A quick correction: in the video, showed a list of countries and said that countries not in this list are considered emerging markets, however, I mispronounced it and so it’s confusing, so I’m clarifying here.
Do you think you’d be making the switch to a new game engine? Despite the $1Mil threshold for the runtime fee to apply? I don’t think this will effect a large majority of indie devs if I understand correctly.
@@maiteko_prime Nothing this bad. Not to mention Unreal already has insane plugins and they are always growing. And since that is the case, us game developers always have new tools to work with.
@@maiteko_prime The one thing that might stop Epic from doing the same crap is watching how that decision affects Unity. I promise you Epic is paying attention right now and they're drooling at the idea many developers are considering the switch to Unreal. Napoleon once said "Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself."
If they were not getting enough money from ads and the asset store, perhaps the CEO should stop giving himself massive raises, and they should stop spending billions to acquire companies that only drive up their cost. The truth is, Unity as a publicly traded company just wants to keep cranking up the value of the company, they will always spend more than they have to do so, and then react by trying to get more money. The cycle only ends once they decide to cash out and sell the company entirely. Also the revenue share system shouldn't be seen as acceptable either. I can somewhat understand why Unreal would do it, the software is free to use and they put cutting edge software solutions in it. Unity was sold as software as a product originally, they don't need to be more than that.
@@commanderdemonno9819 EA's reputation was a long time in the making, Have you heard of the Clorox Gang? Electronic Arts was originally the company that was intended to be less predatory, more creatively focused. This was the vision of Trip Hawkings, who was with the company until 1991. When he quit to persue other ventures (the 3DO console which was supposed to be very cheap to publish on without censorship and favouritism, and which could be manufactured by any electronics manufacturer), nobody from the company wanted to actually take up the management, so Larry Probst from Clorox was hired, who had some videogame industry experience because he had worked for Activision before. He in turn brought in Riccitiello also from Clorox, and they together kept bringing in dozens of Clorox people, because company grew and needed more management, and hey look nepotism! These people are largely still there. The company culture got gradually poisoned by Clorox management, with the poisonous mindset making its way down into the studios, which is responsible for a lot of decay.
they failed even at 'cranking up the value of the company'. Just look at Unity Software Inc share since going public. From 156 to 33. Losing 4/5th of their value despite 1 Billion revenue....
The CEO of Unity John Riccitiello sold a bunch of shares right before this announcement: “Outlets like Eurogamer have also highlighted the fact that Unity's CEO and other execs mysteriously offloaded a bunch of stock in the past month as if they knew this particular announcement would be incredibly unpopular.” “John Ricciteliello became notorious in the past for saying that developers who don't focus on microtransactions are "fucking idiots," while also saying he'd like to charge Battlefield players to reload their guns.” More suspicious than that, he also never _bought_ shares in his time as CEO.
@@spiffy1209 Don't forget, UA-cam censors comments by just hiding them to anyone else if you use the wrong word. Who knows when "hell" will become one of those, and who wants to keep track?
@@baitposter The shares thing is likely not relevant, it sounds fishy but he's been selling about as much as he legally can since hired. And supposedly there's a long lead time for a CEO to sell stocks in their own company, they have to be pre-approved months before they can be sold. What's more relevant is that he's never *bought* any Unity stock, so he doesn't expect their stock to do well in the long run. Everything else said is absolutely a huge red flag. Unity has been making awful business decisions since he got the job, or since they became a publicly traded company perhaps.
Unity is dead. First they go public, gets CEO from EA, he calls you and me "idiots", then says people should pay $1 for reloading in FPS games and now you should pay $0.20 for each install. Trust is lost no matter how much they backtrack
Reminds me of Alan Joyce from Qantas and tim gurner from his property development And who can forget Elon musk and his Twitter, Space X, Tesla and neuralink shitshow bonanza
This is the equivalent of if Home Depot charged construction companies for everytime someone looked at a house they built, because it happened to be built with tools from Home Depot.
More accurate is if everytime a house is sold they are owed a flat fee from the construction company because materials purchased at Home Depot were used in its construction. On top of that they are acquiring the information on whether or not the house sold by questionable means.
@@Dilligff Not sold, changed owner. Give your house to your only child, well there you go. The construction company now has to pay the tool manufacturer.
Oh shit, the guys who built my house five years ago sent me a letter, saying they're going to charge me $1 every time I open and or close my front door! 😩
Literally "BLACKMAIL" in broad daylight!!!!. Can't anyone take legal action against this??? 0.2$? tomorrow maybe 2$? 10$ 10 000$? Or did we agree to all this shiit when accepting terms and conditions?
Yes it was him, in off the cuff statement on some panel or interview while working for EA, that he believed the console and PC games are severely unermonetised, and that Battlefield should just charge you a dollar for reloading. Because in his mind $1 is such a tiny amount of money, almost unnoticeable, and dying in a game is worse. So this was about a decade ago if not more. But then he doubled down on this exact mindset just a year ago with a statement that the most artistically minded Unity developers are "biggest fucking idiots" (his wording) because they don't start game planning and design from monetisation strategy, they try to make an appealing game and figure out how to make money out of it later. He had to apologise or "apologise" for it. To me this sort of mindset is completely alien, like how. How does one not understand that game developers don't want to worry about going bankrupt BECAUSE their game is too popular, or that players don't want to have to worry about whether they're going to go bankrupt due to normal gameplay actions, or think about money or any real life concerns while playing a videogame at all. And that $1 is actually a fair chunk of money, because how much is your game budget? I don't know i feel a lot of people budget one full price game every 3 months or so, coming out to $20 a month; and my budget for example is even less than that. We're not all EA CEOs for fuck's sake. Bloody Guillemot isn't such an imbecile. Riccitiello is a shitstain that makes you appreciate the rest of shitstains for being not quite as coked out of their mind as him.
@@SianaGearz he doesn't understand because he has a lot of money and thinks everyone has that amount of money. Rich people are genuinely sick in the head (not even in a "they're assholes" way, although that also tracks, they legit have issues)
I've read a post somewhere in reddit by a self-proclaimed unity staff/employee explaining this update, but he/she also mentioned there that they still don't have any concrete idea on how to handle unique installs to deter the install bombing and as well as piracy installs. Also most of the solutions that they mentioned were more of "we'll try if this will work" ideas and not really tested yet.
So they already updated their FAQ to "A: We are not going to charge a fee for reinstalls. The spirit of this program is and has always been to charge for the first install and we have no desire to charge for the same person doing ongoing installs.(Updated, Sep 13)" But I do want to stress that initially, the OFFICIAL information from Unity was : "A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data." - Their system isn't even able to tell which installs are ASSOCIATED WITH A PURCHASE. Them saying they have safe guards anti piracy is pure bullshit
I've worked in tech for decades and it's not the first time I've heard stories like this. Usually it's non-tech business people deciding to do something that simply isn't technically possible and waving it off as "we'll figure it out later". Sometimes it pays off and they do figure out how to do it (at least to some plausible degree) but at the end of the day you can't break fundamental laws of engineering and economics and that's what they're playing with here. In theory, if Unity could accurately track "paid installs" and only charge developers exactly once per sale of their game AND they only introduced this rule for new games I don't think the backlash would've been nearly as severe. If I'm selling my game for $10 and have to pay $0.20 cents for every $10 sale I make, I can chalk it up to cost of doing business. But I think a big part of the backlash against this move is because game developers are engineers and they understand that accurately tracking paid installs is not what's happening here. They intuitively know how difficult it would be to implement such a system. The proposed system just fundamentally doesn't work at it's core regardless of how much Unity would like to believe it can and developers know this.
@@dele1763Not necessarily, it still counts as install, so, if your game go to the goal, then, if 1k people installed from your demo, you are being charged for those demo players on at least your first 1k installs, so on this hypothesis, 200 will be given to Unity just because of Demo players.
@@GabdaRocur I’m trying to understand what you’re saying. Even if you have a 100 million downloads, if you haven’t made any money you won’t be charged. Even when you do cross the $200,000 threshold you will only be charged for the installs that happen after crossing that threshold. And I believe this is per game not per account.
@@GabdaRocur if you are releasing a demo, I assume that is before the game’s release and before any monetization, so you will not be making any money and won’t be charged. When you eventually release the game and cross the threshold limit, you are only charged for the installs that happen after you crossed the threshold.
@@dele1763what they're trying to say is, what if you publish a demo, then after some time release the full game, then it earns 200k dollars and gets 200k downloads, and then suddenly people decide to mass download your demo, which is free? You are probably going to be charged for each download
They have been clearly leaning towards this path for a while unfortunately, its just sad to see them actually decide to go through with it. Hopefully they pull back when they realize a large portion of their customer base will leave.
@@Fa1seP0sitive They'll definitely roll back this change, or at least tone it down by alot. That's not the issue though. It'd be pretty stupid as a customer to keep using a product from such an untrustworthy company when they'll probably try pulling something like this again.
@@st.altair4936 Yeah, I feel like most companies/people that were still deciding between Unity and Unreal their choice is pretty obvious now. This is probably hurting Unity's brand more than they realise.
I think that they need to do this, because they need money and maybe it's the only way. It's their product and they can earn money and do what they want. If you want a free game engine, build one and share it for free with us.
