Unity To Roll Back Some Key Aspects of Runtime Fee Policy (ign.com) 55
Unity has announced some key changes to its widely panned Runtime Fee policy, which spawned both derision and confusion from developers and the gaming community at large when it was unveiled earlier this month. From a report: It's easing up on some big aspects of the previously announced charges, removing the fee from the Unity Personal tier entirely, although it still remains in a revised form on the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise tiers. In short, as originally announced, starting on Jan. 1, 2024, Unity would start charging developers a small fee every time someone downloads a game built on Unity's game engine after a certain threshold for minimum revenue and install count.
The different tiers of Unity plans - Unity Personal/Unity Plus, Unity Pro, and Unity Enterprise - had different thresholds and, per the original announcement, smaller developers using Unity Personal/Unity Plus would have to pay Unity $0.20 per install once their game passes $200,000 in revenue over the last 12 months and 200,000 life-to-date installs. Unity announced today, however, that there will be no Runtime Fee on games built on Unity Personal, which will remain free. They will also be increasing financial theshold of Unity Personal from $100,000 to $200,000 and will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.
The different tiers of Unity plans - Unity Personal/Unity Plus, Unity Pro, and Unity Enterprise - had different thresholds and, per the original announcement, smaller developers using Unity Personal/Unity Plus would have to pay Unity $0.20 per install once their game passes $200,000 in revenue over the last 12 months and 200,000 life-to-date installs. Unity announced today, however, that there will be no Runtime Fee on games built on Unity Personal, which will remain free. They will also be increasing financial theshold of Unity Personal from $100,000 to $200,000 and will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.
Use Godot. (Score:5, Informative)
It's free.
Re: (Score:3)
I wish game companies who used products like Godot would take the time and have developers work on those projects. It would be a tiny fraction of the license costs, but help it for not just themselves, but everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
That is the ages-old "tragedy of the commons". Essentially "Why should I contribute when I can just take?" I think in the end we really need some FOSS tax that everybody has to pay on profits made using FOSS. And that tax then has to go to the projects. Could allow it being paid in dev-hours though.
Re: (Score:2)
At the minimum, perhaps governments donating to popular FOSS efforts and keeping them afloat, because it matters to national security. The ROI as a nation to keep core critical security packages funded will be tremendous, because another Log4J can cost not just companies a heavy price, but governments as well, when they have to muster law enforcement and deal with the aftermath.
Re: (Score:2)
More importantly, it's Free.
Re: (Score:2)
It's free.
I'll preface this with, I'm a huge fan of OSS and FOSS but...
There is wisdom in saying "it's only free if your time is free"... or more accurately, can Godot do what game devs need it to?
As with my preface, I really hope it can but a lot of smaller game developers are not adept at developing code. There's a lot more to making a game than raw code, not the least of which are art assets so a lot of indie devs are artists who know a bit of code.
We shouldn't be telling people to use Godot because it's
So stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Charging for an installation makes no sense because it has no correlation to the sales. A user might install it only once or 20 times even if they bought it once. It depends if their computer fails, or if they delete the game to free storage and want to reinstall it later. It makes no sense whatsoever and is purely motivated by greed.
If there was actually a metric they needed to address with funding, they would charge 20 cents per unit of that metric. But they don't have an expense they need to cover, just greed, so they picked something random like per install.
will MS and sony pay up as part of game pass? (Score:2)
will MS and sony pay up as part of game pass? and what happens if they don't pay the bill?
also what about other issues like
contract law issues with an change like this?
GDPR issues?
how they count installs issues?
will this force some must be online to play and unity servers must be up to play?
Re: (Score:2)
will MS and sony pay up as part of game pass? and what happens if they don't pay the bill?
This is the part where we break out the popcorn and watch what happens.
contract law issues with an change like this? GDPR issues? how they count installs issues? will this force some must be online to play and unity servers must be up to play?
All of these fell under "Trust us, bro" way of doing things. Why should developers be worried? :P
Re: (Score:3)
They addressed all of that.
It's no longer retroactive, the terms only apply to Unity versions releasing next year and newer.
Installs are self reported by developers.
You pay the lesser of 2.5% of revenue or the per install fee.
