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Comment by hcks | Hacker News Reader

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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.

> 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.

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!

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.

Those thresholds are just the point when you'll be net negative. There's still a large range above that ARPU where you're making less money than before or with a different engine. Cult of The Lamb has already announced they will delist their game, and the Slay The Spire dev team have announced they're halting development on their new game to port it to a new engine.

Those are exactly the types of games that would be much worse off under an Unreal style royalty.

Cult of the Lamb is $24.99 on Steam

Unreal royalty is 5%, so $1.25 per sale

Unity is $0.20

So royalty is ~6x more

If there was a reasonable way to count installs (I don't think it is technically possible), install fee is much better than royalty for most devs who are not F2P apps.

You're forgetting the Unity subscription fee, the very likely reinstalls, the steam sales discounts and the games that aren't 25 but more like 10-15.

This is not an accurate calculation as it assumes a single install per purchase.

Let's say I really like this game and install it on my laptop, desktop, and steamdeck (3 installs). Now, let's say I upgrade from win10 to win11 (4 cummulative installs). Alright, now I'm bored of the game an uninstall it. A year later the game recieved a new free DLC including new content. So, I install on my laptop, desktop, and steamdeck again, after I have updated both PCs from win10 to win11 or made some other hardware change (7 cummulative installs). And repeat this process every 2 years.

Unity's price is now much more than Unreals as I'm now costing the dev $1.40 after just the first update. Every subsequent update means I'm costing the dev another $0.60.

This may seem ridiculous, but anecdotally, it seems relatively common.

Again, the issue is not with Unity wanting to make more money, but with how they are trying to achieve this. Install based cost means you cannot estimate tooling cost as it is impossible to estimate situations like above.

I paid $15 for Cult of the Lamb

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/cultoflamb/info/

For Slay The Spire I paid $8.49

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/slayspire/info/

This also ignores regional pricing differences. Games tend to be cheaper in the India/Brazil/etc regions on Steam

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.

Hopefully pirates are kind enough to strip whatever install-tracking code Unity includes when crack the DRM.

Yes.

Unity already has license fees if your game earns money. This new license change comes across like a shameless money grab.

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.

Unity is my favorite developer tool. I think it is fantastic for both prototyping and production. I am (used to be) a VERY strong advocate for the platform. My current product won't be affected by these changes.

I'm still absolutely and 100% against these changes and am lobbying internally for us to explore different 3d engines not because of the price changes but because Unity has announced, loudly, they do not respect their own user agreement and may change it retroactively(!!!!!) at anytime.

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