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Commenters here are overreacting due to misunderstandings: - the per-install fee doesn't kick in until you've passed BOTH the annual game revenue and install t

Commenters here are overreacting due to misunderstandings: - the per-install fee doesn't kick in until you've passed BOTH the annual game revenue and install thresholds (i.e. >$200k annual revenue on the game and >200k lifetime unique downloads) - the fee isn't monthly, it's per unique download (poor wording in Unity's chart) - you only pay the fee on the number of downloads over the threshold This new pricing will actually decrease the price of using Unity for many developers. Before, if your company's total annual revenue was >$100k, you had to buy a paid Unity license no matter what. Now those company's can use Unity totally free until their game reaches $200k annual revenue and 200k lifetime downloads. This licensing scheme is actually very similar to licensing the AVC/H.264 video codec from Via LA (for example, if you want to ship a build of Chromium with MP4 enabled). In their case, licensees self report the number of units they've distributed per year and pay a small fee on the number of units over 100k. If you ship under 100k units, there is no fee.

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procflora 3y ago
I think a lot of people are just fundamentally rejecting the structure of a deal like that. The numbers will matter a lot to individual org's decisions but at least to me the emotional reaction here is unrelated to the specifics of the thresholds and rates. It's just "game engine company should not be doing that." Probably true since it doesn't appear like they're a game engine company any more. The enshittification machine is rumbling to life.
gs17 3y ago
I do appreciate that if you make something that's always free, no matter who you work for you don't need to worry about which license to use, and by making it revenue for the last 12 months we don't need to worry about every dev taking down all their old Unity games to avoid fees. But it's still not a great deal. Even if they somehow can exclude pirated copies and malicious reinstalls, there's still plenty of absurd scenarios with it. A developer decides to make their game that was a hit almost a year ago free? Now they might have to pay Unity more than the $200k they made on the game earlier! Or if they throw it in a charity bundle, they get punished for their attempt to help people in need!

deleted 3y ago

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procflora 3y ago

I think a lot of people are just fundamentally rejecting the structure of a deal like that. The numbers will matter a lot to individual org's decisions but at least to me the emotional reaction here is unrelated to the specifics of the thresholds and rates. It's just "game engine company should not be doing that." Probably true since it doesn't appear like they're a game engine company any more. The enshittification machine is rumbling to life.

gs17 3y ago

I do appreciate that if you make something that's always free, no matter who you work for you don't need to worry about which license to use, and by making it revenue for the last 12 months we don't need to worry about every dev taking down all their old Unity games to avoid fees. But it's still not a great deal. Even if they somehow can exclude pirated copies and malicious reinstalls, there's still plenty of absurd scenarios with it. A developer decides to make their game that was a hit almost a year ago free? Now they might have to pay Unity more than the $200k they made on the game earlier! Or if they throw it in a charity bundle, they get punished for their attempt to help people in need!