8 ms·

Unity's Trap

114 points by Fraterkes 3y ago

pavlov 3y ago
I don’t think a lot of users of the engine understand that Unity the engine company doesn’t exist anymore. Last year Unity merged with IronSource, a mobile ad network, which is much more profitable than Unity. In a public company, the profit drives the business. The company that’s called Unity is in the business of selling ads and showing lots of them to people on phones. They own a game engine as a delivery vehicle for those ads. There was an unsolicited competing bid from another ad peddler, AppLovin, who also wanted to buy Unity. I guess the optics with the IronSource deal looked better because it could be called a merger rather than a straight-up acquisition. But the end result is the same. (As a side note, I think it’s a shame that BigTech can’t really do strategic acquisitions anymore. A company like Meta or Microsoft would have been a much better home for Unity. But some regulator around the world would have blocked the deal for sure. Meta can’t seem to acquire a sandwich these days without FTC or the UK competition authority trying to block it.)
- tjrgergw 3y ago
  > They own a game engine as a delivery vehicle for those ads. I don't know anything about Unity, but I've spent a few years in online ads and this is 100% how they think about it.
- ramraj07 3y ago
  How does this interpretation make any difference? It’s the same like people pointing out “short term greed” as the reason for these moves, but did this move increase short term greed either? Which logical person could have thought this was a good idea? No one that’s who. No matter what the strategy is.
  - tjrgergw 3y ago
    > Which logical person could have thought this was a good idea? I think maybe what the above person is trying to say is that while no one in the game dev space would've thought this is a good idea, everyone in the online ad speace thinks this is a good idea. You could've predicted this would happen just from knowing that the game engine was acquired by an adtech company. It's a very insightful post, don't dismiss it.
    - delusional 3y ago
      But is it? If this ends up killing the unity engine business, then what's the gain to ad business?
      - pavlov 3y ago
        A smaller developer base that shows more ads can be more valuable to this company than a large developer base that shows no ads.
        ffgjgf1 3y ago
        If you show bo ads and sell your game for $10+ the 0.02-0.05 fee per user doesn’t really affect you that much financially
      - wffurr 3y ago
        What’s the alternative to Unity? They have a huge market share and mind share among game developers. Some might be driven away but others will stay and show lots of ads. If this does eventually drive someone else to create something that takes Unity’s place, Ironsource will have made a giant pile of money running Unity into the ground. Tragic for everyone else, great for Ironsource and it’s investors.
        thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
        >> What’s the alternative to Unity? It depends on what you are targetting, but there has been a huge surge in interest in both the Unreal and Godot communities since the announcement was made. Alternatives exist and while it takes time to adjust if you are deeply invested, it will occur. Nothing causes people to abandon ship like a torpedo.
        delusional 3y ago
        > What’s the alternative to Unity? Not making games. Unity has won big on the indie game community flourishing, of more people making games. If Unity stops being a valid choice, or starts being scary, some of the people making indie games might decide making games isn't worth it. Sometimes we think of economy in terms of necessity. Some idea that people will make games, it's only a matter of how, but Unity didn't get big by cannibalizing some existing market of indie games. Unity was part of creating that market.
- nycdatasci 3y ago
  I agree. I think this is clearly more IronSource than Unity. Check out the top comments on this thread [1] about the IronSource/Unity deal: “IronSource is known for leveraging their ad network and installers to distribute spam, malware, and adware bundlers. What the fuck Unity.” “I've interviewed IronSource employees who showed me their work. I was pretty shocked at how purely evil the products intent was (malware wrapped installers for popular Windows applications). …“ “It's the end of the road for Unity. ( at least what most of us think Unity still is, but it's not ) The technology was always more or less "fine". Unreal Engine didn't "kill" Unity and it will not in the future. For the better part of a decade, Unity tried to become not-sure-what but way more than "just a game engine", and that's the problem, I don't know exactly what and neither do they. To be clear, Unity is not "dead" and will not be dead for a while, but the writing is on the wall with this "merger".” [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081051
  - gizmo 3y ago
    Unity knew exactly what kind of deplorable people the ironsource guys are, and they still sold. They knew this would inevitably result in the gamedevs getting screwed over, and they still sold. They knew.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    oh wow, i had no idea about this. for me this totally changes the perspective. it's no longer "bad unity" but it looks like unity was going to be a lost cause from the moment it got sold. i am not developing with unity so i am not affected, but it seems time to jump ship was a year ago.
    - BlueTemplar 3y ago
      Time to jump ship was when they announced that they were going to sell a subscription-based service, rather than software, which AFAIK was already the case in 2015...
- croes 3y ago
  >A company like Meta or Microsoft would have been a much better home for Unity Perhaps companies like these shouldn't never have become so big in the first place. They destroyed much of the necessary competition .
- jonplackett 3y ago
  It’s strange though that an ad company, which usually is in the business of maximising eyeballs, would make a move that makes things more expensive and less people likely to use a product.
  - brianwawok 3y ago
    Who says they won’t let you install ads to avoid this fee? Win/win for evil ad co
    - kibwen 3y ago
      > evil ad co "But I repeat myself."
    - jonplackett 3y ago
      Had not thought of this. Must not be evil enough…
- Hamcha 3y ago
  Amazon tried to do its own spin on CryEngine and ended up horribly as they just filled it with AWS integrations and hoped people would move over, the only news cycle I can recall from Lumberyard before it ended up being thrown away was Star Citizen getting in legal trouble over it[1]. So honestly I think if any of the big 5 got Unity they would have probably ended up doing something similar. 1. https://www.eurogamer.net/the-star-citizen-makers-are-being-sued-by-crytek https://www.eurogamer.net/the-star-citizen-makers-are-being-...
  - tormeh 3y ago
    New World is based on it, and apparently doing rather well.
- uthrowaway384 3y ago
