• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Unity introducing new fee attached to game installs

Kataploom

Kataploom

Gold Member
Elder Legend said:
Nah, you are smoking crack sir. Unity has been having financial problems for a while now, maybe if it was good they wouldn't have those issues to begin with. Engine is known for poor optimization and bugs.. It's obvious you've been living under a rock for quite a while.
Click to expand...
I use it quite extensively but enlighten me with your vast experience.

Unity has financial issues because of monetization, it's the defacto indie game engine, outside AAA gaming, there's barely competition and that's counting unreal too.

The reason they do this is because they see them providing big multi-million successes and want to eat from it, current monetization it's not enough for all the things the engine provides.
 
MiguelItUp

MiguelItUp

Member
Really can't wait to see the reaction from this, it makes absolutely no sense. It just comes off as pointless and greedy in most cases. I can understand needing or wanting to monetize, but surely there could be a better way to do it...
 
Last edited:
StueyDuck

StueyDuck

Member
Weird comments In this thread... like we have engine warriors now 🤣

Also people in this thread acting like you just "choose an engine" like you just choose a console and their isn't other important factors that push developers to a certain engine, something as simple as preferring C# to C++
 
Elder Legend

Elder Legend

Banned
Kataploom said:
I use it quite extensively but enlighten me with your vast experience.

Unity has financial issues because of monetization, it's the defacto indie game engine, outside AAA gaming, there's barely competition and that's counting unreal too.

The reason they do this is because they see them providing big multi-million successes and want to eat from it, current monetization it's not enough for all the things the engine provides.
Click to expand...
You have to be trolling right? Ever since Unity went public in 2020 it has gotten worse and worse because the investors know nothing about game development snd they don't care about the engine or its users. All they want is money, instead of actually delivering good features for passionate and hard working developers.

Epic does not even charge you money unless you've made $1 million dollars worth in sales. Yeah, Unity is a good guy here for sure...when it comes to finances.

"Unreal Engine 5 is free to create linear content, custom projects, and internal projects. It's free to get started for game development–a 5% royalty only kicks in when your title earns over $1 million USD."

Source - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/unreal-engine-5

Defacto indie game engine? Maybe it was at one point. But the pendelum is now swining a different way and UE 5.3 is far superior. Also, a ton of Unity based games devs are starting to migrate to UE 5 due to better and more robust features. Unity also lacks Nanite and Lumen which are game changers and they are going to take forever to have some sort of equalvant.

Also, no, I don't have experience in Unity despite the fact that I heard its an easier "beginner" engine to learn. I've done plenty of tutorials in the past and currently working on some personal protoypes in UE 5.3 when I have free time. I am very comfortable now and i am still learning a bunch of stuff as i go. I won't ever learn something that's "beginner friendly" for the sake of learning when it's already outdated and is only a matter of time before it comes completely useless or abandoned.

Didn't Unity also laid 600+ employees back in May without any warning? Sounds like a fantastic company that cares for their employees.

Source - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/uni...ounced plans to,-term and profitable growth.”
 
Kataploom

Kataploom

Gold Member
Elder Legend said:
You have to be trolling right? Ever since Unity went public in 2020 it has gotten worse and worse because the investors know nothing about game development snd they don't care about the engine or its users. All they want is money, instead of actually delivering good features for passionate and hard working developers.

Epic does not even charge you money unless you've made $1 million dollars worth in sales. Yeah, Unity is a good guy here for sure...when it comes to finances.

"Unreal Engine 5 is free to create linear content, custom projects, and internal projects. It's free to get started for game development–a 5% royalty only kicks in when your title earns over $1 million USD."

Source - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/unreal-engine-5

Defacto indie game engine? Maybe it was at one point. But the pendelum is now swining a different way and UE 5.3 is far superior. Also, a ton of Unity based games devs are starting to migrate to UE 5 due to better and more robust features. Unity also lacks Nanite and Lumen which are game changers and they are going to take forever to have some sort of equalvant.

Also, no, I don't have experience in Unity despite the fact that I heard its an easier "beginner" engine to learn. I've done plenty of tutorials in the past and currently working on some personal protoypes in UE 5.3 when I have free time. I am very comfortable now and i am still learning a bunch of stuff as i go. I won't ever learn something that's "beginner friendly" for the sake of learning when it's already outdated and is only a matter of time before it comes completely useless or abandoned.

Didn't Unity also laid 600+ employees back in May without any warning? Sounds like a fantastic company that cares for their employees.

