starburst

Yes but among those huge amount of smaller players a few gems popup that crawl their way to the top along side the big ones.

But the thing is that it is not the smaller players that leave (technically only affect if you make 1M$+), it’s everyone from the amateur to the AAA studio using Unity for their mobile games.

It doesn't always phone home, that's the thing, a lot of people assume that's the case and that every games built using their engine since the beginning does it but that's not the case.

The way they calculate the installs is not base on that, well unless you enabled Unity Analytics of course, but that's not the case on every games and they are going for every games ever made by their engine.

Definitely but Unity itself isn't really doing something "legal" here with their extortions, but I guess time will tell with the eventual legal battles.

Well, they cannot really disabled it remotely (it's not like that functionality exists in the current code base atm, maybe in future Unity version).

But they could kill your license so you won't be able to build your game using their tool anymore (however you could also just grab a new license under a different name).

What I wonder tho is if they are going to go to the length of asking platform holder like Apple / Google to delist your game and would they actually comply with Unity on this?

Because they can, programming for many is not only a job but also a hobby and passion. Doing something like this you can learn a tons as well and it is a worthy challenge in itself to push your craft.

People re-create classic games all the time, like tetris, for fun.

Every new version is bloatier, slower and buggier. When you have a Unity version that works for your project, you stick to it and hope you won't be forced to update because Apple / Google changed something that now requires a new Unity version to be compatible.

Short term cash flow but with a potential future of 0 new projects ever being greenlight using Unity...

I guess it is still better than going even deeper into debt short term but the thing is that there is so many more ways they could have done that, yet they seems to have picked the one that ensure them in practice no future at all.

I certainly hope that at least, legally speaking, they would be forced to back down on games built using older version of the unity engine so that previous and upcoming projects aren't affected.

But that's the thing, it isn't, it's simply good enough, get the job done and is so popular that employing people that knows it is easy. I agree it is a good value proposition which is why it is the industry standard for mobile games.

However, it isn't some marvelous piece of technology that's irreplaceable and when you factor the fact that they can come up with any kind of ridiculous fees and breaking their TOS at will, that value drop drastically to the point that everyone will be looking at alternative in the future, no one is going to use it, certainly not the people that right now helped making this one of the most popular game engine. Those people are pissed off and have been for a while but this is just too much. It cannot work.

I don't think it could have been planned all along, the damage done seems irreversible. No one is going to propose Unity ever again for upcoming projects even if the fees are actually a much better deal than the competitions (like Unreal 5%).

The audacity of asking everyone who have built a game using their engine (completely disregarding the TOS at the time) to be potentially on the hook to receive monthly bills from their own black box that estimate the number of installs ensure that their reputation is effectively ruined, the future is that no one is going to trust them to use their engine because at any point they can come up with new ridiculous fees...

Very true, for now, but the amount of tools / libraries / projects that will spawn / funded / contributions to move projects out of Unity is gonna make that more realistic eventually.

Yeah I wonder if that will impact their partnership they have with their VisionOS...

Technically there is UnrealCLR, so if you made a game with mostly Unity-agnostics code it's possible to keep a bunch of it.

One of my game is multiplayer, the whole gameplay code is completely Unity-agnostics to run server-side without any Unity code.

They didn't retroactively changed the TOS of their engine so that a game you made years ago means you now potentially receive monthly invoices from Unity (and what about ridiculous new fees they will think in the coming years).

If Unity would've said that now any games built using whatever the most recent version of their engine is subject to a new TOS that means a fees per installs it wouldn't have nearly generated the amount of backlash it has received (no one is going to use Unity for a future project regardless of the fact that the fees per install is for the most majority a much better deal than 5% revenue).

Or what about games made on previous version of the engine? They certainly didn't include a phone home to Unity but still according to the pricing on January 1st any new installs of old games is going to have a cost at that point...

Web Games? So every single person that open the web page is going to cost me 0.20$?

I get that, but I feel like there must've been a much better way to do so than with this proposal that seems to have burn the last remaining goodwill that developers had left in Unity and making sure most future projects won't get done on Unity.

A lot of people have been thinking about switching for years, Unity is becoming slower and slower with time, more buggier, etc. I feel like this is the tipping point where the number of developpers is going to go down, so was it worth it? Maybe, maybe it was the correct decision, time will tell.

I'll still continue to use it for on-going projects I have and pay the tax no problem, but I won't pick it for any project in the future personnaly because of how out of touch and ridiculous I personaly feel this business decision is (and other decisions they've made).

> That's pretty much the only thing that matters. there is a huge difference whether they make $0.5, $1 or $2 etc

My point is those numbers can vary GREATLY from games to games, and not only the revenue per user but the cost of user acquisition as well. There isn't one truth, the numbers I gave up could very well fit a real project.

