Why Unity's New Install Fees Are Spurring Massive Backlash Among Game Developers - IGN
Why Unity's New Install Fees Are Spurring Massive Backlash Among Game Developers - IGN
Game developers aren't happy with a new policy from Unity that will cost developers a small fee every time someone installs a game built on Unity's game engine.
The Unity Runtime Fee is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2024, and it's been universally panned by developers on social media since its announcement earlier today.
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For instance, if a free-to-play game has made $200,0000 in the last 12 months but has millions of people installing it, the developer could end up owing Unity more than the profit earned from in-game purchases.
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Others are worried this could lead some smaller developers who built their games on Unity to pull titles from digital storefronts to prevent more people from racking up downloads.
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"I bet Steam, Epic, Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft will love having waves of developers pulling their games," writes Forest from Among Us developer Innersloth Games. "Innersloth has always paid Unity appropriately for licenses and services we use. I'm not a discourse guy, but this is undue and will force my hand."
Other developers are actually asking people online to not install their game built in Unity, with Paper Trail developer Huenry Hueffman writing, "if you buy our Unity game, please don't install it… demos also count, dont install this demo, you'll literally bankrupt me".
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Unity also clarified that the fee will not apply to charity games or charity bundles. Unity defended the pricing model, saying it's designed to only charge developers who have already found financial success.
We only succeed when you succeed. Our 5% royalty model only kicks in after your first $1M in gross revenue, meaning that if you make $1,000,001 you owe us 5 cents. And this is per title!
Also, revenue generated from the Epic Games Store will be excluded from that 5% royalty.
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Unity has been under pressure lately, laying off hundreds of employees in the first half of 2023. Riccitiello also came under fire in 2022 for referring to developers who don't focus on microtransactions as the "biggest f*cking idiots" before apologizing. Featured in everything from Cuphead to Beat Saber to Pokemon Go, it has been lauded for ease of use. However, trust in the platform has been declining over the years, leading many developers to look to alternatives.
Riccitiello also came under fire in 2022 for referring to developers who don't focus on microtransactions as the "biggest f*cking idiots" before apologizing.
Classic CEO brainrot. There's more to life than just maximizing profit.
Maybe this will be the kick in the rear that gets people to drop them enmasse. I'd definitely explore the other options for any new projects I was starting.
Even if they drop this fee, is it really worth the headache in the future when they try something again?
In a capitalist oligarchy? There’s really not.
Well fuck me, apparently. The Adobe and Sibelius fees already break me, and I’ve invested enough in Unity assets (not to mention the learning curve) to get a game close to preproduction, and this could drive me out.
I’m a tiny Dev just trying to break into VR, console, and mobile by myself, and am dirt poor with no support, just my knowledge and talent. I’m working on three beta projects, but this makes me scared to continue on Unity.
I’m a good designer and developer with industry experience, but my health has forced me into smaller Indy projects. I put all my eggs in Unity’s basket and now it feels like they’re ditching me just at the point I was ready for production.
God dammit. :(
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The problem is they keep changing the license terms every 6-12 months and the changes have always been retroactive. I think they've changed it about once every year for the last 5 years and this year they did it twice. Games often take years to make and that means you might have no idea what the terms are going to be by the time you're ready to release.
So lets say they walk this back. What about next time?
Oh, I’ll keep going, for sure! (…with one eye on developments.) But now I also need to prepare contingencies if their licensing goes the way of Avid, Adobe, and most recently Reddit and the bird one.
Something major might have to change and I can’t be blindsided by it, so I have to carve out time to deal with this, anyhow.
For future projects you may want to consider Godot or Stride. Free and Open Source.
It's not like nobody warned you Unity was bad, they've been hounding developers forever. I've personally been warning people to not touch unity and instead use the vastly superior Unreal Engine, ever since the UDK days. This isn't the fall of Unity, it's mid descent.
Kick 'em while they're down
Jump ship to Musescore and Affinity while you're at it my friend.
They must have lost their minds. Bankrupt or even pay Unity back for a successful game you made and finished months ago? I hope they get legal action.
Seriously. If they were changing the terms going forward, that'd at least be defensible, but trying to make it apply to everything that's ever been made is just nonsensical.