The CEO of unity should be fired from the company and blacklisted from all entertainment industry. He also did insider trading fraud by selling their shares in unity before they did their announcement .
Yep. He must be one arrogant piece of work to think he can do all that with no consequences. He does need to be fired for sure. It was already sus when he was revealed to be former EA. Made worse with all the stories surrounding him.
It's not insider trading because he constantly sells his shares. The guy has a habit of failing upwards so he doesn't like getting too invested in the companies he runs.
As much as I hate the guy, what he did doesn't actually look like insider trading. He pretty regularly sells of stock because he regularly receives stock in the company as part of his compensation package. And nearly as can be told, the sales are vetted months in advance. In fact, most CEOs do this, since your investment portfolio should not be overly tied to the company that also pays you your salary. You also have to consider insider trading on something he controls, like this policy, by tanking the stock price, doesn't actually make sense. There's no actual way to make money their, just defray a loss he could have avoided by just . . . not doing a thing. Insider trading usually occurs where a thing is 'bad' and the executives have no control over it. For instance, if a drug company's tests revealing that their drug doesn't work. Selling off stocks with that privileged information is inside trading.
I really don't get how anyone could think a "per install" fee would work. Installations don't track with revenue, so beyond everything else it's a capricious system that could backfire on developers in any number of ways. The revenue sharing of the Unreal Engine makes a lot more sense as it directly couples what a studio brings in with the money going to the engine the studio is using. As a hobbyist with no intention of trying to make anything for the market, this doesn't affect me. But in terms of how it affects indie studios (one thing that attracted me to learn Unity in the first place), I couldn't think of a more boneheaded move. I get they have to double down for a bit, because corporate direction and all that, but if they don't eventually reverse this and the right heads don't roll, how could they possibly think they have a product Devs will want to work on going forward? They've just indicated how willing they are to throw Devs under the bus. That's a lot of brand trust they've burned and it'll take a lot to repair that trust. It's not like they are the only game in town... Epic Games must be loving this!
That is because you are thinking in terms of fair and honest practices instead of thinking like a parasite who only cares about maximizing your own profit with no care about how it may harm anyone else.
Unreal has already tweeted a learn program just 12 hrs ago which is basically a way of trolling unity and telling game devs that they are open to have them work on their engine.
They overreached by far with 20c. 1 million installs and you owe unity 200k? That's a fucking house or four years of a job (ignoring taxes). Even at 2c, 20k is pushing it. Who the hell greenlit these numbers.
This is really devastating for the developers that have been using Unity for years and have invested a lot of money and trust into the company. And the fact that older games are getting affected by this is just unacceptable.
This will desvatate people who bought and played games from devs who use unity. What if they just erase their unity game from the online stores, i bought it i should be able to play it but the devs get punished for me downloading and playing their game This is horrible
"I doubt this is Unity's intention." Unity's CEO is the former EA CEO who wanted to charge players every time they reloaded a gun in Battlefield after crossing a certain time investment so as to prey upon the player's desire to not have wasted that time. This is definitely Unity's intention.
nah blame ea, if we time travel to make ea non existant, that greedy ceo (prob) not be a ceo at all (i think) [this is my opinion tbh, dont attack me.]
When I started learning unity, it used to have one of the best community and the unity tech dev used to listen to the us and rectify things asap. But now with this stunt I guess most of the developers has lost their faith in the company and worst affected people are the people who gave their so much of free asset and knowledge to make this community more welcoming. Pricing might not affect an individual personally but it's had done a lot damage to developers of unity community.
Crap, now I have to figure out how to code not allowing my game to be installed more than ex amount of times and reupload it each time it meets this threshold. And have it monitor its own code so that it deletes it's self if pirated.
Good thing I stuck with free/open source engines ♥Wishing all the luck to unity game devs out there and even tho we use different engines, we're all fighting the same fight! I hope you find a good alternative for your games ^^
3:43 installs before monitization was added still count towards your total installs, you just don't have to start paying until you make over a certain amount of money and a certain amount of installs. If this policy were in place when Crab Game came out, Dani would have had to start paying as soon as he made $200k because his game already had well over 200k installs.
They possibly changed this in the interim, anyway this is no longer true. Only new installs since jan1 2024 count. They also walked back on a number of other implementation details. They said first WebGL deployments would count the same, then said they won't count. They also said Game Pass and other giveaway installs and demos would count, then walked back and these as well as sales for charity no longer count. They also said reinstalls count but now they no longer count. But you have multiple PCs or PCs experience fingerprint configuration changes, those probably still count. There's a whole lot of "trust us bro" left in there from "we have anti fraud measures, we think they work because we use them for ads" to "well if we were to bankrupt a customer, how about we just unbankrupt them individually?" Which, that latter thing is a mafia protection racket tactic. They're really hanging onto this bad idea and trying to make it work, even though they were told by numerous employees that this is a terrible approach. They fired off the change without further warning to employees, where it seemed like they'd work out the issues or reconsider before they go ahead and never did. Thus resignation letters are now starting to pile up.
Bro, Unity Technologies is a stock-exchange listed entity headed by a guy who used to work for EA... in case nobody has figured it out yet, AAA publishers have just realised they can no longer pump out s**t and print money - the threat of the indie dev is real, and instead of bringing creativity and competitive advantage back to their products, they're behaving like true CEOs and increasing the barriers to deal with the threat of new entrants.
There's no way they can make devs pay retroactively. Those devs accepted a TOS. That TOS can't be changed without agreement from both sides, and unless the devs are still updating the game to newer versions of the engine, there's no need to accept a new TOS. If they try, this sounds like a class action potential
Feel like their plan was likely to have smaller developers to push more monetization into their games to safeguard themselves from these additional fees, which seems pretty tone death because many likely support many smaller indie games exactly because they often don't have the scummy business and monetization schemes that the big AAA tiles often have now a days, plus are some the few places where games still have creativity, ingenuity and the love to make something that isn't just a generic cash cow type gaming.
It is additionally tone deaf - because let's assume that you DO add monetization into your game that does end up covering the exorbitant Unity tax they added... Give me one reason why you wouldn't port your game to another engine and keep that money for yourself? You paying Unity per install doesn't come with any benefits, it doesn't enhance the experience you or your players have - it just makes Unity the worst platform to have your game on
The only thing this policy is meant to do, is to force developers to insert more predetory monetizations into their games, be it microtransactions or ads everywhere. This lines up with the views of the CEO who called people who do not monetize their games "F****** idiots" and has belittled players for disliking microtransactions. If they would have upped the subscription prices, or, added new tiers, nobody would have complained. Additionally, the change for the software to have to have some online connection and not being to opt out at all from audience usage tracking are huge red flags
I think something more reasonable would have been accepted - Personal Edition just has a Revenue share (2-5%) after 200K - Pro Edition has no revenue share at their current price or -Pro has a cheaper license fee and a Revenue share model (smaller and tiered compared to Personal)
I think they realize that most new game developers are usually going to pick Unity because of the sheer number of tutorials for it. They think they have everybody locked in so they don't worry too much about people getting angry.
wtf are you talking about? Piracy has ALWAYS been stealing as you are obtaining the game through illegitimate means. IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CRIME. Not going to question the morality of it as everyone has their reasons to do it, but let's not pretend it's somehow legal to pirate a game and just not that has changed with Unity, because that is a delusional and idiotic statement.
@@DarkOmegaMK2 It was, is, and for the most part should be illegal; but to say that it's stealing is industry propaganda, because it's not. By the act of piracy you're not (generally) depriving the rightful owner of the product or anything tangible, you're abusing intellectual property. If you steal a car, someone doesn't have a car any longer. That's the difference. If it is the money you wouldn't have spent anyway on a pirated product, then it can be considered a victimless crime. Furthermore it's not necessarily a crime, it's usually a tort, jurisdictions differ. Where you owe the entity whose product you pirate a compensation + damages but you shouldn't be under a risk of criminal prosecution. From my political opinion, making it a criminal act is completely unjustified, it should be a tort. Government prosecutors and police shouldn't be hunting down software pirates.
@@SianaGearz Well you can argue the developer was losing out because you are clearly wanting to play the game so if you hadn't pirated it they would have received money for your purchase.
What's especially suspicious is, apparently, Unity has a GIT repo with its license agreements across various versions. The entire repo had been quietly removed and re-created with terms removed from existing license agreements. The terms basically forbade Unity from changing the revenue agreement for those versions of the Unity runtime.
This has been a genuinely devastating development. While not professionally, I've been using Unity for 10+ years gradually teaching myself with the goal of either eventually making my own complete game, or joining a studio. And suddenly all of that time feels wasted. Thankfully there's a lot I can carry over to other engines but it doesn't change the fact my entire repertoire of knowledge is tainted by this decision. Both routes I've been striving towards just got pushed so much further back than they already were. Hell, I'm in the middle of a portfolio piece that'll carry significantly less weight simply because of it being in Unity, along with the rest of my portfolio. Just so fucking frustrated right now lol
10 years is a lot of shit. I'm think in starting now with game development and I'm glad to hear that unity is no longer trustful so I don't waste time with this shit. I hope you do well lil niga Do you plan to switch over to Unreal or Godot ?
