unity Plus
| per install pricing in their table if they were doing that?
| [deleted]
| Borealid wrote:
| Perhaps missed in the discussion so far is that the Unity
| Personal license (the one that's free up to a certain sales
| volume) will now require an always-on Internet connection to use.
|
| That's a change from the past, and the FAQ doesn't provide a
| reason why. My guess would be analytics over licensing, but who
| knows really.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| > Perhaps missed in the discussion so far is that the Unity
| Personal license (the one that's free up to a certain sales
| volume) will now require an always-on Internet connection to
| use.
|
| Is that really such a problem? It looks like it'll work offline
| for up to 3 days.
|
| Will there many people doing game dev that can't go online once
| every 3 days in 2024?
| grogenaut wrote:
| They got bought by an ad company, and have mainly been
| investing in ads and the 17th render pipeline internally so you
| can see where this is going: always on internet to deliver
| UHDQSRP ads
| hightrix wrote:
| Sounds like I need to start a betting pool as to when ads
| will come to the editor.
|
| Ugh, this whole thing is so frustrating. I'd love to cancel
| our unity projects and port to godot or unreal, but that's
| just not possible in the near term.
|
| Unity is doing everything they can to push devs away.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Unity spent $4.4BN to merge with an Ad Tech company. How is
| anyone surprised about this change?
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| I don't understand, is this as absolutely insane as it seems? Am
| I reading this wrong? They're charging the game developer 20
| cents every time a user installs the game? I must be missing
| something here.
| JoeOfTexas wrote:
| its bonkers, considering most games fail lol, no way some
| college student is going to pay that
| stuckinhell wrote:
| a college student wouldn't pay anything until they are making
| money
| no_wizard wrote:
| They have thresholds based on revenue and install counts. You
| have to meet both before you pay anything.
|
| After reading the FAQ though I'm not sure it's a good deal.
|
| It also seems like you 100% have to enable spyware
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| You're telling me. I've been working on a Unity project for
| several years and now I'm on the verge of scrapping the whole
| thing and starting over in Godot because of these fucking MBA
| parasites. I should've known better than to trust a publicly
| traded company with anything ever.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| Godot is reasonably better than Unity, especially with
| Godot 4 and onward. A bit of a learning curve, but that's
| the same with any engine. You can certainly prototype and
| ship more quickly with Godot than Unreal.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Godot is reasonably better than Unity, especially with
| Godot 4 and onward.
|
| I actually made a post explaining how the only terrain
| plugin available at the time didn't really work well in
| neither Godot 3, nor Godot 4:
| https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/terrains-in-godot-not-
| quite...
|
| Then, a while later, a new plugin came out that's made by
| the community, which seems to address some of my
| concerns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwJEXOglBrQ
| (video by Gamefromscratch)
|
| To me, it feels like Godot has a pretty nice future ahead
| of it. I'll probably stick with Unity for the time being,
| since I don't actually expect any of my small game
| projects to ever get big, so the change in pricing
| doesn't really affect me at the time. But in the future?
| Maybe I'll go back to Godot, even their C# support is
| getting much nicer now!
| meheleventyone wrote:
| You need to meet minimums in terms of revenue and installs so
| for college students it'd be a success problem. It's still
| going to put a load of people off because who needs the added
| worry and reporting involved!
| jsharpe wrote:
| College students don't have to, since they don't meet this
| criteria to be charged the monthly fee: "Those that have made
| $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least
| 200,000 lifetime game installs."
|
| That said, wow. Charging a monthly fee on game installs is
| absolutely wild. The personal fee (for first world countries)
| is $0.20 / month. If you charged $10 for the game, you'd be
| losing money after only 50 months (around 4 years).
| meheleventyone wrote:
| You're reading it wrong the monthly bit refers to the
| reporting/billing period and volume discounts. So each
| month you pay for the installs past the thresholds that
| month.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| They managed to create a price that inviabilizes both ads-
| for-playing (and the more devious variants, like pay-for-
| win and lottery) and upfront paid games. That's just
| amazing, and will probably become a case study somewhere
| after the company fails.
| ceeam wrote:
| 20 cents MONTHLY
| r053bud wrote:
| From the FAQ: "Creators only pay once per download."
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Surely that's not right... it's gotta be first install is 20
| cents. 20 cents per install is egregious but a recurring
| license is financially unsustainable.
| flutas wrote:
| It's only once per install. I agree that it's worded very
| badly though.
|
| > What is the Unity Runtime Fee?
|
| > (...) Creators only pay once per download.
|
| https://unity.com/pricing-updates
| ceeam wrote:
| https://unity.com/sites/default/files/2023-09/NewFeeTable.p
| n...
|
| Why does it say "monthly rate" if it's not a monthly rate?
| semanticist wrote:
| Because the pro and enterprise plans give you a price
| break based on the number of installs per month.
| flutas wrote:
| Maybe because it's paid monthly no matter what, as
| opposed to yearly plans?
|
| > You will be invoiced monthly based on the month's
| install data. Invoicing will be the same method as for
| your Unity plan subscriptions, though it will be monthly
| regardless of your Unity plan payment cycle.
|
| I'm assuming that $0.20 is paid every time it's
| downloaded based on their wording, so that could
| introduce a new way to harm competitors. Buy their game
| and uninstall / reinstall on loop?
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Unity wants to get into the premium space and shake off the
| shovelware engine stigma.
| [deleted]
| flutas wrote:
| > They're charging the game developer 20 cents every time a
| user installs the game?
|
| Yup, but don't worry. You can get a discount if you use Unity's
| ad network![0]
|
| This whole thing seems...short sighted.
|
| [0]: https://unity.com/pricing-updates "Can I get a discount on
| the Unity Runtime Fee?"
| [deleted]
| TeaDude wrote:
| I can't believe that they're encouraging MORE Unity games to
| be riddled with ads. Isn't that the (admittedly unfair but
| true for the mobile market) stereotype?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Mobile users put up with even directly "pay to win"
| mechanics and blatant gacha bullshit. They seem unwilling
| or unable, for whatever reason, to even conceive of a
| different paradigm. "Mobile gaming", read mobile
| unregulated casinos where you can never withdraw, are the
| biggest and most profitable gaming sector.
|
| Don't worry, companies like EA are looking at that market,
| licking their chops, and continue to try and push such
| concepts as gacha into what used to be perfectly fine video
| games, and plenty of consumers eat up any excuse just so
| they don't have to go a year without the exact same
| videogame as last year but worse.
| pavlov wrote:
| Unity merged with an ad network last year.
|
| The engine now exists as a vehicle to show more ads, since
| that's the primary revenue source of the company.
| hightrix wrote:
| Ads are a technological cancer that seem to have no cure
| in sight.
|
| It is really frustrating how ads have ruined so many good
| products/platforms.
| wpietri wrote:
| Yes, but the developer has to have made $200k over the last 12
| months and had 200k installs. So if you hit both minimums and
| have made $1/install, they'd like 20% of that. Unless you're in
| an emerging market, in which case it's 2%.
|
| Is that insane? I'm not a game developer, but it seems like
| it's in the ballpark of what the app stores are charging, and
| with a structure that's actually enforceable at reasonable cost
| from Unity's perspective.
| jsharpe wrote:
| They want 20% of that, PER MONTH.
| wpietri wrote:
| Sorry, where does it say per month? I don't see that.
| jsharpe wrote:
| "Standard monthly rate" above that section of the fee
| table.
| wpietri wrote:
| Ah, I see what you're saying, but in the linked FAQ it
| says, "Creators only pay once per download."
| [deleted]
| semanticist wrote:
| That just references that the fee is charged monthly and
| for pro/entprise plans based on monthly install numbers.
|
| But you're at least the second person just in this
| discussion to make that mistake, so they probably need to
| reword that table!
| flutas wrote:
| > it seems like it's in the ballpark of what the app stores
| are charging
|
| But now that's on top of the app store fee. So, using your
| example and the "standard (aka 30%)" app store fee, after
| that 200k cliff, the game makes $0.50 for every $1 sale. That
| is going to drive people away from using Unity on mobile
| games imo. Who cares about a $0.20 fee for a $70 (rip $60)
| game, but for a $1 game where 30% of your rev is already
| gone... it changes the dynamics.
|
| Maybe that's what they want though? Maybe they are trying to
| use this to angle as Unity is a "serious" engine now?
| wpietri wrote:
| Yeah, the case that interest me is mobile games with a high
| install/revenue ratio. If I install a popular game, try it
| out for 3 minutes, and decide it's not for me, then am I
| costing some indie developer $0.20 even though there's no
| revenue?
|
| My guess is that the answer there is in this bit:
| "Qualifying customers may be eligible for credits toward
| the Unity Runtime Fee based on the adoption of Unity
| services beyond the Editor, such as Unity Gaming Services
| or Unity LevelPlay mediation for mobile ad-supported games.
| This program enables deeper partnership with Unity to
| succeed across the entire game lifecycle. Please reach out
| to your account manager to learn more."
|
| My guess is that as long as Unity is getting a slice of
| your ads, you don't have to worry about per-install fees.
| So this may be more about driving free-to-play mobile devs
| to use their ad services.
|
| Depending on how the legalese is worded, we might also see
| the comeback of demo versions and paid versions. So the
| free version has lots of installs but zero revenue, and the
| $0.20 bite only comes out of things you're charging for.
| danShumway wrote:
| > it seems like it's in the ballpark of what the app stores
| are charging
|
| Are there any app stores that charge developers per
| _install_? It 's only per-purchase/transaction, right? The
| principle behind that is you don't get charged except as part
| of a transaction where you're making money. If a user
| downloads your app for free or pirates it or doesn't make any
| transactions, you don't pay anything.
|
| What Unity is saying that if I buy a new phone and re-
| download my apps, that should cost the developers money. That
| seems like a very different situation to me.
| wpietri wrote:
| I get the concern, but app stores can do that because the
| money flows through them. Unity says they're shifting away
| from revenue shares, presumably because they can't track
| purchase revenue and are tired of having a bunch of small
| fights with people who have every incentive to hide revenue
| from them.
| indymike wrote:
| > Unity says they're shifting away from revenue shares,
| presumably because they can't track purchase revenue and
| are tired of having a bunch of small fights with people
| who have every incentive to hide revenue from them.
|
| So now they are charging developers for something users
| have an incentive to try to do without paying the
| developer.
| danShumway wrote:
| > presumably because they can't track purchase revenue
|
| So tracking installs and distinguishing between pirated
| and legit copies, and fingerprinting consumer hardware,
| and dealing with malicious or troll installs is going to
| be something they're somehow better at?
|
| I can't prove Unity's motivations, but I can quote
| directly from their article:
|
| > Qualifying customers may be eligible for credits toward
| the Unity Runtime Fee based on the adoption of Unity
| services beyond the Editor, such as Unity Gaming Services
| or Unity LevelPlay mediation for mobile ad-supported
| games. This program enables deeper partnership with Unity
| to succeed across the entire game lifecycle. Please reach
| out to your account manager to learn more.
|
| and I think it's reasonable to at least entertain that
| it's not enforcement trouble that's causing them to
| create this policy. Not for the least reason being that
| they still have a revenue requirement sitting in front of
| this policy, and they still need to engage in the exact
| same accounting and fights to figure out which companies
| have made $200,000 so they can start charging them per-
| install.
| wpietri wrote:
| I have no inside knowledge and am not a game developer.
| So I'm just guessing here. But yes, I believe tracking
| installs, which have published app store numbers and are
| instrumentable by them, is much easier than tracking
| revenue.
|
| Note that nobody here really cares about total precision.
| Especially not their major customers who have negotiating
| power and who end up paying $0.01 per install. They're
| going to miss x% of the installs and have y% of spurious
| extras, and whether or not this approach advantages one
| side or the other is going to depend on a lot of factors
| down in the noise. If there's a large enough error it's
| going to end up as one more factor in the conversation
| with the account rep I'm sure they'll be having anyway.
|
| > they still need to engage in the exact same accounting
| and fights
|
| No, I think these are very different fights. A rev share
| means that every month everybody has to have the fight
| about what the actual revenue numbers are. I expect the
| way this work is that Unity will be tracking every game
| and looking at their app store metrics. If in their
| opinion they think you're making enough money to be worth
| squeezing, they're going to have an account rep call you.
| And if you don't engage, eventually they bring in the
| lawyers. So it's a one-time pain versus a monthly pain.
| Then the fight's just about install numbers, which are
| published and which I'd guess they have the ability to
| check on via instrumentation.
| danShumway wrote:
| > So it's a one-time pain versus a monthly pain.
|
| I disagree, these requirements refresh regularly and are
| applied per-game (note, I'm not saying that Unity is
| charging per-month, I'm pointing out that if you make
| $200,000 one year and $180,000 the next year, you dip
| back under the threshold and don't have to pay.)
|
| This is still going to be a continual fight. Sure, I buy
| that you save some effort for studios that are clearly
| over the threshold, but it sounds like you're primarily
| talking about smaller companies anyway, and (correct me
| if I'm wrong) I don't see how it would be harder for a
| company to say "last year our 5 games each only made
| $190,000, it was a slow year for us".
|
| > They're going to miss x% of the installs and have y% of
| spurious extras, and whether or not this approach
| advantages one side or the other is going to depend on a
| lot of factors down in the noise. If there's a large
| enough error it's going to end up as one more factor in
| the conversation with the account rep I'm sure they'll be
| having anyway.
|
| > Then the fight's just about install numbers, which are
| published and which I'd guess they have the ability to
| check on via instrumentation.
|
| I don't think these statements agree with each other. In
| any situation where it's simple to check install numbers
| (ie, Steam) -- Steam will also be tracking revenue. Where
| sales numbers are hard to track would be across multiple
| storefronts where... I mean, installs are also going to
| be hard to track. Unless they're planning to require an
| Internet connection for installing GoG games and Itch
| games because those installs aren't otherwise tracked.
