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If a company makes a product, say physical goods, and the price of manufacturing goes up but the company doesn't increase consumer prices in response, is it the

If a company makes a product, say physical goods, and the price of manufacturing goes up but the company doesn't increase consumer prices in response, is it the manufacturers fault? > you would have been making fun of that developer for having that concern What a ridiculous statement, thinking you can somehow figure out how I'd reply "100%" just from reading this thread. You haven't provided anything so far in this conversation that has pushed the conversation forward, other than some ad-hominems. Great job. > It's made up All pricing models are made up.

danShumway 3y ago
> What a ridiculous statement, thinking you can somehow figure out how I'd reply "100%" just from reading this thread. Am I wrong? :) I mean, feel free to prove me wrong, were you a year ago thinking about the possibility of Unity dropping a revenue share model completely? Was that a conversation anyone was having anywhere at all? Forget about your personal response, you might not have been thinking about Unity at all a year ago. Fine. Can you find a thread, anywhere at all, advising mobile developers not to use Unity because they might abandon revenue sharing? I mean, apparently this is a thing they should have considered, right? So do you have an example of anyone, anywhere, considering it? The closest I can think of is the general advice to game developers not to use proprietary tools period, but I don't think that's what you're suggesting given you're not on here now saying that nobody should use Unity because of the power imbalance. > If a company makes a product, say physical goods, and the price of manufacturing goes up but the company doesn't increase consumer prices in response, is it the manufacturers fault? Nothing physically has changed to force Unity to change prices, nor is Unity claiming that's the case. Also yes, in a scenario where you have an agreement with a company and the company changes the underlying prices of that agreement without warning, you would be correct in saying that it is certainly more the supplier's "fault" that a company goes out of business than the company owner. You might claim that the supplier didn't have a choice, but it would be ridiculous to claim that it's the buyer's fault that the prices changed. And again, I have to keep saying this: there is nothing physical going on here and Unity the company itself is not claiming that they're changing their pricing model in order to cover new costs. Analogies to material costs don't really apply here. > All pricing models are made up. Yep. That's... that's what I said. And if you're asking "who's fault is it that the pricing model is what it is" it's probably the fault of the person who created the pricing model. "Who's fault is it that this book has these words in it? The author's?" "No, it's the readers' fault!" Come on.
- tomnipotent 3y ago
  > Am I wrong? I mean, feel free to prove me wrong Can you prove you're right? > I mean, apparently this is a thing they should have considered, right? I'm unaware of any business that doesn't consider pricing changes to strategic costs as future liabilities, especially when you don't have a contract with fixed terms. I don't see any evidence that Unity made guarantees that it's historical prices would remain consistent into the future. They're a public for-profit company, not a charity. > Nothing physically has changed to force Unity to change prices So not only can you predict what I would say, you have some sort of insights into Unity's cost structures and what it requires for them to keep Unity updated and competitive? > but it would be ridiculous to claim that it's the buyer's fault that the prices changed. It's not ridiculous to blame the seller that doesn't increase their pricing to keep a tenable margin. If my costs of goods increase but I keep my prices the same, it's my fault.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    > Can you prove you're right? :) I thought so. The only people making arguments about future Unity changes were Open Source weirdos like me who were warning against proprietary software in general, and we were regularly dismissed and called impractical. Nobody was considering that Unity would drop revenue sharing as a business model. If you go back and look at advice about the mobile markets, this was not a concern on anybody's mind. Yes, people considered that pricing itself might change, but professionals in industry were not advising about the possibility of Unity changing away from a revenue share model, nor was this ever coming up as a concern in conversations about Unity's efforts to appeal to mobile developers. It's actually fairly easy to tell what people were thinking about Unity's pricing model given how recent the change is -- you can just go back and look at the many conversations people were having about engines. I'll tell you what you won't see: you won't see a lot of people floating the possibility of installation-based pricing. > I don't see any evidence that Unity made guarantees that it's historical prices would remain consistent into the future. This isn't about a pricing change, it's about a change to the entire pricing model. Nonetheless, you raise a good point. Unity could make arbitrary changes in the future as well. Doubtless, you would agree that it's irresponsible for devs today to use Unity under the current terms given that they have no control over what Unity's future pricing will be and given that pricing changes can be retroactively applied to games that they release before those changes? Certainly you'd advocate today for the same level of responsibility and caution that you're arguing mobile developers should have had in the past, right? We have no idea what Unity's pricing model will be in 6 months, there's no guarantees in the contract -- and like you say, we need to consider that fact when building a business. So it would be the height of irresponsibility to advocate that everything is fine and the changes are no big deal and developers should just continue to use Unity. Would you advise Unity developers today to decrease reliance on the engine and to be extremely cautious about building a business on top of a platform that can make arbitrary changes to pricing structures and that can apply those changes to existing products? Sure Vampire Survivors is profitable now, but as you correctly point out, there's nothing in the contract stopping Unity from changing that in the future. ---- > So not only can you predict what I would say, you have some sort of insights into Unity's cost structures and what it requires for them to keep Unity updated and competitive? Scary, right? I'm almost as psychic as you expect mobile developers should have been. ;) In my case it's not magic though, there's a trick to it. I get my information from having being active in game development spaces for a while and being familiar with the conversations that professionals were having about engine choice, and also from reading Unity's own press release and reading their own supplied justifications for why they're making the change. ---- > If my costs of goods increase but I keep my prices the same, it's my fault For anyone unfamiliar with how F2P and ad-supported games work, you can't just increase the cost of purchase for them, that's not really a thing, ad-supported games don't have a purchase cost to increase.
berkle4455 3y ago
You're arguing in bad faith, just stop, you've been a total dick to the community and you keep digging this hole deeper.
- tomnipotent 3y ago
  > You're arguing in bad faith Because I'm not throwing out low-effort "woe poor game developer" vibes and am instead expecting more? I've actually made effort to model how this could work, rather than exclaiming "this is going to ruin indie game developers!". Bad faith is making unsubstantiated claims and then getting mad when asked to back it up.
  - fzeroracer 3y ago
    Have you actually worked on a game in any sense or fashion?
    - tomnipotent 3y ago
      Yes, casual web games. Millions of units, high eight-figure to low nine-figure in gross sales. Tens of billions of online game sessions. I helped start an early online gaming site called GameRival.com that's most famous for Gold Miner and powering MySpace Games, and later led engineering for Grab.com (before the domain was sold off for taxis or whatever it is today). I still run into Gold Miner clones at casinos even to this day. Have you?
      - danShumway 3y ago
        So what's particularly funny about this is that Unity has since clarified that transmission of the runtime over the web via streaming or browser plays counts as an install, and your nine-figure sales compared to tens of billions of sessions would have been impossible to do profitably under these terms. And yet you're still on here defending them and somehow forgot that the F2P genre existed when doing your math. If this is your background then this conversation is even more ridiculous; you should understand what it means to have more installs than profitable users because that was literally your business model. So why are you having trouble connecting the dots here about why developers would be concerned about these changes? By your math you were making pennies per-session. How are you having trouble understanding why even a 2-3 cent additional cost for each session would be a problem for that model?
dang 3y ago
Would you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? You started a doozy with this one and then continued to perpetuate it by breaking the site guidelines yourself. Seriously not cool. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