  You're free to believe what you want, but your message does seem to just repeat points made by YouTube videos that also get a lot of things wrong. For your main point, the merger with ironsource didn't modify power dynamics in the company that much. Also trying to group an organisation with thousands of employees into a single entity that doesn't care about anything but pushing ads is just ignorant. Maybe you can make the argument for the highest level of the organization that's responsible of generating shareholder value, but I assure you the majority of the company is made of people who actually care about the engine, the community and often are developers themselves.
  - droopyEyelids 3y ago
    Sounds like it was either your first experience with a big company merger, or you’re high ranking enough to only see what you want to see
    - uthrowaway384 3y ago
      Weirdly personal attack, but then again I did say they parent message was repeating YouTube videos so my bad and somewhat warranted.
  - lsaferite 3y ago
    The problem with your assertion is that those upper levels drive the company direction and if the lower levels won't comply, they'll be replaced.
    - uthrowaway384 3y ago
      On that regard the public rage is something I don't mind. I don't know what would be enough to modify the value proposition to the point that the core product would be the most important thing in generating shareholder value. Then again part of this whole thing is exactly to reduce the dependency of ads in how revenue is generated so if the community completely shuts down the effort things are not any better. But it should never be possible to be in a situation where the costs are as unpredictable as they are in the released model.
- icegreentea2 3y ago
  I guess it's not clear to me how adding per-install fees (as opposed to revenue split) would increase the reach and depth of their ad network? Specifically I'm arguing that the boneheadedness of this decision (and its honestly shit communication) is probably not related to their 'new ad network masters', and is reflective of long-term problems that have been at Unity long before the IronSource merger. The reality is that Unity was always bleeding cash. Ever since it's IPO, it's been cash flow negative. Like a significant amount. Their last filing before IronSource merger stuff starts showing up is 2022Q4, and it has $323 million revenue, and net loss of $250 million. Their claimed R&D expense was $248 million, cost of revenue was $112 million, and sales and marketing and G&A both about $100 million. Even after their merger with IronSource (so looking at their 2023Q1 filing), they are $500 million revenue, net loss is $253 million. Basically looks like IronSource's business is roughly break-even. Framing this as a company chasing "higher profits" is a bit misleading. This is about a company trying to chase "not dying" and floundering. Unity pre-merger and post-merger was not a company that could 'just keep the status quo'. In fact, if you frame this from a game developer centric standpoint, what you've actually seen happen is a game engine developer try just about everything EXCEPT adding a per-install fee/revenue-split for decade+. Like pre-merger, Unity was already an ad company - it was pulling in half its revenue from its existing ad network. Unity did so many contortions to try to make a minimal strings attached game engine work as a business (and it has not succeeded). Now for Unity (the ad company) to successfully make profits deploying ads through their game engine, either their ad business needs to become vastly more profitable (which it won't - ads can be profitable, but it's not magic printing machine), or their game engine business needs to not being a gaping bleeding wound. And hey, that's actually the exact priority that Unity the game engine company would have. I am not excusing their current actions. But it's plain as day that they need to generate more revenue from their game engine business to be a viable business at all.
  - moogly 3y ago
    > I guess it's not clear to me how adding per-install fees (as opposed to revenue split) would increase the reach and depth of their ad network? Because it appears they will waive the fee if you use LevelPlay (previously IronSource?). https://mobilegamer.biz/unity-is-offering-a-runtime-fee-waiver-if-you-switch-to-levelplay-as-it-tries-to-kill-applovin/ https://mobilegamer.biz/unity-is-offering-a-runtime-fee-waiv...
- kibwen 3y ago
  > I think it’s a shame that BigTech can’t really do strategic acquisitions anymore What's a shame is that acquisitions are allowed at all. Companies should be forced to compete, rather than agglomerating other companies so that they can leverage them to artificially increase their market share as has been done here. It's completely anti-competitive.
  - CivBase 3y ago
    I'm not a fan of how acquisitions are often used, but how would you go about making them illegal? Would an entrepreneur be required to maintain ownership of a business and its assets forever?
    - kibwen 3y ago
      Make it so that shares of a company cannot be bought and held by corporations. Make trademarks non-transferable; they can only ever be owned by the entity that originally filed them. Make copyrights/IP rights subject to public auction; any time that ownership of a copyright would be transferred from one company to another, the public has the right to bid on it collectively, and if they outbid the company then the copyright goes into the public domain.
      - unusualmonkey 3y ago
        None of that prevents aquisitions. Companies would just be bought by wealth induviduals (or trusts, or whatever) as opposed to companies, and copyright/ip would just stay unde the original legal entity and licensed out.
        kibwen 3y ago
        Great, that's an improvement.
        ffgjgf1 3y ago
        How? You’d just have a bunch of under the table deals with similar outcomes but much less transparency. Also effectively you’d have way less economic growth and paradoxically less competition. For instance entering a new market which is dominated by oligopolies would be prohibitively expensive even if there is a lot of potential for disruption. Now you can just buy a small/ailing/mismanaged company and restructure it. With you proposal everything would have to be built from scratch at best you could just buy some of their assets during bankruptcy proceedings.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > Meta can’t seem to acquire a sandwich these days without FTC or the UK competition authority trying to block it. And for good reason, Meta is already big enough, no need to give up even more of our lives to these data hoarders.
- philistine 3y ago
  You're carrying the water of the monopolists. The reason why it would make so much sense for these conglomerates to own Unity is not because they're so much better; it's because their practices have already eliminated any competition that would have been a happy home for Unity.
- raincole 3y ago
  > IronSource, a mobile ad network It's an understatement. Even calling it an understatement is an understatement.
- chii 3y ago
