This is not only about Unity. But also about every other service software (MS Office, Photoshop, and so on): As soon as Unity gets away with it, other companies will follow this example! Everyone is watching this now! Not just gamers, developers, but every other company too!
Yeah, they've shown they have a desire to screw their devs. Even if they revert it, they can always redo it (or something worse) at any time. The will is there.
Two corrections so far: 1) Whilst the old 100k for Unity was based on studio-wide revenue, the new $200k revenue threshold will apply on a per-game basis. So this is good news for studios like us that don't make money exclusively from just games, but also work for hire, selling assets or UA-cam AdSense. 2) You pay monthly for the new installs, it's not a recurring monthly charge for every install over the threshold. Updates from Unity: They clarified on Twitter that reinstalls won't count (as I guessed in the video). Some other points such as piracy, refunds, and gamepass aren't really solid yet though. Even though they are backtracking partially, their wording is needlessly complicated and vague. twitter.com/unity/status/1702077049425596900 -M
But it’s not just this change that matters though right? It seems like every year Unity makes a new terrible decision to squeeze more money out of developers. Since games can take years to make, you also have to consider, “what will they do next year?”
The reinstall justification doesn’t explain how they determine it’s not a reinstall, and doesn’t take into account moving between machines, changing existing hardware or webGL not detecting browser changes.
I don't care if Unity walks this back. I can forgive an honest mistake, but I can't help but feel we're catching a glimpse of more to come. I'm switching to Godot
I do think it was a mistake in some sense because PC games weren't even the target. They were targeting f2p games and trying to force them to swap to unity services. So they do actually think the 0.20 cent doesn't effect us. I really believe they think no one would have cared, there some ex unity financial employees on twitter saying it is not bad... imagine that, they actually believe it's not so bad... Its maybe not an "honest mistake" more like a naive,stupid and uneducated mistake.
Yupp. Trust is lost. This is a company which is hostile to its customers, regarding them as an enemy to be "conquered" (fleeced). I don't want my future as a game developer to be dependent on someone who is supposed to be my partner but who in reality regards me as an adversary.
After years of playing and learning Unity, I'm finally convinced to look at another engine. I guess, I'll dust off my C++ skills and switch to Unreal. Or try out another engine.
Part of what attracted me to Unity is that it seemed the perfect engine for Indie development (not that I ever expect to develop anything other than hobby projects). This has got me questioning whether it's even worth the effort to learn Unity. I truly don't get how executives who have the business acumen to rise to their position could so badly misread what their product is good for. I worry now for the studios I have games for whether I should even reinstall a game of theirs. Absolutely bonehead move!
C# is available in godot, so you wouldn't need to learn a new language. Godot is also taking steps to make it easier to port to console, but I don't know where that will end up. Just be careful trusting Unity if you choose to stay with it. This isn't the first time they've pulled the rug out from under devs.
Godot is barely good enough (I've used it and wasn't happy with the engine). Even with C# support, it's just not feature rich enough for me (and I would assume a lot of others, otherwise Godot would've been first choice for them).
@@Cabolt44 I'm a big advocate for Godot, and having used Godot (3, not 4 yet), I would be happy with using the engine for the next game. Biggest down sides that I can see are third party assets are lacking as opposed to Unity, and no Console support (either implement it ourselves, or outsource it).
I very recently decided to go with UE5 over unity. I went back and forth for quite a while and honestly don't even rembember what swayed me, but, wow, am I'm super happy with my choice, now.
Yeah, choosing UE5 feels a bit like dodging a bullet. Even if they revert this, they can still re-enact it (or something worse) at any time. It's just not worth it...
While I've used Unreal for a few years myself, it's limited to higher end stuff. Their 2D and mobile support isn't great (which is why Genshin etc. Is Made on Unity) And since they're a company with proprietary engine, how long will they keep being nice to devs? The Epic Fund, a generous threshold for revenue share, a dedicated store with 100% profits going to devs. That sounds too good to be sustainable for a profit making business. I have very little trust for any of these companies with dedicated engines now. At this point, Peter Jackson should just buy back Weta, so their rep isn't further ruined by the stupidity of Unity.
I totally agree on you. This new pricing is just a joke. Especially the last few years it feels like Unity is slowly killing itself. And that's very sad - and frustrating. But, two points: 2:33 It does not apply on your whole studio but on a per game base! (explained in the FAQ under "Who does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to?": "For creators with games over these revenue and install thresholds, the following fees apply on a per-game basis:[...]") So if you have two games that made 150k in the last 12 months you are NOT above the threshold. (same for installs) 3:22 That is also not true. You only pay once per install. Just the calculation is on per month basis. So if someone installs your game you dont have to pay every the month while they have it installed. You just need to pay that one time fee at the end of the month.
Thanks! It seems that the new wording did confuse me. The old 100k requirement was (is?) studio wide, however they are changing it to 200k per game, which is a good thing, as the studio wide thing is quite dumb for people who do work for hire on the side and such. I've pinned a correction in the comments as well. - M
What's funny is that within the past 24 hours of this announcement Unity has backpedalled hard on a lot of this. Too many well known studios/publishers have slammed this decision (like Devolver Digital), and they obviously didn't check with their lawyers about the massive legal battles if they even tried to fight Steam, Apple, Sony and Nintendo on charging them this fee (too).
Don't be too excited about that. We're not even sure if Unreal will remain friendly to devs. Also... they just can't do 2D very well. That's the purview of 2D dedicated engines.
@@Cabolt44 I mean unreal 5 didn’t release terribly long ago and that’s when they changed from charging 5% after 100,000 to 5% after a million. And there’s no pro/enterprise software version. It’s all just the same unreal
@@Cabolt44Unreal has also taken advantage of Unity's foibles and said if there are any future changes to agreements you don't like, you're not forced into them. Revenue is also self-reported, they say. Now, does that mean I trust Unreal with my life? No. But compared to what Unity's spouting, it's worth it to consider it at least.
I started in Unreal and decided to try Unity this year and fell in love with it and C#...I have to closely monitor this change now because this might cause me to switch back after I release my game.
No need to closely monitor this change as it has no affect on small indies. None. You need to have 200,000 installs, which depending on how installs are calculated, you have had to sold at least 100,000 copies of your game (im low balling here). Now the fees only start when you reach this milestone. So you already have over 100,000 copies sold under your belt when the fees start. Say you sell another 100,000 copies, if its a $10 game then total revenue is $2,000,000. But say Unity calculated there's an additional 400,000 installs (high estimate). You owe unity $80,000, which is only 4% of your revenue (better than Unreals 5%). So with greatly exaggerating the amount of installs you're still paying less than if you're using unreal. But none of this matters cause if you actually have to worry about then congrats as youre not a small indie anymore.
@btmodz you need to understand there is a big difference between 200,000 installs and 200,000 copies sold. One player can reinstall the game multiple times over time which you will pay for. Pirate installs you will pay for (no way to differentiate - check unity forums. People uninstall and reinstall games for multiple reasons. There is no reason or justification why you need to charge someone per "install". Do you know how easy it would be for some troll kid to set up a script and rack up installs? Oh, but you have faith that Unity will differentiat between them on the good of their own faith, right? Nope, rent is due pay up.
It's very difficult to sell 200,000 copies of a game as an indy developer. It's far less difficult to have your game downloaded 200,000 times. Just personally I've reinstalled games I've liked sometimes ten times each when I want to come back to them. This is an extreme case, but in that case then the number of purchases falls way down to 20,000. Now let's say your game is a WebGL client...well then it counts as one download EVERY TIME THE PAGE LOADS. The only saving grace here is that they clarified it requires both money and download thresholds to count. But if you're a dev that finally just makes that threshold, now for the rest of your life that game will cost you 20 cents every time it's reinstalled. Even worse than that, there's nowhere they state that they can't just raise that price at any given moment to pad their own numbers. This is a red-alert nightmare scenario for EVERY level of developer, save kids in school just playing with the engine.@@Btmodz
@@BtmodzWhy are you playing devils advocate for this decision? This is a horrible way to revenue share. Look at it this way: If Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the internet) charged everyone for clicking on every website (say 2c US), how would that be monitored/enforced? Could it even be monitored? This Unity debarcle is a smaller scale version of that example.
