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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

This could have been done in a much better fashion to achieve the long term desired outcome (more income) while also ensuring continued trust and transparency with their community.

Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a per-installation fee. And they would slowly discontinue support for the older versions on a specific schedule.

There are new devices coming out like the new Switch, the Apple Vision Pro, and then the new features Unity is adding like AI, just add those to the new versions that have the run-time fee. People will upgrade to it on their own terms!

By making it retroactive and forcing it on everyone, they have basically screwed over their existing customers who shipped games expecting a certain cost structure and now it is higher.

Deleting this GitHub license archive repo where they make it clear that their license changes are likely unenforceable is icing on the cake.

EDIT: To remove the claim that Unreal Engine had a similar per-install fee, it doesn't.

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The problem is that they did it retroactively and they also added a per install/download fee. So if your game has 1mio installs you pad the install fee x 1 Million. Unreal has no install fee like this.

“A 5% royalty is due only if you are distributing an off-the-shelf product that incorporates Unreal Engine code (such as a game). Provided that you notify us on time using the Release Form, you will only owe royalties once the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in other words, the first $1 million will be royalty-exempt.”

Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.

> Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.

Exactly. So if they did this in an upfront way, they would have said that starting with Unity 2024 there is this new cost structure. Then game devs can make informed choices if they want to build those types of games on the platform.

This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. Although I think I sort of answered my own question...

>This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users.

If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's definitely a money grab. If it's deemed illegal, i.e. fraud, I hope there is jail time. Gotta send a message.

Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?

> Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?

EA's former CEO, John Riccitiello took over last year. He inaugurated himself with quite a few statements, one of which was discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752

When it comes to games it's always EA, isn't it? Isn't this CEO the one also responsible for some of EA's notoriety?

EA and Activision/Blizzard doesn't have a great track record either. Megacorps are usually bad for everybody except ownership.

Yes, he is the brain behind the 2013 SimCity disaster.

Forgive my ignorance, what disaster are you referring to?

It was a very dumbed down attempt to reboot the franchise, when what the fans wanted was what Cities Skylines would later deliver.

> when what the fans wanted was what Cities Skylines would later deliver.

For me personally, C:S goes in too much on building a nice looking city and not enough on the simulation aspect.

Fair, but I think SC2013 was all of that and worse (as well as having glitches and being a massively multiplayer always-online affair).

SC2013 had the horrible "agent" simulation. While I personally wished for more of the sc4 kind of simulation.

Under his rule, lootboxes were added to FIFA. He also famously mused about charging Battlefield players $1 for reloading their weapon, once they're immersed in the game enough to not want to break the flow

Riccitiello has been CEO since 2014. There were some good times at the beginning, but things seem to be falling apart.

How do these fuckers keep failing up?

Because it's a club and you ain't in it

Anyone can be a failure, but it takes a lot of work to be a real piece of shit.

The terms have been changed so that all future installs can incur a fee even on older games that used unity even if the haven't been updated recently.

>The terms have been changed so that all future installs can incur a fee even on older games that used unity even if the haven't been updated recently.

They'll be able to get away with that then, the weasels. Sounds like they are trying to make a golden goose and kill it in one fell swoop. The latest Unreal demos look mighty fine. Sounds like we will be seeing a bunch of games use it in the near future.

I wonder if the older engines used by older games have any way to detect installs. I'd hate to see devs who abandoned their projects years ago but are still downloadable somewhere get caught up in this.

It's not fraud. They are not misrepresenting anything, or getting any money that doesn't belong to them.

If it's illegal, it will just be invalid. What means that people could just not pay them. There's no jail time coming out of this.

> Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?

Nope. They bought Weta tools and the investment haven't paid out and probably won't be soon if ever, now they are desperate for money.

Unity IPO'ed in 2020, which isn't super recent, but is probably the reason behind these changes. IPO'ed means they gotta report some quarterly improvements, every quarter forever under the totally unsustainable growth model.

Unity went public. Bombed, and merged with IronSource, a notorious malware spam mobile ad company. It’s always about milking their install base.

https://blog.unity.com/news/welcome-ironsource

I have only been generally following this but I don’t think this is quite accurate.

