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The problem is that they did it retroactively and they also added a per install/download fee. So if your game has 1mio installs you pad the install fee x 1 Mill

The problem is that they did it retroactively and they also added a per install/download fee. So if your game has 1mio installs you pad the install fee x 1 Million. Unreal has no install fee like this. “A 5% royalty is due only if you are distributing an off-the-shelf product that incorporates Unreal Engine code (such as a game). Provided that you notify us on time using the Release Form, you will only owe royalties once the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in other words, the first $1 million will be royalty-exempt.” Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.

bhouston 3y ago
> Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible. Exactly. So if they did this in an upfront way, they would have said that starting with Unity 2024 there is this new cost structure. Then game devs can make informed choices if they want to build those types of games on the platform. This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. Although I think I sort of answered my own question...
- Clubber 3y ago
  >This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's definitely a money grab. If it's deemed illegal, i.e. fraud, I hope there is jail time. Gotta send a message. Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?
  - awesomeMilou 3y ago
    > Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management? EA's former CEO, John Riccitiello took over last year. He inaugurated himself with quite a few statements, one of which was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752
    - jskherman 3y ago
      When it comes to games it's always EA, isn't it? Isn't this CEO the one also responsible for some of EA's notoriety?
      - Clubber 3y ago
        EA and Activision/Blizzard doesn't have a great track record either. Megacorps are usually bad for everybody except ownership.
      - internet101010 3y ago
        Yes, he is the brain behind the 2013 SimCity disaster.
        riffraff 3y ago
        Forgive my ignorance, what disaster are you referring to?
        mikepurvis 3y ago
        It was a very dumbed down attempt to reboot the franchise, when what the fans wanted was what Cities Skylines would later deliver.
        Akronymus 3y ago
        > when what the fans wanted was what Cities Skylines would later deliver. For me personally, C:S goes in too much on building a nice looking city and not enough on the simulation aspect.
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  They don't want developers choosing to target older Unity versions for their games, they want to milk cent they can out of their users.
  - derefr 3y ago
    Then just specify that new greenfield projects created after [date] won’t be licensed for previous versions of the engine, and that anyone with a project currently in development has until [date] to register their existing use.
  - numpad0 3y ago
    That and/or they wanted to set up existing games. Something like 1 in 5 of top 50 iOS games, free-to-play and majority Asian(Chinese or Japanese), are making banks and on Unity. Personally I’m wondering if Chinese gamedev industry would “buy Godot” or do something to that effect. Japanese publishers won’t be able to do that nor would be willing to pay, so I’m guessing they’ll migrate existing to UE or wind down Unity titles, just my speculations though.
    - yAak 3y ago
      Thankfully Godot is safe from acquisition: https://godotengine.org/governance/ https://godotengine.org/governance/ (Or, at least they say they are.)
      - jkaplowitz 3y ago
