[HN Gopher] Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch...
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Unity is offering a runtime fee waiver if you switch to LevelPlay
Author : stuckinhell
Score : 73 points
Date : 2023-09-14 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mobilegamer.biz)
(TXT) w3m dump (mobilegamer.biz)
| linuxftw wrote:
| I had a feeling some detail like this was missing from previous
| reports (most of which I did not read entirely).
|
| This is the right move. It represents an opportunity to dethrone
| google in the ad display market, at least for gaming.
| pjc50 wrote:
| There really shouldn't be a gaming ad market. There are no good
| ad-supported games, it's more corrosive to the gameplay than
| even gatcha.
| linuxftw wrote:
| There are plenty of free to play games supported by ads that
| are fun to play. It's also a great funnel for converting a
| non-paying user into a paying user to disable the ads.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| It is also a great way to hook up kids as early as possible
| to get the best tracking data and condition them to
| whatever it is, that you want to sell them.
|
| With paying for games, the cost is clear. With ads, it
| isn't.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| This really does seem like Unity is destroying their business for
| pennies. Mobile game display ads seem like a very, very low value
| business to be in and I would imagine rates are going down all
| the time. Unity may manage to wipe out AppLovin by burning down
| the rest of their business, but winning king-of-the-hill on top a
| pile of ashes does not seem to be a high value position.
|
| Edit: It's as if Unreal wants to be king of glossy, fancy, high
| value brochures, magazines, and books. Unity wants to be king of
| phone book yellow page ads.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| It's kind of amazing just how big a Rubicon they crossed. Like,
| they're going to walk the changes back at this point, I don't
| think that's even in question anymore - but it won't matter.
| They have broadcast loud and clear that they can and will alter
| the deal.
| hightrix wrote:
| This is the biggest issue. Unity have clearly signaled that
| the previous and current user agreements to use their
| software are useless as they may be retroactively changed at
| any time.
|
| What company would put their bottom line at risk dealing with
| these terms?
| sp332 wrote:
| Unity is already making more money from ads than from engine
| license sales. Most developers don't pay for using the engine.
| Ad sales pay for engine development.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Unity want a cut of Genshin Impact and see _everyone else_ as a
| rounding error.
| bbatsell wrote:
| Except that Genshin will not be subject to it. Genshin Impact
| is made by Mihoyo, a Chinese company. In order to sell Unity
| licenses to Chinese customers, Unity Technologies created a
| joint venture called Unity China, and, as is standard Chinese
| government policy, it must be majority-owned and controlled
| by Chinese entities. The majority owner of Unity China?
| Mihoyo.
|
| (On top of that, it makes no sense -- Genshin would be a
| poster child for revshare: a single entity that has made
| billions off microtransactions and that can be easily audited
| in one go.)
| jsnell wrote:
| That explanation makes no sense, because their changes were
| achieving the exact opposite. Genshin has a high ARPU, $0.01
| per install will capture basically none of that. (Yes, $0.01
| because the Unity fees are regressive, the fewer installs you
| have the more you have to pay per install. Genshin Impact
| obviously will fall into the bucket with the lowest cost.)
|
| If the goal were to get a cut of Genshin while treating
| everyone else as a rounding error, they'd have changed the
| contract to be a revenue share. Or they would not have made
| the install fees regressive.
| alex_lav wrote:
| > Mobile game display ads seem like a very, very low value
| business to be in and I would imagine rates are going down all
| the time
|
| You'd be incorrect. It's a huge business. Less ads in general
| more paid install services as a result of ads for games, but
| both are huge businesses tbh.
| pc_edwin wrote:
| I'm not an industry expert (mobile gaming) but currently
| (14/09/2023) App Lovin (NASDAQ:APP) is worth more than Unity
| (NYSE:U) and they make twice as much in revenue with a higher
| profit margin (less negative).
|
| Its seems like advertising is where its at with mobile gaming
| and I don't why that will change anytime soon.
| belval wrote:
| > Mobile game display ads seem like a very, very low value
| business to be in
|
| Might be much less prestigious than selling games that aren't
| predatory, but Unity does in fact make a lot more money from
| selling ads in mobile games than licensing and by a very wide
| margin.
|
| The sad truth is that for every "real gamer", there are 10+
| regular mom and pop playing candy crush and buying boosts every
| other day.