It seems more like, starting in 2024 when you get more downloads the fee would be applied.

I see people talking here about apps that have a huge user base and a very low price per purchase. I admit that segment didn’t pop into my mind initially. And I see the problem there. I also imagine the Unity execs may have missed that scenario too.

From reading all of their public communication, and with just a hint of principle of charity, I suspect they are trying to do this in the most fair minded and developer friendly manner possible.

You have to meet both volume and revenue minimums to even be subject to this. All free apps are safe. All non-profits are safe.

I think it is good Unity is receiving public feedback.

I am sad so many people are jumping to the conclusion this is a corrupt money grab.

A public company with veteran leadership does not upend their revenue model without first playing out, in great detail, how it will impact all of their largest users. The segment you mention may not have popped into your mind, but it's certainly been on theirs. This was intentional.

What category of game has "a huge user base and a very low price per purchase?" Mobile free-to-play, that's what. How are those games monetized? Frequently with ads. And it's been noted elsewhere that if you use Unity's ad network, you will get a 100% discount on your per-install fees.

They knew exactly what they were doing. They merged with an ad company -- they are now an ad company. Their strategy is to make F2P games untenable on Unity if you're not getting advertisements from them.

I believe the whole point and plan is that you use the Unity ad network exclusively. My understanding is that you get exempted then. Unity makes the most money with its Ad provider and would love to kill other ad mediation frameworks to get a bigger slice of the pie.

I am pretty sure that they can't actually just *say* that. I suspect you are right.

Maybe. AWS had no problem saying "Use our Lumberyard engine for free, but if you rent gameservers, you must rent them from us."

I wonder how it'd have gone down if Unity had said, "From Unity version 2024 and beyond, if you have ads in your game, you must get them from us," and let that be the end of it.

> principle of charity

That goes out the window when they make the changes retroactive.

They don't want developers choosing to target older Unity versions for their games, they want to milk cent they can out of their users.

Then just specify that new greenfield projects created after [date] won’t be licensed for previous versions of the engine, and that anyone with a project currently in development has until [date] to register their existing use.

That and/or they wanted to set up existing games. Something like 1 in 5 of top 50 iOS games, free-to-play and majority Asian(Chinese or Japanese), are making banks and on Unity.

Personally I’m wondering if Chinese gamedev industry would “buy Godot” or do something to that effect. Japanese publishers won’t be able to do that nor would be willing to pay, so I’m guessing they’ll migrate existing to UE or wind down Unity titles, just my speculations though.

Thankfully Godot is safe from acquisition: https://godotengine.org/governance/

(Or, at least they say they are.)

I just dug into the details. Yes, it looks pretty legitimate: copyright remains held by the individual contributors without a Contributor License Agreement, they are sponsored by a true non-profit foundation with robust non-profit policies and suitably non-profit legal status in the Netherlands, their money and important assets like the Godot trademark itself are held by a mixture of that non-profit foundation and (possibly as a transitional matter) the longstanding free software non-profit charity in the US which was their primary legal home for 7 years.

I was formerly heavily involved in the leadership of the other major US non-profit charity that does this kind of fiscal sponsorship (and which maintained a friendly and collaborative relationship with the charity that Godot previously used). They’re not scamming you in the way of a lot of executives at VC-funded for-profit startups (and their acquirers) when they make entirely legally unenforceable statements about what will or won’t happen in the future which they don’t necessarily even believe themselves.

I have to say, I have been very impressed with the management of Godot. I wish many other open-source projects were as on the ball as Godot seems to be.

Why couldn't Japanese publishers buy Godot (assuming that they even could)?

The seller that would be necessary is a legal non-profit foundation in the Netherlands, and currently for at least some important assets like the Godot trademark in the US, also a long-standing US 501(c)(3) public charity focused broadly on free software which is not controlled by the Godot team. These non-profits would usually not be legally allowed to subvert the purpose of the organization / the project in this way, based on their approved non-profit mission, and the relevant non-profit regulators could slap them down in court if they do.

Additionally the copyright isn’t even owned by those organizations but rather retained in full by all of the many individual contributors to Godot, without a Contributor License Agreement.