| But I feel like that's going to be an issue for users if
| they do. Tracking revenue on a platform like GoG should
| be significantly easier than tracking installs, GoG has
| very little infrastructure I'm aware of to track installs
| of DRM free games.
|
| I'm not an accountant, I don't want to make a serious
| claim, I could be wrong about the complexity, but it
| sounds like there is still going to be fighting over what
| installs failed, what was and wasn't pirated, etc... is
| that fight easier to have than "how much revenue did you
| take in?" :shrug:
|
| Also bear in mind that this is not "you cross the
| threshold and then pay us for all installs", it's "you
| cross the threshold and pay us for installs _after that
| point_. " So it's not just enough to ask if a company is
| making $200,000. When did they hit $200,000 in the
| current calendar year? How many installs happened
| specifically after that point? You still have to have
| that conversation with the company's accountants and you
| still have to try and confirm dates. And you have to do
| that yearly, and if you're already going to companies
| yearly and working with their accountants per-game to
| figure out when exactly installs start costing money... I
| don't know, again I'm not an accountant. I see that as a
| similarly complicated problem. Maybe I'm wrong.
|
| ----
|
| My take is that Unity isn't saying that this makes their
| accounting easier, they're saying that it's going to
| encourage more "deep collaboration" with developers who
| purchase additional services, and that it supports the
| "continued investment" of the runtime. I'm inclined to
| believe the motivations that they're saying publicly. I'm
| sure that if they're pressed they won't reject a framing
| of accounting/ease of use, but it strikes me that it's
| not the motivation they're leading with. But I can't read
| their mind.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| The FAQ suggests that once you cross the install
| threshold, you keep paying. The thresholds are "lifetime"
|
| >The Unity Runtime Fee will apply to this game, as it
| surpasses the $1M revenue and 1M lifetime install
| thresholds for Unity Pro. Let's look at the game's
| installs from the last month: Prior month installs
| (Standard fee countries) - 200K Prior month installs
| (Emerging market fee countries) - 100K
|
| The fee for install activity is $23.5K USD, calculated as
| follows: (100K x $0.15 (first tier for standard fee
| countries)) + (100K x $0.075 (second tier for standard
| fee countries)) + (100K x $0.01 (fee for emerging market
| countries)) = $23.5K USD
| danShumway wrote:
| Wait, that can't be right, it would be ludicrous. Once a
| game passes the threshold it pays per-install
| permanently? That's so wildly horrible of a pricing model
| that I just have to assume that's not what they intend,
| even a completely out-of-touch exec should be able to see
| the problems with that.
|
| Have a game that's profitable enough to pass the
| threshold and then interest drops off? You're suddenly
| incentivized to completely take it off of the market and
| remove the game from people's libraries since you'll keep
| racking up fees from installs even if no one ever buys
| another copy.
|
| I'm not denying that the quote does seem to imply what
| you're saying, but I have to believe that's a misprint or
| bad writing on their part, the implications of the
| threshold being lifetime sales are so bad. The policy is
| bad, but there's no way Unity is _that_ comically out of
| touch, is there?
| strobe wrote:
| their terms also not about game profits. Let's say in
| case if $300k spent on Ads to get 200k+ installs and as
| result you made only $200k back as in-apps payments
| Revenue from game (so your profit is loss of
| $100k+fees+taxes) then Unity will demand you to pay them
| $40k+ just to cover installs amount and you almost won't
| have control to stop new charges because even if you will
| shutdown a game then some installs continue to happen
| from various pirate sources or some small app stores.
|
| It looks completely insane terms for lot of mobile games
| where monetization is huge challenge and difference
| between profitable game and company bankruptcy measured
| in cents per user.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Are there any app stores that charge developers per
| install?
|
| Ad platforms. It's common especially for mobile games to
| have a monetary rate where you pay per install.
| danShumway wrote:
| I would not categorize an ad platform as an app store.
| Plenty of streaming services and content licensing models
| charge per-stream/impression as well, but I feel that's a
| pretty separate category.
|
| I'd be open to more clarification if there's something
| I'm missing, but I still don't think this is comparable
| to app store fees.
| charcircuit wrote:
| It's the only thing I can think of that also charges on a
| per install basis.
| hobs wrote:
| Don't forget malware for your botnet!
| danShumway wrote:
| Do stuff like DDoS attack services or botnets charge per-
| install instead of directly for usage or compute time?
| Honestly kinda predatory pricing if that's the case.
| Seems a little problematic.
|
| /j
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Will this end free game giveaways as free wil not cost the dev?
| readyplayernull wrote:
| > cloud-based asset storage
|
| Last time I checked their storage limit was around 40GB, that's
| too little unless you are making 2D casual games. I'm making a 3D
| shooter that takes 300GB+.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| The amount of outrage from people with no P&L or game development
| experience in this thread is unreal.
|
| Let's look at fictional scenario for Vampire Survivors, and model
| 5M units sold in the first 12 months at $4.99 per sale. We'll
| also assume a Unity Enterprise plan. Units
| Sold: 5,000,000 Gross Sales: $24,950,000
| Steam Fees: $0-10M (30%): $3,000,000 $10M+ (25%):
| $3,737,500 Total: $6,737,500 Unity
| Fees: 0-100,000: $12,500 100-500k: $24,000
| 500k-1MM: $10,000 1MM-4MM: $30,000
| Total: $76,500 Net Sales: $18,136,000
|
| I can't be certain exactly how Unity is planning to accrue
| installs when determining installs over threshold, so treating it
| like brackets.
|
| So in this fictional scenario, the Unity fee is 0.3% of gross or
| 0.47% after Steam takes its cut.
|
| Even if we assume the average consumer downloads the game 1.2
| times, that's still only $20k more. The bigger issue is how
| thresholds accrue, since that could push more installs into
| costlier lower threshold brackets.
|
| I'm not sure I see the outrage.
| starburst wrote:
| Don't forget Mobile or f2p gaming, Unity has a huge market
| share there and the margin are really low, adding ~0.20$ per
| user when most will makes you 0$ doesn't make sense at all.
|
| Going with % of profit does.
|
| Also it is quite unfair to cheaper games, indie 5$ games pay a
| much bigger share than a 40$ / 70$ game
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Unity isn't responsible for a bad business model. If you
| can't turn a profit after the fee structure, then don't
| choose Unity.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Remember: It's impossible to criticize a business for
| unilaterally altering previously existing deals (this
| change is retroactive) because you should have been able to
| see in the future and know ahead of time that this change
| would hurt your business and thus Unity was the wrong
| choice.
| ncr100 wrote:
| It's a poorly marketed price change. And the way it's being
| rolled out is harmful.
|
| Along the lines of CEO John Riccitiello infamously saying
| developers who don't monetize are effing idiots:
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/18/23269218/unity-ceo-
| john-r...
| [deleted]
| asmor wrote:
| He was the person that turned EA into a microtransaction
| and arguably live-service game pioneer. For the worse.
|
| "If you are six hours into playing Battlefield, you run
| out of ammo on your clip, and we ask you for a dollar to
| reload, you're really not very price sensitive at that
| time".[1]
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR6-u8OIJTE
| MissingAFew wrote:
| >don't choose Unity
|
| Sounds good to me!
| NotGMan wrote:
| The problem with that logic is that all mobile devs will
| leave Unity -> even less money for Unity.
|
| You cannot be onsided in business: both parties have to
| profit.
|
| If one parties is screwing the other party one party will
| say "goodbye, we will take our money elsewhere".
| anonymousab wrote:
| > If you can't turn a profit after the fee structure, then
| don't choose Unity.
|
| You've got the order wrong. This is about people who
| already chose Unity, and then they changed the fee
| structure. Changing engines is beyond nontrivial for a
| project in flight.
| 3seashells wrote:
| The free market recommends open source.
| starburst wrote:
| Easy to say to mobile games studios that have ben using
| Unity for the last 10 years (or where in the process of
| releasing a game after multiple years of development) and
| didn't have to pay that tax before.
|
| Also this will apply to every games made on Unity, so if
| you have a hugely popular game just above the threshold but
| make less than 0.20$ per user you effectively need to
| shutdown it down.
|
| It isn't "bad business model" either, there is definitely a
| market for games where the revenue per user is less than
| 0.20$ (or whatever number).
|
| Going with % of revenue is the sensible decision, just like
| Unreal does...
| danShumway wrote:
| > Unity isn't responsible for a bad business model. If you
| can't turn a profit after the fee structure, then don't
| choose Unity.
|
| What? Unity is in fact responsible for the fee structure,
| _they made it_. It 's not a force of nature, you don't get
| to change the business model under people's feet and then
| say, "huh, real irresponsible of you to choose a business
| model that doesn't work because we broke it; not our fault,
| you should have planned for us changing your revenue
| structure." Especially since as far as I can tell, Unity is
| retroactively applying this change onto existing games
| already on the marketplace.
|
| God didn't make the business model bad, Unity did. And when
| those games launched, they launched under a different
| business model than what Unity is proposing. It is in fact
| not their fault that they didn't have the psychic ability
| to consider, "what if Unity randomly decides in the future
| to charge us every time a user installs one of our free
| games even if they only play it for 30 seconds?"
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > God didn't make the business model bad, Unity did
|
| No, the developer that chose Unity made the bad business
| model.
|
| If I buy a Porsche in order to do Uber, it's not Uber's
| fault that I'm going to lose money.
| 3seashells wrote:
| If you buy a Honda civic that gets upgraded to a Porsche
| deliverator mid delivery..
| danShumway wrote:
| It's the developer's fault that they didn't magically
| guess what Unity's terms were going to be in the future?
| Be serious.
|
| This is absolutely Unity's fault. If you buy a car to use
| Uber, and then half a year later Uber decides that your
| brand of car is no longer eligible to drive or that it
| needs to use a different fee structure, then it is Uber's
| fault that you are losing money.
|
| If you launch an ad-supported game in 2020 under a
| revenue share and in 2023 Unity decides that it's bored
| of revenue shares and it wants you to start paying per
| install, it is Unity's fault that you are losing money.
| There just is no way to spin it otherwise. Are you
| seriously trying to blame developers right now for not
| being psychic?
|
| I guarantee 100% that if we were having a conversation
| about Unity a year ago and someone said "I don't know if
| I should use Unity because what if they charge for
| installs in the future" you would have been making fun of
| that developer for having that concern. I promise you
| that a year ago you would not have predicted this change
| and you would have dismissed concerns about a theoretical
| structural change away from revenue shares as
| fearmongering.
|
| > If I buy a Porsche in order to do Uber, it's not Uber's
| fault that I'm going to lose money.
|
| Also once again, Unity's pricing model is not a natural
| consequence of the laws of physics. It's made up, Unity
| made it. The reason you'll lose money driving a porche
| for Uber is because the car will physically degrade, not
| because a bunch of board members at Uber got together and
| thought, "how can we extract more revenue from porsche
| owners?" Unity's revenue model is not the natural result
| of entropy, they decided to make it what it is.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| If a company makes a product, say physical goods, and the
| price of manufacturing goes up but the company doesn't
| increase consumer prices in response, is it the
| manufacturers fault?
|
| > you would have been making fun of that developer for
| having that concern
|
| What a ridiculous statement, thinking you can somehow
| figure out how I'd reply "100%" just from reading this
| thread. You haven't provided anything so far in this
| conversation that has pushed the conversation forward,
| other than some ad-hominems. Great job.
|
| > It's made up
|
| All pricing models are made up.
| danShumway wrote:
| > What a ridiculous statement, thinking you can somehow
| figure out how I'd reply "100%" just from reading this
| thread.
|
| Am I wrong? :) I mean, feel free to prove me wrong, were
| you a year ago thinking about the possibility of Unity
| dropping a revenue share model completely? Was that a
| conversation anyone was having anywhere at all? Forget
| about your personal response, you might not have been
| thinking about Unity at all a year ago. Fine. Can you
| find a thread, anywhere at all, advising mobile
| developers not to use Unity because they might abandon
| revenue sharing?
|
| I mean, apparently this is a thing they should have
| considered, right? So do you have an example of anyone,
| anywhere, considering it?
|
| The closest I can think of is the general advice to game
| developers not to use proprietary tools period, but I
| don't think that's what you're suggesting given you're
| not on here now saying that nobody should use Unity
| because of the power imbalance.
|
| > If a company makes a product, say physical goods, and
| the price of manufacturing goes up but the company
| doesn't increase consumer prices in response, is it the
| manufacturers fault?
|
| Nothing physically has changed to force Unity to change
| prices, nor is Unity claiming that's the case. Also yes,
| in a scenario where you have an agreement with a company
| and the company changes the underlying prices of that
| agreement without warning, you would be correct in saying
| that it is certainly more the supplier's "fault" that a
| company goes out of business than the company owner. You
| might claim that the supplier didn't have a choice, but
| it would be ridiculous to claim that it's the buyer's
| fault that the prices changed.
|
| And again, I have to keep saying this: there is nothing
| physical going on here and Unity the company itself is
| not claiming that they're changing their pricing model in
| order to cover new costs. Analogies to material costs
| don't really apply here.
|
| > All pricing models are made up.
|
| Yep. That's... that's what I said. And if you're asking
| "who's fault is it that the pricing model is what it is"
| it's probably the fault of the person who _created the
| pricing model_.
|
| "Who's fault is it that this book has these words in it?
| The author's?"
|
| "No, it's the readers' fault!"
|
| Come on.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > Am I wrong? I mean, feel free to prove me wrong
|
| Can you prove you're right?
|
| > I mean, apparently this is a thing they should have
| considered, right?
|
| I'm unaware of any business that doesn't consider pricing
| changes to strategic costs as future liabilities,
| especially when you don't have a contract with fixed
| terms. I don't see any evidence that Unity made
| guarantees that it's historical prices would remain
| consistent into the future. They're a public for-profit
| company, not a charity.
