Unity plans to charge per install.

[Solauren]

Looks like Unity have picked a fight with Apple.

Given their CEOs history, that might have been the point. Pick a fight with the larger studios and hope they simply by Unity up to deal with the situation.

[bilateralrope]

Looks like Unity have picked a fight with Apple.

Given their CEOs history, that might have been the point. Pick a fight with the larger studios and hope they simply by Unity up to deal with the situation.

That seems unlikely. Just look at how much of a legal fight Microsoft is going through over their Activision purchase. Buying a major engine seems like it will raise similar concerns if any of the major companies (MS, Apple, Sony, etc) in gaming try it. Then there will be worries that whoever buys it, if successful, will attempt to limit Unity to their platform.

Move to the companies below them and you get to the likes of Valve and Epic. One rarely makes games and the other is a direct competitor in the engine space. So I'd rule them out.

[Lord Revan]

It seems they've "heard the community feedback" (more likely feedback from the Lawyers of Apple or Nintendo) and are "reviewing" the policy. I guess someone in Unity figured out pissing the whole gaming industry might not be a smart move.

[Solauren]

Looks like Unity have picked a fight with Apple.

Given their CEOs history, that might have been the point. Pick a fight with the larger studios and hope they simply by Unity up to deal with the situation.

That seems unlikely. Just look at how much of a legal fight Microsoft is going through over their Activision purchase. Buying a major engine seems like it will raise similar concerns if any of the major companies (MS, Apple, Sony, etc) in gaming try it. Then there will be worries that whoever buys it, if successful, will attempt to limit Unity to their platform.

Move to the companies below them and you get to the likes of Valve and Epic. One rarely makes games and the other is a direct competitor in the engine space. So I'd rule them out.

True.

But that doesn't stop idiots from trying. (Go read about their CEO, he used to work for EA...)

[bilateralrope]

EU game devs ask regulators to look at Unity’s “anti-competitive” bundling

Company's power is a "market failure" with "significant vendor lock risk" for devs.
KYLE ORLAND - 9/22/2023, 7:44 AM

In the wake of Unity's sudden fee structure change announcement last week, a European trade group representing thousands of game developers is calling on governments to "update their regulatory framework" to curb what they see as a "looming market failure" caused by "potentially anti-competitive market behavior."

In an open letter published last week, the European Games Developer Federation goes through a lot of the now-familiar arguments for why Unity's decision to charge up to $0.20 per game install will be bad for the industry. The federation of 23 national game developer trade associations argues that the new fee structure will make it "much harder for [small and midsize developers] to build reliable business plans" by "significantly increas[ing] the game development costs for most game developers relying on [Unity's] services."

The organization also publicly worries about "professional game education institutions" that may need to update their curriculums wholesale if there is a mass exodus from Unity's engine. "Many young industry professionals who have built their career plans on mastering Unity’s tools [will be put] in a very difficult position."

Beyond simply being bad for the industry, though, the EGDF argues that "Unity's move might be anti-competitive" in a way that demands government action. The group takes a special exception to Unity's history of bundling its game engine with services like analytics, in-game chat, ad networks and mediation tools, user acquisition tools, and more. That kind of bundling creates "a significant vendor lock risk for game developers using Unity services," which "also makes it difficult for many game middleware developers to compete against Unity."

This kind of bundling directly supports Unity's new fee structure plans, the EGDF argues, thanks to a clause where the company promises that developers "may be eligible for credits toward the Unity Runtime Fee based on the adoption of Unity services beyond the Editor." This amounts to Unity "strategically using install fees to deepen the lock-in effect by creating a solid financial incentive to bundle other Unity services even closer to its game engine," the EGDF says. This "will create a competitive disadvantage for those game distribution platforms that do not use ad-based monetization at all," and punish games that generate viral attention without much in the way of monetization.

If the EGDF's invocation of the B-word sounds familiar, it might be because similar bundling accusations led to an official European Union antitrust probe of Microsoft's Teams and Office products and Google's ad platform and search engine just this summer. And the EU has shown a willingness to put some bite behind these kinds of bundling charges, with judgments of 4.1 billion, 2.4 billion, and 1.5 billion euros against Google in recent years.

Bring on the regulations

Bundling aside, the EGDF implies that Unity's previous royalty-free structure was a form of artificially low price-dumping designed to hurt competition before jacking up the price with the new install fees. "It is clear that if Unity’s pricing model had, in the past, been similar to the now-introduced model, it would likely never have achieved the level of dominance it enjoys today, as more developers would have chosen another alternative in the beginning," the EGDF writes.