@@recodegamesstudio Supposedly this won't be the case. They've since stated that it only counts as the first install on the device. Obviously the same user installing it on other devices would also count as an initial install. But I guess Unity isn't going to charge for reinstalls after that. Or piracy installs. How the heck they're going to differentiate between that? Well, who knows? I guess it's something though...
It is sad. I have 2 years of work done, demo soon to be announced and minimum of 2 years of finishing the game ahead. There is no step back at this point for me like switching to another engine with my game. One way is to finish the game and switch to another engine later, but ONLY if they will change this fees per install. The other is just stop the project completely as soon as possible and start another with another engine. I am unity user for almost 10 years and this just sucks. I don't know what to do, but this can not be tolerated by developers.
WOW! People are going crazy about this. It was the pricing that finally pushed me to Unreal...And it was a hard decision. Unity has amazing community. I'm new to this. And even I see that it's a crappy thing to do to your developers/supporters.
I think, if it goes through, especially with older games, that there will be a LOT of old legacy games that will stop being available. Having some hidden gem somewhere that is still getting a few downloads and a few players that really like it, it will probably be too much of a risk for the developers and they'll just remove it from the internet. Which would be very sad.
They cant, once you purchase a game, the game will always be available for download. And remember pirated games will count, so even if they manage to remove it, you can still pirate it and cost them money. This is going to end badly for everyone.
@Btmodz And these older games can still make those numbers fairly easily. Especially with Charity Bundles and sales. So some Legacy devs will get pinged... very hard due to a poorly planned system.
@@Kconv1 they can on consoles, but they can't on Steam. Because Steam treat its users' rights better than consoles, so anyone who bought a game can keep redownloading what they've paid for.
I think it's obvious why... Unity Technologies posted an 800 million dollar loss last year. They're trying to get back to profitibalility. Unfortunately, indie devs already have a hard time staying liquid and so these charges are screwing over all these emerging and talented smaller studios
That's their Idiotic fault. They bought up too many IPs (many weren't needed at all) and now they're losing money. Shouldn't punish us devs for their clueless business practices.
@@Cabolt44this. Fire the incompetent leadership. Stop compensating them so much as they piss off and lay off their own employees that were working on the product. The wrong heads always roll.
@@Rai2M The goal is not to have a really good engine, but one thay works well enough for what the game needs to do. That is achievabel. (Edit: certain things like going full photorealistic or certain physics systems would take a very long time to implement, but that is not really necessary. Also, most people underestimate the efficiency of solo development ;)
@@saemideluxe Look, your main problem would be stability and UI. A good UI is hard to make. I'm a professional UI developer and created a lot of different tools/editors in the past but making an engine UI is a different story. I don't even know where to start. It all depends on architecture and takes a lot of time. Good tools do save your time, that's true but wasting your time on making something so complicated is just... Dunno, i personally wouldn't. But if you think it's okay then high five and i do wish you good luck. upd.:btw, i'm a solo dev myself (after years and years of team development) so i know how it works )
@@Rai2M Agreed. Driver-stability is my biggest concern at the moment (due to its unpredictability). And the engine is only API-based, not UI-based (more like raylib, maybe some people do not consider that an engine these days). "Editor"-functionality will be on a per-game basis, if necessary, like a small level-editor etc.
Looking at the different game engines, licensing always made me wary. Having a free license is great, but having the possibility of the contract change on me due to circumstances somewhat out of my control doesn't seem great. Unity demonstrating that they can just change the terms on a whim drives home that fear. For now, I'm glad I started with Godot as my first engine
Glad you guys covered this too. This is... the worst thing Unity could ever do, and I'm out from Unity for life, even if they walk it back, because they can do this or worse in the future, its enough to burn their rep forever.
My last launch was of course a free game supported only with ads. Due to the expected percentage of uninstalls, a 20c (or even the 15c) per install would sink if I were unlucky enough to tip over the 200k installs. I have decided I am porting to Godot, and future will likely go to Unreal who seem much more reasonable to deal with
Рік тому+2
Imagine the CEO looking at the spreadsheet numbers and thinking "We are going to be(more), rich! bAWHAUBAWHAW"
Unity used to be so close of it's community. They made game dev accessible to everyone back in the days now i just feel like i can't trust them anymore even if they back down. I'm so glad i switched to UE earlier this year, I can't recommend unity anymore.
And... we're seeing Unreal making their engine accessible and being open with the community. If Unity can do this, whose to say any of these other non-open source engines could do the same in the future. At this point, best bet might just be FOSS engines Luke Godot, or smaller libraries like Raylib or engines you have to pay for straight out of pocket.
@@Cabolt44 You're absolutely right, they could decide tommorrow to have the same pricing as unity. But it doesn't mean that it will happen, and while unity pulls stuff like that, not that long ago Epic Games is giving options to the devs to pay less royalty through their store. It's too easy to say well if that company did that, the other one could too. That's true but doesn't mean that it will ever happen and if it does i'll look at my options then, but right now i'm happy with Unreal and if you're happy with any other engines even with Unity that's great use whatever is better for you.
@@Cabolt44 A quick update, I read Unreal Engine's EULA and if they ever change the royalty plan we are protected and have the option to not accept the new EULA. 7. The Agreement Between You and Epic a. Amendments If we make changes to this Agreement, you are not required to accept the amended Agreement, and this Agreement will continue to govern your use of any Licensed Technology you already have access to.
What funny about unity is that they add all of these fees but the engine is not improving at all, we get a new feature once in 3 years ! from the other side unreal pushing high end technologies each update and didn't charge shit for it ! also Godot is completely free and open source yet it keep pushing updates and improvements ! I can't remember when is the last time Unity made a big release.
Speechbound is being developed in Unity and as a Indie Gamedev, being suddenly hit with a cost that was not factored in when we made the decision to use this engine is a big SLAP IN THE FACE. Not cool Unity!
Your getting a good invite to move to a different engine: Godot, UE5... and I would not hesitate at all. It has been years since I dislike Unity's pricing policies... now I think few people will like them. I personally think stiking to Unity for your next game is a mistake. Assets can be exported to other engines, and once you know one engine, learning other is not such a big jump. It is not like starting from zero. This is, of course, my personal opinion.
Follow the Money: Cathie Woods (ARK Invest) is reported to own 3.41% of the outstanding Unity Software stock. There are other institutions that have a much larger investment / ownership- of Unity. This entire development is Unity CEO's desparate longshot from the hip at a 2 mile away target. No analysis went into this initially. This decision was like Brexit: Do it cause I say so, and as CEO I won't be hurt either way. Devs be damned.
If I've understood this new scheme correctly (and I'm not a Unity user), the retroactive nature of the install fee may mean publishers could pull successful older games from circulation rather than expose themselves to the risk of unexpected install costs at the end of a game's earning lifetime. Certainly making an old Unity game free when it has previously reached the $200k revenue threshold, is not going to be something you'd want to do. I've seen a few examples of this sort of thing lately; a company with a loyal base of artists who have built up an ecosystem around the company's products, adding enormous amounts of value, are subject to short sighted slash and burn tactics after the company has gone public and the CEO wants some quick revenue to impress shareholders.
@@Rai2MGrey zone between the two. I wrote an engine based on lwjgl. It doesn't have its own editor so you'd be developing in Intellij IDEA, but other than that, it's an engine through and through. Multi purpose, with 2d and 3d rendering systems, that you can use to create a racing game or a 2d card game.
@@Rai2M While I do have a game engine and a framework I call it a platform. I call it the AllBinary Platform. It is hard to quantify it as any of the 3 as I currently use GDevelop for the scene editor and I have many projects that are part of it. So instead of any of the three I probably should call it AllBinary and let people decide on their own.
When you revealed it was John Riccitiello at the head of Unity I almost crapped my pants laughing. Of course it had to be him... the same chode who made EA one of the most hated companies in the world. If you had made you video 3 seconds long and all you said was John Riccitiello, that would have given me all I needed to know about what Unity is thinking.
It’s time to take unity out of the S tier engines and make unreal / Godot the duo we always needed ! Also why no trains and tracks in your game??? Unbelievable
Named must your fear be before banish it you can. Unity started down the dark path, forever will it dominate it's destiny. When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back. If no mistake you have made, losing you are. A different game you should play. Your path you must decide. Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future. The end is a natural part of life. Rejoice, as for those who share your fate will transform into a force.