So any for-profit corporate acquirer would not be able to get the Godot name, and if they didn’t want to have to comply with the Godot copyright license, they’d have to get the agreement of every individual contributor whose work they don’t want to rewrite.

In short, they are safe from acquisition in the same way that Debian is, unlike most corporate-sponsored or small-team personally-owned “open source” projects that we see here on Hacker News.

I just can't see it happening - I wasn't meaning financial acquisition per se, it could be internally circulated fork a la closed-source Linux Kernel on embedded devices, and Chinese games developers/publishers seem - albeit just impression, to have better vertical integration and open minds toward pulling it, whereas Japanese companies have bad track records on shared codebases.

> This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users.

I can't even understand how it can possibly be legal. How on earth is it even possible to say "your game which was released before we updated this license is subject to the updated version"? IANAL but that sure seems like something which would require both parties to agree to the updated terms for them to be binding.

You can say whatever you want in a contract. If the other party thinks it is illegal they take you to court and the judge decides.

But it means that their legal teams say that it's legit already, so that's why most people assume that this is legal.

A lawyer friend of mine once told me that most of his job as a contract lawyer was basically a game to see if the other company's lawyers were paying attention and to take absolutely everything he could if they weren't.

But in that case there is a meeting of the minds where one party is supposed to read the terms and object to any that are unreasonable.

It's very different from the situation where one party retroactively changes conditions.

This is an extremely bad way to view a contract.

Maybe their argument was going to be the malicious interpretation that continued use of the engine represents consent to the updated terms. Thus maliciously expecting that anyone who doesn't agree should cease distribution and support of their game.

The old Terms of Service have the usual clause that says that the company can change the terms at any time. However, the terms do provide that if you don't update Unity then you can continue to use the old terms. Unity obviously doesn't point that out in the blog or FAQ.

> Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1). If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification. If a modification is required to comply with applicable law, the modification will apply notwithstanding this section. Except as explicitly set forth in this paragraph, your use of any new version or release of the Unity Software will be subject to the Updated Terms applicable to that release or version. You understand that it is your responsibility to maintain complete records establishing your entitlement to Prior Terms.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...

Worth noting that this clause was removed early this year, whats interesting is you can see it under previous terms on the unity site, which indicate it was replace on October 13, 2022, linking to the new terms (that don't have this clause), implying that this clause was removed nearly a year ago...

However, the clause was still in the October 2022 terms, and was still there in March 2023 [2], and was actually removed in April this year...

It's likely just an oversight, but it does feel pretty dishonest in the face of removing the github repo, its the difference between "that clause has been gone for a year" and "that clause was removed less than 6 months ago"

[1] https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service/software-legacy

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230303043022/https://unity.com...

Well, it depends on how you think of the license. Is it like you buy a license for a specific release or do you subscribe to a license to the software across all releases?

I don’t know. I can see how it would be ridiculous if Amazon said “oh, by the way, starting next year you have to pay a cent every time you finish any of the books you bought on your kindle”

But if Netflix went “starting next year, there’s a surcharge of 1 cent per episode you watch” nobody would go “surely it can only count for episodes released from next year!

Which raises an interesting question to me: what if a developer wants out of the Unity contract? Does that mean they have to somehow break games consumers already purchased so as not to be liable to install fees?

Reminder that Amazon did something like that once: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/techn...

I think whether something can only run on the company's service is the differentiating factor. So if Unity games all required to be played on unity3d.com or if they all required online communication with unity3d servers to function at all then people would accept that the contract for finished games could change anytime.

waves in the general direction of the housing market, politicians being "lobbied" (bought) by companies, rampant destruction of the environment by industry; but paper straws for us, the numerous tax havens and the lack of any reform from Panama papers, government "contractors" padding their purses with tax money (see projects like crossrail), privately owned utilities completely mismanaged and corrupt (see Thameswater)

We live in a dystopia lmao. Of course stuff like this is possible. Unity took one leap forward and pissed everyone off, they'll "fix" it by taking one or two steps back and then everyone will forget about it, just like we forget about everything else.

If you pay $2k for unit pro it’s a max of 15 cents an install, actually less. And you pay nothing for installs until $1m in revenue and 1m installs in the previous 12 months

That’s $2k, per seat, per year.

