Comment by bhouston
2 years ago
This could have been done in a much better fashion to achieve the long term desired outcome (more income) while also ensuring continued trust and transparency with their community.
Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a per-installation fee. And they would slowly discontinue support for the older versions on a specific schedule.
There are new devices coming out like the new Switch, the Apple Vision Pro, and then the new features Unity is adding like AI, just add those to the new versions that have the run-time fee. People will upgrade to it on their own terms!
By making it retroactive and forcing it on everyone, they have basically screwed over their existing customers who shipped games expecting a certain cost structure and now it is higher.
Deleting this GitHub license archive repo where they make it clear that their license changes are likely unenforceable is icing on the cake.
EDIT: To remove the claim that Unreal Engine had a similar per-install fee, it doesn't.
The problem is that they did it retroactively and they also added a per install/download fee. So if your game has 1mio installs you pad the install fee x 1 Million. Unreal has no install fee like this.
“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.”
Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.
> Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.
Exactly. So if they did this in an upfront way, they would have said that starting with Unity 2024 there is this new cost structure. Then game devs can make informed choices if they want to build those types of games on the platform.
This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. Although I think I sort of answered my own question...
> This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users.
I can't even understand how it can possibly be legal. How on earth is it even possible to say "your game which was released before we updated this license is subject to the updated version"? IANAL but that sure seems like something which would require both parties to agree to the updated terms for them to be binding.
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>This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users.
If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's definitely a money grab. If it's deemed illegal, i.e. fraud, I hope there is jail time. Gotta send a message.
Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?
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They don't want developers choosing to target older Unity versions for their games, they want to milk cent they can out of their users.
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> Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.
When you put it that way, Unity could have come out of this price change looking like heroes with better messaging.
Serious games pay the $0.27 fee moving forward, and (hopefully) that comes with some new value add for end users (such as contractually enforced no advertising, cross-platform something something).
Ad-supported games use a different engine with different rules, and end users get the “free to play” benefit.
(The retroactive thing is obviously bullshit; I wonder how many studios will simply refuse to pay and jump ship for future titles.)
They have actually released something like this in the last day that says if you use their ad market there is no per device fee.
It was on HN this morning.
> $0.27
The highest possible fee seems to the $0.20 (only if 100% of your users are in the US and a few other rich countries). Also it only seems to the there to encourage everyone on Personal/Plus to upgrade to Pro (before these changes you were already required to do that if you company revenue was above $200).
Realistically it's going to be closer to $0.02-0.05 per install.
If you pay $2k for unit pro it’s a max of 15 cents an install, actually less. And you pay nothing for installs until $1m in revenue and 1m installs in the previous 12 months
That’s $2k, per seat, per year.
Which you now need to pay to get rid of the Unity splash screen. Why they haven’t learned the lesson of only poor developers (and therefore, largely shovelware and bad games) showing their splash screen is a really bad idea I’ll never understand. I suppose this will technically help with that.
> 27cents
Realistically it’s closer to 3-5 cents per install. Where did you get 27? Even personal/plus is cheaper than that in the worst case (ie. 100% of your users are in NA, the richer parts of Western Europe etc)
> Simply, they could have not made this retroactive
How can they make this apply retroactively though? For already shipped titles, if I'm no longer providing updates anymore, how can they force me to pay money?
I'm aware that games no longer have a final shipping date, with early access and all, and as a dev I'd likely would want to offer continued support in such a scenario.
But the way I understand it from the overall public reaction, is that they're trying to charge customers for existing titles, retroactively, in perpetuity going onward. This would be a one sided ToS change which only benefits them, which they push the customer into agreeing. Such a practice is mostly unenforceable in a lot of jurisdictions around the world.
Well yeah, that’s what is so mind boggling about the whole thing. They are trying to do something that’s likely illegal in terms of contract law. It’s also just abundantly stupid given the social cost. There was a super clean way to do the whole transition where you announce the changes going forward starting 1 Jan 2024. You show examples of what costs will be and stress that that the pricing is an order of magnitude cheaper than Unreal, and everyone feels like it’s fair (though nobody loves price increases). Someone needs to fire their CEO.
Are there perpetual unity licenses? If not, then surely the retroactivity comes as soon as you renew your license.
The problem is they now want to license the engine as a separate product which they didn’t do in the past. Previously, you paid your license fee for editor and any game you build off that is deployed and you could stop paying them.
I guess they didn’t like the thought of not being able to perpetually milk their customers and wanted to increase their cut outside of the editor fee.
From what I understand though, Unreal is just licensed based on revenue and all the editing tools are free. Unity had the opposite approach previously. They’ve decided they want a cut of both pies.
This has nothing to do with whether there are perpetual licenses or not.
