United Against Unity

[@Digedon]

As an indie dev who has spent over 4 years of learning Unity/working on a project I'm really passionate about, the past week has been more stressful than you can imagine.

[@sevroaubarca5209]

Sorry bro

[@robertkeaney9905]

i'm sorry. I use unreal 5. And although the learning curve on that can be steep. You'll be elbow deep in tutorials before you start to get a hand one things. That said, the tutorials for unreal 5 are really good. Alternatively, I also use Godot on my linux computers. Godot is a lot simpler. But it doesn't have a ton of tutorials yet. However, more and more people are making Godot tutorials. So in the next few years it should catch up to unreal in tutorial count. One pro of unreal is that it does have an asset store. While one Pro of Godot is that its 100% free so you don't have to worry about paying the Godot dev's part of your revenue. Instead, they completely survive off of donations. Making the switch over to a new engine is never easy. But I hope that you find a engine that works for you. And that a lot of your previous indie dev experience helps you excel with your new engine.

[@coffee_gaming]

It's sickening! I wonder if some plan can't be made people have to give a donation and receive a code the game is listed as free but requires the unique code to unlock all the features in game. I just play games so I have no idea how legal this would be? good luck!.

[@Digedon]

@@robertkeaney9905 yeah we've been testing out all sorts of options. Unreal has been pretty impressive so far

[@Valcuda]

I'd recommend moving over to a new game engine at this point, that unfortunately seems to be the best option now. Even as someone who mostly plays games, this absolutely sucks! Seeing games needing to restart development almost COMPLETELY! Just because Unity decided to be greedy.

[@devinwooley3575]

I can’t wait to see unity’s year end financial report. That’ll be a graph to look at.

[@minsin21]

Well, there will probably be something interesting this year, but next year is the most interesting one i think

[@JelaniWood]

Just like Wizards of the Coast with D&D earlier this year

[@Vastin]

If the Ironfold Ad blockade holds, it'll be quite grim. Next year's is going to be far, far worse as developers find opportunity to escape entirely.

[@jjpark98]

It's going to look like a stock market crash

[@-sleepy-]

pretty much about the same considering they make almost no money from engine licensing

[@t3tsuyaguy1]

Devs PLEASE don't let Unity pull this "door in face" technique on you. They knew everyone would blow up about this. The place they " walk it back" to is the policy they wanted all along. Don't give them an inch. You all need to leave them behind and let them crumble. Send a clear unified message to executives and investors alike. If you do this, you lose everything. Never use Unity again, no matter how hard they pivot.

[@qwolf1999]

While in principal, I agree with this, in practice it's easier said than done to take 3 years of development and just "move it" to another engine.

[@Dave102693]

The company will just become an ad business lol

[@Shadowninja1200]

@@qwolf1999 which is why a lot of developers are essentially dropping Unity for their next project. The one in too deep are just probably either going to cut content or change their pricing structure to cover the cost over time while planning to move to other engines that won't rug pull them. The fact that even their "clarifying" statement didn't actually address the problem of retroactive changes to previous engine versions speak volume about what they think the community actually have a problem with. The channel gamesfromscratch goes in a lot more detail especially since the wan show glossed over the fact that the Unity reps have reached out to devs to make a deal to drop the install fee if they move to Unity's ad platform which is extra scummy (and probably illegal in several countries).

[@Shadowninja1200]

@@Dave102693 It already is. Several devs have talked about being contacted by Unity reps to have the install fees waived if they use Unity's ad platform. Ads ruins everything as usual.

[@artaizen1613]

​@@qwolf1999and invest more, risking for more time , effort and money? as long as that pesky ceo still heading Unity this shit gonna happen more often than what people want it. ahhh the sunken cost fallacy now creeped to game devs not only gamer.

[@BlakeHelms]

Unity is losing money due to mismanagement and ill-advised acquisitions and they are asking their customers to pay for those mistakes. Obviously the execs and board need to go but it may be that Unity’s time is done. The company dies and the next competitor rises up. No company “deserves” to survive.

[@seeing-j7w]

yes; on the other hand, other issues different from the price of the installs and thresholds which have not been well-known at all in the last days: 1) “mandatory” to be connected to internet to work on Unity editor (independently that one is online most of the time). 2) unity plus is eliminated and most of the (indie) game developers pay that subscription due to getting rid of the splash unity screen, Unity (indirectly) obligates indie game developers to buy Unity pro paying $399 (which It´s ok) to not less than $2000. 3) one specific indie developer with one license or seat might pay fees for unity installation by each computer that she/he can own for example a desktop AND one laptop.

[@marccram6584]

It's a classic pump-n-dump from a 65 year old CEO who still thinks it's 2005.

[@TheAzureLance]

Yeah, that and maybe having 7700 employees? I mean... thats a whole lot of people for an engine, or any gaming company for that matter. Just take Unreal as a parameter, in comparison they have a measly 350 employees. So, yeah, no wonder they can't keep the machine working and make money. I am very sorry to any Unity employee, and i am sure they are all great people, but i think Unity may have overgrown a bit?

[@YoutubePizzer]

that being said, the situation we’re in is the situation we’re in and i don’t know if developer collateral damage is the best option here.

[@Elmithian]

​@@TheAzureLanceThey got ambitious, but this really stinks of share fraud. Try to inflate a company before selling your shares and then collapsing it

[@powerfist1340]

Unity: "Help, we're not making enough money, our budget needs balancing if we want to stay solvent!" The Budget: $200 Million Employee Pay: $20 Million R&D: $30 Million Company Acquisitions: $120 Million Executive Stock Options: $500 Million Unity: "Stock options budget is non-negotiable, please help."

[@LM-nb7rj]

They're literally extorting the entire industry to justify the stupidly high executive pay 😂😂😂

[@bradhaines3142]

watch the execs take a 5mil pay cut and act like theyre saving the company

[@imaginalex5850]

it's more about rug pulling under a competitor to avoid having to abide by normal rules then about unity sadly

[@complexity5545]

That happens when you go public stocks. Those Unity C-Suite idiots. Devs were just looking for a way out.

[@dr.v645]

As the head of a dev team myself, we have decided this week to stop all work in unity and migrate to unreal. This is due to the loss of trust more than any other single reason. This will not be a simple change for us and is costing us considerable time and work.

[@arieloq]

Why not gadot?

[@Freek314]

​@@arieloqGodot is good and will improve much faster with the amount of people this brings to it, but it's just not ready for serious 3D development yet.