|
| > Create Solutions (Game engine) second quarter revenue of $193
| million was up 17% year-over-year.
|
| > Grow Solutions (Ads) revenue of $340 million was up 157%
| year-over-year
|
| And an even better exerpt:
|
| > This quarter we partnered with one of the leading dating apps
| in the world, Tinder, to power their video ad monetization.
| Expanding beyond games is part of our goal of providing the
| most comprehensive platform for the App Economy, adding value
| to customers.
|
| Customers are not players here, they are the companies using
| Unity.
| cratermoon wrote:
| So Unity is a digital ad company that gives away a game
| engine, or sells it at a loss, as a way to sell ads targeted
| based on what they know about the people playing the game. Ad
| revenue is in decline across the whole industry, so now Unity
| is looking to get a bigger slice of the pie by displacing
| AppLovin as the data harvester/ad provider
|
| Aside: I wonder how much user data Unity-based games harvest
| from mobile devices. This may shed some much-needed light on
| privacy, advertising and mobile games.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| they really always have been when you think about it. shame
| about the engine being a causality of war
| TillE wrote:
| There's just no way this change is actually gonna happen. Many
| prominent indie developers have already announced they'll be
| switching away from Unity for future projects, and you have to
| think that larger studios are drawing the same conclusions. The
| ship is sinking.
|
| Unity will retract this. Switch to revenue share or whatever.
| They'll eat a huge loss of trust because of this idiocy, but
| they'll remain a relevant game engine. I just can't see any
| other scenario.
| syntheweave wrote:
| They've gotten commodified. It's going to be like being
| Oracle in a Postgre/MySQL world. You'll have some big legacy
| customers who just can't switch. But the market as a whole
| was primed to pack up and leave anyway. Gamedev has high
| turnover, and what the new kids are going to gravitate
| towards is what works immediately for them, which Godot
| superseded Unity on out-of-the-box experiences a long while
| back, and now has the tutorial content to accompany it.
|
| What Unity has in its favor is mostly in the Asset Store, but
| that's shifted towards being a commodity as well.
| mholm wrote:
| > but they'll remain a relevant game engine For a little
| while. The problem is that Unity is a public company, merged
| with a malware company, and (currently) headed by somebody
| with no understanding of their own customers. But nobody
| looking to make games right now is going to start using
| Unity. Many indie developers are going to transition off, and
| the major players who still use it are likely going to find
| that Unity is going to start squeezing them to keep any
| semblance of profitability. Maybe big games like
| Genshin/Cities Skylines/Pokemon Go stick with it, but Unity
| doesn't survive that transition.
| CactusOnFire wrote:
| I'm not a gamedev, but I am hoping one of the actionable
| things from this situation is a call to action from the
| gaming community to put together more open-source game
| engine platforms, and for them to be more easily sharable.
|
| I am sure there are reasons this is difficult, but with so
| many industries built on open-source compliant tools,
| gamedev feels like a no-brainer for it as well.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Unreal is virtually open-source anyway, it doesn't make
| any sense for anyone to invest the _billions_ of dollars
| you need to even come close to it.
| Cpoll wrote:
| > they'll remain a relevant game engine
|
| I think "loss of trust" is understating it. This is an
| existential threat for lots of studios, and I can't imagine
| them placing future bets on the platform.
| gabereiser wrote:
| This is exactly what's happening. Studios' strategies are
| moving off of Unity. None of the ones I know are going to
| do any further development in the engine on any future
| projects. One studio is rewriting their game right now to
| run on Godot. It's been the biggest exodus I've ever seen.
| rodgerd wrote:
| > There's just no way this change is actually gonna happen.
|
| You under-estimate the degree to which companies can be
| driven by an exec determined to have their way.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Revenue share is going to be worse for most indie developers
| - the .20 install fee is only bad for extremely high volume,
| low ARPU games. Basically mobile F2P. They deserve a
| different payment option, but switching everyone to revenue
| share is would be much worse for a typical Steam, $5+ indie
| game.
| [deleted]
| __loam wrote:
| The problem with install fees is that it's a potentially
| unlimited financial risk.
| deciplex wrote:
| At least with revenue share the amount you owe is bounded
| by the revenue you've realized from sales.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| That seems like monopolistic behavior on Unity's part. Wouldn't
| this action run afoul of antitrust laws?