|
| > Nothing physically has changed to force Unity to change
| prices
|
| So not only can you predict what I would say, you have
| some sort of insights into Unity's cost structures and
| what it requires for them to keep Unity updated and
| competitive?
|
| > but it would be ridiculous to claim that it's the
| buyer's fault that the prices changed.
|
| It's not ridiculous to blame the seller that doesn't
| increase their pricing to keep a tenable margin. If my
| costs of goods increase but I keep my prices the same,
| it's my fault.
| danShumway wrote:
| > Can you prove you're right?
|
| :) I thought so.
|
| The only people making arguments about future Unity
| changes were Open Source weirdos like me who were warning
| against proprietary software in general, and we were
| regularly dismissed and called impractical. Nobody was
| considering that Unity would drop revenue sharing as a
| business model. If you go back and look at advice about
| the mobile markets, this was not a concern on anybody's
| mind.
|
| Yes, people considered that pricing itself might change,
| but professionals in industry were not advising about the
| possibility of Unity changing away from a revenue share
| model, nor was this ever coming up as a concern in
| conversations about Unity's efforts to appeal to mobile
| developers. It's actually fairly easy to tell what people
| were thinking about Unity's pricing model given how
| recent the change is -- you can just go back and look at
| the many conversations people were having about engines.
|
| I'll tell you what you won't see: you won't see a lot of
| people floating the possibility of installation-based
| pricing.
|
| > I don't see any evidence that Unity made guarantees
| that it's historical prices would remain consistent into
| the future.
|
| This isn't about a pricing change, it's about a change to
| the entire pricing model.
|
| Nonetheless, you raise a good point. Unity could make
| arbitrary changes in the future as well. Doubtless, you
| would agree that it's irresponsible for devs today to use
| Unity under the current terms given that they have no
| control over what Unity's future pricing will be and
| given that pricing changes can be retroactively applied
| to games that they release before those changes?
|
| Certainly you'd advocate today for the same level of
| responsibility and caution that you're arguing mobile
| developers should have had in the past, right? We have no
| idea what Unity's pricing model will be in 6 months,
| there's no guarantees in the contract -- and like you
| say, we need to consider that fact when building a
| business. So it would be the height of irresponsibility
| to advocate that everything is fine and the changes are
| no big deal and developers should just continue to use
| Unity.
|
| Would you advise Unity developers today to decrease
| reliance on the engine and to be extremely cautious about
| building a business on top of a platform that can make
| arbitrary changes to pricing structures and that can
| apply those changes to existing products? Sure Vampire
| Survivors is profitable now, but as you correctly point
| out, there's nothing in the contract stopping Unity from
| changing that in the future.
|
| ----
|
| > So not only can you predict what I would say, you have
| some sort of insights into Unity's cost structures and
| what it requires for them to keep Unity updated and
| competitive?
|
| Scary, right? I'm almost as psychic as you expect mobile
| developers should have been. ;) In my case it's not magic
| though, there's a trick to it. I get my information from
| having being active in game development spaces for a
| while and being familiar with the conversations that
| professionals were having about engine choice, and also
| from reading Unity's own press release and reading their
| own supplied justifications for why they're making the
| change.
|
| ----
|
| > If my costs of goods increase but I keep my prices the
| same, it's my fault
|
| For anyone unfamiliar with how F2P and ad-supported games
| work, you can't just increase the cost of purchase for
| them, that's not really a thing, ad-supported games don't
| have a purchase cost to increase.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| You're arguing in bad faith, just stop, you've been a
| total dick to the community and you keep digging this
| hole deeper.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > You're arguing in bad faith
|
| Because I'm not throwing out low-effort "woe poor game
| developer" vibes and am instead expecting more? I've
| actually made effort to model how this could work, rather
| than exclaiming "this is going to ruin indie game
| developers!".
|
| Bad faith is making unsubstantiated claims and then
| getting mad when asked to back it up.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Have you _actually_ worked on a game in any sense or
| fashion?
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Yes, casual web games. Millions of units, high eight-
| figure to low nine-figure in gross sales. Tens of
| billions of online game sessions. I helped start an early
| online gaming site called GameRival.com that's most
| famous for Gold Miner and powering MySpace Games, and
| later led engineering for Grab.com (before the domain was
| sold off for taxis or whatever it is today).
|
| I still run into Gold Miner clones at casinos even to
| this day.
|
| Have you?
| danShumway wrote:
| So what's particularly funny about this is that Unity has
| since clarified that transmission of the runtime over the
| web via streaming or browser plays counts as an install,
| and your nine-figure sales compared to tens of billions
| of sessions would have been impossible to do profitably
| under these terms. And yet you're still on here defending
| them and somehow forgot that the F2P genre existed when
| doing your math.
|
| If this is your background then this conversation is even
| more ridiculous; you should understand what it means to
| have more installs than profitable users because that was
| literally your business model. So why are you having
| trouble connecting the dots here about why developers
| would be concerned about these changes? By your math you
| were making pennies per-session. How are you having
| trouble understanding why even a 2-3 cent additional cost
| for each session would be a problem for that model?
| tomnipotent wrote:
| We didn't build our games on a platform that required
| royalties. And when the tools we did use had unexpected
| cost increases, like Macromedia Flash Communication
| Server, we built our own to replace them.
|
| Unexpected changes to supply chain happen. Cost of goods
| go up, or sometimes even disappear altogether. That's
| business. It's an absolute punch in the throat that Unity
| has decided to apply these fees retroactively with so
| little advance notice, but the onus is on the game
| developers to adapt and change their models to the new
| reality.
| NotGMan wrote:
| The problem is mobile.
|
| What if you get 5M installs and fail to monetize it or if the
| game isn't well suited to monetization?
|
| And assume that you, beforehand, breached 200k, then
| monetization drops for some reason.
|
| Then you own unity ~85k$ and you so you go in net negative.
|
| That is the real problem here.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I'd suspect if you're doing those numbers that it'd be a
| company that'd need to be on Pro licences anyway so the
| thresholds would be much higher.
| gs17 wrote:
| What if you're just an indie who makes some random app game
| that gets popular suddenly? Maybe you made the next Flappy
| Bird but didn't monetize it quite well enough?
|
| >a company that'd need to be on Pro licences anyway
|
| They also got rid of the income threshold for Personal
| licenses.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I'd choose an engine without this silly install based
| scheme. Which is what I expect most hobbyists and small
| developers to do now.
|
| The other route if the game was F2P or ad supported would
| be to use a similar process to the big guys and soft-
| launch to judge the product and monetization on a smaller
| scale.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Unless my math is wrong it seems like a pretty onerous fee
| for the case that your monetization starts failing.
|
| Start with 5 million installs, and then your new installs are
| another 5 million copies, which incurs a worst case
| ($0.20/install) $1 million fee from Unity. You would still
| have to have earned $200,000 (worst case you're personal
| user) in the last 12 months.
|
| So with this, you would gross -$800,000. And this is before
| app store fees, taxes, payroll, and no accommodation for
| pirate installs in the new plan.
|
| I don't see the benefit to the developer. Mark Whitten CFO of
| Unity, says the developers are excited about this. The 6 Plus
| pages of 99%- comments on the unity forum shows a lot of
| excitement, a lot of negative excitement from developers.
|
| I don't see the value to many developers. It seems like a
| huge mistake.
| [deleted]
| Quot wrote:
| It seems disingenuous to pick one of the most popular games of
| this year as an example when the pricing goes down with more
| sales.
|
| I would like to see that same breakdown for the much smaller
| games that barely pass the sales threshold. That is the main
| Unity audience. Vampire Survivors is a huge outlier that didn't
| even start using Unity until after it became a massive hit.
|
| https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/vampire-survivors-makes-its...
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Ok so the fees jump up to 1-3%, that's still reasonable.
| tapland wrote:
| No need to guess, worst case scenario is 10%.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > worst case scenario is 10%
|
| You seem to have pulled this number out of thin air, and
| I cannot see a scenario where this is true.
|
| Let's pretend you sell 300,000 units at $0.99 with the
| Unity Personal Plan. Units: 300,000
| Gross: $297,000 Unity Fee: $20,000
|
| That puts unity at 6.7%. The issue isn't Unity, it's the
| developers bad business model for charging $0.99 while
| opting to use Unity.
| tapland wrote:
| > You seem to have pulled this number out of thin air,
| and I cannot see a scenario where this is true.
|
| Why? Could you explain why 300k units w/ $200k gross
| would be impossible?
|
| Is it not legal to sell unity games below $0.99 each,
| maybe not even in other currencies?
|
| I'd rather be enlightened than shit upon if there's a
| reason I'm missing why the worst case scenario is 6.7%
| and not the apparent 10%.
|
| You could also add to that why 6.7% is now possible which
| is more than 2x the 1-3% from earlier?
|
| Why do you say you "pretend" in your numbers and accuse
| me of pulling numbers out of thin air with the technical
| worst case scenario?
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Steam and Epic both have a minimum price of $0.99, not
| sure about Apple & Google App Stores. Credit card
| processors have a minimum charge that makes lower prices
| untenable.
|
| > Why do you say you "pretend" in your numbers
|
| Where did you pull 10%, happy to go over your math/model.
| tapland wrote:
| > Where did you pull 10%, happy to go over your
| math/model.
|
| The example numbers I posted would give 10%.
|
| The pricing was easy enough that the 10% worst case could
| easily be pulled from it.
|
| I wouldn't trust the numbers from someone who needed a
| model to go over to see that and I seriously thought you
| were joking about not getting where the 10% worst case
| was from.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| I wasn't considering F2P or ad-supported games, so my
| mental model was seeing $0.99 as the pricing floor. If
| you want to arbitrarily choose an ARPU, we could get that
| percentage to any number we wanted to make a point.
| danShumway wrote:
| > If you want to arbitrarily choose an ARPU
|
| From https://www.statista.com/statistics/263797/number-
| of-applica...:
|
| > As of July 2023, nearly 97 percent of apps in the
| Google Play app store were freely available
|
| I don't think "arbitrarily" is the right word to use
| here. Your mental model might have been $0.99 as the
| pricing floor, but that mental model does not represent
| the reality of mobile app stores. Paid apps are a
| minority on both iOS and Android, the dominant revenue
| model for mobile games is to offer free
| downloads/installs with advertising and in-app purchases.
| [deleted]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Worth noting you are ignoring the 30% that app stores
| take off that gross, which Unity still counts against
| you.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| That's not relevant to Unity's cut in this example, since
| the percentage is based on gross.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| My point is that 30% makes the situation worse, because
| it is not available to you to pay Unity's cut, so it's as
| if you made 30% less revenue. IE Unity pricing kicks in
| at $200k gross, but that's only $170k net, which is what
| is available you as a business to pay Unity.
| theknocker wrote:
| [dead]
| babypuncher wrote:
| > Even if we assume the average consumer downloads the game 1.2
| times, that's still only $20k more.
|
| Charging the developer when a customer re-downloads a game they
| already bought sounds incredibly asinine to me, no matter how
| small the fee actually is. No download store charges for this
| privilege, and they're the ones actually footing the bill for
| the bandwidth and infrastructure to make that possible. Unity
| is adding accounting complexity and fees for something they do
| none of the legwork to provide.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Oh, but don't you know it's so small it can't POSSIBLY be a
| predatory practice! Give the corporation all of your money
| and be quiet, peon!/s
| berkle4455 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ouraf wrote:
| redo the math for an indie with Unity Personal and a sudden hit
| with 250k sales Units Sold: 250000
| Gross Sales: $1 247 500 Steam Fees:
| $0-10M (30%): $374 250 Unity Fees (personal or
| plus): 250 000 : $50 000 Net Sales:
| 823 250
|
| Now it's more or less 6%, and that's before development costs
| and taxes.
|
| It's a big bite for something that's impossible to code out of
| the project.
|
| Imagine if Oracle charged a dollar every time someone ran your
| software the first time on the JRE in that machine.
| installation on a new machine? pay again. Old customer
| reinstalls the JRE? pay again. main executable or JRE update?
| pay again.
|
| Not so funny anymore.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Except there's no fee for the first 200k installs, so the
| Unity fee is only $10k for the 50k after the threshold.
|
| You could also have saved $8k by upgrading to Unity Pro for
| $2040, though of course you run the risk of paying for that
| plan and not selling 250k units.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Vampire Survivor wasn't developed with a Unity Enterprise
| subscription, so it's irrelevant what their hypothetical cost
| structure would have been if they had done something completely
| different than what they actually did.
|
| 5 million x $0.20 = $980,000 in Unity fees under 2023 pricing
| vs. $2040 annual pro subscription under 2022 pricing (for
| exceeding $100k in sales).
|
| In other words, this is an instantaneous 480x fee increase,
| without any corresponding increase in the value of the services
| provided.
|
| Do you understand why people are outraged now?
| [deleted]
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > Vampire Survivors developer would have been using the Unity
| Personal plan
|
| So you think they would have left money on the table rather
| than spend $4k to upgrade to Enterprise?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Do you even know the history of Vampire Survivors?
|
| The game's sales blew past the Unity threshold in _hours_
| when it first became a hit. Yes, they would have switched
| to Enterprise after that. And you know what? It would have
| still been too late to prevent them from owing _several
| multiples_ of what the Unity fee used to be.
| [deleted]
| matt3210 wrote:
| Especially since the extra cost will certainly be passed onto
| the customer anyway. That's a small bump for a 4.99 game, but a
| 20% bump for a 1$ mobile game
| adocomplete wrote:
| Yup. Unity I believe is very fairly priced and even with these
| changes the fees are very reasonable for what you get. And at
| the end of the day, if you think it's too expensive, you're
| free to build your own cross platform game engine from scratch.