Source - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/unity-layoffs-company-to-cut-600-employees-or-8percent-of-its-workforce.html#:~:text=Unity Software announced plans to,-term and profitable growth.”
Click to expand...
Company wants money, more news at 11.

Also, Unity also has a threshold before it starts charging. Just for clarify: I think the "per install" model is shit and will backfire.
 
Elder Legend

Elder Legend

Banned
Kataploom said:
Company wants money, more news at 11.

Also, Unity also has a threshold before it starts charging. Just for clarify: I think the "per install" model is shit and will backfire.
Click to expand...
No shit company wants money, but one is obviously way more greedy and is providing less than the other. Firing 600 employees and then on top of that trying to find more ways to charge people? That doesn't bode well for their public outlook and their future regardless of whether someone thinks their engine is good or bad. It's becoming a shit company that is going to be thrown off the cliff by its competitors in a matter of time.
 
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Company is losing shitloads of money. But lucky for them their stock price is holding well at around $40.

Their annual losses last 4 years have gotten worse. Nuts. -$100M, -$200M, -$500M, most recent -$900M.

I don’t follow this company aside from just knowing they do that game engine every indie dev uses. But their overheads must be through the roof since their annual revenue is most recently $1.3 billion. Yet they still lost -$900M.
 
Last edited:
Kataploom

Kataploom

Gold Member
Elder Legend said:
No shit company wants money, but one is obviously way more greedy and is providing less than the other. Firing 600 employees and then on top of that trying to find more ways to charge people? That doesn't bode well for their public outlook and their future regardless of whether someone thinks their engine is good or bad. It's becoming a shit company that is going to be thrown off the cliff by its competitors in a matter of time.
Click to expand...
With that I can agree, the engine is pretty good btw, the company now in the hands of EA ex-CEO is something to worry about for the future of the service. I wouldn't call a company "greedy" tho, all of them are by mere nature "greedy", all they should and do care about is making money
 
Last edited:
MiguelItUp

MiguelItUp

Member
Elder Legend said:
Didn't Unity also laid 600+ employees back in May without any warning? Sounds like a fantastic company that cares for their employees.

Source - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/unity-layoffs-company-to-cut-600-employees-or-8percent-of-its-workforce.html#:~:text=Unity Software announced plans to,-term and profitable growth.”
Click to expand...
Exactly. To me this sounds less like, "Hey, we need money", and more like panicked flailing. It really could be handled so much better across the board.
 
SJRB

SJRB

Gold Member
SlimeGooGoo said:
Ex-EA CEO strikes again

jr.jpg
Click to expand...

This guy is legit one of the worst people in the entire industry, and that's saying something.

All-around bad person.
 
Mikado

Mikado

Member
Miyazaki’s Slave said:
You are only "immune" from this install cost cost on a F2P game IF you have installed unity's ad platform into your title.
Click to expand...

Lots of F2P games don't monetize based on ads anymore. Unity's ad platform thing wouldn't help.

To clarify:
- I make a game that's free and adless, but monetizes by offering users Paid Hats to equip on their characters.
- 100M people download it. One Oil Shiek in UAE buys 201K worth of hats. Nobody else buys anything and delete the game immediately.
- I write a cheque to Unity for 20M dollars.
 
Last edited:
jshackles

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
K

kevm3

Member
This always happens

Offer something for low-cost to free and get a bunch of people hooked and then gradually raise the prices and fees over time until a point to where it costs just as much if not more than the old solutions.

Also, a lot of times, these products are created by techies who want to release an awesome product, and then they bring on some 'business mind' with a harvard mba who doesn't care about tech or business but only is concerned with squeezing every last drop of profit they can... and hence, this.
 
DryvBy

DryvBy

Member
SJRB said:
I'll never understand how these scumbags keep getting these positions. Why would you want a turd like this in your company? The guy is filth, poison.

Probably because they promise mountains of gold.
Click to expand...
Networking. They're all in a club, running things into the ground with a bunch of other worthless execs going "yes boss" to anything suggested. If they were only allowed to rely on their success at a company and not insider trading, they'd all collapse.
 
Kataploom

Kataploom

Gold Member
CGNoire said:
Copies sold would make more sense. Per Install sounds Fishy and frankly Greedy as Fuck.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I got it a bit late, it's per installation so if the user install the game like 10 years later after you get no more sales from it, you owe Unity money. It would make sense if it was a fee per sale or a percentage over total sales per month like 5% that UE charges (I may be wrong by the amount btw).

