Unity planning on charging developers *by individual installation* in the near future.

[pApA^LeGBa]

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

* Essentially this is an issue between Unity and game companies using Unity, not endusers. If anyone doesn't buy a unity game anymore because of this he will hurt the game companies more than Unity. For future games lots of developers might switch to other engines if unity's price policy is too risky or too expensive for them. If they don't change then Unity may be right with their opinion that they didn't charge enough until now.

 

* Still, the announced policy sounds like their brains were clouded by illegal substances when Unity came up with that plan 😉. Or they knew they would get flak anyway and wanted something to backpedal from so the developers would think they achieved something in the end. Sort of like negotiations are always started with extreme positions so the middle ground everyone agrees to eventually is nearer to the wanted result. 

 

* If anyone thinks TFP would switch to whatever engine for 7D2D, forget it. No matter how much it costs in licence fees, switching engines would almost surely cost more, and a lot more time. 7D2D will be released with Unity.

Also they surely have a Unity Pro subscription and will pay less than the .20 cent per installed game.  Statistically most players will have the game installed only once, and even if someone installs the game on virtual machines to harm TFP it would be a drop in an ocean. And Unity can simply add a limit to the maximum installations per user that would have to be payed to make it impossible for an internet mob to perceptibly harm TFP through creating lots of parallel installations.

 

 

I mean i have installed and uninstalled this game like 15 times already. And if the modders keep working after gold, there will be a ton of mods. A lot to explore and with that it´s highly possible that many people install and uninstall a few times.

 

Not to mention all the angry users wich will do it out of spite. Imagine No Man´s Sky would have had that pay model for their game back then at the orignal release. A big part of the gaming crowd would have installed and uninstalled like there is no tomorrow because they were angry.

 

That could very fast be a money grave with no bottom if things go wrong. It could easily cost more than switching engines in the long run. What would TFP do if paying Unity reaches the point where they would acutally loose money because people installed to often? I mean look at some people on the steamforums, i have seen at least 20 people from only the last month of reading that would gladly waste their time with a ton of installs and uninstalls and i only read a few topics over there.

 

I can just assume that you are right with your extreme starting position theory. Everyone with 2 braincells left must know that what they try to offer now can only be the end of Unity in the long run.

Edited September 13, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[FramFramson]

I wouldn't worry about it yet, not least till the dust settles.

I think Unity is just @%$#ed at this point. They can walk back this entire proposal, but they can't walk back the intention behind it, and while existing games may find it impossible to port to a new engine, you can bet everyone will be remembering this come time to make the next game.

 

More importantly, while everyone is focusing on what a huge blow this would be to indie devs, they're missing the big players affected by this. Just to name a few:

 

miHoYo/Cognosphere (Genshin Impact)

 

Nintendo/Niantic (Pokémon Go).

 

Disney (a bunch of stuff).

 

I hear those guys got lawyers, and not ordinary ones but Lawyers, with a capital LAW.

 

Or how about Unity's plan on how to deal with "install spam"? They actually didn't walk back those charges - not exactly. When asked this afternoon about users on Game Pass trying to financially obliterate a dev by installing millions of copies of a Unity game on Game Pass, Unity's reply was "oh, we'll just bill Microsoft for those installs". Yes, Microsoft.

[pApA^LeGBa]

@FramFramson They want to charge Microsoft for games where they have no legal contract with Microsoft about that game? I don´t think that´s even possible. Not even in the US where marketing regulations are very loose.

 

It might be a possibility that the developers of the game try to charge Microsoft, but Unity themselves? No. That´s like the company who delivers the parts to General Motors asking the car dealership to pay for the parts even if the dealership already paid for the car to GM.

 

I wonder if they even can do this in the EU. I mean they had a legal contract with terms and conditions. Changing the payment 10 years after that should not be possible tbh.

Edited September 13, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

I mean i have installed and uninstalled this game like 15 times already. And if the modders keep working after gold, there will be a ton of mods. A lot to explore and with that it´s highly possible that many people install and uninstall a few times.

 

I wrote my post AFTER the Unity guy already declared that installing and uninstalling would not cost again (see the link doughphunghus posted) 

 

So we are only talking about parallel installations on **another device**. Another device is NOT another directory on the same harddisk, it is another hardware altogether (like PC and steam deck or two or more PCs). The only crux or problem here might be if a virtual machine can be faked as looking like a different device.

 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[meganoth]

 

1 hour ago, FramFramson said:

I wouldn't worry about it yet, not least till the dust settles.

