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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Still, the $50K limit and 3D/memory-specific technology seems like there is only a handful of companies that will ever fulfill these conditions... and Adobe surely has a list of exactly who they are. So this is a very targeted policy that will never apply to 99.99% of us.

Is this an accurate assessment?

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At GDC this year there was a lot of talk about using the planned Unity3D-to-Flash feature. At this point, the only advantage Flash has over Unity is that more people have the Flash plugin than the Unity plugin. I think a lot of game developers were planning on switching to Unity once the market penetration question was solved by exporting to Flash. Unity was poised to become the no-brainer choice for game development. A few years down the road, the deployed base of Unity-powered games would become large enough that the Flash part could be phased out, like ActiveX was (i.e. slowly and painfully but inexorably).

By adding this license fee, Adobe puts a serious damper on that.

(edit: people were planning on using Unity for plain old 2D games; the nature of the toolkit is that even exporting those to Flash would run afoul of the licensing requirement)

Pretty much. My understanding is that it's specifically targeted at monetizing businesses that use tools like Unity or Unreal's UDK to build 3D flash games.

In other words, all the Facebook game developers.

Very few Facebook game developers use flashes premium features, so this royalty fee won't apply to them.

I know quite a few groups developing Facebook games using Unity.

> Still, the $50K limit and 3D/memory-specific technology seems like there is only a handful of companies that will ever fulfill these conditions... and Adobe surely has a list of exactly who they are. So this is a very targeted policy that will never apply to 99.99% of us.

> Is this an accurate assessment?

No.

If you want to create a 3D game using Unity and deploy to Flash, for example, you will need to pay the 9%. That's a lot of people, Flash support for Unity was a much-requested feature. So that's a lot of people right there.

And this isn't just Unity users. Any fast 3D game will require the premium features.

You can of course make a Unity game and publish for the Unity web player. There's plenty of precedent for it these days.

You might want to export to Flash if you're going the licensing/sponsorship route ala Armor Games, Kongregate etc but there's not a ton of demand for the 3d stuff anyway.

The Unity plugin is installed in far, far fewer places than Flash. That's why so many Unity devs have been asking for Flash export from Unity.

This 9% cost will affect all those developers. They are not a small group - Unity would not have put the effort it did into supporting a new (and very different) platform, Flash, if it wasn't for a large group.

You only need to pay the tax if you make use of BOTH ApplicationDomain.domainMemory and Stage3D.request3DContext in the same application. They can be used independently without having to get a licence.

Here's a question in general though, ExternalInterface.call allows you to execute javascript in the browser from flash. So if you'd use ExternalInterface.call to control WebGl you wouldn't need Stage3D.request3DContext for hardware acceleration and thus allows you to use ApplicationDomain.domainMemory at the same time without needing a licence?

Based on Adobe's announcements on this subject earlier in the week, the licensing requirement only applies to apps that use both the 3d and memory-optimization technologies. Using one or the other by itself won't require licensing. The practical effect on Unity-Flash games are that small 3d games should not be subject to the licensing requirement.

Caveat: Adobe has actually not issued specific rules or statements on when licensing is required, so until they do, any analysis is really just conjecture.

Edit: The facts on which I based my analysis have changed. Adobe has issued a FAQ, and Unity has confirmed that the Unity-Flash conversion uses both features. Consequently, the practical effect is that any game that succeeds in reaching the $50,000 revenue threshold will incur licensing fees of 9% on the revenue in excess of $50,000 (i.e., $0.09 for $50,001 total revenue, $4500 licensing fee for $100,000 total revenue).

Adobe has released a FAQ: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/premium-fea...

Unity's export to Flash does currently require both 3D and memory-optimization technologies. Any Unity-Flash game that has a chance of netting $50k falls under the requirement, from what I currently understand. This basically covers any non-hobbyists. Unity could solve this problem by making their Flash exporter not use "domain memory", but that might be technically infeasible.

One interesting question is, if my company makes 5 games, each of which makes $49k, is that legit? Could I get away with taking down any game right before it nets the magic number and putting up a "new" game which is only slightly different? I'm guessing the answer is "no", but edge cases sound like a nightmare.

Thanks. I was going off of what was known yesterday; didn't know about the FAQ or that Unity had confirmed its conversion process used both of the targeted techniques.

> Based on Adobe's announcements on this subject earlier in the week, the licensing requirement only applies to apps that use both the 3d and memory-optimization technologies.

Yes, but all Unity games on Flash do use both. So all Unity games on Flash will need to pay 9%.

Since these are just a small handful of larger companies, doesn't that mean that they are screwing over their best, most loyal customers?

It's very accurate.

Adobe is targeting operations that are 1) making allot of money of their platform and 2) could benefit from the new features.

And for exchange to access the new features that will make their games port easier, run faster, and allow for more play, they want a small fee back.

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