8 ms·

Unity is cancelling the runtime fee for games customers

150 points by dagmx 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mystified5016 2y ago
[flagged]
sickofparadox 2y ago
Seems a bit late now that they blew up their customer base and created a movement for developers to transition away from their products. Total own-goal, brought to you by the EA executive that thought players would pay in game for ammunition reloads.[1] The concept of meritocracy cries whenever these morons get hired. [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/technology/unity-chief-resigns-after-pricing-backlash.html#:~:text=He%20once%20floated%20the%20idea,the%20company's%20poor%20financial%20performance https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/technology/unity-chief-re....
- stuaxo 2y ago
  See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
diggan 2y ago
> We called it “democratizing game development,” and it remains our core mission today. > However, we can’t pursue that mission in conflict with our customers Surprising absolutely no one. Either you can "democratize Y" or you can focus on building your for-profit company, where profits have to take topmost priority. But hopefully people won't fall for this after it's been abused as a term multiple times. When these companies scream they just want to "save the world", remember that it's just marketing, just like the rest of this announcement. There are better options out there. Godot probably the most mature one at this point, owned by a non-profit with the source code being FOSS, so you can be sure it'll act in your interest for the future.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  Profits do not "have to" take top priority for any company, this is a widely believed myth. Any company may choose to prioritise its mission over absolute profit as long as they are clear with their investors that that's what they're doing.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    If it were true companies could never legally offer discounts, bundles, whatever. Long term thinking (eg acquire customers at less profit today) would be impossible if immediate profits always had to come first.
    - diggan 2y ago
      You think companies offer discounts, bundles or whatever out of altruism? The goal is to maximize profits with those things, although it's future profits, not immediate profit.
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
        That was exactly the point I was attempting to make.
  - diggan 2y ago
    Why create the standard for-profit enterprise then? If profits isn't your topmost priority, then going for a non-profit, public benefit corporation or similar would be in your best interest and more beneficial. You can still make profits with those, but there is a limit, hence people tend to go for the typical setup.
debacle 2y ago
I wish they had done this for altruistic reasons, but I doubt it. Unity is still better than Godot in a lot of ways (mainly the support ecosystem), but by March that might be different. Godot is catching up quickly. It has more momentum behind it than possibly any other open source project I've experienced.
- krapp 2y ago
  Honestly the best thing that ever happened to the Godot community was the Unity diaspora trying it out and complaining. A lot of that was written off as simply insisting that Godot act and feel like Unity, but given that Unity is the more mature and widely used platform, it sets the standard implicitly whether people like it or not. Also a lot of technical complaints, particularly around Godot's relatively lackluster 3D capabilities, were ironed out that may not have even been addressed if left to community momentum alone. I like Godot but its open source nature means it does have some rough edges, mostly around GDScript but framework features like tilemap implementation, model imports and physics have always been a bit wonky.
  - emptysongglass 2y ago
    > I like Godot but its open source nature means it does have some rough edges, mostly around GDScript but framework features like tilemap implementation, model imports and physics have always been a bit wonky. You're attributing a lack in Godot you feel to it being open source. Given the commercial success of other open source projects like Blender, I don't think this is a fair or measured take.
    - krapp 2y ago
      Blender is a lot older and has a lot more professional investment and interest behind it. I don't doubt Godot could be in a similar state of quality given as much time and effort, but I don't think it's there yet. With open source, contribution quality is often a function of popularity attracting contributors with the necessary skillset being willing to put in the time and effort, usually for free. This isn't meant to be a slight against open source, just an acknowledgement of the tradeoffs of an open development model. Something like a game framework or model editor can't reach a certain level of maturity until actual professionals in the field care enough to contribute, because of the knowledge gatekept within those industries, and their expertise. Most free software contributors will necessarily be amateurs and hobbyists, and that will likewise limit the quality of the end product.
wokwokwok 2y ago
It’s easy to make fun of Unity for this, but at the end of the day, a lot of people are stuck in this ecosystem and this is a good outcome for them. Overall, good job.
- BryanLegend 2y ago
  They also have kept the unity logo splash screen being optional which is nice.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    I would say it’s entirely irrelevant to being nice. Unity demanding that every garbage tier game flaunt that it was made with Unity seemed like it was a net negative for unity itself.
    - nox101 2y ago
      Is the same true of Unreal?
      - jarsin 2y ago
        No, it's the exact opposite. You have to get permission to use the Unreal logo.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        You do not need to show a splash screen for unreal. In fact, I believe you need to get permission to do so, even if they’re only go to refuse for porn and shit. You do need to reference them in the credits.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    That is a minor thing that really annoys me. Modern games all look like NASCAR when they start.
    - OnionBlender 2y ago
lnrd 2y ago
I don't understand the hate. They did a very bad decision and had major backlash. Fast-forward one year: they rectified it completely, they greatly improved the free terms compared to what was before, they replaced the CEO and other involved executives. That's seems a sensible way of addressing a fuckup, especially considering that the plans now are very reasonable and indie-friendly.
- diggan 2y ago
