5 ms·

The thing is it's still far cheaper than Unreal, so unless Unreal is dying too calling it death doesn't make sense.

bpye 3y ago
Maybe? It seems like Unity is charging the fee per install [0], not per unique user. So when I install my Steam games on my desktop, my laptop and my Steam Deck that's 3 installs. If I reinstall the OS, that'll be another install - or if I clean up my Steam library and reinstall later, etc. Maybe this is acceptable if your title has microtransactions because you may get some ongoing revenue stream for that user - but otherwise? And it's entirely unclear to me how this works with Game Pass, streaming, etc. [0] - https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1701679721027633280 https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1701679721027633280
- oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
  It's even worse according to the original announcement - it talks about a monthly rate per install.
  - ummonk 3y ago
    I think the announcement is using confusing verbiage. From the looks of it it's a monthly fee for installs made that month.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago
  And then Epic goes "this week's free game" and now it's several million installs and the game studio's bankrupt. Because weaponizing this will happen if given the chance.
  - oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
    Does the studio not have to agree to Epic making their game free?
- KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
  Yeah it feels like a waste but as a business you should be able to calculate the cost of that, to me it still feels lower than the 5% from unreal. It's 1 cent per install after $1 million. Even if you go crazy and install the game 10 times, that 10cents is less than the 25 cents unreal would charge assuming your game is $5.
kevingadd 3y ago
With this new pricing model, it's not cheaper than Unreal for indies since the sale price of an indie game is typically much lower, and you're paying a fee per-install instead of a % of your revenue. As a comparison point Unreal also has another advantage, which is that they waive the unreal revenue cut for sales on Epic Games Store, so that subset of your revenue (if you release there) is yours to keep. Unity can't offer any deal of that kind, all they can offer is discounts if you use stuff like their ads service (which is only appealing to F2P mobile game developers).
bluescrn 3y ago
AFAIK, UE is completely free until you make your first $1,000,000 revenue? (then a 5% royalty rate beyond that). These new Unity per-install fees could hit developers who aren't making money - for example F2P games, free demos, very cheap games (e.g. charity bundles), potentially even pirated copies (if Unity intend to track installs via analytics sent from the runtime?) In reality, most indies fail and won't hit the 100,000 download threshold or the $100k revenue threshold. But it's a new fee to worry about, and one that gives Unity a lot of 'monetization levers' to pull more aggressively further down the road (tweaking the fees/thresholds) It's also worth considering that Epic could change the UE pricing model significantly if their sole serious competitor starts to fade into irrelevance...
- hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
  There are also lower limits of revenue and installs your games have to break through before Unity starts charging you $$.
- KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
  Unity's install fees don't start until you hit 200k installs AND $200k revenue. If you buy the $1800/yr PRO then it doesn't start until $1 million just like UE. There isn't any concern for the hobbyists.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    Ah, wasn't obvious whether it was an || or an && with those thresholds. Not so bad in most cases if it's an or. There were also people who'd read it as a 'per install per month' (e.g. monthly active users) charge, as the pricing table refered to 'Standard monthly rate', which made it look pretty awful...
  - gcr 3y ago
    The bump is huge though! If your per-install fee costs $0.20 but you have 199,999 installs, you owe Unity $0. But the second a new user downloads your game, you suddenly owe Unity $40,000. If they made the price increase continuous and charged for max(0, #installs - 200,000), then that would be something else, but the way they wrote it implies a bomb waiting to explode if your game gets too successful
TheRealPomax 3y ago
When your game engine's license can bankrupt you just because some game platform owner like Epic decides to put your game on as the freebie-of-the-week, so that you now owe several million installs times 20 cents, you take Unreal over Unity even if it costs more (or you start looking into Godot or the like). This is how you kill a product.
r_hoods_ghost 3y ago
Unity is cheaper only in certain circumstances. UE5 is free and then you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenues over $1m. This avoids a lot of the issues faced by indie developers with the new pricing model (having to pay for copies you give away, having to pay a flat fee that eats the profit margin of 99p games, needing to pay for a subscription up front etc.)
- KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
  Unreal is cheaper if you intend to stay within the free threshold of less than $1 million in sales, you can't beat free. But if you have dreams of having a hit with more than $1million then I can't find any scenarios where unreal is cheaper. Let me know if you can think of an example. And very very quickly unreal is more expensive. For example at $2 million in revenue unreal would cost $50k in royalties. Assuming a game with a price of $1 and 2 million installs unity is $10k in install fees. If your game is priced at $10, that's just $1k in install fee vs the same $50k in fees to unreal.
  - FrozenSynapse 3y ago
    >Assuming a game with a price of $1 and 2 million installs unity is $10k in install fees. Assuming Unity Pro ($2000 per seat per year) - first 1000000 installs are free, next 1000000 priced as follows: 0.15 * 100000 + 0.075 * 400000 + 0.03 * 500000 = 60000$ + Unity Pro for each seat.
    - KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
      You're right, I used the $0.01 as basis because I thought the fees were lifetime and you would quickly accrue over the 500k installs mark. But it turns out that it was per-month which makes unity much more expensive than I thought. That's shocking to me and means low earning games with moderate volumes would suffer painfully and pay substantially more than unreal. Damn that sucks.