[@3k6repairunit4]

@@Freek314 Not for mobile I admit but if you target desktop, Godot 4 got vulkan backend and it is glorious compared to OpenGL we used to use. Unless you target mobile phones Godot is more than ready for 3D games

[@dr.v645]

@@arieloq Short answer is 1) Official paid support is better with unreal. This is needed to save loss of time for projects in my experience. 2) Unreal has more capabilities (time needed / maturity of tools) with code tie in, so we can write code that is not part of the engine to do calculations and interface with hardware calls and devices for some cases where we need to. 3) Proven reliability in quality outcome (we can be sure the unreal engine can handle what we need it to while gadot is still, in my team's opinion, unproven for our requirements). That is just my team's deision, based on our experience at this time, we will be following various other options for consideration with future projects, as you never know what might be needed down the road.

[@nullx2368]

No offence but you might just have doomed your studio. You will swap back within weeks or days lol. You are repeating same mistake by trusting unreal or any other engine. Focus on your skills and team and make the fucking game whatever it takes. That's what you can control.

[@Evitrea]

As a Godot user I can confirmed there are more than ever users joining in the community Godot Actually launched a funding platform 2 hours before Unity announced the plan, the funding went skyrocket, hmmm I wonder why

[@st.altair4936]

The funding platform was already there no? I think they just announced a revamp to make it more efficient. Still, the dev fund has nearly doubled over this past week from this whole fiasco lol

[@newsciencestuff5540]

Yea Valve is funding them too or something

[@ssokolow]

​@@st.altair4936They announced an in-house replacement for their Patreon account so they could spend the money currently going to Patreon fees and unnecessary VAT withholding on developers instead.

[@duckonaroll1913]

@@st.altair4936they were previously using patreon but patreon takes a cut

[@justuseodysee7348]

​@@newsciencestuff5540It would be nice if Valve funded them, but I don't see this happening - Valve has their own engine to maintain and potentially to license

[@Ajv516]

Imagine how much more it would cost to get your car maintained if tool makers charged mechanics $0.25 every time they used a socket wrench.

[@Milsparro]

We're already there. Costs $60 to GM every time you do diagnostics on a Chevy.

[@ssokolow]

That is almost literally the argument Eben Moglen uses in his talks promoting open-source software, except he likens software license fees to license fees for specific mathematical equations. Imagine if, to use the pythagorean theorem, you had to first buy a license for it, and you got taught to use it in school under an "educational license" that doesn't apply once you graduate.

[@Idiomatick]

@@ssokolow The modern world is so built on free tech and math, if you charged $1c for each novel piece, this comment would probably cost a few thousand dollars. It would simply end the modern world. Software is built on a bunch of uneasy truces, ..... and open source people getting screwed. I mean, imagine how screwed we'd be if.... networking protocols came with a fee?

[@MrTVintro]

Don't give them ideas

[@GenjiPrime]

Or each time you power on the engine

[@robotredkitten817]

Thing is, the fact that unity seams to get some information from the player without even a form for player consent is a problem too. At the moment, we don't know what they collect.

[@thegreatdodo5092]

Exactly.

[@Darca1n]

They probably forget that the EU has laws on that, alongside several other things they're doing with this too.

[@robotredkitten817]

@@Darca1n I didn't even think about it. They will probably have troubles there. The way they said it, it seams like they have been doing it for a while.

[@Darca1n]

@@robotredkitten817 Oh boy, that'd just make things so much worse for unity, I can't wait to see the resulting trashfire from that.

[@pixels_per_minute]

I spent a solid 3 days stressing out over this. It's a massive breach in trust, and while I still have to use Unity for my game design classes, I'll be building any personal projects in another engine. Unity can go suck it, even if they walk this all back.

[@zahvy]

If unity has its way, every single video game is going to be a subscription with a battlepass on top of it.

[@captaincool6268]

omg 😥😥😨

[@EmperorSigismund]

A battlepass for the developers. They'll have to unlock new tools and bug fixes as they go along.

[@zahvy]

@@EmperorSigismund oh my god.

[@vi6ddarkking]

According to one of Unity's post they were expecting Microsoft to pay for the instals on Game Pass and for any provider of a similer service to do the same. The image in my mind When I read that. Was of Microsoft's legal team, The nintendo ninjas, Sony's legal department, Apple's' lawyers and basically legal representatives the rest of the gaming industry all glancing in the direction of the unity board and asking in a Darth Vader tone. "Do you feel in charge?"

[@owenyin3316]

Funny you’re mentioning Darth Vader because Disney’s lawyers might be involved too, cus Marvel Snap n iirc some of their other games also use unity…which would be the scariest tag team of lawyers ever assembled lmao

[@flamingscar5263]

lets not forget about Epic Games, Unitys biggest competition, who would have to pay the fees of any unity game they offer for free on EGS I can almost guarantee Epic smells blood in the court room, and Epic would glady take an easy time to hurt unity

[@pettyfan45]

Kinda think Unity might want to look at the history on Netscape before playing fuck around and find out with Microsoft...

[@juances]

Dunno, even if that was true... why wasn't that part of their initial announcement? It really feels like a PR move, the public jumped in on the indies side, but no one would really care if it's microsoft the one that has to pay. But all they are achieving is digging themselves a bigger hole lol.

[@ronsijm]

Microsoft should just charge Unity per install for the usage of C#, and uno-reverse this back onto them

[@TMichael66]

For Unreal, your first $1 million is always free, which easily makes it the cheapest option for most developers. No one forces you to get a custom license; the custom license is for devs that want to negotiate a better deal than the 5% royalty on your second million and beyond. This means you only pay back into the engine once you've become successful. And even then, you can lower the royalty with a custom license. Note that the royalty is waived completely if you choose to sell on the Epic store. Ex: If your game makes $2 million in revenue, without a custom license, you would pay 5% on the second million, which averages out to just 2.5% of your total revenue.

[@alienrenders]

And when sales dwindles afterwards, less than $10K in sales per quarter is exempt. I think sales are exempt on the UE store as well.

[@LuukDomhof]

Except if you were to use Unity, you'd be paying less in this case. Assuming you're selling your game for even as low as 5 dollars, you'd be saving 20k. The higher the price of your game , the higher your savings. Unity's model is far better for anything that isn't F2P games with poor monetization.

[@VJK102]

​@@LuukDomhofyou can't be speaking of the new model, are you?

