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.
This is why we as consumers must demand open source software
While I’m a huge open source advocate this has little to do with open vs closed source software.
The issue of having to put up with software changes you dislike is solved when you (or 3rd parties) have the freedom to change the software in ways you like.
It is my hope that people see this as very much a proprietary vs free software issue. I hope this leads to further introspection; it’s bad when an engine mistreats them (game devs) so maybe they should give software freedom to their users too.
The problem is, free software model is actually difficult to make profit with. Red hat has long been touted as the prime example of how to do it, by selling service and support instead of software, and even they try to limit the customers’ freedom as much as possible now. Turns out a lot of people don’t need support. And the better the software the less support is needed.
I struggle to see a way to make a game engine available so that it’s free software and the customers can just take it if they don’t like your pricing policy, but still make money from developing it. Or even break even. What would the engine developers sell? What would the game developers sell if the code could just be redistributed for free?
This has everything to do with FOSS.
If a company can get away with pulling the rug on you, they will.
Once you’ve heavily invested in using a a piece of software, the company behind it has leverage over you, but if you could pay for updates to that software from another company, the original company has no leverage over you.
The only reason these companies refuse to release the source code is because they are planning on fucking you over in the future. As consumers we need to demand open source products to prevent this sort of abuse.
When capitalism runs out of places to grow/metastasize, it will consume itself.
And it has been for years, in every sector. People try to blame everything but the cause.
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
Is there any legitimate reason for this other than “shareholders go wahhhh!” Like is there a financial burden on unity every time someone installs a game?
If not this is insanely disgusting…
There is a reason. The current CEO is EA’s former CEO. Dude was kicked out of EA for pulling something similar.
Well that makes all the sense in the world now. Man fuck EA even when it’s not EA lol
He was kicked out of EA. Even EA isn’t this bad lol. Seriously, while EA has had some controversies with nickle and diming, have they ever retroactively started making things cost money?
Unity do not suffer financial hit just because someone installs the game.
They don’t host the code. You use their code but the code itself is hosted by the likes of Valve or Microsoft or Sony. So no they have no legitimate reason, other than they like money and they reckon this will generate them some.
