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> 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

by 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.

starburst 3y ago
Not sure I understand? I just made those number up to give you an example, be it realistic or not hardly matters. You get X per user and it cost you Y per user and Unity take Z per user. Now `X - Y` is profitable but `X - Y - Z` is not, that's it. If it was instead a % at least it would still be profitable if only less, it doesn't put the revenue per user in jeopardy of being in the negative. Plenty of games are profitable at scale with only a few pennies per user.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > I just made those number up to give you an example, be it realistic or not hardly matters That's pretty much the only thing that matters. there is a huge difference whether they make $0.5, $1 or $2 etc (and especially how much more do they make per user in a "rich" country since Unity seems to think that they are worth up to 10x more than everyone else. > Plenty of games are profitable at scale with only a few pennies per user. Beyond a certain point (over 1 mill users) it will only cost $0.01 per install. So this will affect 1-5 dev/worker studios with very low revenue per user. They could still probably just pay ~2k for Unity Pro per seat and stay under the 1 million revenue threshold. To me it almost seems that the '$0.20 per install' is only there to encourage developers to upgrade to pro if they have more than a few hundred k. users. > If it was instead a % True, I'm not arguing that wouldn't be more fair. It would be quite expensive to enforce and close to impossible in certain cases. So I understand why Unity chose to do this instead.
  - starburst 3y ago
    > That's pretty much the only thing that matters. there is a huge difference whether they make $0.5, $1 or $2 etc My point is those numbers can vary GREATLY from games to games, and not only the revenue per user but the cost of user acquisition as well. There isn't one truth, the numbers I gave up could very well fit a real project. Of course you would be pretty stupid to not subscribe to Pro once you notice your game going to 200k. And let's be real, at 1M$ threshold, if the Unity tax is what kill your game, maybe there wasn't a market fit. But it just feel such a bad and unfair way to generate revenue on free to play games. > So I understand why Unity chose to do this instead. Other engines does it just fine, tracking installs (without any false positive) seems a much bigger hassle especially legal wise
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > Other engines does it just fine, I'm not sure that's comparable or even true. No other proprietary engine has as even remotely comparable market share in the freemium/Ad/IAP-funded/shovelware mobile game market. Also Epic isn't trying to pay for 8000 employees (especially not just with their engine revenue) or service billion in debt accrued from (possibly unnecessary) acquisitions. It feels to me that Unity pushed themselves into a corner by increasing and don't really have any choices but to try and maximize their revenue any way they can. e.g. Epic seems to have about 4000 employees and compared to Fortnite Unreal seems to almost be just a side gig for them. Also let's be fair a 5% royalty would be much more likely to scare off their best paying customers. And looking at their current leadership and overall philosophy I find it easy to understand why they might not care that much what will happen to some indy/small developers who can't afford/don't want to pay for Pro or have more than 1 million users but can't generate more than ~$0.2 - 0.5 in profit per install.
      - starburst 3y ago
        I get that, but I feel like there must've been a much better way to do so than with this proposal that seems to have burn the last remaining goodwill that developers had left in Unity and making sure most future projects won't get done on Unity. A lot of people have been thinking about switching for years, Unity is becoming slower and slower with time, more buggier, etc. I feel like this is the tipping point where the number of developpers is going to go down, so was it worth it? Maybe, maybe it was the correct decision, time will tell. I'll still continue to use it for on-going projects I have and pay the tax no problem, but I won't pick it for any project in the future personnaly because of how out of touch and ridiculous I personaly feel this business decision is (and other decisions they've made).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kevingadd 3y ago
the average is skewed by games like Genshin Impact with gross exploitative monetization, not to mention literal casino games. So smaller developers with more reasonable monetization are not getting anywhere close to those averages and will be punished hard by these fees, especially because it's per-install not per-user. If a user installs your F2P mobile game on 2-3 devices (not uncommon), you now owe 40-60 cents, not 20. Hope your average revenue is good enough that you can afford that after Apple/Google take their 30%.
- qwytw 3y ago
  Average cost per install should be significantly lower than 20 for most games (it's just 2 cents for most country's in the world after all). However yeah it seems pretty excessive. I wouldn't be surprised if that 20 cent cost is just there to encourage developers who'd have to pay to update to pro (e.g. a seat for a year seems to be equal to about 10k installs, but with pro you get extra 800k free installs and increase your revenue limit by another 800k so you'll likely won't even have to pay extra for users at all)

by qwytw 3y ago

starburst 3y ago

Not sure I understand? I just made those number up to give you an example, be it realistic or not hardly matters. You get X per user and it cost you Y per user and Unity take Z per user. Now `X - Y` is profitable but `X - Y - Z` is not, that's it. If it was instead a % at least it would still be profitable if only less, it doesn't put the revenue per user in jeopardy of being in the negative. Plenty of games are profitable at scale with only a few pennies per user.