[@zjanez2868]

​​@@LuukDomhofthat is if you trust them to not suddenly change their mind and start charging more, And im not very confident about their methods of tracking installs

[@TMichael66]

Let's break it down. First, we know that Unity is charging for installs, not sales. If a $5 game makes $2 million in profit, that means 400,000 people bought it. However, the install count will be higher than that, perhaps even double or more. So, we end up with 600,000 installs? Maybe 800,000 installs or more? At least Unity is looking to cap the cost at *2.5%. But wait! In order to minimize that cost per install, the team will have to get Pro ($2040 per year per seat) or Enterprise (more per seat) licenses. If we have a team of, say, 5 devs working on the game for, say, 2 years, that's $20,000+ in fees to Unity before the game even hits the market. There's more! In order to keep the install price reasonable, the team will have to retain those seats after release. Add another year at $10,000+. Hopefully the team can apply that cost to their next game in development. Maybe just one team member can pay for the license after release and save the studio some money. Double-dipping - paying while developing AND paying for installs after release - is not cool. In the vast majority of cases - games making up to $1 million - Unreal will always be cheaper because it's free. Games making slightly more than $1 million will also be cheaper. And developers selling on the Epic store will pay zero in royalties, so that's cheaper too. Only in the case of successful games a) not sold on the Epic Store and b) making millions in profit does Unity SOMETIMES cost less, depending on price point and install count. NOTE: Most developers aren't leaving Unity because of the money, so the above hardly matters. It's about lost trust.

[@Gazntyno]

Unity should start making games to generate income and to understand what features devs would actually want and how to implement them.

[@m96k3y7]

Why, Unreal already do a better job. oh wait, you can fully customize the entire UE engine... never mind, rest in piss Unity.

[@LuukDomhof]

@@m96k3y7 Unity is FAR more versatile compared to Unreal. While UE is very powerful, if you're developing a game like Marvel Snap, you won't think twice about using Unity.

[@m96k3y7]

Both can achieve same games, just depends who's making them, and how. The fact that one is a better choice for indie / 2d" games is bs, both can achieve the same in 2d, 3d, indie, triple A, what ever. It's just another engine. @@LuukDomhof

[@newdiary6978]

​​@@LuukDomhofcouldn't agree more but this whole drama against the CEO sucks. Bet, Unreal is happy right now and wants to embrace people who want to join the squad xD

[@RusticRonnie]

⁠@@LuukDomhofunreal is more versatile than unity. Its also cheaper. Unity just has more tutorials, it has many people making youtube tutorials which makes more people use it which then makes more tutorials. But its not better than unreal in any way… especially now. And godot has been slowly killing for a few years now

[@squiddler7731]

Also worth noting the reason why unreal and unity are free to use: it's because when it comes to game development, it's impossible for anyone to just dominate the market like Photoshop or Maya can. A company like unity or epic games would love to charge everyone to use their engine if they could, but it doesn't work because game devs can make their own engines. It's one of the only instances where the people using the software are the same people that can and will write that software themselves if they have the time and skill (whereas there's little overlap between drawing and software development, and that lack of options allows photoshop to charge much more). This means that instead of targeting those skilled game developers who would otherwise pay for something they know they'll use, game engines are better served targeting unskilled developers who maybe can't make games right now, but will learn if the opportunity is there. If they had to pay just for the chance to try an engine they don't even know how to use yet, then no one would overcome that hurdle, but by lowering the bar of entry, they're allowed to learn at their own pace. Epic games wants people to learn to make games on their engine because that means they can profit if those people ever succeed. They don't mind letting everyone else use the engine for free because if they don't succeed with a free game engine, they were never going to pay for it in the first place.

[@sunbleachedangel]

Which is.. a very good and fair model, actually, good job EG

[@RusticRonnie]

Even Photoshop and Maya are losing their marketshare to new software Less so photoshop. But maya is getting fucked by blender, its just taking industry by industry and that’s mostly because maya never gets updates

[@PandaXpress668]

Epic games should take this opportunity to make a tool to convert unity projects to unreal engine in anticipation for a mass migration over

[@_sukuratchi]

Someone actually already made a plugin called the UTU tool

[@psalmy26]

This is an inconceivably impossible task. At least until superintelligent coding ai. Would be cool though.

[@HaloWolf102]

I'm guessing people will go with Godot instead of Unreal Engine.

[@peterino2]

Not that impossible in terms of assets, this already exists. Scripts and code will have to be redone.

[@intrepidneon]

Yeah, the appeal of Unity is that its a lightweight engine. Unreal is a bit too heavy to be indie-dev friendly.@@HaloWolf102

[@benancio]

Godot is amazing, is almost required to do some scripting (in my experience) but their scripting language is super easy and really powerful

[@touma-san91]

And its open source released under MIT license

[@kanbekan]

The best part is you don't have to pay Godot 👍 But you can donate to their development fund if you want

[@jerbid_]

I love Godot, I'm definitely sticking with it - but apparently there's discussion on r/Godot that its physics engine API is super clunky and/or slow, so Unity devs will have to re-learn most of that area and find ways to optimize it. That being said, GDScript is super well-integrated into the engine and, personally, I've never been a Unity developer so that doesn't bother me lmao

[@vladimirsantos2318]

For everyone that doesn’t know, Unity will also be requiring internet connection to run their engine and my speculation why is because they want to monitor how often we run their engine and then maybe later on charge us too every time we run Unity Engine after a certain runtime threshold

[@gljames24]

No, it's so they make sure you see ads like mobile games.

[@John.S92]

"Contact us for figures" usually just means "we'll try push garbage on you, and up-sale you some other useless crap you probably don't need"

[@dozilla77]

They're walking it back but to what extent who knows. Their reputation is done even if it's walked back 100%. Trust is out the window.

[@synthiandrakon]

I saw something on twitter where a bunch of devs were like "thank god pc gamers buy games on steam and never actually instally them"

[@kitsunekaze93]

how dare you call me out like that!

[@rot_studios]

lmao yeah guilty XD

[@krishnarai4854]

that made me laught cause i have few games i havent installed

[@superbnns]

This reeks of "here's an obscenely bad new policy, well apologize in a week and come out with a less bad policy thatvwas actually our original plan that wouldbt have gone over well but it looks comparatively better"

[@sunbleachedangel]

Except it's way too late and everyone's already gone

[@targetbuddy5]

WotC called, they want their contract rug-pulling strategy back

[@hasyidanparamananda]

@@sunbleachedangel Actually already too late, everyone already gone for their next project.

[@valestivale4711]

The reason they did this is because the new ceo was the ex ceo of EA games. This was a man too greedy for EA!! The sane guy who wanted to charge players a dollar to reload..

[@threeuniquefingers]

the heck for real?!

