Unity Introduces New Runtime Fee allowing them to charge per installation beginning in 2024

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, AlexGoesHigh said:

 

Not once, heck no. But I'd pick a publisher or developer I really hate and reinstall it 10,000 times. I also recommend thousands of other people do the same. I'm sure something will happen lol

[WereCat]

Let's charge them back for wearing down our SSDs after each installation.

[rcmaehl]

Quote

Unity also clarified some questions developers had in regards to how it counts an "installation" Clarifying that if a player deletes and re-installs a game it does indeed count as 2 installations and thus 2 charges.

[RejZoR]

This has to be the dumbest business model I've ever heard of. Excellent way to alienate all your existing developers as well as players. It's like Unity wants to lose all their customers and go bust lol. There is no way you can enforce this backwards for games already released with Unity and good luck finding new clients with such absurd business model... Unreal Engine devs are jumping in joy as their business will be booming in 2024 and onwards...

[Brooksie359]

19 hours ago, Kisai said:

Unity was always the worst license (next to GameMaker's Adobe-style license, which makes using it to develop indie games a pain unless you only make HTML5 exports, otherwise it's 80$/mo to export to game consoles ).  Just because you can download the engine for free, doesn't mean you can make a free game because Unity wants install fees, and GameMaker want's ongoing developer install fees. Both of these make "free games"/"free software"  impossible to maintain unless there is some skinner box mechanic to empty the wallet of the player.

 

Unreal's terms are even extremely reasonable (5% of all revenue.) Not perfect, but this is why you see "good" games that use the GPU and CPU extensively built on Unreal, but not Unity. Unity is Mobile-first, and has a reputation for being used for junky asset-flip fake games.

 

Then you have Godot and Stride (formerly Xenko) which are basically Unity-like which are both under the MIT license. Godot is a mobile-first style of engine (engine environment designed around OpenGL ES and HTML5 exportables), where as Stride is more of a desktop-first one (iOS and Android available, but not game consoles or web.)

 

Like I'd recommend Unity developers who aren't heavily invested in the Unity asset store to build their next game on Godot.

 

Yeah I think a small percent of revenue is always going to be fair and very easy to understand what the cost of using the engine is going to be. The unity model is so confusing and hard to determine how much it would cost you as its per install which is insane to me. It basically makes lower cost games very at risk of being a money sink. I mean I think I have installed terraria at least 10 time so I guess that is 2+ dollars in cost if it was made in Unity. I imagine for good games that are repayable it would be similar and I guess you are almost better off not having a too good of a game that way people only install it once lol. 

[KaitouX]

20 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Yeah I think a small percent of revenue is always going to be fair and very easy to understand what the cost of using the engine is going to be. The unity model is so confusing and hard to determine how much it would cost you as its per install which is insane to me. It basically makes lower cost games very at risk of being a money sink. I mean I think I have installed terraria at least 10 time so I guess that is 2+ dollars in cost if it was made in Unity. I imagine for good games that are repayable it would be similar and I guess you are almost better off not having a too good of a game that way people only install it once lol. 

Games that are small in filesize are also probably more likely to be installed and uninstalled more often, as for most people with decent internet downloading a 500mb or less from steam takes less than a minute, reinstalling is also usually the first troubleshooting step for many, again small games in particular due to how fast it's to download them.

 

Also would updates count as new installation? That would be crazy, as storefronts usually automatically install those.

[Brooksie359]

17 minutes ago, KaitouX said:

Games that are small in filesize are also probably more likely to be installed and uninstalled more often, as for most people with decent internet downloading a 500mb or less from steam takes less than a minute, reinstalling is also usually the first troubleshooting step for many, again small games in particular due to how fast it's to download them.

 

Also would updates count as new installation? That would be crazy, as storefronts usually automatically install those.

I just don't understand why they would go for such a model. I mean how hard would it be to just go by how many games sold rather than installs? I mean who in the world came up with such a horrible model and signed off on it? I mean it doesn't take a genius to realize why such a model would be highly problematic as you can essentially lose money on a game sale depending on how many times someone installs the game. 

[Quackers101]

never forget the stupid people at the top and since unity became "public".

unity has a link to a newer QnA for questions around it

When you can be gambling and get away with everything

[Quackers101]

But the meme going around for everyone, from devs and publishers.

"you wouldn't want to install a unity game, would you?"