Lol. I feel like that from time to time, massive companies just throws at the public a random bs decision just for the fun of it and produce a source of drama. There is no way this is going to actually be approved. I've never seen a worse decision in my entire existence.
It's a difficult situation for so many developers. As we would like for companies to make the best financial dictions for the long term instead of short term cash grabs ... we also have to look for our best interest long term and not be hypocritical just because in the short term it's cheaper/easier to just lay down and take it. I don't expect other studios that already have working in progress to change, but if their next projects are still in unity In my opinion you are hurting whole industry and every future developer.
Let's hope Unity means unique User installs - counting the actual installs might even be impossible in the EU considering the privacy laws. It might also target the asian mobile games market primarily, since that's where companies make the big money :D
Nope. They would count each and every install (what pisses me off even more, because runtime is the same for each unity project) even for the same game on the same device. And yes, they're only .0001 inch away from violating EU laws.
Godot or any game company in the future will eventually p and inevitably fall like this, as long as the money is running, they just simply don’t care. This is what happened when you bring materialistic into creativity
Q: how are you going to collect installs?: maby they shuld tell a bit more like: what if i pause and unpause the install and how will the system understand that its a patch we download and not the game?
Ok. You guys don’t understand how smart this move unity did is ! Even though currently there are lots of Unity projects out there only few have Millions in profits / revenue, and they don’t care about indie devs, (most indies fail after all) and almost never reach 100K $ so what does this means, they are targetting specifically MiHoYo and the likes of those Chinese/Japanese free to play games making millions out of rich guys and girls . Truly pretty smart because for example , now Mihoyo has to do a infrastructure change of all their games they are developing with unity and that is going to require at least 6 Years and let me tell you something : when all those free to play devs making millions find a solution to this hurdle , and have a new ecosystem, Unity will loose their monetary restrictions on devs and all will be fine again again . From a business perspective , this is Genius . However I hope they fail and receive unrepairable reputation damage, but as we all know we live in a world that doesn’t mind these practice so … no hope 😢
I switched to Unreal Engine about a year ago and I have no regrets. Unreal Engine has a lot of things implemented right in the engine and for me it was such a smooth switch. I recommend all the devs that got destroyed by Unity to switch too.
I am very green and started on Unreal despite being told it would be too steep for baby's first game. I'm kind of glad I didn't invest time into Unity after all of this, which is nice. It kind of killed lingering concerns about making the wrong initial decision.
@@diligencehumility6971Since it was a long time ago and Unreal Engine actually updates and adds features i would not reccomend the same tutorial as I used but you can look at Mat Aspland, Unreal Sensei, Smart Poly and I would also recommend watching PontyPants Devlog series. There are a lot of long courses and the longer, the better. I really liked the course of making a zombie fps game in 5 hours made by smart poly.
So here is a question, since yoinking the game from steam/epic is unlikely to stop these fees, people will still be able to download/install, does that mean devs are going to have to update and sabotage their installers so they cant complete the install? And what happens if the devs just say "We arent paying?" do they have to collect from Steam/epic, good luck wiht that.
Just face it. Unity wants to be an advertisement company. Whoever can't meet income requirements with monetization, is essentially seen as liability, that will just take up precious space in their registry, which will look bad in audit.
Even if they decide to pull back on this horrible decision, how can one guarantee this won't happen again in a couple of years when you're deep into developing your game? From now on, this is another thing to consider when anyone starts to study or teach about a new engine.
i don't care that they want to have money. They can want to. This solution which u said at the end is okey for me "if it would be for one user". They can get 10% for every sold copy. Which this model no one will be bankrupt. In my interest is that they will revert this and make some solution that have more sense. I have hope too. I said the same "they can't be idiots like this".
@@RazRaptorX The place is thoroughly rotten. All companies which go public eventually end this way - their loyalty is to the shareholders rather than customers and you can't change that back. Imo, it's dead, Jim. Just walk away and don't look back. I know I won't.
If Unity make it $.20 per sale, then I think it's not so bad. They can easily track game downloads through a store analytics too. Anyway, I worked on a game using Unity but I'm thinking switching to UE now.
That would be missing the point though. You know Pokemon Go? That is a unity game that has been installed millions of times on phones, but as a free game with little in ads and limited amount of in-app purchases per active player it ain't profitable for Unity. It ain't alone on that either. Unity is running on so many phones in one way or another, but despite its popularity, often gets little from such games. And THAT is why Unity came up with this brain dead idea. They see their engine being installed billions of times and believe they are entitled to benefit from their engine's popularity and that mobile developers should start paying more via this stupid decision. Even if the game is completely free, they would still try to demand you to pay "Per installation". Effectively forcing mobile game devs to start monetizing (more) for Unity's benefit if they hope to offset this. Apparantly when John riciwhatever says people should be monetising games. He wasn't merely giving advice...
My only issue with Godot is its 3D. It has gotten better but its behind compared to Unity and Unreal. 2D solid but I don't make 2D games. I'm glad that they trying to get funding to improve with the engine though.
I think the motivation is trying to force mobile developers to monetize their free games. Games like Niantic's Pokemon Go have a lot of users that are playing completely free without any purchases. So Unity gains pretty much bupkiss despite some of these games being the biggest in the mobile ecosystem, besides those quite a few are using different AD and User Analytics software than Unity's own. So they are also getting stiffed out of juicy valuable user data and ad-revenue... Naturally they didn't even think for a second how every other platform would be affected. Cause in typical John Ricitwhatever fashion. He is blinded by the big shiny fish and puts all his eggs in that single basket.
I'm thinking about what caused the fees per install mentality in the "unity" head. I believe this is because they wants to integrate / link the cost of the unity updates (so the engine development cost) with game updates (literally installs) The problem with the installs from my point of view as developer and player: I have a lot game ( I mean 200+ games) so I can not keep all of the installs at the same time.. SO I play with a game 1-3 hours and delete it.. after that maybe next month I will download the game again from steam a play a bit.. and it goes on.. And I'm almost sure not I am the only player with this behavior pattern and it will cause a lot fee for the developers. (moreover, what about the demo games?... you understand .. it is anoying if I think for that, I can bankrupt a small studio, because I don't have enough SSD storage space.. )
I can explain the mindset with a single Example.... Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go is a mobile game made with the Unity engine. It has millions upon millions of installation. However, it has no ads and not that many in-app purchases that are super popular. The game is arguably the most popular unity game to ever existed... and Unity gets peanuts. Which probably pisses off some of the higher ups like John Ricitiwhatever who view this as a disproportionate compared to other platforms that as only premium titles which give a constant share. This is what Unity is after. With this move. They are trying to squeeze money out of the mobile market at any cost. Even if it forces mobile game devs who see 15-20 cent as a death-knell if their game only gets a few cents worth of ad-revenue before being uninstalled: to engage in more aggresive/predatory monetisation to compensate.
You can build your own engine based on some kind of framework but why would you do that? You will spend an enormous amount of your time competing with way more stable and reliable engines. Just grab one of those (Cocos Creator, Godot, Game Maker, UE5, Defold... whatever) and enjoy actually making your game, not trying to implement some basic engine features.
I agree, if your goal is to publish a game fast, it's best to go with a ready solution. If you're not aiming to publish as quickly as possible and given that your game is simple enough, creating your own engine gives you complete freedom and control as you are not tied to a restrictive license (which we see here, may completely change over time), API which may get breaking changes and features which may be broken, break or get dropped. And importantly for me, with your own engine you can customize your UX completely yourself as I've found UX to be a dealbreaker on many engines for me. But indeed, on many of the above points, for example Godot seems at the moment like a good solution, but as we see, things may change for the worse drastically in 5 or 10 years time. Not to mention, some people might also enjoy creating their engine as much as the game itself :)
UA-cam and Twitch? What about Kick????? I am happy with this. Fewer idiots get money for dumb shit they make. And better games come out of it. Win win for the consumer.
They have backed down a bit. Now you pay once per install ınstead of once per install per month. Another thing is you must both reach 200k $ last year AND 200k download lifetime. At that point you can buy 2k$ per year license to push the limit further to 1 Million. I am not defending Unity but I am trying to give some peace of mind to you guys. No need to give up unless you are planning to make a lot
Yeah no worries, I actually think the new wording is not bad for us, as indeed, if we get the $200k rev, I have no issue in getting a pro license, so for me this new version is better already. They just decided to nuke their credibility which greatly affects them in the long term now, even if they backtrack everything. -M
there's no going back to unity, the trust is gone. there's still an open question teams with existing projects should go through the effort of porting to another engine, but going forward anyone who starts a new project using unity is a complete fool.
