Unity U-turns on controversial runtime fee and begs forgiveness
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
They basically did the standard thing of "we're sorry for how we communicated this the first time around, but we're still doing it, and we've scheduled a Q&A so we can give you more information".
Should I think of articles like this as news or opinion? It's packaged as news, with the reporting standards of a tweet.
As PR.
Pretty sure TechCrunch is mostly PR for tech companies.
1) It is no longer retroactive. Existing games on the market using unity can continue distributing without their business getting immediately impacted.
2) It's no longer per install, it's now "new people engaging with your game each month" and the numbers are now all self-reported. Originally Unity was going to calculate installs on their end in an opaque way.
3) You can choose to just use a revenue share arrangement instead of per install. Since it's the lower of the two you can effectively ignore whichever one isn't favorable to your business.
This is like saying "you can't really expect linux TOS to never change for future versions" (pretend that makes sense). Like yeah they might be subject to change, but as someone basing my entire work on it, i am making the bet that i will continue to be able to do that, and unity has just showed that not only they can change it, but that they will, without hesitation and possibly retroactively.
But I'm not quite sure I understand your overall argument. Are you saying that if you release any type of software you're should never be allowed to change the TOS in subsequent version? e.g. Windows 11 should have exactly the same TOS as Windows 95?
But they don't promise that.
from their website:
> What are you changing in the terms?
> The last changes were made on April 3, 2023. We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity you are using as long as you keep using that version. We will post these changes on our GitHub repository and https://unity.com/legal.
They already were caught changing terms retroactively a few years ago and created that repo back then. They silently deleted it last(?) year...
So it seems they do promise that (whatever their promise is worth is another question..)
Then again they've shown their word is worthless and that they will break promises. No point in crying over spilled milk.
Surely they won't do it a third time, right? Especially after this "U-turn" sitll includes all the tech and legal for setting up a "fee for each installation"
/s
”There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
The good part of the news is that developers who are currently working on a game can still finish it without submitting to the news terms. That is incredibly important and will save many games. But it's not going to save Unity from itself.
More like sorry the peasants didn’t understand their master plan. It gives more money to Unity! What’s not to like?
Even worse, it was typical corporate laywer speak for "saying sorry without admitting to anything"
The text they said: "We are sorry for how this has been received." That does not mean anything. You're saying that Unity is sorry for how we logically felt? That means you are putting the blame for the reactions back onto the customers! That we "somehow" did not understand "well-enough"
Besides, even if they did nullify this change (which they did not) it is now a "partner" you cannot trust again. Ever.
A dutch proverb: "Trust comes on foot, but leaves on the back of a horse." It's hard to earn it, and extremely easy to lose.
It's also a warning to not be overly reliant on 1 "partner" So going to unreal is not really an option either. They are now also tainted by this insane thing Unity did.
It's difficult to take this company seriously when they are run by out of touch MBA's who routinely make objectively poor business decisions and then reward themselves handsomely. I think people are increasingly tired of business leaders paying themselves millions when things go well, but facing no repercussions when they don't.
"STAT | $494 million - The cumulative stock-based compensation Unity reported paying out over its past three quarters.
STAT | $152 million – The cumulative "profit" Unity reported over those same three quarters."
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unitys-self-combustion-engine-...
NOBODY believes they won't try something like this again, because the people responsible are still there. Get rid of the people that broke the trust and I guarantee you'll see the community praise the decision.
> Executives who green lit projects like mentioned in this post really don't care about their users, its all about maximizing profits while stepping on everyone else
Uh...that sounds exactly like a group of MBAs looking for a quick buck.
I'm sure that Riccitello and Unity's execs who didn't come from IronSource are more than capable of coming up with something like this.
I remember when it dawned on my poor team lead that they had gone from being a team lead to being alone and in charge of a massive portion of Unity's systems. Just like me, they're an immigrant. However, they also have a family to consider, so what options are available to them?
Being honest mate, it's not much better out there, the games industry is wall to wall owned and operated by mostly borderline-sociopathic MBAs who are as useful as a chocolate teapot and nowhere near as delicious when you bite into them.