| anonymousab wrote:
| The number of downloads or installs is not equal to the number
| of purchases, and can be quite a lot larger, particularly for a
| game with a free demo, steam refund "trial" shenanigans,
| pirated copies, etc.
| asmor wrote:
| and depending on how unity does track an install, hardware
| changes
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Or possibly reinstalls, or even something like the user
| hitting the "generate new ad ID" button. Do they clarify
| such situations?
| anonymousab wrote:
| On mobile, theoretically each new APK - every new update
| to the game - could count as a new install.
|
| I don't think they're that crazy, but I wouldn't be
| surprised if JRR didn't even think that far.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| It seems like to me you're the one with little to no game
| development experience given your repeated comments about
| mobile games.
|
| As an example where their new pricing scheme especially breaks
| down: You actively _lose_ money (beyond just lost sales) for
| including your game in things like charity bundles because
| Unity will still ship you a bill for every install. This means
| if you had a modest success the incentive is to never give away
| your game even temporarily.
|
| They also removed pricing levels that hobbyist developers used,
| which means they also have to pay more in subscription fees (up
| to $1k+ more) in addition to the fees above.
| [deleted]
| danjoredd wrote:
| The outrage is that this pretty much kills hobbyist game devs
| in Unity. Unity was great because it allowed small devs who
| aren't seeking to make a profit to put stuff out there
| relatively quickly. I used it myself all the time in college.
| Now imagine a game you made...for free...goes viral and you
| pass your threshold. Now you owe Unity a bunch of money.
|
| Not every project needs to seek to make money. Sometimes you
| want to put something out there for the sake of putting
| something out there without worrying that you are going to need
| to pay up for it.
|
| While we are at it, I want to shill my personal favorite
| engine...Godot. I know its fairly well known in the HN scene,
| but I think that this should be a push to use more free and
| open-source technology in game dev, rather than relying on a
| bunch of corporate black boxes that can turn predatory at any
| minute.
| yesimahuman wrote:
| Doesn't this only kick in if you've hit a revenue threshold,
| which won't happen for a free game?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Free games generally have ads. The revenue calculation
| isn't for sales revenue, it's for all revenue.
| danjoredd wrote:
| I must have misread it
| gs17 wrote:
| Correct, and it seems to be per game, which is better than
| before, since it seems to allow Unity Personal for making
| free/small things in any setting.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Yes, It seems harmful.
|
| There are scenarios where the $ number goes negative, for
| your net, for a modestly successful game .. is negative tens
| of thousands of dollars.
|
| There is no provision against software piracy, or
| competitors/griefers artificially inflating your install
| account.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > There are scenarios where the $ number goes negative
|
| Show me legitimate scenario where this is true.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Freemium games with millions of installs but maybe only a
| couple hundred k of revenue. The model of "having a bunch
| of users but only a couple of them pay money" or ad-
| supported so the ARPU is really low is not uncommon, and
| certainly more of a likely sweetspot for a smaller game
| or studio to find themselves in.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > hobbyist game devs in Unity
|
| Is it a hobby if you're making more than $200k in a 12-month
| period? Most hobbyists will likely be unaffected by this, and
| those that are will see very small fees less than what Visa
| charges to process a credit card transaction.
| sammyoos wrote:
| As a Unity developer, first this year our account manager told us
| our yearly fees were about to double and now runtime fees. One of
| the reasons we picked Unity was because of the fact they
| advertised (loudly) about the lack of runtime fees.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder if installs could be faked? So find a project that has
| revenue of the 200k and then appear to install it couple million
| times... Is this sort of scenario considered at all?
| hightrix wrote:
| I'm wondering the opposite. Could a developer block the phone
| home call signifying a new install. I'm sure someone will try
| it.
| gs17 wrote:
| I'm sure it'll be against their ToS and they'll ban your
| account (which you now need to log in to at least once every
| three days to use the editor).
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| The developer doing so would certainly result in bans
| and/or lawsuits, but it's not inconceivable that if it is
| something that relies on the installer being able to phone
| home that people start building it into ad-blockers or
| popularising some script to set the appropriate firewall
| rules. And if this does go through, there's bound to be
| thousands of people with the talent and influence to do so
| and a desire to spite Unity.
| hightrix wrote:
| > there's bound to be thousands of people with the talent
| and influence to do so and a desire to spite Unity.
|
| There are at least a few of us here already. I imagine
| the "hacks" will be released shortly after this is
| available to the public.
| matt3210 wrote:
| Must have spyware in the runtime.
|
| Watch your games get auto removed after the developer goes out of
| business or doesn't pay RENT
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Epic and Roblox are going to be very happy with this news.
| codingcodingboy wrote:
| Money is not free anymore.
| dagmx wrote:
| IMHO this is yet another failure of leadership at Unity.
|
| This will absolutely kill any incentive for the remaining indie
| devs to use Unity with such a low floor and flat cost. Whereas
| your game going temporarily viral would have been huge , now
| it'll be a huge burden. Meanwhile Unreal is 5% after 1M.
|
| A progressive fee would have at least made some sense.
|
| As it is, Unity lags severely behind Unreal for both features and
| sentiment. The big markets for Unity were indie and enterprise.
| They'd ceded everything in the middle to Unreal.
|
| Epic provide megagrant funding to Godot, in what I imagine is a
| play to eat Unity from the bottom up. Unity will just accelerate
| that.
|
| And enterprise is fickle. They'll switch to something else as
| soon as any project lead feels like it.
|
| Imho this is one more step down the road to the death of Unity.
| They have brilliant engineers led by very incompetent leadership.
| qwytw wrote:
| > Meanwhile Unreal is 5% after 1M.
|
| Which is still more than Unity as long as you game costs more
| than $5-20?
|
| Of course this pretty much makes making any actually free (not
| filled with ads free) games impossible.
|
| Edit: If I understand correctly the install fee only kicks in
| after $200k revenue? If so these pricing changes actually seem
| pretty reasonable..
| dagmx wrote:
| But that's the crux of it. For Epic, you have to make several
| times the amount. 200k of success is a lot more achievable
| than 1M of success for an indie.
|
| The issue is that, Unity are in a very odd place of the
| market. They completely ceded high end gaming to Unreal. They
| have reasonable alternatives like Godot on the other end. So
| their main markets are:
|
| 1. Enterprise - which is fickle
|
| 2. Indie devs aspiring for success - who are going for cheap
|
| 3. Mobile (which might include 2)
|
| 4. A very few AAA games
|
| I think this move will alienate a lot of their indie clients
| in the hopes of getting more money from their higher end
| clients. For those indie clients, hitting 200K of revenue is
| a much closer dream than 1M of revenue, and they'll see that
| Unreal gives them more "high end graphics".
|
| So I understand Unity's position, I just think they're
| alienating one of their biggest bases. Even if they don't
| make money directly off of them, those are the people who
| often advocate for use of Unity in other areas like
| Enterprise.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Most Unity games are mobile apps. Some suits probably saw the
| numbers on installs and saw dollar signs, but never thought
| about if it was a viable pricing model for most of their
| actual customers.
| qwytw wrote:
| > pricing model for most of their actual customers
|
| I guess they don't really value customers who can only
| generate $0.01-1.0 or less per install. Not saying it's
| right but it's not like this group of developers is really
| paying them that much anyway (and noncommercial games/apps
| don't seem to be affected at al).
| starburst wrote:
| You'd be surprise how HUGE that market is and also
| Unity's foothold as the engine of choices for those
| games. So this makes this decision even more baffling
| because instead of sharing the revenue these developers
| will just change to a different engine (it's not like
| that market will disappear, so if using Unity is
| unprofitable or too big of a dent in the revenue, they
| won't stop making those games, just use a different
| engine)
| qwytw wrote:
| > instead of sharing the revenue
|
| I'm sure one reason Unity did this is that are pretty
| certain that many of those developers won't be willing to
| share their revenue. In countries like China where even
| relatively large studios would just pay for 1-5 licenses
| for 100 employees forcing them to give you a share of
| their revenue seems hardly possible.
| starburst wrote:
| They will have the same problem trying to get them to pay
| per installs as well, whatever punishment can happens for
| not paying their cost to install tax they can do the same
| tactic for those not paying their revenue share.
| qwytw wrote:
| > They will have the same problem trying to get them to
| pay per installs as well
|
| If they are already clients and paying for Plus/Pro/etc.
| subscriptions that shouldn't be too hard (much, much
| easier anyway).
| starburst wrote:
| That is the problem, and what is completely baffling, games
| that are sold at 70$ means they pay a ridiculously low fee
| (%) compared to cheap or free to play mobile games where that
| fee means it can render the game unprofitable and need to be
| shutdown, yet with a reasonable % of the revenue they would
| be able to be profitable and everyone makes money.
|
| Big company selling big games will see this as a rounding
| error in their revenue. Indies / small company will probably
| need to shutdown some games because this won't be
| profitable...
| qwytw wrote:
| > Indies / small company will probably need to shutdown
| some games
|
| Are they giving away their games for free (so this
| shouldn't(?) affect them)?
|
| Or or have about $1-2 revenue per user or less and over
| overall $200k revenue?
| starburst wrote:
| Maybe you're not familiar with the economics of f2p
| mobile games, but basically, the game is free, you get
| maybe 100k installs and make back 25k$ (IAP, etc.) so
| revenue of 0.25$ per user. But then you have to pay for
| users acquisition (marketing to get installs) so the
| actual revenue is more like 0.19$ per user (still
| profitable!) BUT then I have to pay 0.20$ for any
| installs regardless of it made any money, so I'm
| effectively at a loss -0.01$ per user when I could've
| been profitable.
|
| I made up the number up but you get the idea. With a % of
| revenue share (or at the very least do not count installs
| that generated 0$ revenue) it could be a profitable game,
| now it risks of being shutdown.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| You wouldn't pay anything to Unity in that scenario - you
| need 100k installs and 200k in revenue for the game
| before the fee applies.
|
| And the charge is incremental after the 100k and 200k in
| revenue, so if you had 101k installs and 200k in revenue,
| you'd only pay $15.
| starburst wrote:
| I'm going to use the Personal / Plus pricing instead of
| Pro, on a f2p mobile game, but let's say you made 200k$
| on the first 200k install, but only 20k$ on the next 200k
| installs (for whatever reason, different market, whale
| spending 10's of thousands $ skewing the data, etc.), you
| owe Unity 40k$ and are now in the negative for those new
| installs when you could've still turned a profit, albeit
| less.
|
| Of course Unity deserve to be paid and receive revenue,
| I'm absolutely not against that and if you are on the Pro
| subscription, it is only a concerned once you reach 1M$
| which at this point means the project should be
| profitable and manage to pay that tax (otherwise maybe
| that project isn't commercially viable).
|
| But it just feel very harsh for the mega popular indie
| hit that have very low revenue per user you know... A %
| of revenue would be better or at the very least only
| count install that generated revenue or whatever...
| qwytw wrote:
| > but let's say you made 200k$ on the first 200k install,
| but only 20k$ on the next 200k installs (for whatever
| reason, different market, whale spending 10's of
| thousands $ skewing the data, etc.), you owe Unity 40k$
| and
|
| And that point you should just switch to Pro and ust pay
| ~2k per seat each year without install fees.
|
| Of course I guess you need to think about that in
| advance, but unless there is a massive spike in
| popularity and your daily installs spike by 10000% or
| something in a day (which is not that unthinkable) you
| should be fine.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| yes, you are correct in that scenario. It would be
| nightmare. But the scenario seems like it would be rare.
| And it is $200k revenue in the previous 12 months, not
| lifetime. So the trailing 12 month revenue would start to
| drop, probably under the 200k threshold.
|
| But there are definitely gotcha scenarios, and tracking
| installs is highly dubious.
| qwytw wrote:
| > 0.25$ per user
|
| I assumed than US/CAN/etc. user would be worth much more
| than that?
|
| > marketing to get installs
|
| Not sure how accurate, since this was on the first page I
| googled:
|
| "Average mobile app CPI - $0.93 (APAC), $1.03 (EMEA),
| $0.34 (Latin America), $5.28 (North America)" but would
| imply that those numbers are no realistic.
|
| All Latin America and most Asian (outside Japan and SK)
| and significant proportion of EMEA users would only cost
| $0.02 per install. And the users you have to pay $0.20
| for are likely to be generating significantly more ad/IAP
| revenue for you than the rest.
|
| But yeah, if you can't get to $1-2 even for NA/etc. users
| are you're actually selling your game for $1-2 the 20
| cent fee seems pretty extreme.
| kevingadd wrote:
| the average is skewed by games like Genshin Impact with
| gross exploitative monetization, not to mention literal
| casino games. So smaller developers with more reasonable
| monetization are not getting anywhere close to those
| averages and will be punished hard by these fees,
| especially because it's per-install not per-user.
|
| If a user installs your F2P mobile game on 2-3 devices
| (not uncommon), you now owe 40-60 cents, not 20. Hope
| your average revenue is good enough that you can afford
| that after Apple/Google take their 30%.
| qwytw wrote:
| Average cost per install should be significantly lower
| than 20 for most games (it's just 2 cents for most
| country's in the world after all). However yeah it seems
| pretty excessive.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if that 20 cent cost is just
| there to encourage developers who'd have to pay to update
| to pro (e.g. a seat for a year seems to be equal to about
| 10k installs, but with pro you get extra 800k free
| installs and increase your revenue limit by another 800k
| so you'll likely won't even have to pay extra for users
| at all)
| starburst wrote:
| Not sure I understand? I just made those number up to
| give you an example, be it realistic or not hardly
| matters. You get X per user and it cost you Y per user
| and Unity take Z per user. Now `X - Y` is profitable but
| `X - Y - Z` is not, that's it. If it was instead a % at
| least it would still be profitable if only less, it
| doesn't put the revenue per user in jeopardy of being in
| the negative.