danShumway 3y ago

> What a ridiculous statement, thinking you can somehow figure out how I'd reply "100%" just from reading this thread. Am I wrong? :) I mean, feel free to prove me wrong, were you a year ago thinking about the possibility of Unity dropping a revenue share model completely? Was that a conversation anyone was having anywhere at all? Forget about your personal response, you might not have been thinking about Unity at all a year ago. Fine. Can you find a thread, anywhere at all, advising mobile developers not to use Unity because they might abandon revenue sharing? I mean, apparently this is a thing they should have considered, right? So do you have an example of anyone, anywhere, considering it? The closest I can think of is the general advice to game developers not to use proprietary tools period, but I don't think that's what you're suggesting given you're not on here now saying that nobody should use Unity because of the power imbalance. > If a company makes a product, say physical goods, and the price of manufacturing goes up but the company doesn't increase consumer prices in response, is it the manufacturers fault? Nothing physically has changed to force Unity to change prices, nor is Unity claiming that's the case. Also yes, in a scenario where you have an agreement with a company and the company changes the underlying prices of that agreement without warning, you would be correct in saying that it is certainly more the supplier's "fault" that a company goes out of business than the company owner. You might claim that the supplier didn't have a choice, but it would be ridiculous to claim that it's the buyer's fault that the prices changed. And again, I have to keep saying this: there is nothing physical going on here and Unity the company itself is not claiming that they're changing their pricing model in order to cover new costs. Analogies to material costs don't really apply here. > All pricing models are made up. Yep. That's... that's what I said. And if you're asking "who's fault is it that the pricing model is what it is" it's probably the fault of the person who created the pricing model. "Who's fault is it that this book has these words in it? The author's?" "No, it's the readers' fault!" Come on.