| badRNG wrote:
| Typically antitrust laws apply to a company using a monopoly in
| one industry to behave anti-competitively in another. Unity is
| behaving terribly, but they aren't a monopoly, and this isn't
| really even anti-competitive, it's just shitty. There's a
| greater case that they aren't properly representing the
| fiduciary interests of their shareholders.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| 30% market share is not a monopoly
| everyone wrote:
| I've been a pro Unity dev, as an employee and then a freelancer
| running a small team doing contracts for 10 years. I think this
| was in the back of my mind for a long time but yesterday a switch
| just flipped in my head and I decided Unity are just not to be
| trusted anymore, the company has lost all credibility and I never
| want to use Unity for another project. I'm learning Godot atm.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| What I'd like to see is that this fiasco encourages studios to
| produce their own engines rather than using the pre/existing
| selection.
|
| I'd happily wait another 5-7 years for a new game on a new engine
| then have a new game in two years that feels identical to others.
|
| And then open-source it and let the creativity roam free.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >encourages studios to produce their own engines rather than
| using the pre/existing selection.
|
| >And then open-source it and let the creativity roam free.
|
| These things are mutually exclusive.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| I disagree. It is a lot of effort to build and maintain an
| engine. To be more precise, there is no such thing as a pure
| engine, but a platform with tools. Hardly anyone can build
| these things alone or even with a small team.
|
| Most indie games and devs would not exist without Unity and it
| makes perfectly sense to use services from 3rd parties. We all
| do, we all rely on others.
|
| On the other hand, a steady and trustworthy business
| relationship is key. While I understand Unity, they wanna earn
| money, I think it is bad to act in such a manner.
|
| Regarding the "look a like" feeling: This only shows, that the
| market works this way. How could an engine change that?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| It's more the feeling of the mechanics, game-play. Certain
| aspects carry through regardless of the genre and how
| modified the engine has.
|
| A game to me modeled in Unreal engine feels like all others
| created in Unreal.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Building a custom engine costs a lot of money and adds risk to
| a project. Games already have a very high probability of not
| breaking even and so publishers are going to be extremely
| reluctant to take on any additional risks.
| raytopia wrote:
| I do agree that more engines would be nice especially if they
| push workflows in different ways.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Square enix spent millions on their in house engines (luminous
| engine). They have a good report on how and why it wasn't a
| great investment (10 year delays on projects). They've switched
| to unreal for everything now.
| jsnell wrote:
| I'm not having any luck finding this. Do you happen to have a
| link?
| raytopia wrote:
| It seems like part of the problem is they're being poorly
| managed https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/report-square-
| enix-mi...
| armancdev wrote:
| I disagree. It's not an engine problem if a game look like
| others. Most of the time, it's not lack of creativity too. It's
| often, not taking risk and applying what is already working.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| And using a game engine lets you take those risks because you
| can iterate and release faster.
|
| Studios will take more risk on a $3m game than a $6m game.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Rightly so, but than the $3m game feels like every other
| $3m game. Without the risk, you don't get the whole
| innovated design of a new game.
| willio58 wrote:
| I think it will just more people into existing engines like
| Unreal and Godot.
| filiposnz wrote:
| >> "A fresh report...has thrown light on the situation"
|
| ...no it hasn't. This was in their original announcement.
| Discounts are available for those using other Unity
| products/services (which includes their ad stuff).
| i_am_jl wrote:
| Describing a 100% fee waiver for studios that start a new
| engagement with one specific service as "discounts... for those
| using other Unity products/services" isn't exactly being
| forthcoming.
|
| This isn't my car insurance giving me a discount on my
| homeowner's policy, this is my landlord threatening to jack up
| my rent unless I use his garbage disposal company.
| hcks wrote:
| The outrage is on par with the Reddit API drama (if anybody
| remember?)
|
| Like wow, this company that edits this software and loose
| millions every year is asking for a few cents on every install.
| Outrageous! I ought to be able to make the 1000th survival horror
| zombie game for free!
| hightrix wrote:
| > The outrage is on par with the Reddit API drama (if anybody
| remember?)
|
| You are spot on with this comment. Both Reddit's changes and
| Unity's changes will have/have had massive effect on the
| userbase.
