10 ms·

Game developers turning off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization

226 points by bo0tzz 3y ago

paxo 3y ago
some of those companies that are at the bottom of this letter, are one of the worst i've ever seen. many of them are known to just copy other indie games, and just heavily monetize them.
- varelse 3y ago
  [dead]
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  I looked at those companies and thought, “you wish you were stakeholders.” Tell me when the developers of Among Us, Pokemon, GRIS, Cuphead, Hollow Knight, Ori, Cities: Skylines, etc. join the letter.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    tell you when the (relatively speaking) peanut gallery joins in? You may not have heard of them but each of these companies have a billion downloads in their portfolio minimum. This is massive that they all rejected this.
  - galleywest200 3y ago
    Only Among Us in this list uses Unity.
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      I updated the list. I’m sorry - Stardew Valley is not unity, and “Nintendo” wasn’t specific enough to referring to some of their Pokémon projects. (I also added everything after “Pokémon” in the list after this comment and they all use Unity.)
      - astura 3y ago
        >“Nintendo” wasn’t specific enough to referring to some of their Pokémon projects. Nintendo does not develop the Pokemon games - Game Freak does. Nintendo, however, does publish some of the Pokemon games and does partially own the Pokemon IP through The Pokemon Company.
    - ykonstant 3y ago
      I am pretty sure Hollow Knight uses Unity.
      - flutas 3y ago
        He edited his post. Originally it was "Stardew Valley, Among Us, Nintendo, etc."
        ED_Radish 3y ago
        Nintendo has used Unity for certain titles. Off the top of my head I can think of the Pokemon Sinnoh remakes, Super Mario Run, I think the fire emblem mobile game too?
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Considering that as paid games, none of them have ads in them, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make since they can't meaningfully join in to a boycott of IronSource and Unity ads by virtue of not using them in the first place?
  - flutas 3y ago
    > Tell me when the developers of Stardew Valley, Among Us, Nintendo, etc. join the letter. You're missing the point entirely. This is for FTP ad supported games, the 2 you mention (of which only one actually uses Unity) are all paid games. How about the big studios pulling support for Unity: Massive Monster (Cult of the Lamb): https://twitter.com/MassiveMonster/status/1701808567140102633 https://twitter.com/MassiveMonster/status/170180856714010263... Mega Crit (Slay the Spire): https://twitter.com/MegaCrit/status/1702077576209207611 https://twitter.com/MegaCrit/status/1702077576209207611 Inner Sloth (HEY LOOK, AMONG US): https://twitter.com/InnerslothDevs/status/1701731398498013575 https://twitter.com/InnerslothDevs/status/170173139849801357... and plenty of others I'm too lazy to pull up.
  - ncallaway 3y ago
    This letter is about turning off Unity Ads. From you list, none of the games I’ve played (Among Us, GRIS, Hollow Knight, Ori) use Unity Ads. Why would they join this letter?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- omoikane 3y ago
  I only recognize one of the company listed, for exactly the same reason you described. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_(company)#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_(company)#Criticism
  - dgb23 3y ago
    To me this seems shameless and of poor taste.
    - thih9 3y ago
      I looked at hole.io vs donut county. I have played neither. From app store descriptions, hole.io looks like a casual mobile game and donut county seems a polished and complex product, with storyline and quality art. It reminds me of 2048 vs threes. Thing is, sometimes I prefer a casual game. The copying is still poor taste, I agree with that. At the same time the titles can be different and respond to different market needs. I’m not sure what to think of that or about the industry as a whole. Especially since when I searched donut county on the app store, there were more copycats.
  - JoeOfTexas 3y ago
    Funny, because Google denied my Hole genre game that was real multiplayer. Their reason was that it was too similar to Hole.io, which was single player.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      Is competition not allowed in the marketplace? That seems weird.
      - JoeOfTexas 3y ago
        Voodoo spends big $$ on advertisement. Special treatment.
    - MaxikCZ 3y ago
      Disgusting
- copx 3y ago
  The interesting part is who is not on the list e.g. HoYoverse. It has been speculated by many that this is all about Unity Technologies wanting a much larger share of the billion dollar profits of the gatcha games based on Unity. If all indie devs quit Unity, but HoYoverse (the company behind the money printing press "Genshin Impact") does not, it would still massively increase the profits of Unity Technologies. Of course because we are literally talking about billions of dollars on the table here HoYoverse & Co will probably all try sueing first.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    From what I heard, Unity China is not actually owned by Unity, and Hoyoverse has a stake in Unity China: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-reportedly-looking-to-separate-china-unit-from-main-business https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-reportedly-looking-to-se... So the answer here may legitimately be that Hoyoverse isn't affected by this.
  - saladprince 3y ago
    Why are people so misinformed and spreading misinfo around? Genshin is using a highly customized Unity Engine bound under Unity China and the developer hoyoverse is a major shareholder in Unity China as well. Unity China is a separate entity from Unity Technologies. https://blog.unity.com/news/unity-forms-new-venture-to-manage-china-operations https://blog.unity.com/news/unity-forms-new-venture-to-manag...
drexlspivey 3y ago
Can Unity make such a change retroactively? If the terms were different when you made your game can they can force a per install fee now legally?
- remram 3y ago
  This is the US, the only way you find out is by spending millions in a legal battle, during which they might very well disable your game remotely (and get fined for that too after, if you still exist then).
  - djbusby 3y ago