😱 not only developers, this could impact gamers as well, if games had to pulled down so they no longer can be installed or so, what the hell unity you were my favourite one, guess i'll use unreal now 😅
Not to mention the mobile games market, which relies heavilly on free installation and then slowly gaining revenue from ads and the rare purchase. This move is basically going to force them to monetise more than ever before. Even big names like Niantic would have to offset costs considering Pokemon Go uses Unity and has no ads.
"your game must meet both(!) revenue AND (!) install sresholds..." So you don't need to pay till the point while BOTH condition is met. If only the one of them met the critetion, you dont need to pay! - As I understand
And what is stopping them from lowering that threshold? Or from basically saying "gief" whenever their need money because they "leverage" their "models" which tell them how many installs there were? Trust me bro, eh? No, the trust is lost. They have shown their true face and what they're capable of. It is too much risky to invest money and time into Unity, especially for larger projects. According to their new "model" they literally reserve the right to charge you however much they want, and you have no way of checking or disputing the data except their own "compliance team" which is supposed to investigate itself. It is ridiculous. I wouldn't invest in a cup of coffee on these terms, much rather years of my life.
From what I understand about Unity Asset Store, you can buy asset then convert them into godot without legal problem. IMO, the fall of Unity is a slow process, so it is not so urgent to switch engine, but necessary in the long run
Are you sure? Because there are framework assets, dedicated Unity plugins that are surely non-convertible. I could understand models and meshes, but everything else? I just don't see it.
@@Cabolt44 It depends, Editor Script would be impossible to convert. Script is convertible with some work (maybe a lot of work), godot has c#, but doesn't have component (so GetComponent need to be replaced), instead, using a node system. Shader is convertible. Particle system is ok, godot has more particle system features, but VFX graph might be harder to convert.
I believe the condition is a AND type. Like you have to be earning enough and getting installed often enough, for them to start screwing you over. If you just make a free game with no monetization whatsoever. You should be fine. But as a hobbyist. GODOT is already a better choice honestly. Cause it fills that same niche as Blender. completely free to get started with with no strings attached and good enough to stick with should you ever want to take your hobby further.
I have roughly 9k in assets from the Unity Asset Store, since 2013 when I started using it Unity, and because of this, I am jumping ship! Even if, or more like when, they realize how horribly they screwed up with this decision, I still won't be coming back to them, because they obviously can't be trusted, and nothing is stopping them from coming up with some other ridiculous greedy plan to do something equally horrible, or even worse, to their customer base! This incident is going to cost them a fortune, and they are going to be haunted by this decision for many years to comes! The next thing that happens in Unity news, will be their CEO being kicked to the curb, and then a public apology explaining that that wasn't the direction they wanted to take, and that it was all him and greed, which will be the only thing they will be able to announce, that may convince some people to stick around to see what happens... So incredibly dumb...
This is going to affect indie devs so much. If they get a massive hit, they wont be able to funnel that money into starting a real game dev studio, and instead they'll be forking that cash to Unity😢
No more giving away free copies as a promotion, this costs money. No more multiple installs on many computers, this costs money. No more existing games, making a profit, being able to just...do so without worry...they gonna charge every existing game, and try to leech more cash out of any game made in unity. Doesn't matter if the game is pirated or not. Doesn't matter if the game is reinstalled, or not. Doesn't matter if somebody installs 50K times on an emulator just to freaking make you pay cause they hate you, you'll pay. And worse, Unity isn't telling nobody HOW they are finding all this info on installs....but, just "trust them about it, they'll charge you fairly."
And there is the mobile market that relies on free-installation and then trying to earn revenue via ads. THOSE are the ones Unity is trying to screw over with this really...
You pay per install only once, not monthly, they do the calculations monthly. After you published the video there are a lot of updates on the topic from the Unity team, so some info already changed.
They can say whatever they want to calm down the people. What surprises me is that some of those are actually going to believe all that crap. Unity management can change their minds instantly and what would you do? Risk management, have you ever heard of it? I did and i'm out. There are **** ton of free tools and Unity not even the best, it's Jack-of-all-trades. Master of none.
Not really. Not only enforcement of it would mean tracking user activity in ways illegal in EU and California, it's would also be a system to attack developers by faking installs of their game, and Unity will just destroy them with inflated bill.
As an indie developer myself... this whole situation is just ugh. While I know people are like "Oh just go to Godot, or Unreal etc." remember that it's not that easy - especially when you've splurged money (for asset packs which are mostly non-transferable) and used resources (time, energy) on Unity. Switching to Unreal only works for 3D games studios and those focused heavily on PC/Console. Godot is just not feature rich enough yet (could be in 2/3 years if funding is decent for them). We have alternatives like Stride, GDevelop, Playmaker (for rpgs) but they all have issues or just plain lack Unity's features.
i love when innovation and creativity is punished ❤
This is not only about Unity. But also about every other service software (MS Office, Photoshop, and so on): As soon as Unity gets away with it, other companies will follow this example! Everyone is watching this now! Not just gamers, developers, but every other company too!
No way people are going back to unity even if they backtrack on this. Trust is already lost.
This screams “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice , shame on me”
100%
Yeah, they've shown they have a desire to screw their devs.
Even if they revert it, they can always redo it (or something worse) at any time.
The will is there.
People will be angry but they most certainly will go back there are people who have invested loads
Two corrections so far:
1) Whilst the old 100k for Unity was based on studio-wide revenue, the new $200k revenue threshold will apply on a per-game basis. So this is good news for studios like us that don't make money exclusively from just games, but also work for hire, selling assets or UA-cam AdSense.
2) You pay monthly for the new installs, it's not a recurring monthly charge for every install over the threshold.
Updates from Unity:
They clarified on Twitter that reinstalls won't count (as I guessed in the video). Some other points such as piracy, refunds, and gamepass aren't really solid yet though. Even though they are backtracking partially, their wording is needlessly complicated and vague.
twitter.com/unity/status/1702077049425596900
-M
Do you qualify for these fees? Or are you just bitching?
But it’s not just this change that matters though right? It seems like every year Unity makes a new terrible decision to squeeze more money out of developers. Since games can take years to make, you also have to consider, “what will they do next year?”
They said that reinstalls won't count, BUT how would they know? They can't just gather users information for it in shadow, it's like illigal, tho
I know you're just clarifying for the sake of being as truthful as possible, but it's still terrible.
The reinstall justification doesn’t explain how they determine it’s not a reinstall, and doesn’t take into account moving between machines, changing existing hardware or webGL not detecting browser changes.
I don't care if Unity walks this back. I can forgive an honest mistake, but I can't help but feel we're catching a glimpse of more to come. I'm switching to Godot
the honest mistake was probably the wording. I was like, did they even do the math?
You are seeing more of the future here. While fucking execs who only know numbers on a spreadsheet are in charge, this will continue to happen.
I do think it was a mistake in some sense because PC games weren't even the target. They were targeting f2p games and trying to force them to swap to unity services. So they do actually think the 0.20 cent doesn't effect us. I really believe they think no one would have cared, there some ex unity financial employees on twitter saying it is not bad... imagine that, they actually believe it's not so bad...
Its maybe not an "honest mistake" more like a naive,stupid and uneducated mistake.
Yupp. Trust is lost. This is a company which is hostile to its customers, regarding them as an enemy to be "conquered" (fleeced). I don't want my future as a game developer to be dependent on someone who is supposed to be my partner but who in reality regards me as an adversary.
Stride engine is a better option its what im going with its written in c# has good 3d support is free and open source
After years of playing and learning Unity, I'm finally convinced to look at another engine. I guess, I'll dust off my C++ skills and switch to Unreal. Or try out another engine.
If you are building 3d games go for Unreal. If you want to build 2d / 2.5d games Godot is undisputed king
Part of what attracted me to Unity is that it seemed the perfect engine for Indie development (not that I ever expect to develop anything other than hobby projects). This has got me questioning whether it's even worth the effort to learn Unity.
I truly don't get how executives who have the business acumen to rise to their position could so badly misread what their product is good for. I worry now for the studios I have games for whether I should even reinstall a game of theirs. Absolutely bonehead move!
