3 ms·

> Meanwhile Unreal is 5% after 1M. Which is still more than Unity as long as you game costs more than $5-20? Of course this pretty much makes making any actua

by qwytw 3y ago

> Meanwhile Unreal is 5% after 1M. Which is still more than Unity as long as you game costs more than $5-20? Of course this pretty much makes making any actually free (not filled with ads free) games impossible. Edit: If I understand correctly the install fee only kicks in after $200k revenue? If so these pricing changes actually seem pretty reasonable..

bcrosby95 3y ago
Most Unity games are mobile apps. Some suits probably saw the numbers on installs and saw dollar signs, but never thought about if it was a viable pricing model for most of their actual customers.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > pricing model for most of their actual customers I guess they don't really value customers who can only generate $0.01-1.0 or less per install. Not saying it's right but it's not like this group of developers is really paying them that much anyway (and noncommercial games/apps don't seem to be affected at al).
  - starburst 3y ago
    You'd be surprise how HUGE that market is and also Unity's foothold as the engine of choices for those games. So this makes this decision even more baffling because instead of sharing the revenue these developers will just change to a different engine (it's not like that market will disappear, so if using Unity is unprofitable or too big of a dent in the revenue, they won't stop making those games, just use a different engine)
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > instead of sharing the revenue I'm sure one reason Unity did this is that are pretty certain that many of those developers won't be willing to share their revenue. In countries like China where even relatively large studios would just pay for 1-5 licenses for 100 employees forcing them to give you a share of their revenue seems hardly possible.
      - starburst 3y ago
        They will have the same problem trying to get them to pay per installs as well, whatever punishment can happens for not paying their cost to install tax they can do the same tactic for those not paying their revenue share.
        qwytw 3y ago
        > They will have the same problem trying to get them to pay per installs as well If they are already clients and paying for Plus/Pro/etc. subscriptions that shouldn't be too hard (much, much easier anyway).
starburst 3y ago
That is the problem, and what is completely baffling, games that are sold at 70$ means they pay a ridiculously low fee (%) compared to cheap or free to play mobile games where that fee means it can render the game unprofitable and need to be shutdown, yet with a reasonable % of the revenue they would be able to be profitable and everyone makes money. Big company selling big games will see this as a rounding error in their revenue. Indies / small company will probably need to shutdown some games because this won't be profitable...
- qwytw 3y ago
  > Indies / small company will probably need to shutdown some games Are they giving away their games for free (so this shouldn't(?) affect them)? Or or have about $1-2 revenue per user or less and over overall $200k revenue?
  - starburst 3y ago
    Maybe you're not familiar with the economics of f2p mobile games, but basically, the game is free, you get maybe 100k installs and make back 25k$ (IAP, etc.) so revenue of 0.25$ per user. But then you have to pay for users acquisition (marketing to get installs) so the actual revenue is more like 0.19$ per user (still profitable!) BUT then I have to pay 0.20$ for any installs regardless of it made any money, so I'm effectively at a loss -0.01$ per user when I could've been profitable. I made up the number up but you get the idea. With a % of revenue share (or at the very least do not count installs that generated 0$ revenue) it could be a profitable game, now it risks of being shutdown.
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > 0.25$ per user I assumed than US/CAN/etc. user would be worth much more than that? > marketing to get installs Not sure how accurate, since this was on the first page I googled: "Average mobile app CPI – $0.93 (APAC), $1.03 (EMEA), $0.34 (Latin America), $5.28 (North America)" but would imply that those numbers are no realistic. All Latin America and most Asian (outside Japan and SK) and significant proportion of EMEA users would only cost $0.02 per install. And the users you have to pay $0.20 for are likely to be generating significantly more ad/IAP revenue for you than the rest. But yeah, if you can't get to $1-2 even for NA/etc. users are you're actually selling your game for $1-2 the 20 cent fee seems pretty extreme.
dagmx 3y ago
But that's the crux of it. For Epic, you have to make several times the amount. 200k of success is a lot more achievable than 1M of success for an indie. The issue is that, Unity are in a very odd place of the market. They completely ceded high end gaming to Unreal. They have reasonable alternatives like Godot on the other end. So their main markets are: 1. Enterprise - which is fickle 2. Indie devs aspiring for success - who are going for cheap 3. Mobile (which might include 2) 4. A very few AAA games I think this move will alienate a lot of their indie clients in the hopes of getting more money from their higher end clients. For those indie clients, hitting 200K of revenue is a much closer dream than 1M of revenue, and they'll see that Unreal gives them more "high end graphics". So I understand Unity's position, I just think they're alienating one of their biggest bases. Even if they don't make money directly off of them, those are the people who often advocate for use of Unity in other areas like Enterprise.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > For those indie clients, hitting 200K of revenue is a much closer dream than 1M of revenue If you were using Unity you already had to update to Pro when you company hit 200k revenue (they actually changed this to per game now, I think?). So fundamentally nothing really changed to that regard. They added an option to not upgrade to Pro and pay the $0.2 per install instead. I can't imagine why would anyone do that though. You'd basically have to have about 300-400k installs and revenue but require 10-20 seats so that paying per install would make more sense than upgrading you subscription. I can only imagine this might be the case in some third world sweatshop where you pay you developers less than 10k per year..

