8 ms·

Not the best article. It basically entirely ignores how this is going to hurt the small/indie developers the most, who are the main reason Unity exists as it do

by ZeWaka 3y ago

Not the best article. It basically entirely ignores how this is going to hurt the small/indie developers the most, who are the main reason Unity exists as it does today. Indie games will have lower price points than AAA games, and thus Unity's cut is a larger piece of the ever-shrinking pie. My personal opinion about this whole fiasco is that they'll go back on their original statement to something still quite greedy but less so than the prior. Perhaps they planned that all along?

gambiting 3y ago
>> It basically entirely ignores how this is going to hurt the small/indie developers the most, who are the main reason Unity exists as it does today. You only start paying if you have 200k installs AND $200k in revenue. Most indie devs never reach anything like those numbers.
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  Right, but once a dev does hit that threshold, they could very easily be upside down on their income if the app goes viral and gets installed at a much higher rate than the revenue it generates and that's what people are mad about. You could instantly go from 200k revenue to being in the red on developer fees alone.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Indie devs actually selling their game should be fine right? If it's just the devs of F2P / adware crap that will be sunk, then maybe Unity's new pricing policies will be the unexpected savior of gaming. Imagine a world in which we're not racing to the bottom with ad-ridden shovel-ware but instead people try to make the best possible product and sell it for what it's worth... radical. Or maybe I've misunderstood something and this will hurt developers who sell their games too.
    - Hemospectrum 3y ago
      Install bombing is still a problem. Unity, for all its "clarifications," keeps promising it won't be a problem and then refusing to be transparent about any of the ways it could possibly be less of a problem. Either they backtrack on this whole lifetime install count scheme or this blows up even more spectacularly when January rolls around.
      - gambiting 3y ago
        I don't understand why this is a worry - they will do it the same way Valve/Microsoft/Epic/Blizzard identify how many machines you have their product installed on - with a unique hardware ID that will make sure you aren't charged twice for installing the game on the same machine. It's not rocket science, it's been used in the industry for ages.
        Ekaros 3y ago
        I'm not sure that really fits well with GDPR... Or it has to be quite far removed from any actual identifier. I certainly believe that tracking number of game installs to bill someone else isn't legitimate reason to store any identifying data about my systems...
        bitvoid 3y ago
        Are you sure? As far as I'm aware, I'm able to install a game I own on multiple machines for all of these platforms. I figured that the game is tied to my account, not some hardware ID. Why would they need to make sure I'm not charged twice based on installing the game to a machine rather than just seeing if my account owns it? I have never been charged more than once for a game I own that I have installed on both my desktop and my laptop, even after replacing those machines.
        gambiting 3y ago
        Microsoft will stop you from downloading the game if it's installed on too many devices - it will tell you to deauthorize it on another device or sign it out entirely. >> I figured that the game is tied to my account, not some hardware ID Because it is. These platforms still use hardware ID matching for account bans and other functionality.
  - ralferoo 3y ago
    From what I can tell, it only applies on copies sold after 200k copies or 200k in sales. So, if you've paid $X profit after 200k copies, after 201k copies you've made $X plus a bit more, unless you're actually selling your game at less than $0.20 per copy and whatever your payment fees are on the platform you're using. If you consider the IOS app store, where the minimum price is $0.99 and they take a maximum of 30% (including all payment fees etc), that still leaves you with at least $0.49 per extra copy sold.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      > If you consider the IOS app store, where the minimum price is $0.99 and they take a maximum of 30% (including all payment fees etc), that still leaves you with at least $0.49 per extra copy sold. This is assuming that all users only install the app on one device. Say a user has both a tablet and a phone, they install the app on both, and after a couple of years they upgrade both and reinstall the app - suddenly you owe Unity more money than you took in from the sale!
- devmor 3y ago
  When people say "indie" devs, they mean devs that aren't with a big publisher. Not necessarily solo devs. Any relatively successful game is going to hit those numbers. $200k in revenue is barely enough to cover 3-4 months of development for a small studio.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Or couple of years of solo developer time. Not to forgot it is from revenue not profit. So give Steam/Google/Apple their cut and remove any external asset or work bought and 200k isn't that much for any non-low income country.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    That's not what I mean when I say "indie" and I work in video games. I'm aware of some companies that employ 10+ people who still call themselves "indie" - I find that dishonest. >>Any relatively successful game is going to hit those numbers. Sure - and any relatively successful game should have no trouble paying those fees. The only real edge case that's going to be affected negatively by this change are f2p games that rely on having millions of installed copies to make miniscule amount of money from few paying people. Those games should consider switching away from Unity.
    - 0x457 3y ago
      It's the same meaning of the world as in the movie and music industry - no publisher/label == indie. Indie doesn't mean "small team" or "ugly game with interesting gameplay" or "game that makes less than 200k". All that means is that there aren't any external contractual obligations.