  > The company that’s called Unity is in the business of selling ads and showing lots of them to people on phones. They own a game engine as a delivery vehicle for those ads. but if that were really the case, why would they start charging per install? Why wouldn't they distribute the engine for free, but with the caveat that free users must show the ads? Adding a revenue share per install is the antithesis of trying to get an ad platform more widely distributed imho.
  - suby 3y ago
    They wave the fee if you use their ad network.
    - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
      Which is wildly uncompetitive and most probably illegal in the EU. Hopefully unreal or Applovin will complain.
      - ffgjgf1 3y ago
        Why is it illegal? A bunch of companies in the EU have a comparable business model
- signaru 3y ago
  In a lesser evil scenario it could have been Microsoft as they could have an incentive to use Unity to force users into Windows, or devs into C#. Unity is even featured in Visual Studio before.
- saurik 3y ago
  FWIW, in a world with very few major game engines and very few major game platforms, I'm elated that the latter might not be allowed to purchase the former, as it is trivial to predict how Meta would decide--whether explicitly as the reason they bought it in the first place or implicitly from incentivized lack of interest in the alternative--that Unity would become a tool that only can be used to develop apps for Quest.
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  Fun fact. AppLovin was IronSource’s main competitor, in fact it’s the market leader by a significant margin. And yes, while it’s true that AppLovin decided to mess with them a bit by making an unsolicited offer that would make Unity a minority stake holder at 49%, their offer was significantly higher than IronSource’s and significantly higher than market value. I’m sure the fact that IronSource’s CEO Tomer Bar Zeev was (and still is) on the Unity board had little to no influence on Unity passing up on the offer and going with IronSource instead. > (As a side note, I think it’s a shame that BigTech can’t really do strategic acquisitions anymore. A company like Meta or Microsoft would have been a much better home for Unity. But some regulator around the world would have blocked the deal for sure. Meta can’t seem to acquire a sandwich these days without FTC or the UK competition authority trying to block it.) I think this cheering on of companies gobbling up each other, is bad in general, whether it’s Meta or Microsoft doing it or Unity. Ultimately it’s a bad thing for everyone if in the end there’s barely any competition and everything is under the umbrella of a few companies.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  > IronSource, a mobile ad network, which is much more profitable than Unity. Unity was still the much larger company and its leadership stayed in charge so it was a stock funded acquisition. > AppLovin, who also wanted to buy Unity. I guess the optics with the IronSource deal looked better because it could be called a merger The AppLovin deal would’ve been a merger and certainly not an “acquisition”. AppLovin was effectively asking Unity to “buy” them. Unity’s shareholders would’ve kept 51% of the new company and its CEO would be in charge. > A company like Meta or Microsoft would have been a much better home for Unity If we admit that game engine development can’t be profitable on its own and has to be subsidized either by some megacorp or by ad revenue like now. To be fair that’s not true. Had Unity kept focusing on it’s core business and hadn’t hires 4000-5000 unnecessary employees they’d be doing fine financially and their engine/editor would be just as good/bad as now.
rcarmo 3y ago
"It wasn’t on my radar that the most reputable indie engine might be silently laying the groundwork for a moustache-twirling betrayal next year." is a great quote.
- wccrawford 3y ago
  Except that they've made a series of moves in the last few years that have outraged the community. So "most reputable" is debatable at best.
  - rapind 3y ago
    It may not have been obvious at the time he chose Unity for his project. > in 2019 Unity went out of their way to say, and cement in their Terms of Service, that “When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS.” I suspect a lot of small shops were just toiling away trusting that when they first evaluated and decided on Unity they made the right decision. I bet less than 1% were reading ToS changes whenever they had to click the button.
cloogshicer 3y ago
Serious question, what engine should an aspiring indie dev currently pick, especially when targeting 2D? - Godot seems immature in many ways (for example, Web export is currently broken on macOS/iOS according to their docs) - Unreal seems like major overkill and apparently not well suited for 2D Is there anything else that is a serious contender? How can you protect yourself to not end up in a similar situation as the author?
- donatj 3y ago
  I am not a game developer but John Romero has said good things about Solar2D (formerly known as Corna, oof)
- Nihilartikel 3y ago
  I was about to suggest Marmalade SDK, which I found to be adequate back around 2015.. but unity/unreal squished it https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/69217/marmalade-sdk-shuts-down-citing-increased-pressure-from-unity-and-unreal/ https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/69217/marmalade-sdk-shuts-d...
- Fraterkes 3y ago
  Gamemaker and Love2D are both quite decent (and arguably more stable than godot).
  - cloogshicer 3y ago
    Thanks for the suggestions. Couldn't Gamemaker (or really anything that's proprietary) do a similar rug pull as Unity? Is there any way you can protect yourself against that when choosing a proprietary engine?
    - suby 3y ago
      Yeah, migrating to a proprietary engine after this is I think missing the point entirely.
    - Fraterkes 3y ago
wheelerof4te 3y ago
More power to the developers who build their own game engines. Game development meta should be: 1. Decide on the type of games you want to develop (RTS, RPG, advanture, FPS, etc.). 2. Make a game engine for it. 3. Make assets for it. 4. Finall, make a game by combining the engine with assets. 5. If successful, create a sequel/similar game. This is how all major game-dev companies operate. Indies can do this, too. Just on a smaller scale.
- tyleo 3y ago
  I work on games and I would not say, “this is how all major game-dev companies operate”. However, I have worked at companies that make their own engine and it’s easier than people think if you have the correct scope. Your first bullet is the most important one. I feel like the issue most companies have is that they get into engine building mode and get caught up in the fun of building the engine rather than delivering value to the player and shipping a game.
- Akronymus 3y ago
  > This is how all major game-dev companies operate. Patentedly untrue. MANY major game companies use existing engines. For example, the pokemon gen 4 remakes are on it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - trollied 3y ago