C# is available in godot, so you wouldn't need to learn a new language. Godot is also taking steps to make it easier to port to console, but I don't know where that will end up. Just be careful trusting Unity if you choose to stay with it. This isn't the first time they've pulled the rug out from under devs.
Godot is barely good enough (I've used it and wasn't happy with the engine). Even with C# support, it's just not feature rich enough for me (and I would assume a lot of others, otherwise Godot would've been first choice for them).
Godot just isn't nearly developed enough for most games unfortunately.
@@Cabolt44 I'm a big advocate for Godot, and having used Godot (3, not 4 yet), I would be happy with using the engine for the next game. Biggest down sides that I can see are third party assets are lacking as opposed to Unity, and no Console support (either implement it ourselves, or outsource it).
Programming language is amongst least significant parts of a game engine.
@@Cabolt44 Have you tried the completely rewritten new version (4)?
I very recently decided to go with UE5 over unity. I went back and forth for quite a while and honestly don't even rembember what swayed me, but, wow, am I'm super happy with my choice, now.
Yeah, choosing UE5 feels a bit like dodging a bullet.
Even if they revert this, they can still re-enact it (or something worse) at any time.
It's just not worth it...
While I've used Unreal for a few years myself, it's limited to higher end stuff. Their 2D and mobile support isn't great (which is why Genshin etc. Is Made on Unity) And since they're a company with proprietary engine, how long will they keep being nice to devs? The Epic Fund, a generous threshold for revenue share, a dedicated store with 100% profits going to devs. That sounds too good to be sustainable for a profit making business.
I have very little trust for any of these companies with dedicated engines now. At this point, Peter Jackson should just buy back Weta, so their rep isn't further ruined by the stupidity of Unity.
I'm telling myself exactly that right now!
The good news is that this change also seems to displease the shareholders: Unity's stock has fallen by 7.2% today. Unity will surely respond to this.
Lol! I wonder how much of that was from the CEO himself selling his shares (which we already know he did) 🤣
@@Luis-TorresTrash 🗑 CEO for sure. Should be instantly fired by the board.
5.52% at closing. Honestly, not enough. Was expecting so much more. Disappointed in the market reaction.
@@Luis-Torres Let him buy back some now, and have FTC make vulture food out of his a**
That’s what happens when shareholders decide for a company. End users are not the focus anymore. The CEO must go.
I totally agree on you. This new pricing is just a joke. Especially the last few years it feels like Unity is slowly killing itself. And that's very sad - and frustrating.
But, two points:
2:33 It does not apply on your whole studio but on a per game base! (explained in the FAQ under "Who does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to?": "For creators with games over these revenue and install thresholds, the following fees apply on a per-game basis:[...]") So if you have two games that made 150k in the last 12 months you are NOT above the threshold. (same for installs)
3:22 That is also not true. You only pay once per install. Just the calculation is on per month basis. So if someone installs your game you dont have to pay every the month while they have it installed. You just need to pay that one time fee at the end of the month.
Thanks! It seems that the new wording did confuse me. The old 100k requirement was (is?) studio wide, however they are changing it to 200k per game, which is a good thing, as the studio wide thing is quite dumb for people who do work for hire on the side and such.
I've pinned a correction in the comments as well.
- M
What's funny is that within the past 24 hours of this announcement Unity has backpedalled hard on a lot of this. Too many well known studios/publishers have slammed this decision (like Devolver Digital), and they obviously didn't check with their lawyers about the massive legal battles if they even tried to fight Steam, Apple, Sony and Nintendo on charging them this fee (too).
Unreal- Gets more affordable for all studios over time
Unity- Gets more expensive and convoluted for all studios over time
Don't be too excited about that. We're not even sure if Unreal will remain friendly to devs. Also... they just can't do 2D very well. That's the purview of 2D dedicated engines.
@@Cabolt44 I mean unreal 5 didn’t release terribly long ago and that’s when they changed from charging 5% after 100,000 to 5% after a million. And there’s no pro/enterprise software version. It’s all just the same unreal
@@Cabolt44Unreal has also taken advantage of Unity's foibles and said if there are any future changes to agreements you don't like, you're not forced into them. Revenue is also self-reported, they say. Now, does that mean I trust Unreal with my life? No. But compared to what Unity's spouting, it's worth it to consider it at least.
I started in Unreal and decided to try Unity this year and fell in love with it and C#...I have to closely monitor this change now because this might cause me to switch back after I release my game.
No need to closely monitor this change as it has no affect on small indies. None. You need to have 200,000 installs, which depending on how installs are calculated, you have had to sold at least 100,000 copies of your game (im low balling here). Now the fees only start when you reach this milestone. So you already have over 100,000 copies sold under your belt when the fees start. Say you sell another 100,000 copies, if its a $10 game then total revenue is $2,000,000. But say Unity calculated there's an additional 400,000 installs (high estimate). You owe unity $80,000, which is only 4% of your revenue (better than Unreals 5%). So with greatly exaggerating the amount of installs you're still paying less than if you're using unreal. But none of this matters cause if you actually have to worry about then congrats as youre not a small indie anymore.
@btmodz you need to understand there is a big difference between 200,000 installs and 200,000 copies sold. One player can reinstall the game multiple times over time which you will pay for. Pirate installs you will pay for (no way to differentiate - check unity forums. People uninstall and reinstall games for multiple reasons. There is no reason or justification why you need to charge someone per "install". Do you know how easy it would be for some troll kid to set up a script and rack up installs? Oh, but you have faith that Unity will differentiat between them on the good of their own faith, right? Nope, rent is due pay up.
It's very difficult to sell 200,000 copies of a game as an indy developer.
It's far less difficult to have your game downloaded 200,000 times.
Just personally I've reinstalled games I've liked sometimes ten times each when I want to come back to them.
This is an extreme case, but in that case then the number of purchases falls way down to 20,000. Now let's say your game is a WebGL client...well then it counts as one download EVERY TIME THE PAGE LOADS.
The only saving grace here is that they clarified it requires both money and download thresholds to count.
But if you're a dev that finally just makes that threshold, now for the rest of your life that game will cost you 20 cents every time it's reinstalled.
Even worse than that, there's nowhere they state that they can't just raise that price at any given moment to pad their own numbers.
This is a red-alert nightmare scenario for EVERY level of developer, save kids in school just playing with the engine.@@Btmodz
@@BtmodzWhy are you playing devils advocate for this decision? This is a horrible way to revenue share. Look at it this way: If Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the internet) charged everyone for clicking on every website (say 2c US), how would that be monitored/enforced? Could it even be monitored? This Unity debarcle is a smaller scale version of that example.
@@recodegamesstudio Supposedly this won't be the case. They've since stated that it only counts as the first install on the device. Obviously the same user installing it on other devices would also count as an initial install. But I guess Unity isn't going to charge for reinstalls after that. Or piracy installs. How the heck they're going to differentiate between that? Well, who knows? I guess it's something though...
It is sad. I have 2 years of work done, demo soon to be announced and minimum of 2 years of finishing the game ahead. There is no step back at this point for me like switching to another engine with my game. One way is to finish the game and switch to another engine later, but ONLY if they will change this fees per install. The other is just stop the project completely as soon as possible and start another with another engine. I am unity user for almost 10 years and this just sucks. I don't know what to do, but this can not be tolerated by developers.
i feel u dude. btw, do u have a trailer of your game?
@@lucasalmeida7951 Thank you, there will be in one or two months I hope.
I was thinking when would you comment about it. Thanks for posting!
Great overview. I'm always happy to see game studios give their perspectives. This change affects different studios very differently.
WOW! People are going crazy about this. It was the pricing that finally pushed me to Unreal...And it was a hard decision. Unity has amazing community. I'm new to this. And even I see that it's a crappy thing to do to your developers/supporters.
I think, if it goes through, especially with older games, that there will be a LOT of old legacy games that will stop being available. Having some hidden gem somewhere that is still getting a few downloads and a few players that really like it, it will probably be too much of a risk for the developers and they'll just remove it from the internet. Which would be very sad.
remember the game needs to have made $200,000 in the past year for the install fees to count.
They cant, once you purchase a game, the game will always be available for download. And remember pirated games will count, so even if they manage to remove it, you can still pirate it and cost them money. This is going to end badly for everyone.