The backslash is overwhelming, even John from DF posted about it:



BTW, Riccitiello might be committing a crime here, the man seems to be doing insider trading, he's draining the company and no one is stopping them:

 
Last edited:
Kataploom

Kataploom

Gold Member
I wonder how many times devs install their games before sending it to a store, that should count, right? BTW
 
jshackles

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Kataploom said:
Click to expand...

This absolutely fucks over devs who have (or plan on having) their Unity game release on Game Pass or PS+ or similar subscription services. Also RIP devs that released Unity games on Humble Bundle and got a few pennies from each copy, that now have to pay $0.20 each.
 
Zathalus

Zathalus

Member
Wow, just read it applies to already launched games. So the game you purchased 5 years ago can apparently cost the developers money if you decide to install it again.

Who thinks of stupid shit like this?
 
BlackTron

BlackTron

Gold Member
Kataploom said:
I use it quite extensively but enlighten me with your vast experience.

Unity has financial issues because of monetization, it's the defacto indie game engine, outside AAA gaming, there's barely competition and that's counting unreal too.

The reason they do this is because they see them providing big multi-million successes and want to eat from it, current monetization it's not enough for all the things the engine provides.
Click to expand...

There has to be a better way to monetize the product than per-basis end user installs.

So if I have a technical issue and need to reinstall a game, that's another fee for the studio? Get the hell outta here.
 
Kataploom

Kataploom

Gold Member
spons said:
People rather donate to Godot Engine than pay for this. Interesting what good will can do.
Click to expand...
My problems with Godot:

1. It's not nearly as matured and doesn't have nearly as much community support as Unity. The later is the same for UE btw.

2. Does it have good looking, performant and easy to work with PBR materials like Unity and UE?

3. Most important: It uses its own language. WHY? It has C# support but it's second class citizen there

Can't believe I may probably be learning UE and not because of Unity lacking something, but because of the business model that punishes high sales over the time.

Devs might start charging users $0.2 per install as well lol
 
Last edited:
Kataploom

Kataploom

Gold Member
BlackTron said:
There has to be a better way to monetize the product than per-basis end user installs.

So if I have a technical issue and need to reinstall a game, that's another fee for the studio? Get the hell outta here.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's something that clicked later, I thought it was a per sale thing, like they ask for receipts or something, but it's actually something that automatically connects to internet and pings to a server so the ramifications of this are just too many and too big.
 
jshackles

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Kataploom said:
My problems with Godot:

1. It's not nearly as matured and doesn't have nearly as much community support as Unity.
Click to expand...
Well you're in luck, since I get the impression that it's about to become MUCH more widely adopted thanks to this change. Because really, the only reason it's not matured or has as much community support as Unity is that it simply hasn't been as popular a choice.
 
N

negator2vc

Member
This crap prove that you shouldn't depend on a proprietary game engine.
Even if they take back these changes how can any sane developer trust them again?

While Godot has its flaws (depending on the project type of course - as a 2D GDScript game dev I am more than happy with current state) the fact it's opensource prevent this kind of crap.
 
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
To be fair, Unity is trying to charge what? 20 cents? That's on the game studio's shoulders to figure out to pay for it. If a studio cant make a business model work charging a customer 20 cents than do it differently. Even a gumball machine will charge someone a quarter.

How about dont release a game for free or any way where a game engine maker lets you make a product and you decide to unleash it for free or peanuts to the masses.

If you cant get gamers to pay 20 cents for a game to cover the fee, then it sounds like a bad business model.
 
Last edited:
jshackles

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
StreetsofBeige said:
To be fair, Unity is trying to charge what? 20 cents? That's on the game studio's shoulders to figure out to pay for it. If a studio cant make a business model work charging a customer 20 cents than do it differently. Even a gumball machine will charge someone a quarter.

How about dont release a game for free or any way where a game engine maker lets you make a product and you decide to unleash it for free or peanuts to the masses.

If you cant get gamers to pay 20 cents for a game to cover the fee, then it sounds like a bad business model.
Click to expand...
This would be good advice, if not for the fact that

a) this fee is being charged to devs retroactively for games that have already released and
b) this fee isn't "per sale" or even "per customer", it's "per install". If I buy a game from Steam that's $20 (where the dev makes $14 after Valve's cut), then proceed to install it on 70 devices of mine, now the dev owes that $14 from my sale to Unity and makes no profit.