    Indeed. Hearthstone is Unity-based, for example.
- pg5 3y ago
  Why would an indie dev want to spend years making a game engine instead of building an actual game? Especially for small teams or solo projects?
  - strangecasts 3y ago
bbkane 3y ago
This article lays out his problem very successfully, but doesn't talk at all about what he plans to do about it, which I'd be very interested to hear.
- rcthompson 3y ago
  They don't come out and say specifically what they're doing, but: > I have to accept the new terms to continue paying for it, which we have to do to keep legally using Unity, which we have to do to finish our game – because by this point we’re trapped in their platform to the tune of 5 years’ work. And: > The only difference with a released game is our recourse: instead of having to abandon development of our game, we’d just have to abandon the game – never patch, never update. Which sucks for players almost as much as it sucks for devs. It sounds like they're too deep into developing their current game for switching engines to be feasible, so they're presumably going to agree to the new terms and complete development using Unity, release the game, and hope that Unity's current and future terms don't end up being too onerous for them. And then never ever touch Unity again after that.
0xDEF 3y ago
Unity is used by many mobile game studios in the developing world who don't follow Western accounting practices. It would have been hard or impossible to get proper Unreal-like revenue sharing out of them. The correct move would have been to ignore them but instead Unity chose to shoot their other users and themselves in the foot.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Or, you know, they could have done the normal software thing of charging once for the tool. But yeah, this would have still have meant that most of the developing world devs would not have paid... I'm guessing here is that Unity counts on these devs being forced to go through a few game distributors that have monopolized it in the developed countries : iOS, Google Play, Steam... this is a bigger issue here !
Fraterkes 3y ago
I occasionaly see the response that devs should have been prepared for something like this, both because the TOS laid some groundwork for this, and because it is in line with the way the current owners of Unity want to operate. The fact that they deliberately tried to obscure that something like this might happen is no excuse by this logic: as a gamedev you should always be hyperaware of the terms you are working under and read everything you agree to as carefully as a lawyer. My response to that would be: even keeping morality out of it, Unity's bussiness is specifically making the job of gamedevs easier. Forcing people to keep up with every detail of the terms on which you are using their engine undercuts the value of their product in exactly the same way as e.g. making their engine twice as slow, or making it much harder to port to different platforms. It forces their users to take their attention away from the actual job of making the game. In that view this isn't just a pricing change, but a fundamental worsening of their offering, which is meant to be a streamlining of game development.
- strangecasts 3y ago
  This is how I view it as well, if you're working on a library/framework which is an inextricable part of other people's products, you have a moral obligation not to participate in enshittification, in the same way you would expect other people to say, not inject ads into your browser addons The problem, on multiple levels, remains rewarding people for doing necessary maintenance work rather than "big-ticket" features like adding another ad framework
hnthrowaway0315 3y ago
IMO Unity has to make more $$ to support the development of its engine. Even the money from Ads is not good enough. Not to say they pick the right plan and communication though. But the end result is the same: profitable companies either pay or don't use Unity. Unity is OK if smaller players choose to leave too because they don't contribute to even the long term profits, and apparently this is aimed for short-middle term profits.
- rapind 3y ago
  > Unity is OK if smaller players choose to leave too because they don't contribute to even the long term profits, and apparently this is aimed for short-middle term profits. It's OK to fire your crappy and unprofitable customers, but keep in mind that smaller players don't just disappear. They will adopt (or build) something else, and that something else (Godot, Unreal) may benefit from Unity's loss over the short and long term. Just as important though is the trust they're losing with larger successful customers because of how they implemented this change. I suspect they might have just destroyed their own business. These engines are a learning investment and the more friction you add, the fewer devs that will bother investing their time into it. Time will tell.
  - hnthrowaway0315 3y ago
    Yeah as I said they are probably aiming for the short-mid term because it might be life or death to them. No one thinks in the long term nowadays.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  > IMO Unity has to make more $$ to support the development of its engine This misses the point that the change was done with deception, but it was also appropriately addressed in the article: > But they have to do this, their game engine business isn’t profitable! > Ah, I didn’t know that, perhaps because I don’t give a fuck? It’s not the customer’s job to make your business plan pay off. I didn’t ask them to offer terms that don’t work for them, I didn’t ask them to hire 7,000 people, I never even made a feature request. They asked me to pay them $10,000 in sub fees on the promise that it meant no fee per-sale, then once I was in too deep to switch, they changed the deal.
artursapek 3y ago
can’t wait to see OS engines like godot and bevy take over this space
bluescrn 3y ago
While I'm a Unity user and rather unhappy with the changes, maybe the outrage would be better directed at App Stores, Steam, and Console platforms all with their near-monopolies and taking a much larger cut of revenue.
- kibwen 3y ago
  We have been directing our outrage at all those things since at least the Epic/Apple tiff.
- Uvix 3y ago
  At least the retailers only take their cut one time. Under Unity’s new paradigm they can charge the developer more than the user paid for the game.
- dham 3y ago
  I agree to a certain extent but a tool charging money just seems odd. Like what if Ableton starts charging for every stream someone gets on Spotify, or Apple with Final Cut for every minute someone watches a video. Or probably, not so far fetched, Adobe charging for every view you get on Twitter of an image. Like, just charge someone a fee for your tool and be done. If you think your tool is worth more just charge more.
- whutsurnaym 3y ago
  Don't worry, there's plenty of outrage to go around.
midwit 3y ago
Oh well. There are alternatives out there. This is what we get for basing your game on someone else’s business.
fieldbob 3y ago
Time to harvest! You work for unity now bitches Got it?