They didn't directly address the GamePass case, but the only reason it was an issue at all was because the per install fee could lead to huge fees the developer couldn't cover. The new capped fees make it reasonable to just charge the developer.
Will the outrage matter? (Score:3)
They're absolutely destroying the good will of the community. But... each company making use of it will have to do the calculus for themselves.
How much to make the switch? Could be quite a lot - especially since the retroactive nature of these terms make already released products problematic. Companies may have to reopen previously "finished" games, or pay the cost. Some devs are already threatening to release scripted transition tools that will ease the cost... but it's still a cost.
But... Unity may be sabotaging their future in pursuit of immediate profit. The calculation has changed when considering what tools to use when launching a new effort. They may make themselves irrelevant in the near term. I guess it all comes down to whether the customer feels that the the perceived value minus their internal anger is greater than the cost of going elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
The retroactive portion was the most troubling bit, because it was a violation of their own TOS. With these new adjustments, the new fees only apply starting with the next LTS release of the engine, so it's no longer retroactive. That makes the math far easier, since it's only for new projects.
~D
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A while back they added a clause to the TOS saying they could add fees at a later date.
Before they started making the questionable TOS changes, they got rid of the GitHub repository that stored the license. It's no longer easy to figure out exactly when they made the change. But they were planning this for a while and prepping for it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing in his talk contradicts the suspicion that they're backing away from retroactive changes for now. NO commitment to put legally binding irrevocability into the licenses. Come b
Re: (Score:2)
Also, generally speaking (see, e.g., this law review article [ua.edu]), contracts and legal obligations cannot be changed retroactively.
There are also the legal concepts of contracts of adhesion as well as unconscionability, which, together, would likely cause a court to reject a contract provision of the form of "we may alter the deal at any time; pray we do not alter it further." I don't have access to Lexis or Westlaw but I'm pretty sure that's the case.
DISCLAIMER: not a lawyer, not your lawyer, this is not
Re:Will the outrage matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Step 1: Build a mountain of good will
Step 2: Reduce mountain to rubble
Step 3: Squeeze the blood out of all the stones you've just created
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit!
The problem with this method is that, as you've noted, you're no longer dealing with a mountainous community of good willed enthusiasts, but instead are dealing stone by stone, and stones tend to go where they want.
I should think it would have been obvious that it was best to keep the mountain and exercise greater care. I hope the stockholders sue these people for incompetence.
Re: (Score:3)
"I hope the stockholders sue these people for incompetence."
Heh.
The share price was north of $160/share 2 years ago, and had steady support above $100. Then it fell apart for a variety of reasons (nothing to do with the current debacle -- I'd say it is mostly attributed to Apple policy changes that impacted unity advertising revenue from mobile apps built with unity) and it's been between between 30 and 45 for the last year or so.
Unity lost BILLIONS of 'market cap'; and is under massive pressure to find new
Re:Will the outrage matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
Unity always lost money. The long term goal was have an IPO and use money from that to buy other companies that can get them to profitability faster. They bought a bunch of other companies with stock while their stock price was high, so that part worked out fine.
It'll take time for the acquisitions to get fully merged into the company and the redundant jobs to be eliminated. And after that we'll see if the acquisitions pay off as expected. That was always going to be a long term process.
The changes here are because the old per seat licensing model never generated enough revenue for them to be successful. Something had to change there no matter what. If they didn't go public and tried to stay small they still would've needed to generate significantly more income. The problem was just that the proposed fees were completely unworkable. Today's fee structure seems reasonable, and probably cheaper than they could've gotten away with if they just started out with something like this.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Epic was always a game developer that made extra money by licensing out their engine to other developers. The root of Epic Store is them wanting to make a bigger profit off their hits. A 30% share is huge off a game like Fortnite.
With the Epic Store and Unreal, they seem to be ok with taking a little bit of money from a lot of people, and hoping for the occasional hit that makes it all worthwhile. None of that is essential to them tho. It's all just extra money on top of what they were doing anyway, and it'
New Name (Score:2)
Their CEO is ex-EA from the Bad Times (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again an incompetent CEO who blundered his way into failing up has basically destroyed an entire company and will walk away with a gold parachute smelling like roses because his class takes care of their own.
Meanwhile if any of us cost the company 1/1,000,000 what he just did we'd be out on our asses without so much as unemployment and a black market on our CV.