    Its like fighting Amazon. They kick you off the affiliate program and to fight you start with arbitration ($2000). And lose your ability for Prime shipping, movies, music and stuff. It's like impossible to fight these big dogs
    - vkou 3y ago
      As a small dog, you're much better off going to arbitration than into an actual courtroom.
      - somenameforme 3y ago
        Small claims court is surprisingly friendly and accessible to 'small dogs.'
      - djbusby 3y ago
        The point is that for a consumer to start the process to attempt a fair and just outcome costs $2000. Unaffordable justice.
  - starburst 3y ago
    Well, they cannot really disabled it remotely (it's not like that functionality exists in the current code base atm, maybe in future Unity version). But they could kill your license so you won't be able to build your game using their tool anymore (however you could also just grab a new license under a different name). What I wonder tho is if they are going to go to the length of asking platform holder like Apple / Google to delist your game and would they actually comply with Unity on this?
suyash 3y ago
In game ads specially on mobile phone create a horrible UX, I'm happy that at least this made them turn off annoying ads in thier games.
- nightowl_games 3y ago
  There just gonna switch to a different ad network.
  - MaxGabriel 3y ago
    It’s pretty common to use ad network mediators, which try multiple ad networks for an ad, to optimize for using high earning ones first, and falling back to others in case the first network didn’t have an ad to show. (I helped make such a product 7 years ago)
    - nightowl_games 3y ago
      HeyZap was good
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Dudester230602 3y ago
If those companies would disappear overnight, it would be a positive outcome for humanity. I guess there are upsides to Unity's insanity after all.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Those companies would rebuild their games from scratch before they truly disappearing. They have literal billions of dollars each, and they will long outlive Unity at this rate.
- rizky05 3y ago
  [dead]
- yazzku 3y ago
  I think it also affects legitimate gamedev studios. But yeah, I couldn't care less for the signees on this letter. Good riddance, boys; if your product can only run on ads because people won't pay for it, you know you have a shitty product. We need higher quality games in the market, not higher quantity of your chaff.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    > if your product can only run on ads because people won't pay for it, you know you have a shitty product. https://www.eurogamer.net/football-manager-dev-hopes-to-stick-with-android-despite-9-1-piracy-rate https://www.eurogamer.net/football-manager-dev-hopes-to-stic... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2012/jul/23/dead-trigger-android-free-piracy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2012/jul/23/... https://venturebeat.com/games/monument-valley-developer-only-5-of-android-installs-were-paid-for/ https://venturebeat.com/games/monument-valley-developer-only... https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/34191/gdc-online-11-androids-piracy-and-compatibility-issues-mean-its-not-a-viable-platform-for-us-says-appys-sargent/ https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/34191/gdc-online-11-android... https://www.androidpolice.com/2010/08/26/android-piracy-by-country/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2010/08/26/android-piracy-by-c... https://www.computerworld.com/article/2515893/android-software-piracy-rampant-despite-google-s-efforts-to-curb.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2515893/android-softwa... If anyone ever wonders why premium games on mobile died out, there's your answer. But to give a TL;DR for those who don't click through: Piracy on Android in the 2010's was especially rampant, due to the nature of how you APKs are packaged and distributed (and how hard Google makes to add DRM). 70% piracy rates were common on Android compared to 30% on IOS, and it wasn't unusual to hear of 90+% in some games, to the point where a few games went f2p simply because they could not get users to pay a single dollar for their game. in a particular instance, the hit game Monument Valley, a 2014 game that had 26m downloads on IOS alone in 2016, was reporting 95% piracy rates on Android. It is (or was, back in 2018) $3 on IOS, and now f2p on Android for that reason. if you want a frame of reference for how absurd this is (not that you should to understand how 19/20 of your "customers" aren't buying your game): PC piracy has stayed around 33-40% throughout the decades. I cannnot blame developers for switching or abandoning the platform given those piracy rates. It would legitimately be better to offer a demo on Android (a properly isolated demo, not "part of the full game" demo) and point them to console/PC than it would to spend resources porting to Android.\ ----- Gabe Newell is oft-quoted saying "Piracy is a service problem". Well, this shows that services can simply get around this by turning the pirated content into a thin client and store all the value on the server. It simply took until "always online" was no longer a lofty assumption to perform.
wheelerof4te 3y ago
"Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Ducky, Burny Games, Inspired Square, Geisha Tokyo, tatsumaki games, New Story, Playgendary, Supercent, KAYAC, TapNation, Matchingham Games, Moonee, YSO Corp, MondayOFF" I see major development studios are fine with this change. No Blizzard, Bethesda, Rockstar, CD Project Red, Epic Games, Ubisoft... Unless they weight in on this, Unity won't budge. Honestly, it almost seems like someone is destroying the IT industry on purpose.
- rawcal 3y ago
  All those major studios listed have their own game engines, so unitys decisions don't affect them anyways. And Epic develops Unreal Engine, so Unitys' loss is their win.
  - wheelerof4te 3y ago
    Bethesda has a game engine? I thought their games were run by a 1000 year old abacus.
    - GaggiX 3y ago
      Starfield engine is pretty good: https://youtu.be/neO-Bl7g9-U https://youtu.be/neO-Bl7g9-U
      - nomel 3y ago
        I would claim that’s the physics engine, more than the “game engine”. Physx did this sort of thing 15 years ago.
        johnnyanmac 3y ago
        well, no one else is known for their "physics engine", so clearly Bethesda did something right, or cheaper than everyone else (doubtful).