        I just dug into the details. Yes, it looks pretty legitimate: copyright remains held by the individual contributors without a Contributor License Agreement, they are sponsored by a true non-profit foundation with robust non-profit policies and suitably non-profit legal status in the Netherlands, their money and important assets like the Godot trademark itself are held by a mixture of that non-profit foundation and (possibly as a transitional matter) the longstanding free software non-profit charity in the US which was their primary legal home for 7 years. I was formerly heavily involved in the leadership of the other major US non-profit charity that does this kind of fiscal sponsorship (and which maintained a friendly and collaborative relationship with the charity that Godot previously used). They’re not scamming you in the way of a lot of executives at VC-funded for-profit startups (and their acquirers) when they make entirely legally unenforceable statements about what will or won’t happen in the future which they don’t necessarily even believe themselves.
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  > This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. I can't even understand how it can possibly be legal. How on earth is it even possible to say "your game which was released before we updated this license is subject to the updated version"? IANAL but that sure seems like something which would require both parties to agree to the updated terms for them to be binding.
  - fennecfoxy 3y ago
    waves in the general direction of the housing market, politicians being "lobbied" (bought) by companies, rampant destruction of the environment by industry; but paper straws for us, the numerous tax havens and the lack of any reform from Panama papers, government "contractors" padding their purses with tax money (see projects like crossrail), privately owned utilities completely mismanaged and corrupt (see Thameswater) We live in a dystopia lmao. Of course stuff like this is possible. Unity took one leap forward and pissed everyone off, they'll "fix" it by taking one or two steps back and then everyone will forget about it, just like we forget about everything else.
  - perryizgr8 3y ago
    You can say whatever you want in a contract. If the other party thinks it is illegal they take you to court and the judge decides.
    - TheRoque 3y ago
      But it means that their legal teams say that it's legit already, so that's why most people assume that this is legal.
      - moron4hire 3y ago
        A lawyer friend of mine once told me that most of his job as a contract lawyer was basically a game to see if the other company's lawyers were paying attention and to take absolutely everything he could if they weren't.
gnopgnip 3y ago
If you pay $2k for unit pro it’s a max of 15 cents an install, actually less. And you pay nothing for installs until $1m in revenue and 1m installs in the previous 12 months
- Auracle 3y ago
  That’s $2k, per seat, per year. Which you now need to pay to get rid of the Unity splash screen. Why they haven’t learned the lesson of only poor developers (and therefore, largely shovelware and bad games) showing their splash screen is a really bad idea I’ll never understand. I suppose this will technically help with that.
hedora 3y ago
> Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible. When you put it that way, Unity could have come out of this price change looking like heroes with better messaging. Serious games pay the $0.27 fee moving forward, and (hopefully) that comes with some new value add for end users (such as contractually enforced no advertising, cross-platform something something). Ad-supported games use a different engine with different rules, and end users get the “free to play” benefit. (The retroactive thing is obviously bullshit; I wonder how many studios will simply refuse to pay and jump ship for future titles.)
- StopHammoTime 3y ago
  They have actually released something like this in the last day that says if you use their ad market there is no per device fee. It was on HN this morning.
- wwtrv 3y ago
  > $0.27 The highest possible fee seems to the $0.20 (only if 100% of your users are in the US and a few other rich countries). Also it only seems to the there to encourage everyone on Personal/Plus to upgrade to Pro (before these changes you were already required to do that if you company revenue was above $200). Realistically it's going to be closer to $0.02-0.05 per install.
ffhhttt 3y ago
> 27cents Realistically it’s closer to 3-5 cents per install. Where did you get 27? Even personal/plus is cheaper than that in the worst case (ie. 100% of your users are in NA, the richer parts of Western Europe etc)