114 points by Fraterkes 3y ago

I don’t think a lot of users of the engine understand that Unity the engine company doesn’t exist anymore. Last year Unity merged with IronSource, a mobile ad network, which is much more profitable than Unity. In a public company, the profit drives the business. The company that’s called Unity is in the business of selling ads and showing lots of them to people on phones. They own a game engine as a delivery vehicle for those ads. There was an unsolicited competing bid from another ad peddler, AppLovin, who also wanted to buy Unity. I guess the optics with the IronSource deal looked better because it could be called a merger rather than a straight-up acquisition. But the end result is the same. (As a side note, I think it’s a shame that BigTech can’t really do strategic acquisitions anymore. A company like Meta or Microsoft would have been a much better home for Unity. But some regulator around the world would have blocked the deal for sure. Meta can’t seem to acquire a sandwich these days without FTC or the UK competition authority trying to block it.)

tjrgergw 3y ago
> They own a game engine as a delivery vehicle for those ads. I don't know anything about Unity, but I've spent a few years in online ads and this is 100% how they think about it.
ramraj07 3y ago
How does this interpretation make any difference? It’s the same like people pointing out “short term greed” as the reason for these moves, but did this move increase short term greed either? Which logical person could have thought this was a good idea? No one that’s who. No matter what the strategy is.
- tjrgergw 3y ago
  > Which logical person could have thought this was a good idea? I think maybe what the above person is trying to say is that while no one in the game dev space would've thought this is a good idea, everyone in the online ad speace thinks this is a good idea. You could've predicted this would happen just from knowing that the game engine was acquired by an adtech company. It's a very insightful post, don't dismiss it.
  - delusional 3y ago
    But is it? If this ends up killing the unity engine business, then what's the gain to ad business?
    - pavlov 3y ago
      A smaller developer base that shows more ads can be more valuable to this company than a large developer base that shows no ads.
      - ffgjgf1 3y ago
        If you show bo ads and sell your game for $10+ the 0.02-0.05 fee per user doesn’t really affect you that much financially
    - wffurr 3y ago
      What’s the alternative to Unity? They have a huge market share and mind share among game developers. Some might be driven away but others will stay and show lots of ads. If this does eventually drive someone else to create something that takes Unity’s place, Ironsource will have made a giant pile of money running Unity into the ground. Tragic for everyone else, great for Ironsource and it’s investors.
      - thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
        >> What’s the alternative to Unity? It depends on what you are targetting, but there has been a huge surge in interest in both the Unreal and Godot communities since the announcement was made. Alternatives exist and while it takes time to adjust if you are deeply invested, it will occur. Nothing causes people to abandon ship like a torpedo.
      - delusional 3y ago
        > What’s the alternative to Unity? Not making games. Unity has won big on the indie game community flourishing, of more people making games. If Unity stops being a valid choice, or starts being scary, some of the people making indie games might decide making games isn't worth it. Sometimes we think of economy in terms of necessity. Some idea that people will make games, it's only a matter of how, but Unity didn't get big by cannibalizing some existing market of indie games. Unity was part of creating that market.
nycdatasci 3y ago
I agree. I think this is clearly more IronSource than Unity. Check out the top comments on this thread [1] about the IronSource/Unity deal: “IronSource is known for leveraging their ad network and installers to distribute spam, malware, and adware bundlers. What the fuck Unity.” “I've interviewed IronSource employees who showed me their work. I was pretty shocked at how purely evil the products intent was (malware wrapped installers for popular Windows applications). …“ “It's the end of the road for Unity. ( at least what most of us think Unity still is, but it's not ) The technology was always more or less "fine". Unreal Engine didn't "kill" Unity and it will not in the future. For the better part of a decade, Unity tried to become not-sure-what but way more than "just a game engine", and that's the problem, I don't know exactly what and neither do they. To be clear, Unity is not "dead" and will not be dead for a while, but the writing is on the wall with this "merger".” [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081051
- gizmo 3y ago
  Unity knew exactly what kind of deplorable people the ironsource guys are, and they still sold. They knew this would inevitably result in the gamedevs getting screwed over, and they still sold. They knew.
- em-bee 3y ago
  oh wow, i had no idea about this. for me this totally changes the perspective. it's no longer "bad unity" but it looks like unity was going to be a lost cause from the moment it got sold. i am not developing with unity so i am not affected, but it seems time to jump ship was a year ago.
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    Time to jump ship was when they announced that they were going to sell a subscription-based service, rather than software, which AFAIK was already the case in 2015...
croes 3y ago
>A company like Meta or Microsoft would have been a much better home for Unity Perhaps companies like these shouldn't never have become so big in the first place. They destroyed much of the necessary competition .
jonplackett 3y ago
It’s strange though that an ad company, which usually is in the business of maximising eyeballs, would make a move that makes things more expensive and less people likely to use a product.
- brianwawok 3y ago
  Who says they won’t let you install ads to avoid this fee? Win/win for evil ad co
  - kibwen 3y ago
    > evil ad co "But I repeat myself."
  - jonplackett 3y ago
    Had not thought of this. Must not be evil enough…
Hamcha 3y ago
Amazon tried to do its own spin on CryEngine and ended up horribly as they just filled it with AWS integrations and hoped people would move over, the only news cycle I can recall from Lumberyard before it ended up being thrown away was Star Citizen getting in legal trouble over it[1]. So honestly I think if any of the big 5 got Unity they would have probably ended up doing something similar. 1. https://www.eurogamer.net/the-star-citizen-makers-are-being-sued-by-crytek https://www.eurogamer.net/the-star-citizen-makers-are-being-...
- tormeh 3y ago
  New World is based on it, and apparently doing rather well.
uthrowaway384 3y ago
You're free to believe what you want, but your message does seem to just repeat points made by YouTube videos that also get a lot of things wrong. For your main point, the merger with ironsource didn't modify power dynamics in the company that much. Also trying to group an organisation with thousands of employees into a single entity that doesn't care about anything but pushing ads is just ignorant. Maybe you can make the argument for the highest level of the organization that's responsible of generating shareholder value, but I assure you the majority of the company is made of people who actually care about the engine, the community and often are developers themselves.
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  Sounds like it was either your first experience with a big company merger, or you’re high ranking enough to only see what you want to see
  - uthrowaway384 3y ago
    Weirdly personal attack, but then again I did say they parent message was repeating YouTube videos so my bad and somewhat warranted.
- lsaferite 3y ago
  The problem with your assertion is that those upper levels drive the company direction and if the lower levels won't comply, they'll be replaced.
  - uthrowaway384 3y ago
    On that regard the public rage is something I don't mind. I don't know what would be enough to modify the value proposition to the point that the core product would be the most important thing in generating shareholder value. Then again part of this whole thing is exactly to reduce the dependency of ads in how revenue is generated so if the community completely shuts down the effort things are not any better. But it should never be possible to be in a situation where the costs are as unpredictable as they are in the released model.
icegreentea2 3y ago