1. Retroactive TOS Changes: If you've created a game using Unity before they updated their Terms of Service (TOS), Unity typically cannot apply the new TOS to charge you retrospectively. This principle is often upheld in court, as users have successfully challenged retroactive TOS changes in the past. 2. TOS Agreements and User Rights: When you register for an online service, you are usually required to agree to the company's Terms and Conditions or TOS by checking a box and creating an account. However, your rights become a significant concern when you're already a user, and the company decides to modify its TOS. 3. Modifying TOS with User Agreement: Companies can indeed modify their TOS, but they generally cannot do so without obtaining the agreement of their existing users. The reason for this is that a website's TOS is, in essence, a contract between the business and its users. For a contract to be legally binding, it must fulfill several critical criteria: a. Offer and Acceptance: One party (the company) must make an offer, and the other party (the user) must accept it. In the context of online services, the act of creating an account or continuing to use the service after being notified of the changes can represent acceptance. b. Meeting of the Minds: Both parties must understand that they are entering into a legally binding agreement. This means that users should be adequately informed about any TOS changes and their implications. c. Consideration: Each party must agree to provide something of value in exchange for the benefits of the contract. In the case of TOS agreements, the consideration might be the use of the service in exchange for complying with the terms. 4. Legal Protections for Consumers: Federal and state laws are in place to protect consumers from a wide range of deceptive, fraudulent, or unfair business practices. These laws often provide a safety net, ensuring that companies cannot unilaterally change their terms to the detriment of their users. If a TOS change is found to be unconscionable, overly one-sided, or materially harmful to users, it may not hold up in court. In summary, TOS agreements are legally binding contracts, and while companies can update them, they usually need the agreement of their users. Legal protections are in place to prevent unfair practices, ensuring that users are not unjustly harmed by TOS changes. However, the specifics of how these principles are applied can vary by jurisdiction and individual cases. It's essential for users and businesses to be aware of their rights and responsibilities in these matters.
From what i'm familiar with in Germany they are required to give you an extraordinary cancellation right if you don't agree with the updated contract. This right exists even if not explicitly stated. Many countries will also take issue with "jurisdiction location for this contract is California". But this leads to another issue, it's still racket because then you potentially lose distribution rights on the runtime and need to unpublish your game/product. There is applied law that deems any ToS terms invalid if they're grossly unjust or obscene, as in reaching far outside industry practices. But what the outcome of a legal confrontation may be is anyone's guess, after all a fixed per copy royalty based contract on middleware isn't actually that uncommon per se.
The biggest issue is that the trust has been completely destroyed. Even if they roll this back 100%, no one is going to trust they won't pull this sort of shit or similar scummy tactics in the future. Maybe tossing the CEO to the curb might help but even then there were SO MANY PEOPLE between the greedy CEO (assuming the decision came from that high up, which is a pretty safe bet to make considering his reputation), and the person that wrote the blog post and none of them stood up to the management and said no? That means that everyone in that pipeline are essentially just yes men more interested in keeping their jobs over doing what's right for the project. I dabble with both unity and unreal here and there, not enough to make proper games but just to have a fun play around and if I ever decide to start a larger project, it's not even worth considering Unity for it any more.
Freemium developres will go to Godot - and when they do, they'll also start to abandon services like Unity Ads. I'm not sure I've seen a company shoot themselves in the foot so bad for ages.
There is a bigger problem there and is your actual players. Why would I agree to have personal information like IPs and MAC addresses sent to an API to collect data so they can charge you? Because there is no other way for them to know that a game has been installed or that installed is unique. I wouldn't buy a Unity game after the 1st of January, because thats now close to spyware. Most likely it will be illegal and if your game does not meet GDPR regulations in EU, it would not be sold there. Those are quite bigger issues than fees themselves.
I'd jump ship, the people profiting from this will be the stake holders, not even the people actually developing Unity. Board members can't imagine, not making more money.
Every time a company makes a vague statement, I just think back on a paraphrase of a quote from the Transformers comic. "Here's an idea, let's all play the _Making Sense Game_ . When Person A asks a question, Person B has to give an answer that requires no further elaboration. If I have to speculate as to what you mean, or _infer_ things, or go away and do some research - Then you _lose_ ."
This is so disappointing, I've been using Unity for over 6 years so leaving it is kind of sad, but I think it's for the best. I've been trying Godot and I was surprised how easy it was to pick up, so I will probably be moving to that long term.
he's either already cashing out (which he and most of the top executives did the week before the announcement), or he's planning to buy out the company to gain 100% control and take it private once he's destroyed the share price (that way no one can make him apologize for calling unity devs stupid for not cramming their games full of enough micro transactions that even current EA and most Gatchas think it's way too much. (Keeping in mind, EA gave him the boot for insisting that FPS players should be charged 1 dollar per reload in shooters).
I look for "upcoming UE5 games" on UA-cam daily. I have never once looked for "upcoming unity games" so for someone like me, I'm happy that now my upcoming UE5 games are going to have so many more games in them.
The outrage is part of unity's marketing tactic; they want to anticompeitively, retroactively and in contract breach, as part of insider trading, force MOST profitaable unity game devs to switch to "levelplay" to get the 20 cents install fees weaved. No class action (even one that would return all install fees) would recover you from the damage of having to use levelplay instead of applovng resulting in a monopoly forever.
According to recent articles Unity is changing their policy in reaction to the backlash they received. Hopefully they will remove prices for new users completely.
"we have fraud detection" has such trust me bro energy, and a new "machine" is easily achieved if you just change your mac adress or just use virtual machines and to detect this would be a pretty shady privacy infringement. But it makes sense that an EX EA CEO would a scummy bastard.
It seems unity wanna change their reputation of being the 'engine for shit games' and cut out all the less corporatized devs while forgetting how many devs from the bigger companies probably started out of these smaller projects. Just baffling strategy ignoring long term potential that makes me wonder if the ceo want to milk the company for quick profit and sell it off cause they gave up competing with unreal and their funding.
my understanding is that he and most of the execs have already been dumping their stock leading up to this announcement. i.e. he's either getting out or preparing to buy out and take the company private for pennies so he can do whatever he wants without a board.
Rovio proudly announced that as of April '22, Angry Birds crossed 5Billion+ downloads. Since the game is made with Unity. I wonder what are they gonna do.... 🤒
So if I have bought a bunch of games and they were made with unity, what happens to them if the devs decide to erase their game, can I prevent those steam games from ever updating and charging the devs
When you put Deltarune in the video, you made my heart stop and made me think that, that was also going to be affected but it's actually being made with Gamemaker 2. But this also affects Hollow Knight Silksong and alot of other games I was excited for.
Unity said the fee takes account of ANY GAME using unity even the opd games that aint supported anymore still have this fee put to it. Its all about installing the data and breaking the privacy of users. They literally have a FAQ that says this in lawyer terms. Well they have a lawsuit coming cuz the EULA that Unity edited makes no sense and some of it i heard was illegal.
Just another sign of late-stage capitalism. We are slowly learning that the workers, and not out-of-touch CEOs, are the only ones who can make business decisions that prioritize the consumers and not the bottom line.
I am still puzzled why they landed on the outrageous 20c and not start with a modest 2c (still expensive)? Lets say 1,000,000 "installs" arbitrarily claimed as such. The difference between "owing" 200k and 20k is a good lawyer. Your money is better spent on a lawyer. So much for paying 250 dollars per seat every month or whatever the deal was before. They reached too damn far with direct numbers. Percentages are safer and scales better.
Companies really need to do a company-wide sanity check on decisions. Add a monetary reward for any argument against it. Then you don't get things like Disney's anniversary hats that looks like.... something that can be perceived as problematic, or even finding loopholes.
EA did that and kicked the guy at the top out after suggesting that FPS players should be charged a dollar every time a gun is reloaded. He's now the CEO pushing this after saying indie devs were stupid for not packing their games full of predatory micro-transactions, which this change is apparently a tool of forcing them to do. As that's the only logical outcome of the way this is setup as a opposed to a cut of purchases. Since you essentially need to make a game predatory enough to ensure that someone has to pay to even load the game or re-install it. And it's also your fault you'll need to pay for if you didn't cram it full of DRM to prevent pirated installations and make the user experience absolutely intolerable.
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!
As long as governments let infrastructure be owned privately or by investors this shit is going to happen over and over again. The enshittification is real.
A big problem is devs can't just make their game all free to play once they pass the 2 thresholds, once you pass it thats it, you will pay no matter what you do. And all of this sounds like there is one guy in his office wrote the article and is now answering to people on twitter without any legal recommendations from lawyers and such.
becoming free won't help, since the devs still get charged for those (Or pirated games, since according to unity's Q&A it's the dev's fault for not cramming enough DRM to make illegal installation impossible or putting enough mandatory macro transactions to provide post-sell income per user). Literally the only way to stop it is to erase your game from the internet and ask existing users to not re-install the unity version until it's switched to a new engine (and then they'll probably have to eat a loss sending owners of the unity version a copy of the new engine version in order to maintain community good will and cover their bases).