      - kemayo 3y ago
        To mostly agree with you, note that the etymology is that "indie" is a shortening of "independent". It does tend to carry connotations of small teams in video games, but that might just be because the margins in the industry make it super-hard for large studios to remain independent. Note that I think Valve would count as an indie under a pure independence metric, thus making things like Half Life an indie game. Which feels a bit off.
- dleslie 3y ago
  It's not unheard of for Ad-supported mobile games to have per-install revenues measured in the single cents or fractions of a cent, and total revenues over $200k.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    Then those devs need to switch to Unity Enterprise and at 1M installs they will be paying 1c/install. If the product still doesn't make enough to pay 1 cent per install, then maybe........unity is not the product for them. I don't know, on one hand I get why devs are complaining, but on the other I really don't - if your product gets installed millions of times but doesn't make even 1 cent per install then you're doing something wrong.
- ZeWaka 3y ago
  True, but it does hurt the indie darlings that 'get noticed,' who showcase the Unity engine as a platform for small developers to make their game. Examples of recent indie games like this: Among Us, Valheim, Phasmophobia, Rimworld, Hollow Knight,... Here's a whole list: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39750107-Games-Made-With-Unity/ https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39750107-Games-Made-W... Other than the 'extremely' popular games, you'd be surprised who surpasses those numbers. A small game studio by me was showing their financials at a talk (unheard of!), and the 'long tail' of their games definitely went past those numbers - and more costs coming in after a certain point just make the game less likely to be supported and discounted/sold.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    How much does it hurts them? What's the cut? I see this being repeated over and over, but I'm not really understanding, say an indie Dev makes 500k in revenue in one year, how much is it going to unity? If it is anything below 50k it seems to me like a sweet deal for all the things Unity offers to devs. There's no shortage of free and good game engines out there, but I guess Unity does offer a lot that those free options don't.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      That's the thing: it's not possible to answer this question, since the cut Unity gets is not tied to the revenue of the developer anymore. You pay per user install. In the absolute worst case of people trying to abuse this structure, it would be possible for the developer to owe more than their revenue!
      - epolanski 3y ago
        That only applies to F2P games essentially thought, right?
        Timon3 3y ago
        No, it applies to all games. Say you publish an iOS game for 1$, and a user installs it on two devices which he replaces after a couple of years - you'll owe Unity more money than you took in from the sale.
ako 3y ago
Is Godot mature enough to offer Indy games developers an alternative to unity? If not, what is missing?
- raincole 3y ago
  Mobile support for C# is the top of my list.
  - jeremyjh 3y ago
    There are really good reasons to choose Unity over Godot, but C# isn't one of them. You have to learn a whole new API, framework, workflow, etc. Learning GDScript is the least of the issues.
    - BudaDude 3y ago
      This isn't always true. C# outperform GDScript. Even GDScript 2. GDScript is great for quickly programming certains events. But if you want to create complicated systems that using require thousands or millions of data points, you will notice the speed difference.
      - jeremyjh 3y ago
        And C++ outperforms C#, so native modules are always an option where you really need performance. Yes, you have to build for every platform but most projects really won't need it - but its there so you know you have options when you do. GDNative is also an option to avoid building the core engine, and its still at least as fast as C#.
        pjmlp 3y ago
        Except most Unity users don't want to write C++, if they wanted to, they would have chosen another engine in first place.
        deleted 3y ago
madrox 3y ago
Are indies still Unity's raison d'etre? They may have started there, and they're hardly a AAA engine, but I'm pretty sure they've moved upstream.
- stuckinhell 3y ago
  Unity was used for an official pokemon remake. Unity was used for an official digimon game. Unity was in genshin impact (3 bil revenue - https://sensortower.com/blog/genshin-impact-three-billion-revenue https://sensortower.com/blog/genshin-impact-three-billion-re...) A bunch of asian companies were all jumping onboard the unity train.
- raincole 3y ago
  Unity has a very long history of obsoleting features before the replacement is ready. Now they're doing the trick to themselves: they obsoleted themselves as an engine for mobile casual games and indies, but not ready as an AAA engine. That's what I call consistency.
  - danjoredd 3y ago
    I remember Unity web plugin for web browsers was starting to pop off but they axed it a while ago making some games unplayable. Now they have a webassembly option so you can still make 3d games for the browser, but those old games are still unplayable. Shame because those were some of my favorite online games when I was a teen
- epolanski 3y ago
  Pretty sure that unity is behind multi 100M+ $ projects like Genshin Impact.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  And being the best C# engine. There are others, but without the console support, VR/AR headset and platform SDKs like Unity.
dehrmann 3y ago
> Perhaps they planned that all along? This will turn off new development, though.
lnxg33k1 3y ago
I mean every time something like a dev tool starts charging, or there is some tax or regulation, someone arrives and says it's gonna hurt the small indie devs, but who cares? If they can't contribute to anything and require the whole society worse off, then its likely that they'd better do something else
- foota 3y ago
