Charging per install has to be the most out of touch insane choices they could have made.
There is zero rationality behind the decision, especially given that it’s retroactive and there’s no language in their decision that handles unique user versus multiple users versus multiple accounts.
I’ve had two gaming PCs over the last ten years. On my last one, I replaced the hard drive twice, and I’m on my second hard drive on the newest one. With each hard drive replacement, I’ve had to reinstall all my games. I’m not paying for all of them again with each install but just getting the same files off Steam and installing again. According to this decision, the devs of these games would have had to pay Unity four extra times just due to my hardware upgrades. How is that on the developer at all, and Lord help us if Unity tries to run some BS where players have to pay for each new installation.
The entire gaming industry, even from the “disc era”, doesn’t work with a cost per install model.
Someone claims here that if you use Unity’s internal Ad API then you will make that money back, giving people who put ads in their games a free pass.
If true, Unity is trying to force indie devs to enshittify their products.
That’s exactly what they’re trying to do because their CEO is a nut job crazy man who’s grasp of business economics is embarrassing even when compared to my cats.
The problem with that is that it relies on the idea that people are able/willing to pay and aren’t willing to try something else. Game devs are naturally technical people who are okay with trying new things if their current solution stops being an option. Then there are indie devs who must work cheaply or they will not make anything off their games.
Its a bold strategy cotton, let’s see how it plays out for them.
How can be retroactive?
I mean legally. The devs agreed to a contract, it can’t be changed with different economic terms later
If someone published an Unity game 4 years ago, has now abandoned the project, doesn’t release any update, why needs to pay a per install fee “for supporting the runtime”? The version is now ancient. I could understand if it was “from version xx.yy”
They actually explicitly stated as such:
Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs?
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.
Doesn’t steam let you download games you purchased that have since been removed? Will they try to bill developers still in this case?
Bye, Unity! It’s nice to know you’ve gone evil, so that even if you backpedal on this, we’ll know never to trust you again…
One hour before that Q&A went live:
PM: Hey Steve! Yes, you from development! How can the, uh, that runtime of yours, tell if it’s a new install or a reinstall?
S: As of right now it can’t, we just have aggregate data. We’d need to update it to support that. We have an item on the backlog already if you –
PM: No need! I have all the information I need!
Not to mention that it’s such a sudden announcement. I mean, sure, they gave people 3 months notice in advance, but when you consider the scale of many games probably take longer than 3 months to make the decision AND actually make the switch (or make up for the switch), it’s cause for quite a bit of harm.
Granted, the majority of people may not be affected by it due to needing to meet a requirement of like earning $200,000 and 200,000 installs at a minimum, but I feel like the once you reach that, it’s just downhill from there.
In addition to your example of costing the devs for reinstalling the game, you now have to consider the possibility of a user (or group of users) maliciously reinstalling their games to financially damage the developer. Sure, Unity says they’ll have fraud detection for stuff like that, but then it’s literally up to the people you owe money to decide whether you should pay more or less money to them.