10:00 Is this true? I live in a place with virtually no phone reception, and not everyone even has the internet! I recently went 9 months using the town library to do my research. This would mean I simply wont be able to work at all! Ill have a quick dig myself, but can anyone clarify?
Imagine a containerized program that is set up to configure a VM, install a game with Unity runtime while connected to the network (triggering the install count), and then kill the VM multiple times until an arbitrary count of installs has been reached. This system will probably be exploited into dirt day 1.
These are the corporate decisions that break consumer trust. Same thing with adobe subscription plans, Microsoft Word payment plans, Videogaming Passes.
For commercial games, I don't see the problem in theory, but I have to admit, that their pricing strategy doesn't make much sense. Indie game developers, that have low pricing must pay a lot and the big studios that can charge more, pay less per installation. It should be a percentage of price (5%) up to a maximum like 1$ for a 20$ game and only if the game sells over 1000 units, because administration cost would be too high (imagine accounting managers that have to run after people that sold 10 units..).
Have they explained why it is that every time a unity game is downloaded this program is downloaded? If i already have a unity game on my PC i already have the runtime editior so why is it that im downloading it again when i downlosd a new game? Why isnt it checking to confirm i already have it and then omitting that from the download?
being a unity dev i just cant trust this companies if there willing to make changes that retroactively change how games are billed. furthermore if you want to get a job at studios or pitch a game your out of luck with unity as no sane investor will be willing to give 20c usd per install.
Corrections: "Only installs after the marketplace was added will count" Incorrect, all installs add to the "lifetime installs" of that game. If you had at least the limit downloads, then add a marketplace and the game makes the limit amount of money then all downloads from that month forwards will cost you 20 cents. Which, in that case where something like 98% of the downloads won't use the marketplace amounts to about 10 dollar fee per paying customer, on average. "You get a discount on high volume of install rates per month, but it drops if you get fewer" Incorrect, it's lifetime installs. So on the pro plan you pay 15k for the first bracket, then 30k for the second, 15k for the third, then .02 per following install. Technically, if taken at face value, that *should* mean that someone adding in-game purchases after their 10 millionth install only pays .02 for every install, but you can bet that they alter that to only count for installs over *both* thresholds. Either way, you won't lose the discount for having periods of lower install volume.
I think such a charging model would actively disencourage freemium games. But at the same time would hurt their ad service since freemium games are the games that abuse ads the most. Maybe it could promote a healthier gaming ecosystem but doing it like this would harm existing developers that especially rely on the freemium model.
Charging creators for how many times players use their games is so pants-on-the-head stupid it's almost hard to believe someone would punish creativity in that way.
A team of 75 pro developers couldn't even finish a game demo. Versions always buggy and broken, bad CEOs. I like unity but switching to unreal was the best thing I ever done. What took me weeks in unity took me a day in unreal. Sure unity is better for 2d but I'm so glad I switched. Unreal is amazing. Things just work. Not constantly fighting the engine.
This is the usual step by successful companies. I mean look at: Sony -> PlayStation Microsoft - Office to Office 365 Adobe Licenses - Adobe CC EA Games with The big name games every 2 years they release a new game more expensive than the previous one. Also, Adobe CC increased prices so much, that people are going to Da vinci Resolve. I think we see a pattern here.
I just realized that Unity is forcing vendors who create non-game apps for clients who make $1million a year in revenue (the clients, not the vendors!) to use their $5,000/year Industry license. I'm doing minor freelance on the side to pay some extra bills here and there, and now I can't use Unity for that, because I'd have to do twice as much work just to cover the cost of the license.
Just think how many assets people bought from unity that may now be wasted cash and they're starting over w/ another engine in the negative. (Including myself if they don't reverse this)
Bro, there is no revenue share option that will be cheaper than the Runtime fee... for indie games selling at a $10 price point the fees are a literal percentage point. While freemium games make up a huge portion of that market, which is great to point out, the games MOST affected by this change are low preforming freemium titles--those devs already have issues with revenue and literally any change to any pricing would exacerbate those problems. Only being able to generate a few cents per user, on average, is not great, and if their margins are that tight then maybe switching services--like moving over to godot--would have huge benefits. But like, are those the people we gotta defend? Devs who make under preforming, often spammy, mobile games using Unity? Idk... If your game is making close to a million dollars a year WHY would you stay on personal plan and not just upgrade to the Industry plan? And if your legacy game is suddenly getting a bunch of downloads it still has to make more than million dollars in the last twelve months before it triggers any requirements--again if you're making more than $200K a year with your game WHY are you not on the Industry plan?? Meaning your old game can comfortably be making your team $900,000 a year and you never pay this runtime fee. And selling a million copies is no easy feat. A $5 Unity game would have earned its devs $5 million in revenue BEFORE hitting a runtime fee requirement. If the game went on to sell another million copies in the following year, making another $5 million dollars, they would be paying an extra $10K a month in Runtime fees that they are now eligible for. Oh no, a team that grossed $10 million dollars wound up paying Unity $120K... thieves! I get that the sudden changes is shitty, and their lack of communication--the entire roll out of this thing--has been terrible, but literally only super successful projects are going to be impacted by this. Mobile games have options, like you mention in the video they can partner with Unity to avoid the fees, but also lets be serious--the average mobile user generates $60-90 dollars (that's how much whales over spend in comparison to free users) over the lifetime of a game. Unity would see $0.125 of that revenue. The games that this fee really hurts are not doing great in the mobile market, earning $1 or less on average per user, it could mean that they should be building their tight margin works in open source engines like Godot. I just don't see this as anything other than huge games trying to whip up support by suggesting that Unity is not only "out" for them but also you and I'm like... c'moooooonnnnn.
I'm with you. I am a 2 year Unity user, and I hate this. I don't want to switch engines because Unity has brought me from block coding to 3D game development and C#. But this? This might honestly push me over the edge.
A quick correction: in the video, showed a list of countries and said that countries not in this list are considered emerging markets, however, I mispronounced it and so it’s confusing, so I’m clarifying here.
Do you think you’d be making the switch to a new game engine? Despite the $1Mil threshold for the runtime fee to apply? I don’t think this will effect a large majority of indie devs if I understand correctly.
Probably not, I’ll see how this develops
#unitygate
ya that be crazy
Speedrunners playing this game with the new .20 install
Every speed runner will be playing the older vers to play the game
if the game dont work or load, redownload over and over
Unity is the best marketing team for godot
YES
And unreal
@@Just1Dev Nah. At the core of it, there is nothing to stop Epic from doing the same crap, and they've done similar things in the past.
@@maiteko_prime Nothing this bad. Not to mention Unreal already has insane plugins and they are always growing. And since that is the case, us game developers always have new tools to work with.
@@maiteko_prime The one thing that might stop Epic from doing the same crap is watching how that decision affects Unity.
I promise you Epic is paying attention right now and they're drooling at the idea many developers are considering the switch to Unreal.
Napoleon once said "Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself."
If they were not getting enough money from ads and the asset store, perhaps the CEO should stop giving himself massive raises, and they should stop spending billions to acquire companies that only drive up their cost. The truth is, Unity as a publicly traded company just wants to keep cranking up the value of the company, they will always spend more than they have to do so, and then react by trying to get more money. The cycle only ends once they decide to cash out and sell the company entirely.
Also the revenue share system shouldn't be seen as acceptable either. I can somewhat understand why Unreal would do it, the software is free to use and they put cutting edge software solutions in it. Unity was sold as software as a product originally, they don't need to be more than that.
The CEO also sold a ton of his shares before this decision got public. He doesn't care, he just wants to shovel money and quit.
so you know the guy who gave EA it's reputation it has now?
he's running the company
that should explain why unity's acting so scummy now
@@commanderdemonno9819 EA's reputation was a long time in the making, Have you heard of the Clorox Gang?
Electronic Arts was originally the company that was intended to be less predatory, more creatively focused. This was the vision of Trip Hawkings, who was with the company until 1991.
When he quit to persue other ventures (the 3DO console which was supposed to be very cheap to publish on without censorship and favouritism, and which could be manufactured by any electronics manufacturer), nobody from the company wanted to actually take up the management, so Larry Probst from Clorox was hired, who had some videogame industry experience because he had worked for Activision before. He in turn brought in Riccitiello also from Clorox, and they together kept bringing in dozens of Clorox people, because company grew and needed more management, and hey look nepotism! These people are largely still there.
The company culture got gradually poisoned by Clorox management, with the poisonous mindset making its way down into the studios, which is responsible for a lot of decay.
they failed even at 'cranking up the value of the company'. Just look at Unity Software Inc share since going public. From 156 to 33. Losing 4/5th of their value despite 1 Billion revenue....
@@commanderdemonno9819why did they make him the CEO AGAIN?
Unity's self-destruction is bizarre until one learns they hired EA's most infamous CEO's.
Greed is one h*ll of a drug.
its ok you can say hell, we are big boys
The CEO of Unity John Riccitiello sold a bunch of shares right before this announcement: “Outlets like Eurogamer have also highlighted the fact that Unity's CEO and other execs mysteriously offloaded a bunch of stock in the past month as if they knew this particular announcement would be incredibly unpopular.”
“John Ricciteliello became notorious in the past for saying that developers who don't focus on microtransactions are "fucking idiots," while also saying he'd like to charge Battlefield players to reload their guns.”