I guess it's not clear to me how adding per-install fees (as opposed to revenue split) would increase the reach and depth of their ad network? Specifically I'm arguing that the boneheadedness of this decision (and its honestly shit communication) is probably not related to their 'new ad network masters', and is reflective of long-term problems that have been at Unity long before the IronSource merger. The reality is that Unity was always bleeding cash. Ever since it's IPO, it's been cash flow negative. Like a significant amount. Their last filing before IronSource merger stuff starts showing up is 2022Q4, and it has $323 million revenue, and net loss of $250 million. Their claimed R&D expense was $248 million, cost of revenue was $112 million, and sales and marketing and G&A both about $100 million. Even after their merger with IronSource (so looking at their 2023Q1 filing), they are $500 million revenue, net loss is $253 million. Basically looks like IronSource's business is roughly break-even. Framing this as a company chasing "higher profits" is a bit misleading. This is about a company trying to chase "not dying" and floundering. Unity pre-merger and post-merger was not a company that could 'just keep the status quo'. In fact, if you frame this from a game developer centric standpoint, what you've actually seen happen is a game engine developer try just about everything EXCEPT adding a per-install fee/revenue-split for decade+. Like pre-merger, Unity was already an ad company - it was pulling in half its revenue from its existing ad network. Unity did so many contortions to try to make a minimal strings attached game engine work as a business (and it has not succeeded). Now for Unity (the ad company) to successfully make profits deploying ads through their game engine, either their ad business needs to become vastly more profitable (which it won't - ads can be profitable, but it's not magic printing machine), or their game engine business needs to not being a gaping bleeding wound. And hey, that's actually the exact priority that Unity the game engine company would have. I am not excusing their current actions. But it's plain as day that they need to generate more revenue from their game engine business to be a viable business at all.
- moogly 3y ago
  > I guess it's not clear to me how adding per-install fees (as opposed to revenue split) would increase the reach and depth of their ad network? Because it appears they will waive the fee if you use LevelPlay (previously IronSource?). https://mobilegamer.biz/unity-is-offering-a-runtime-fee-waiver-if-you-switch-to-levelplay-as-it-tries-to-kill-applovin/ https://mobilegamer.biz/unity-is-offering-a-runtime-fee-waiv...
kibwen 3y ago
> I think it’s a shame that BigTech can’t really do strategic acquisitions anymore What's a shame is that acquisitions are allowed at all. Companies should be forced to compete, rather than agglomerating other companies so that they can leverage them to artificially increase their market share as has been done here. It's completely anti-competitive.
- CivBase 3y ago
  I'm not a fan of how acquisitions are often used, but how would you go about making them illegal? Would an entrepreneur be required to maintain ownership of a business and its assets forever?
  - kibwen 3y ago
    Make it so that shares of a company cannot be bought and held by corporations. Make trademarks non-transferable; they can only ever be owned by the entity that originally filed them. Make copyrights/IP rights subject to public auction; any time that ownership of a copyright would be transferred from one company to another, the public has the right to bid on it collectively, and if they outbid the company then the copyright goes into the public domain.
    - unusualmonkey 3y ago
      None of that prevents aquisitions. Companies would just be bought by wealth induviduals (or trusts, or whatever) as opposed to companies, and copyright/ip would just stay unde the original legal entity and licensed out.
      - kibwen 3y ago
        Great, that's an improvement.
        ffgjgf1 3y ago
        How? You’d just have a bunch of under the table deals with similar outcomes but much less transparency. Also effectively you’d have way less economic growth and paradoxically less competition. For instance entering a new market which is dominated by oligopolies would be prohibitively expensive even if there is a lot of potential for disruption. Now you can just buy a small/ailing/mismanaged company and restructure it. With you proposal everything would have to be built from scratch at best you could just buy some of their assets during bankruptcy proceedings.
mschuster91 3y ago
> Meta can’t seem to acquire a sandwich these days without FTC or the UK competition authority trying to block it. And for good reason, Meta is already big enough, no need to give up even more of our lives to these data hoarders.
philistine 3y ago
You're carrying the water of the monopolists. The reason why it would make so much sense for these conglomerates to own Unity is not because they're so much better; it's because their practices have already eliminated any competition that would have been a happy home for Unity.
raincole 3y ago
> IronSource, a mobile ad network It's an understatement. Even calling it an understatement is an understatement.
chii 3y ago
> The company that’s called Unity is in the business of selling ads and showing lots of them to people on phones. They own a game engine as a delivery vehicle for those ads. but if that were really the case, why would they start charging per install? Why wouldn't they distribute the engine for free, but with the caveat that free users must show the ads? Adding a revenue share per install is the antithesis of trying to get an ad platform more widely distributed imho.
- suby 3y ago
  They wave the fee if you use their ad network.
  - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    Which is wildly uncompetitive and most probably illegal in the EU. Hopefully unreal or Applovin will complain.
    - ffgjgf1 3y ago
      Why is it illegal? A bunch of companies in the EU have a comparable business model
signaru 3y ago
In a lesser evil scenario it could have been Microsoft as they could have an incentive to use Unity to force users into Windows, or devs into C#. Unity is even featured in Visual Studio before.
saurik 3y ago
FWIW, in a world with very few major game engines and very few major game platforms, I'm elated that the latter might not be allowed to purchase the former, as it is trivial to predict how Meta would decide--whether explicitly as the reason they bought it in the first place or implicitly from incentivized lack of interest in the alternative--that Unity would become a tool that only can be used to develop apps for Quest.
turquoisevar 3y ago
Fun fact. AppLovin was IronSource’s main competitor, in fact it’s the market leader by a significant margin. And yes, while it’s true that AppLovin decided to mess with them a bit by making an unsolicited offer that would make Unity a minority stake holder at 49%, their offer was significantly higher than IronSource’s and significantly higher than market value. I’m sure the fact that IronSource’s CEO Tomer Bar Zeev was (and still is) on the Unity board had little to no influence on Unity passing up on the offer and going with IronSource instead. > (As a side note, I think it’s a shame that BigTech can’t really do strategic acquisitions anymore. A company like Meta or Microsoft would have been a much better home for Unity. But some regulator around the world would have blocked the deal for sure. Meta can’t seem to acquire a sandwich these days without FTC or the UK competition authority trying to block it.) I think this cheering on of companies gobbling up each other, is bad in general, whether it’s Meta or Microsoft doing it or Unity. Ultimately it’s a bad thing for everyone if in the end there’s barely any competition and everything is under the umbrella of a few companies.
ffgjgf1 3y ago
> IronSource, a mobile ad network, which is much more profitable than Unity. Unity was still the much larger company and its leadership stayed in charge so it was a stock funded acquisition. > AppLovin, who also wanted to buy Unity. I guess the optics with the IronSource deal looked better because it could be called a merger The AppLovin deal would’ve been a merger and certainly not an “acquisition”. AppLovin was effectively asking Unity to “buy” them. Unity’s shareholders would’ve kept 51% of the new company and its CEO would be in charge. > A company like Meta or Microsoft would have been a much better home for Unity If we admit that game engine development can’t be profitable on its own and has to be subsidized either by some megacorp or by ad revenue like now. To be fair that’s not true. Had Unity kept focusing on it’s core business and hadn’t hires 4000-5000 unnecessary employees they’d be doing fine financially and their engine/editor would be just as good/bad as now.

