Unity’s new “per-install” pricing enrages the game development community | Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.::Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.
So out of every 1M downloads, that’s $200,000 to Unity’s pocket and out of the pockets of developers. Am I doing this math right?
Not downloads. Installs. They also count re installs. So if you. Install a game, play it, remove it, then install again later that is an additional charge to the dev.
You’ve entered into a brand new era of trolling game developers by directing costing them for the fun of it.
So… if your game becomes the most pirated game in history, you’re on the hook for millions off zero income.
Way to go Unity…
If I’ve read this right, they don’t count re-installs on the same hardware, so just “I don’t want to play this anymore” uninstall -later- “I want to play this again” reinstall won’t count as two installs. But reinstalls of the same license on different hardware does, so “I just bought a game! Let’s play it on my aging gaming PC” installs I just bought a new gaming PC, let’s see what that game looks like on high graphics settings installs again does count as two installs and the studio will…bewilderingly…be charged twice for that one sale.
Plus on top of all the other subscription fees.
it’s not even really about the money, even if it will fuck the devs and ruin projects and lives, but the breach of trust and a mark that more shit is probably on it’s way if this goes through. Unity owns a ecosystem that many people depend on and now they really start squeezing. It’s not right.
This is why things that act as commons should be either nationalised or replaced with free software.
Plus on top of all the other subscription fees
False. This 200k number assumes you would stay on Unity Personal, which breaks EULA anyway since you’re required to buy Unity Pro once you have more than 200k in revenue and funding.
The real cost for 1M installs, under Unity Pro, would be 62k$, to which you’re adding 2k annually for every seat of Pro you need, that’s it. Again, this assumes you’re making upwards of 2M$ annually. As soon as your game falls back under that, there’s no runtime fees anymore.
Compare with Unreal, where as soon as your game made 1M$ revenue over its lifetime, you’re on the hook for the 5% revshare perpetually. Over time, there’s loads of situations where that will stay more expensive.
Compare with Unreal, where as soon as your game made 1M$ revenue over its lifetime, you’re on the hook for the 5% revshare perpetually. Over time, there’s loads of situations where that will stay more expensive.
The difference between that and Unity that with Unreal it’s predictable.
Not necessarily. It depends on the Unity license being used and it scales based on installs. So higher tier license and more installs makes each additional install cheaper. But if they are using the free license, it stays at 20c per install no ‘discount’ at any install counts. It is a bit convoluted: https://unity.com/runtime-fee