I think the same.
@Btmodz And these older games can still make those numbers fairly easily. Especially with Charity Bundles and sales. So some Legacy devs will get pinged... very hard due to a poorly planned system.
@@Kconv1 they can on consoles, but they can't on Steam. Because Steam treat its users' rights better than consoles, so anyone who bought a game can keep redownloading what they've paid for.
Godot suddenly seems like a great engine. 10+ years in Unity here. Maybe it'll be a fresh new chapter.
I think it's obvious why... Unity Technologies posted an 800 million dollar loss last year. They're trying to get back to profitibalility. Unfortunately, indie devs already have a hard time staying liquid and so these charges are screwing over all these emerging and talented smaller studios
That's their Idiotic fault. They bought up too many IPs (many weren't needed at all) and now they're losing money. Shouldn't punish us devs for their clueless business practices.
@@Cabolt44this. Fire the incompetent leadership. Stop compensating them so much as they piss off and lay off their own employees that were working on the product.
The wrong heads always roll.
Their current CEO is a parasite with a history of running companies into the ground. Look it up
Yay, and again I feel justified writting my own engine :D
Do not. Period.
You will never make a really good engine alone and you're not immortal. Just grab an existing engine and make a great game.
@@Rai2M The goal is not to have a really good engine, but one thay works well enough for what the game needs to do. That is achievabel.
(Edit: certain things like going full photorealistic or certain physics systems would take a very long time to implement, but that is not really necessary. Also, most people underestimate the efficiency of solo development ;)
@@saemideluxe Look, your main problem would be stability and UI. A good UI is hard to make. I'm a professional UI developer and created a lot of different tools/editors in the past but making an engine UI is a different story. I don't even know where to start. It all depends on architecture and takes a lot of time.
Good tools do save your time, that's true but wasting your time on making something so complicated is just... Dunno, i personally wouldn't.
But if you think it's okay then high five and i do wish you good luck.
upd.:btw, i'm a solo dev myself (after years and years of team development) so i know how it works )
@@Rai2M Agreed. Driver-stability is my biggest concern at the moment (due to its unpredictability). And the engine is only API-based, not UI-based (more like raylib, maybe some people do not consider that an engine these days). "Editor"-functionality will be on a per-game basis, if necessary, like a small level-editor etc.
Looking at the different game engines, licensing always made me wary. Having a free license is great, but having the possibility of the contract change on me due to circumstances somewhat out of my control doesn't seem great. Unity demonstrating that they can just change the terms on a whim drives home that fear. For now, I'm glad I started with Godot as my first engine
Glad you guys covered this too.
This is... the worst thing Unity could ever do, and I'm out from Unity for life, even if they walk it back, because they can do this or worse in the future, its enough to burn their rep forever.
I guess I'll start my game dev journey on another engine.
They claim to own the magical DRM that can detect if the game is pirated... MAGIC!
Our systems didn't detect any pirated copies of the 8 trillion installs of your game that has sold 20 copies.
You just have to pay us our part.
Unity will die from this. Nobody can tolerate this, complete loss of trust.
You'd think so eh
Ironic, as I was watching your game engine tierlist yesterday. Maybe time for a new tierlist XD
I think it's time to redo your engine teir list lol.
My last launch was of course a free game supported only with ads. Due to the expected percentage of uninstalls, a 20c (or even the 15c) per install would sink if I were unlucky enough to tip over the 200k installs. I have decided I am porting to Godot, and future will likely go to Unreal who seem much more reasonable to deal with
Imagine the CEO looking at the spreadsheet numbers and thinking "We are going to be(more), rich! bAWHAUBAWHAW"
Unity lost $800 million last year, to be fair. The Unity CEO is just trying (and failing miserably) at being profitable
Unity used to be so close of it's community. They made game dev accessible to everyone back in the days now i just feel like i can't trust them anymore even if they back down. I'm so glad i switched to UE earlier this year, I can't recommend unity anymore.
And... we're seeing Unreal making their engine accessible and being open with the community. If Unity can do this, whose to say any of these other non-open source engines could do the same in the future. At this point, best bet might just be FOSS engines Luke Godot, or smaller libraries like Raylib or engines you have to pay for straight out of pocket.
@@Cabolt44 You're absolutely right, they could decide tommorrow to have the same pricing as unity. But it doesn't mean that it will happen, and while unity pulls stuff like that, not that long ago Epic Games is giving options to the devs to pay less royalty through their store. It's too easy to say well if that company did that, the other one could too. That's true but doesn't mean that it will ever happen and if it does i'll look at my options then, but right now i'm happy with Unreal and if you're happy with any other engines even with Unity that's great use whatever is better for you.
@@Cabolt44 A quick update, I read Unreal Engine's EULA and if they ever change the royalty plan we are protected and have the option to not accept the new EULA.
7. The Agreement Between You and Epic
a. Amendments
If we make changes to this Agreement, you are not required to accept the amended Agreement, and this Agreement will continue to govern your use of any Licensed Technology you already have access to.
What funny about unity is that they add all of these fees but the engine is not improving at all, we get a new feature once in 3 years ! from the other side unreal pushing high end technologies each update and didn't charge shit for it ! also Godot is completely free and open source yet it keep pushing updates and improvements ! I can't remember when is the last time Unity made a big release.
Speechbound is being developed in Unity and as a Indie Gamedev, being suddenly hit with a cost that was not factored in when we made the decision to use this engine is a big SLAP IN THE FACE. Not cool Unity!
Your getting a good invite to move to a different engine: Godot, UE5... and I would not hesitate at all. It has been years since I dislike Unity's pricing policies... now I think few people will like them.
I personally think stiking to Unity for your next game is a mistake. Assets can be exported to other engines, and once you know one engine, learning other is not such a big jump. It is not like starting from zero. This is, of course, my personal opinion.
Follow the Money: Cathie Woods (ARK Invest) is reported to own 3.41% of the outstanding Unity Software stock. There are other institutions that have a much larger investment / ownership- of Unity. This entire development is Unity CEO's desparate longshot from the hip at a 2 mile away target. No analysis went into this initially. This decision was like Brexit: Do it cause I say so, and as CEO I won't be hurt either way. Devs be damned.
Godot about to go brr
If I've understood this new scheme correctly (and I'm not a Unity user), the retroactive nature of the install fee may mean publishers could pull successful older games from circulation rather than expose themselves to the risk of unexpected install costs at the end of a game's earning lifetime. Certainly making an old Unity game free when it has previously reached the $200k revenue threshold, is not going to be something you'd want to do.
I've seen a few examples of this sort of thing lately; a company with a loyal base of artists who have built up an ecosystem around the company's products, adding enormous amounts of value, are subject to short sighted slash and burn tactics after the company has gone public and the CEO wants some quick revenue to impress shareholders.
This is why I created my own game engine.
Engine? Or just a framework?
Not the same thing.
@@Rai2MGrey zone between the two. I wrote an engine based on lwjgl. It doesn't have its own editor so you'd be developing in Intellij IDEA, but other than that, it's an engine through and through. Multi purpose, with 2d and 3d rendering systems, that you can use to create a racing game or a 2d card game.
@@Rai2M While I do have a game engine and a framework I call it a platform. I call it the AllBinary Platform. It is hard to quantify it as any of the 3 as I currently use GDevelop for the scene editor and I have many projects that are part of it. So instead of any of the three I probably should call it AllBinary and let people decide on their own.
When you revealed it was John Riccitiello at the head of Unity I almost crapped my pants laughing. Of course it had to be him... the same chode who made EA one of the most hated companies in the world. If you had made you video 3 seconds long and all you said was John Riccitiello, that would have given me all I needed to know about what Unity is thinking.
It’s time to take unity out of the S tier engines and make unreal / Godot the duo we always needed ! Also why no trains and tracks in your game??? Unbelievable
They will pull it back and do something less terrible... Don't bite the hook. Let them starve.
Welcome to capitalism putting PROFIT before morals and ethics
Remember when Unity was supposed to make their own game in their own engine but then canceled that?
if they back out of it, it only means they'll reintroduce it later.
Don't worry. They will back down from this and not come back to it.
They'll come back with something worse.
Bro make more long videos. Also when are you gonna start your podcast/ live gamedev talk show? :P I'm here for it all.