bhouston 3y ago

> Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible. Exactly. So if they did this in an upfront way, they would have said that starting with Unity 2024 there is this new cost structure. Then game devs can make informed choices if they want to build those types of games on the platform. This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. Although I think I sort of answered my own question...

Clubber 3y ago
>This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's definitely a money grab. If it's deemed illegal, i.e. fraud, I hope there is jail time. Gotta send a message. Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?
- awesomeMilou 3y ago
  > Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management? EA's former CEO, John Riccitiello took over last year. He inaugurated himself with quite a few statements, one of which was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752
  - jskherman 3y ago
    When it comes to games it's always EA, isn't it? Isn't this CEO the one also responsible for some of EA's notoriety?
    - Clubber 3y ago
      EA and Activision/Blizzard doesn't have a great track record either. Megacorps are usually bad for everybody except ownership.
    - internet101010 3y ago
      Yes, he is the brain behind the 2013 SimCity disaster.
      - riffraff 3y ago
        Forgive my ignorance, what disaster are you referring to?
        mikepurvis 3y ago
        It was a very dumbed down attempt to reboot the franchise, when what the fans wanted was what Cities Skylines would later deliver.
        Akronymus 3y ago
        > when what the fans wanted was what Cities Skylines would later deliver. For me personally, C:S goes in too much on building a nice looking city and not enough on the simulation aspect.
heavyset_go 3y ago
They don't want developers choosing to target older Unity versions for their games, they want to milk cent they can out of their users.
- derefr 3y ago
  Then just specify that new greenfield projects created after [date] won’t be licensed for previous versions of the engine, and that anyone with a project currently in development has until [date] to register their existing use.
- numpad0 3y ago
  That and/or they wanted to set up existing games. Something like 1 in 5 of top 50 iOS games, free-to-play and majority Asian(Chinese or Japanese), are making banks and on Unity. Personally I’m wondering if Chinese gamedev industry would “buy Godot” or do something to that effect. Japanese publishers won’t be able to do that nor would be willing to pay, so I’m guessing they’ll migrate existing to UE or wind down Unity titles, just my speculations though.
  - yAak 3y ago
    Thankfully Godot is safe from acquisition: https://godotengine.org/governance/ https://godotengine.org/governance/ (Or, at least they say they are.)
    - jkaplowitz 3y ago
      I just dug into the details. Yes, it looks pretty legitimate: copyright remains held by the individual contributors without a Contributor License Agreement, they are sponsored by a true non-profit foundation with robust non-profit policies and suitably non-profit legal status in the Netherlands, their money and important assets like the Godot trademark itself are held by a mixture of that non-profit foundation and (possibly as a transitional matter) the longstanding free software non-profit charity in the US which was their primary legal home for 7 years. I was formerly heavily involved in the leadership of the other major US non-profit charity that does this kind of fiscal sponsorship (and which maintained a friendly and collaborative relationship with the charity that Godot previously used). They’re not scamming you in the way of a lot of executives at VC-funded for-profit startups (and their acquirers) when they make entirely legally unenforceable statements about what will or won’t happen in the future which they don’t necessarily even believe themselves.
bigstrat2003 3y ago
> This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. I can't even understand how it can possibly be legal. How on earth is it even possible to say "your game which was released before we updated this license is subject to the updated version"? IANAL but that sure seems like something which would require both parties to agree to the updated terms for them to be binding.
- fennecfoxy 3y ago
  waves in the general direction of the housing market, politicians being "lobbied" (bought) by companies, rampant destruction of the environment by industry; but paper straws for us, the numerous tax havens and the lack of any reform from Panama papers, government "contractors" padding their purses with tax money (see projects like crossrail), privately owned utilities completely mismanaged and corrupt (see Thameswater) We live in a dystopia lmao. Of course stuff like this is possible. Unity took one leap forward and pissed everyone off, they'll "fix" it by taking one or two steps back and then everyone will forget about it, just like we forget about everything else.
- perryizgr8 3y ago
  You can say whatever you want in a contract. If the other party thinks it is illegal they take you to court and the judge decides.
  - TheRoque 3y ago
    But it means that their legal teams say that it's legit already, so that's why most people assume that this is legal.
    - moron4hire 3y ago
      A lawyer friend of mine once told me that most of his job as a contract lawyer was basically a game to see if the other company's lawyers were paying attention and to take absolutely everything he could if they weren't.

gnopgnip 3y ago

If you pay $2k for unit pro it’s a max of 15 cents an install, actually less. And you pay nothing for installs until $1m in revenue and 1m installs in the previous 12 months

Auracle 3y ago
That’s $2k, per seat, per year. Which you now need to pay to get rid of the Unity splash screen. Why they haven’t learned the lesson of only poor developers (and therefore, largely shovelware and bad games) showing their splash screen is a really bad idea I’ll never understand. I suppose this will technically help with that.

hedora 3y ago

> Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible. When you put it that way, Unity could have come out of this price change looking like heroes with better messaging. Serious games pay the $0.27 fee moving forward, and (hopefully) that comes with some new value add for end users (such as contractually enforced no advertising, cross-platform something something). Ad-supported games use a different engine with different rules, and end users get the “free to play” benefit. (The retroactive thing is obviously bullshit; I wonder how many studios will simply refuse to pay and jump ship for future titles.)

StopHammoTime 3y ago
They have actually released something like this in the last day that says if you use their ad market there is no per device fee. It was on HN this morning.
wwtrv 3y ago
> $0.27 The highest possible fee seems to the $0.20 (only if 100% of your users are in the US and a few other rich countries). Also it only seems to the there to encourage everyone on Personal/Plus to upgrade to Pro (before these changes you were already required to do that if you company revenue was above $200). Realistically it's going to be closer to $0.02-0.05 per install.

ffhhttt 3y ago

> 27cents Realistically it’s closer to 3-5 cents per install. Where did you get 27? Even personal/plus is cheaper than that in the worst case (ie. 100% of your users are in NA, the richer parts of Western Europe etc)