Game developers unite against Unity’s new “per-install” pricing structure

Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.

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[Frodo Douchebaggins]

 

[thrillgore]

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.” -Warren Buffet

And Unity joins the ranks of the enshittificators. They are desperately trying to chase Hoyoverse and Blizzard for money and in the process, they have damaged their reputation with everyone else.

As childish as it is, watching the Godot developers clown on Unity has been edifying:

 

[Thad Boyd]

Man, Godot picked a perfect day to announce the Godot Development Fund.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/09/the-open-source-godot-engine-has-a-new-godot-development-fund/

 

[Vengfulteapot]

Way to tank your business, unilaterally piss off your customer base.

"this is probably ok"

 

[uberculex]

Man, Godot picked a perfect day to announce the Godot Development Fund.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/09/the-open-source-godot-engine-has-a-new-godot-development-fund/

I think we've all been waiting for Godot to be the better choice.

 

[Nazgutek]

Remember when Unity bought out IronSource? One of their projects was InstallCore, which could apparently count the number of times something was installed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InstallCore

The platform and its programs have been rated potentially unwanted programs (PUP) or potentially unwanted applications (PUA) by anti-malware product vendors since 2014,[3] and by Windows Defender Antivirus since 2015.[4]

But then, what else should we expect from the ex-CEO of EA, John Riccitiello.

 

[uberculex]

By taking the easy out, these developers kind of get what they deserve. Make your own engine and have control of your business model.

Do you know how much it costs and how many man hours it takes to make a game engine? The whole point of Unity is that it is (was) a good economic version for indie developers.

 

[uberculex]

View attachment 63078

Certainly not a smoking gun but I see no reason to give any of them the benefit of the doubt. Guilty in my eyes.

 

[Corporate_Goon]

Many developers expressed particular outrage over the idea that the new fee structure will apply to previously existing Unity games, not just those developed or released after the new fees go into effect next year. While installs made before January 1, 2024, will not incur any per-install fees, those previous installs will be used to help calculate whether a game meets the applicable "lifetime installs" threshold, according to Unity's FAQ.

As a general rule of thumb, this is not legal or enforceable. You can not unilaterally change the terms of a contract to retroactively apply to past transactions. I expect if Unity actually tries to move forward with this they're going to get sued, and they're going to get their asses handed to them by any judge with even a passing familiarity with contract law and the principles of equity.

 

[Gyrotica]

"Sure we lied to you, but that's perfectly legal!" doesn't seem to me to be a winning play.

Guess they need those royalties to pay for better spokespeople!

 

[Deleted member 764661]

"We're not nickel-and-diming people"

Charges Pro users a literal nickel-and-dime per install

 

[UserIDAlreadyInUse]

"Hmm. I'm new to Unity the corporation and game development in general, but boy, do I know Business. How can I increase profits here? I know! I'll change the licensing terms to bring in more bucks! That always works! What choice do they have? As far as I know, none whatsoever! I have them both over and inside of the barrel now!"

Also:
"We're not nickle and diming people here - 2015"
"We're charging a literal nickle and a literal dime now - 2024"

 

[Honeybog]

Rather than requiring installed games to "phone home" after each install, that model will "collect data from numerous sources"

Yeah, no, bye.

 

[Qyygle]

Did everyone in the executive suite of seemingly every company develop brain rot during the pandemic days or something?

Or did they all collectively watch the meltdowns of Twitter, Reddit, D&D, and company and decide, "Yes! That's me! I can do that!"

 

[Thad Boyd]

View attachment 63078

Not to defend Unity's decision here, but I'm skeptical of the insider trading allegations.

It's true that Riccitiello recently sold 2,000 shares, but he sells shares pretty frequently and often in much, much higher amounts than that.

https://tickertracker.io/stocks/U/insiders/john-s-riccitiello/summary
Bar Zeev sold a whole lot more than Riccitiello, but looking at his history that's not unusual for him; he's been selling shares in multiples of 37,500 about once a month since March. This isn't unusual behavior for somebody who recently acquired a large amount of stock through a buyout.

https://tickertracker.io/stocks/u/insiders/tomer-bar-zeev/summary
I think this is a terrible decision on Unity's part and developers should be looking for an offramp. But if Riccitiello and Bar Zeev have been selling shares all this time just to gear up for this announcement, they've been clever enough about it that the SEC would have a hell of a hard time proving that was what they were doing.

 

[rhavenn]

The sad thing is this will increase short term (next few years) profits, the CEO / directors and board will make money and then bail, and then the company will decline. This looks and smells like a MBA driven pump and dump and not a long term growth business model.

 

[Dhalgren]

Unity Execs: "Hey, look at all the attention Wizards of the Coast is getting, can we get some of that attention?"

(This seems similar to the idiotic decision WotC made regarding D20 licensing.)

 

[Golgo1]

Have they not been paying attention?