Which you now need to pay to get rid of the Unity splash screen. Why they haven’t learned the lesson of only poor developers (and therefore, largely shovelware and bad games) showing their splash screen is a really bad idea I’ll never understand. I suppose this will technically help with that.

> Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.

When you put it that way, Unity could have come out of this price change looking like heroes with better messaging.

Serious games pay the $0.27 fee moving forward, and (hopefully) that comes with some new value add for end users (such as contractually enforced no advertising, cross-platform something something).

Ad-supported games use a different engine with different rules, and end users get the “free to play” benefit.

(The retroactive thing is obviously bullshit; I wonder how many studios will simply refuse to pay and jump ship for future titles.)

They have actually released something like this in the last day that says if you use their ad market there is no per device fee.

It was on HN this morning.

> $0.27

The highest possible fee seems to the $0.20 (only if 100% of your users are in the US and a few other rich countries). Also it only seems to the there to encourage everyone on Personal/Plus to upgrade to Pro (before these changes you were already required to do that if you company revenue was above $200).

Realistically it's going to be closer to $0.02-0.05 per install.

> 27cents

Realistically it’s closer to 3-5 cents per install. Where did you get 27? Even personal/plus is cheaper than that in the worst case (ie. 100% of your users are in NA, the richer parts of Western Europe etc)

> Simply, they could have not made this retroactive

How can they make this apply retroactively though? For already shipped titles, if I'm no longer providing updates anymore, how can they force me to pay money?

I'm aware that games no longer have a final shipping date, with early access and all, and as a dev I'd likely would want to offer continued support in such a scenario.

But the way I understand it from the overall public reaction, is that they're trying to charge customers for existing titles, retroactively, in perpetuity going onward. This would be a one sided ToS change which only benefits them, which they push the customer into agreeing. Such a practice is mostly unenforceable in a lot of jurisdictions around the world.

Are there perpetual unity licenses? If not, then surely the retroactivity comes as soon as you renew your license.

The problem is they now want to license the engine as a separate product which they didn’t do in the past. Previously, you paid your license fee for editor and any game you build off that is deployed and you could stop paying them.

I guess they didn’t like the thought of not being able to perpetually milk their customers and wanted to increase their cut outside of the editor fee.

From what I understand though, Unreal is just licensed based on revenue and all the editing tools are free. Unity had the opposite approach previously. They’ve decided they want a cut of both pies.

This has nothing to do with whether there are perpetual licenses or not.

The way the go about this makes it seem that you enter a contract that you can never reasonably exit out of, as in order for you to stop having to pay, you'd have to convincingly prove that you forced every customer to uninstall your app, i.e. that there isn't at least one install left.

This sounds absolutely bonkers to me.

Well yeah, that’s what is so mind boggling about the whole thing. They are trying to do something that’s likely illegal in terms of contract law. It’s also just abundantly stupid given the social cost. There was a super clean way to do the whole transition where you announce the changes going forward starting 1 Jan 2024. You show examples of what costs will be and stress that that the pricing is an order of magnitude cheaper than Unreal, and everyone feels like it’s fair (though nobody loves price increases). Someone needs to fire their CEO.

They can't force you to pay. The only leverage or legal claim they have is if you want to update your title after Jan 2024, then they can ask you to get up to date on your account.

This reminds me of the old Simpsons ep where Homer realises their pet elephant costs a lot and decides to retrospectively update pricing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uQNPS9v_VU

Wow, this should be higher. It’s perfect. I don’t think someone could even find an XKCD more relevant.

XKCD is super overrated. Cringe at times, banal at others.

....amd yet referenced so often.

“Get out of my house.”

This whole debacle is unreal (pun intended?). I don’t think they’ll be able to enforce this the way they hope to. For example they want to be paid for unity games in subscription services, like xbox gamepass. Meanwhile M$ lawyers are rubbing their hands together in anticipation.

They’re going to (already have) damaged their reputation beyond repair. This isn’t typical consumer strong arm tactics. Their clients are businesses who already have alternatives. If one of my vendors abruptly changed our agreement like this, there’s no question I’d quietly phase them out ASAP.