Tade0 3y ago
Went to the website of one of the signers, clicked "reject" on their cookie popup, which just navigated me into this paragraph: > What can you do if you do not want storing cookies to be set or want them to be removed? > You are able to withdraw the consent to store cookies by changing the settings of your web browser. I'm warming up to the idea of there being some kind of barrier to entry to this industry. One that disincentives low-effort cash-grabs.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  This just cuts out the indies. the big cashgrabs can afford to roll their engine. They are that profitable.
- jen20 3y ago
  The other way to look at it is that browser settings are the perfect way to express lack of consent for non-allow listed entities and get rid of the ridiculous piecemeal approach we have now.
  - troupo 3y ago
    Do Not Track header was used by the ads industry to track people.
    - jen20 3y ago
      Indeed - what I'm suggesting is not that we have some opt-in standard that people may or may not follow. Browsers should go nuclear on tracking, and remove any feature that permits it.
      - troupo 3y ago
        The problem is, it's very hard to define what tracking is. That's why GDPR is General Data Protection Regulation. As it places the onus not on the tools to try and implement some ways to evade tracking, but on the companies who pretend that tracking is their god-given right. Because tracking is significantly larger than just placing third-party cookies on the users' machines.
neilv 3y ago
If you need a Web page, to protest being at the mercy some company because of dependencies out of your control... why would you gratuitously put that Web page at a Google Docs URL (which, again, you don't control)? Even three decades ago, you could pretty easily self-host this Web page and the Web form, in a way that you controlled it. Which prompts a thought... I'm sure there are much better reasons for dependency on a video game foundation. But -- seeing other aspects of ordinary software development practice (e.g., ridiculously unnecessary massive complexity, numerous shoddy SaaSes, and hundreds of unvetted JS or Python package dependencies casually pulled in) -- I wonder how much of the video game dependency decisions similarly have little thought put into them? Or are video game developers smarter than most other developers?
- uniformlyrandom 3y ago
  Google docs is: 1. Free. 2. Does not require any infrastructure investment. 3. Has built-in access management system. 4. Easy to collaborate in. 5. Hosted on a 3rd party that is highly unlikely to intervene. > put that Web page at a Google Docs URL (which, again, you don't control) What is the alternative? Bring up an AS, hook it up to a couple of dark fibers, and host it off your battery and solar panel? Because you do not control your ISP, hosting provider or power provider either. You barely control the hardware you bought. You independence depends on benevolence of other players, and Google is most likely to remain benevolent in this case.
  - juunpp 3y ago
    I'm surprised nobody has mentioned blockchain.
  - neilv 3y ago
    Reasonable degree of control. Being able to put up a Web page at a domain name registered to you is just the beginning of tablestakes in this business.
lifechoseme123 3y ago
TLDR: Don't bet on Unity's success. Bet on their collapse. The place has zero integrity in management. I've never worked at a worse managed place, and I hope I never do again. (Disclaimer: two of my three engineering managers were actually very good skilled engineers and managers (the one bad one was the "people manager", who "always knew he wanted to be a manager" and was put in charge of an engineering team... he had followed an engineering director from app dynamics). It's the business management steering the ship that I think is the problem) I used to work at Unity. I left quickly after what I saw. The biggest problem at Unity: Internal Distractions. Slack channels are filled with political discussions (As you might venture to guess: It's a race to the bottom of the Oppression Olympics-- lots of "no my group is more marginalized!" "no mine is!" type of people). Me, as a Software Engineer-- I was working while other employees were arguing about political issues (as if they could change each others minds-- unlikely, and a waste of time.) I thought "How is HR allowing people to NOT work yet instead spend that time arguing politics in so many slack channels? Who is doing the real work here?" Then there was the main problem (For me) of being hired into a bait-and-switch role (after the 7 or 8 interviews... Lord have mercy...) I was told: - You'll be fully remote, you can work from anywhere. (My manager soon told me: No, we hired head count in <Your City> and we expect you to stay there. Because I like to visit for 1-2 days every quarter, and I want to see the whole team.) - You'll be a NodeJS developer. (Turns out... you'll be a low-code Mulesoft developer, and maybe if you're lucky you'll work with NodeJS) - We hire you on Salary. (Turns out... you'll be treated like an hourly employee. I took a 2 hour lunch break one day because I expected to be judged on my impact & contributions, not the time my rear-end is in a chair. "Yeah... I'm going to need you to keep your lunches to one hour only". It was then that I decided to resign.) - They offered $110k base salary. I countered with $140k. I accepted $120k base, plus some stock. Had they paid me more, perhaps the BS I experienced would have been tolerable. But they didn't pay me the "Oh, and accept all of our BS" rate I asked for (looking back, I should have asked for much more, given what I saw internally). After leaving Unity, I arrived at a company and it was such a breathe of fresh air to find that nowhere in Slack did anyone mention anything about their political opinions-- all the people actually worked. Unlike at Unity, where many people spend time arguing about irrelevant non-work topics. I'm telling you-- I have never seen the amount of meaningless distracting politically argumentative conversations at a company as I did at Unity
hakre 3y ago
> We are the collective voice of the game development industry—developers, game designers, artists, and business minds. Passionate about our craft, we've invested years in shaping an industry that touches the lives of millions worldwide. Clearly the "our craft" is "business minds" and the problem with increased Unity fees is that their add business is at risk despite all these "business minds" invested years to shape their model. What an excellent shit-show.