  Pragmatically, many people enjoy indie games as much (or more) than AAA games. AAA games are more oriented towards making money and mass market appeal, and if we don't provide a market for indie games then we lose out on the specialty and variety of them.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    But....there is a thriving market for indie games, even with this change. If you make a fantastic little indie game and release it for free = nothing changes, you pay nothing. If you make a little indie game and sell 100k copies = nothing changes, you still pay nothing. If you make a little indie game and sell 200k copies - you will now have to pay a small fee per install, but if you reached 200k sales you are way out of what I'd consider "small indie dev". I think dev tools should be provided for free or cheap to people experimenting or starting out, but there is a point where people are taking the piss if they sell 200k copies and they still think they should be able to use the tools for free(or nearly free).
    - Timon3 3y ago
      > I think dev tools should be provided for free or cheap to people experimenting or starting out, but there is a point where people are taking the piss if they sell 200k copies and they still think they should be able to use the tools for free(or nearly free). You have completely misunderstood the discussions if you think the issue is indie devs wanting to use the engine for free. If it were just a percentage of revenue, few people would complain. Instead the pricing structure is explicitly made in a way that puts small developers at risk if their cheap small game happens to go viral.
starburst 3y ago
I don't think it could have been planned all along, the damage done seems irreversible. No one is going to propose Unity ever again for upcoming projects even if the fees are actually a much better deal than the competitions (like Unreal 5%). The audacity of asking everyone who have built a game using their engine (completely disregarding the TOS at the time) to be potentially on the hook to receive monthly bills from their own black box that estimate the number of installs ensure that their reputation is effectively ruined, the future is that no one is going to trust them to use their engine because at any point they can come up with new ridiculous fees...
- Airsinner 3y ago
  If Unity is the best by a mile it works.
  - hx8 3y ago
    Unity isn't.
  - bitvoid 3y ago
    Unfortunately for them, it isn't.
  - starburst 3y ago
    But that's the thing, it isn't, it's simply good enough, get the job done and is so popular that employing people that knows it is easy. I agree it is a good value proposition which is why it is the industry standard for mobile games. However, it isn't some marvelous piece of technology that's irreplaceable and when you factor the fact that they can come up with any kind of ridiculous fees and breaking their TOS at will, that value drop drastically to the point that everyone will be looking at alternative in the future, no one is going to use it, certainly not the people that right now helped making this one of the most popular game engine. Those people are pissed off and have been for a while but this is just too much. It cannot work.
    - jwells89 3y ago
georgeecollins 3y ago
I think you missed the point of the article, which is that the professional game business has grown faster than the market and is likely to consolidate. The article is in gamesindutry.biz, not "indie developer" after all. Indie devs have lots of choices for engines and Unity doesn't owe them a free engine. Lots of professional developers / publishers use Unity but in my experience that is because Unity is really easy to port across platforms and maintaining hardware compatibility across platforms is expensive work we are happy to outsource.
- ARandumGuy 3y ago
  One of this big problems is that this change doesn't just apply to new Unity titles, but every single Unity title already released. This means that if a developer released a Unity game a few years ago, they're still on the hook for these new fees, despite the fact they never agreed to it. These developers are now forced to pay these new fees (even if the fees eclipse the ongoing revenue for a game), or de-list the game entirely. This also completely erodes trust with Unity, as even developers willing to pay the new fees are scared that Unity will unexpectedly add more costs in the future.
belltaco 3y ago
Meanwhile Steam takes 30% of indie devs' hard earned revenue and is a monopoly, but Valve seems immune from any criticism or even mention of it, with the pc gamer community reacting with downvotes(like with this comment) and angry replies if it's ever brought up. Think about it, when did you ever see anything critical of Steam on HN or Reddit? Its competitor Epic store which charged only 12% IIRC was demonized and got much more that it's share of criticism and every shortcoming was highlighted relentlessly. I guess Unity does not have much fan armor.
- mannerheim 3y ago
  >Steam ... is a monopoly >Its competitor Epic
  - gruez 3y ago
    To be fair "monopoly" is so abused now it basically means "entity that controls the market". eg. "amazon is a monopoly" despite the fact that there are obviously other e-commerce sites, "uber is a monopoly" despite the fact that there's other ride-hailing apps, "google is a monopoly" despite the fact that there are other search engines.
    - whaleofatw2022 3y ago
      Idk if steam is a true monopoly though. Almost every big US publisher has their own platform (i.e. Origin, EGL, whatever the hell Ubi is doing nowadays) for distribution. There is also GoG, but I feel like that is not a good option for Indies. Still, they get a huge shout out because of their retro collection and friendliness to that subgenre. For indie developers, there's always Itch.io with the option to try Steam or somewhere else later. As it stands I still have more options from where to buy a given game than 10, even 20 years ago. Not to say this current course is sustainable, of course...
      - belltaco 3y ago
        And many of those publishers are now also publishing on Steam because it's close to a monopoly. Like Blizzard recently with Overwatch and soon their other games. And Microsoft published games.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by ZeWaka 3y ago