rcarmo 3y ago

"It wasn’t on my radar that the most reputable indie engine might be silently laying the groundwork for a moustache-twirling betrayal next year." is a great quote.

wccrawford 3y ago
Except that they've made a series of moves in the last few years that have outraged the community. So "most reputable" is debatable at best.
- rapind 3y ago
  It may not have been obvious at the time he chose Unity for his project. > in 2019 Unity went out of their way to say, and cement in their Terms of Service, that “When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS.” I suspect a lot of small shops were just toiling away trusting that when they first evaluated and decided on Unity they made the right decision. I bet less than 1% were reading ToS changes whenever they had to click the button.

cloogshicer 3y ago

Serious question, what engine should an aspiring indie dev currently pick, especially when targeting 2D? - Godot seems immature in many ways (for example, Web export is currently broken on macOS/iOS according to their docs) - Unreal seems like major overkill and apparently not well suited for 2D Is there anything else that is a serious contender? How can you protect yourself to not end up in a similar situation as the author?

donatj 3y ago
I am not a game developer but John Romero has said good things about Solar2D (formerly known as Corna, oof)
Nihilartikel 3y ago
I was about to suggest Marmalade SDK, which I found to be adequate back around 2015.. but unity/unreal squished it https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/69217/marmalade-sdk-shuts-down-citing-increased-pressure-from-unity-and-unreal/ https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/69217/marmalade-sdk-shuts-d...
Fraterkes 3y ago
Gamemaker and Love2D are both quite decent (and arguably more stable than godot).
- cloogshicer 3y ago
  Thanks for the suggestions. Couldn't Gamemaker (or really anything that's proprietary) do a similar rug pull as Unity? Is there any way you can protect yourself against that when choosing a proprietary engine?
  - suby 3y ago
    Yeah, migrating to a proprietary engine after this is I think missing the point entirely.
  - Fraterkes 3y ago

wheelerof4te 3y ago

More power to the developers who build their own game engines. Game development meta should be: 1. Decide on the type of games you want to develop (RTS, RPG, advanture, FPS, etc.). 2. Make a game engine for it. 3. Make assets for it. 4. Finall, make a game by combining the engine with assets. 5. If successful, create a sequel/similar game. This is how all major game-dev companies operate. Indies can do this, too. Just on a smaller scale.