- ganglandfee 3y ago
  [flagged]
- lacrimacida 3y ago
  Yeah, doesn’t seem they bring much the community, Id be surprised if content produced isn’t mindless addictive clicker of some kind. I agree it’s just a business model to leech off open source
- varelse 3y ago
  [dead]
- jarsin 3y ago
  Our Craft = Coding what the resident psychologist came up with that will have the greatest likelihood of addicting players to buy our loot boxes.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    I am wondering at what point will governments step up and regulate social media, loot boxing, and other such digital-based addictive things just as they regulate other addictive things like drugs, alcohol, and gambling?
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      it's been in argument for years. I don't think the US will ever step in given its culture. Also, I'm unsure how you step in and "regulate social media" to begin with. The whole issue is that social media provides much of its content via users, and users take these bathroom writings as gospel. That's a societal issue. Even if you regulate the money out of social media people will just join some home spun sites or even the fediverse, and the core problem continues.
thih9 3y ago
I’m feeling some sort of fatigue related to community hostile actions and campaigns against them. Twitter, reddit, unity, I’m sure there were others too. On the bright side, issues like this bring more attention and appreciation to open platforms.
- basisword 3y ago
  The problem is seeing yourself as part of a “community”. You’re the customer/user of a business. They owe you nothing other than what you’ve paid for.
  - fyrn_ 3y ago
    That's a little tone deaf considering how the whole crux of this is that they have altered the terms of "what you have paid for" post transaction. And for a product that studios invest in over years, leaving many with no recourse
    - basisword 3y ago
      The parent comment was referring to lots of other recent “scandals”. I was more referring to them.
  - adamrezich 3y ago
    at some point "independent game development" became more of a fashion than a craft taken seriously
    - thih9 3y ago
      Mobile games went a completely different route, with many dev shops crafting titles that reuse gameplay mechanisms and focus on monetization only.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    Oh, capitalism. The ol' people are simply resources to be mined approach. People also do have the prerogative to buy from somewhere else, you know. It's up to the company if they'd like to keep customers or not.
lionkor 3y ago
Id recommend anyone who can to move to https://godotengine.org/ https://godotengine.org/ and give it an honest try
- adamrezich 3y ago
  I'd recommend trying to make a game "from scratch", using only libraries, instead of an "engine", if you haven't done it before, and have only used fully-featured game engines. it's good to learn how to solve problems using structs and pointers and memory, instead of thinking only in high-level primitives like Entities and Components and Prefabs and Scenes and Nodes. not only will you level up your knowledge of how computers work, but you might be surprised at how much easier it can be to structure your code and reason about it. spend a weekend making a simple 2D platformer with something like C and SDL. include support for multiple levels, a title screen, and maybe a pause screen. if you've never done this before, you might be shocked at how easy it is. you don't need a scene graph. you don't need a component system. you don't need garbage collection. if you're used to having all of these things by default, it's the only paradigm you'll ever know how to work within. once you've done this, feel free to return to using full-featured engines if you wish—but you may start to see the value in doing more things yourself, instead of trying to fit your ideas into complex, overly-generic, overengineered systems and abstractions you yourself didn't design. this is all assuming, of course, that your goal is, at least in part, to be able to honestly call yourself a "game developer" in general, as opposed to merely an expert user of a specific piece of software. if instead your goal is to just make something you want to make, without care for improving your knowledge and skills and craft, then by all means jump from one full-featured engine to the next, replacing your mental schema for "how games are made" with the high-level abstractions and systems of one complex piece of software with that of another. (if any downvoters could explain why they find this post to be disagreeable, I'd love to hear it.)
  - vunderba 3y ago
    "this is all assuming, of course, that your goal is, at least in part, to be able to honestly call yourself a "game developer" in general" This is some Wagnerian level of gatekeeping snobbery right here. A game developer.... develops games by definition. They don't develop engines, they don't develop rigid body collision systems, they don't develop 3D renderers, they develop (aka make) games. If you find a suitable tool to facilitate the creation of your vision, you'd be a fool not to avail yourself of it.
holoduke 3y ago
Why is it not possible for a company to keep doing what they were doing when they became successful. In case of Unity a cross platform game toolkit. But no. They wanted to add all kinds of shitty functionality. I dont really get it. It must be all the non gaming people taking over the company looking at Excel sheets and other graphs to find new income streams by implementing the crappiest features ever. They need to put those people on a public shame list so they wont be hired ever again. I hope these kind of companies die quickly.
- rhtgrg 3y ago
  Unity never became successful in terms of profit. It isn’t FOSS but people treat it as such. I mean look at this: https://discord.com/channels/428803852351963146/428803852351963148/1152338765948395641 https://discord.com/channels/428803852351963146/428803852351... Unity has bottom of the barrel users for the most part, it will be good for the company if these demanding yet unprofitable people go elsewhere.
phendrenad2 3y ago
Has anyone tried http://www.gamebryo.com/ http://www.gamebryo.com/ ?
- nimish 3y ago
  Bethesda, notoriously