If they think they can find a court that will actually enforce this change, then they’ll be waiting for Godot.

> have a run-time fee, similar to Unreal Engine

Another comment already said this, but I feel it's worth emphasizing: Unreal Engine does not have a runtime fee. You don't pay per install.

I edited the comment to fix that. :)

> Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a per-installation fee

I would still oppose it because I don't want every installer to spy on me as a user. I'm glad it happened in a way that spurred so much resistance instead of a slow frog-boil.

> Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a run-time fee, similar to Unreal Engine.

No no, you don’t understand, that’s exactly what they want

It does appear to be what they want, but it is also very likely unenforcible retroactively. So it is likely that they are currently paying the steep repetitional costs of this move without making anywhere close to the additional income that they wanted from this move.

You are mistaking what the CEO and the VCs want with what a long term stable company would want.

The incentives don’t work that way. The CEO gets his bonus and ability to sell shares if he pleases VCs and VCs are looking for bagholders for the company. So the CEO creates a revenue narrative to sell to institutional investors so they take an increasingly mediocre asset from the VCs at a premium.

The pattern is all around, exactly the same as Reddit for example.

As a game designer - there is zero built in incentives for the C level of a publicly listed company to do what’s good for the company long term. It’s much better to get rich quick and cash out.

It’s just that the desperation is now now sky high and narratives for the next earnings call need to be generated quickly

This comment makes no sense considering Unity is a publicly traded company.

Why? IMHO it makes more sense for a public company.

They are heavily invested by VCs who need to find bagholders to buy their shares. That’s the point.

They've been public for three years. Any VC that funded them had plenty of time to exit. It's like you're just regurgitating words you heard on wallstreetbets or something.

I’ve been asking the exact same question. There is so clearly a better way to have handled this whole thing it makes you wonder whether the person in charge of this transition is simply incompetent, or actually negligent. If I were a shareholder, I might consider suing.

I wonder just how much this change is geared at capturing value from what's already out there, i.e. the retroactivity is the point.

Most games on the Switch and Quest devices for sure. A lot of mobile games as well.

Over 1B games sold on the switch: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/1-billion-switch-games-hav...

We can assume at least one game per Quest was sold: https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-sales-20-million-retention-st...

Hard to figure out the mobile numbers.

That list (which is at least half of switch game sales) are nintendo games that don't use Unity. I'd be shocked if half of the remaining 500mn games sold used unity. But if they did, at .20c, that's like 50mn dollars.

As for the quest sales, that's another 4mn.

It seems extremely foolhardy to cause this much damage to their reputation and potential growth as a multi-billion dollar company (market cap of 13bn) for 50-100mn a year of additional revenue.

> at .20c

Zero of them would be paying $0.2 per instal. Probably much closer to $0.03-0.05.

Nobody could ship games in the Switch using the personal edition and nobody who understands basic math would be paying $0.2 even after these prices go into effect

> geared at capturing value from what's already out there

This sounds like a plausible motive. There's a handful of huge games using Unity that together generate upwards of 20bln annually, such as Pokemon GO, Honor of Kings, and Genshin Impact. I'm guessing their soundbite of "developers being excited" over the change is with those behemoths in mind, and not the other games that are barely making ends meet.

These particular successful games are still going to save millions compared to Unreal, while the change means that everyone else would now be more profitable with Unreal. Pokemon GO alone would have made Unreal $100mln+ a year with the 5% royalty, while paying considerably less with Unity's new scheme. Even at a billion downloads it's only $10mln in comparison.

It sounds like Unity is shifting their focus from the long tail where they were successful charging annual subscription fees (and ads), to the head that's generating orders of magnitude more revenue.

> everyone else would now be more profitable with Unreal

To be fair only F2P games that makes less than ~$2 per user might be more profitable. For almost everyone else above the 1 million threshold Unity would still be cheaper.

Just so you know Genshin and Star Rail is using a heavily customized Unity Engine under Unity China. Unity China is a separate entity from Unity Technologies. They (mihoyo) is also a major shareholders in Unity China.

https://blog.unity.com/news/unity-forms-new-venture-to-manag...

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