|
| Plenty of games are profitable at scale with only a few
| pennies per user.
| [deleted]
| qwytw wrote:
| > I just made those number up to give you an example, be
| it realistic or not hardly matters
|
| That's pretty much the only thing that matters. there is
| a huge difference whether they make $0.5, $1 or $2 etc
| (and especially how much more do they make per user in a
| "rich" country since Unity seems to think that they are
| worth up to 10x more than everyone else.
|
| > Plenty of games are profitable at scale with only a few
| pennies per user.
|
| Beyond a certain point (over 1 mill users) it will only
| cost $0.01 per install. So this will affect 1-5
| dev/worker studios with very low revenue per user. They
| could still probably just pay ~2k for Unity Pro per seat
| and stay under the 1 million revenue threshold.
|
| To me it almost seems that the '$0.20 per install' is
| only there to encourage developers to upgrade to pro if
| they have more than a few hundred k. users.
|
| > If it was instead a %
|
| True, I'm not arguing that wouldn't be more fair. It
| would be quite expensive to enforce and close to
| impossible in certain cases. So I understand why Unity
| chose to do this instead.
| starburst wrote:
| > That's pretty much the only thing that matters. there
| is a huge difference whether they make $0.5, $1 or $2 etc
|
| My point is those numbers can vary GREATLY from games to
| games, and not only the revenue per user but the cost of
| user acquisition as well. There isn't one truth, the
| numbers I gave up could very well fit a real project.
|
| Of course you would be pretty stupid to not subscribe to
| Pro once you notice your game going to 200k. And let's be
| real, at 1M$ threshold, if the Unity tax is what kill
| your game, maybe there wasn't a market fit. But it just
| feel such a bad and unfair way to generate revenue on
| free to play games.
|
| > So I understand why Unity chose to do this instead.
|
| Other engines does it just fine, tracking installs
| (without any false positive) seems a much bigger hassle
| especially legal wise
| qwytw wrote:
| > Other engines does it just fine,
|
| I'm not sure that's comparable or even true. No other
| proprietary engine has as even remotely comparable market
| share in the freemium/Ad/IAP-funded/shovelware mobile
| game market.
|
| Also Epic isn't trying to pay for 8000 employees
| (especially not just with their engine revenue) or
| service billion in debt accrued from (possibly
| unnecessary) acquisitions. It feels to me that Unity
| pushed themselves into a corner by increasing and don't
| really have any choices but to try and maximize their
| revenue any way they can.
|
| e.g. Epic seems to have about 4000 employees and compared
| to Fortnite Unreal seems to almost be just a side gig for
| them.
|
| Also let's be fair a 5% royalty would be much more likely
| to scare off their best paying customers. And looking at
| their current leadership and overall philosophy I find it
| easy to understand why they might not care that much what
| will happen to some indy/small developers who can't
| afford/don't want to pay for Pro or have more than 1
| million users but can't generate more than ~$0.2 - 0.5 in
| profit per install.
| starburst wrote:
| I get that, but I feel like there must've been a much
| better way to do so than with this proposal that seems to
| have burn the last remaining goodwill that developers had
| left in Unity and making sure most future projects won't
| get done on Unity.
|
| A lot of people have been thinking about switching for
| years, Unity is becoming slower and slower with time,
| more buggier, etc. I feel like this is the tipping point
| where the number of developpers is going to go down, so
| was it worth it? Maybe, maybe it was the correct
| decision, time will tell.
|
| I'll still continue to use it for on-going projects I
| have and pay the tax no problem, but I won't pick it for
| any project in the future personnaly because of how out
| of touch and ridiculous I personaly feel this business
| decision is (and other decisions they've made).
| no_wizard wrote:
| are they only counting unique installs or do developers pay with
| any install? Like if i reimagined my machine and reinstall games
| does that mean they have to pay the install fee again?
|
| EDIT: The more I read the FAQ, the more I think this is a bad
| deal
| wpietri wrote:
| Ooh, good question. Does Unity phone home when a game is
| launched? If I were in Unity's shoes and trying to enforce this
| cheaply, I'd either have it phone home so I could keep track of
| how many active users a game has, or I'd just scrape data from
| the app stores to see who's worth having a salesperson call up.
| Zuiii wrote:
| Ballsy to pull this stunt when Godot is so close to hitting
| critical mass (see Bender). Is this them seeing the writing on
| the wall and cashing in?
| wpietri wrote:
| I was looking at that table, which otherwise made great sense,
| but struggling to understand why Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise
| had cheaper per-install prices than Unity Personal. Part of the
| answer is that they charge up-front monthly fees to use it:
|
| https://unity.com/products/unity-pro
|
| So I see $2040 per year per seat for Unity Pro. That doesn't
| quite explain why the per-install costs decline with volume for
| Pro/Enterprise licensees, but I suspect that's just that the
| Pro/Enterprise are more sophisticated and have better negotiating
| power.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Presumably the Pro/Enterprise subscribers are more likely to
| reach the thresholds as well so get charged for installs and
| it's a carrot to get people to upgrade if you expect volume.
| [deleted]
| NotGMan wrote:
| Oh boy...the mobile game studio who are already making little
| money per install are gonna go crazy.
|
| Unity right now is only massively used by 1) Indies 2) Mobile
| game studios
|
| They just made sure that all of those will switch tech.
|
| Unreal Engine has a much better license because it says that
| "it's not retroactively changable": so if you eg stay at Unreal
| 5.2 forever no new epic changes to the license will apply to you
| since the 5.2 license applies to you forever.
|
| RIP unity.
|
| Even if unity reverts this (which IMO they will due to backlash)
| all new mobile studio game devs will move to some other engine.
| [deleted]
| m-p-3 wrote:
| https://twitter.com/AggroCrabGames/status/170169103683230926...
|
| I suspect this will significantly impact the Xbox GamePass lineup
| soon once it takes effect.
|
| Also, imagine that pirated copies or even multiple installs by
| the same users counts into hitting that threshold. I could see a
| malicious competitor pushing a lot of _installs_ to hit someone
| else bottom-line and sink them financially with a minimum of risk
| for them.
|
| That new policy need to go back to the drawing board ASAP.
| ambyra wrote:
| I wonder if the old versions of the editor will still run without
| the DRM additions in November.
| fidotron wrote:
| Unity is a tragedy. They have managed to fumble the technical
| aspects so much it drove people away, to the point they become
| more valuable as part of an ad business than an engine one. Their
| efforts outside the games industry don't appear to have as much
| traction as they deserve either.
|
| The question has already been "Why aren't you using Unreal?" and
| that's just going to get harder.
|
| Given the current VC taste for eliminating all things which count
| against gross margins now might be a good time to be an engine
| developer again.
| everyone wrote:
| I'm a game dev and Unreal is not a Unity replcement imo..
| Making a game in Unity feels like making a game in XNA, you
| just start writing code and can write your entire game from
| scratch and can ignore most of Unity's features. Unreal on the
| other hand feels like you are modding an existing game and you
| must use their many existing systems and patterns. I'm moving
| to Godot, it feels like the new Unity / XNA.
| dleslie wrote:
| The question is "Why aren't you using Godot?"
|
| Unreal is just another vendor with a hand in your revenues.
| fidotron wrote:
| My last comment there is a hint that might happen, as this
| shifts the calculus enough that for big casual players hiring
| devs to work on godot makes more sense. However, those
| players will also get preferential treatment anyway.
|
| But everyone will be waiting for Godot to have the first
| widespread hit before jumping in like that.
| dleslie wrote:
| Sonic Colors: Ultimate was recently released, and it's a
| Godot game.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > The question has already been "Why aren't you using Unreal?"
| and that's just going to get harder.
|
| Lack of Web and Mobile support
| mthoms wrote:
| Is Unreal known for having poor web and mobile support?
| Genuinely curious.
| starburst wrote:
| Compared to unity, yes (especially for 2D stuff which is
| more the norm on those platforms).
|
| Unity is already imho pretty bloated but at least useable
| and a sensible choice for both, Unreal is just too massive
| and more suited for console 3D type of games.
| fidotron wrote:
| It really isn't the lack of mobile support, as Fortnite
| shows, it is the fact Unity devs are cheaper and iteration
| speed from code changes is faster, which in hypercasual type
| stuff proves to be essential.
|
| I tend to think the dev iteration speed is the core Unreal
| weakness.
|
| The problem Unity have created is if something can be made
| with Unity it will get crowded out with clones in five
| minutes.
| wokwokwok wrote:
| > in hypercasual type stuff...
|
| Yes. Well.
|
| The idea that developer iteration speed is actually an
| indicator of project-completion-at-scale speed is really
| only true at a trivial scale; you know, when you only have
| developers. Maybe a handful of them. ..and like, one does-
| everything artist.
|
| When you have multiple different teams including _non_
| developers working on actually building a significant game,
| crafting levels, assets, etc. the iteration speed of your
| handful of devs is really _really_ a drop in the ocean.
|
| There are a lot of very powerful tools in unreal for
| _teams_ , and they have consistently invested in tooling
| (eg. File per actor) and real life production needs (eg.
| LED stage support) with their customers.
|
| Unity has invested in different areas, with a lot of
| effort, and bluntly, nothing to show for it.
| ido wrote:
| really only true at a trivial scale
|
| You seem to suggest this means it doesn't really matter?
| I run a startup with 4 employees (only 2 of us are
| developers). I care about stuff in this "trivial scale"
| and a lot of other developers are like me.
|
| It's not just hobbyists and students.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Unity has invested in different areas, with a lot of
| effort, and bluntly, nothing to show for it.
|
| Aren't they making shitloads on advertising?
| Jensson wrote:
| > at a trivial scale; you know, when you only have
| developers. Maybe a handful of them. ..and like, one
| does-everything artist.
|
| And that includes most games.
| andsoitis wrote:
| How do you square what you say here with your prior comment
| that unity is driving devs _away_?
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I did an evaluation earlier this year between the two. We
| needed the 3d engine but also needed native phone features.
| Meaning some screens of the app would be Unreal/Unity and
| some would be native iOS.
|
| We couldn't even get Unreal to build as an embeddable
| library for a mobile app nor could we get it to build into
| anything that would run in a web browser despite more than
| a week of effort.
|
| We had Unity working for both use cases in under a day.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Unreal is nowhere in the mobile space.
| ceeam wrote:
| > Why aren't you using Unreal?
|
| C++. Sure, we can talk about Verse or even Skookum, but C# is
| much easier. Still, if any big game engine would have something
| like JS it would be even better for indie or small studios.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Unreal C++ is so heavily modded that it often doesn't really
| feel like C++. Like I feel kind of odd the rare times I use
| std:: anything. And Unreal C++ tends to be garbage
| controlled, support reflection, and so on. The only real big
| downsides are you have C++ compile times and generally poor
| intellisense - though IDEs that specialize in Unreal, like
| Rider, have seen exponential improvements on that front. And
| for teams that are genuinely averse to C++, going 100%
| Blueprint is also a completely viable option.
| V1ndaar wrote:
| For people scared off by C++ and who want faster recompile
| times, check out the Nim bindings [0]. Check out his
| Twitter/X account [1] for plenty of cool things it brings
| to the table.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/jmgomez/NimForUE
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/_jmgomez_
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Unity used to support JS but nobody used it. Why would I ever
| pick such a weakly typed mess over C# for this use case?
| fidotron wrote:
| I've actually been writing an engine in JS (with the
| exception of physics in WASM) partly to understand the
| implications of doing it.
|
| You do need to be disciplined, however, being able to
| simply start extending random instances of other types
| proves remarkably useful when developing.
|
| I'm not sure such a thing would work well on a team.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Probably not very good on a team, yeah. I actually have a
| bit of a toy game engine for the browser/ThreeJS targeted
| at making games similar to the Windows 95 screensaver.
| Learned some good things like GLSL and shaders but
| working in JS was definitely a bit of a slowdown when I'd
| hit classes of bugs that wouldn't be possible in C#, even
| with annotations helping me. But other times it was
| convenient being able to pass stuff around without
| writing up classes or structs for them as you alluded to.
|
| Has a brief overview in its README if anyone wants to
| check it out: https://github.com/ldyeax/MazeEngine
|
| I have more expansive ideas for it but for now the main
| demo is this silly museum. https://jimm.horse/maremuseum
|
| It's a fun experiment in seeing what JS can do, it's cool
| having it run natively on the web, and annotations get
| you a lot of the way there, but in a context like Unity
| I'd never pick it over C#. Typescript might be alright
| but at that point why bother? C# has anonymous types,
| tuples, and such today too.
| kroltan wrote:
| Because it was not JS, it was UnityScript which is what
| happens when someone read "JavaScript: The Good Parts", and
| thought the title was "... The Bad Parts" and threw all
| those away and kept only the actual bad parts.
|
| It was just about fine if you were doing very small
| projects but quickly got very hairy, and their compiler was
| full of bugs.
| detuur wrote:
| And to contrast, Godot's GDScript has been great for me
| so far. I've been hacking at a personal project for a
| couple of days now and I feel right at home in the
| language, which feels right at home in the engine.
| mentos wrote:
| Blueprints Blueprints Blueprints
|
| The name of the game is iteration speed. (I always think of
| Paul Grahams story about beating out the competition using
| Lisp.)
|
| I've been working with UE since 2014, originally started in
| UE4 C++ and avoided blueprints and kept everything in C++.
| Was great 'for performance' and code diffs but now 10 years
| later I'm 99% blueprint and only go down to C++ if the
| performance requires it for the 1% of hot paths. My iteration
| time in UE using blueprints makes me shutter to think of all
| the time I spent waiting for C++ to compile.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I just started using Unreal 5 to prototype a VR game (lots
| of quirks but this engine is amazing). I've been writing
| C++ for 5ish years now and am pretty comfortable with it.
