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The problem is that Unity has a lot of customers that make freemium/ad supported/low cost (mobile) games. $0.20 per install is absurd when most players are gone

The problem is that Unity has a lot of customers that make freemium/ad supported/low cost (mobile) games. $0.20 per install is absurd when most players are gone after less than an hour of playtime. Of course if you sell games at $60 a piece it is not a whole lot, and the regular seat pricing of Unity is most likely a far greater expense.

gsuuon 3y ago
This does look pretty bad for hyper-casual and casual Unity devs. The total earning per install could easily drop into the negative and even with the $200k revenue buffer, it'd be easy to end up with almost nothing. I imagine these folks will just shut their game down around the $200k mark if they see their LTV hovering at or below $0.20.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > shut their game down around the $200k Wouldn't upgrading to Pro be a better option? Yearly subscription for a seat seems to be worth about 10k $0.2. Also you're cost per install is almost certainly going to be significantly below $0.2 because every install outside of: "United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, and the United Kingdom" (I wonder how did they create this list, e.g. Spain and Italy seem to have a comparable or even higher cost-per-click than Sweden , Austria, Finland etc.) will cost just $0.02
  - gsuuon 3y ago
    You're right, upgrading to pro would be better at $2k/seat/yr which gets you a much larger million dollar buffer. Also, I'm noticing that the revenue thresholds seem to be per-game not per org - so actually, the new pricing isn't that bad!
qwytw 3y ago
> $0.20 per install is absurd Yeah, it almost seems to me that the $0.20 is there to force to encourage plus subscribers to Pro. Which probably was a poor choice marketing wise since most people will just see a single number and not pay much attention at anything else. Also it's only $0.2 fore a specific list of countries (US, CAN, AU, NZ, JP, SK and some richer EU countries). Everywhere else it's $0.02 I don't personally like this whole business model that much, but financially it seems to be pretty reasonable (I guess as long as you can somewhat predict your expected install count in advance which might not be that easy in some cases).
- sbergot 3y ago
  It does seem reasonable as an incentive for successful studios to switch to pro. However the issue is not purely with the price only. The issue is the fact that the wording is unclear. Also a price per install seems like a bad target overall. How is it reported? Now they are saying that there are exceptions like gamepass installs. It is going to be a mess. Also the change is retroactive. Imagine a vendor announcing that starting January 2024 you will have to give them a piece of your cake. Even if the piece is small, you are still going to contact your layers, and you will loose trust with this particular vendor.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > The issue is the fact that the wording is unclear. Also a price per install seems like a bad target overall. How is it reported? Now they are saying that there are exceptions like gamepass installs. It is going to be a mess. Oh yeah, I 100% agree with this. On the very basic level I just hate the concept of a third party tracking and counting every user I have without my (or the actual user's consent). Not every game/app made with Unity is distributed on the App Store/Steam/etc. and there are plenty of other reasons why I wouldn't want to share that data with anyone (or even collect it).

gsuuon 3y ago

This does look pretty bad for hyper-casual and casual Unity devs. The total earning per install could easily drop into the negative and even with the $200k revenue buffer, it'd be easy to end up with almost nothing. I imagine these folks will just shut their game down around the $200k mark if they see their LTV hovering at or below $0.20.

qwytw 3y ago
> shut their game down around the $200k Wouldn't upgrading to Pro be a better option? Yearly subscription for a seat seems to be worth about 10k $0.2. Also you're cost per install is almost certainly going to be significantly below $0.2 because every install outside of: "United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, and the United Kingdom" (I wonder how did they create this list, e.g. Spain and Italy seem to have a comparable or even higher cost-per-click than Sweden , Austria, Finland etc.) will cost just $0.02
- gsuuon 3y ago
  You're right, upgrading to pro would be better at $2k/seat/yr which gets you a much larger million dollar buffer. Also, I'm noticing that the revenue thresholds seem to be per-game not per org - so actually, the new pricing isn't that bad!

qwytw 3y ago

> $0.20 per install is absurd Yeah, it almost seems to me that the $0.20 is there to force to encourage plus subscribers to Pro. Which probably was a poor choice marketing wise since most people will just see a single number and not pay much attention at anything else. Also it's only $0.2 fore a specific list of countries (US, CAN, AU, NZ, JP, SK and some richer EU countries). Everywhere else it's $0.02 I don't personally like this whole business model that much, but financially it seems to be pretty reasonable (I guess as long as you can somewhat predict your expected install count in advance which might not be that easy in some cases).

sbergot 3y ago
It does seem reasonable as an incentive for successful studios to switch to pro. However the issue is not purely with the price only. The issue is the fact that the wording is unclear. Also a price per install seems like a bad target overall. How is it reported? Now they are saying that there are exceptions like gamepass installs. It is going to be a mess. Also the change is retroactive. Imagine a vendor announcing that starting January 2024 you will have to give them a piece of your cake. Even if the piece is small, you are still going to contact your layers, and you will loose trust with this particular vendor.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > The issue is the fact that the wording is unclear. Also a price per install seems like a bad target overall. How is it reported? Now they are saying that there are exceptions like gamepass installs. It is going to be a mess. Oh yeah, I 100% agree with this. On the very basic level I just hate the concept of a third party tracking and counting every user I have without my (or the actual user's consent). Not every game/app made with Unity is distributed on the App Store/Steam/etc. and there are plenty of other reasons why I wouldn't want to share that data with anyone (or even collect it).