Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.
Developer makes a game for the iPhone, charges $1 for it.
I buy the game for $1.
Apple takes 30 cents.
My family of 5 all install the game and play it via family sharing.
Unity takes $0.20 X 5 = $1
Developer loses 30 cents on the sale.
I think the worst part of it all is the trust that is irrevocably broken now.
This is obviously a moronic scummy decision driven by greed, but it also goes directly against past decisions. As per this reddit post, Unity actually had a TOS in action that protected Developers against retroactive changes like this. Specifically, it stated that you could choose to continue using old versions of the engine and comply to the old TOS if an update to the TOS that you disagree with ever happened. This specific part of the TOS was deleted last year.If they actually try to enforce this new crap on already released games (that accepted an older version of the TOS) then it would seem blatantly illegal (I’m not a lawyer though).
Even if they revert everything by tomorrow, the whole fiasco still shows where Unity’s current interests are, and make the company a liability to deal with for any game developer.
Yeah, this isn’t a “I’m never using Twitter again!” kind of fiasco. This has upset Capitalist™®© company heads, who now see Unity as a financial risk. Money tends to have more of a sway than morality.
Apparently Genshin Impact and some Nintendo Games are made in Unity, and there are even some plans to charge Microsoft for Game Pass installs.
I hope Unity’s legal team is prepared.
Well I mean I wouldn’t mind seeing Genshin Impact suffer. They’re advertising and fanbase are insufferable. But I’ve never been a fan of Unity and it’s nice to see everybody else getting on board now too.
Unity actually had a TOS in action that protected Developers
No it didn’t. It just had words that pretended tk protect developers. TOS are meaningless for anyone other than the service when they can change at will.
Yea, they are useless when being changed at will, but what if the TOS specifically said “You can disregard future TOS versions and still abide by this old one under certain circumstances” ?
You would still be complying with the Terms of Service, by not honoring the new Terms of Service.Obviously, this is still a terrible situation regardless, but I am thinking about if the old TOS won’t give already released games a way out of this BS, or even better, may keep a usable Unity version alive for the future. Long term obviously, as many people as possible should ditch unity entirely, but for right now, it looks like a lot of developers will have big trouble starting in just 3 months.
This specific part of the TOS was deleted last year.
Yeah that’s fine, what could possibly go wrong?
the trust that is irrevocably broken now
Irrevocably for the next week or so, maybe. People not only put up with but eat up heaps and heaps of BS and never change, so the BS never changes. Oh, Unity’s corporate shite. “Shut up, it’s fine!” Oh, Unity’s being evil. “Shut up, it’s fine!” Oh, Unity hired the fucking EA guy. “Shut up, it’s fine!” Unity removed protections for devs. “Shut up, it’s fine!” Unity wants to charge the fuck out of everycritter per-install. “Oh woe!” … but any day now it’ll be back to “Shut up, it’s fine! They just want money, that’s what companies are for! It’s just capitalism broooo gotta make money, they can’t just give stuff away!” like that justifies literally anything.
Blah blah blah. I guess I’ll never understand how people can think for-profit companies that repeatedly abuse them are their friends. Maybe that’s just me being a clueless lefty free software hippie or whatever, unaware of the benefits of being exploited and shat on then going and white-knighting for the damn companies against real people anyway.
wanders off yappyranting into the void
Unity saw how Reddit killed off free users by raising prices to absurd rates, and how Reddit was largely unaffected by it as a whole. Not going to be surprised to see other types of platforms also follow suit.
The reddit issue screwed over end consumers and a couple of tiny app developers.
There’s some big developers that use Unity. Pokemon Go is in Unity. Pokemon BDSP was in Unity: say what you want about the quality, but that’s as still over 14 million games sold and I would not be at all surprised if ILCA was halfway through another Unity re-make.
These changes aren’t just screwing over random individuals who like to play games. Not just indie developers either. Unity is looking to battle with billion-dollar corporations over this. I can’t believe for once I’ll actually be rooting for Nintendo’s legal team.
Genshin Impact is also on Unity, so you know they were hoping for some of all that MiHoYo cash, since this scheme of theirs was going to apply retroactively.
Reddit largely unaffected
So they might say. However the post 3 up from this is an article about how their posts and comments have dropped 50 to 90% across major subreddits.
That’s what happens if you piss off the 10 percent of your users that provides 90% of the meaningful engagement.
I’ve read that this started with easy loan money drying up after the First Republic collapse.
I was always curious about Unity, but now I’m good.
It’s crazy how these companies could manage to lose their goodwill overnight one by one these 2~3 years. It’s almost like they have some secret any% fiasco RTA competition or something.
Wizards Of The Coast: Ha, it will never affect us if we change our licensing and hurt the little guy. End consumers don’t care and no one reads these things anyway. “We have an announcement about changes to our EULA!”
Internet and DND community revolt, Pathfinder 2 sees a massive boost, and content providers are scared now.
Unity: Surely nothing similar could happen to us if we change our licensing? “We have an announcement about changes to our EULA…”
2023 has been quite an year of revelation, showing the true nature of these scummy corporates. Lets learn our lesson and not jeopardize ourselves by trusting them.
high quality shitpost! +1
😭
This is why non-libre software sucks. They have 0 incentive to not screw you over.
I was going to start game programming using unity. Just uninstalled it. Will pick up something else like godot.
How is unity to determine a company’s revenue on a game if not self reported by a company?
They guess.
We leverage our own proprietary data model and will provide estimates of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project – this estimate will cover an invoice for all platforms.
From their FAQ.
Thanks for the clear response. 👍🏻
I really don’t understand why they care the runtime is getting installed.
They just want money
Has anyone used Stride3d enough to recommend it?
No
Ffs, add twenty cents to the price, fuck it add 50 cents so valve gets it’s cut and you do too. If it’s a good game from an indie developer I’ll buy it.
