Seems like a sensible overhaul, hitting the major issues with the fee, but still going ahead with a version of it. Big points for me:
Not retroactive. Only affecting the next version of Unity, and you can even opt out of updating to skip the fee.
Data is now reported by the customers. Still not sure how that plan to enforce this, but it’s a hell of a lot better than some arbitrary data collection scheme being baked into the game.
Free version is excluded. No charging tiny side projects, or students or something, it only affects already paying customers.
Still not sure I love charging per install as a concept, and they’ve already overplayed their hand and burnt many bridges, but at least this implementation isn’t insanely hostile. Guess we’ll see how this plays out from here.
That’s great but they didn’t say a single word about:
the silent license update they made to enable this whole shitshow, which people discovered after they changed the license and had to find archived copies of the previous license to compare against
the scummy and anticompetitive (and, in some jurisdictions, possibly illegal) fee vouchers they were handing out to try to nuke AppLovin’s customer base
The retroactive fee stuff was pure idiocy, but the above points are also deeply concerning and problematic, and indicate a leadership culture that appears entirely unconcerned with business ethics. And the exec team is not changing. They will try something similar in the future.
Seems like a sensible overhaul, hitting the major issues with the fee, but still going ahead with a version of it. Big points for me:
Still not sure I love charging per install as a concept, and they’ve already overplayed their hand and burnt many bridges, but at least this implementation isn’t insanely hostile. Guess we’ll see how this plays out from here.
That’s great but they didn’t say a single word about:
The retroactive fee stuff was pure idiocy, but the above points are also deeply concerning and problematic, and indicate a leadership culture that appears entirely unconcerned with business ethics. And the exec team is not changing. They will try something similar in the future.