qwytw 3y ago
> I just made those number up to give you an example, be it realistic or not hardly matters That's pretty much the only thing that matters. there is a huge difference whether they make $0.5, $1 or $2 etc (and especially how much more do they make per user in a "rich" country since Unity seems to think that they are worth up to 10x more than everyone else. > Plenty of games are profitable at scale with only a few pennies per user. Beyond a certain point (over 1 mill users) it will only cost $0.01 per install. So this will affect 1-5 dev/worker studios with very low revenue per user. They could still probably just pay ~2k for Unity Pro per seat and stay under the 1 million revenue threshold. To me it almost seems that the '$0.20 per install' is only there to encourage developers to upgrade to pro if they have more than a few hundred k. users. > If it was instead a % True, I'm not arguing that wouldn't be more fair. It would be quite expensive to enforce and close to impossible in certain cases. So I understand why Unity chose to do this instead.
- starburst 3y ago
  > That's pretty much the only thing that matters. there is a huge difference whether they make $0.5, $1 or $2 etc My point is those numbers can vary GREATLY from games to games, and not only the revenue per user but the cost of user acquisition as well. There isn't one truth, the numbers I gave up could very well fit a real project. Of course you would be pretty stupid to not subscribe to Pro once you notice your game going to 200k. And let's be real, at 1M$ threshold, if the Unity tax is what kill your game, maybe there wasn't a market fit. But it just feel such a bad and unfair way to generate revenue on free to play games. > So I understand why Unity chose to do this instead. Other engines does it just fine, tracking installs (without any false positive) seems a much bigger hassle especially legal wise
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > Other engines does it just fine, I'm not sure that's comparable or even true. No other proprietary engine has as even remotely comparable market share in the freemium/Ad/IAP-funded/shovelware mobile game market. Also Epic isn't trying to pay for 8000 employees (especially not just with their engine revenue) or service billion in debt accrued from (possibly unnecessary) acquisitions. It feels to me that Unity pushed themselves into a corner by increasing and don't really have any choices but to try and maximize their revenue any way they can. e.g. Epic seems to have about 4000 employees and compared to Fortnite Unreal seems to almost be just a side gig for them. Also let's be fair a 5% royalty would be much more likely to scare off their best paying customers. And looking at their current leadership and overall philosophy I find it easy to understand why they might not care that much what will happen to some indy/small developers who can't afford/don't want to pay for Pro or have more than 1 million users but can't generate more than ~$0.2 - 0.5 in profit per install.
    - starburst 3y ago
      I get that, but I feel like there must've been a much better way to do so than with this proposal that seems to have burn the last remaining goodwill that developers had left in Unity and making sure most future projects won't get done on Unity. A lot of people have been thinking about switching for years, Unity is becoming slower and slower with time, more buggier, etc. I feel like this is the tipping point where the number of developpers is going to go down, so was it worth it? Maybe, maybe it was the correct decision, time will tell. I'll still continue to use it for on-going projects I have and pay the tax no problem, but I won't pick it for any project in the future personnaly because of how out of touch and ridiculous I personaly feel this business decision is (and other decisions they've made).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

kevingadd 3y ago

the average is skewed by games like Genshin Impact with gross exploitative monetization, not to mention literal casino games. So smaller developers with more reasonable monetization are not getting anywhere close to those averages and will be punished hard by these fees, especially because it's per-install not per-user. If a user installs your F2P mobile game on 2-3 devices (not uncommon), you now owe 40-60 cents, not 20. Hope your average revenue is good enough that you can afford that after Apple/Google take their 30%.

qwytw 3y ago
Average cost per install should be significantly lower than 20 for most games (it's just 2 cents for most country's in the world after all). However yeah it seems pretty excessive. I wouldn't be surprised if that 20 cent cost is just there to encourage developers who'd have to pay to update to pro (e.g. a seat for a year seems to be equal to about 10k installs, but with pro you get extra 800k free installs and increase your revenue limit by another 800k so you'll likely won't even have to pay extra for users at all)