To prevent companies like Unity from exploiting their market power in this way, the EGDF urges EU governments to create new regulations focused on reining in "non-negotiable [business to business] contract terms." Such regulations might force companies to give "sufficient time" (e.g., six months) before unilateral changes to terms of service go into effect.

"Game productions can take years, and game developers cannot change their game engine at the last minute, so they are forced to accept all changes in contract terms, no matter how exploitative they are," the EGDF points out. "Unity must know that if they had given more notice, many more developers might have had a realistic chance of abandoning Unity altogether by the time the new pricing came into play."

The EGDF also urges regulators to consider making engine makers like Unity subject to the Digital Markets Act, which would put it in the company of other so-called "gatekeeper" online platforms like YouTube, Amazon, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn. DMA identification would subject Unity to strict new rules and "ensure that Unity cannot use data it collects through its game engine to gain an unfair competitive advantage for its other services like advertisement services," according to the EGDF.

The EGDF also says governments should consider offering financial support to "privacy-friendly open-source alternatives for game engines" such as Godot. Such financial support could help solve the "market failure" that has allowed a company like Unity to have outsize power over game developers' livelihoods in the first place.

After seeing the "confusion and angst" that its announcement caused across the game industry last week, Unity has promised vague "changes" to its proposed fee structure will be announced soon. But any such changes may come too late for many developers, who have said they are moving on to other engine options because they feel they can no longer trust Unity as a reliable partner.

This could get interesting if the EU finds what the European Games Developer Federation is alleging here.

Unless Unity makes the smart move and backs down.

[Solauren]

If Unity is smart....

They'll announce they've dropped the plan.

If they want to make more money from the engine, they either need to announce the next version if $ only, or they need to come up with a free version (that still requires the Splash screen, and has limited features/support), and the $ full version.

[bilateralrope]

If Unity is smart....

They'll announce they've dropped the plan.

If they want to make more money from the engine, they either need to announce the next version if $ only, or they need to come up with a free version (that still requires the Splash screen, and has limited features/support), and the $ full version.

That might not be enough. They have already shown a willingness to suddenly alter the agreement to make it much worse in an attempt to please shareholders. What can Unity do here to convince developers that they shouldn't worry about next time ?

Well, short of firing everyone on the board who approved of this move.

[Solauren]

So long as the same shareholders own the company, they can still hire/appoint more idiot board moneys that see people as piggybanks to raid.

Really, I can't think of any 'return things to normal', more like 'minimize fall out'.

Unlike WOTC, they are not going to release things to Creative Commons by way of apology. That would mean other people could develop similiar Unity-compatible engines and cut Unity itself out completely.

[bilateralrope]

Unity have partially backed down:

CHANGES TO UNITY PLANS AND PRICING

Summary of Unity Runtime Fee program
On September 22, 2023, we shared a letter with a summary of changes to our Runtime Fee policy. This page summarizes and replaces the prior Runtime Fee policy (introduced September 12, 2023).

If you’re on the Unity Personal or Plus plans, the Runtime Fee does not apply. The new Unity Runtime Fee will only apply to Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise.

No games created with any currently supported Unity versions will be impacted. Only those created with or upgraded to the Long Term Support (LTS) version releasing in 2024 (or later), currently referred to as the 2023 LTS will be impacted. For those games, the fee is only applicable after a game has crossed two thresholds: $1,000,000 (USD) in gross revenue (trailing 12 months) AND 1,000,000 initial engagements. After crossing these two thresholds, you can choose to pay the Runtime Fee, either based on monthly initial engagements or 2.5% of your game’s monthly gross revenue. Ultimately, you will be charged the lesser of the two.

An open letter to our community

To our community:

I’m Marc Whitten, and I lead Unity Create which includes the Unity engine and editor teams.

I want to start with this: I am sorry.

We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine.

You are what makes Unity great, and we know we need to listen, and work hard to earn your trust. We have heard your concerns, and we are making changes in the policy we announced to address them.

Our Unity Personal plan will remain free and there will be no Runtime Fee for games built on Unity Personal. We will be increasing the cap from $100,000 to $200,000 and we will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.

No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee.

For those creators on Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise, we are also making changes based on your feedback.

The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity.

We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version.

For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month. Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.

We want to continue to build the best engine for creators. We truly love this industry and you are the reason why.

I’d like to invite you to join me for a live fireside chat hosted by Jason Weimann today at 4:00 pm ET/1:00 pm PT, where I will do my best to answer your questions. In the meantime, here are some more details.*

Thank you for caring as deeply as you do, and thank you for giving us hard feedback.