|
| Reddit's activity in many of the largest subreddits is down
| 50-90% from before July 1 when the changes went into effect. I
| imagine Unity will see similar numbers.
| TheIronMark wrote:
| Unity already has license fees if your game earns money. This
| new license change comes across like a shameless money grab.
| vore wrote:
| A per-installation fee model is bonkers: of course Unity is
| allowed to charge for their product, but if your margins are
| already pretty thin, it's pretty hard to budget for a per-
| installation fee - not even per sale!
| sph wrote:
| How do per-installation fees work in the case of piracy? Will
| game studios have to pay for pirated installs?
|
| And if a user installs a game twice, do they have to pay the
| fee twice? Forget review bombing, now people can hate install
| a game.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| How many apps are successful enough to meet the revenue
| thresholds (over $1mil), but are sub $1 ARPU, and aren't ad
| revenue driven? I'm sure there are some, but that's going to
| be a small number, and there likely can be some carve out for
| them.
| CDSlice wrote:
| This isn't even close to accurate. For one thing, developers
| already pay to license the Unity engine, it's only free if you
| agree to keep the unity logo loading screen and make under a
| certain amount of money.
|
| Two, unlike the Reddit API changes which just annoyed mods at
| worst (yes there were problems for people with disabilities but
| that is such a small percentage it was basically a rounding
| error for them) this is an existential threat to F2P mobile
| games which are Unity's largest market by far. When you aren't
| directly selling the game and the only way to make money is to
| get as many downloads as possible in the hope that a certain
| small percentage buy IAPs these few cent fees per install could
| very easily wipe out their entire revenue.
|
| Three, unlike Reddit which had no viable alternatives for the
| millions of end users to migrate to, Unity has far fewer
| customers and an extremely viable replacement in the form of
| Unreal and potentially Godot.
| password54321 wrote:
| As usual, a lot of it isn't even genuine outrage but people who
| just want to see a giant fall. I will even admit, as someone
| who didn't like Unity anyway I find this quite amusing.
| Renaud wrote:
| Wondering if Microsoft shouldn't have bought Unity, It could have
| made sense, because of its focus on developer, because of its
| interests in gaming and because it's a huge showcase for C# and
| .Net as many of the features of unity could have been folded into
| regular .Net or there could have been an opportunity to have a
| '.GameNet' version, maybe.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| on the flip side they kinda left XNA out to dry despite
| basically being the unity before unity in some ways for indie
| devs
| everyone wrote:
| Yeah I made games in XNA, then Unity (for 10 years), now
| Godot since yesterday.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Monogame came in to fill in the XNA gap to a certain extent.
| Works pretty well as long as you're making 2D games. I'm
| trying to make a 3D game in it right now, and it's... _okay_
| , not great.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Microsoft already has XBox, and CryEngine is also C#/.NET.
| bmalicoat wrote:
| Xbox doesn't provide a game engine, just lower level APIs.
| Unity is a popular way to get games on Xbox for folks who
| can't build their own engine. Further, things like HoloLens
| run Unity as a first class dev environment.
|
| I used to work on both Xbox and HoloLens at Microsoft, but
| this is all public info.
| asabla wrote:
| I guess this could also be a play to make Microsoft interested
| in buying them out when money crisis hit.
|
| But I don't know, it could just be an ordinary bad bussiness
| decision
| Someone wrote:
| > I guess this could also be a play to make Microsoft
| interested in buying them out when money crisis hit.
|
| That would be a stupid idea. Companies that are in financial
| trouble tend to be cheaper to buy, typically a lot cheaper if
| there's only one serious buyer candidate.
|
| If they think "when we're almost broke, we can sell out to
| Microsoft for X million", certainly they can get at least the
| same amount now that they aren't?
| pc_edwin wrote:
| They really want to but Lina Khan will blow up the acquisition
| before the ink even has a chance to dry.
|
| Especially after the bruising FTC for from the Activision
| fight. Unlike Activision, the FTC actually has a case here.
| salynchnew wrote:
| When the anonymous source in the article said "they've been
| killing it," then I knew that the quote came from a source
| internal to AppLovin. Their exec team loves to say stuff like
| that.