| I've also been slowly converting all the blueprints in the
| VR template provided by Unreal to C++ for a few reasons and
| was curious if these effect you.
|
| I tried using blueprints for awhile, but it just feels so
| cumbersome and time consuming. I can bang out 10 lines of
| code basically as fast as I can think, but converting those
| same 10 lines of code to blueprints often involves much
| more time. You have to click around a bunch, rearrange the
| routing wires, make it look readable, abstract a lot of
| stuff into functions that usually don't need it just
| because it helps condense the blueprints. Then the
| blueprints end up sprawling a large area and are very
| difficult to keep in my head at once (whereas it would
| normally take less than a page of C++ code to write it out
| and you can easily hold that in your head).
|
| Basically, I was wondering if these downsides to blueprints
| effect you much or if you've developed suitable
| workarounds? I want to like blueprints, but the time it
| takes to click around and make it readable is painful, in
| my opinion, more painful than compile times for the C++.
| mentos wrote:
| Yea its unfair to taught Blueprints as the answer when
| they have a serious learning curve.
|
| It took me a while to build up enough experience where I
| could become more expressive with Blueprints than C++.
| The Lyra example has some good Blueprint hygiene worth
| reviewing where they organize all variables underneath a
| function call.. but until you have serious experience
| with Blueprints they are going to feel like a cumbersome
| mess.
|
| My advice is to do what you feel most expressive with,
| doing the thing you enjoy more will lead to more hours of
| experience. Start with C++ and build up a good
| understanding/mental model of the engine and then
| eventually give Blueprints a try in a few more years and
| you will see them in a new light.
| bojo wrote:
| Blueprints are fun to work with, but the amount of time it
| takes to drag and drop nodes around to make the equivalent
| of a for loop feels incredibly unproductive. The result
| does look visually pleasing though!
| throwaway4577 wrote:
| Visually pleasing indeed.
| https://blueprintsfromhell.tumblr.com/
| MassiveBonk51 wrote:
| Hmm.. I guess this is what motivates me to try Godot.
| eljimmy wrote:
| The claw of capitalism will always tighten its grip. Any software
| company that goes public has this problem it seems.
| garganzol wrote:
| Many companies start as bright locomotives of the tomorrow world,
| only to crumble into the valley of greed in the future. Unity is
| not an exception, it seems. For them, it's so much easier to
| raise prices and f%.k their customers than to truly innovate.
|
| Innovation requires talent, efforts and pain - and that's a
| scarcity, especially in the aging company which prefers an
| illusionary comfort to the true freedom.
| dindobre wrote:
| So they basically tripled (4.5X actually) the cost of customizing
| the splash screen, to an amount that for non US based customers
| is a lot. I'm quite shocked, I was looking at godot with mild
| interest but now I'm actively hoping it picks up, this kind of
| changes are just insane and I'm guess things will get worse over
| time.
|
| And what about the install fees? Let's say my studio fails but
| people keep installing because of piracy or any arbitrary reason,
| am I going to get charged for the remaining of my life? It's just
| a shocking move
| ponytech wrote:
| I feel the same. EUR1,877/year for removing the Unity logo on
| splash screen is way too much for a small studio like us.
| peteforde wrote:
| This is brutal and devastating. They might as well have called
| the post "Party time is over, our MBAs need to make some money
| for our investors".
|
| In my case, this would be the final straw after years of baffling
| tech reorgs and broken promises, but I have such a massive sunk
| cost investment in Unity store assets that I am effectively
| locked in.
|
| All of that said, I would put serious money on this getting at
| least partially rolled back in the next few days. The blowback is
| going to be big enough that the investors might tell the MBAs to
| stop sacrificing their long-term profits for short-term gains.
| namdnay wrote:
| Is the drive to make money for investors specific to MBAs? If
| your investors want their money back it seems reasonable to
| find ways to give it to them?
| Takennickname wrote:
| Honestly this is hilarious.
| damsta wrote:
| How does the install tracking work exactly? Do they fingerprint
| the device once you start a game?
| KMnO4 wrote:
| The pricing is a bit weird. Their criteria is based on gross
| revenue of >=$200k. But instead of charging a percentage of that,
| they charge per install at a rate of $0.20/install.
|
| So if you made $200k off of 1M installs, you'll now pay $200k and
| your total profit will be zero.
|
| I guess the assumption is that each install will earn you
| >>$0.20, but that's a very generous assumption. What about a F2P
| game that has millions of installs but only a fraction support
| the game with microtransactions?
|
| There's definitely going to be some cases where studios will owe
| more money to Unity than their game makes.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I think you need to read the table again. If you have that
| volume you shouldn't be on the most expensive per install plan.
| And if you're on a higher plan you wouldn't qualify for the per
| install pricing at all.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Before this change, there would be no reason to spend
| $2100/seat on Unity Pro. The Personal/Plus plans would be
| more than sufficient for indie devs.
|
| You're right, some studios are going to be forced to switch
| to the Pro plan to save on per install pricing. That just
| seems like a really frustrating forced upgrade.
| krajzeg wrote:
| In fact, the Plus plan is being removed completely. It's
| only mentioned off-handedly in the last paragraph of the
| article, but it's another giant change for indie devs (who
| have no choice but to migrate from Plus to Pro).
|
| They are offering a free upgrade from Plus to Pro for one
| year, but that does nothing once that time elapses - you
| have to pay the Pro fees or drop down to Personal, which is
| not viable for most games.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Is they're cranking out that many sales and games is $2100
| unfair?
| yalok wrote:
| Those are life time installs.
|
| My game has been around for a few years and has over 500k
| life time installs.
|
| I May be getting very small install rate per month now,
| but would still have to pay a lot.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| You would only pay if your game made 200,000 in the last
| 12 months. They aren't looking at lifetime revenue.
| strobe wrote:
| 'made 200,000' that doesn't meant that you able to get
| any profits from that, and it lot of cases with 200k
| revenue small game studios only loosing money
| meheleventyone wrote:
| In your presumed case the studio would already be breaking
| Unity's terms to be using Personal or Plus as companies
| making over $200,000 in the last 12 months need to have Pro
| subscriptions! Dunno how flouted that is though.
| DuctTapeAI wrote:
| They've been pushing hard recently to get people to use their
| ads platform, my bet is they're hoping to push "under-
| monetized" games to run a ton of ads in order to make any
| money. This kind of a pricing model forces games to think about
| ads and monetization from the beginning instead of building a
| large happy user base.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > So if you made $200k off of 1M installs
|
| Then you shouldn't be in the business of selling games with a
| model that bad. Who is charging 20 cents for their games?
| Mydayyy wrote:
| His point stands tho. Think about mobile games, where games
| are significantly cheaper (0.99EUR-5EUR). That install fee
| will hit a lot different than for high priced desktop titles
| (30EUR+). In addition think about the turnover in mobile
| games.
|
| The Unity Page does not mention free games with micro
| transactions, but especially there the user turnover is way
| higher. A lot of people will install it, play it for a few
| minutes (or days) and remove it again. Will the developer pay
| those install fees too?
|
| This entire thing seems not really thought out.
|
| I am also wondering what about trolls, who spoof HWID (or
| whatever the unique install id is based of) and spam-install
| it
| unusualmonkey wrote:
| Does unity want to support games where the vast majority
| uninstall it within a few minuites?
|
| Seems like having less of those games on Unity might
| improve Unity's brand.
| hightrix wrote:
| > I am also wondering what about trolls, who spoof HWID (or
| whatever the unique install id is based of) and spam-
| install it
|
| You don't even need to get that technical. It seems that
| using a privacy respecting browser that blocks cookies and
| fingerprinting techniques will identify a simple page
| refresh as an install.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > His point stands tho.
|
| Except it doesn't. Selecting Unity as your game engine is a
| business decision and part of your business model. If you
| cannot make a profit in your game after the fee, it's not
| Unity's fault that you have a bad business model.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| If you're just going to spam the same thought over and
| over again then you should go to reddit where that lack
| of originality is appreciated.
| executesorder66 wrote:
| Ah, this explains so much!
|
| I once crapped out a game engine over a weekend using
| python. I called it turdPy.
|
| I released it under a commercial license of $20000 per
| CPU thread per developer device per day to use. With an
| additional 80-20 revenue share model (80% going to me)
| once the devs sell their game.
|
| I never got any customers, and I always wondered why. But
| now I understand that it was because game studios simply
| didn't have a good enough business model.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| What about the fact that Unity is changing their business
| model and making it retroactive to fuck over people?
| TillE wrote:
| That's completely realistic for a F2P game.
| gambiting wrote:
| So I guess you can't make fully online games with unity anymore -
| the runtime will have to connect with unity servers at least once
| to report new installation.
| gambiting wrote:
| *offline
| ravivyas wrote:
| 20 cents per install is crazy.
|
| Mobile games are already a risky business with success hard to
| come by. Marketing costs for games has already gone up due to due
| to ATT.
|
| They are doing the classic chase current revenue while destroying
| future revenue thing
| madsbuch wrote:
| This might be good for for Godot..
| ncr100 wrote:
| Yeah, there's like a small size studio, or studios where they
| plan to not have like a very strong monetization curve, where
| this makes sense.
|
| This pricing change pressurizes modestly successful long tail
| profits. And so I think yes competitor game engines that are
| more progressive will be more popular for those segments.
| ceeam wrote:
| The big deal breaker with Godot was that any console (XBox/PS)
| release was out of question.
| 6581 wrote:
| https://docs.godotengine.org/en/4.0/tutorials/platform/conso.
| ..
| amitmathew wrote:
| W4 Games, which was founded by some of the Godot devs, also
| recently announced console support:
| https://w4games.com/2023/08/06/w4-games-
| unveils-w4-consoles-....
| consoomer wrote:
| Unity has built a very impressive engine and runtime.
|
| With that being said, I have never had the desire to use it (or
| any other engine). Perhaps I'm a minority here, but I dislike
| engines and I dislike the idea of "building my own engine."
|
| I think you should set out to make the game. You begin by
| creating a window. Then you draw some pixels or render a texture.
| You add events and controls. You make the game logic and states.
| Then you have a game. It can take as little as a hundred lines of
| code to have a basic game up and running.
|
| From there, you make the thing you want to create. No more, no
| less.
| dbrueck wrote:
| To each his own, but it sounds like you're overlooking the
| opportunity cost, which is potentially massive.
| peteforde wrote:
| That's fine for a hobby; specifically a hobby where you plan to
| spend 90% of your available time reimplimenting crappy
| equivalents to things you get on day one of using an engine. In
| other words, a hobby project where the point is the exercise
| and has no need to actually ship.
|
| Just pray that you're never employed to be the #2 developer to
| someone who built their own game without an engine. "Why would
| there be documentation? Just follow my inner voice."
| matt3210 wrote:
| It's much harder than you make it out to be.
| andersa wrote:
| And by the time you actually ship something, 10 years have
| passed.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > You begin by creating a window. Then you draw some pixels or
| render a texture. You add events and controls.
|
| Yes, but without an engine, how do you make this all cross-
| platform?
|
| Using something like Unity, you can theoretically write your
| program _once_ and it runs on damn near anything. Android, iOS,
| Linux, Windows, PlayStation 4 /5, Switch, and more.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| Any advice on how to build a tender pipeline from scratch? Im
| struggling learning how to implement interesting shaders as a
| user. I couldn't imagine building a render pipeline engine on
| top of writing shader code.
| faefox wrote:
| The ongoing enshittification of Unity is great news for Godot.
| [deleted]
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| What product-market-fit does Unity have left?
|
| If you're an indie studio making small 2d or basic 3d games, you
| will use Godot If you're a big studio looking for AAA graphics
| capability you will use Unreal.
|
| There is no other reason to use Unity other than legacy asset
| store purchases and existing project maintainence.
|
| In 2-3 years those legacy projects will wrap up and Unity will be
| dead in the water as a company, mark my words.
| matt3210 wrote:
| This being a monthly rate is insane. Does the game stop working
| if the developer doesn't pay?
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Monthly is in regards to how Unity invoices, the fee is per-
| install.
| matt3210 wrote:
| No, the table header says "monthly rate" of .20 per install.
| Eg 10 installs is 2$ a month
| gambiting wrote:
| That's not correct. It's poorly worded, but fee is per
| install per lifetime not per month.
| matt3210 wrote:
| Explain why my interpretation is incorrect, otherwise
| I'll continue with it.
|
| There's no other way to interpret "standard monthly rate
| = 0.2"
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Read the FAQ, which would have taken less time then you
| spent expressing your faux outrage on HN.
| What is the Unity Runtime Fee? We are
| introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that applies to
| certain Unity subscription plans based on per-
| game installs across any Unity-supported game
| platform. Creators only pay once per download.
| matt3210 wrote:
| Makes sense, thanks for pointing it out. Also
|
| Faux: made to look like something else that is usually
| more valuable
|
| Common mistake, no worries
| dcow wrote:
| At least you admit you were actually mad. Kudos.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| They're using faux totally acceptably!