Just a reminder that other game engines exist. Some are even free and just as powerful, if not more.
Also stride!
This doesn't help people who were already knee deep in a project.
I might invest in some cheap liquor instead.
Unity is Unreal's biggest marketer now, it seems...
Curious if some of the many internal AAA engines out there might start to get shopped around as a new alternate to UE. Sony, Ubisoft, and Microsoft all have a few in house engines that at least on paper seem viable for branching out — the biggest obstacle would be support, I suspect. Which isn't a trivial obstacle, to be clear.
idTech is due for a resurgence. Maybe Valve could even get a revival in usage of Source.
I'd love to see Capcom license the RE Engine with how nice and smooth all the games made on that have been
The aftermath from its main audience, mobile devs, is going to be biblical.
My hope would be that this encourages open source engine usage but it'll probably simply make Unreal Engine more popular instead.
To be fair, while unreal isn't FOSS, it's source code is at least openly viewable so devs would find it easier to make easily transferable alternatives
Also if theirs a engine bug you can crack it open and fix it yourself, handy if you're not a AAA studio who has epic Devs on speed dial. Though I believe you do have to share any code alterations with epic if it's hosted on a private repo
I can see why you would think that, but there's alot of stuff unreal just isn't that good at, things like 2d games are a massive struggle to work with in unreal, so it'll gain more popularity, but mainly from devs making 3d games with a focus on high graphics
Godot is a pretty good alternative for 2D games
I'm confused. I've never licensed a game engine, but I figure you'd write what charges you pay into the contract, and as far as I know, you can't just add additional charges in later without renegotiating the contract. At least, you'd have no way to enforce those. So I'm sort of at a loss how this is even supposed to work.
The game engine is licensed as a subscription. When January 1st rolls around and the dev's meed to renew their subscription it will have these new terms. Their options are to accept this or to never update their games again.
Makes sense. I hope the unity guys come to their senses. This whole thing seems rather self-destructive on the company's part. Unity is far from being a monopoly, with one competitor being free and open source (Godot). And pulling stunts like these, even if you walk them back later, does not engender trust.
I forgot it was John Riccitiello at the helm of Unity these days. That explains a lot.
Also quite interesting that he's offloaded ~$2mil worth if Unity shares in the past year too
Whoah spez, are you the CEO at Unity now as well? Impressive
May your golden parachute have secretly been stuffed with lead you greedy abusive piece of shit. Fuck these bait and switch MBAs.
Just read some details, it's a monthly fee too? Wouldn't that really screw over single-player games which don't do recurring revenue?
Can someone explain to me why they might have gone with this strange pricing model instead of the very simple revenue sharing model that Epic uses?
Because a lot of mobile games are made in Unity, and mobile has a higher rate of people who install and then uninstall without really playing the game. People also install things by mistake on mobile, thinking they're something else.
So by charging based on installs, they're able to squeeze developers a lot more (especially mobile game developers). Competitor engines like Unreal don't run very well on mobile.
Something something $$$.
But yeah, revenue sharing makes a ton more sense. Maybe have a per-seat option up to $X in revenue, and a revenue percent above that amount.
This article has some new quotes and details. I know we have the other thread going, but this would get buried over there.
Good thing i switched from unity to godot a while ago
i have a couple Unity games that are close to shipping, i think i'll hold off on that and rewrite in Godot instead. I was already considering it since working with Godot is a thousand times more pleasant than Unity anyway.
They pushed this change with the always online dev kit. I believe the price change is a smoke screen for the other changes. Soon they might step back on this decision.
Join the Godot Chad's!
Unity's CEO must have met with Reddit CEO over a party and after discussion, came to this horrible profit making decision I guess.
Someone in another post mentioned the cuurent Unity CEO was the CEO for EA when it was voted worst company in America... so it kinda explains a lot.
Twitter has gotten enshittified. Reddit has gotten enshittified. Now Unity is getting enshittified.
It's time to learn the lesson: don't be a sharecropper on somebody else's property.
L
I've been using Godot for engineering simulations and I cannot recommend it enough for this one niche.
Suddenly there's an 150% increase in Dev jobs using Unreal Engine 5
Games that use Unity are cringe