The way the go about this makes it seem that you enter a contract that you can never reasonably exit out of, as in order for you to stop having to pay, you'd have to convincingly prove that you forced every customer to uninstall your app, i.e. that there isn't at least one install left.
This sounds absolutely bonkers to me.
They can't force you to pay. The only leverage or legal claim they have is if you want to update your title after Jan 2024, then they can ask you to get up to date on your account.
This reminds me of the old Simpsons ep where Homer realises their pet elephant costs a lot and decides to retrospectively update pricing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uQNPS9v_VU
“Get out of my house.”
Wow, this should be higher. It’s perfect. I don’t think someone could even find an XKCD more relevant.
XKCD is super overrated. Cringe at times, banal at others.
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This whole debacle is unreal (pun intended?). I don’t think they’ll be able to enforce this the way they hope to. For example they want to be paid for unity games in subscription services, like xbox gamepass. Meanwhile M$ lawyers are rubbing their hands together in anticipation.
They’re going to (already have) damaged their reputation beyond repair. This isn’t typical consumer strong arm tactics. Their clients are businesses who already have alternatives. If one of my vendors abruptly changed our agreement like this, there’s no question I’d quietly phase them out ASAP.
If they think they can find a court that will actually enforce this change, then they’ll be waiting for Godot.
> have a run-time fee, similar to Unreal Engine
Another comment already said this, but I feel it's worth emphasizing: Unreal Engine does not have a runtime fee. You don't pay per install.
I edited the comment to fix that. :)
> Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a per-installation fee
I would still oppose it because I don't want every installer to spy on me as a user. I'm glad it happened in a way that spurred so much resistance instead of a slow frog-boil.
> Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a run-time fee, similar to Unreal Engine.
No no, you don’t understand, that’s exactly what they want
It does appear to be what they want, but it is also very likely unenforcible retroactively. So it is likely that they are currently paying the steep repetitional costs of this move without making anywhere close to the additional income that they wanted from this move.
You are mistaking what the CEO and the VCs want with what a long term stable company would want.
The incentives don’t work that way. The CEO gets his bonus and ability to sell shares if he pleases VCs and VCs are looking for bagholders for the company. So the CEO creates a revenue narrative to sell to institutional investors so they take an increasingly mediocre asset from the VCs at a premium.
The pattern is all around, exactly the same as Reddit for example.
As a game designer - there is zero built in incentives for the C level of a publicly listed company to do what’s good for the company long term. It’s much better to get rich quick and cash out.
It’s just that the desperation is now now sky high and narratives for the next earnings call need to be generated quickly
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I’ve been asking the exact same question. There is so clearly a better way to have handled this whole thing it makes you wonder whether the person in charge of this transition is simply incompetent, or actually negligent. If I were a shareholder, I might consider suing.
I wonder just how much this change is geared at capturing value from what's already out there, i.e. the retroactivity is the point.
> geared at capturing value from what's already out there
This sounds like a plausible motive. There's a handful of huge games using Unity that together generate upwards of 20bln annually, such as Pokemon GO, Honor of Kings, and Genshin Impact. I'm guessing their soundbite of "developers being excited" over the change is with those behemoths in mind, and not the other games that are barely making ends meet.
These particular successful games are still going to save millions compared to Unreal, while the change means that everyone else would now be more profitable with Unreal. Pokemon GO alone would have made Unreal $100mln+ a year with the 5% royalty, while paying considerably less with Unity's new scheme. Even at a billion downloads it's only $10mln in comparison.
It sounds like Unity is shifting their focus from the long tail where they were successful charging annual subscription fees (and ads), to the head that's generating orders of magnitude more revenue.
Just so you know Genshin and Star Rail is using a heavily customized Unity Engine under Unity China. Unity China is a separate entity from Unity Technologies. They (mihoyo) is also a major shareholders in Unity China.
https://blog.unity.com/news/unity-forms-new-venture-to-manag...
> everyone else would now be more profitable with Unreal
To be fair only F2P games that makes less than ~$2 per user might be more profitable. For almost everyone else above the 1 million threshold Unity would still be cheaper.
Most games on the Switch and Quest devices for sure. A lot of mobile games as well.
Over 1B games sold on the switch: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/1-billion-switch-games-hav...
We can assume at least one game per Quest was sold: https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-sales-20-million-retention-st...
Hard to figure out the mobile numbers.
That list (which is at least half of switch game sales) are nintendo games that don't use Unity. I'd be shocked if half of the remaining 500mn games sold used unity. But if they did, at .20c, that's like 50mn dollars.
As for the quest sales, that's another 4mn.
It seems extremely foolhardy to cause this much damage to their reputation and potential growth as a multi-billion dollar company (market cap of 13bn) for 50-100mn a year of additional revenue.
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