[@s0sDarkAngels0s]

Yep. And he called indies who don't use microtransaction in their game "fucking idiot".

[@sunbleachedangel]

The guy who was in charge of EA when they were rated the worst company of the year TWICE IN A ROW

[@zaywolfe7245]

It’s been reported that hackers have already created a script to reinstall games with hardware spoofing to rack up install fees 😂

[@tsalVlog]

@@Belliger1991 people still mistakenly believe that "hackers" == "people who break into computers" or "people who hijack software". I just wish people would read a f--ing dictionary now and then. Yes a "hacker" can do those things, but those people are not "hackers" automatically. Please stop the conflation.

[@BillyBraga]

Reinstalls are not charged

[@tsalVlog]

@@BillyBraga yeah.. they said that after everyone complained about it. And they also said YOU, the developer, are responsible for coming to THEM to say the installs are not accurate. Of course they're the last authority on what is or isn't an installation.

[@JordanUpload]

​@BillyBraga he said it hardware spoofs? Therefore it believes its a new install everytime

[@BillyBraga]

@@JordanUpload Oh, right.

[@ALC570]

Spotify just silently upped the price of premium by about 25% without even mentioning it to customers. I found out when my bill was higher. This shouldn’t be legal. I agreed to pay a price per month, not a price per month that is subject to change randomly at the whim of the Spotify corporation.

[@roqeyt3566]

My ISP also upped pricing more than an inflation adjustment, within a 2 year fixed contract. Stuff like this somehow flies under the radar but it should definitely be illegal.

[@Meta0Riot]

They been sending me e-mails about it for weeks m8. You sure you just didn't miss the mail?

[@ALC570]

@@Meta0Riot if I did it’d only be because they got mistagged as junk, and since none of the other Spotify emails do that (they go to inbox) I don’t know whether to blame gmail or Spotify atp. I’m just mad the price went up tbf

[@sunbleachedangel]

I can guarantee you it's somewhere in the User Agreement

[@Gilmaril]

The gun reload thing is pretty important, because it tells that this guy seeks for opportunities to get you invented, so he can use the sunk cost effect to pull your money out of your pocket. This thing is pretty close to blackmailing.

[@SlavTiger]

classic case of the rapist mentality facing modern gaming.

[@cocoxcocoa]

I think the whole argument about the Netflix/ KZbin subscriptions is different because its more like you are purchasing a product every month. You pay the 10$ and you get access to everything for a month. The movies, TV shows, and Videos are never yours, you just get to look at them. If they up it to $12 and that's too much for you then you don't have to pay. Its much closer to a singular transaction. Where as with the Unity situation, they are forcing devs to pay extra for a product they 100% own already. Its more like if you bought a Blue Ray player. You can buy a Blue ray player when its $100, then they could up the price to $150 to buy a new one after you bought it, and that's fine, there's nothing fishy going on there. But if that Blue ray player suddenly got a firmware update that you couldn't stop that changed it so you had to pay an extra $0.20 every time you insert a new disk, THEN that would be super fishy and almost certainly 100% illegal. Im pretty sure printer companies have tried that bull shit where 3rd party ink carts suddenly weren't accepted because of a firmware update, and they were instantly shut down in court for pulling that off.

[@miciso666]

Hp 😅

[@wtfdinges]

You're absolutely right, but unfortunately it is something that probably only applies to consumer protection law. Commercial deals don't enjoy the same level of protection and changes in the contract/TOS are usually allowed (but frowned upon).

[@FutureKLX300SMowner]

Stupidest decision made by a tech company this month I think

[@flamingscar5263]

the fact that you ended that with "I think" is so funny because it leaves to door open to another tech company being even dumber

[@tsquitz]

@@flamingscar5263 I mean, there's still some time left in the month

[@tomasgrisinas397]

I wouldn't disregard Elon Musks ability to absolutely dwarf this

[@FutureKLX300SMowner]

@@flamingscar5263 exactly my thinking lmao

[@ameries147]

@@flamingscar5263 theres microsoft with xbox possibly there

[@oldgamer856]

Unity created an amazing free advertisement for other Game Engines

[@ivoryowl]

How would they know whether a copy is legit, fraudulent or part of a charity bundle? How would they keep track of (and distinguish) fresh installs, malicious re-installs and regular ones? When you consider Unity merged with a former malware distributer (IronSource) it kind of raises some flags on the possibility of getting spyware ingrained into the software itself, which then collects data and pings it to the company for processing... So very shady.

[@s0sDarkAngels0s]

They don't and it will be illegal if they do because they are 3rd party and secretly collect data from end user.

[@miciso666]

Im sure they could use achieve tracking sites like exophase

[@tsalVlog]

@@s0sDarkAngels0s they already secretly collect data from the end user in the latest builds.

[@chrissolace]

I agree as well. I can see why they are imposing costs, since they’re losing money. But why not copy Unreal’s model? Why retroactively charge per install instead of charge going forward? Why hurt smaller devs more than bigger devs (especially when bigger devs make more money)?

[@mariusirgens5555]

I think it would be amazing if all indie game developers would rally around a free, open-source alternative, such as Godot, and make sure it became a prominent engine alternative. They could work together on a feture-set that rivals the best engines out there.

[@RusticRonnie]

Not all indie developers are engine developers, they are different skills. Also what would be best is 2 or 3 more focused open source engines.

[@RubelliteFae]

For context, John Riccitiello was COO of EA during the whole "EA employee's spouse Livejournal post" about them purposely overworking employees. (mid 00s) He then became CEO and was later let go for tanking their profitability. (early 2010s) I really wish we followed the Japanese model of company boards.

[@u9vata]

Godot is not only "free", but open source - which should be pointed out, because if it would be free offering from a company this could also happen, but its like Blender: bunch of people adding to its code and code is always there for your to keep and this can never happen - so its not just the price, but trust. Also same with unreal with trust because they seem to maybe more pricey but they have stable business model and sanity. Trust means more than just the pricing ;-)

[@GeneralNickles]

I think it would be better for them to do "per purchase" model, rather than "per install". Unity gets some small percentage of each purchase made for/in any game that uses the unity engine. Something like 0.005% would net them 10 cents from every $20 spent. Its a low enough percentage that most devs could take it and not notice the difference, but across the massive number of transactions happening for the massive number of games that use unity, its a huge amount of money going in unity's pocket.

[@sbdnsngdsnsns31312]

10 cents is 1/200th of $20, so 0.5%. 0.005% would be 0.1 cents.

[@GeneralNickles]

@@sbdnsngdsnsns31312 right. I was looking at the calculation wrong. I didn't move the decimal.