Installing a $20 game 70 different times is definitely going to be on the extreme end of a normal use case, but the root of the problem is that each subsequent install will cost the dev money. If you buy something on Steam / PlayStation / Xbox / whatever, are you willing to pay an extra quarter to download the game you already paid for? Even a gumball machine will charge someone a quarter.
 
LavitzSlambert

LavitzSlambert

Member
Kataploom said:
Yeah, I got it a bit late, it's per installation so if the user install the game like 10 years later after you get no more sales from it, you owe Unity money. It would make sense if it was a fee per sale or a percentage over total sales per month like 5% that UE charges (I may be wrong by the amount btw).

The backslash is overwhelming, even John from DF posted about it:



BTW, Riccitiello might be committing a crime here, the man seems to be doing insider trading, he's draining the company and no one is stopping them:

Click to expand...


It’s pretty standard for the C suite to be awarded equity based compensation (aka stock options) and it’s standard procedure for them to cash out, typically on schedule. Not only that but the sum of this transaction was incredibly small, only 2000 shares for $80k in total. Not saying Riccitiello hasn’t been a scourge on the company, just looking at this transaction and the policy changes alone don’t suggest anything illegal.


In fact this pricing change was disclosed during their last quarter earnings release and letter to shareholders, although the specific details were not noted.


There is specifically a part in there talking about how Unity is “capturing a portion of that incremental value” AKA profit from the value they believe they are creating with their tools’ additional capabilities. This is Unity attempting to fulfill their goal of increasing earnings in the midst of a high interest environment. They actually need to start making money, much like the games that are being released. They can’t afford to allow their licensing model to languish in the movement to GaaS and subscription, F2P models. Those types of games simply do not work with high upfront costs and large risk in today’s industry.


I haven’t done much digesting of the pricing details but I suspect what’s going to happen is a reduction in the amount of studios that can afford to use Unity. Less F2P and indie long shots, more stable large studios who can afford it. Higher costs for those breakout indie studios who are successful. And higher costs to reach a broader audience. Unity might suffer in time, but any too big to fail projects underway will have no choice but to adopt these terms or go into what is likely development hell for a bit while they try to port everything to another engine. That’s not very easy to do, so this will be a slow burn grind downward unless devs band together and force a change to the terms.
 
Pejo

Pejo

Member
XesqueVara said:
Bruuh Wtf is that CEO smoking?
Click to expand...

This is pure insanity. If this is legal, why doesn't Unity just build a warehouse of PCs, then write a script that constantly installs/uninstalls games from every pc all day every day 24/7? Free money!

*edit*

Hell you don't even need PCs, just spin up a million VMs on AWS/Azure and run the script. The VMs don't even have to be able to play the games.
 
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
jshackles said:
This would be good advice, if not for the fact that

a) this fee is being charged to devs retroactively for games that have already released and
b) this fee isn't "per sale" or even "per customer", it's "per install". If I buy a game from Steam that's $20 (where the dev makes $14 after Valve's cut), then proceed to install it on 70 devices of mine, now the dev owes that $14 from my sale to Unity and makes no profit.

Installing a $20 game 70 different times is definitely going to be on the extreme end of a normal use case, but the root of the problem is that each subsequent install will cost the dev money. If you buy something on Steam / PlayStation / Xbox / whatever, are you willing to pay an extra quarter to download the game you already paid for? Even a gumball machine will charge someone a quarter.
Click to expand...
Good points.

I didn't catch the retroactive part. I dont know how Unity could even enforce a retroactive fee for old games. I'm assuming the retroactive fee is for downloads going forward for all games, and not 20 cents per download even if the download was 10 years ago?

As for the 20 cent fee per download, that can be a problem. I dont know how they'd even catch that unless there's a mandatory online check (even if it's a SP game)?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Former Zynga COO Matthew Bromberg is the new CEO of Unity
News Business
4
580
jufonuk replied
  • Locked
If Playstation & co agree to pay the new runtime fee to Unity, will they pass the cost to the players?
2
53
3K
MAX PAYMENT replied
Unity: CEO letter to community & Details on New Unity Pricing Changes
News
25
3K
Kilau replied
Developers Announce they will abandon Unity Engine if company doesn't reverse price changes
Game Dev 2 3 4
190
18K
Stitch replied
Unity Claims PlayStation, Xbox & Nintendo Will Pay Its New Runtime Fee On Behalf Of Devs
News Business Game Dev 2 3 4
160
14K
YeulEmeralda replied
Top Bottom