I think Unity is just @%$#ed at this point. They can walk back this entire proposal, but they can't walk back the intention behind it, and while existing games may find it impossible to port to a new engine, you can bet everyone will be remembering this come time to make the next game.

 

More importantly, while everyone is focusing on what a huge blow this would be to indie devs, they're missing the big players affected by this. Just to name a few:

 

miHoYo/Cognosphere (Genshin Impact)

 

Nintendo/Niantic (Pokémon Go).

 

Disney (a bunch of stuff).

 

I hear those guys got lawyers, and not ordinary ones but Lawyers, with a capital LAW.

 

Or how about Unity's plan on how to deal with "install spam"? They actually didn't walk back those charges - not exactly. When asked this afternoon about users on Game Pass trying to financially obliterate a dev by installing millions of copies of a Unity game on Game Pass, Unity's reply was "oh, we'll just bill Microsoft for those installs". Yes, Microsoft.

 

This is the moment where the lawyers employed by Unity try to apply for an extended vacation so they aren't around when their boss tries to convert his announcements into legal documents 😁

 

 

[Adam the Waster]

This is kinda scary, I don't want them to ravage TFP. And there is NO way they can transfer this to another engine.  

 

@faatal hopefully this won't effect the game too much 

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by Adam the Waster (see edit history)

[FramFramson]

40 minutes ago, meganoth said:

This is the moment where the lawyers employed by Unity try to apply for an extended vacation so they aren't around when their boss tries to convert his announcements into legal documents 😁

 

 

I mean, this is pretty much my thinking. It's one of those cases where the C-suite guys decided they knew better than their lawyers "but it says right here we can change the terms any time!"

 

In just one day they've had a massive wave of bad press not just in game media, but mainstream media, a stock value that's already dropping, who knows how many angry emails and phone calls from devs, and what has to be a non-zero number of letters from lawyers.

 

I was kinda-sorta worried last night, but I'm increasingly confident that they've screwed up hard enough that if they refuse to walk the whole thing back voluntarily, they're going to be forced into doing so when they eat a class-action suit.

 

This is why you don't let your CEO stick your company's wiener in a wasp's nest, kids!

 

EDIT:  Another big player using Unity is Innersloth (the Amongus guys), who've now stated publicly that they will damn well rebuild their entire game in another engine if they have to.

 

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by FramFramson (see edit history)

[Adam the Waster]

3 minutes ago, FramFramson said:

 

I mean, this is pretty much my thinking. It's one of those cases where the C-suite guys decided they knew better than their lawyers "but it says right here we can change the terms any time!"

 

In just one day they've had a massive wave of bad press not just in game media, but mainstream media, a stock value that's already dropping, who knows how many angry emails and phone calls from devs, and what has to be a non-zero number of letters from lawyers.

 

I was kinda-sorta worried last night, but I'm increasingly confident that they've screwed up hard enough that if they refuse to walk the whole thing back voluntarily, they're going to be forced into doing so when they eat a class-action suit.

 

This is why you don't let your CEO stick your company's wiener in a wasp's nest, kids!

 

 

That's what's my hope is, unity will get there @%$# slammed in the toilet seat

[Callum123456789]

I hope that this never goes through it's a really dumb move and will likely lead to a decline in developers choosing their tools.

 

 

 

[Yukkuri]

5 hours ago, 4sheetzngeegles said:

So here is a question.
If say I for instance have 7 days installed in my steam install default directory.
And have an alternative hard drive with all, of the prior alphas on it. I, being a
a compulsive technology hoarder of sorts, copy the version that I am going to play
to the default directory and delete the other. No worries, I make copies once the

game is verified, so no loss.
Does that mean that i still am considered to have one installation?

 

The reason I ask and why i archive the way i do is because, If you are doing an install

and it is corrupted from steam download or a bad sector. if you have to re-download

it then is that considered two installs?

 

 

 

Unity has backed off a bit and now claims they will magically somehow figure out what is a reinstall versus what is a new install, but anyone with any technical knowledge knows they can't guarantee that, ESPECIALLY while also not tracking individual users as they claim they will not.

 

Further, no matter what magic they say they're going to implement with this, someone will find a way to spoof installs and bomb gamedevs with install charges.

[meganoth]

6 hours ago, Yukkuri said:

 

Unity has backed off a bit and now claims they will magically somehow figure out what is a reinstall versus what is a new install, but anyone with any technical knowledge knows they can't guarantee that, ESPECIALLY while also not tracking individual users as they claim they will not.

 

Further, no matter what magic they say they're going to implement with this, someone will find a way to spoof installs and bomb gamedevs with install charges.