Marc Whitten

- A return to "you can stay on the old TOS if you stay on the old version of Unity". A clause they tried to eliminate to shove the runtime fee onto everyone. No mention of anything to stop Unity trying something like this again.
- A choice between 2.5% of a games revenue "or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month" with a promise to always bill the lesser amount, with self-reported data from the dev. Which makes me wonder what data they are going to demand from all developers and what Unity plans to do with it, which leads to questions about the GDPR.
- No mention of anything about the credit given to people who use Unity's ad platform in their games. Which is one of the things in the complaint to the EU.

These changes should avoid most of the lawsuits and convince some devs to stick with Unity for current projects. But there is still the loss of trust that's going to make devs switch engines for their next projects.

[bilateralrope]

Someone did some calculations about where Unity or Unreal would be cheaper based on their announced prices. The conclusion is unexpected:

Unity Corporate Self-Immolation Fest 2023: Final(?) update

Tuesday before last, Unity out of nowhere dropped an announcement that they were changing their pricing structure, killing the Plus tier and introducing a new, completely unworkable pricing scheme based on "installs". After a series of meaningless "clarifications", today Unity issued a partial walkback. You should read that, I'm not really going to summarize it.

I have three thoughts.

The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond.

Thought 1: The fact that the new fees only apply to future versions is the critical change in this latest announcement, and probably(?) avoids a lawsuit. This will have interesting ecosystem effects since many people will now want to stick on 2022.3 LTS indefinitely. Possibly, some libraries will latch to 2022.3 and never update.

(Note that 2023 LTS will be released in 2024 and thus the new fees will apply. Yes, this is confusing.)

Thought 2: Which is more expensive now? Unity or Unreal?

So this gets grits teeth complicated.

The new policy is a bit confusing, but much easier to understand than last week's. They now claim that, once you hit $1m revenue, they will charge the lower of 2.5% revshare, or a charge per "number of new people engaging with your game" that they "calculate" based on your "self-reported data".

The part after the "or" there is the remnant of their baffling "install"-based pricing from last week. This new, "new installs" number is still untrustworthy gibberish. But! Now you can ignore it. So the "price" for using Unity is now effectively 2.5% of revenue over $1M, possibly reduced arbitrarily.

2.5% is less than Unreal's revshare (5% over $1m). But Unity is also still charging a per-seat fee, which Unreal doesn't. (In today's announcement they raised the revenue threshold for the per-seat fee to $200k— but they also killed the Plus tier, meaning for the smallest shops the per-seat fee just increased 5x.)

A per-seat fee plus a revshare is sour tasting. ("They're getting you coming and going.") Per-seat fees are really inconvenient for small operations like mine where some or all of your devs may only use Unity part time. But never mind how it feels. If you combine the revshares and seat prices, which costs more now?

<snip diagram>

Okay, this is a mess! But here is my takeaway: Unless you are making a lot of money, Unity is the more expensive option. If you're making a lot of money— multiple millions in revenue— then Unreal's higher revshare fee very rapidly dwarfs the price of Unity. But you have to make $1.08 million on a single-dev project— or $1.41 million on a 5-dev project, or $2.64 million on a 20-dev project— before Unity starts to look like a better deal than Unreal.

Is 2.6 million dollars a lot of money? Well, here's what's weird. The range where Unity looks like a worse deal is between $200k and $2.6m in revenue. Make no money and it doesn't matter, make over $2.6m and Unity is a money save. But that "mid-range" where Unreal does better? That's supposed to be Unity's target market. That's where Unity originally made its name. If Unity is now trying to abandon the midrange and make a play for the high end, there's a different problem: Unity isn't as good as Unreal on features. Maybe the idea is to abandon the midrange and the high end, but milk high-revenue, low-quality mobile developers who don't care about features— but if they don't care about features, then instead of paying Unity why not use all that money to retarget to (say) Godot?

Thought 3: This is manageable, but Unity is dead anyway

My gut is that if this open letter's policies were what Unity had announced to begin with, like last week, then people would have been annoyed, as they were with the 2021 changes, but you wouldn't have seen a community collapse or mass exodus.

However, that's not what happened. I do not think this open letter will halt the mass exodus. The core problem is that Unity can no longer be trusted. You can consider the new 2024 prices acceptable. But now what you really have to worry about is how they will change in 2026.

Down in the comments

andi
@mcc
10 hr. ago
Also, a point made by Maddy Thorson on Mastodon: Above I assume the revenue all comes in over one year and the per-seat license is for a single year. But as long as you qualify for the revenue threshold, you have to pay the per-seat license every year. Your next game will probably take more than one year to finish, but you're not going to make as much revenue the second year after your last game's release. In a whole-project graph, the per-seat cost would probably be multiplied by a factor of 2 to 5 vs above. In other words, even though this graph really doesn't make Unity look like a good deal, *I'm actually being unfairly generous to Unity!