It's sad because I've been using Unity since it was only available on MacOS and it used Boo, but hey, c'est l'capitalisme, nes't pas? And already two prospective jobs that were using Unity ghosted me so hard that I know who I gotta call.
So I shrug my shoulders, and keep studying for my third post-graduate[1] that I can barely afford to get more skills so another useless MBA fuck hires me and pays me a pittance.
Oh! And I switched to Godot too, but that was out of spite mostly.
[1] Insert joke about over-educated millennial
This is why I left the games industry entirely. It's an especially abusive and horrific part of the software industry. Basically, it's become Hollywood.
Does firing execs even count as repercussions when they've got golden parachutes to make sure they can fail with no consequences
So they haven't done a 180. They're no longer going to try and retroactively inflict the runtime fee on existing projects, but it is still going to be a thing going forward.
> The free Unity Personal will stay free, and the revenue ceiling above which users must upgrade to the next tier has been raised to $200,000. And above $1 million, users will be able to choose between a per-user fee or a 2.5% revenue share, whichever is lesser.
If this was the first and only news delivered with the users' concerns in mind, none of this would be such a big deal--that whole retroactive version value extraction play was going too far. The net effect is that the current crop of near-completion Unity-based games may be completed and supported with the now current version.
It's reassuring in the sense that some theoretical problem (costly installs) can be avoided.
Otherwise, not really. The big selling point with Unity was that you pay per seat, and that's that. You don't owe them anything beyond that particular fee, no money, no confidential information, nothing. The change of terms is a not-so-tacit admission that their business model does not work and that the whims of the MBA-types are going to dictate the future of the platform. Unreal Engine has basically the same revenue share type of deal (but no per-seat cost), but then its leadership has a proven track record in developing actual games.
> The net effect is that the current crop of near-completion Unity-based games may be completed and supported with the now current version.
Of course, in the short term nobody is going to switch engines mid-flight. However, in a few years time, when we ask ourselves "How did Unity die?" this change of terms is likely to be identified as the point of no return.
There will be no asking ourselves in a few years time. Unity is a dead man walking.
Most EULA's say "we can change this when ever we want... " so likely they were banking on that.
Most EULA's in a sane legal system would be considered unconscionable contracts and thus unenforceable, unfortunately the US Legal system is far from sane,
That said, I am sure they heard from lawyers at major studios who said "yea try to retro active bill us and we will bankrupt you in legal fees" so they changed their tune.
Even if current projects can now continue under the original terms, no sane small developer will ever trust them again.
How is "We've decided not to open ourselves up to legal liability by retroactively modifying TOS conditions, and instead only make the same changes in the future" a 180°?
Fuck Unity's corporate ownership. And so fuck Unity.
A: "Sorry we got caught / sorry you're upset" and
B: "Oh snap. Our internal values are obviously way wrong. The board has fired the CEO, we are going to solve this in the open along with the community, and then we'll bind our own hands in every way legal that we won't do this again."
So far this still smells a lot like A.
Unity has entered the enshittification (or more generously "value extraction") phase of their existence, and you should assume that going forward no matter what they do, it will be in the context of prioritizing value extraction over customer success or happiness.
Companies are allowed to make money, but how it's done really matters.
By comparison, Epic didn't have that sort of baggage. They were a big company with a big engine made for big games. And over time they made that engine cheaper and more accessible to smaller devs.
However, I missed the news that Unity merged with ironSource. The runtime fees news filled me in on that and also filled me in on some of the less than savory things that ironSource has been up to in the past.
Now my position has moved towards, "I guess I shouldn't play anything made in Unity (at least not on machines where I care about their security)." And cancelling the runtime fee isn't likely to shift my position.
I'm not a game dev at all, but this is where the whole thing has brought me as well. If it's based on Unity, I'll pass.
If you start to boycott something, you typically have done some research (why else would you have wanted to boycott it in the first place). I.e boycotting Nestle means that you research where the company may have their fingers in and avoid that.
That may be true, but so what? There are more great non-Unity-based games than I have time in my life to play anyway.
If you boycott a child-labor produced coffee, and it just so happens that your favourite indie cafe uses that as their main coffee because it's so cheap! Yea, that cafe will suffer.