[@rlhugh]

@@GeneralNickles its possible to edit youtube comments by the way :)

[@sudamahebert6978]

It doesn't cover for game with ad revenue. Wich is their goal. The also offered to give a 80-100% discount if game Dev would utilize their ad platform

[@racvets1]

So, if you use Unreal Engine, they collect a 5% royalty fee. Using Steam, Android, Apple, Sony, and Microsoft charge 30%. Once you have a cost of $5, 20c is not much (4%). And you have to have 1mil installs before they starts charging. I feel this really change only effects mobile games and free to play genre. Once you get to a Steam level game, the engine license isn’t that much.

[@wandre_canada]

Funny Linus didn't ask the first most obvious question. "How can they even track installs of software?" Protip: They can't

[@zemagaia]

Unity games have a sort of API bundled in that tracks that, or so they told everyone.

[@theartifactmythos7465]

they cant track it, legally...

[@ConnorHammond]

So Unity is saying this without realising they can't enact it? This whole conversation is for nothing? It's odd that you're the only comment noting this, which would undo all of our concerns.

[@apollolux]

You honestly think that a tool that forces users to bundle the Unity base framework into every project they make won't include tracking software of some kind if it hasn't already? How ignorant are you?

[@apollolux]

@@ConnorHammond It's the only comment noting this because it's an ignorant comment that doesn't realize Unity already forces bundling of the Unity base framework into every project made with the tool. If there wasn't tracking software in it already there could easily be some put in that requires an internet connection even as a baby DRM.

[@lilrockstar77]

I’m an indie dev (develop in my free time). I currently pay for my engine. I’m almost willing to bet if they would have just started charging a yearly fee to use it, that would have went better than this bull.

[@Saturn2888]

Thanks to Luke for the $1/reload clarification. I knew that was overblown.

[@jogo7947]

Overblown?

[@Saturn2888]

@@jogo7947 it was taken out of context. Even Luke's reading wasn't in full context. I could talk about the shadiest way to get money on a game, but if you clipped that one piece, it wouldn't explain that I'm saying "this is how far you could go". I don't think Unity is making reasonable decisions right now nor do I think their execs understand the market, but that comment about $1/reload was way outta context.

[@keenoogodlike]

John Riccitiello want to charge players for each reloading in BattleField. What do you expect promoting him to CEO, Unity?

[@racistpixel1017]

Good idea how unity could make money. 1. Charge everyone 4% from their profits when they hit 10k $ in sales. 2. Make paid tools and plugins, or pro/fully unlocked versions from existing ones for unity free license users, for example free lightmaper baker with locked features for free users, and fully unlocked lighmapper for paid users. 2. New paid shaders, same as standart, better optimised, more features... You can make game with pro/paid tools, but if you export game you see water mark so you cant release game with it until you either pay for tools you use or pay for unity it self

[@MaximumSpice]

Been a solo unity game dev since 2018, so sad seeing this happen. Even if some people stay on Unity but so many devs and educational unity youtubers are leaving regardless what is happening

[@salbill4484]

One of the worst parts of this is the people who spent large chunks of their lives learning Unity, become excellent at it and suddenly the company makes it so that their job/creation prospects drop to almost 0. Companies are simply going to stop using Unity which literally is going to kill the company. Greed is amazing. Unity btw made about 2 billion dollars in the last year. *2 billion*

[@JS-bk4pn]

They actually have been losing money.

[@sycration]

@@JS-bk4pn they made 2 bil and spend more on stupid companies for 10x their worth

[@ZaLewdWarudo]

​@@JS-bk4pnno, they haven't. Their share holders aren't making as much year on year as the last year. That's not "lost" money, that's simply living in a reality of finite resources lmao. Now after this cluster fuck they will indeed lose an atrocious amount of money. Of their own fault.

[@Gnidel]

Thankfully their experience is partially transferable to other engines.

[@lilrockstar77]

I have someone who will rename nameless that says they are doing this on purpose to hurt the brand…. Talk to a unity employee if you can find one Linus. It will mean more coming from you.

[@JordanCharters]

One day Linus will let Luke speak a full sentance without interrupting him.

[@chrisraka.k.r9565]

Ikr, so annoying. Just let the man talk

[@treescompany3462]

I can't believe Linus of all people referenced Chris Rock's bullet control joke 😂

[@torinnbalasar6774]

The unilateral changes in contracts is relatable. We switched ISPs a few years ago when they wanted to charge more for the same service, and there was another provider offering the same higher price with better service, so we jumped ship. On the other hand, our phone provider hasn't changed our plan even though it's unavailable anymore; though if we go over our data limit we'll automatically switch to a higher plan, and won't be able to go back to the old significantly cheaper one.

[@SlavTiger]

i miss when anyone with a moderate business budget could host their own isp, used to be significantly more common during the dial up age when anybody could rent a phone service satellite to establish uplink then host their own isp domain with the rented base station equipment. Now only a handful of providers keep an iron grip on the modern equipment and nobody hosts their own isp domain, everyone is either one of the big names, or a subsidiary of such nowadays.

[@jimmy5846]

What should Unity do to stop bleeding money? - Lower team sizes - Create commercial games using Unity

[@newdiary6978]

They got 7700+ employees while unreal only has 300+ something working in the engine. The heck 😂

[@newdiary6978]

They actually started making games but it was canceled and all the employees working on that project. were fired xD

[@Hietakissa]

The thing is people get mad when they lay off people, the same thing happened 4 months ago when they laid off 600 people (8%).

[@petersmythe6462]

Someone must've had an argument about whether piracy is theft, and the solution was to steal from the developers every time someone pirates their game.

[@kaleckton]

It now making me wonder if unity software is doing extra stuff in the background on phones and computers that allow them to know if a install is legit or not as they have hinted without telling anyone how they are doing it which making me wonder if the reason why they are not telling people how is because they are breaking the law and doing stuff they shouldn't be doing. Would look and see what it is doing and check the network bandwidth while looking but I'm too busy to really look.

[@generic6099]

you can never trust proprietary software ever. that should just be a given

[@sunbleachedangel]

No

[@N-MCMXCIX]

Here's how to properly increase revenue: Raise the fees for the big studios, and tell the investors to be patient and wait for Nintendo to announce the next system. Stock values will go through the roof when Nintendo makes the announcement, and taxing the big studios will provide more dough from those who can afford it. _Also, fire half the executives!_

[@EmilOsena]

Isn't Unreal also branching out from other fields as well? Like they have been advertising their engine to the movie industry for years now, right? As for the payment model for Solidworks, I bet they are able to enforce it thru background checks (They request a lot of business info when setting up this kind of things) with the mix of the software sending data back to them.