I guess if you're making microtransaction-pump mobile games it's plausible you could develop a game in a year and you could keep up sustained income from a game 1 year post release. Once again, rapidly developed microtransaction-pump mobile games seem to be the only market segment Unity's interested in selling their engine to.

Unity being more expensive in what I assume is where most of the current Unity devs sit is a very unusual move to make.

[Lord Revan]

Well from what I've heard the current Unity CEO is someone who thinks that market should put as many predatory monetization systems as possible into their games, so he probably thinks they'll just put more microtransactions into their games and keep using Unity. the Truth is most likely that currently project using Unity will be completed but a lot fewer new projects will be started using Unity as the trust on Unity is gone, sure the engine seems to more or less the same but people are no longer thinking they rely on the terms staying reasonable and that's a big deal.

The Unity executives don't seem to realize to regain that trust they lost they need show they're willing to sacrifice their bottom line for that trust even if only nominally.

[Solauren]

Also, if they are thinking 'microtransactions', they have a rude awakening coming. It's one thing to play a game like that on your phone. You stick that onto PC games and Console games as a standard, game sales will fall.

[bilateralrope]

Switch game cancelled over controversial Unity changes

25TH SEP 2023 / 11:14 AM

A SWITCH PORT OF HIGHLY PRAISED WIPEOUT-LIKE BALLISTICNG HAS BEEN SCRAPPED

A planned Switch port of BallisticNG, a Wipeout-inspired racing game with “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on Steam, has been cancelled due to Unity’s recent policy changes.

Earlier this month, the software development company announced plans to charge developers every time a game that uses its Unity engine is installed.

Despite a subsequent apology followed by an attempt to partially walk back these plans over the weekend, much of the development community is still frustrated at the proposed changes to the terms of using Unity, with some saying it will affect their future projects.

Now, in one of the first solid examples of this, the developer of BallisticNG says it has cancelled its Switch port as a direct result of the Unity situation.

As spotted by ComicBook, developer Neognosis posted an update on the game’s Steam page, stating that the Switch port is no more, partly because it would have to upgrade to a new version of Unity and therefore be subject to the new terms of service.

“Nintendo has a rolling Unity version requirement for game releases and we’re already behind the threshold by two years,” the studio says.

“Two weeks ago this wouldn’t have been an issue – no doubt there’d have be some pains in updating BallisticNG to a new version of Unity again, but it would have benefited us in the long run.

“By the time we’ll have a Switch version of BallisticNG ready, the threshold for Unity versions will exceed the new versions that Unity are pushing their TOS changes with, and we currently have no confidence that they won’t try pulling another move or pushing back to their original plans under / beyond this new TOS.”

Because of this uncertainty, Neognosis says it has abandoned its plans for the Switch version of the game.

“Despite Unity’s efforts to recover after their PR disaster, there just isn’t any trust and security for us to continue moving forward with newer versions of their tools in the foreseeable future,” it said.

“It comes with much frustration and disappointment that we’re announcing the cancellation of the Switch version.

“Several years of development has gone into preparing BallisticNG technically for the port while maintaining the usual output of updates for the PC version, so this comes as a big kick in the balls to both us and everybody else who was excited for this version of the game.

“We’re sorry that it has turned out this way, and we’ll be looking at working with the console (or the rumoured Switch 2) in a future project not bound by Unity.”

I wonder how many games this will cost Nintendo.

[Solauren]

Switch game cancelled over controversial Unity changes

I wonder how many games this will cost Nintendo.

I wonder how much Nintendo is going to cost Unity over this.

[Lord Revan]

I think there's some very telling lines in that article that show how developers are thinking about this and it's not good news for unity.

and we currently have no confidence that they won’t try pulling another move or pushing back to their original plans under / beyond this new TOS.

Despite Unity’s efforts to recover after their PR disaster, there just isn’t any trust and security for us to continue moving forward with newer versions of their tools in the foreseeable future

These being the lines I'm referring to. The trust and faith on Unity is gone and Unity has done nothing really to regain that trust.

[bilateralrope]

Unity dev group dissolves after 13 years over “completely eroded” company trust

Meanwhile, major game devs say fee structure changes haven't won them back.
KYLE ORLAND - 9/27/2023, 4:35 AM

The "first official Unity user group in the world" has announced that it is dissolving after 13 years because "the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded." The move comes as many developers are saying they will continue to stay away from the company's products even after last week's partial rollback of some of the most controversial parts of its fee structure plans.