I mean, even not using them as a development platform is something. But I don't get the logic behind supporting them as a purchaser of games? Is it just FOMO?
You suggested boycotting the developers that use Unity. I don't get your scorched earth logic. It seems unreasonable to me.
>Unity themselves have given enough incentive.
Sure, if they change on their own volition, then I have no need to boycott those developers. This adds to that incentive should they not do so.
(copied from my other comment)
I.e. I have no real way to boycott Nestle, but if enough people stop buying their products, the stores will carry fewer of them. Yea, the stores (or devs, or cafes) will get hurt in the short term, but only if they're insistent on not listening to their users/the market.
If the dev studios feel like they're being mistreated by Unity, they are already incentivized to abandon it. If they don't abandon it, they either _don't_ actually feel mistreated, or they are just not in a financial position to switch over just now. Boycotting them in either scenario is not helping anyone.
1. Assertion: End-users of Unity are developers, not gamers.
2. Opinion: Gamers should not boycott developers in this situation.
To fix your analogy, it would be like a coffee manufacturer who apparently somehow screws over their customers (cafes), so you decide to retaliate by boycotting the cafe.
The boycotting happens by proxy. This isn't a hard concept to understand.
I.e. I have no real way to boycott Nestle, but if enough people stop buying their products, the stores will carry fewer of them. Yea, the stores (or devs, or cafes) will get hurt in the short term, but only if they're insistent on not listening to their users/the market.
The naivete involved in expecting to boycott a product without having any inconveniences never ceases to amuse me.
The very nature of boycotting necessitates that you will miss out on things. If you never used the product/byproduct, what effect would your boycott have? It's like a bald person boycotting a hair cuttery, who cares?
As it's now Unity dont collect any telemetry.
> As it's now Unity dont collect any telemetry.
Maybe not (but maybe -- how would I know?), but Unity clearly has no problems throwing people under the bus if it suits them, so again -- they can't be trusted. On this point or any other.
Tracking players is their intention, and although they have rolled it back (solely due to the strength of the backlash), they have revealed their hand. We now know that tracking players is how they want to monetize heading into the future, and that they have no qualms applying it retroactively to games you already own.
Your framing is wrong. If I really want to buy a game but choose not to, I'm not "refus[ing] to pay" the game developer. Game developers don't deserve to be paid with my money if I decide not to get their games.
I don't want to support businesses that operate as they do. The intent isn't to punish developers, of course, but continuing to give money to a company that I don't want to support is asking more of me than I'm willing to do.
In the end, it's just me and my decision will have no effect on anybody. If enough other people also avoid Unity, then devs will have to adapt. That's just life.
I've felt this when Flash was canceled for iOS. Steve Jobs's "letter about Flash" changed my job outlook in just one day.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-ironsource-malware-came-...
https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-is-merging-with-a-company-who-...
Not allowing developers to remove it from their games would certainly be a step too far (at this time anyway, who know what will they come up with in a couple of years).
The argument that I have some sort of ethical obligation to continue to support the likes of Unity because it would harm game devs if I don't seems specious to me.
Oh, that sounds good!
> Under the revised terms, there is no runtime fee whatever for any game developed with a current version of Unity, only for those developers who adopt the latest version in 2024.
So, not at all reversed, just pushed further into the future?
> Overall the changes seem to address most of the issues people had with the new terms, and importantly it is more or less opt-in
This makes it seem like this is a submarine post trying to help Unity to regain some sort of control, rather than a journalistic investigation into the event, where the journalist at least would try to be impartial.
https://thalein.medium.com/trust-arrives-on-foot-and-leaves-...
What a curious synchronicity
I have no involvement and I'm not a game developer (except for small weekend projects). Please do not make any change "to the policy" you have announced! Your decision seemed to be the straw that was lacking for many people to support Godot and I'm rooting for them. Please don't let us down now.
Plenty of companies renege on promises, or stiff their customers, and we just suck it up and keep coming back. Take Sony, discussed earlier as "deserving" of being hacked, but all the same we keep buying their stuff no matter how despicable their behaviour.
