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.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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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.
How does that even work if say I buy a game at $10 and then I uninstall and install 51 times?
You’ve entered into a brand new era of trolling game developers by directing costing them for the fun of it.
I can even automate it for pennies.
Spin up 100 digital ocean droplets with Terra form. Install steam, the game, open the game, let it crash. Kill the droplet and do it again.
For every $0.70 I spend, I could get ~2000 installs. Per hour. Costing some dev up to $400/h
They don't count reinstalls.
You can tell because they totally promise and definitely won't let you see how their system works because it's "proprietary".
That’s the cool part, it doesn’t.
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..
They carved out an exception for pirated copies
And they can tell.. how exactly?
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.
Now I'm intrigued about multiple installs on multiple virtual machines.
You're not the first to consider that possibility. It seems possible to grief a studio by repeatedly installing games in virtual machines and running up their Unity bill.
The question of "what about pirated games" has also come up. Are developers going to be charged per install of pirated games? Unity's answer to this has been an LTT brand "Trust me, bro."
Basically unless you're going to make a sellout game, it might cost you money to make a game.
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?
EA realised that it would be illegal and would get them sued. This guy either didn't ask the lawyers, or didn't listen to the lawyers.
A contract, is a contract, is a contract. You can't change it halfway through without getting confirmation from all parties, and obviously they haven't got that
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.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That goodwill has now been largely thrown out the window due to Unity's Tuesday announcement of a new fee structure that will start charging developers on a "per-install" basis after certain minimum thresholds are met.
The newly introduced Unity Runtime Fee—which will go into effect on January 1, 2024—will impose different per-install costs based on the company's different subscription tiers.
Outside of those countries, an "emerging markets rate" ranging from $0.005 (for Enterprise subscriptions) to $0.02 (for Unity Personal users) will apply after the minimum thresholds are met.
This is a major change from Unity's previous structure, which allowed developers making less than $100,000 per month to avoid fees altogether on the Personal tier.
Larger developers making $200,000 or more per month, meanwhile, paid only per-seat subscription fees for access to the latest, full-featured version of the Unity Editor under the Pro or Enterprise tiers.
"Gloomwood will definitely be my last Unity game, likely even if they roll back the changes," developer Dillon Rogers wrote on social media.
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