Edited September 13, 2023 by Quackers101

[starsmine]

47 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I just don't understand why they would go for such a model. I mean how hard would it be to just go by how many games sold rather than installs? I mean who in the world came up with such a horrible model and signed off on it? I mean it doesn't take a genius to realize why such a model would be highly problematic as you can essentially lose money on a game sale depending on how many times someone installs the game. 

Free to play games dont have "units sold"

A LOT of unity games are free to play (like genshin impact)

Many PC games would not even have a tracker on users if you dont need to make an account to play. 

[Brooksie359]

4 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Free to play games dont have "units sold"

A LOT of unity games are free to play (like genshin impact)

Many PC games would not even have a tracker on users if you dont need to make an account to play. 

If your model doesn't work that doesn't mean you make another model that also doesn't work. It's very simple to just do a profit share and it would result in way less problems. Also reinstalls counting is also a huge issue so not sure how you can justify that. 

[Quackers101]

12 minutes ago, starsmine said:

A LOT of unity games are free to play (like genshin impact)

Mmmm microtransactions, me likey. Very free.

[starsmine]

7 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

If your model doesn't work that doesn't mean you make another model that also doesn't work. It's very simple to just do a profit share and it would result in way less problems. Also reinstalls counting is also a huge issue so not sure how you can justify that. 

If your model does not work, you try to make a model that does work. Im not saying this one is good, I'm saying your counter example of a model is not better as its the broken one. 

 

2 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

Mmmm microtransactions, me likey. Very free.

... yes. Its probably the most popular F2P game on unity. Others exist obviously with fewer MTX. 

[Brooksie359]

32 minutes ago, starsmine said:

If your model does not work, you try to make a model that does work. Im not saying this one is good, I'm saying your counter example of a model is not better as its the broken one. 

 

... yes. Its probably the most popular F2P game on unity. Others exist obviously with fewer MTX. 

They did try and make a model that works because even an idiot can tell the new model doesn't work. I mean even a lazy person could come up with a better model especially since any lazy person could easily look at similar engines monetization model and basically copy them. 

[starsmine]

54 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

They did try and make a model that works because even an idiot can tell the new model doesn't work. I mean even a lazy person could come up with a better model especially since any lazy person could easily look at similar engines monetization model and basically copy them. 

The new model is a standard (fucked) progressive model. 

Do not base your logic off of an idiot. Idiots are not known for their ability to use logic. 

The problem with the new model is the assumption that an install is equivalent to additional revenue for the studio and the fact that large tail games get hurt hard by the missing base bucket of installs. 

Remeber this does not trigger until the initial conditions are met (200k revenue in a year) 
Which for games that came out a year ago. are very uncommon. 

THE issue is you hit that trigger point a year (or some other year) after a game comes out and all the sudden you owe money for that 200k due to the lack of the base bucket. make 190k of revenue? pay nothing, make 200k, pay 25k (with this example being 7 dollar sale price per install (store takes 30%, that isn't revenue) (assuming everyone who buys installs once), sold 40k copies somehow on the free version of unity after selling 200k units the year before aka long tail

this math gets worse as the game get cheaper, like 99 cent games on apple store (but how many of those are selling 200k copies)

So this effects all of a dozen games. 

This is really targeting f2p games that do charge MTX, and charging them a fair price. However large tail purchaseable games got hit in the crossfire.
LIGHTLY monetized games get shafted. No monetization and moderate should be fine. 

The other option that this is trying to push studios to, is if you are making 500k of revenue on a game sale, you REALLY should be considering not using the FREE version of unity. You are a small company at that point. 


Progressive models ARE the correct models to use, when made right. 

[WolframaticAlpha]

2 hours ago, starsmine said:

new model is a standard (fucked) progressive model

The issue is that there are very few frameworks if any that have such progressive cessation policies. This stuff is really more popular in the enterprise space.

Unity is the only one that comes to my mind that has something like this for consumer/prosumer tiers.

 

 

Mark my words, heads are going to roll with this one. Unity has destroyed whatever goodwill they had with developers in one fell swoop.

[noenken]

This might be the dumbest move in gaming ever.

Whatever was left in terms of trust is entirely gone.

Nobody will use Untity ever again for a game.

That company just kurtcobained itself.

GG

[SpaceGhostC2C]

On 9/12/2023 at 7:08 PM, Haaselh0ff said:

 

 

Unity also clarified some questions developers had in regards to how it counts an "installation" Clarifying that if a player deletes and re-installs a game it does indeed count as 2 installations and thus 2 charges.

 

 

 

Unity developers to tech media: "please, please don't pick our game for benchmarks!"