Of course you would be pretty stupid to not subscribe to Pro once you notice your game going to 200k. And let's be real, at 1M$ threshold, if the Unity tax is what kill your game, maybe there wasn't a market fit. But it just feel such a bad and unfair way to generate revenue on free to play games.

> So I understand why Unity chose to do this instead.

Other engines does it just fine, tracking installs (without any false positive) seems a much bigger hassle especially legal wise

They will have the same problem trying to get them to pay per installs as well, whatever punishment can happens for not paying their cost to install tax they can do the same tactic for those not paying their revenue share.

I'm going to use the Personal / Plus pricing instead of Pro, on a f2p mobile game, but let's say you made 200k$ on the first 200k install, but only 20k$ on the next 200k installs (for whatever reason, different market, whale spending 10's of thousands $ skewing the data, etc.), you owe Unity 40k$ and are now in the negative for those new installs when you could've still turned a profit, albeit less.

Of course Unity deserve to be paid and receive revenue, I'm absolutely not against that and if you are on the Pro subscription, it is only a concerned once you reach 1M$ which at this point means the project should be profitable and manage to pay that tax (otherwise maybe that project isn't commercially viable).

But it just feel very harsh for the mega popular indie hit that have very low revenue per user you know... A % of revenue would be better or at the very least only count install that generated revenue or whatever...

Not sure I understand? I just made those number up to give you an example, be it realistic or not hardly matters. You get X per user and it cost you Y per user and Unity take Z per user. Now `X - Y` is profitable but `X - Y - Z` is not, that's it. If it was instead a % at least it would still be profitable if only less, it doesn't put the revenue per user in jeopardy of being in the negative.

Plenty of games are profitable at scale with only a few pennies per user.

You'd be surprise how HUGE that market is and also Unity's foothold as the engine of choices for those games. So this makes this decision even more baffling because instead of sharing the revenue these developers will just change to a different engine (it's not like that market will disappear, so if using Unity is unprofitable or too big of a dent in the revenue, they won't stop making those games, just use a different engine)

Maybe you're not familiar with the economics of f2p mobile games, but basically, the game is free, you get maybe 100k installs and make back 25k$ (IAP, etc.) so revenue of 0.25$ per user. But then you have to pay for users acquisition (marketing to get installs) so the actual revenue is more like 0.19$ per user (still profitable!) BUT then I have to pay 0.20$ for any installs regardless of it made any money, so I'm effectively at a loss -0.01$ per user when I could've been profitable.

I made up the number up but you get the idea. With a % of revenue share (or at the very least do not count installs that generated 0$ revenue) it could be a profitable game, now it risks of being shutdown.

That is the problem, and what is completely baffling, games that are sold at 70$ means they pay a ridiculously low fee (%) compared to cheap or free to play mobile games where that fee means it can render the game unprofitable and need to be shutdown, yet with a reasonable % of the revenue they would be able to be profitable and everyone makes money.

Big company selling big games will see this as a rounding error in their revenue. Indies / small company will probably need to shutdown some games because this won't be profitable...

Compared to unity, yes (especially for 2D stuff which is more the norm on those platforms).

Unity is already imho pretty bloated but at least useable and a sensible choice for both, Unreal is just too massive and more suited for console 3D type of games.

Easy to say to mobile games studios that have ben using Unity for the last 10 years (or where in the process of releasing a game after multiple years of development) and didn't have to pay that tax before.

Also this will apply to every games made on Unity, so if you have a hugely popular game just above the threshold but make less than 0.20$ per user you effectively need to shutdown it down.

It isn't "bad business model" either, there is definitely a market for games where the revenue per user is less than 0.20$ (or whatever number).

Going with % of revenue is the sensible decision, just like Unreal does...

Don't forget Mobile or f2p gaming, Unity has a huge market share there and the margin are really low, adding ~0.20$ per user when most will makes you 0$ doesn't make sense at all.

Going with % of profit does.

Also it is quite unfair to cheaper games, indie 5$ games pay a much bigger share than a 40$ / 70$ game

It is bad phrasing, I think they meant each month you need to pay X for the installs of the month. You pay only once per install.

Also what is an install? Why not go with "user", someone installing the game 5 times is gonna cost 1$?

Terrible communication all around form Unity.

Free with splash screen, or Plus / Pro subscription to remove splash screen.

I don't disagree that Unity need to make money, but they should go the Unreal route with % of profit or something.

Tons of games don't even make back 0.20$ per user (mobile or f2p), what's going to happens to those? Force to close because they cannot pay the rent?

That's how Unreal does it, 5% over 1M or something. Installs tracking has it own problem in itself, like pirated copies or offline, etc.

This cannot be right, how can this makes sense with mobile gaming? Unity has a HUGE market share there, so they know the number. How can free games ensure a 0.20$ per install? Why not go with X% of the revenue?