[@bumpsy]

I believe either Godot or Unreal also announced the introduction of better C# support in their engine , to make it easier for Unity-developers to migrate their skills. I believe it was Godot but I could be wrong

[@synthiandrakon]

I don't think you can fix this ultimately. They're a public company and that means they have to make as much money as possible right now and the long-term value of the business doesn't matter at all. At the end of the day unity is going to do anything they can to increase revenue. They know what they're doing they've made their intentions clear. Developers long term just need to do whatever they can to get away because this is only the start the money is gonna come from somewhere. You can't make a game on an engine that you can't trust not to fuck you over heck I don't even know if I can trust unity as a company will exist in 5 years after this. I mean if they've lost a billion dollars, unity is a bloated ass company with like 7k employees it's just not sustainable

[@ZaLewdWarudo]

So the problem is capitalism.

[@AzraelAlpha]

​@@ZaLewdWarudocorporatism

[@synthiandrakon]

@@ZaLewdWarudo Eh broadly yes, but more specifically its a problem with the incentive structure of public buisnesses. As a publically traded company unity is incenitivised and in many cases legally obligated to pursue short term growth over all else. The long tern viability of a publically traded company does not matter, as long as they can increse share prices it does not matter if the company is, sustainable, profitable or producing a good product. Unity is not a company that makes a game engine it is a company that produces a share value primarily.

[@SlavTiger]

also when the entire budget goes into exec payroll obviously the business is never going to improve, no reinvestment means no growth means eventual death. they did nothing to add to the table in years, have performance issues out the ass in their software and bugs galore, and wonder why they are no longer making money, then immediately bite the hand that feeds and call foul when naturally the hand leaves. This is what ea did to every single game company they ruined. Grab something popular, drain all the lifeblood, file bankruptcy when all good will is lost, then find a new host. It's the parasitoid's business model: find a host to slowly kill for resources, then finish the job and move on at first sign of a fresh host. Like a horsehair worm that slowly eats a cricket then compels it to jump in the nearest stream so it can lay eggs in the drinking water of other crickets when this one drowns.

[@RW-ij1ci]

As a solo developer who uses Unity, while I think the practice of changing an agreement like this the way they did is really shit.... if I sold $200K worth of any game I make on top of also 200k downloads... I feel like that would be high class problems for me at that point. The caveat for me is I'm only targeting Steam releases and 200k on steam for a solo dev is a smash hit. But I do feel like Unity could have made a much better choice for getting more revenue, specially like just talking to us solo/indie devs.

[@tsalVlog]

You sell 200,000 copies of your game at 5 each. After the Steam tax, you have 700,000 USD - assuming a best case. Then you get the bill from Unity for 1.5 million installs, you owe them 3 million USD. again, assuming a best case. that's not a problem -- if you're not paying yourself / your developers / your artists / your other employee(s), if any -- and you alread have a lot of money.

[@1InVader1]

I never really understood why people learned Unity in the first place instead of Unreal. Every UT game had the UT Editor and then later in UE3's lifecycle UDK came around. Before UDK, yeah ok, maybe before the full might of UE was wildly available and easy to learn, it made sense to pick up Unity. But after it?! With UE4 the licensing changed too, so you could mess around with the engine until you actually start selling your name, so now Unity's hardly even cheaper than UE. Godot was just a uni student project at the time but now it's a fully fledged, completely free and open source game engine, also a no brainer choice over Unity.

[@stefanmadsen5605]

as a former game dev - worked with ue2 and 3 - you could get a looooong way with udk, but the moment you started needing to do things that didn't fit into the udk 'way' you were fairly quickly lost and would have to aquire source licensing so you could recompile the engine with whatever lower level source was needed for your project. UE4 has changed that somewhat - you can go alot deeper. with unity, you basically had free access to do whatever, tho - (still lower level linking and mixed mode assemblies could be a pain) - but there were workarounds. unitys editor was basically the same as udk's editor, they had different ways of doing things, different features and plugins available. but essentially they did the same thing. it all depends on what type of game you were building. today if i were to go back into game dev, i would look at the project - what was the scope of it, whats the main priorities and what skillsets do i and the team have, and then it would basically be between godot and ue4. unity is not even on the table with this bullshit.

[@1InVader1]

@@stefanmadsen5605 Yet there was such a wide range of games made on UE3 - anything from Mass Effect trilogy, fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Guilty Gear, XCOM games, even MMORPGs like Lost Ark that got a DX11 upgrade. I think about the only type of game I haven't seen on UE3 is RTS, but that has probably more to do with the genre being dead in general. Beyond that, there was of course the yearly Make Something Unreal contest to help people out with further development. I'm sure the winners had no problem getting a good deal on the source license.

[@yumri4]

To Luke's take on Unreal's pricing model for professionals and enterprise it is almost always deals made behind closed doors with a NDA included so other companies cannot point at that deal and say "you gave that company a deal at X price with Y discount so I want the same for my company"

[@NeoShameMan]

Ricci: "I'm sorry you got me red handed, sorry if i confuse you when my mask dropped, please continue acting as if my mask never drop"😂

[@Angry-Lynx]

Yeah gotta love typical corpo non- apology apology.... "We're sorry u feel l that way" 😂😂 jeez how I hate that corporate jargon

[@Ditlemon]

I've used some softwares with trial versions before, if you are done with the trial and you uninstall and install the software knows that you already got a trial and doesn't give it to you again, but after I reformatted my PC, I was given a fresh trial again.

[@hardy83]

CEO: Oh nooooo I destroyed another company... better take my multi-million exit package and go to another company. So sad.

[@mowtow90]

Its the same thing Oracle did with Java. What happaned - it pretty much killed Java. Every single OEM used to use Java for their managment tools for enterprise equipment and worked perfectly. Now the clients have to bring their own Java licences but when they buy something ,they expect to get the full package , so we had to switch to horrable onboard Webservers and REST API.... Thanks Oracle, I hope you got the money expected...

[@Seventyy]

This is why open source projects are king. Godot is free and open source

[@geoffreyhendrikx]

Thank you for paying attention to this. My team and I have been working on our new game for 2 years and have agreed something completely different in the ToS in that time.