Something is different about this.
There's a community that seems to have solidity. And they seem hell-bent on rubbing Unity's nose in its own poop.
And Unity is small and dependent enough to be really hurt. I expect they will survive, but as markets get more specialised I wonder if in times to come coordinated action will totally take down companies.
I wish the world would get likewise up in arms at being similarly abused by the likes of true industrial titans (in and out of the tech sector).
Yep, I remember when they were getting together, was it around 2006 maybe, when they were the kid on the block and Unreal was heavy.
> that (unfortunately?) makes it so they are more likely to pay a price
Kinda how the second or third biggest kid attracts the bullies. Not saying the game community are "bullying" Unity, but there are bigger fish to fry.
Trust already violated which took years to build. 1 C-level executive decision ruined and betrayed that trust. There is no going back.
Open source game engine or bust. Individually, I support GoDot with donations and time (contributions to codebase). If I ever become a game studio, would definitely have a team to continue to contribute to godot as well as monthly monetary contributions for other maintainers.
This may very well be an intentional shedding of a demographic, as typically lower price tier and free customers tend to be the largest support burden for SaaS companies.
Unity (and other company execs) saw that pricing per install will most likely generate a lot of outrage, so profit seeking must be kept to more moderate means.
Unity settled on terms that will still generate them some income (which is probably good, given how fast they're burning money), the revenue share is still lower than that of Unreal and if the fireside chat is to be believed, then these terms should hold for a while.
Unity won't be making every game/program phone home, at least if you don't use their analytics, the install figures will be self-reported and also the splash screen will be optional.
The people with years of Unity experience and purchased assets won't be forced to migrate to something else and will be able to use their good tech and tools (even if the editor can be annoying), and their businesses won't have to pay insane amounts of money for runtime fees.
In addition, engines like Godot get a nice boost in popularity and also some funding, which should secure them a better future. Probably not much is changing for the niche engines that I like, but it's still to nice see Godot succeeding in some ways!
That whole fiasco could have been avoided altogether, though - just consider the new policies for like half a year and run some numbers first, I'm not sure how they missed out on how their initial plans would affect mobile games!
The people making these decisions dont really pay attention to anything else besides quarterly reports and stock movement, and they rarely actually know much about the industry they work in(from my observations). these are broad generalizations, there will be exceptions definitely.
I suspect this guy, considering ironSource's past and his current title, may have been more responsible for these changes than the CEO. I assume the CEO has to sign off but the whole strategy of value extraction and nebulous fees just stinks of ironSource.
I've been told that Unity remains one of the best engines for mobile development so maybe those folks will continue to linger around, but I think for everyone else it's accelerated their move to the exit.
Exec:“they’d have no choice but to pay this new fee, they are fked now”
A week later..
The thing is: Capitalism demands perpetual (growing) growth. Pay-per-download would have helped tremendously with this.
I don’t believe pay-per-download is dead.
Money isn’t free anymore, but companies are desperate for growth. Inflation is currently caused by companies issuing significant price hikes to appease shareholders. I expect more pay-per-download-style shenanigans from other companies or outrageous price hikes going forward, to sustain growth.
Completely agree.
> The thing is: Capitalism demands perpetual (growing) growth. Pay-per-download would have helped tremendously with this.
Disagree. The market provided a strong answer in the form of: "No, we hate this model and will literally do extra work (switch game engines) to avoid it".
Not everything has to be "financially viable" and return a profit. The best things in life are made by people without any profit motive at all.
It's easy to get sidetracked by "the engine" when all you wanted was to create a game... Most amateur gamedevs I know all started creating "the engine" and then the actual game never happened.
Why should "decent human people" who want to build a cool game be forced to first build an engine for it?
In case of majorify of indie games you only can only get $100,000-500,000 of funding total for one game with development time of 6-18 months. And like 50%+ of this money will go into creating art assets especially if we talk of pixel art.
Go look what is the salary of senior C++ programmer with experience working with graphics, audio and little bit of everything. And one person can hardly create anything close to game engine tooling unless he work for several years.
Making own game engine is the last any game developer gonna consider.