gambiting 3y ago

>> It basically entirely ignores how this is going to hurt the small/indie developers the most, who are the main reason Unity exists as it does today. You only start paying if you have 200k installs AND $200k in revenue. Most indie devs never reach anything like those numbers.

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
Right, but once a dev does hit that threshold, they could very easily be upside down on their income if the app goes viral and gets installed at a much higher rate than the revenue it generates and that's what people are mad about. You could instantly go from 200k revenue to being in the red on developer fees alone.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Indie devs actually selling their game should be fine right? If it's just the devs of F2P / adware crap that will be sunk, then maybe Unity's new pricing policies will be the unexpected savior of gaming. Imagine a world in which we're not racing to the bottom with ad-ridden shovel-ware but instead people try to make the best possible product and sell it for what it's worth... radical. Or maybe I've misunderstood something and this will hurt developers who sell their games too.
  - Hemospectrum 3y ago
    Install bombing is still a problem. Unity, for all its "clarifications," keeps promising it won't be a problem and then refusing to be transparent about any of the ways it could possibly be less of a problem. Either they backtrack on this whole lifetime install count scheme or this blows up even more spectacularly when January rolls around.
    - gambiting 3y ago
      I don't understand why this is a worry - they will do it the same way Valve/Microsoft/Epic/Blizzard identify how many machines you have their product installed on - with a unique hardware ID that will make sure you aren't charged twice for installing the game on the same machine. It's not rocket science, it's been used in the industry for ages.
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        I'm not sure that really fits well with GDPR... Or it has to be quite far removed from any actual identifier. I certainly believe that tracking number of game installs to bill someone else isn't legitimate reason to store any identifying data about my systems...
      - bitvoid 3y ago
        Are you sure? As far as I'm aware, I'm able to install a game I own on multiple machines for all of these platforms. I figured that the game is tied to my account, not some hardware ID. Why would they need to make sure I'm not charged twice based on installing the game to a machine rather than just seeing if my account owns it? I have never been charged more than once for a game I own that I have installed on both my desktop and my laptop, even after replacing those machines.
        gambiting 3y ago
        Microsoft will stop you from downloading the game if it's installed on too many devices - it will tell you to deauthorize it on another device or sign it out entirely. >> I figured that the game is tied to my account, not some hardware ID Because it is. These platforms still use hardware ID matching for account bans and other functionality.
- ralferoo 3y ago
  From what I can tell, it only applies on copies sold after 200k copies or 200k in sales. So, if you've paid $X profit after 200k copies, after 201k copies you've made $X plus a bit more, unless you're actually selling your game at less than $0.20 per copy and whatever your payment fees are on the platform you're using. If you consider the IOS app store, where the minimum price is $0.99 and they take a maximum of 30% (including all payment fees etc), that still leaves you with at least $0.49 per extra copy sold.
  - Timon3 3y ago
    > If you consider the IOS app store, where the minimum price is $0.99 and they take a maximum of 30% (including all payment fees etc), that still leaves you with at least $0.49 per extra copy sold. This is assuming that all users only install the app on one device. Say a user has both a tablet and a phone, they install the app on both, and after a couple of years they upgrade both and reinstall the app - suddenly you owe Unity more money than you took in from the sale!
devmor 3y ago