More suspicious than that, he also never _bought_ shares in his time as CEO.
@@spiffy1209 Don't forget, UA-cam censors comments by just hiding them to anyone else if you use the wrong word. Who knows when "hell" will become one of those, and who wants to keep track?
@@baitposter The shares thing is likely not relevant, it sounds fishy but he's been selling about as much as he legally can since hired. And supposedly there's a long lead time for a CEO to sell stocks in their own company, they have to be pre-approved months before they can be sold.
What's more relevant is that he's never *bought* any Unity stock, so he doesn't expect their stock to do well in the long run.
Everything else said is absolutely a huge red flag. Unity has been making awful business decisions since he got the job, or since they became a publicly traded company perhaps.
IRS will be coming after them@@baitposter
Unity is dead. First they go public, gets CEO from EA, he calls you and me "idiots", then says people should pay $1 for reloading in FPS games and now you should pay $0.20 for each install. Trust is lost no matter how much they backtrack
He said the 1$ to reload a gun when at EA. That is one of the reasons he got the boot.
@@GegoXarenThen he's getting the boot here, and possible jail time due to insider trading.
mf needs to be stopped
Reminds me of Alan Joyce from Qantas and tim gurner from his property development
And who can forget Elon musk and his Twitter, Space X, Tesla and neuralink shitshow bonanza
@@haruhisuzumiya6650 That was a whole mess for Aussie wasn't it. And yes, Musk is just a mess.
This is the equivalent of if Home Depot charged construction companies for everytime someone looked at a house they built, because it happened to be built with tools from Home Depot.
Yeah its such a stupid monetization model
More accurate is if everytime a house is sold they are owed a flat fee from the construction company because materials purchased at Home Depot were used in its construction. On top of that they are acquiring the information on whether or not the house sold by questionable means.
@@Dilligff Not sold, changed owner. Give your house to your only child, well there you go. The construction company now has to pay the tool manufacturer.
More like every time someone moves in. Spouse moves in, pay again. Had a baby, pay again. Kid back from college, pay again.
@@JamieElli And in my honest opinion it is none of their damn business!
Oh shit, the guys who built my house five years ago sent me a letter, saying they're going to charge me $1 every time I open and or close my front door! 😩
Guess its time to invest in a "Open" door policy.
Nah you just rented the tools to build your own house and now they are charging you $1 everytime you open your door
What if I also open and close ur door?
guess im using the windows from now on
Literally "BLACKMAIL" in broad daylight!!!!. Can't anyone take legal action against this??? 0.2$? tomorrow maybe 2$? 10$ 10 000$? Or did we agree to all this shiit when accepting terms and conditions?
Unity's change was so powerful, it did necromancy and revived Dani's twitter account.
Didn't the CEO literally say before that he wanted to monetize gun reloads in shooter games?
Yes it was him, in off the cuff statement on some panel or interview while working for EA, that he believed the console and PC games are severely unermonetised, and that Battlefield should just charge you a dollar for reloading. Because in his mind $1 is such a tiny amount of money, almost unnoticeable, and dying in a game is worse. So this was about a decade ago if not more.
But then he doubled down on this exact mindset just a year ago with a statement that the most artistically minded Unity developers are "biggest fucking idiots" (his wording) because they don't start game planning and design from monetisation strategy, they try to make an appealing game and figure out how to make money out of it later. He had to apologise or "apologise" for it.
To me this sort of mindset is completely alien, like how. How does one not understand that game developers don't want to worry about going bankrupt BECAUSE their game is too popular, or that players don't want to have to worry about whether they're going to go bankrupt due to normal gameplay actions, or think about money or any real life concerns while playing a videogame at all. And that $1 is actually a fair chunk of money, because how much is your game budget? I don't know i feel a lot of people budget one full price game every 3 months or so, coming out to $20 a month; and my budget for example is even less than that. We're not all EA CEOs for fuck's sake. Bloody Guillemot isn't such an imbecile. Riccitiello is a shitstain that makes you appreciate the rest of shitstains for being not quite as coked out of their mind as him.
@@SianaGearz he doesn't understand because he has a lot of money and thinks everyone has that amount of money. Rich people are genuinely sick in the head (not even in a "they're assholes" way, although that also tracks, they legit have issues)
He was EA's CEO and he wanted to charge 0.99$ to reload in battlefield.
@@evilsquirrell995 1$ reload is close to what it cost to shoot a real gun... That is just insanely crazy idiocrasy utter moronic GREED !!!
I've read a post somewhere in reddit by a self-proclaimed unity staff/employee explaining this update, but he/she also mentioned there that they still don't have any concrete idea on how to handle unique installs to deter the install bombing and as well as piracy installs. Also most of the solutions that they mentioned were more of "we'll try if this will work" ideas and not really tested yet.
So they already updated their FAQ to
"A: We are not going to charge a fee for reinstalls. The spirit of this program is and has always been to charge for the first install and we have no desire to charge for the same person doing ongoing installs.(Updated, Sep 13)"
But I do want to stress that initially, the OFFICIAL information from Unity was :
"A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data." - Their system isn't even able to tell which installs are ASSOCIATED WITH A PURCHASE. Them saying they have safe guards anti piracy is pure bullshit
Wouldn't tracking this require invasive spyware and DRM? And if your customer is underage, that opens a whole can of worms legally.
@@RancorSnp Which is just a fancy way of saying "just trust me, bro". Awesome! Why aren´t all business contracts like that?
I've worked in tech for decades and it's not the first time I've heard stories like this. Usually it's non-tech business people deciding to do something that simply isn't technically possible and waving it off as "we'll figure it out later". Sometimes it pays off and they do figure out how to do it (at least to some plausible degree) but at the end of the day you can't break fundamental laws of engineering and economics and that's what they're playing with here.
In theory, if Unity could accurately track "paid installs" and only charge developers exactly once per sale of their game AND they only introduced this rule for new games I don't think the backlash would've been nearly as severe. If I'm selling my game for $10 and have to pay $0.20 cents for every $10 sale I make, I can chalk it up to cost of doing business.
But I think a big part of the backlash against this move is because game developers are engineers and they understand that accurately tracking paid installs is not what's happening here. They intuitively know how difficult it would be to implement such a system. The proposed system just fundamentally doesn't work at it's core regardless of how much Unity would like to believe it can and developers know this.
"we'll try if this will work"
Basically how they've implemented all features since John took over :P
One problem there. They are being charged for free games. You can't even make an early access or demo without being charged as a different project.
But the thing is you must have made at least $200k before they charge you anything. So a free demo, that makes no money, will not be charged.
@@dele1763Not necessarily, it still counts as install, so, if your game go to the goal, then, if 1k people installed from your demo, you are being charged for those demo players on at least your first 1k installs, so on this hypothesis, 200 will be given to Unity just because of Demo players.
@@GabdaRocur I’m trying to understand what you’re saying. Even if you have a 100 million downloads, if you haven’t made any money you won’t be charged. Even when you do cross the $200,000 threshold you will only be charged for the installs that happen after crossing that threshold. And I believe this is per game not per account.
@@GabdaRocur if you are releasing a demo, I assume that is before the game’s release and before any monetization, so you will not be making any money and won’t be charged. When you eventually release the game and cross the threshold limit, you are only charged for the installs that happen after you crossed the threshold.
@@dele1763what they're trying to say is, what if you publish a demo, then after some time release the full game, then it earns 200k dollars and gets 200k downloads, and then suddenly people decide to mass download your demo, which is free? You are probably going to be charged for each download
Unity Devs announcement to gamers :
please just buy my game and dont install it.
Yet another platform destroyed by stupid business decisions and corporate greed... 😕
They have been clearly leaning towards this path for a while unfortunately, its just sad to see them actually decide to go through with it. Hopefully they pull back when they realize a large portion of their customer base will leave.
Once someone betrays your trust you don't come back. @@Fa1seP0sitive
@@Fa1seP0sitive They'll definitely roll back this change, or at least tone it down by alot.
That's not the issue though. It'd be pretty stupid as a customer to keep using a product from such an untrustworthy company when they'll probably try pulling something like this again.
@@st.altair4936 Yeah, I feel like most companies/people that were still deciding between Unity and Unreal their choice is pretty obvious now. This is probably hurting Unity's brand more than they realise.
I think that they need to do this, because they need money and maybe it's the only way. It's their product and they can earn money and do what they want. If you want a free game engine, build one and share it for free with us.
The CEO of unity should be fired from the company and blacklisted from all entertainment industry. He also did insider trading fraud by selling their shares in unity before they did their announcement .
Yep. He must be one arrogant piece of work to think he can do all that with no consequences. He does need to be fired for sure. It was already sus when he was revealed to be former EA. Made worse with all the stories surrounding him.
Unity got what they deserved, entrust in a shady dude to be their CEO
It's not insider trading because he constantly sells his shares. The guy has a habit of failing upwards so he doesn't like getting too invested in the companies he runs.
As much as I hate the guy, what he did doesn't actually look like insider trading. He pretty regularly sells of stock because he regularly receives stock in the company as part of his compensation package. And nearly as can be told, the sales are vetted months in advance. In fact, most CEOs do this, since your investment portfolio should not be overly tied to the company that also pays you your salary.