If you don't worry about writing an engine, and just write games without one, then as a side-effect you'll also be developing the core of an engine that's more specifically optimized for the sort of work that you actually do.
Eventually, it may become advantageous to make that into a formal engine, or it may not. Either way, you're still creating games.
This is demonstrably untrue. It wasn't all that long ago that there were no game engines available for use, and yet small devs managed to produce a ton of great games anyway. It is true that a small developer is unlikely to be able to produce a grand AAA-scale game in a reasonable time, though.
> Majority of game developers simply dont have skillset to work with audio, graphics APIs and cross platform support.
Then perhaps they should gain that skillset? I would have assumed that any game dev is well-versed in doing these things regardless, but if not, isn't that a problem?
Audience expectations for production quality of art, animations and overall gameplay has grown accordingly over the years. To become a success game dont have to be best of the best, but it's just cant be much worse than baseline of modern successful games.
If there is any indie games that you like and they were released less than 10 years ago please do a little research of how long they actually took to build. There are reasons why one-guy indie game production take 5-7 years.
> Then perhaps they should gain that skillset?
It's just too many skills and each of them take years of practice. If you take any modern game engine there will be dedicated programmers working on audio, graphics, networking, physics, etc.
If you have group of 3 rock start programmer buddies who can work full time for free then you might have some chances, but I doubt you will have any time left to actually make games.
Also even with your 3 buddies working for free process of making a game costs money. And if you tell the publishers or investors that your company building their own game engine no one will ever invest money into your project.
I know a number of successful game developers that are counterexamples to your thesis.
> If you take any modern game engine there will be dedicated programmers working on audio, graphics, networking, physics, etc.
Right, but that's to make a full engine. I'm arguing that you shouldn't make an engine at all.
Yes, if you're aiming at high production values, then you're looking at millions of dollars of investment and a full team.
But if you're looking to produce an excellent and successful game, the equation can be entirely different. You don't need top-notch graphics, top-notch sounds, etc. You just need to make a great game, and a great game is defined by the gameplay, not by the window dressing.
If you're a one-man shop, it absolutely is major factor in terms of what sort of games you can produce. There's no question about it. But it doesn't mean you can't produce excellent and successful games.
>you're still creating games.
No, every moment you're writing or debugging engine code is a moment you're not working on content.
The thing is, by the time the website is done, you have built a framework, and it's worse than all of the existing off-the-shelf frameworks you could've used.
From source perhaps
I have a few friends who work on relatively medium-scale game development operations and every one of them is basically saying “oh thank god, we can work with this”. But reading this thread you’d think it was still a catastrophe, just a slightly smaller one.
As far as I can tell, most of the discussion is to the effect of: "does a reversion to only slightly shitty pricing terms make up for initially trying to get away with super shitty terms?"
I'll acknowledge that!
But it doesn't matter. This is the second time that Unity retroactively changed the terms of their deal. That they removed the retroactive part is great, but that they've done it twice also indicates that it will happen again at some point in the future.
So, for me, it doesn't matter in the slightest how favorable their new terms are. They've shown their true colors and they can't take that back.
That's why I won't be buying any Unity-based games in the future. Unity is a bad actor, and I don't want to support their business.
A huge improvement relative to the current pricing policy in effect (the status quo), no. A huge improvement relative to the previous incoming pricing policy, yes. But that's only the half of it. The other half is that Unity cannot be trusted to abide by its own terms of service. I don't need mental gymnastics to decide that Unity will never be palatable again.
Unity's terms as of October 2022 included the line:
> If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification. [1]
But in April 2023, Unity silently rewrote the terms, and one of the changes was removing that self-obligation [2]. Ctrl-F for "notif" and you won't find a match.
> I have a few friends who work on relatively medium-scale game development operations and every one of them is basically saying “oh thank god, we can work with this”.
It's good that Unity decided not to screw your friends after all. But "oh thank god, we can work with this" suggests an aftertaste of dread. I don't make games, but if I did I would not want to rely on the company which gave me such dread.
[1] https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/71...
[2] https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/ma... (which as of September 26, 2023 corresponds to https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/50...)