When people say "indie" devs, they mean devs that aren't with a big publisher. Not necessarily solo devs. Any relatively successful game is going to hit those numbers. $200k in revenue is barely enough to cover 3-4 months of development for a small studio.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Or couple of years of solo developer time. Not to forgot it is from revenue not profit. So give Steam/Google/Apple their cut and remove any external asset or work bought and 200k isn't that much for any non-low income country.
- gambiting 3y ago
  That's not what I mean when I say "indie" and I work in video games. I'm aware of some companies that employ 10+ people who still call themselves "indie" - I find that dishonest. >>Any relatively successful game is going to hit those numbers. Sure - and any relatively successful game should have no trouble paying those fees. The only real edge case that's going to be affected negatively by this change are f2p games that rely on having millions of installed copies to make miniscule amount of money from few paying people. Those games should consider switching away from Unity.
  - 0x457 3y ago
    It's the same meaning of the world as in the movie and music industry - no publisher/label == indie. Indie doesn't mean "small team" or "ugly game with interesting gameplay" or "game that makes less than 200k". All that means is that there aren't any external contractual obligations.
    - kemayo 3y ago
      To mostly agree with you, note that the etymology is that "indie" is a shortening of "independent". It does tend to carry connotations of small teams in video games, but that might just be because the margins in the industry make it super-hard for large studios to remain independent. Note that I think Valve would count as an indie under a pure independence metric, thus making things like Half Life an indie game. Which feels a bit off.
dleslie 3y ago
It's not unheard of for Ad-supported mobile games to have per-install revenues measured in the single cents or fractions of a cent, and total revenues over $200k.
- gambiting 3y ago
  Then those devs need to switch to Unity Enterprise and at 1M installs they will be paying 1c/install. If the product still doesn't make enough to pay 1 cent per install, then maybe........unity is not the product for them. I don't know, on one hand I get why devs are complaining, but on the other I really don't - if your product gets installed millions of times but doesn't make even 1 cent per install then you're doing something wrong.
ZeWaka 3y ago
True, but it does hurt the indie darlings that 'get noticed,' who showcase the Unity engine as a platform for small developers to make their game. Examples of recent indie games like this: Among Us, Valheim, Phasmophobia, Rimworld, Hollow Knight,... Here's a whole list: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39750107-Games-Made-With-Unity/ https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39750107-Games-Made-W... Other than the 'extremely' popular games, you'd be surprised who surpasses those numbers. A small game studio by me was showing their financials at a talk (unheard of!), and the 'long tail' of their games definitely went past those numbers - and more costs coming in after a certain point just make the game less likely to be supported and discounted/sold.
- epolanski 3y ago
  How much does it hurts them? What's the cut? I see this being repeated over and over, but I'm not really understanding, say an indie Dev makes 500k in revenue in one year, how much is it going to unity? If it is anything below 50k it seems to me like a sweet deal for all the things Unity offers to devs. There's no shortage of free and good game engines out there, but I guess Unity does offer a lot that those free options don't.
  - Timon3 3y ago
    That's the thing: it's not possible to answer this question, since the cut Unity gets is not tied to the revenue of the developer anymore. You pay per user install. In the absolute worst case of people trying to abuse this structure, it would be possible for the developer to owe more than their revenue!
    - epolanski 3y ago
      That only applies to F2P games essentially thought, right?
      - Timon3 3y ago
        No, it applies to all games. Say you publish an iOS game for 1$, and a user installs it on two devices which he replaces after a couple of years - you'll owe Unity more money than you took in from the sale.