[Taf the Ghost]

13 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I just don't understand why they would go for such a model. I mean how hard would it be to just go by how many games sold rather than installs? I mean who in the world came up with such a horrible model and signed off on it? I mean it doesn't take a genius to realize why such a model would be highly problematic as you can essentially lose money on a game sale depending on how many times someone installs the game. 

Unity might be bigger in Mobile than in PC. That's what it's targeted after. Genshin Impact is on Unity, for instance.  Unreal's 5% revenue cut has always been a fair going rate, but Unity's rate is now extremely difficult to calculate. And if you get an unexpected smash hit (like Vampire Survivors), you are going to get slammed.

 

While they're walking back some of the stuff (yeah, great job with the "Go too Far, Walk Back" strategy there, buds. Watch a mass exodus of developers), the damage is absolutely done. The big games on Unity can't move, but smaller companies will pivot or start on different Engines to begin with.

 

Also, knowing the Internet, there's going to be ways of spoofing these "install" numbers. I give it 2 weeks after they roll out some system for reporting.  Some group is going to really dislike some game, and they're going to find a way to make the Unity Bill higher than the game's revenue.

[Avocado Diaboli]

From their FAQ.

 

 

Sounds like they intend for massive invasions of privacy to make sure that they're only counting individual installs per person. Or, if you're more cynical like me, it's a "trust us bro" situation where they'll claim their numbers are correct regardless of how many times the same person switches platforms, redownloads a game and installs it. Speaking of "trust us bro".

 

 

This just in, Unity can detect pirated software. This is huge news, because developers will be now in a position to crack down on pirates and bring them to justice with ease. /s

[Helly]

So if they only charge for the first install... how do they know it's the first? What counts as a first install? If i install it on windows then switch to linux and install it there, is that 2 installs or 1? My guess is that will be 2 installs. So if people play the game on their pc and steamdeck, its paying twice.

Doesn't matter what they do, people will find a way to fuck over developers and bankrupt them. Just keep creating VM's and installing the game. A little more trouble but can be completely automated.

I don't see this ending well for Unity...

[porina]

Random thought: this could impact game giveaways in future. Right now, giving away a game costs very little, beyond the bandwidth hosting. If each "free" copy is going to cost something in the future, it may act as a disincentive.

 

How could this have sucked less?

• Make it per game sale, not install. This is easy to verify from sales data.
• For f2p games they could instead base it on game revenue.
• Is there any get out clause if you released a game on an older license to keep on that licence? I haven't looked into the details but it sounds like past sales will still count towards this once it takes effect.

[Thaldor]

I just love how in panic mode Unity is currently. Out of their 12 FAQ questions 7 has been already updated with the biggest change going for WebGL games which earlier were counted in (as in every initialization) and now the answer is just "No".

 

The "trust me, bro" side of logging installs is also nice to see after being more or less under the hood of Unity and especially the more experimental builds for over a decade. It's a fucking hackjob of game engine at the best, things "just work" and other things change so fast you're fixing your earlier doings more than developing new because someone at Unity decided to do things differently, again. Like seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if their new install detection system is just one check byte in Windows registry and you can just go and flip it like 5 year old ADHD kid does light switch and Unity counts every time as a new install.

 

Then you have the REALLY dangerous parts of this fuckery.

The different kind of game passes. Unity says that they won't bill the developer for those installs but the platform, wanna know how happy Microsoft, Sony, Apple, HTC (Viveport Infinity), Nintendo and whoelse would be about this? So, happy that they either drop every. single. Unity game from the programs or they just pass the bill to the devs or consumers (either dig deeper into dev pockets with poorer contracts and golden handshakes or rise the prices for consumers). The game passes are surprisingly good things for many developers because they offer good visibility with at least some income, not as good as legit sales but better than just getting the game pirated and you cannot really argue against that consumers doesn't like it with Xbox Game Pass having 25 million paying users.

 

What I believe this is some financial dying breaths of Unity, the last tries to hold on to the income and the past profitability of the company. 2023 hasn't been a good year for Unity, over 600 employees fired and plans to cut 28 offices (from 58 to 30), the engine being challenged by others while falling badly behind it's main competition without much teeth to bite back (Godot and O3DE have come a long way while Unreal 5 is far ahead). Tells a lot when the Unity execs have sold their stocks in pretty huge numbers along the year, CEO 50,610 shares during the year with 2,000 shares just before this release, President 37,500 shares September 1st, Board Director 68,454 shares in August 30th... While not big things, still shows that the value keeps dropping and the leadership is jumping the ship.