226 points by bo0tzz 3y ago

paxo 3y ago

some of those companies that are at the bottom of this letter, are one of the worst i've ever seen. many of them are known to just copy other indie games, and just heavily monetize them.

varelse 3y ago
[dead]
gjsman-1000 3y ago
I looked at those companies and thought, “you wish you were stakeholders.” Tell me when the developers of Among Us, Pokemon, GRIS, Cuphead, Hollow Knight, Ori, Cities: Skylines, etc. join the letter.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  tell you when the (relatively speaking) peanut gallery joins in? You may not have heard of them but each of these companies have a billion downloads in their portfolio minimum. This is massive that they all rejected this.
- galleywest200 3y ago
  Only Among Us in this list uses Unity.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    I updated the list. I’m sorry - Stardew Valley is not unity, and “Nintendo” wasn’t specific enough to referring to some of their Pokémon projects. (I also added everything after “Pokémon” in the list after this comment and they all use Unity.)
    - astura 3y ago
      >“Nintendo” wasn’t specific enough to referring to some of their Pokémon projects. Nintendo does not develop the Pokemon games - Game Freak does. Nintendo, however, does publish some of the Pokemon games and does partially own the Pokemon IP through The Pokemon Company.
  - ykonstant 3y ago
    I am pretty sure Hollow Knight uses Unity.
    - flutas 3y ago
      He edited his post. Originally it was "Stardew Valley, Among Us, Nintendo, etc."
      - ED_Radish 3y ago
        Nintendo has used Unity for certain titles. Off the top of my head I can think of the Pokemon Sinnoh remakes, Super Mario Run, I think the fire emblem mobile game too?
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Considering that as paid games, none of them have ads in them, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make since they can't meaningfully join in to a boycott of IronSource and Unity ads by virtue of not using them in the first place?
- flutas 3y ago
  > Tell me when the developers of Stardew Valley, Among Us, Nintendo, etc. join the letter. You're missing the point entirely. This is for FTP ad supported games, the 2 you mention (of which only one actually uses Unity) are all paid games. How about the big studios pulling support for Unity: Massive Monster (Cult of the Lamb): https://twitter.com/MassiveMonster/status/1701808567140102633 https://twitter.com/MassiveMonster/status/170180856714010263... Mega Crit (Slay the Spire): https://twitter.com/MegaCrit/status/1702077576209207611 https://twitter.com/MegaCrit/status/1702077576209207611 Inner Sloth (HEY LOOK, AMONG US): https://twitter.com/InnerslothDevs/status/1701731398498013575 https://twitter.com/InnerslothDevs/status/170173139849801357... and plenty of others I'm too lazy to pull up.
- ncallaway 3y ago
  This letter is about turning off Unity Ads. From you list, none of the games I’ve played (Among Us, GRIS, Hollow Knight, Ori) use Unity Ads. Why would they join this letter?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
omoikane 3y ago
I only recognize one of the company listed, for exactly the same reason you described. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_(company)#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_(company)#Criticism
- dgb23 3y ago
  To me this seems shameless and of poor taste.
  - thih9 3y ago
    I looked at hole.io vs donut county. I have played neither. From app store descriptions, hole.io looks like a casual mobile game and donut county seems a polished and complex product, with storyline and quality art. It reminds me of 2048 vs threes. Thing is, sometimes I prefer a casual game. The copying is still poor taste, I agree with that. At the same time the titles can be different and respond to different market needs. I’m not sure what to think of that or about the industry as a whole. Especially since when I searched donut county on the app store, there were more copycats.
- JoeOfTexas 3y ago
  Funny, because Google denied my Hole genre game that was real multiplayer. Their reason was that it was too similar to Hole.io, which was single player.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    Is competition not allowed in the marketplace? That seems weird.
    - JoeOfTexas 3y ago
      Voodoo spends big $$ on advertisement. Special treatment.
  - MaxikCZ 3y ago
    Disgusting
copx 3y ago
The interesting part is who is not on the list e.g. HoYoverse. It has been speculated by many that this is all about Unity Technologies wanting a much larger share of the billion dollar profits of the gatcha games based on Unity. If all indie devs quit Unity, but HoYoverse (the company behind the money printing press "Genshin Impact") does not, it would still massively increase the profits of Unity Technologies. Of course because we are literally talking about billions of dollars on the table here HoYoverse & Co will probably all try sueing first.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  From what I heard, Unity China is not actually owned by Unity, and Hoyoverse has a stake in Unity China: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-reportedly-looking-to-separate-china-unit-from-main-business https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-reportedly-looking-to-se... So the answer here may legitimately be that Hoyoverse isn't affected by this.
- saladprince 3y ago
  Why are people so misinformed and spreading misinfo around? Genshin is using a highly customized Unity Engine bound under Unity China and the developer hoyoverse is a major shareholder in Unity China as well. Unity China is a separate entity from Unity Technologies. https://blog.unity.com/news/unity-forms-new-venture-to-manage-china-operations https://blog.unity.com/news/unity-forms-new-venture-to-manag...

drexlspivey 3y ago

Can Unity make such a change retroactively? If the terms were different when you made your game can they can force a per install fee now legally?