[@jprsfragoso]

Nintendo: "We're in financial trouble". CEO: "It's my responsibility. I'm taking a 75% cut on my paycheck until this situation is resolved". Unity: "We're in financial trouble". CEO: "Got it, already sold stock. Now let's speed up the destruction, to file for bankruptcy, so I'm hired as CEO of another company"

[@agoosecalledxaro6679]

This was a big mistake. They should have just increased their base pricing and said that they need to make money. No one would be talking about Unity if they did that.

[@ShxpxRok]

they did insider trading too all the head ceos unloaded their stocks before the announcement went out, the fact that they get away with it after screwing so many people is just so demotivating.

[@Gray_Falcon]

The insider trading that occurred shortly before this announcement just further proves they knew what effect this was going to have when they announced this. Multiple members of the board including the CEO sold stock because they knew they where going to be unpopular by making this choice.

[@TrueSucrose]

im gonna go out on a limb and say why cant i make hundreds of vms to slowly bankrupt a company

[@-TheFacelessGamer-]

I think adobe allows you to buy the whole suit for like $20 or $30 if your in school. I had everything from Photoshop and Illustrator, to Premier Pro just for about $20. This was at least 4 years ago. They might not have it anymore or the prices changed, but that was a good deal.

[@Uninspirational]

Another familiar story where a company leadership makes bad decisions due to greed then back tracks and makes changes only after being called out by the community. Oh wait.

[@tsalVlog]

there's a grand canyon size of a difference between the two things you're comparing, but your lack of depth-in-thinking is noted.

[@ccoder4953]

You think those license fees are expensive? Try pricing Cadence's IC design tools. They don't list the numbers (one of these contact us type things), but rumors are that the negotiated rates are like 6 figures per license.

[@rlhugh]

If you're going to tape out an IC, you're looking at not much less than a billion dollars, at 3nm or so. And it's a pretty niche market.

[@ccoder4953]

@@rlhugh Depends on the node. Yeah, 3nm is crazy expensive. But there's lots of other nodes in use. Believe it or not, stuff like 180nm and 250nm and even larger is quite common for analog and power products. Even TSMC offers processes at those sorts of nodes. That's actually about state of the art for high power monolithic DC-DC converters. Turns out that ultra fine geometry isn't really all that helpful for big, high power, high voltage power transistors. And old school analog is still very much a thing. Stuff like even recently released op-amps are often on some old BiCMOS process or even a bipolar process. Like the reference in the world best multimeter (the Keysight 3458A) is the LTZ1000. That's like on an ancient 5um bipolar process or something like that. And I can tell you from experience those tapeouts are definitely nowhere near a billion dollars. Not sure what masks are on these old nodes, but something like a few tens of thousands is my understanding. And far, far less verification than at 22nm and below nodes. Yeah, sort of a niche market, it's quite true. But it's also basically a requirement if you want to do ANY IC design - all the PDKs (process development kits) assume you have Cadence IC tools, no matter if it's like 600nm or 3nm. At the really fine geometries, it's even more because of the extra verification tools you need. It's effectively a monopoly. There's only a handful of ways where you can get around Cadence and they're very limited.

[@The_Viktor_Reznov]

Ah yes, Unity's CEO: John Unity.

[@zimriel]

Junity :^) i see what you did

[@void2258]

When i was i grad school, we switched from solidworks to Pro-Engineer/Creo (they changed later) because the terms solidworks wanted were so insane and expensive we couldn't keep using it.

[@syncrossus]

Microsoft recently unilaterally changed the terms for playing Minecraft by requiring the use of a Microsoft account. Much less of a deal, but as someone who finally managed to remove Microsoft from my life entirely, I was PISSED. I don't engage with companies that change terms for products I've purchased. F Microsoft, F Netflix, F Unity.

[@downundarob]

Have you heard about the 'Invalid Traffic Bug' that seems to be impacting smaller channels costing them around 90% of income.

[@DOGbackwardz]

Game Engines are the weirdest thing to me. There is no industry push to standardization. It doesn't make any sense, since if you created a non-profit standard you could massively reduce onboarding time as you systematically fire people once the launch push is over.

[@Broodjemetbeleg]

Not really though, do you honestly think for example rockstar games and naughty dog would share their engine secret?

[@Shadowninja1200]

The problem is that no one engine is the best for every genre as we have saw with EA where they tried to use Frostbite for all their games (it's very clearly built for shooters since it was Dice's in-house engine). Unreal is really good for 3d games for example but kind of eh for 2d games from my understanding. Unity apparently is decent at a bunch of different things, but not the best at anything. It really depend what you're wanting to do and that's not even getting into all the middlewares that interface with game engines.

[@ZaLewdWarudo]

Standardization isn't necessary in an industry of innovation.

[@DOGbackwardz]

@@ZaLewdWarudo Opposite, especially in an industry of innovation. Innovation can be leapfrogged. Think for a single second. You have games launching today without features that were common 20 years ago. Game Development is one of the sole industries where they've failed to build on top of the past and that is due to the lack of standardization.

[@jonasfermefors]

I have had a provider change a monthly fee and still charging me many times but never retroactively.

[@bluesrike]

I hardly ever watch WAN show so I can't wait to hear Linus' bad take on this.

[@CorndogCrusader]

Nah, his take is pretty good. Basically "Unity bad", which is the correct take.

[@SumDoodSumWhere]

Someone may have already said this in the comments, but just know "we hear you" was probably a planned business strategy from the beginning.

[@SumDoodSumWhere]

Let's say I'm a youtuber, and I say " from now on, I expect 10 dollars per view and won't make content til it happens " garbage take everyone hates. " we hear you, ya know what, I'll just make it a buck per view" just don't forget you watched this hypothetical KZbinr for free beforehand, but they are now making more money and look good.

[@bocimino463]

Unity just had their Bud Light moment

[@davidwiley4953]

Except Bud didn't do anything wrong.

[@bocimino463]

@@davidwiley4953 someone should tell their sales figures

[@MinnesotaCouchpotato]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading somewhere that the current CEO of Unity was a former CEO of Electronic Arts.

[@squiddler7731]

Supposedly, the only reason Unity decided to go with this insane per-install fee instead of a revenue share like unreal engine is because they don't trust game developers to accurately report their earnings. Which is hilarious when you consider that their solution required us to instead trust them with something _they have admitted that they don't even know how to do._ Like that's the entire reason they initially said that reinstalls would count, because they can't distinguish between the two. If they were, that could potentially be an invasion of privacy where installing any game made in the unity engine sends data about the machine back to unity. It's extremely hard if not outright impossible for them to accurately count installs without breaching privacy, and they're fully aware that they haven't figured it out yet.

[@Ferodra]

Unity actually forgot that the internet never forgets anything.