You also have to consider insider trading on something he controls, like this policy, by tanking the stock price, doesn't actually make sense. There's no actual way to make money their, just defray a loss he could have avoided by just . . . not doing a thing.
Insider trading usually occurs where a thing is 'bad' and the executives have no control over it. For instance, if a drug company's tests revealing that their drug doesn't work. Selling off stocks with that privileged information is inside trading.
I'm betting an golden parachute for the CEO sigh
I really don't get how anyone could think a "per install" fee would work. Installations don't track with revenue, so beyond everything else it's a capricious system that could backfire on developers in any number of ways. The revenue sharing of the Unreal Engine makes a lot more sense as it directly couples what a studio brings in with the money going to the engine the studio is using.
As a hobbyist with no intention of trying to make anything for the market, this doesn't affect me. But in terms of how it affects indie studios (one thing that attracted me to learn Unity in the first place), I couldn't think of a more boneheaded move.
I get they have to double down for a bit, because corporate direction and all that, but if they don't eventually reverse this and the right heads don't roll, how could they possibly think they have a product Devs will want to work on going forward? They've just indicated how willing they are to throw Devs under the bus. That's a lot of brand trust they've burned and it'll take a lot to repair that trust. It's not like they are the only game in town... Epic Games must be loving this!
They're about to bud light themselves into bankruptcy.
That is because you are thinking in terms of fair and honest practices instead of thinking like a parasite who only cares about maximizing your own profit with no care about how it may harm anyone else.
Unreal has already tweeted a learn program just 12 hrs ago which is basically a way of trolling unity and telling game devs that they are open to have them work on their engine.
They overreached by far with 20c.
1 million installs and you owe unity 200k? That's a fucking house or four years of a job (ignoring taxes).
Even at 2c, 20k is pushing it.
Who the hell greenlit these numbers.
This is really devastating for the developers that have been using Unity for years and have invested a lot of money and trust into the company. And the fact that older games are getting affected by this is just unacceptable.
This will desvatate people who bought and played games from devs who use unity. What if they just erase their unity game from the online stores, i bought it i should be able to play it but the devs get punished for me downloading and playing their game
This is horrible
@@thanhosnugyen2274 So, whatever competitor creates a way to move the game from Unity to Them will get all of those old devs to move over...
"I doubt this is Unity's intention."
Unity's CEO is the former EA CEO who wanted to charge players every time they reloaded a gun in Battlefield after crossing a certain time investment so as to prey upon the player's desire to not have wasted that time. This is definitely Unity's intention.
nah blame ea, if we time travel to make ea non existant, that greedy ceo (prob) not be a ceo at all (i think)
[this is my opinion tbh, dont attack me.]
When I started learning unity, it used to have one of the best community and the unity tech dev used to listen to the us and rectify things asap. But now with this stunt I guess most of the developers has lost their faith in the company and worst affected people are the people who gave their so much of free asset and knowledge to make this community more welcoming. Pricing might not affect an individual personally but it's had done a lot damage to developers of unity community.
Crap, now I have to figure out how to code not allowing my game to be installed more than ex amount of times and reupload it each time it meets this threshold. And have it monitor its own code so that it deletes it's self if pirated.
Good thing I stuck with free/open source engines ♥Wishing all the luck to unity game devs out there and even tho we use different engines, we're all fighting the same fight! I hope you find a good alternative for your games ^^
3:43 installs before monitization was added still count towards your total installs, you just don't have to start paying until you make over a certain amount of money and a certain amount of installs. If this policy were in place when Crab Game came out, Dani would have had to start paying as soon as he made $200k because his game already had well over 200k installs.
They possibly changed this in the interim, anyway this is no longer true. Only new installs since jan1 2024 count.
They also walked back on a number of other implementation details. They said first WebGL deployments would count the same, then said they won't count.
They also said Game Pass and other giveaway installs and demos would count, then walked back and these as well as sales for charity no longer count.
They also said reinstalls count but now they no longer count.
But you have multiple PCs or PCs experience fingerprint configuration changes, those probably still count.
There's a whole lot of "trust us bro" left in there from "we have anti fraud measures, we think they work because we use them for ads" to "well if we were to bankrupt a customer, how about we just unbankrupt them individually?" Which, that latter thing is a mafia protection racket tactic.
They're really hanging onto this bad idea and trying to make it work, even though they were told by numerous employees that this is a terrible approach. They fired off the change without further warning to employees, where it seemed like they'd work out the issues or reconsider before they go ahead and never did. Thus resignation letters are now starting to pile up.
Watching unity is like watching EA in late 90’s progress into the 2000’s
Is that even surprising? They do have a guy from EA running the show after all
Even ea worst decisions dotn come close to this ...
Bro, Unity Technologies is a stock-exchange listed entity headed by a guy who used to work for EA... in case nobody has figured it out yet, AAA publishers have just realised they can no longer pump out s**t and print money - the threat of the indie dev is real, and instead of bringing creativity and competitive advantage back to their products, they're behaving like true CEOs and increasing the barriers to deal with the threat of new entrants.
There's no way they can make devs pay retroactively. Those devs accepted a TOS. That TOS can't be changed without agreement from both sides, and unless the devs are still updating the game to newer versions of the engine, there's no need to accept a new TOS. If they try, this sounds like a class action potential
Feel like their plan was likely to have smaller developers to push more monetization into their games to safeguard themselves from these additional fees, which seems pretty tone death because many likely support many smaller indie games exactly because they often don't have the scummy business and monetization schemes that the big AAA tiles often have now a days, plus are some the few places where games still have creativity, ingenuity and the love to make something that isn't just a generic cash cow type gaming.
It is additionally tone deaf - because let's assume that you DO add monetization into your game that does end up covering the exorbitant Unity tax they added... Give me one reason why you wouldn't port your game to another engine and keep that money for yourself? You paying Unity per install doesn't come with any benefits, it doesn't enhance the experience you or your players have - it just makes Unity the worst platform to have your game on
I like that (presumably) autocorrect made it "tone death". Very appropriate to this business decision.
Didn't the CEO of Unity call every dev who doesn't prioritize monetization of their games, and I quote: "fucking idiots"?
You know it's going south when Dani uploads
Imagine MS Word charging authors after they sell their book after years of hard work. Unity isn't entitled to a share of the developers hard work
The only thing this policy is meant to do, is to force developers to insert more predetory monetizations into their games, be it microtransactions or ads everywhere. This lines up with the views of the CEO who called people who do not monetize their games "F****** idiots" and has belittled players for disliking microtransactions.
If they would have upped the subscription prices, or, added new tiers, nobody would have complained.
Additionally, the change for the software to have to have some online connection and not being to opt out at all from audience usage tracking are huge red flags
Love the omori music when start going into discussing the unity changes. Game forever scarred my soul and i want everybody to play it 😢
I think something more reasonable would have been accepted
- Personal Edition just has a Revenue share (2-5%) after 200K
- Pro Edition has no revenue share at their current price
or
-Pro has a cheaper license fee and a Revenue share model (smaller and tiered compared to Personal)
I think they realize that most new game developers are usually going to pick Unity because of the sheer number of tutorials for it. They think they have everybody locked in so they don't worry too much about people getting angry.
As rules for re-installs and other harmful practices are not 100% clear, we can only cross our fingers
Piracy up until now wasn't stealing because you're just copying a game, now, thanks to Unity, they really made piracy a crime, thanks Unity, good boy
wtf are you talking about? Piracy has ALWAYS been stealing as you are obtaining the game through illegitimate means. IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CRIME. Not going to question the morality of it as everyone has their reasons to do it, but let's not pretend it's somehow legal to pirate a game and just not that has changed with Unity, because that is a delusional and idiotic statement.
@@DarkOmegaMK2 It was, is, and for the most part should be illegal; but to say that it's stealing is industry propaganda, because it's not. By the act of piracy you're not (generally) depriving the rightful owner of the product or anything tangible, you're abusing intellectual property. If you steal a car, someone doesn't have a car any longer. That's the difference. If it is the money you wouldn't have spent anyway on a pirated product, then it can be considered a victimless crime.
Furthermore it's not necessarily a crime, it's usually a tort, jurisdictions differ. Where you owe the entity whose product you pirate a compensation + damages but you shouldn't be under a risk of criminal prosecution. From my political opinion, making it a criminal act is completely unjustified, it should be a tort. Government prosecutors and police shouldn't be hunting down software pirates.
@@SianaGearz Well you can argue the developer was losing out because you are clearly wanting to play the game so if you hadn't pirated it they would have received money for your purchase.
What's especially suspicious is, apparently, Unity has a GIT repo with its license agreements across various versions. The entire repo had been quietly removed and re-created with terms removed from existing license agreements. The terms basically forbade Unity from changing the revenue agreement for those versions of the Unity runtime.
This has been a genuinely devastating development. While not professionally, I've been using Unity for 10+ years gradually teaching myself with the goal of either eventually making my own complete game, or joining a studio. And suddenly all of that time feels wasted. Thankfully there's a lot I can carry over to other engines but it doesn't change the fact my entire repertoire of knowledge is tainted by this decision. Both routes I've been striving towards just got pushed so much further back than they already were. Hell, I'm in the middle of a portfolio piece that'll carry significantly less weight simply because of it being in Unity, along with the rest of my portfolio.