ako 3y ago

Is Godot mature enough to offer Indy games developers an alternative to unity? If not, what is missing?

raincole 3y ago
Mobile support for C# is the top of my list.
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  There are really good reasons to choose Unity over Godot, but C# isn't one of them. You have to learn a whole new API, framework, workflow, etc. Learning GDScript is the least of the issues.
  - BudaDude 3y ago
    This isn't always true. C# outperform GDScript. Even GDScript 2. GDScript is great for quickly programming certains events. But if you want to create complicated systems that using require thousands or millions of data points, you will notice the speed difference.
    - jeremyjh 3y ago
      And C++ outperforms C#, so native modules are always an option where you really need performance. Yes, you have to build for every platform but most projects really won't need it - but its there so you know you have options when you do. GDNative is also an option to avoid building the core engine, and its still at least as fast as C#.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Except most Unity users don't want to write C++, if they wanted to, they would have chosen another engine in first place.
        deleted 3y ago

madrox 3y ago

Are indies still Unity's raison d'etre? They may have started there, and they're hardly a AAA engine, but I'm pretty sure they've moved upstream.

stuckinhell 3y ago
Unity was used for an official pokemon remake. Unity was used for an official digimon game. Unity was in genshin impact (3 bil revenue - https://sensortower.com/blog/genshin-impact-three-billion-revenue https://sensortower.com/blog/genshin-impact-three-billion-re...) A bunch of asian companies were all jumping onboard the unity train.
raincole 3y ago
Unity has a very long history of obsoleting features before the replacement is ready. Now they're doing the trick to themselves: they obsoleted themselves as an engine for mobile casual games and indies, but not ready as an AAA engine. That's what I call consistency.
- danjoredd 3y ago
  I remember Unity web plugin for web browsers was starting to pop off but they axed it a while ago making some games unplayable. Now they have a webassembly option so you can still make 3d games for the browser, but those old games are still unplayable. Shame because those were some of my favorite online games when I was a teen
epolanski 3y ago
Pretty sure that unity is behind multi 100M+ $ projects like Genshin Impact.
pjmlp 3y ago
And being the best C# engine. There are others, but without the console support, VR/AR headset and platform SDKs like Unity.

dehrmann 3y ago

> Perhaps they planned that all along? This will turn off new development, though.

lnxg33k1 3y ago

I mean every time something like a dev tool starts charging, or there is some tax or regulation, someone arrives and says it's gonna hurt the small indie devs, but who cares? If they can't contribute to anything and require the whole society worse off, then its likely that they'd better do something else

foota 3y ago
Pragmatically, many people enjoy indie games as much (or more) than AAA games. AAA games are more oriented towards making money and mass market appeal, and if we don't provide a market for indie games then we lose out on the specialty and variety of them.
- gambiting 3y ago
  But....there is a thriving market for indie games, even with this change. If you make a fantastic little indie game and release it for free = nothing changes, you pay nothing. If you make a little indie game and sell 100k copies = nothing changes, you still pay nothing. If you make a little indie game and sell 200k copies - you will now have to pay a small fee per install, but if you reached 200k sales you are way out of what I'd consider "small indie dev". I think dev tools should be provided for free or cheap to people experimenting or starting out, but there is a point where people are taking the piss if they sell 200k copies and they still think they should be able to use the tools for free(or nearly free).
  - Timon3 3y ago
    > I think dev tools should be provided for free or cheap to people experimenting or starting out, but there is a point where people are taking the piss if they sell 200k copies and they still think they should be able to use the tools for free(or nearly free). You have completely misunderstood the discussions if you think the issue is indie devs wanting to use the engine for free. If it were just a percentage of revenue, few people would complain. Instead the pricing structure is explicitly made in a way that puts small developers at risk if their cheap small game happens to go viral.

