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Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

If we are being real, and not assuming abuse, at ~$5 or up, you are going to be better off at .20 install than 5% of revenue.

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$0.20 is the minimum, you pay for every device they install on every time. Anytime they offload and reinstall, you pay again. Every additional device, upgrade, or replacement, you pay again. You’ll also pay then current rates, whatever Unity decides those are.

No abuse needed to lose money with this, I’ve probably installed the same games 20+ times over the years.

That's not what Unity is saying - they are saying reinstalls do not count. From their faq:

Does a reinstall of an app on the same device count towards the Unity Runtime Fee?

No, we are not going to charge a fee for reinstalls.

https://unity.com/pricing-updates

That's a change from what they said before for one, but there's also no real way to accurately measure "installs" anyway at a technical level.

They can probably track accurately enough to identify that 90% of games aren't worth billing. Then once they are working with the top 10%, they can negotiate something that makes sense, like submit your monthly sales number, and Unity will use that as a limit on install count.

I agree what they are saying isn't workable, but that idea of install based fee could work, and would be better than a royalty for many.

> on the same device

This is the issue.

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