| brundolf wrote:
| You can almost hear the lawsuits being prepared
| olliej wrote:
| "Make your apps have a shitty UX, and sell your user's data
| without their consent, or we'll force you to discard all the work
| you did under our previous license"
|
| In other words, any unity products going forward should be
| considered suspect. Any new games should avoid the entire company
| as they are clearly dishonest and have no interest in maintaining
| whatever contract terms you might agree to today.
| Fordec wrote:
| What a lovely way of saying that everyone who _doesn 't_ leave
| the platform is about to become a Ubisoft tier Developer filled
| with spyware. Burning even their users that don't quit the
| platform. How absolute this decimation of their user base will be
| is almost impressive in how destructive this move has been. I
| almost have to commend it's comprehensiveness.
| failrate wrote:
| Godot is pretty good. GameMaker Studio is all right for 2D stuff.
| Havoc wrote:
| At this stage Unity could offer a free unicorn and it wouldn't
| move the needle.
|
| They literally smoked all their goodwill in a day with their
| retrospective revise the terms to something that fucks over ever
| dev thing
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I feel like there ought to be a really good open source game
| engine competing with Unity and Unreal, but I'm unfamiliar with
| any.
| malermeister wrote:
| Sounds like you were waiting for Godot.
| gabereiser wrote:
| There's quite a few. The biggest one right now is Godot.
| There's still MonoGame, Open3D, Unreal, and others. Unity has
| one thing these others don't (outside of Unreal) and that's a
| healthy asset store. Solo indie devs aren't necessarily the
| best artists. We know the math, but lack the eye.
| everyone wrote:
| Its fairly trivial to buy art assets from the Unity asset
| store and port them to Godot, there are tools to do it
| automatically. They are just meshes and textures after all.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "We know the math, but lack the eye."
|
| I do have the eye, but lack the skills in my hand. I can do
| shiny art, but am so slow compared to an skilled artist. So
| why should I do their jobs?
|
| Blender has also an asset store btw, but not really
| comparible (yet). But the blender foundation would be a
| player I would trust to invest in them. I always stayed away
| from unity and it seems my gut feeling was right.
| raytopia wrote:
| When of the others is Panda3D. It's not on a lot of people's
| radars but you can use it with Python and C++. It's pretty
| code oriented which might not be everyone's cup of tea but I
| enjoy working with it.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| There's quite a few art asset marketplaces though. You'll
| find most art is sold across all of them as well as it's
| obviously easy to do. The move by Roblox to make their
| creator store denominated in dollars is likely a move to
| reduce the friction to attract these sellers there as well.
| bogwog wrote:
| The Unity asset store isn't limited to Unity (yet...). If
| you're ising Unreal or Godot or whatever, there's no reason
| you can't use assets from the Unity store. (With the
| exception of code assets of course)
| TillE wrote:
| Godot is already a great, viable option for many games, and
| it's only getting better with each point release. Official
| (paid) console ports are coming in the near future. An asset
| store is coming, probably next year.
|
| It's not a drop-in replacement for Unity, but nothing is.
| rocky1138 wrote:
| What's OpenXR support like in Godot?
| lsaferite wrote:
| I have no clue, but I was reading the documentation
| yesterday and XR is in there: https://docs.godotengine.org/
| en/stable/tutorials/xr/index.ht...
| gustavus wrote:
| Godot and yes although it isn't at parity at this point as more
| people adopt it it will increase in the number of features,
| especially if people choose to support it monetarily.
| lux wrote:
| Godot Engine is coming along nicely https://godotengine.org/
| jarsin wrote:
| Switch over to Unreal. There is no risk over there.
|
| Tim Sweeney (Dec 2022): Epic Games will 'fight on to victory,
| whatever it costs' in Apple legal battle
|
| Psst...that cost will be Unreal.
| jarsin wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| cratermoon wrote:
| Buried lede: AppLovin tried to buy Unity last year:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/applovin-proposes-combination-w...
| LevelPlay is Unity's rebrand of IronSource's mobile game
| monetization platform. IronSource bought/merged with Unity about
| the same time, a move criticized by some:
| https://www.thegamer.com/unity-criticised-for-merging-with-k...
| Ekaros wrote:
| Hmm, I wonder if they get the 0.20 cents per install from adds?
| Then again it would be extremely ironic if they would charge more
| for install than they can provide revenue via adds...
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