Named must your fear be before banish it you can. Unity started down the dark path, forever will it dominate it's destiny. When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back. If no mistake you have made, losing you are. A different game you should play. Your path you must decide. Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future. The end is a natural part of life. Rejoice, as for those who share your fate will transform into a force.
Lol. I feel like that from time to time, massive companies just throws at the public a random bs decision just for the fun of it and produce a source of drama. There is no way this is going to actually be approved. I've never seen a worse decision in my entire existence.
It's a difficult situation for so many developers. As we would like for companies to make the best financial dictions for the long term instead of short term cash grabs ... we also have to look for our best interest long term and not be hypocritical just because in the short term it's cheaper/easier to just lay down and take it.
I don't expect other studios that already have working in progress to change, but if their next projects are still in unity In my opinion you are hurting whole industry and every future developer.
Let's hope Unity means unique User installs - counting the actual installs might even be impossible in the EU considering the privacy laws. It might also target the asian mobile games market primarily, since that's where companies make the big money :D
Nope. They would count each and every install (what pisses me off even more, because runtime is the same for each unity project) even for the same game on the same device. And yes, they're only .0001 inch away from violating EU laws.
If they aim to differentiate installs vs. reinstalls, and pirated vs. legitimate copies, then Unity will need invasive spyware and DRM bundled in it.
Godot or any game company in the future will eventually p and inevitably fall like this, as long as the money is running, they just simply don’t care. This is what happened when you bring materialistic into creativity
Q: how are you going to collect installs?: maby they shuld tell a bit more like: what if i pause and unpause the install and how will the system understand that its a patch we download and not the game?
Can we bankrupt Blizzard by installing Hearthstone infinitely on pc, Android and iOS?
S-Tier plan.
*already writing a script*... 👹👹👹
Ok. You guys don’t understand how smart this move unity did is ! Even though currently there are lots of Unity projects out there only few have Millions in profits / revenue, and they don’t care about indie devs, (most indies fail after all) and almost never reach 100K $ so what does this means, they are targetting specifically MiHoYo and the likes of those Chinese/Japanese free to play games making millions out of rich guys and girls . Truly pretty smart because for example , now Mihoyo has to do a infrastructure change of all their games they are developing with unity and that is going to require at least 6 Years and let me tell you something : when all those free to play devs making millions find a solution to this hurdle , and have a new ecosystem, Unity will loose their monetary restrictions on devs and all will be fine again again . From a business perspective , this is Genius . However I hope they fail and receive unrepairable reputation damage, but as we all know we live in a world that doesn’t mind these practice so … no hope 😢
What happened with Unity Plus? It's gone from Unity homepage?
As part of their changes, they killed Plus, "in order to simplify". Existing plus subscribers get pro at the regular plus price for 1 year. -M
I switched to Unreal Engine about a year ago and I have no regrets. Unreal Engine has a lot of things implemented right in the engine and for me it was such a smooth switch. I recommend all the devs that got destroyed by Unity to switch too.
I tried to start learning UE4 and 5, but I cant get anything done. How do I start learning UE the best way?
I am very green and started on Unreal despite being told it would be too steep for baby's first game. I'm kind of glad I didn't invest time into Unity after all of this, which is nice. It kind of killed lingering concerns about making the wrong initial decision.
@@diligencehumility6971Since it was a long time ago and Unreal Engine actually updates and adds features i would not reccomend the same tutorial as I used but you can look at Mat Aspland, Unreal Sensei, Smart Poly and I would also recommend watching PontyPants Devlog series. There are a lot of long courses and the longer, the better. I really liked the course of making a zombie fps game in 5 hours made by smart poly.
UE5 is fantastic for 3d projects (esp 1st person) but 2d... not so good, to say the least.
@@Rai2M yeah that is the biggest problem with Unreal for me. I used to use Unity for 2d.
So here is a question, since yoinking the game from steam/epic is unlikely to stop these fees, people will still be able to download/install, does that mean devs are going to have to update and sabotage their installers so they cant complete the install? And what happens if the devs just say "We arent paying?" do they have to collect from Steam/epic, good luck wiht that.
So they like that he surrendered and are happy to see him face justice!!!
Just face it. Unity wants to be an advertisement company. Whoever can't meet income requirements with monetization, is essentially seen as liability, that will just take up precious space in their registry, which will look bad in audit.
Unity making marketing for GODOT
Even if they decide to pull back on this horrible decision, how can one guarantee this won't happen again in a couple of years when you're deep into developing your game? From now on, this is another thing to consider when anyone starts to study or teach about a new engine.
you better switch now, cause it is only a beginning
I believe they didn't get how low the LTV was for most mobile games.
simple term, if you made and released a free demo, the dev has to pay for every install
We should come up with a new name for the engine, because it no longer unites...What about UNO?
the most talk about thing on the game dev
i don't care that they want to have money. They can want to. This solution which u said at the end is okey for me "if it would be for one user". They can get 10% for every sold copy. Which this model no one will be bankrupt. In my interest is that they will revert this and make some solution that have more sense. I have hope too. I said the same "they can't be idiots like this".
One small correction about Unreal: the 1st million is royalty-free, and after that the 5% applies. Not the other way around
Ladies and gentlemen...we got them...Time for Godot has come
I think unitys got to get a new ceo asap
They need far more than that, if another one pops their heads up and the yes men around him just keeps saying the same, there's no solution
@@RazRaptorX The place is thoroughly rotten. All companies which go public eventually end this way - their loyalty is to the shareholders rather than customers and you can't change that back. Imo, it's dead, Jim. Just walk away and don't look back. I know I won't.
If Unity make it $.20 per sale, then I think it's not so bad. They can easily track game downloads through a store analytics too. Anyway, I worked on a game using Unity but I'm thinking switching to UE now.
That would be missing the point though. You know Pokemon Go? That is a unity game that has been installed millions of times on phones, but as a free game with little in ads and limited amount of in-app purchases per active player it ain't profitable for Unity. It ain't alone on that either. Unity is running on so many phones in one way or another, but despite its popularity, often gets little from such games.
And THAT is why Unity came up with this brain dead idea. They see their engine being installed billions of times and believe they are entitled to benefit from their engine's popularity and that mobile developers should start paying more via this stupid decision. Even if the game is completely free, they would still try to demand you to pay "Per installation". Effectively forcing mobile game devs to start monetizing (more) for Unity's benefit if they hope to offset this.
Apparantly when John riciwhatever says people should be monetising games. He wasn't merely giving advice...
My only issue with Godot is its 3D. It has gotten better but its behind compared to Unity and Unreal. 2D solid but I don't make 2D games. I'm glad that they trying to get funding to improve with the engine though.
I think the motivation is trying to force mobile developers to monetize their free games. Games like Niantic's Pokemon Go have a lot of users that are playing completely free without any purchases. So Unity gains pretty much bupkiss despite some of these games being the biggest in the mobile ecosystem, besides those quite a few are using different AD and User Analytics software than Unity's own. So they are also getting stiffed out of juicy valuable user data and ad-revenue...
Naturally they didn't even think for a second how every other platform would be affected. Cause in typical John Ricitwhatever fashion. He is blinded by the big shiny fish and puts all his eggs in that single basket.
I'm thinking about what caused the fees per install mentality in the "unity" head. I believe this is because they wants to integrate / link the cost of the unity updates (so the engine development cost) with game updates (literally installs) The problem with the installs from my point of view as developer and player: I have a lot game ( I mean 200+ games) so I can not keep all of the installs at the same time.. SO I play with a game 1-3 hours and delete it.. after that maybe next month I will download the game again from steam a play a bit.. and it goes on.. And I'm almost sure not I am the only player with this behavior pattern and it will cause a lot fee for the developers. (moreover, what about the demo games?... you understand .. it is anoying if I think for that, I can bankrupt a small studio, because I don't have enough SSD storage space.. )
I can explain the mindset with a single Example.... Pokemon Go.
Pokemon Go is a mobile game made with the Unity engine. It has millions upon millions of installation. However, it has no ads and not that many in-app purchases that are super popular. The game is arguably the most popular unity game to ever existed... and Unity gets peanuts. Which probably pisses off some of the higher ups like John Ricitiwhatever who view this as a disproportionate compared to other platforms that as only premium titles which give a constant share. This is what Unity is after.