Just so fucking frustrated right now lol
10 years is a lot of shit. I'm think in starting now with game development and I'm glad to hear that unity is no longer trustful so I don't waste time with this shit. I hope you do well lil niga
Do you plan to switch over to Unreal or Godot ?
1. Retroactive TOS Changes:
If you've created a game using Unity before they updated their Terms of Service (TOS), Unity typically cannot apply the new TOS to charge you retrospectively. This principle is often upheld in court, as users have successfully challenged retroactive TOS changes in the past.
2. TOS Agreements and User Rights:
When you register for an online service, you are usually required to agree to the company's Terms and Conditions or TOS by checking a box and creating an account. However, your rights become a significant concern when you're already a user, and the company decides to modify its TOS.
3. Modifying TOS with User Agreement:
Companies can indeed modify their TOS, but they generally cannot do so without obtaining the agreement of their existing users. The reason for this is that a website's TOS is, in essence, a contract between the business and its users. For a contract to be legally binding, it must fulfill several critical criteria:
a. Offer and Acceptance: One party (the company) must make an offer, and the other party (the user) must accept it. In the context of online services, the act of creating an account or continuing to use the service after being notified of the changes can represent acceptance.
b. Meeting of the Minds: Both parties must understand that they are entering into a legally binding agreement. This means that users should be adequately informed about any TOS changes and their implications.
c. Consideration: Each party must agree to provide something of value in exchange for the benefits of the contract. In the case of TOS agreements, the consideration might be the use of the service in exchange for complying with the terms.
4. Legal Protections for Consumers:
Federal and state laws are in place to protect consumers from a wide range of deceptive, fraudulent, or unfair business practices. These laws often provide a safety net, ensuring that companies cannot unilaterally change their terms to the detriment of their users. If a TOS change is found to be unconscionable, overly one-sided, or materially harmful to users, it may not hold up in court.
In summary, TOS agreements are legally binding contracts, and while companies can update them, they usually need the agreement of their users. Legal protections are in place to prevent unfair practices, ensuring that users are not unjustly harmed by TOS changes. However, the specifics of how these principles are applied can vary by jurisdiction and individual cases. It's essential for users and businesses to be aware of their rights and responsibilities in these matters.
From what i'm familiar with in Germany they are required to give you an extraordinary cancellation right if you don't agree with the updated contract. This right exists even if not explicitly stated. Many countries will also take issue with "jurisdiction location for this contract is California".
But this leads to another issue, it's still racket because then you potentially lose distribution rights on the runtime and need to unpublish your game/product.
There is applied law that deems any ToS terms invalid if they're grossly unjust or obscene, as in reaching far outside industry practices. But what the outcome of a legal confrontation may be is anyone's guess, after all a fixed per copy royalty based contract on middleware isn't actually that uncommon per se.
I hope someone makes a chart showing how much some of the existing games (developped with or without unity) would owe unity under this business model.
they would owe 0.00. Unity is trying to squeeze them
The biggest issue is that the trust has been completely destroyed. Even if they roll this back 100%, no one is going to trust they won't pull this sort of shit or similar scummy tactics in the future. Maybe tossing the CEO to the curb might help but even then there were SO MANY PEOPLE between the greedy CEO (assuming the decision came from that high up, which is a pretty safe bet to make considering his reputation), and the person that wrote the blog post and none of them stood up to the management and said no? That means that everyone in that pipeline are essentially just yes men more interested in keeping their jobs over doing what's right for the project.
I dabble with both unity and unreal here and there, not enough to make proper games but just to have a fun play around and if I ever decide to start a larger project, it's not even worth considering Unity for it any more.
regardless of their further response, i can't imagine most people just trusting Unity to not be scumbags in the future
Freemium developres will go to Godot - and when they do, they'll also start to abandon services like Unity Ads. I'm not sure I've seen a company shoot themselves in the foot so bad for ages.
There is a bigger problem there and is your actual players. Why would I agree to have personal information like IPs and MAC addresses sent to an API to collect data so they can charge you? Because there is no other way for them to know that a game has been installed or that installed is unique. I wouldn't buy a Unity game after the 1st of January, because thats now close to spyware. Most likely it will be illegal and if your game does not meet GDPR regulations in EU, it would not be sold there. Those are quite bigger issues than fees themselves.
I'd jump ship, the people profiting from this will be the stake holders, not even the people actually developing Unity. Board members can't imagine, not making more money.
my advice... make the switch... even if they rollback now, the mask is off. It wont be easy, but in the long run I think you will be better off
Every time a company makes a vague statement, I just think back on a paraphrase of a quote from the Transformers comic.
"Here's an idea, let's all play the _Making Sense Game_ . When Person A asks a question, Person B has to give an answer that requires no further elaboration. If I have to speculate as to what you mean, or _infer_ things, or go away and do some research - Then you _lose_ ."
This is so disappointing, I've been using Unity for over 6 years so leaving it is kind of sad, but I think it's for the best.
I've been trying Godot and I was surprised how easy it was to pick up, so I will probably be moving to that long term.
Are we absolutely sure the CEO isn't secretly working for Godot/Unreal? 😂
he's either already cashing out (which he and most of the top executives did the week before the announcement), or he's planning to buy out the company to gain 100% control and take it private once he's destroyed the share price (that way no one can make him apologize for calling unity devs stupid for not cramming their games full of enough micro transactions that even current EA and most Gatchas think it's way too much. (Keeping in mind, EA gave him the boot for insisting that FPS players should be charged 1 dollar per reload in shooters).
I look for "upcoming UE5 games" on UA-cam daily. I have never once looked for "upcoming unity games" so for someone like me, I'm happy that now my upcoming UE5 games are going to have so many more games in them.
The outrage is part of unity's marketing tactic; they want to anticompeitively, retroactively and in contract breach, as part of insider trading, force MOST profitaable unity game devs to switch to "levelplay" to get the 20 cents install fees weaved.
No class action (even one that would return all install fees) would recover you from the damage of having to use levelplay instead of applovng resulting in a monopoly forever.
According to recent articles Unity is changing their policy in reaction to the backlash they received. Hopefully they will remove prices for new users completely.
Also, mobile games are reinstalled A LOT. Every time someone gets a new phone, often if there's an error, some people don't have much storage.
"we have fraud detection" has such trust me bro energy, and a new "machine" is easily achieved if you just change your mac adress or just use virtual machines and to detect this would be a pretty shady privacy infringement. But it makes sense that an EX EA CEO would a scummy bastard.
It seems unity wanna change their reputation of being the 'engine for shit games' and cut out all the less corporatized devs while forgetting how many devs from the bigger companies probably started out of these smaller projects. Just baffling strategy ignoring long term potential that makes me wonder if the ceo want to milk the company for quick profit and sell it off cause they gave up competing with unreal and their funding.
my understanding is that he and most of the execs have already been dumping their stock leading up to this announcement.
i.e. he's either getting out or preparing to buy out and take the company private for pennies so he can do whatever he wants without a board.
I expect Unity and CEO John Riccitiello will probably be facing lawsuits related to this.
Rovio proudly announced that as of April '22, Angry Birds crossed 5Billion+ downloads.
Since the game is made with Unity. I wonder what are they gonna do.... 🤒
110 billion US pennies Rovio would owe to UNITY corp= 1 billion 100 million dollars.
thats a lot @@gravekeepersven82 🤧
So if I have bought a bunch of games and they were made with unity, what happens to them if the devs decide to erase their game, can I prevent those steam games from ever updating and charging the devs
I do believe we need to make more noise about Personal having to always be online. It's straight-up BS
Great, now we may never see Hollow Knight: Silksong
I doubt that this will affect it, but I also doubt we’ll see in in our lifetimes anyways
This looks like a choice made by a business Man not a programmer 💀
When you put Deltarune in the video, you made my heart stop and made me think that, that was also going to be affected but it's actually being made with Gamemaker 2. But this also affects Hollow Knight Silksong and alot of other games I was excited for.
Unity said the fee takes account of ANY GAME using unity even the opd games that aint supported anymore still have this fee put to it. Its all about installing the data and breaking the privacy of users. They literally have a FAQ that says this in lawyer terms. Well they have a lawsuit coming cuz the EULA that Unity edited makes no sense and some of it i heard was illegal.
now WTF? which engine should we use ?
after all these days of using unity
Just another sign of late-stage capitalism. We are slowly learning that the workers, and not out-of-touch CEOs, are the only ones who can make business decisions that prioritize the consumers and not the bottom line.
Nah mate! This is just human greed. The economic system of a country would not effect an organization making a brain dead decision.
If we're lucky, Unity might undo the change. If we're really lucky, genshin impact might discontinue.
7:14 FINALLY!!! SOMEONE ELSE IS MAKING THE CONENCTION!!!
Stephen Totilo isn't a game developer, he's a former writer or something for Kotaku.
I am still puzzled why they landed on the outrageous 20c and not start with a modest 2c (still expensive)?
Lets say 1,000,000 "installs" arbitrarily claimed as such. The difference between "owing" 200k and 20k is a good lawyer.
