A fresh report into Unity’s hugely-controversial decision to start charging developers when their games are downloaded has thrown fresh light on the situation.
MobileGamer sources say Unity has already offered some studios a 100% fee waiver - if they switch over to Unity’s own LevelPlay ad platform.
The report quotes industry consultants that say this move is an “attempt to destroy” Unity’s main competitior in this field: AppLovin.
Why’s it always end up being fucking ads?
I hate late stage capitalism. I want off Mr. Bones’ Wild Ride.
Shareholders prefer constant steady income over one time purchases. Hence why they prefer subscriptions and ads.
Well… Peasants need this hot thing called voting with your feet and money…
Amazing things can be done esp in 100% discretionary sectors.
But nahh…
Nothing will ever change.
You know it, I know it, we all know it.
There is only one thing to be done.
Sir, this is a
Wendysvideo game technology thread.Hard to disagree but I don’t like your attitude dawg
Sure, bud. You do that.
I mean quite the opposite. Ff you are talking about the plebs, you would have a point but the Unity changes they are now trying to force through are going to other companies who typically don’t like it when you mess with their income unexpectedly. They likely will switch to a new engine with their newer projects, so they don’t have to deal with a surprise change.
Had me in the first part NGL.
But leaving democracy because capitalism is bah? No.
Democracy isn’t an economic system. You can have communism with democracy and capitalism without it. You maybe wouldn’t get elected as a straight up communist — like an unreformed Maoist or whatever — but democratic socialism is popular across the world.
Democracy isn’t an economic system.
Yes true.
Communism is both non democratic, and an economic system. You cannot have democracy and communism at the same time.
Socialism is in the same vein, but today we often conflate it with social democracy (which seems to be the best of the two worlds nowadays IMO).
Communism is not democratic. Read up ffs. It’s not democratic.
I know they do, and I hate it so so much…
That’s why I’m gonna buy Procreate Dreams even if I’m not an animator.
Well yeah. Subscriptions make a shitload of money compared to a one-time payment.
The ride never ends
It’s either ads or crabs
Tortoises?
Don’t you just love when a company creates a problem just to go and try to sell the solution?
It looks like a protection racket with extra steps. An unpleasant solution presented by the problem creator. Why is this not banned?
Game design 101 since the first smart phone.
IBM sure does suck donkey balls but I really don’t think that particular thing is their fault.
I wasn’t blaming any single entity. And really the first smart phone wouldn’t be accurate either, probably the first iPhone. Not so much brand, but popularity. Once the market became so large, and they started to realize they could get people addicted, regular games were over.
Game devs: “No thanks, we’re waiving the fees by using a different engine.”
I’d imagine that game devs, just like Unity’s shareholders, like predictability in profits. Even if it’s more expensive overall for them to move to Unreal for their next game, it could be worth it to avoid future calamity.
The problem is because you pay per install you could end up owing Unity more money than you actually make. Especially if people uninstall and reinstall your game a bunch of times for whatever reason.
sounds like a good way to protest
How did a good way to protest? It’ll just rack up your bills.
The correct way to protest is just stop using their platform.
I hope the large studios that use unity sue them into oblivion for breach of contract, because changing the deal after the fact is utterly unacceptable. How a business is supposed to operate if other businesses just change the terms of the deal retrospectively.
No it means instead of review bombing a game, you reinstall bomb it to cost the publisher a load of money.
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okay i misread that. I thought you were meaning like, a way of costing unity more money in the end.
Lol nope. Not even fucking close. You’re gonna die, Unity. You have only yourself to blame.
Ooh yeah FOSS forever!
Screw this. Boycott unity.
The conspiracy theorist in me says Unity planned this whole thing out to get less resistance on this thing they actually wanted to roll out; announce a super shit change that will intentionally outrage everybody, then say “ok, we won’t do it if you agree to use this other shitty model instead”.
Anyways, big shoutout to Godot for existing as an open-source alternative.
That’s not a conspiracy theory that’s like entry level MBA stuff.
Hey remember that time Unity bought IronSource so they could integrate ads more aggressively? Unity stopped being a game engine at some point they’re just an ads company now
There should be a law against offering something for free for a long time, until many other businesses rely on it then make it pay to a point of breaking all those businesses. It’s one thing changing the price of a product that’s customer facing but if you market to other businesses that’s not okay. I guess it’s up to businesses to look in the contract for a clause that states that the product will be free forever or that they need X time warning before making it pay.
Tech companies wouldn’t exist. It’s literally most of their business plans.
Good.
Changing from free to paid is fine. Doing it retroactively is not.
Once a game is in development using their product the terms need to stay the same.
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The vast majority of “new” tech companies operate at a loss.
This is a bullshit hypothetical that has no relevance for Unity. Unity is a well established company, that has been very successful after they revised their model to be more Indie friendly. This is a money grab attempt pure and simple. And it’s a money grab that is so bad it might actually kill Unity.
Unity technologies has never made a profit since it was founded. It’s still a company aiming at growth by burning money. Their losses have only increased since they went public.
I’m pretty sure that when Unity was headquartered in Denmark it made a profit. But I may be mistaken, because it was hyped as a danish enterprise success.
When they changed the license to be more Indie friendly a few years back, that too was hyped as a huge success.
But I can see on Wikipedia that Unity Software Inc. has a negative net income of $921 million on revenue of $1.4 billion.
That’s an insane loss, meaning that they basically operate at 50% loss! How or Why they ended up that badly is beyond me. It’s so bad it smells like something is not quite right with those numbers.
It was a private company back then so I don’t think there is financial info available. But at least it seems that the reports they filed for IPO indicated they had made loss for a few years prior.
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My problem with it is not monetizing; it is the changing of your monetization to affect games that were sold under a different model. If this was just the new TOS, ok fine. It would suck, but it’s their right to make whatever shitty monetization they want. But retroactively inflicting this on games? Shocking the development world with only a few months warning when game development takes years? No, that is not ok.
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I disagree. If you state that it’s free until X bench make and you make the change after that benchmark it’s fine. If you don’t, then users should be able to seek compensation
Elon Musk: speedruns enshittification on Xitter
Unity: “Hold my beer”
It’s enshittification all the way down
That’s worse, you fucking assholes.
The first one was assholish, but this one is outright insulting.
This is such a dumb move.
Forget about ethics for a minute, if there is an alternate option that doesn’t cost as much money then developers would obviously make use of that option so in any environment where alternate options exist companies have a limit of how obnoxious they can be and get away with it.
Somehow unity forgot that Unreal and Godot exist.
Honestly, if I had any stake in them I’d be wondering why Unity is so desperate for money.
AppLovin? What kind of a stupid name is that? What, are they trying to be an Irish R&B singer?
They hired the same marketing firm to come up with a name that McDonalds’ used.
It was either that or Mohammed
And so continues the downward spiral of the enshitification of video games.
Fuck unity. Use anything but unity.
The closest competitor is, what, Unreal Engine? That’s more costly.
Godot
How many times are developers going to put up with being used as sticks for one group of rich assholes to whack a different group of rich assholes with before we start supporting open platforms?