 

37 minutes ago, porina said:

Is there any get out clause if you released a game on an older license to keep on that licence? I haven't looked into the details but it sounds like past sales will still count towards this once it takes effect.

 

This is actually kind of interesting point when it comes to Unity. They are also dropping the Plus license and moving those users to the more expensive Pro license which is kind of asshole move as it's own. But the thing is quite many devs who have made Unity games in the past and moved on to Unreal or other engines probably don't have active Pro/Enterprise licenses since generally those just give you benefits during development and after launch and "death of the project" you can drop on to the free license and pay the 5% to Unity. Few years back it was even adviced step in releasing Unity game on budget to pay the Pro license for the launch month to get the few extra features and rid of the watermark and Unity was completely fine with it. There's also publisher(s) who will make some "acquisitions" if you manage to sell them Unity game because for them it's a lot cheaper to have their own Enterprise license and suck in the games and release them under it than get a new license for the studio.

[noenken]

So, if I understand this correctly ... Unity just started a bar fight against

 

• Epic Games (Fall Guys)
• Nintendo (Pokemon Go)
• Activision-Blizzard (Hearthstone)
• Disney (Marvel Snap)
• and basically China (Genshin Impact)

 

And these are just examples of singular games. I bet Playstation, X-Box and Steam are absolutely stoked about the great news as well.

 

There is no coming back from this for Unity. I don't even think they could fix this or even survive it if they do a 180 right now.

 

They have not pissed against the wind, they are currently actively projectile vomiting downwards while falling ... after uppercutting themselves out of a plane without a parachute.

 

Also love this:

 

 

[Kisai]

31 minutes ago, noenken said:

So, if I understand this correctly ... Unity just started a bar fight against

 

• Epic Games (Fall Guys)
• Nintendo (Pokemon Go)
• Activision-Blizzard (Hearthstone)
• and basically China (Genshin Impact)

 

And these are just examples of singular games. I bet Sony, X-Box and Steam are absolutely stoked about the great news as well.

 

 

Electronic Arts has always deserved the hate it gets, because it has 30 years of evil baggage that can't be undone. Unity has been "avoid at all costs" for at least 13 years (since 2.0). It's only managed to sneak into popularity due to Adobe abandoning Flash, and Unity fitting the same use case (at least until the "browser plugin"s died.)

 

But I think now's a good time to throw Unity in the junk bin with Java, Silverlight and Flash. Software that you should stop using immediately (due to terrible ownership/management) and not develop new software on. If you're an indie and don't have the patience to learn Godot, then you're basically going to have to learn Unreal Engine 5.x if you want to use a 3D pipeline. Cause there's not much else out there.

 

If you want to stick with 2D you're better off just biting the bullet and using Godot or Stride (Xenko) because a lot of other amateur tier engines have no chance of getting onto game consoles or mobile devices without you learning C++ and porting it yourself. Hell, "GameMaker" (the thing that Undertale was written with) never had anything on the Switch (2018) until Undertale (2015).

 

It's THAT hard to get stuff on game consoles in the first place and you're not going to spend any time porting a game written with a game engine that can't be exported to it. So a lot of free stuff is not on the table.

 

SDL, the middleware for getting 2D and 3D games on everything, is extremely difficult to setup because it largely only supports 2D and basic audio. If you want Vulkan, you can use it for Vulkan, but you're basically not using SDL itself for Vulkan. Likewise SDL has no native, text, image or audio playback and it's kind of a PITA to build the SDL TTF, Image, Mixer libraries due to underlying code rot in the playback codecs.

 

But again, in some cases, you are just better off forging the middleware if the thing you're trying to develop is isn't input latency sensitive. Because the hardest stuff stuff to "make work" are timing loops, and it's been a good 25 years (eg before Windows 2000 and ME) since 2D games could be developed against bare hardware. The minute 3D graphics adapters became a thing, no more innovation happened in 2D.

 

So 2D middleware has been a thing ever since, but the thing people used before Unity for 2D was flash. The Jackbox games still use Flash in 2023, but they don't use Adobe's runtime. they use CRIWARE/FMOD for audio/video middleware which is about 90% of what their games are actually using, and the entire input to the games are via HTML5 on the jackbox server. 

 

Another 2D option is Cocos-2dx, but this is really just a package of libraries, not a game engine, and it seems to have jumped down the metaverse rabbit hole. It's primarily intended for mobile devices.