This is even worse than the DnD license fiasco.
At least in that case they explicitly were not trying to retroactively apply the dumb

 

[umaromc]

By taking the easy out, these developers kind of get what they deserve. Make your own engine and have control of your business model.

Sounds like you've never even typed out anything that output "Hello, world!"

 

[numerobis]

So the MBAs have completed their takeover of the place.

I had a discussion with a unity dev back in 2018 who was seeing hints of the MBA brain virus infecting his organization already.

 

[Zeebee]

How does their machine/device detection and identification work? They'd have to derive a device id based on different factors... but if a group hates a game and wants to financially hurt the developer, could forge device id information and repeated install a game?

What about create a pipeline to build a virtual machine, install the game, the destroy the VM and repeat the process?

Without a whole lot of clarity on their detection methods and "fraud" detection that's a lot of risk of smaller game developers... and piracy because a real concern (if you're at or over the threshold 50,000 people pirating your game will cost you $10K on the lowest tier), so there could be even more DRM/anti-piracy measures.

 

[Downrazor]

Damn, man.. the enshittification continues!!

I was never much of a regulations type guy ('free market will decide' and all), but this type of developer/creator-tools industry really feels like it needs protections from these types of corporate hostage-taking behaviors for library-like toolsets (fusion 360, adobe suite, pro tools, I'm looking at you too!!) that foster 'an addiction' to the method or toolset with no feasible recourse if the terms become unkind for the customer down the line.

It is simply too much to expect another toolset-/ suite-/ workstation- type developer or company to come in and replace the 'library' of chained interactions that these tool suites provide creators without destroying current workflows and the small companies built around them..

I fear the same thing happening with Google and some of their 'life-enhancement' products that were free, and thus became entrenched within the framework of my modern-day existence, needing a subscription in the future to retain their functionality..

 

[Thad Boyd]

The problem is, Unity could try to defend this in the US, and they could go to the SCOTUS. And the risk of them winning and impacting everyone is too damn high.

Sure, but it's a significant risk to them, too.

It's one of those things I expect would get settled out-of-court before it went to SCOTUS because there's just too much to lose on both sides.

 

[Dhalgren]

By taking the easy out, these developers kind of get what they deserve. Make your own engine and have control of your business model.

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

The sad thing is this will increase short term (next few years) profits, the CEO / directors and board will make money and then bail, and then the company will decline. This looks and smells like a MBA driven pump and dump and not a long term growth business model.

It's almost like paying C-suite people 8 hojillion dollars a year without regard for their ability or willingness to do their job in a way that's actually good for the company might have downsides for everyone besides the shitbag getting the money.

Who knew?

 

[simonbp]

Between the terrible effort to raise cash and the blatant insider trading, I'm going to guess the execs think the financial state of the company is a lot worse than general investors know.

Which is flatly Enron vibes.

 

[mattCCC]

By taking the easy out, these developers kind of get what they deserve. Make your own engine and have control of your business model.

If only it were that easy

 

[kinpin]

Will the dev get their money back if the user uninstalls ? /s

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

Here's my take on that as someone who has heard about this whole mess but hasn't really dug into the specifics. Yeah, insider trading is illegal and maybe it's always morally wrong, too, but I'm sympathetic in the following scenario: you've worked hard to make a company valuable, a significant part of your compensation has been stock, and other people besides you are making a decision that you explicitly disagree with and that you know will be terrible for the company and its value.

Illegal? Yeah, probably. Immoral? I'm prepared to approach the situation with a nuanced eye.

If we step WAY back from this specific situation and keep it general:

I agree when it comes to the idea of the rank and file people who have actual jobs and work for a living.

WHen it comes to executives? Fuck them straight to death. They're the ones responsible for the decisions and they should sink with the ship.

 

[Thad Boyd]

I actually do. And have done it professionally. Once you've done it a few times it isn't that hard.

As long as these devs opt for this route other companies will ultimately control their work.

It depends on what you mean by "this route". I'd say Godot's looking pretty good right now.

It's not that the owners of an open-source project can't make decisions that are hostile to the devs. But if that happens, the devs will fork it and keep doing what they're doing. See LibreOffice and Nextcloud.

 

[Dan in NY]

The greed of some of these companies, is...
I am a loss for words.

 

[thelee]

Did the dummies at Unity not pay attention to the absolute shitstorm that Hasbro got for trying to revoke the irrevocable OGL?

Even after Hasbro ended up having to walk it back, a lot of damage was done and a lot of OGL-based outfits are migrating to a competitor (the ORC gaming license being led by Paizo)

Major unforced error that won't succeed at getting Unity more business, just helping the folks at Epic via Unreal Engine

 

[sword_9mm]

Per install fee sounds really odd. Does any other middleware do that?

I can see a fee charged after x$ of sales or something but per install sounds a bridge too far. Also doing anything retroactively sounds like a ball of crap.

 

[Elon Muskie Admirer]

Its a perfect unity of gluttony, greed and scummyness.