remram 3y ago
This is the US, the only way you find out is by spending millions in a legal battle, during which they might very well disable your game remotely (and get fined for that too after, if you still exist then).
- djbusby 3y ago
  Its like fighting Amazon. They kick you off the affiliate program and to fight you start with arbitration ($2000). And lose your ability for Prime shipping, movies, music and stuff. It's like impossible to fight these big dogs
  - vkou 3y ago
    As a small dog, you're much better off going to arbitration than into an actual courtroom.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      Small claims court is surprisingly friendly and accessible to 'small dogs.'
    - djbusby 3y ago
      The point is that for a consumer to start the process to attempt a fair and just outcome costs $2000. Unaffordable justice.
- starburst 3y ago
  Well, they cannot really disabled it remotely (it's not like that functionality exists in the current code base atm, maybe in future Unity version). But they could kill your license so you won't be able to build your game using their tool anymore (however you could also just grab a new license under a different name). What I wonder tho is if they are going to go to the length of asking platform holder like Apple / Google to delist your game and would they actually comply with Unity on this?

suyash 3y ago

In game ads specially on mobile phone create a horrible UX, I'm happy that at least this made them turn off annoying ads in thier games.

nightowl_games 3y ago
There just gonna switch to a different ad network.
- MaxGabriel 3y ago
  It’s pretty common to use ad network mediators, which try multiple ad networks for an ad, to optimize for using high earning ones first, and falling back to others in case the first network didn’t have an ad to show. (I helped make such a product 7 years ago)
  - nightowl_games 3y ago
    HeyZap was good
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Dudester230602 3y ago

If those companies would disappear overnight, it would be a positive outcome for humanity. I guess there are upsides to Unity's insanity after all.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
Those companies would rebuild their games from scratch before they truly disappearing. They have literal billions of dollars each, and they will long outlive Unity at this rate.
rizky05 3y ago
[dead]
yazzku 3y ago
I think it also affects legitimate gamedev studios. But yeah, I couldn't care less for the signees on this letter. Good riddance, boys; if your product can only run on ads because people won't pay for it, you know you have a shitty product. We need higher quality games in the market, not higher quantity of your chaff.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  > if your product can only run on ads because people won't pay for it, you know you have a shitty product. https://www.eurogamer.net/football-manager-dev-hopes-to-stick-with-android-despite-9-1-piracy-rate https://www.eurogamer.net/football-manager-dev-hopes-to-stic... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2012/jul/23/dead-trigger-android-free-piracy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2012/jul/23/... https://venturebeat.com/games/monument-valley-developer-only-5-of-android-installs-were-paid-for/ https://venturebeat.com/games/monument-valley-developer-only... https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/34191/gdc-online-11-androids-piracy-and-compatibility-issues-mean-its-not-a-viable-platform-for-us-says-appys-sargent/ https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/34191/gdc-online-11-android... https://www.androidpolice.com/2010/08/26/android-piracy-by-country/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2010/08/26/android-piracy-by-c... https://www.computerworld.com/article/2515893/android-software-piracy-rampant-despite-google-s-efforts-to-curb.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2515893/android-softwa... If anyone ever wonders why premium games on mobile died out, there's your answer. But to give a TL;DR for those who don't click through: Piracy on Android in the 2010's was especially rampant, due to the nature of how you APKs are packaged and distributed (and how hard Google makes to add DRM). 70% piracy rates were common on Android compared to 30% on IOS, and it wasn't unusual to hear of 90+% in some games, to the point where a few games went f2p simply because they could not get users to pay a single dollar for their game. in a particular instance, the hit game Monument Valley, a 2014 game that had 26m downloads on IOS alone in 2016, was reporting 95% piracy rates on Android. It is (or was, back in 2018) $3 on IOS, and now f2p on Android for that reason. if you want a frame of reference for how absurd this is (not that you should to understand how 19/20 of your "customers" aren't buying your game): PC piracy has stayed around 33-40% throughout the decades. I cannnot blame developers for switching or abandoning the platform given those piracy rates. It would legitimately be better to offer a demo on Android (a properly isolated demo, not "part of the full game" demo) and point them to console/PC than it would to spend resources porting to Android.\ ----- Gabe Newell is oft-quoted saying "Piracy is a service problem". Well, this shows that services can simply get around this by turning the pirated content into a thin client and store all the value on the server. It simply took until "always online" was no longer a lofty assumption to perform.

wheelerof4te 3y ago

"Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Ducky, Burny Games, Inspired Square, Geisha Tokyo, tatsumaki games, New Story, Playgendary, Supercent, KAYAC, TapNation, Matchingham Games, Moonee, YSO Corp, MondayOFF" I see major development studios are fine with this change. No Blizzard, Bethesda, Rockstar, CD Project Red, Epic Games, Ubisoft... Unless they weight in on this, Unity won't budge. Honestly, it almost seems like someone is destroying the IT industry on purpose.

rawcal 3y ago
All those major studios listed have their own game engines, so unitys decisions don't affect them anyways. And Epic develops Unreal Engine, so Unitys' loss is their win.
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  Bethesda has a game engine? I thought their games were run by a 1000 year old abacus.
  - GaggiX 3y ago
    Starfield engine is pretty good: https://youtu.be/neO-Bl7g9-U https://youtu.be/neO-Bl7g9-U
    - nomel 3y ago
      I would claim that’s the physics engine, more than the “game engine”. Physx did this sort of thing 15 years ago.
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        well, no one else is known for their "physics engine", so clearly Bethesda did something right, or cheaper than everyone else (doubtful).