Your money is better spent on a lawyer.
So much for paying 250 dollars per seat every month or whatever the deal was before.
They reached too damn far with direct numbers. Percentages are safer and scales better.
Part of this entire decision was Unity trying to eliminate a Free To Play pricing model because they feel it tarnishes their development environment.
Honestly deleting freemium games sounds good but on the other hand it would hinder a lot of good indie developements
Companies really need to do a company-wide sanity check on decisions. Add a monetary reward for any argument against it. Then you don't get things like Disney's anniversary hats that looks like.... something that can be perceived as problematic, or even finding loopholes.
EA did that and kicked the guy at the top out after suggesting that FPS players should be charged a dollar every time a gun is reloaded. He's now the CEO pushing this after saying indie devs were stupid for not packing their games full of predatory micro-transactions, which this change is apparently a tool of forcing them to do.
As that's the only logical outcome of the way this is setup as a opposed to a cut of purchases. Since you essentially need to make a game predatory enough to ensure that someone has to pay to even load the game or re-install it. And it's also your fault you'll need to pay for if you didn't cram it full of DRM to prevent pirated installations and make the user experience absolutely intolerable.
What was that Labyrinth type game displayed around @7:00?
Monument valley
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!
This will cause a disaster and a massive economical disorder on world scale
As long as governments let infrastructure be owned privately or by investors this shit is going to happen over and over again.
The enshittification is real.
As opposed to what being government owned? lmao how would that make it any better, governments are probably worse in that regard
A big problem is devs can't just make their game all free to play once they pass the 2 thresholds, once you pass it thats it, you will pay no matter what you do.
And all of this sounds like there is one guy in his office wrote the article and is now answering to people on twitter without any legal recommendations from lawyers and such.
Stephen Totilo is a journalist not a game developer
I suspect a LOT of games are going to disappear off the market or suddenly because free before everyone gets a chance to fully switch over.
becoming free won't help, since the devs still get charged for those (Or pirated games, since according to unity's Q&A it's the dev's fault for not cramming enough DRM to make illegal installation impossible or putting enough mandatory macro transactions to provide post-sell income per user).
Literally the only way to stop it is to erase your game from the internet and ask existing users to not re-install the unity version until it's switched to a new engine (and then they'll probably have to eat a loss sending owners of the unity version a copy of the new engine version in order to maintain community good will and cover their bases).
@@ZanathKariashi If Unity actually pushes this they're going to get a lawsuit.
10:00 Is this true? I live in a place with virtually no phone reception, and not everyone even has the internet! I recently went 9 months using the town library to do my research. This would mean I simply wont be able to work at all! Ill have a quick dig myself, but can anyone clarify?
Imagine a containerized program that is set up to configure a VM, install a game with Unity runtime while connected to the network (triggering the install count), and then kill the VM multiple times until an arbitrary count of installs has been reached.
This system will probably be exploited into dirt day 1.
These are the corporate decisions that break consumer trust.
Same thing with adobe subscription plans, Microsoft Word payment plans, Videogaming Passes.
Watching this video while Unreal downloads in the background. I've been using Unity nearly daily since 2013.
For commercial games, I don't see the problem in theory, but I have to admit, that their pricing strategy doesn't make much sense. Indie game developers, that have low pricing must pay a lot and the big studios that can charge more, pay less per installation. It should be a percentage of price (5%) up to a maximum like 1$ for a 20$ game and only if the game sells over 1000 units, because administration cost would be too high (imagine accounting managers that have to run after people that sold 10 units..).
wait, if i publish my game on itch for example and i publish it for free, i still owe unity 0.20 per install??
2:55 Correction: It's countries that are NOT in that list of countries.
He said "Countries that aren't on this list" just very fast
Yeah, that’s my bad, I should’ve re-recorded that line
Have they explained why it is that every time a unity game is downloaded this program is downloaded?
If i already have a unity game on my PC i already have the runtime editior so why is it that im downloading it again when i downlosd a new game? Why isnt it checking to confirm i already have it and then omitting that from the download?
being a unity dev
i just cant trust this companies
if there willing to make changes that retroactively change how games are billed.
furthermore if you want to get a job at studios or pitch a game your out of luck with unity as no sane investor will be willing to give 20c usd per install.
UNITY IS GOING BANKRUPT!!!!! UNITY IS GOING BANKRUPT!!!! UNITY IS GOING BANKRUPT!!!!
Corrections:
"Only installs after the marketplace was added will count"
Incorrect, all installs add to the "lifetime installs" of that game. If you had at least the limit downloads, then add a marketplace and the game makes the limit amount of money then all downloads from that month forwards will cost you 20 cents. Which, in that case where something like 98% of the downloads won't use the marketplace amounts to about 10 dollar fee per paying customer, on average.
"You get a discount on high volume of install rates per month, but it drops if you get fewer"
Incorrect, it's lifetime installs. So on the pro plan you pay 15k for the first bracket, then 30k for the second, 15k for the third, then .02 per following install. Technically, if taken at face value, that *should* mean that someone adding in-game purchases after their 10 millionth install only pays .02 for every install, but you can bet that they alter that to only count for installs over *both* thresholds.
Either way, you won't lose the discount for having periods of lower install volume.
Now I am thinking twice about learning to work with Unity...
I think such a charging model would actively disencourage freemium games. But at the same time would hurt their ad service since freemium games are the games that abuse ads the most. Maybe it could promote a healthier gaming ecosystem but doing it like this would harm existing developers that especially rely on the freemium model.
Charging creators for how many times players use their games is so pants-on-the-head stupid it's almost hard to believe someone would punish creativity in that way.
I have been working on my game for over 10 years, i hope it doesn't affect older versions of Unity. ( I stayed with 5 )
A team of 75 pro developers couldn't even finish a game demo. Versions always buggy and broken, bad CEOs. I like unity but switching to unreal was the best thing I ever done. What took me weeks in unity took me a day in unreal. Sure unity is better for 2d but I'm so glad I switched. Unreal is amazing. Things just work. Not constantly fighting the engine.
This is the usual step by successful companies.
I mean look at:
Sony -> PlayStation
Microsoft - Office to Office 365
Adobe Licenses - Adobe CC
EA Games with The big name games every 2 years they release a new game more expensive than the previous one.
Also, Adobe CC increased prices so much, that people are going to Da vinci Resolve.
I think we see a pattern here.
what is the game showed at 6:13??
Who else thinks he looks like Dani?
I just realized that Unity is forcing vendors who create non-game apps for clients who make $1million a year in revenue (the clients, not the vendors!) to use their $5,000/year Industry license. I'm doing minor freelance on the side to pay some extra bills here and there, and now I can't use Unity for that, because I'd have to do twice as much work just to cover the cost of the license.
Just think how many assets people bought from unity that may now be wasted cash and they're starting over w/ another engine in the negative. (Including myself if they don't reverse this)
Can you make a tutorial how to switch unity to unreal engine with project files
Bro, there is no revenue share option that will be cheaper than the Runtime fee... for indie games selling at a $10 price point the fees are a literal percentage point. While freemium games make up a huge portion of that market, which is great to point out, the games MOST affected by this change are low preforming freemium titles--those devs already have issues with revenue and literally any change to any pricing would exacerbate those problems. Only being able to generate a few cents per user, on average, is not great, and if their margins are that tight then maybe switching services--like moving over to godot--would have huge benefits. But like, are those the people we gotta defend? Devs who make under preforming, often spammy, mobile games using Unity? Idk...
If your game is making close to a million dollars a year WHY would you stay on personal plan and not just upgrade to the Industry plan? And if your legacy game is suddenly getting a bunch of downloads it still has to make more than million dollars in the last twelve months before it triggers any requirements--again if you're making more than $200K a year with your game WHY are you not on the Industry plan?? Meaning your old game can comfortably be making your team $900,000 a year and you never pay this runtime fee. And selling a million copies is no easy feat. A $5 Unity game would have earned its devs $5 million in revenue BEFORE hitting a runtime fee requirement. If the game went on to sell another million copies in the following year, making another $5 million dollars, they would be paying an extra $10K a month in Runtime fees that they are now eligible for. Oh no, a team that grossed $10 million dollars wound up paying Unity $120K... thieves!
I get that the sudden changes is shitty, and their lack of communication--the entire roll out of this thing--has been terrible, but literally only super successful projects are going to be impacted by this. Mobile games have options, like you mention in the video they can partner with Unity to avoid the fees, but also lets be serious--the average mobile user generates $60-90 dollars (that's how much whales over spend in comparison to free users) over the lifetime of a game. Unity would see $0.125 of that revenue. The games that this fee really hurts are not doing great in the mobile market, earning $1 or less on average per user, it could mean that they should be building their tight margin works in open source engines like Godot. I just don't see this as anything other than huge games trying to whip up support by suggesting that Unity is not only "out" for them but also you and I'm like... c'moooooonnnnn.
sooo if you don't make over X money and x install you won't get charged the install fee ? Or would the install fee applies if you are below ?
I'm with you. I am a 2 year Unity user, and I hate this. I don't want to switch engines because Unity has brought me from block coding to 3D game development and C#. But this? This might honestly push me over the edge.