Since its founding in 2010, the Boston Unity Group (BUG) has attracted thousands of members to regular gatherings, talks, and networking events, including many technical lectures archived on YouTube. But the group says it will be hosting its last meeting Wednesday evening via Zoom because the Unity of today is very different from the Dave Helgason-led company that BUG says "enthusiastically sanctioned and supported" the group at its founding.
"Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities," the group leadership wrote in a departure note. "Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue matter more to Unity than the functionality game developers care about."

BUG says the install-fee terms Unity first announced earlier this month were "unthinkably hostile" to users and that even the "new concessions" in an updated pricing model offered late last week "disproportionately affect the success of indie studios in our community." But it's the fact that such "resounding, unequivocal condemnation from the games industry" was necessary to get those changes in the first place that has really shaken the community to its core.

"We've seen how easily and flippantly an executive-led business decision can risk bankrupting the studios we've worked so hard to build, threaten our livelihoods as professionals, and challenge the longevity of our industry," BUG wrote. "The Unity of today isn't the same company that it was when the group was founded, and the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded."

Developers remain wary

BUG's feelings are being echoed across large swaths of the game development community, where many prominent developers are saying Unity's public reversal has done little to nothing to restore their trust in the company.

Vampire Survivors developer Poncle, for instance, gave a succinct "lol no thank you" when asked during a Reddit AMA over the weekend if their next game/sequel would again use the Unity Engine. "Even if Unity were to walk back entirely on their decisions, I don't think it would be wise to trust them while they are under the current leadership," Poncle added later in the AMA.

"Basically, nothing has changed to stop Unity from doing this again in the future," InnerSloth (Among Us) developer Tony Coculuzzi wrote on social media Friday afternoon. "The ghouls are still in charge, and they're thinking up ways to make up for this hit on projected revenue as we speak... Unity leadership still can't be trusted to not fuck us harder in the future."

Some developers are now also suggesting that Unity ignored advice from the development community before announcing its initial plans earlier this month. Brandon Sheffield of Necrosoft Games (Demonschool) told Wired that his company was "privy to these [initial] install-fee changes well before they went live and pushed back against them. We knew the reaction would be resoundingly negative, but we weren’t listened to."

In part because of that intentional ignorance on Unity's part, Sheffield says he will stick with an earlier pledge to never use Unity in a future project despite the later fee structure changes. "We simply don’t trust them to stick to their word," he told Wired. “We don’t trust them to update their engine in ways that affect us, as PC/console developers, in a positive way. I think they have done irreparable damage to their brand for game developers in general, and the walkback isn’t going to fix it."

In an interview with Ars Technica last week, Unity executive Marc Whitten said he would be "out there talking much more in a two-way conversation with our creators" to try to earn back trust with the community. "I know deeply that trust is hard to earn and easy to lose," Whitten said. "I know the only way you actually earn it is through actions, not words... That's all I can do: Say what we're going to do and then do what we say."

The fallout continues.

[bilateralrope]

Unity CEO John Riccitiello is retiring, effective immediately

Former EA CEO will be replaced in interim by James Whitehurst from IBM/Red Hat.
KEVIN PURDY - 10/10/2023, 10:43 AM

John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, the company whose 3D game engine had recently seen backlash from developers over proposed fee structures, will retire as CEO, president, and board chairman at the company, according to a press release issued late on a Monday afternoon, one many observe as a holiday.

Riccitiello "will continue to advise Unity to ensure a smooth transition," the company stated, as it seeks to find a permanent CEO. James M. Whitehurst, a former Red Hat and IBM executive, will serve as interim CEO, while Roelof Botha, lead independent director of the Unity board, is now chairman.

“It’s been a privilege to lead Unity for nearly a decade and serve our employees, customers, developers and partners, all of whom have been instrumental to the Company’s growth,” Riccitiello said. “I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the Company’s future success.”

The timing of Riccitiello's retirement is certainly intriguing, given Unity's recent history. After announcing a per-install fee that many developers felt would endanger their livelihoods, Unity made major changes and has sent other executives on something of an apology tour. Riccitiello previously served as CEO at Electronic Arts, where his resignation came soon after a launch that seemed to follow soon after SimCity's technically (if not financially) disastrous launch, though Riccitiello himself cited financial results.

I wonder how big his golden parachute is.

[Solauren]

Well that's a small start to repairing their reputation.

Next the rest of the board would have to resign, or a record of who voted in favor of the new fees, and who voted against released, and the 'voted for' resign.