starburst 3y ago

I don't think it could have been planned all along, the damage done seems irreversible. No one is going to propose Unity ever again for upcoming projects even if the fees are actually a much better deal than the competitions (like Unreal 5%). The audacity of asking everyone who have built a game using their engine (completely disregarding the TOS at the time) to be potentially on the hook to receive monthly bills from their own black box that estimate the number of installs ensure that their reputation is effectively ruined, the future is that no one is going to trust them to use their engine because at any point they can come up with new ridiculous fees...

Airsinner 3y ago
If Unity is the best by a mile it works.
- hx8 3y ago
  Unity isn't.
- bitvoid 3y ago
  Unfortunately for them, it isn't.
- starburst 3y ago
  But that's the thing, it isn't, it's simply good enough, get the job done and is so popular that employing people that knows it is easy. I agree it is a good value proposition which is why it is the industry standard for mobile games. However, it isn't some marvelous piece of technology that's irreplaceable and when you factor the fact that they can come up with any kind of ridiculous fees and breaking their TOS at will, that value drop drastically to the point that everyone will be looking at alternative in the future, no one is going to use it, certainly not the people that right now helped making this one of the most popular game engine. Those people are pissed off and have been for a while but this is just too much. It cannot work.
  - jwells89 3y ago

georgeecollins 3y ago

I think you missed the point of the article, which is that the professional game business has grown faster than the market and is likely to consolidate. The article is in gamesindutry.biz, not "indie developer" after all. Indie devs have lots of choices for engines and Unity doesn't owe them a free engine. Lots of professional developers / publishers use Unity but in my experience that is because Unity is really easy to port across platforms and maintaining hardware compatibility across platforms is expensive work we are happy to outsource.

ARandumGuy 3y ago
One of this big problems is that this change doesn't just apply to new Unity titles, but every single Unity title already released. This means that if a developer released a Unity game a few years ago, they're still on the hook for these new fees, despite the fact they never agreed to it. These developers are now forced to pay these new fees (even if the fees eclipse the ongoing revenue for a game), or de-list the game entirely. This also completely erodes trust with Unity, as even developers willing to pay the new fees are scared that Unity will unexpectedly add more costs in the future.

belltaco 3y ago

Meanwhile Steam takes 30% of indie devs' hard earned revenue and is a monopoly, but Valve seems immune from any criticism or even mention of it, with the pc gamer community reacting with downvotes(like with this comment) and angry replies if it's ever brought up. Think about it, when did you ever see anything critical of Steam on HN or Reddit? Its competitor Epic store which charged only 12% IIRC was demonized and got much more that it's share of criticism and every shortcoming was highlighted relentlessly. I guess Unity does not have much fan armor.

mannerheim 3y ago
>Steam ... is a monopoly >Its competitor Epic
- gruez 3y ago
  To be fair "monopoly" is so abused now it basically means "entity that controls the market". eg. "amazon is a monopoly" despite the fact that there are obviously other e-commerce sites, "uber is a monopoly" despite the fact that there's other ride-hailing apps, "google is a monopoly" despite the fact that there are other search engines.
  - whaleofatw2022 3y ago
    Idk if steam is a true monopoly though. Almost every big US publisher has their own platform (i.e. Origin, EGL, whatever the hell Ubi is doing nowadays) for distribution. There is also GoG, but I feel like that is not a good option for Indies. Still, they get a huge shout out because of their retro collection and friendliness to that subgenre. For indie developers, there's always Itch.io with the option to try Steam or somewhere else later. As it stands I still have more options from where to buy a given game than 10, even 20 years ago. Not to say this current course is sustainable, of course...
    - belltaco 3y ago
      And many of those publishers are now also publishing on Steam because it's close to a monopoly. Like Blizzard recently with Overwatch and soon their other games. And Microsoft published games.

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