bpye 3y ago

Maybe? It seems like Unity is charging the fee per install [0], not per unique user. So when I install my Steam games on my desktop, my laptop and my Steam Deck that's 3 installs. If I reinstall the OS, that'll be another install - or if I clean up my Steam library and reinstall later, etc. Maybe this is acceptable if your title has microtransactions because you may get some ongoing revenue stream for that user - but otherwise? And it's entirely unclear to me how this works with Game Pass, streaming, etc. [0] - https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1701679721027633280 https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1701679721027633280

oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
It's even worse according to the original announcement - it talks about a monthly rate per install.
- ummonk 3y ago
  I think the announcement is using confusing verbiage. From the looks of it it's a monthly fee for installs made that month.
TheRealPomax 3y ago
And then Epic goes "this week's free game" and now it's several million installs and the game studio's bankrupt. Because weaponizing this will happen if given the chance.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
  Does the studio not have to agree to Epic making their game free?
KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
Yeah it feels like a waste but as a business you should be able to calculate the cost of that, to me it still feels lower than the 5% from unreal. It's 1 cent per install after $1 million. Even if you go crazy and install the game 10 times, that 10cents is less than the 25 cents unreal would charge assuming your game is $5.

kevingadd 3y ago

With this new pricing model, it's not cheaper than Unreal for indies since the sale price of an indie game is typically much lower, and you're paying a fee per-install instead of a % of your revenue. As a comparison point Unreal also has another advantage, which is that they waive the unreal revenue cut for sales on Epic Games Store, so that subset of your revenue (if you release there) is yours to keep. Unity can't offer any deal of that kind, all they can offer is discounts if you use stuff like their ads service (which is only appealing to F2P mobile game developers).

bluescrn 3y ago

AFAIK, UE is completely free until you make your first $1,000,000 revenue? (then a 5% royalty rate beyond that). These new Unity per-install fees could hit developers who aren't making money - for example F2P games, free demos, very cheap games (e.g. charity bundles), potentially even pirated copies (if Unity intend to track installs via analytics sent from the runtime?) In reality, most indies fail and won't hit the 100,000 download threshold or the $100k revenue threshold. But it's a new fee to worry about, and one that gives Unity a lot of 'monetization levers' to pull more aggressively further down the road (tweaking the fees/thresholds) It's also worth considering that Epic could change the UE pricing model significantly if their sole serious competitor starts to fade into irrelevance...

hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
There are also lower limits of revenue and installs your games have to break through before Unity starts charging you $$.
KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
Unity's install fees don't start until you hit 200k installs AND $200k revenue. If you buy the $1800/yr PRO then it doesn't start until $1 million just like UE. There isn't any concern for the hobbyists.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Ah, wasn't obvious whether it was an || or an && with those thresholds. Not so bad in most cases if it's an or. There were also people who'd read it as a 'per install per month' (e.g. monthly active users) charge, as the pricing table refered to 'Standard monthly rate', which made it look pretty awful...
- gcr 3y ago
  The bump is huge though! If your per-install fee costs $0.20 but you have 199,999 installs, you owe Unity $0. But the second a new user downloads your game, you suddenly owe Unity $40,000. If they made the price increase continuous and charged for max(0, #installs - 200,000), then that would be something else, but the way they wrote it implies a bomb waiting to explode if your game gets too successful

TheRealPomax 3y ago

When your game engine's license can bankrupt you just because some game platform owner like Epic decides to put your game on as the freebie-of-the-week, so that you now owe several million installs times 20 cents, you take Unreal over Unity even if it costs more (or you start looking into Godot or the like). This is how you kill a product.

r_hoods_ghost 3y ago

Unity is cheaper only in certain circumstances. UE5 is free and then you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenues over $1m. This avoids a lot of the issues faced by indie developers with the new pricing model (having to pay for copies you give away, having to pay a flat fee that eats the profit margin of 99p games, needing to pay for a subscription up front etc.)

KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
Unreal is cheaper if you intend to stay within the free threshold of less than $1 million in sales, you can't beat free. But if you have dreams of having a hit with more than $1million then I can't find any scenarios where unreal is cheaper. Let me know if you can think of an example. And very very quickly unreal is more expensive. For example at $2 million in revenue unreal would cost $50k in royalties. Assuming a game with a price of $1 and 2 million installs unity is $10k in install fees. If your game is priced at $10, that's just $1k in install fee vs the same $50k in fees to unreal.
- FrozenSynapse 3y ago
  >Assuming a game with a price of $1 and 2 million installs unity is $10k in install fees. Assuming Unity Pro ($2000 per seat per year) - first 1000000 installs are free, next 1000000 priced as follows: 0.15 * 100000 + 0.075 * 400000 + 0.03 * 500000 = 60000$ + Unity Pro for each seat.
  - KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
    You're right, I used the $0.01 as basis because I thought the fees were lifetime and you would quickly accrue over the 500k installs mark. But it turns out that it was per-month which makes unity much more expensive than I thought. That's shocking to me and means low earning games with moderate volumes would suffer painfully and pay substantially more than unreal. Damn that sucks.