Tade0 3y ago

Went to the website of one of the signers, clicked "reject" on their cookie popup, which just navigated me into this paragraph: > What can you do if you do not want storing cookies to be set or want them to be removed? > You are able to withdraw the consent to store cookies by changing the settings of your web browser. I'm warming up to the idea of there being some kind of barrier to entry to this industry. One that disincentives low-effort cash-grabs.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
This just cuts out the indies. the big cashgrabs can afford to roll their engine. They are that profitable.
jen20 3y ago
The other way to look at it is that browser settings are the perfect way to express lack of consent for non-allow listed entities and get rid of the ridiculous piecemeal approach we have now.
- troupo 3y ago
  Do Not Track header was used by the ads industry to track people.
  - jen20 3y ago
    Indeed - what I'm suggesting is not that we have some opt-in standard that people may or may not follow. Browsers should go nuclear on tracking, and remove any feature that permits it.
    - troupo 3y ago
      The problem is, it's very hard to define what tracking is. That's why GDPR is General Data Protection Regulation. As it places the onus not on the tools to try and implement some ways to evade tracking, but on the companies who pretend that tracking is their god-given right. Because tracking is significantly larger than just placing third-party cookies on the users' machines.

neilv 3y ago

If you need a Web page, to protest being at the mercy some company because of dependencies out of your control... why would you gratuitously put that Web page at a Google Docs URL (which, again, you don't control)? Even three decades ago, you could pretty easily self-host this Web page and the Web form, in a way that you controlled it. Which prompts a thought... I'm sure there are much better reasons for dependency on a video game foundation. But -- seeing other aspects of ordinary software development practice (e.g., ridiculously unnecessary massive complexity, numerous shoddy SaaSes, and hundreds of unvetted JS or Python package dependencies casually pulled in) -- I wonder how much of the video game dependency decisions similarly have little thought put into them? Or are video game developers smarter than most other developers?

uniformlyrandom 3y ago
Google docs is: 1. Free. 2. Does not require any infrastructure investment. 3. Has built-in access management system. 4. Easy to collaborate in. 5. Hosted on a 3rd party that is highly unlikely to intervene. > put that Web page at a Google Docs URL (which, again, you don't control) What is the alternative? Bring up an AS, hook it up to a couple of dark fibers, and host it off your battery and solar panel? Because you do not control your ISP, hosting provider or power provider either. You barely control the hardware you bought. You independence depends on benevolence of other players, and Google is most likely to remain benevolent in this case.
- juunpp 3y ago
  I'm surprised nobody has mentioned blockchain.
- neilv 3y ago
  Reasonable degree of control. Being able to put up a Web page at a domain name registered to you is just the beginning of tablestakes in this business.

lifechoseme123 3y ago

TLDR: Don't bet on Unity's success. Bet on their collapse. The place has zero integrity in management. I've never worked at a worse managed place, and I hope I never do again. (Disclaimer: two of my three engineering managers were actually very good skilled engineers and managers (the one bad one was the "people manager", who "always knew he wanted to be a manager" and was put in charge of an engineering team... he had followed an engineering director from app dynamics). It's the business management steering the ship that I think is the problem) I used to work at Unity. I left quickly after what I saw. The biggest problem at Unity: Internal Distractions. Slack channels are filled with political discussions (As you might venture to guess: It's a race to the bottom of the Oppression Olympics-- lots of "no my group is more marginalized!" "no mine is!" type of people). Me, as a Software Engineer-- I was working while other employees were arguing about political issues (as if they could change each others minds-- unlikely, and a waste of time.) I thought "How is HR allowing people to NOT work yet instead spend that time arguing politics in so many slack channels? Who is doing the real work here?" Then there was the main problem (For me) of being hired into a bait-and-switch role (after the 7 or 8 interviews... Lord have mercy...) I was told: - You'll be fully remote, you can work from anywhere. (My manager soon told me: No, we hired head count in <Your City> and we expect you to stay there. Because I like to visit for 1-2 days every quarter, and I want to see the whole team.) - You'll be a NodeJS developer. (Turns out... you'll be a low-code Mulesoft developer, and maybe if you're lucky you'll work with NodeJS) - We hire you on Salary. (Turns out... you'll be treated like an hourly employee. I took a 2 hour lunch break one day because I expected to be judged on my impact & contributions, not the time my rear-end is in a chair. "Yeah... I'm going to need you to keep your lunches to one hour only". It was then that I decided to resign.) - They offered $110k base salary. I countered with $140k. I accepted $120k base, plus some stock. Had they paid me more, perhaps the BS I experienced would have been tolerable. But they didn't pay me the "Oh, and accept all of our BS" rate I asked for (looking back, I should have asked for much more, given what I saw internally). After leaving Unity, I arrived at a company and it was such a breathe of fresh air to find that nowhere in Slack did anyone mention anything about their political opinions-- all the people actually worked. Unlike at Unity, where many people spend time arguing about irrelevant non-work topics. I'm telling you-- I have never seen the amount of meaningless distracting politically argumentative conversations at a company as I did at Unity

hakre 3y ago

> We are the collective voice of the game development industry—developers, game designers, artists, and business minds. Passionate about our craft, we've invested years in shaping an industry that touches the lives of millions worldwide. Clearly the "our craft" is "business minds" and the problem with increased Unity fees is that their add business is at risk despite all these "business minds" invested years to shape their model. What an excellent shit-show.