tyleo 3y ago
I work on games and I would not say, “this is how all major game-dev companies operate”. However, I have worked at companies that make their own engine and it’s easier than people think if you have the correct scope. Your first bullet is the most important one. I feel like the issue most companies have is that they get into engine building mode and get caught up in the fun of building the engine rather than delivering value to the player and shipping a game.
Akronymus 3y ago
> This is how all major game-dev companies operate. Patentedly untrue. MANY major game companies use existing engines. For example, the pokemon gen 4 remakes are on it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- trollied 3y ago
  Indeed. Hearthstone is Unity-based, for example.
pg5 3y ago
Why would an indie dev want to spend years making a game engine instead of building an actual game? Especially for small teams or solo projects?
- strangecasts 3y ago

bbkane 3y ago

This article lays out his problem very successfully, but doesn't talk at all about what he plans to do about it, which I'd be very interested to hear.

rcthompson 3y ago
They don't come out and say specifically what they're doing, but: > I have to accept the new terms to continue paying for it, which we have to do to keep legally using Unity, which we have to do to finish our game – because by this point we’re trapped in their platform to the tune of 5 years’ work. And: > The only difference with a released game is our recourse: instead of having to abandon development of our game, we’d just have to abandon the game – never patch, never update. Which sucks for players almost as much as it sucks for devs. It sounds like they're too deep into developing their current game for switching engines to be feasible, so they're presumably going to agree to the new terms and complete development using Unity, release the game, and hope that Unity's current and future terms don't end up being too onerous for them. And then never ever touch Unity again after that.

0xDEF 3y ago

Unity is used by many mobile game studios in the developing world who don't follow Western accounting practices. It would have been hard or impossible to get proper Unreal-like revenue sharing out of them. The correct move would have been to ignore them but instead Unity chose to shoot their other users and themselves in the foot.

BlueTemplar 3y ago
Or, you know, they could have done the normal software thing of charging once for the tool. But yeah, this would have still have meant that most of the developing world devs would not have paid... I'm guessing here is that Unity counts on these devs being forced to go through a few game distributors that have monopolized it in the developed countries : iOS, Google Play, Steam... this is a bigger issue here !

Fraterkes 3y ago

I occasionaly see the response that devs should have been prepared for something like this, both because the TOS laid some groundwork for this, and because it is in line with the way the current owners of Unity want to operate. The fact that they deliberately tried to obscure that something like this might happen is no excuse by this logic: as a gamedev you should always be hyperaware of the terms you are working under and read everything you agree to as carefully as a lawyer. My response to that would be: even keeping morality out of it, Unity's bussiness is specifically making the job of gamedevs easier. Forcing people to keep up with every detail of the terms on which you are using their engine undercuts the value of their product in exactly the same way as e.g. making their engine twice as slow, or making it much harder to port to different platforms. It forces their users to take their attention away from the actual job of making the game. In that view this isn't just a pricing change, but a fundamental worsening of their offering, which is meant to be a streamlining of game development.

strangecasts 3y ago
This is how I view it as well, if you're working on a library/framework which is an inextricable part of other people's products, you have a moral obligation not to participate in enshittification, in the same way you would expect other people to say, not inject ads into your browser addons The problem, on multiple levels, remains rewarding people for doing necessary maintenance work rather than "big-ticket" features like adding another ad framework

hnthrowaway0315 3y ago

IMO Unity has to make more $$ to support the development of its engine. Even the money from Ads is not good enough. Not to say they pick the right plan and communication though. But the end result is the same: profitable companies either pay or don't use Unity. Unity is OK if smaller players choose to leave too because they don't contribute to even the long term profits, and apparently this is aimed for short-middle term profits.

rapind 3y ago
> Unity is OK if smaller players choose to leave too because they don't contribute to even the long term profits, and apparently this is aimed for short-middle term profits. It's OK to fire your crappy and unprofitable customers, but keep in mind that smaller players don't just disappear. They will adopt (or build) something else, and that something else (Godot, Unreal) may benefit from Unity's loss over the short and long term. Just as important though is the trust they're losing with larger successful customers because of how they implemented this change. I suspect they might have just destroyed their own business. These engines are a learning investment and the more friction you add, the fewer devs that will bother investing their time into it. Time will tell.
- hnthrowaway0315 3y ago
  Yeah as I said they are probably aiming for the short-mid term because it might be life or death to them. No one thinks in the long term nowadays.
ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
> IMO Unity has to make more $$ to support the development of its engine This misses the point that the change was done with deception, but it was also appropriately addressed in the article: > But they have to do this, their game engine business isn’t profitable! > Ah, I didn’t know that, perhaps because I don’t give a fuck? It’s not the customer’s job to make your business plan pay off. I didn’t ask them to offer terms that don’t work for them, I didn’t ask them to hire 7,000 people, I never even made a feature request. They asked me to pay them $10,000 in sub fees on the promise that it meant no fee per-sale, then once I was in too deep to switch, they changed the deal.

artursapek 3y ago

can’t wait to see OS engines like godot and bevy take over this space

bluescrn 3y ago

While I'm a Unity user and rather unhappy with the changes, maybe the outrage would be better directed at App Stores, Steam, and Console platforms all with their near-monopolies and taking a much larger cut of revenue.

kibwen 3y ago
We have been directing our outrage at all those things since at least the Epic/Apple tiff.
Uvix 3y ago
At least the retailers only take their cut one time. Under Unity’s new paradigm they can charge the developer more than the user paid for the game.
dham 3y ago
I agree to a certain extent but a tool charging money just seems odd. Like what if Ableton starts charging for every stream someone gets on Spotify, or Apple with Final Cut for every minute someone watches a video. Or probably, not so far fetched, Adobe charging for every view you get on Twitter of an image. Like, just charge someone a fee for your tool and be done. If you think your tool is worth more just charge more.
whutsurnaym 3y ago
Don't worry, there's plenty of outrage to go around.

midwit 3y ago

Oh well. There are alternatives out there. This is what we get for basing your game on someone else’s business.

fieldbob 3y ago

Time to harvest! You work for unity now bitches Got it?