Re: (Score:3)
The buying spree is too result to have results. That was driven by the IPO. Lots of companies take advantage of the high stock price after and IPO and buy other companies with stock.
Unity was never profitable and always needed to make more money. They hope that buying spree will pay off in the long run, but with or without that spree, they were going to need more short term revenue.
A fee increase was always always inevitable, they just went about it pretty much the worst possible way.
Re:Their CEO is ex-EA from the Bad Times (Score:4, Interesting)
Once again an incompetent CEO
I mean their Board of Directors is culpable as well in this. Roelof Botha, from ye olde days of PayPal. Musk's brotanium from Sequoia Capital who is actually the guy who toss his hat in for the Twitter loan to Musk. Shlomo Dovrat perhaps Israel's most out of touch with everyday man and Viola Ventures fame. And Barry "I made AOL famous" Schuler.
Reading the Board is a list of "egos and pushovers" which I wouldn't be one bit surprised if Riccitiello made lofty promises of mucho dinero and found those who would side with him and those who'd bend over and all the group behind him to run them over. The fact that zero leadership change is coming from this is every indication that this will absolutely happen again. You put the same chemicals in, you're going to get the same reaction out.
As long as that group holds the helm. Screw that company, they'll try this whole stunt again but a whole lot quieter.
To explain why Unity did that (Score:5, Interesting)
3 words: Free to play.
How much money does Unity get from games that are F2P and monetize the living daylight out of people with in-game purchases? Right. Zero. Because the game is sold at 0 bucks.
Once you realize that, and once you realize that Unity is (not only for this reason) the go-to platform to build your f2p money gouger on, be it for PC or cellphone, you notice that they want a piece of that cake. And if you ask me, they're kinda entitled to it, too, after all, when you look at the average f2p atrocity, I have to say that I'd wager that Unity pulls about 99% of the weight of that garbage.
From that point of view, the move was pretty sensible. What they did not take into account, obviously, was that this means that the monetization is out of whack for games that are actually sold.
And no, I don't have a solution for them. But I can see where they are coming from.
Re: (Score:1)
There is no argument that Unity does or does not need to find a practical monetization method.
But this wasn't it.
Re:To explain why Unity did that (Score:4, Insightful)
you notice that they want a piece of that cake
Yeah, and this was perhaps the dumbest way to go about it. Lots of different ways they could have changed the license, they picked the path of stupidity.
And if you ask me, they're kinda entitled to it, too
I got no problem with them getting a fair share. They can change the license to be a percentage off of IAP if your F2P involves that. Them doing on install volume was perhaps the dumbest way to go about that. Because install affects everyone, even those putting out games sans IAP. The "money gougers" as you so put it, yeah, they're a problem to be addressed. But runtime installs is a horrible metric for fixing that, there's Unity's IAP API that they can literally pull numbers out of. It's nothing for them to have a call home on the UnityPurchasing.Initialize API call and then dole out fees from that, but they didn't. It fact there's plenty in UnityEngine.Purchasing module that they could have addressed to handle that, BUT THEY DIDN'T.
From that point of view, the move was pretty sensible
Because that's not the POV they took. They wanted more money, full stop. It wasn't just about addressing F2P, it was straight up greedy ass bastards. If they wanted to address F2P, there's plenty to hook into the pre-existing API to handle that and they didn't because that wasn't what they wanted to fix.
was that this means that the monetization is out of whack for games that are actually sold
It isn't out of whack because, they just wanted more fucking money. That's literally it. That's all. Dovrat probably wanted a third yacht and Riccitiello had the great idea that he'd make some dumb ass change, but to hedge shit, sold stock at inflated prices before the announcement. It's plain and simple, they just wanted to extract more money from people, full stop. There is no further logic behind their move. It is just straight up fucking greed and they're getting their asses handed to them, rightfully, for their shitty call.
And no, I don't have a solution for them
They literally have a whole marketing API that hooks into Apple and Google stores for IAP. If curtailing F2P was the goal, that's where you would start. And it doesn't require someone with years of experience in the stack to know that's where you start. But that is not what they did because that was not their goal. If fixing F2P was their actual goal, then they're bigger idiots for picking install volume, and people should be leaving because an average five year old has more intelligence then the whole lot of them, and they've even got a Ph.D on the board.