ganglandfee 3y ago
[flagged]
lacrimacida 3y ago
Yeah, doesn’t seem they bring much the community, Id be surprised if content produced isn’t mindless addictive clicker of some kind. I agree it’s just a business model to leech off open source
varelse 3y ago
[dead]
jarsin 3y ago
Our Craft = Coding what the resident psychologist came up with that will have the greatest likelihood of addicting players to buy our loot boxes.
- bmitc 3y ago
  I am wondering at what point will governments step up and regulate social media, loot boxing, and other such digital-based addictive things just as they regulate other addictive things like drugs, alcohol, and gambling?
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    it's been in argument for years. I don't think the US will ever step in given its culture. Also, I'm unsure how you step in and "regulate social media" to begin with. The whole issue is that social media provides much of its content via users, and users take these bathroom writings as gospel. That's a societal issue. Even if you regulate the money out of social media people will just join some home spun sites or even the fediverse, and the core problem continues.

thih9 3y ago

I’m feeling some sort of fatigue related to community hostile actions and campaigns against them. Twitter, reddit, unity, I’m sure there were others too. On the bright side, issues like this bring more attention and appreciation to open platforms.

basisword 3y ago
The problem is seeing yourself as part of a “community”. You’re the customer/user of a business. They owe you nothing other than what you’ve paid for.
- fyrn_ 3y ago
  That's a little tone deaf considering how the whole crux of this is that they have altered the terms of "what you have paid for" post transaction. And for a product that studios invest in over years, leaving many with no recourse
  - basisword 3y ago
    The parent comment was referring to lots of other recent “scandals”. I was more referring to them.
- adamrezich 3y ago
  at some point "independent game development" became more of a fashion than a craft taken seriously
  - thih9 3y ago
    Mobile games went a completely different route, with many dev shops crafting titles that reuse gameplay mechanisms and focus on monetization only.
- bmitc 3y ago
  Oh, capitalism. The ol' people are simply resources to be mined approach. People also do have the prerogative to buy from somewhere else, you know. It's up to the company if they'd like to keep customers or not.

lionkor 3y ago

Id recommend anyone who can to move to https://godotengine.org/ https://godotengine.org/ and give it an honest try

adamrezich 3y ago
I'd recommend trying to make a game "from scratch", using only libraries, instead of an "engine", if you haven't done it before, and have only used fully-featured game engines. it's good to learn how to solve problems using structs and pointers and memory, instead of thinking only in high-level primitives like Entities and Components and Prefabs and Scenes and Nodes. not only will you level up your knowledge of how computers work, but you might be surprised at how much easier it can be to structure your code and reason about it. spend a weekend making a simple 2D platformer with something like C and SDL. include support for multiple levels, a title screen, and maybe a pause screen. if you've never done this before, you might be shocked at how easy it is. you don't need a scene graph. you don't need a component system. you don't need garbage collection. if you're used to having all of these things by default, it's the only paradigm you'll ever know how to work within. once you've done this, feel free to return to using full-featured engines if you wish—but you may start to see the value in doing more things yourself, instead of trying to fit your ideas into complex, overly-generic, overengineered systems and abstractions you yourself didn't design. this is all assuming, of course, that your goal is, at least in part, to be able to honestly call yourself a "game developer" in general, as opposed to merely an expert user of a specific piece of software. if instead your goal is to just make something you want to make, without care for improving your knowledge and skills and craft, then by all means jump from one full-featured engine to the next, replacing your mental schema for "how games are made" with the high-level abstractions and systems of one complex piece of software with that of another. (if any downvoters could explain why they find this post to be disagreeable, I'd love to hear it.)
- vunderba 3y ago
  "this is all assuming, of course, that your goal is, at least in part, to be able to honestly call yourself a "game developer" in general" This is some Wagnerian level of gatekeeping snobbery right here. A game developer.... develops games by definition. They don't develop engines, they don't develop rigid body collision systems, they don't develop 3D renderers, they develop (aka make) games. If you find a suitable tool to facilitate the creation of your vision, you'd be a fool not to avail yourself of it.

holoduke 3y ago

Why is it not possible for a company to keep doing what they were doing when they became successful. In case of Unity a cross platform game toolkit. But no. They wanted to add all kinds of shitty functionality. I dont really get it. It must be all the non gaming people taking over the company looking at Excel sheets and other graphs to find new income streams by implementing the crappiest features ever. They need to put those people on a public shame list so they wont be hired ever again. I hope these kind of companies die quickly.

rhtgrg 3y ago
Unity never became successful in terms of profit. It isn’t FOSS but people treat it as such. I mean look at this: https://discord.com/channels/428803852351963146/428803852351963148/1152338765948395641 https://discord.com/channels/428803852351963146/428803852351... Unity has bottom of the barrel users for the most part, it will be good for the company if these demanding yet unprofitable people go elsewhere.

phendrenad2 3y ago

Has anyone tried http://www.gamebryo.com/ http://www.gamebryo.com/ ?

nimish 3y ago
Bethesda, notoriously