by qwytw 3y ago

bcrosby95 3y ago

Most Unity games are mobile apps. Some suits probably saw the numbers on installs and saw dollar signs, but never thought about if it was a viable pricing model for most of their actual customers.

qwytw 3y ago
> pricing model for most of their actual customers I guess they don't really value customers who can only generate $0.01-1.0 or less per install. Not saying it's right but it's not like this group of developers is really paying them that much anyway (and noncommercial games/apps don't seem to be affected at al).
- starburst 3y ago
  You'd be surprise how HUGE that market is and also Unity's foothold as the engine of choices for those games. So this makes this decision even more baffling because instead of sharing the revenue these developers will just change to a different engine (it's not like that market will disappear, so if using Unity is unprofitable or too big of a dent in the revenue, they won't stop making those games, just use a different engine)
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > instead of sharing the revenue I'm sure one reason Unity did this is that are pretty certain that many of those developers won't be willing to share their revenue. In countries like China where even relatively large studios would just pay for 1-5 licenses for 100 employees forcing them to give you a share of their revenue seems hardly possible.
    - starburst 3y ago
      They will have the same problem trying to get them to pay per installs as well, whatever punishment can happens for not paying their cost to install tax they can do the same tactic for those not paying their revenue share.
      - qwytw 3y ago
        > They will have the same problem trying to get them to pay per installs as well If they are already clients and paying for Plus/Pro/etc. subscriptions that shouldn't be too hard (much, much easier anyway).

starburst 3y ago

That is the problem, and what is completely baffling, games that are sold at 70$ means they pay a ridiculously low fee (%) compared to cheap or free to play mobile games where that fee means it can render the game unprofitable and need to be shutdown, yet with a reasonable % of the revenue they would be able to be profitable and everyone makes money. Big company selling big games will see this as a rounding error in their revenue. Indies / small company will probably need to shutdown some games because this won't be profitable...

qwytw 3y ago
> Indies / small company will probably need to shutdown some games Are they giving away their games for free (so this shouldn't(?) affect them)? Or or have about $1-2 revenue per user or less and over overall $200k revenue?
- starburst 3y ago
  Maybe you're not familiar with the economics of f2p mobile games, but basically, the game is free, you get maybe 100k installs and make back 25k$ (IAP, etc.) so revenue of 0.25$ per user. But then you have to pay for users acquisition (marketing to get installs) so the actual revenue is more like 0.19$ per user (still profitable!) BUT then I have to pay 0.20$ for any installs regardless of it made any money, so I'm effectively at a loss -0.01$ per user when I could've been profitable. I made up the number up but you get the idea. With a % of revenue share (or at the very least do not count installs that generated 0$ revenue) it could be a profitable game, now it risks of being shutdown.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > 0.25$ per user I assumed than US/CAN/etc. user would be worth much more than that? > marketing to get installs Not sure how accurate, since this was on the first page I googled: "Average mobile app CPI – $0.93 (APAC), $1.03 (EMEA), $0.34 (Latin America), $5.28 (North America)" but would imply that those numbers are no realistic. All Latin America and most Asian (outside Japan and SK) and significant proportion of EMEA users would only cost $0.02 per install. And the users you have to pay $0.20 for are likely to be generating significantly more ad/IAP revenue for you than the rest. But yeah, if you can't get to $1-2 even for NA/etc. users are you're actually selling your game for $1-2 the 20 cent fee seems pretty extreme.

dagmx 3y ago

But that's the crux of it. For Epic, you have to make several times the amount. 200k of success is a lot more achievable than 1M of success for an indie. The issue is that, Unity are in a very odd place of the market. They completely ceded high end gaming to Unreal. They have reasonable alternatives like Godot on the other end. So their main markets are: 1. Enterprise - which is fickle 2. Indie devs aspiring for success - who are going for cheap 3. Mobile (which might include 2) 4. A very few AAA games I think this move will alienate a lot of their indie clients in the hopes of getting more money from their higher end clients. For those indie clients, hitting 200K of revenue is a much closer dream than 1M of revenue, and they'll see that Unreal gives them more "high end graphics". So I understand Unity's position, I just think they're alienating one of their biggest bases. Even if they don't make money directly off of them, those are the people who often advocate for use of Unity in other areas like Enterprise.

qwytw 3y ago
> For those indie clients, hitting 200K of revenue is a much closer dream than 1M of revenue If you were using Unity you already had to update to Pro when you company hit 200k revenue (they actually changed this to per game now, I think?). So fundamentally nothing really changed to that regard. They added an option to not upgrade to Pro and pay the $0.2 per install instead. I can't imagine why would anyone do that though. You'd basically have to have about 300-400k installs and revenue but require 10-20 seats so that paying per install would make more sense than upgrading you subscription. I can only imagine this might be the case in some third world sweatshop where you pay you developers less than 10k per year..