Unity has temporarily closed its offices in San Francisco and Austin, Texas and canceled a town hall meeting after receiving death threats. The company made the call as a precaution against possible retribution after it announced a contentious change to its business model this week.
They’re changing pennies per install, and only after the publisher is receiving over $200,000 per year, and they don’t count the first 100,000 installs. The price goes down dramatically for customers at the higher subscription tiers. I don’t understand why people are so pissed about them wanting such a tiny cut for providing the software that does so much heavy lifting for game developers.
First of all if you’re a poor (and possibly solo) developer who could only spring for the lowest tier you’re being charged the highest rate per install. That rate is 20 cents… per install… not per purchase… per install. If I buy the game once and install it on my desktop machine, my laptop, and my steam deck, the developer has to pay 60 cents. one of those computers breaks down and I need to reinstall the game, that’s an additional 20 cents every time. I have a young nephew who thinks nothing of installing a game to play for a day or two then uninstalling it to make room for another only to reinstall that first game again later. He does this with a lot of games… almost all of which are Unity games (I know, because he wants me to play these games with him quite often, so I see that logo pop up). Come January 1st, every time he installs that game, BOOM, developer owes 20 cents. My nephew isn’t special and, if he’s uninstalling and reinstalling games like that you can bet there’s 1000s of other kids doing the same! Hell, you don’t even have to be a kid. I might play a game for a few months, uninstall it, then reinstall it years later. That’s another thing… this 20 cents is perpetual! As a developer, what happens when you’re done with your game? You do have the time or energy to maintain the game anymore? This pricing model doesn’t care. You abandoned your game 5 years ago? Don’t care, 100 people installed your game, you owe us $20!
I didn’t realize they never “per install” quite so literally. That does make a big difference and it’s a really weird way for them to charge.
Edit: Ok so according to another commenter your interpretation is common but wrong, and Unity clarified they mean the first install per customer only. So my position that this isn’t a big deal stands.
Sorry, no. This is not accurate either. According to Unity’s own FAQ regarding the subject… Which you can look at right here…
So, again, if I install the game on 3 different devices, Unity considers that 3 installs. If I build a new computer later, then reinstall the game there, it’ll count as a new install. The scary thing is… what if someone hates you as a developer? They now only need to buy your game once, then setup a script to roll VMs and install your game on VMs (each VM counts as a seperate device), and you, as the developer, will be hit with the new install cost each time.
Additionally…
The issue here is… the developer would already have been charged the fee for a “pirated” install, because, how is a developer supposed to even know their game was pirated in the first place. Here, the developer may already be financially hit for a pirated game and now has to spend time and resources with Unity to convince them that some percentage of installs are pirated installs. Earlier in their FAQ, Unity claims they do not have a “phone home” when a Unity game is run, so, how are they determining installs in the first place? “Aggregate data”… or, another words, “trust us”.
Their new pricing is not horrible, but it’s pretty wonky at best
After the first wave of outrage they had to clarify that it wouldn’t take reinstalls into account, which should have been clear from the beginning
Also the fact that they take money on a game install wether or not that install generated any money is just dumb, most people would rather pay more as long as they have the guarantee that they only pay AFTER having made some profits
Even with the qualifiers, it makes it super hard to make any financial projections as your profits are totally uncorrelated to the fees you’ll have to pay