tomnipotent 3y ago
> Am I wrong? I mean, feel free to prove me wrong Can you prove you're right? > I mean, apparently this is a thing they should have considered, right? I'm unaware of any business that doesn't consider pricing changes to strategic costs as future liabilities, especially when you don't have a contract with fixed terms. I don't see any evidence that Unity made guarantees that it's historical prices would remain consistent into the future. They're a public for-profit company, not a charity. > Nothing physically has changed to force Unity to change prices So not only can you predict what I would say, you have some sort of insights into Unity's cost structures and what it requires for them to keep Unity updated and competitive? > but it would be ridiculous to claim that it's the buyer's fault that the prices changed. It's not ridiculous to blame the seller that doesn't increase their pricing to keep a tenable margin. If my costs of goods increase but I keep my prices the same, it's my fault.
- danShumway 3y ago
  > Can you prove you're right? :) I thought so. The only people making arguments about future Unity changes were Open Source weirdos like me who were warning against proprietary software in general, and we were regularly dismissed and called impractical. Nobody was considering that Unity would drop revenue sharing as a business model. If you go back and look at advice about the mobile markets, this was not a concern on anybody's mind. Yes, people considered that pricing itself might change, but professionals in industry were not advising about the possibility of Unity changing away from a revenue share model, nor was this ever coming up as a concern in conversations about Unity's efforts to appeal to mobile developers. It's actually fairly easy to tell what people were thinking about Unity's pricing model given how recent the change is -- you can just go back and look at the many conversations people were having about engines. I'll tell you what you won't see: you won't see a lot of people floating the possibility of installation-based pricing. > I don't see any evidence that Unity made guarantees that it's historical prices would remain consistent into the future. This isn't about a pricing change, it's about a change to the entire pricing model. Nonetheless, you raise a good point. Unity could make arbitrary changes in the future as well. Doubtless, you would agree that it's irresponsible for devs today to use Unity under the current terms given that they have no control over what Unity's future pricing will be and given that pricing changes can be retroactively applied to games that they release before those changes? Certainly you'd advocate today for the same level of responsibility and caution that you're arguing mobile developers should have had in the past, right? We have no idea what Unity's pricing model will be in 6 months, there's no guarantees in the contract -- and like you say, we need to consider that fact when building a business. So it would be the height of irresponsibility to advocate that everything is fine and the changes are no big deal and developers should just continue to use Unity. Would you advise Unity developers today to decrease reliance on the engine and to be extremely cautious about building a business on top of a platform that can make arbitrary changes to pricing structures and that can apply those changes to existing products? Sure Vampire Survivors is profitable now, but as you correctly point out, there's nothing in the contract stopping Unity from changing that in the future. ---- > So not only can you predict what I would say, you have some sort of insights into Unity's cost structures and what it requires for them to keep Unity updated and competitive? Scary, right? I'm almost as psychic as you expect mobile developers should have been. ;) In my case it's not magic though, there's a trick to it. I get my information from having being active in game development spaces for a while and being familiar with the conversations that professionals were having about engine choice, and also from reading Unity's own press release and reading their own supplied justifications for why they're making the change. ---- > If my costs of goods increase but I keep my prices the same, it's my fault For anyone unfamiliar with how F2P and ad-supported games work, you can't just increase the cost of purchase for them, that's not really a thing, ad-supported games don't have a purchase cost to increase.

berkle4455 3y ago

You're arguing in bad faith, just stop, you've been a total dick to the community and you keep digging this hole deeper.

tomnipotent 3y ago
> You're arguing in bad faith Because I'm not throwing out low-effort "woe poor game developer" vibes and am instead expecting more? I've actually made effort to model how this could work, rather than exclaiming "this is going to ruin indie game developers!". Bad faith is making unsubstantiated claims and then getting mad when asked to back it up.
- fzeroracer 3y ago
  Have you actually worked on a game in any sense or fashion?
  - tomnipotent 3y ago
    Yes, casual web games. Millions of units, high eight-figure to low nine-figure in gross sales. Tens of billions of online game sessions. I helped start an early online gaming site called GameRival.com that's most famous for Gold Miner and powering MySpace Games, and later led engineering for Grab.com (before the domain was sold off for taxis or whatever it is today). I still run into Gold Miner clones at casinos even to this day. Have you?
    - danShumway 3y ago
      So what's particularly funny about this is that Unity has since clarified that transmission of the runtime over the web via streaming or browser plays counts as an install, and your nine-figure sales compared to tens of billions of sessions would have been impossible to do profitably under these terms. And yet you're still on here defending them and somehow forgot that the F2P genre existed when doing your math. If this is your background then this conversation is even more ridiculous; you should understand what it means to have more installs than profitable users because that was literally your business model. So why are you having trouble connecting the dots here about why developers would be concerned about these changes? By your math you were making pennies per-session. How are you having trouble understanding why even a 2-3 cent additional cost for each session would be a problem for that model?

dang 3y ago

Would you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? You started a doozy with this one and then continued to perpetuate it by breaking the site guidelines yourself. Seriously not cool. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.