 

Good point about the tracking. Theoretically they could make arrangements with licence platforms (i.e. steam, xbox, playstation store, ...) so that they report back total number of installations on a new device (and yes, the aforementioned platforms could track that easily), but the platforms will want to be payed for that service and it doesn't work with games distributed by GOG. 

 

So their only possible route would be to either

1) track users, or

2) forbid distribution without tracking (on GOG, etc.) or

3) ignore the gog problem completely

 

1 and 2 will most certainly lead to @%$# storms and lots of developers dropping them.

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Pille]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

So their only possible route would be to either

1) track users, or

2) forbid distribution without tracking (on GOG, etc.) or

3) ignore the gog problem completely

 

1 and 2 will most certainly lead to @%$# storms and lots of developers dropping them.

 

 

4) Make up data

 

[Riamus]

What Innersloth said on Twitter brings up another good point about this.  Game companies that allow their game to be installed for free if you have a subscription service (EA Play, XBox Gamepass, Google Play Pass, etc.) while also selling the game and who decide to keep using Unity will likely look to drop all such services as they will boost installs significantly and cause untold extra costs for the developers.  Because they'd also be selling their game, they'll have enough income to be charged for every one of those free installs.  This has a good chance to cause a lot of lawyers from these large services to go after Unity for this.

[warmer]

The cost of an install is miniscule. Why are people making this such a huge deal?

[BFT2020]

12 minutes ago, warmer said:

The cost of an install is miniscule. Why are people making this such a huge deal?

 

It's not the cost to the end user (who won't see a thing), but to developers.  Those are the people that are voicing their concerns loudly about this announcement from Unity.

 

Besides the number of installs being an issue, there are also legacy games that are not bringing in revenue for the developer - but being charged for it.  Without knowing how this information is going to be tracked (Unity has told the developers that they should just trust them when they send them the bill), you can see situations where someone buys the game, upgrades their computer, and a new install triggers the fee.  The developer doesn't see any new revenue and the player is not doing anything wrong, but having a bill be sent to the game developer years after it was originally purchased by the player is a knife to the heart of the developer.

[pApA^LeGBa]

Yeah this will either not beeing able to be billed retroactivly for games sold before the change (i can´t imagine this is legal in any way) or it will be the end of unity and a bunch of small games.

 

Either way, it will lead to a drop in indie games beeing developed. No dev who just started will want to risk anything like that.

[Krougal]

3 hours ago, Pille said:

 

4) Make up data

 

Yeah, wow, this whole thing sounds like a truckload of bull@%$#.

 

[warmer]

2 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

 

It's not the cost to the end user (who won't see a thing), but to developers.  Those are the people that are voicing their concerns loudly about this announcement from Unity.

 

Besides the number of installs being an issue, there are also legacy games that are not bringing in revenue for the developer - but being charged for it.  Without knowing how this information is going to be tracked (Unity has told the developers that they should just trust them when they send them the bill), you can see situations where someone buys the game, upgrades their computer, and a new install triggers the fee.  The developer doesn't see any new revenue and the player is not doing anything wrong, but having a bill be sent to the game developer years after it was originally purchased by the player is a knife to the heart of the developer.

I realize this. It's $0.20 cents from what I read. You'd have to install the game 100x before it would cost as much as 7D2D did.

No one installs a game that many times. I might install a game 3 or 4 times max. That's a whopping $0.80

Why is this a huge problem?

Legacy games won't be charged, you'd have to use an updated version of unity for this to take effect. This isn't backward compatible. If it wasn't already written into the game engine when the game was compiled, this isn't an issue.

[pApA^LeGBa]

I think it´s 20 cents for those who have paid for unity pro. The devs that use the free version have to pay 50 cents.

[FramFramson]

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Yeah this will either not beeing able to be billed retroactivly for games sold before the change (i can´t imagine this is legal in any way) or it will be the end of unity and a bunch of small games.

 

Either way, it will lead to a drop in indie games beeing developed. No dev who just started will want to risk anything like that.

 

Hopefully any dip would be temporary, as devs move to alternate engines, like the open-source Godot. Godot is in fact having a FIELD DAY with all this free publicity as they had a a big show and ad push for the first time ever.

[Jihh]

34 minutes ago, warmer said:

Why is this a huge problem?

I mean, if it actually wasn't a huge deal there would be absolutely no point for Unity doing that. We can safely assume that they expect to increase their profits by a lot or else they wouldn't risk all that bad press. While you are correct that at first sight it looks to be a low price, the "bruh chill, we have reliable methods at hand, so just wait for the bill and all will be fine" (not an actual quote) attitude doesn't seem very trustworthy. So I completely understand that game devs don't chill despite $0.20 being such a low price. Most if not all game devs probably prefer to know costs before shipping their games, not afterwards.