[@Iisakki3000]

Fusion 360 is free for personal use. I use it all the time for 3D modeling and it works really well. Now that I'm familiar with it, I'm way more likely to become a paying customer, if I ever decide to use it professionally. Giving this kind of tool for hobbyists for free seems like the way to go, I don't understand why more companies don't do it. The more people learn to use your product, the more potential paying customers you get. I know plenty of people who now pay for Adobe creative cloud, but I don't know anyone who didn't pirate Photoshop/premiere at first, when they learned to use it.

[@AequitasZA]

As to the 'what do they do' question that Linus keeps posing. The *reason* they don't make any money is because after going public, they got tons of investment, and made a bunch of incredibly expensive acquisitions with that money. They could always sell off those acquisitions, and go back to their core business model of ... you know ... making a game engine. Here are just a few of their recent acquisitions: - ironSource, a monetization and marketing platform for mobile games, for $4.4 billion in July 2022. - Ziva Dynamics, a software company that creates realistic character animation, for an undisclosed amount in January 2022. - Weta Digital, a visual effects company that has worked on films like Avatar and The Lord of the Rings, for $1.6 billion in December 2021. - Parsec, a game-streaming platform that enables remote collaboration and gaming, for $320 million in August 2021.

[@nikkfrostt]

Big publicity win for Epic and Unreal engine. They did need some help with their bad image due to the controversy over exclusivity. However the way they handle profits with developers and fees for the engine, its actually quite amazing. Sure the indie platforms will get a ton of traffic, but Unreal is a great option as well.

[@WeirdDuck781]

Thank you for the youtube Ad at the end. Also im taking a shot every time Linus interrupts him

[@tutacat]

Most Windows computers actually have dedicated code in the EFI firmware to provide a Windows license code to the OS. And they probably still do the build fingerprinting on top, even when it's linked to your Microsoft account.

[@Arcansel]

As someone who just finished unity course recently, i already got refused to work in 2 diferent places because me just knowing how to use Unity, companies dont want Unity anymore and it is understandable but now i have to spend 1 more year learning another engine and i am unemployed for 2 years at this moment, going for 3rd year i guess, while that i still dont earn any money + the money i lost paying for the Unity course, thanks Unity.

[@Angry-Lynx]

There's extreme competition for unity dev jobs, and it's very ungrateful industry. U didn't get job because there was 300 other applicants for that job, not because u know 'only' unity. Also just because I did some course doesn't mean u 'know' engine, just like u can't call urself driver after getting driving license. Decade in this career already and it's not getting easier that's for sure. Pay remains more less the same despite insane inflation in last few years

[@Arcansel]

@@Angry-Lynx Having 300 or even millions of Unity developers looking for job doesnt matter, it matters if they are skilled enough or if the company is looking for something specific in them that they need, which if it was the case nobody told me what it was, and because they did not say the reason as to why i did not get chosen nobody can for sure say the real reason why i didnt get chosen (Other than themselves), it is just too fishy that when i got interviewed, Unity had already announced their "deplorable update" AND in the day of the interview my interviewer interrupted my speech and asked me "But you work in Unity right?", i remember being temporarily confused because i had already sent all the documents and portefolio and even answered some questionaire to give them as much info about me as possible without the interview. Naturally i had already given him that info, so yes it is fishy that he only emphasized that question and not the others as if it was the most important question. But no matter, the same way companies dont have to justify themselves, even though they are passively making matters worse because now i dont know for sure where exactly i was wrong if i was wrong at all, besides knowing only Unity and C#. It is in the same way that i will cook a small game good enough to make a little money just for myself without having to be attached to any company, it doesnt need to be super good, there are too many small and weird games out there and they make money soo... And i am aware that it doesnt mean i know engine, the problem here is that the company where i finished my course said that when i finished my course i would have a guaranteed job or at least trying out for work, so yea obviously anyone would get a "little annoyed" when realizing that it is not the case, company made it seem too easy, there are already people filling forms criticizing the company conduit about similar or other cases as well so i am not alone in this. I just finished my course and i was to work for free for 3 months straight to gain more experience, that is what i was doing. Naturally if there are only companies that want experienced people then yea that is fucked up, because the only way someone can get experience would be to train on their own, even game jams are not to be trusted because people just rig the classification, especially in small game jams. Now i will learn Unreal Engine and learn C++ and thus increase my knowledge and skill even further than just knowing Unity and be more future proof due to how untrustworthy Unity is.

[@stefanmadsen5605]

its basically greed and/or insanity - the moment unity went through with their IPO the writing was on the wall.

[@RainingArtillery]

I think the problem is that per install pricing is just far too prone to abuse, opaque and basically a license for them to charge whatever they'd like. I think there would be significantly less uproar if they just charged flat royalties for the high rollers / past certain revenue.

[@paulbarnett227]

As for free option, there's Davinci Resolve, Adobe do not do that for Premier.

[@Konksling123]

The way Unreal does it seems to work well. You pay a % based on income, if you make less money, you pay less. if you make more, you pay more.

[@tafellappen8551]

Luke saying that the unreal learning materials are good gave me Emotions i cannot describe. I always forget how far off the beaten path i go in this monstrosity of an engine. Most of the plugin documentation is flat out false, at least when i needed it. Marked as current when it very clearly was not. The hours it cost me still haunt me

[@seankkg]

I don't understand how they're intending to track these installs without violating privacy you probably didn't agree to while installing that game.

[@BobSentell]

Maybe that's what we need. Legislation that requires a single-pay SKU for any software that doesn't require active internet connection for its base operation with feature support for at least three years after release and security support for five years.

[@CdrSonan]

The biggest issue is that the system deciding what counts as a „valid“ install is proprietary. Unity can essentially just make up numbers and charge developers whatever they want, and the developers have no way of checking how they arrived at these numbers

[@Wolfie5309]

A 5% royalty is due only if you are distributing an off-the-shelf product that incorporates Unreal Engine code (such as a game). Provided that you notify us on time using the Release Form, you will only owe royalties once the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in other words, the first $1 million will be royalty-exempt.

[@The_Slavstralian]

I am curious what would stop Unity from running an install/uninstall/reinstall suite to pad the numbers. Not even considering that people that are disgruntled with either their employer or the game they bought.

[@avibrenner1580]

They walked the every install back but yeah lots of open issues including the insider trading for ceo 6 days before price changes.

[@Taedrin]

The problem isn't that "the price increased", the problem is that the price is now attached to an activity which doesn't produce revenue. They should have just raised the license fee for new products going forward.