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faux
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/faux
| everyone wrote:
| how do they plan to even track revenue and also installs? Also
| what do they do if they say you are over the revenue or install
| threshold and just tell them to fuck off? Can they remotely kill
| your game???
| tezza wrote:
| No mention of WebGL installs
|
| * Do WebGL plays count?
|
| * This could bankrupt indies if too many people click the WebGL
| games
|
| * What Unity Version is this effective from?
|
| * Will games made on prior versions of the editor be affected?
| Karliss wrote:
| > Do WebGL plays count?
|
| According to https://unity.com/runtime-fee "distribution via
| streaming or web browser is considered an install."
|
| > Will games made on prior versions of the editor be affected?
|
| From the FAQ https://unity.com/pricing-updates , "Will this fee
| apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the
| market on January 1, 2024?
|
| Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that
| continue to distribute the runtime".
|
| So while it doesn't apply to any past downloads, it will apply
| to any future downloads of previously released games.
| GenericDev wrote:
| Jesus christ. I'm so deep into my current game I'm hesitant to
| move away. But this is bad...
|
| I don't know what to do. I have a huge sunk-cost fallacy here.
|
| I guess I'm going to ship it and pray, and then never use Unity
| again.
|
| Jesus christ, what were they thinking?
|
| Fuck Unity.
| gs17 wrote:
| What is your monetization model for your game? It might not be
| a huge issue if you know you'll get way more than $0.20 per
| user. If you were selling a game for $10, this is minor. If
| you're making a f2p game where there's no guaranteed income and
| most of your players will not spend a dime, it's a lot riskier.
| I'd worry about the install counts getting spoofed by angry
| players, but that seems like a bigger liability for Unity than
| developers.
| ddxv wrote:
| "Once a game passes the revenue and install thresholds, the
| studio would pay a small flat fee for each install (see the table
| below)."
|
| This was not clear to me at first based on their table which
| currently shows 1-1000 installs as falling into the $0.20, but
| it's in fact actually the installs AFTER passing the threshold I
| believe. So assuming it was installs, it would be install 200,001
| - 201,000 that would be charged $0.20?
| vnorilo wrote:
| They hint that the install fee can be discounted if other Unity
| services (read: their ad network) are used by the game in
| question.
|
| I think it's a play to force f2p games to use their ad mediator
| as the install fee will effectively raise the cost-per-install
| for anyone using competing ad networks.
|
| Vampire squids doing vampire squid things. I'd expect them to get
| sued, and at least in the EU it seems likely to be difficult to
| defend.
| starburst wrote:
| This cannot be right, how can this makes sense with mobile
| gaming? Unity has a HUGE market share there, so they know the
| number. How can free games ensure a 0.20$ per install? Why not go
| with X% of the revenue?
| gambiting wrote:
| How do free games pay for unity licencing right now?
| starburst wrote:
| Free with splash screen, or Plus / Pro subscription to remove
| splash screen.
|
| I don't disagree that Unity need to make money, but they
| should go the Unreal route with % of profit or something.
|
| Tons of games don't even make back 0.20$ per user (mobile or
| f2p), what's going to happens to those? Force to close
| because they cannot pay the rent?
| grogenaut wrote:
| Because they can more easily track the former than the latter?
| The latter would be show me your books.
| starburst wrote:
| That's how Unreal does it, 5% over 1M or something. Installs
| tracking has it own problem in itself, like pirated copies or
| offline, etc.
| Aeglen wrote:
| Time to switch to Godot for my design-stage mobile game. The fact
| that they even came up with this, and worded it so poorly, reeks
| of incompetence.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| They also recently changed the pricing structure of their cloud
| build - they charge per minute used now. For whatever reason it
| takes their service 60 minutes to build our iOS game, which costs
| us around $4. It was kinda tolerable when we weren't getting
| charged per minute, but now it's just stupid to pay more money
| because their builds are slow as hell.
|
| We're kinda busy right now so we're paying the fee, but buying a
| mac mini for builds is definitely on our TODO list now, and once
| there's some slack in our schedule that will be done.
|
| We've also wasted weeks of time debugging bugs in their cloud
| system in the past, some of which were mysteriously fixed and
| they had no clue why. So I'm not even sure we've saved much time
| over just having our own in house build server.
| hightrix wrote:
| If you haven't looked into it yet, GitHub Actions is relatively
| easy to setup for Unity builds and, for us, it cut build times
| more than in half (60+ min to ~20min). GHA isn't cheaper per
| minute, but it is much faster and you can output things like
| Code Coverage.
| Fraterkes wrote:
| I haven't written a lot in compiled languages, so maybe this is
| a dumb question, but are you actually saying that it takes an
| hour to compile your unity project? I thought that only
| happened with huge c++ codebases. How do you get any creative
| work done without quick iteration?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| If you want to test locally, you can just hit the "play"
| button in the Unity editor and it all happens pretty fast. We
| use this for building something you can install on an
| iOS/android device, or for putting up on the web for webgl.
| rahkiin wrote:
| Distribution builds, especially to consoles, need full shader
| compilation of all variants in the build. This can take
| hours. For some pc games they also can prebuild some shaders
| for common hardware to speed up loading times.
| binarynate wrote:
| Commenters here are overreacting due to misunderstandings:
|
| - the per-install fee doesn't kick in until you've passed BOTH
| the annual game revenue and install thresholds (i.e. >$200k
| annual revenue on the game and >200k lifetime unique downloads)
|
| - the fee isn't monthly, it's per unique download (poor wording
| in Unity's chart)
|
| - you only pay the fee on the number of downloads _over_ the
| threshold
|
| This new pricing will actually _decrease_ the price of using
| Unity for many developers. Before, if your company 's total
| annual revenue was >$100k, you had to buy a paid Unity license no
| matter what. Now those company's can use Unity totally free until
| their game reaches $200k annual revenue and 200k lifetime
| downloads.
|
| This licensing scheme is actually very similar to licensing the
| AVC/H.264 video codec from Via LA (for example, if you want to
| ship a build of Chromium with MP4 enabled). In their case,
| licensees self report the number of units they've distributed per
| year and pay a small fee on the number of units over 100k. If you
| ship under 100k units, there is no fee.
| [deleted]
| gs17 wrote:
| I do appreciate that if you make something that's always free,
| no matter who you work for you don't need to worry about which
| license to use, and by making it revenue for the last 12 months
| we don't need to worry about every dev taking down all their
| old Unity games to avoid fees. But it's still not a great deal.
| Even if they somehow can exclude pirated copies and malicious
| reinstalls, there's still plenty of absurd scenarios with it.
|
| A developer decides to make their game that was a hit almost a
| year ago free? Now they might have to pay Unity more than the
| $200k they made on the game earlier!
|
| Or if they throw it in a charity bundle, they get punished for
| their attempt to help people in need!
| procflora wrote:
| I think a lot of people are just fundamentally rejecting the
| structure of a deal like that. The numbers will matter a lot to
| individual org's decisions but at least to me the emotional
| reaction here is unrelated to the specifics of the thresholds
| and rates. It's just "game engine company should not be doing
| that."
|
| Probably true since it doesn't appear like they're a game
| engine company any more. The enshittification machine is
| rumbling to life.
| appstorelottery wrote:
| I've been developing in Unity since it was a two man company.
| Deep down when EA ex CEO took it over I knew it was all downhill
| from there... I'd subscribed yearly to the Unity licence for 14
| years! Certified Unity Expert. Flew to EU for conferences. I
| remember saying to the founders in the day they should raise
| money and grow the company (I was the random guy using Unity for
| window displays and other business applications, running the
| water shader for 24 hours and seeing it degrade etc.). I made a
| great living out of Unity, particularly in the Wind Energy
| industry. It speaks volumes to me about big-capitalism that it's
| gone this way... but to be fair - the product was so fragmented
| towards the end - multiple versions to choose from for a new
| project - LTS builds. It honestly became a nightmare to develop
| in for me. I lost the joy of making stuff work... Unity 2015 was
| probably the peak for me...
|
| These days I'm doing WebGL and ThreeJS is not fun either with
| upgrades, depreciated functions.
|
| The whole ecosystem is a mess these days. I need to shave my
| beard.
| pixelbyindex wrote:
| I haven't seen it mentioned here yet, but for anyone wondering:
|
| "How will Unity track installs?"
|
| > We leverage our own proprietary data model, so you can
| appreciate that we won't go into a lot of detail, but we believe
| it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the
| runtime is distributed for a given project.[1]
|
| [1] https://x.com/unity/status/1701689241456021607?s=20
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Someone's going to break the system, "install" random games
| 1,000-1,000,000 times, and Unity's going to have to salvage
| some metrics and defend their accuracy in court and public.
| pixelbyindex wrote:
| Also, from the unity forums:
|
| > Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their
| hardware, will that count as multiple installs?
|
| > A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs.
| The reason is that Unity doesn't receive end-player
| information, just aggregate data.
|
| https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packa...
| abracadaniel wrote:
| So a subreddit could band together and bankrupt a developer
| by buying their games and scripting an uninstall/reinstall
| process.
| bilekas wrote:
| > We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity
| Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial
| install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial
| gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.
|
| I'm sorry but maybe I'm missing something obvious.. Why are they
| making this seem preferable to developers? Also what does the
| runtime being installed have anything to do with the cost to
| Unity? This is mind blowing, i have to missing something.
| oddevan wrote:
| It's not a "cost to Unity" thing. It's a "you're using _our_
| code and we 're _entitled_ to our share " thing.
| bilekas wrote:
| This really is mind blowing, I used to play games like
| Subnautica and think how impressive it was that it was made
| on Unity. It was advertising of the engine/framework in
| itself!
| CodeL wrote:
| Unity's new pricing model seems to be a double-edged sword. On
| one hand, it aims to monetize successful games more effectively,
| but on the other, it risks alienating indie developers and those
| in the mobile gaming space. Coupled with the introduction of new
| DRM requirements, Unity might be walking a tightrope between
| innovation and alienation. As the gaming industry evolves, it
| will be interesting to see if Unity's gamble pays off or if
| developers start looking elsewhere, especially towards engines
| like Unreal that offer different advantages.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| A great move by Unity. Sometimes I find myself missing features
| from Unity after moving to Godot; a general purpose, strongly
| typed programming language and live editor changes whilst the
| game is running are my biggest examples, but thanks to these
| changes I'll never look back longingly at Unity again. Good work
| team!
|
| Funnily enough the changes have also made me look back into
| Unreal, I hear they have a proper Linux editor now and that their
| flavour of C++ is a bit nicer than I expected. I doubt I'll
| switch from Godot anytime soon, but worth a look.
|
| EDIT: I see the point being made a lot that this won't affect
| many smaller devs as they'll never make enough money to meet the
| threshold, however it seems to me that if your choice of engine
| makes you hope your project _isn 't_ successful, then it might be
| time to choose a different engine. Unreal engine devs hope their
| game will make enough to qualify for the revenue share, not
| because the revenue share is a good thing for them, but because
| it means if they're making that kind of money it won't be a
| problem.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| I wonder if this will impact game.ci
| [deleted]
| yalok wrote:
| This is incredibly painful for indie devs.
|
| My app is totally free, done as a charity/side project for
| disadvantaged kids.
|
| I've been paying for their Plus plan - $35 a month. Now it will
| have to be $185 a month, or my app would have to have Unity
| splash screen...
|
| Very sad.
|
| Would have to figure out another engine to move to, preferably
| that has good native Web support as well. Any recommendations?
| nullifidian wrote:
| >My app is totally free, done as a charity/side project for
| disadvantaged kids.
|
| I assume you haven't made "$200,000 USD or more in the last 12
| months" from it, so you can relax.
| yalok wrote:
| but the splash screen... - will make my app look like some
| demo...
| pixelbyindex wrote:
| Everyone on HN has been suggesting GoDot. I have also spent
| lots of time with Unity, but recently spent about 5-10 hours
| playing around with GoDot. Some thoughts:
|
| - I strongly dislike the name and logo
|
| - It feels very foreign at first, but easy to pick up
|
| - It appears to me that it is production ready
|
| - Migrating an existing unity project would be an absolute
| nightmare
|
| - Publishing to consoles looks tricky, but I haven't been far
| down that path yet
|
| I am going to be spending more time with it now, because I have
| been growing less and less happy with unity over the last 2+
| years. The proverbial straw has now found it's seat upon the
| camel's back
| gavanwilhite wrote:
| Killing the Plus plan is the worst part about this. The cheapest
| paid tier is now $2000 / year, putting it out of range for side
| projects.
| pavon wrote:
| Were the benefits of Plus over Personal worth the price? My
| impression was that most people bought because they went over
| the threshold which has now been eliminated for Personal.
| gavanwilhite wrote:
| Splash screen removal, access to support, etc. Generally all
| the benefits that come with paying for a thing, rather than
| being on a tier that the company is trying to get you off of.
| dindobre wrote:
| Removing the splash screen, guess I'm supposed to fork X
| thousand dollars yearly given it's about 2K per seat now,
| jesus christ
| ponytech wrote:
| I had been thinking about this for sometime but now it is time to
| switch to an alternative game engine. Thank you Unity for helping
| making my mind up.
| jakobson14 wrote:
| Making me feel a lot more like using godot, or writing my own
| engine.
| Kapura wrote:
| It's a shame Unity seems so intent on making itself unattractive
| to developers. I prefer writing c# to c++, and I think Unity's
| onboarding experience is much better than Unreal. But when it
| comes to a non-solo-development effort, when you need to start
| thinking about businesses and numbers and all the things that
| aren't making the game, Epic has made Unreal attractive, and
| partnerships with the Epic Games Store can boost that value even
| further.
|
| Unity's recent moves to me speak to a fear that they've more-or-
| less hit their market saturation point, and now they're looking
| to extract more from the developers who live in their slice of
| the pie. I fear this will make that slice shrink, which will
| create more fear, and then the problem spirals.
| kalupa wrote:
| I wonder if this shift away from developer happiness is due to
| Unity now being beholden to a new master: the stockholders
| badRNG wrote:
| Yet another victim of enshittification this year. Tech sector
| has been hit especially hard.
| depereo wrote:
| Turns out money isn't free.
| golergka wrote:
| How is Unreal's mobile gaming situation? I haven't worked in
| mobile game development for a few years, but at least through
| the 2010s, Unity was an undisputed king of free-to-play mobile
| games for studios who weren't rich enough to develop their own
| engines.
| pnw wrote:
| Unreal has limited traction on mobile, which is now >50% of
| the gaming market. It's likely one of the reasons Unity
| thinks they can get away with this. The last number I saw had
| Unity above 50% share with Unreal under 15%.