With this move. They are trying to squeeze money out of the mobile market at any cost. Even if it forces mobile game devs who see 15-20 cent as a death-knell if their game only gets a few cents worth of ad-revenue before being uninstalled: to engage in more aggresive/predatory monetisation to compensate.
They're either dumb enough to think this was a workable plan or greedy enough to still do this after it all
Does this affect your view on indie devs creating their own custom engine or using a smaller, free and/or open source frameworks like Raylib?
You can build your own engine based on some kind of framework but why would you do that? You will spend an enormous amount of your time competing with way more stable and reliable engines. Just grab one of those (Cocos Creator, Godot, Game Maker, UE5, Defold... whatever) and enjoy actually making your game, not trying to implement some basic engine features.
I agree, if your goal is to publish a game fast, it's best to go with a ready solution.
If you're not aiming to publish as quickly as possible and given that your game is simple enough, creating your own engine gives you complete freedom and control as you are not tied to a restrictive license (which we see here, may completely change over time), API which may get breaking changes and features which may be broken, break or get dropped. And importantly for me, with your own engine you can customize your UX completely yourself as I've found UX to be a dealbreaker on many engines for me.
But indeed, on many of the above points, for example Godot seems at the moment like a good solution, but as we see, things may change for the worse drastically in 5 or 10 years time.
Not to mention, some people might also enjoy creating their engine as much as the game itself :)
Hello Godot
UA-cam and Twitch? What about Kick????? I am happy with this. Fewer idiots get money for dumb shit they make. And better games come out of it. Win win for the consumer.
Why ppl are not making a lawsuit instead just letting it go like that? Spacially when that term "per install" is so vague
Unity CEO was part of EA... Enough said
Unity is basically John McAfee's gf squatting on a hammock and indie devs are John on his back under the hammock sheesh you can fill in the rest
🤣
So true love then, eh?
@@aceofswords1725 da luv
They have backed down a bit. Now you pay once per install ınstead of once per install per month.
Another thing is you must both reach 200k $ last year AND 200k download lifetime. At that point you can buy 2k$ per year license to push the limit further to 1 Million.
I am not defending Unity but I am trying to give some peace of mind to you guys. No need to give up unless you are planning to make a lot
Yeah no worries, I actually think the new wording is not bad for us, as indeed, if we get the $200k rev, I have no issue in getting a pro license, so for me this new version is better already.
They just decided to nuke their credibility which greatly affects them in the long term now, even if they backtrack everything. -M
The title should be "What was Unity cooking?" 💀💀💀
there's no going back to unity, the trust is gone. there's still an open question teams with existing projects should go through the effort of porting to another engine, but going forward anyone who starts a new project using unity is a complete fool.
😱 not only developers, this could impact gamers as well, if games had to pulled down so they no longer can be installed or so, what the hell unity you were my favourite one, guess i'll use unreal now 😅
Not to mention the mobile games market, which relies heavilly on free installation and then slowly gaining revenue from ads and the rare purchase. This move is basically going to force them to monetise more than ever before. Even big names like Niantic would have to offset costs considering Pokemon Go uses Unity and has no ads.
just make unity open soured
"your game must meet both(!) revenue AND (!) install sresholds..." So you don't need to pay till the point while BOTH condition is met. If only the one of them met the critetion, you dont need to pay! - As I understand
And what is stopping them from lowering that threshold? Or from basically saying "gief" whenever their need money because they "leverage" their "models" which tell them how many installs there were? Trust me bro, eh? No, the trust is lost. They have shown their true face and what they're capable of. It is too much risky to invest money and time into Unity, especially for larger projects. According to their new "model" they literally reserve the right to charge you however much they want, and you have no way of checking or disputing the data except their own "compliance team" which is supposed to investigate itself. It is ridiculous. I wouldn't invest in a cup of coffee on these terms, much rather years of my life.
@@aceofswords1725 understood and reasonable. :(
Let's start a movement #uninstallunity
Unity is done
From what I understand about Unity Asset Store, you can buy asset then convert them into godot without legal problem.
IMO, the fall of Unity is a slow process, so it is not so urgent to switch engine, but necessary in the long run
Are you sure? Because there are framework assets, dedicated Unity plugins that are surely non-convertible. I could understand models and meshes, but everything else? I just don't see it.
@@Cabolt44 It depends, Editor Script would be impossible to convert.
Script is convertible with some work (maybe a lot of work), godot has c#, but doesn't have component (so GetComponent need to be replaced), instead, using a node system.
Shader is convertible. Particle system is ok, godot has more particle system features, but VFX graph might be harder to convert.
"What if I just want to make games as a hobby?"
I believe the condition is a AND type. Like you have to be earning enough and getting installed often enough, for them to start screwing you over.
If you just make a free game with no monetization whatsoever. You should be fine.
But as a hobbyist. GODOT is already a better choice honestly. Cause it fills that same niche as Blender. completely free to get started with with no strings attached and good enough to stick with should you ever want to take your hobby further.
I have roughly 9k in assets from the Unity Asset Store, since 2013 when I started using it Unity, and because of this, I am jumping ship!
Even if, or more like when, they realize how horribly they screwed up with this decision, I still won't be coming back to them, because they obviously can't be trusted, and nothing is stopping them from coming up with some other ridiculous greedy plan to do something equally horrible, or even worse, to their customer base!
This incident is going to cost them a fortune, and they are going to be haunted by this decision for many years to comes!
The next thing that happens in Unity news, will be their CEO being kicked to the curb, and then a public apology explaining that that wasn't the direction they wanted to take, and that it was all him and greed, which will be the only thing they will be able to announce, that may convince some people to stick around to see what happens...
So incredibly dumb...
what is unity COOKING ???
I will tell you, add stuff in the future is going to drastically change in the near future. Laws in the USA 🇺🇸 are about to change. Drastically.
I never understood the reason Microsoft didn't buy Unity years ago.
I think it would have been a great move for Game Pass.
You forget Microsoft picks up and drops projects like changing underwear
@@elxero2189 Who doesn't? Remember Flash?
Unity is such a big project i doubt MS would drop it.
This is going to affect indie devs so much. If they get a massive hit, they wont be able to funnel that money into starting a real game dev studio, and instead they'll be forking that cash to Unity😢
That's the idea, bro 😜
No more giving away free copies as a promotion, this costs money.
No more multiple installs on many computers, this costs money.
No more existing games, making a profit, being able to just...do so without worry...they gonna charge every existing game, and try to leech more cash out of any game made in unity.
Doesn't matter if the game is pirated or not.
Doesn't matter if the game is reinstalled, or not.
Doesn't matter if somebody installs 50K times on an emulator just to freaking make you pay cause they hate you, you'll pay.
And worse, Unity isn't telling nobody HOW they are finding all this info on installs....but, just "trust them about it, they'll charge you fairly."
And there is the mobile market that relies on free-installation and then trying to earn revenue via ads.
THOSE are the ones Unity is trying to screw over with this really...
Maybe they got hacked or something? This pricing plan is just nuts. Literally crazy
Well, that was a hell of a hack. They even hacked Unity's CEO to sell his shares before the announcement.
You pay per install only once, not monthly, they do the calculations monthly.
After you published the video there are a lot of updates on the topic from the Unity team, so some info already changed.
They can say whatever they want to calm down the people. What surprises me is that some of those are actually going to believe all that crap. Unity management can change their minds instantly and what would you do?
Risk management, have you ever heard of it? I did and i'm out. There are **** ton of free tools and Unity not even the best, it's Jack-of-all-trades. Master of none.
Not really. Not only enforcement of it would mean tracking user activity in ways illegal in EU and California, it's would also be a system to attack developers by faking installs of their game, and Unity will just destroy them with inflated bill.
Nobody claimed you pay per install monthly. And per install is bad enough, for the reasons he mentioned in this video. Shills are getting dumber
@@StarContract3:12
As an indie developer myself... this whole situation is just ugh. While I know people are like "Oh just go to Godot, or Unreal etc." remember that it's not that easy - especially when you've splurged money (for asset packs which are mostly non-transferable) and used resources (time, energy) on Unity. Switching to Unreal only works for 3D games studios and those focused heavily on PC/Console. Godot is just not feature rich enough yet (could be in 2/3 years if funding is decent for them). We have alternatives like Stride, GDevelop, Playmaker (for rpgs) but they all have issues or just plain lack Unity's features.
Cocos Creator? Game Maker? Defold?