Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off::Unity has announced that starting on January 1st, 2024, it will implement a new pricing model that will charge developers based on how many times a game was installed.

  • Humanius@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    From what I understand this change will retroactively apply to games released in the past as well. I think that’s a rather scummy move on Unity’s part. “I’ve altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it further.”

    And it’s not like game devs have been using a free product. They already pay for it through expensive licenses per developer.

    If the justification on Unity’s part is true, that for each install of a Unity game the runtime environment needs to be downloaded from their servers, then maybe they should look into fixing that rather than nickle and diming their customers for each individual install (customers in this case being the game developers)

      • Humanius@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I’m no legal expert, and I have no familiarity with Unity’s licensing terms. So I didn’t want to outright call what they are doing illegal.
        For all I know they did technically have a clause in their licensing agreement that allows them to do this. But that wouldn’t make it any less of a scum move imo.

        It’ll be interesting to see what the lawyers will make of this.

    • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      By why fix a problem when you can just charge more for a solution!? Jeeze it’s like you’ve never done a capitalism before.

  • Dasnap@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    They expect Game Pass titles to have their bill footed by Microsoft.

    There’s kicking the nest, and then there’s kicking the fucking queen bee.

    • gnutrino@programming.dev
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      2 years ago

      Honestly the most credible theory I can come up with for why Unity is doing this is that it’s an attempt to force MS to acquire them to stop the effect this BS will have on gamepass and C#

      • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Microsoft isn’t in a position to acquire any other significant gaming companies in the near term, imo.

      • RoverRacecar@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        That’s actually an interesting theory, I don’t believe it, but would be cool. Feel like Microsoft would have enough backing too off against Epic.

        Though, they are funding o3de right now.

  • chakan2@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I don’t get it…Unity just forced the entire development community to use Unreal. The pricing structure isn’t even close between the two.

    At 200k downloads at 1$ a pop, unreal is still free…Unity is $40k.

    • brlemworld@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      That’s a 20% cut…on top of Apple/Google’s 30% cut. You only get 50% of the sticker price. That’s fucking criminal.

  • anlumo@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Well, glad that I switched away from Unity in 2016. The competition by the Unreal Engine caused some really weird business decisions back then.