|
| It's difficult to champion high end features for your engine
| but keep it suitable for low end smart phones. Epic made a
| good attempt to win mobile devs back in the Infinity Blade
| days, but given their recent focus (not to mention lawsuits
| against Apple and Google), it seems they intentionally
| decided to deprioritize mobile and focus on PC and console.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| If Unreal (natively) adopted C# that would absolutely be a
| killing blow to Unity, to the point where I'm amazed they
| haven't done it.
| sBqQu3U0wH wrote:
| I don't mind C++, but can you delete the script file without
| closing the editor yet? It was such a turn off for me at the
| time that I abandoned all intentions of ever learning to use
| Unreal Engine.
| mentos wrote:
| I was super excited for Garry Newman's project to bring C# to
| UE but never transpired: https://sbox.facepunch.com/news/dev-
| blog-2
|
| Maybe ChatGPT6 can port the UE C++ codebase to C# and we can
| call it UE6
| bpye wrote:
| There was also Mono UE [0] - which was being developed by
| some of the Xamarin folks.
|
| I've not played around with any game development for a long
| while - does C# end up popular here just because people are
| familiar with Unity? I definitely get that C++ is not the
| most productive language - though improving perhaps.
|
| Simply loading the .NET Core CLR is not difficult [1] - but
| unless things have changed since I last tried binding C++
| interfaces to C# is time consuming, especially if you want
| to be able to implement an interface in managed code.
|
| [0] - https://mono-ue.github.io/
|
| [1] - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/dotnet/core/tutorials/netc...
| kevingadd wrote:
| Part of C#'s popularity with indies is due to the legacy
| of XNA. Thousands, probably tens or even hundreds of
| thousands of indies got started with XNA and released
| games using it, so it's natural to stay on C# whether you
| move to FNA, MonoGame, Unity or Godot
| Kapura wrote:
| I don't think that's true, and I don't think the juice would
| be worth the squeeze. Unreal's flavour of C++ is heavily
| managed, relying on preprocessing of header files to create
| garbage collecting pointers and a whole heap of other things
| you don't think you're signing up for when you think about a
| C++ codebase. There is no simple place to begin if you're
| trying to make it C# friendly.
|
| But most of my issues have been with engine philosophy, where
| Unreal has bent over backwards to expose things to their
| visual scripting language. It feels like every single feature
| has a mandate to work in a blueprint tech demo, and as a
| result few of them are pleasant to code against and almost
| none of them work together coherently. These are not issues
| that depend on the language used.
| kkukshtel wrote:
| I've been tracking this (Epic Megagrant awarded!) project for
| a while that attempts to do very much that:
| https://github.com/nxrighthere/UnrealCLR
|
| I'm also surprised though they haven't just gone and added C#
| support as a first class option, it seems like such an
| obvious win.
| kriro wrote:
| Disagree. Unity is pretty strong on mobile and multi-
| plattform. Enough to survive on this alone (imo). I also
| think Blueprints is already a strong competitor for the share
| of users who find C++ too complicated (non-programers and
| people who have only dabbled in scripting). I think for
| "traditional programers" the difference between C++ and C#
| isn't big enough to make a difference and frankly people with
| a gamedev background probably prefer C++.
|
| That being said as a non mobile guy who occasionally dabbles
| in engine stuff I'll be migrating to Unreal for good now. I
| haven't been a paying customer for a while now but I used to
| pay for Unity back in the super early days of AR.
|
| Or I guess take another serious look at Godot :D
| ummonk wrote:
| Mobile is the kind of use case where the pricing changes
| will be massively impactful though. If you're selling a
| non-mobile game for $10+ then you can just eat the per-
| install fee, but if you're shipping a free to play app or a
| $1 app? The per install fee could make your business model
| nonviable.
| abrolhos wrote:
| >> [...] I'm amazed they haven't done it.
|
| Never interfere with an enemy while he's in the process of
| destroying himself.
| kevingadd wrote:
| There was C# support for Unreal (contributed by the Mono
| maintainers) at one point but Epic actively blocked it. They
| want everyone on C++ and nothing else
| msk-lywenn wrote:
| They gave UnrealCLR an epic megagrant. How can you say they
| "actively blocked it" ?
| dgellow wrote:
| Honestly, Unreal C++ isn't that bad or hardcore. It's fairly
| high level, and Unreal APIs are pretty well designed. You
| spend way more time dealing with Unreal specific stuff and
| your game objects than dealing with C++ issues.
| matt3210 wrote:
| C++ is a much better language than c#, what's your reasoning
| here?
| bilekas wrote:
| Better is relative. And it's just a different type of tool.
| To be honest I know many more better engineers who
| primarily work with dotnet over CPP. The learning curve for
| CPP is higher because the ability to shoot yourself in the
| foot with CPP is higher. It's neither better or worse. Just
| a different tool in a toolbox.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I think a lot of people find the learning curve of c++
| fairly extreme, especially when considering the amount of
| knowledge to do idiomatic programming in c++ required to
| "do things elegantly." C# and related languages tend to
| have idioms baked in closer to the syntax and grammar. My
| view of c++ after 30 years of it is it's great if you've
| got 10 years experience programming it within a team of
| seasoned c++ programmers who shows you the ropes. Even then
| I think rust is the language I wished for all these years
| (albeit not for game dev yet). Finally, for the reasons
| rust isn't great for game dev, c# and ilk generally have
| excellent reflective and dynamic natures making them sort
| of the sweatpants and old T-shirt language for game
| programming.
|
| That said, it locks you into using stuff like mono and
| stuff for cross platform which makes me a sad.
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| > That said, it locks you into using stuff like mono and
| stuff for cross platform which makes me a sad.
|
| Microsoft's .Net Core runtime (now just .Net) has
| supported Linux and MacOS since 2016, so this information
| has been out of date for 7+ years.
|
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/announcing-net-
| core-1-...
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Oh thanks! I stand corrected. Good to see.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Define "better language". If you don't need performance
| then C# can make your life much easier.
| kroltan wrote:
| The new versions of C# can compile ahead-of-time, and
| have expanding support for value types and pointer-like
| semantics, so you're not stuck with the Java-y OOP For
| Everything paradigm if it doesn't fit your requirements.
|
| The standard libraries are still an allocation party, of
| course, but that can be supplemented in an engine
| context.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Famous last words, even with the optimization in the
| latests net core clr, it's nowhere close to C++.
| kevingadd wrote:
| This is a pretty wild generalization to make. It's not
| hard to contrive scenarios where C++ with its notoriously
| slow stdlib (despised by game developers) is going to be
| slower than C# with its JIT doing runtime optimizations
| like guarded devirtualization.
| sha90 wrote:
| Citation needed? Raw speed is likely similar; the cost
| overhead comes from GC cycles and the general approach to
| managing memory primarily in the heap vs stack, although
| C# can stackalloc if you're really diligent. Note that
| this is the same problem that blazing fast alternatives
| like Go have at competing with C/C++. These languages are
| mostly equivalent to C/C++ in speed, but lose the
| benchmark shootouts because of GC.
| sha90 wrote:
| Keep in mind that in addition to the "learning curve"
| arguments, there is also the functional developer
| ergonomics of things like live reload (where you can
| maintain memory state) that are simply not possible to do
| with C++ without heavy limitations or customized tooling.
|
| Being able to fix a bug without resetting memory state is a
| huge ergonomic advantage in game development where
| generating the right memory state can be incredibly complex
| and depend on a ton of very specific and hard-to-reproduce
| factors. Not to mention recompiling and restarting a game
| can be incredibly slow.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| "Being able to fix a bug without resetting memory state
| is a huge ergonomic advantage in game development"
|
| Visual Studio works with UE and calls that "Edit and
| Continue" and it works in C++, too.
| sha90 wrote:
| Yes, but it has many known limitations and isn't nearly
| as reliable as a runtime that has a full GC and
| virtualization optionality, which you really need in
| order to fully track what state can be evicted and what
| needs to stay.
| ActionHank wrote:
| I've been eyeing out UnrealCLR, it looks really promising!
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Unfortunately it looks dead - last release was over a year
| ago, commits tapering off.
| qwytw wrote:
| Isn't Unreal still significantly more expensive with the 5%
| royalty at least as long as your game costs more than $5-10?
|
| Edit: am I wrong (mathematically?)
| namrog84 wrote:
| I think unreal 5% only takes effect after your first 1
| million in revenue
| qwytw wrote:
| I guess it depends then.
|
| Looking at their per install pricing if you have large
| number of users but very low revenue per user it would
| certainly make sense to upgrade to Pro where you would only
| pay ~$2k for each seat as long as you make less than 1
| million per year. Which doesen't seem that unreasonable.
| NohatCoder wrote:
| The problem is that Unity has a lot of customers that make
| freemium/ad supported/low cost (mobile) games. $0.20 per
| install is absurd when most players are gone after less than
| an hour of playtime.
|
| Of course if you sell games at $60 a piece it is not a whole
| lot, and the regular seat pricing of Unity is most likely a
| far greater expense.
| qwytw wrote:
| > $0.20 per install is absurd
|
| Yeah, it almost seems to me that the $0.20 is there to
| force to encourage plus subscribers to Pro.
|
| Which probably was a poor choice marketing wise since most
| people will just see a single number and not pay much
| attention at anything else.
|
| Also it's only $0.2 fore a specific list of countries (US,
| CAN, AU, NZ, JP, SK and some richer EU countries).
| Everywhere else it's $0.02
|
| I don't personally like this whole business model that
| much, but financially it seems to be pretty reasonable (I
| guess as long as you can somewhat predict your expected
| install count in advance which might not be that easy in
| some cases).
| gsuuon wrote:
| This does look pretty bad for hyper-casual and casual Unity
| devs. The total earning per install could easily drop into
| the negative and even with the $200k revenue buffer, it'd
| be easy to end up with almost nothing. I imagine these
| folks will just shut their game down around the $200k mark
| if they see their LTV hovering at or below $0.20.
| qwytw wrote:
| > shut their game down around the $200k
|
| Wouldn't upgrading to Pro be a better option? Yearly
| subscription for a seat seems to be worth about 10k $0.2.
|
| Also you're cost per install is almost certainly going to
| be significantly below $0.2 because every install outside
| of:
|
| "United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada,
| Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan,
| Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland,
| South Korea, and the United Kingdom" (I wonder how did
| they create this list, e.g. Spain and Italy seem to have
| a comparable or even higher cost-per-click than Sweden ,
| Austria, Finland etc.)
|
| will cost just $0.02
| gsuuon wrote:
| You're right, upgrading to pro would be better at
| $2k/seat/yr which gets you a much larger million dollar
| buffer. Also, I'm noticing that the revenue thresholds
| seem to be per-game not per org - so actually, the new
| pricing isn't that bad!
| nullifidian wrote:
| "We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each
| time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose
| this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is
| also installed."
|
| This reads as something insane. If a player replays a game on
| steam, redownloads it, the developer still pays for the
| installation? I know people who redownload games all the time,
| like tens of times over the span of several years. I hope it's
| imprecise language and only the initial install/download is
| counted.
|
| I hope these changes (whatever they actually are) won't push game
| developers towards developing games that milk users more, with
| loot boxes, in-game currency, cosmetics etc, and away from stand
| alone you-pay-once games, single player or multiplayer, only to
| be able to pay for the ongoing engine fees.
| [deleted]
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Reading this on the face of it...
|
| - What about pirated copies?
|
| - What about maliciously installed copies? (4chan: "alright
| frens, time to install-bomb <gamewehate.exe>! Remember to click
| the IP address rotation button each time!"
| danjoredd wrote:
| I posted this update in a discord server and that was the
| first thing a friend of mine said. Said "Great, lets
| reinstall [game they don't like but I won't name here] over
| and over again!"
|
| There is a real risk of this happening.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I have spare SSD drives I'm willing to burn out. Fuck
| review bombing, this is definitely the way to go to
| disincentivize bad game publisher behavior.
| hightrix wrote:
| You probably wouldn't need to install the entire game,
| possibly just install the first bits and then cancel. I'm
| sure our wonderful friends over at 4chan and other places
| full of honorable, upstanding citizens will come up with
| some interesting ideas.
| teraflop wrote:
| And even if you assume they only charge for legitimate,
| authorized installations -- what about free demos? This seems
| to create a massive disincentive to make those available.
| gs17 wrote:
| I think demos would be fine, if you create a separate
| project for the demo. It's effectively a separate game with
| no revenue. Development builds, on the other hand, would be
| the same game.
| Karliss wrote:
| Information provided by Unity says that they can merge
| numbers for multiple games if they decided that they are
| sufficiently similar. So clever tricks of making separate
| game will not work. It depends on how greedy they are
| whether Unity will apply this rule to demos.
| justinclift wrote:
| Yeah, there are definitely games on Steam I've played and
| deleted many, many times over the years.
|
| Eufloria is a good example (for me), as I've played that one on
| several different machines over a few years. Probably played
| and deleted it more then 20 or 30 times overall. And will
| likely keep on doing more too.
| strictnein wrote:
| Easily reinstalled Stellaris 15-20 times, because otherwise
| I'll keep playing just a little bit more until the sun comes
| up.
| [deleted]
| ncr100 wrote:
| Yeah the core problem with that billing logic is that there is
| no value to the developer.
|
| Unity is assuming that there is "success" due to an
| installation. That's a inconsistent assertion. And so, there
| are flaws with this billing approach.
| nullifidian wrote:
| Yup, it makes free-to-play games with high installation
| numbers and less exploitative mechanics that result in $200k
| (or over $1mil with the pro subscription iiuc) yearly income
| either non-viable, or much less viable using this engine.
|
| They are also seemingly making Unity games online-only for
| the DRM/accounting purposes.
| [deleted]
| tekronis wrote:
| GamesFromScratch has commented on this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlPOn0nAOeo
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