Nah. Fuck those assholes. This is greed 100% because every argument I've heard otherwise, there's plenty of different places they could have fixed it without picking install volume. They're just sorry that everyone got word of the change before the change could go into effect. Yes, they can fix F2P. This was absolutely the dumbest way to address it. Either innocent ignorance or malfeasance, both arguments indicate to me people should be leaving.
Re: (Score:2)
So you have a solution to get accurate IAP numbers? Because you sure don't suggest that Unity should trust F2P makers to be honest when reporting their IAPs.
I wouldn't trust a F2P maker with anything. I'd thrust them, and you can certainly imagine where and with what force, but trust? Sure as all hell not.
Re:To explain why Unity did that (Score:5, Interesting)
If their methodologies are odious enough, they become the former go-to platform.
I watched Cisco lose a shit ton of government business by trying to force licensing servers for their IOS on the DoD. Oracle, same deal. Agencies were willing to devote big dollars to recoding their apps to use SQL Server, of all things, to avoid Oracle BS. VMware is in the same boat at this point.
I submit all the above firms were better off with the USG using their shit, regardless if they were getting every single licensing dollar they theoretically could have. As would be Unity - seeing all your competitors using it is a strong argument to stick with it.
Microsoft understands this - their licensing deals are literal fire sale compared to their list prices, and for good reason - the horror stories aren't going to happen to them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, and all in the name of maximizing revenue. Well that sure maxmized it for one cycle.
Re: To explain why Unity did that (Score:2)
They charged developers per seat for a license.
Like pretty much every other software package.
They also ran their own ad network.
Re: (Score:2)
How much money does Unity get from games that are F2P and monetize the living daylight out of people with in-game purchases? Right. Zero. Because the game is sold at 0 bucks.
Prior to this debacle unlike Unreal which charges a royalty Unity charged a fixed per seat dev price, so whether the game was f2p or expensive the sale price didn't matter. I think its safe to assume that the Unreal royalty also applies to microtransactions.
From that point of view, the move was pretty sensible. What they did not take into account, obviously, was that this means that the monetization is out of whack for games that are actually sold.
The install fee is even worse for f2p games, the conversion to paying user (and to whale) is very low so those mobile games would have had a massive increase in customer acquisition cost.
NOPE (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. And this time they make sure future changes of this nature are not possible in whatever replacement they go for. May take a few years, but nobody in the industry will forget this crappy move anytime soon.
I don't often use sports metaphors (Score:1)
... but it's hard not to think of the phrases "unforced error" and "own goal" here.
You lazy f*ckers can't read! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's fine and all... but for how long? It's already known that they want to charge everyone, so who's to say they won't just roll it out in smaller increments?
Where they want to take Unity has been revealed so you're better off jumping ship now to make the transition easier.
Re: (Score:2)
never go full retard (Score:1)
So imagine you found your girlfriend's Tinder account (a bro sent you a screenshot, not because you yourself were on Tinder), she lets you see her account and you can see that she made plans to meet up and bareback fuck some dude with AIDS next Tuesday but hasn't actually met anyone in person yet. She agrees to delete her account and not fuck the dude. So everything is ok now right?
Unity will absolutely screw their developers the next chance they get and only an idiot would rely on them to build their busin
Re: (Score:1)
It's too late. (Score:2)
Stabbing game devs with a nine inch blade and then pulling it six inches back out doesn't make everything all better. The only way Unity is going to recover from this is to fire some executives, eliminate this runtime fee crap and then put out a major upgrade.
This is not going to fly because you have shown people your true colors and it is not a pretty sight.
Re: (Score:2)
And here I thought Slashdot was nothing but communists. We're talking about people making $200k+ annually on a piece of entertainment. Giving up a small cut isn't going to make them any poorer. I don't make nearly as much but I do pay for the tools I need, I even support various open source projects by buying support services that I almost never use.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, but at the same time you shouldn't expect someone else to give you their tech for free. 2 people means $4k/year in license fees, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than building your own tech.
Godot (Score:3)
Best thing ever to happen to Godot.
Re: (Score:2)
Also not without precedent. The reason Linux and the xBSDs got to where they are is that commercial Unix was insanely overpriced and a lot of people were willing to do something about it.