[Krougal]

1 hour ago, warmer said:

I realize this. It's $0.20 cents from what I read. You'd have to install the game 100x before it would cost as much as 7D2D did.

No one installs a game that many times. I might install a game 3 or 4 times max. That's a whopping $0.80

Why is this a huge problem?

Legacy games won't be charged, you'd have to use an updated version of unity for this to take effect. This isn't backward compatible. If it wasn't already written into the game engine when the game was compiled, this isn't an issue.

So personally I don't care. No I really don't. When we're talking about money, I only care about my own. The devs finances are not my business, neither are their transactions with others (Unity). I am a game purchaser not a shareholder. A lot of you fanbois act like you are economics majors or something.

 

No, my issue is how are they tracking my installs? According to the response above, they aren't, they are making it up and handing their customer a bill, which sounds unethical, illegal and immoral, but still not my problem.

 

I am already getting a bit fed up with Steam invading my privacy (We won't talk about @%$#ing Epic). I miss some of the conveniences and the workshop and all but I'm seriously considering all my future game purchases being through GOG as it is.

[Riamus]

6 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

 

It's not the cost to the end user (who won't see a thing), but to developers.  Those are the people that are voicing their concerns loudly about this announcement from Unity.

 

Besides the number of installs being an issue, there are also legacy games that are not bringing in revenue for the developer - but being charged for it.  Without knowing how this information is going to be tracked (Unity has told the developers that they should just trust them when they send them the bill), you can see situations where someone buys the game, upgrades their computer, and a new install triggers the fee.  The developer doesn't see any new revenue and the player is not doing anything wrong, but having a bill be sent to the game developer years after it was originally purchased by the player is a knife to the heart of the developer.

The question I have with this is whether or not the revenue listed in the chart is per game or overall for the company.  If it is per game, there isn't any additional charges for already purchased games unless the games are still being sold enough to reach those revenue limits.  If it is for the company as a whole, that means every single large company will be charged for any free games they release if they are installed enough times, which is ridiculous.

 

4 hours ago, warmer said:

I realize this. It's $0.20 cents from what I read. You'd have to install the game 100x before it would cost as much as 7D2D did.

No one installs a game that many times. I might install a game 3 or 4 times max. That's a whopping $0.80

Why is this a huge problem?

Legacy games won't be charged, you'd have to use an updated version of unity for this to take effect. This isn't backward compatible. If it wasn't already written into the game engine when the game was compiled, this isn't an issue.

They stated this would apply to already released games as well.  I'm certain they have tracked installs of games created with their software for many years, so they don't need a new version to charge developers.  For that matter, you aren't required to use the current version, so developers could just stick to an older version and not be charged if that was an option (at least until they need a new feature or bug fix or change to something else).  It definitely won't be.

 

As far as the cost, it may seem small to you but developers (other than the big name developers) are often not rich and after paying their employees and marketing and licensing fees and whatever else, many don't make much actual profit.  That means even small micro charges like this can kill a company.   Consider a game that sells a million copies and look at how much has to be paid to unity with this model and you will see it adds up quickly.  Also note that although they changed it to say per device install instead of per install, some games offer a free version for other systems.  That will likely go away for unity games as those installs will cost money even though they are free.

 

All in all, this is a very bad money grab from unity that has a good chance of alienating developers.  I know I was considering unity for my own projects and I won't use them now.  Others will also make that choice.  This could easily spell the end for unity unless a couple big name developers choose to keep using them.

[theFlu]

8 hours ago, warmer said:

The cost of an install is miniscule. Why are people making this such a huge deal?

They're introducing a new class of "things" they can bill on, a class that has nothing to do with their own costs. They lose absolutely nothing on a new install of a game, they're not even doing the delivery. And the starting price is just a starting price, it's far easier to adjust the pricing on the fly, especially on something completely artificial. Could be a buck in a couple years, killing any hopes of selling $5 games.

 

Not a "big deal" for AAA-scale, of course - they'll make sure of that - but I wouldn't dare release any kind of "hobbyist game" based on unity for the fear of going viral for a month and then only have people doing repeat installs down the line... with this billing structure, being a one-hit-wonder turns into a threat. Not a great business model to invite new devs.

[dsZombiex]

What about Unity's financials?

 

They were at -192.16M net income last quarter. Last year they lost almost a BILLION (-921.07M)!

https://ycharts.com/companies/U/net_income

 

How long can this go on? Shouldn't this data make Unity devs more nervous than the garbage price model change?