  People were kind of sleeping on the fact that Unity could at any times alter the deal to their own benefit. It wasn't until Unity did what they did, that people realized that maybe it's not a mutually beneficial relationship when one of the parts can change the terms whenever they want. So naturally, people start exploring other options that don't suffer from the same problem. Unity, realizing this, backpedals. Which yeah, makes sense, but people who got burned by the change already got burned, and they want to avoid it in the future. I understand both sides, Unity needs to make money, otherwise it won't be around. And game developers need to feel like they're making a choice they can still justify and feel safe about in the future.
  - dspillett 2y ago
    > but people who got burned by the change already got burned, and they want to avoid it in the future. They likely have also put effort into moving to other frameworks, and if those are working out well enough for them there is no point making the effort to go back even with this change reverted. Same for new projects that went directly elsewhere: unless Unity offers significant benefits (and the project controllers feel that Unity can be trusted not to repeat the rug-pull later) the effort of changing stack are likely not worth it.
  - sbuttgereit 2y ago
    > people realized that maybe it's not a mutually beneficial relationship when one of the parts can change the terms whenever they want. Unity's thinking they could change the terms unilaterally whenever they want and not actually being able to make it stick suggests to me that Unity misunderstood the arrangement more than the users on the other side of that agreement. Yes, Unity had the legal power to change the agreement, but clearly the market disagreed with that move and Unity bore consequences that apparently they weren't ready to bear. In the end it seems that Unity learned that legal power is not the same as market power and that they didn't have the real power to change that deal... and they learned it the all the hard way.
bob1029 2y ago
I just got started with a Unity project a few weeks back. My only goal right now is to build out a concept to see if it even makes sense to invest real time into. If I get to the actual money piles and it turns out the terms of doing business with Unity are too intolerable, I would consider swapping paths. There are a lot of developers who seem interested in the idea of making games, but they get so caught up in the intense tribalism around the various approaches that nothing meaningful comes of their efforts. I recall discussions around how quickly projects were able to be migrated to Godot. So, what's the harm in beginning somewhere else?
- evanmoran 2y ago
  As someone who has worked in the game industry for years both in AAA and indie, I’d say the switching costs are quite high and proportional to the team and code size. The reason it can be so challenging is a late change can easily double your preproduction time as you have to port over existing systems/tools/workflows and the bigger teams have many more of these systems. Usually this means bigger studios only changes engines at the start of new franchises or when fully rebooting old ones (For example, the new Mass Effect is porting from Frostbite to Unreal 5, but it’s only viable because it’s a super high budget reboot with new creative direction and the time to do it) It easier to switch if you’re indie, of course, but the reality is if your game is great it’s better to launch with the engine you have. And if your game is struggling gameplay-wise porting it to another engine isn’t going to help make the game better and puts the release at risk.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Porting a game to another engine is going to be a monumental task.
- ClimaxGravely 2y ago
  If you were really paranoid you could use a framework like ceramic where unity is just one of the many output targets. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it though. https://ceramic-engine.com/ https://ceramic-engine.com/
TillE 2y ago
The reason for doing the runtime fee in the first place is that they're bleeding cash despite being the engine behind many highly lucrative games. From a long term perspective this is very good for the future of Unity, their stock price is even up on the news, but they're going to have to do something about their cash flow situation. The 25% increase for Unity Enterprise is significant, but it doesn't sound like enough.
- crunkykd 2y ago
  IronSource & WETA acquisitions may have been expensive mistakes
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    After blowing $1.6B on WETA, Unity almost immediately pivoted and shutdown the company. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/11/unity-lays-off-hundreds-of-weta-digital-engineers-as-it-pivots-back-to-games/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/11/unity-lays-off-hundre...
    - FractalHQ 2y ago
      That is a tragedy. The amount of talent and brilliance robbed from the world… I still don’t understand why companies buying other companies should be a thing at all. Anti-trust solved, competition restored.
      - WillPostForFood 2y ago
        >That is a tragedy. The amount of talent and brilliance robbed from the world… That talent is all still alive, and will do brilliant things in the future. Probably moreso than if they were stuck working for Unity.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - solardev 2y ago
altairprime 2y ago
The title is misleading: > we’ve made the decision to cancel the Runtime Fee for our games customers Non-games users will still be charged the runtime fee.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  The Runtime Fee was a new fee attached to Unity 6 that applied only to games (and only to games meeting certain number of downloads and revenue floors), so cancelling it for games customers is cancelling it entirely.
vyrotek 2y ago
Can't help feel like these stats were eye opening for them. There was a big shift in the community. The funnel of new Unity devs and games was drying out. https://x.com/reduzio/status/1830184668588568701 https://x.com/reduzio/status/1830184668588568701 "A year ago on Itch, Godot was about 1/10th the projects of Unity. Today its closing in to 1/3rd."
- stanac 2y ago
  Are those overall numbers? Looking at the "this week's projects", it's 230 for godot vs 147 for unity. Which is probably more interesting detail than overall numbers.
  - sieabahlpark 2y ago
    [dead]
w4rh4wk5 2y ago
Ok. So what dumpster fire are you going to start next month?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

150 points by dagmx 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mystified5016 2y ago

[flagged]

sickofparadox 2y ago

Seems a bit late now that they blew up their customer base and created a movement for developers to transition away from their products. Total own-goal, brought to you by the EA executive that thought players would pay in game for ammunition reloads.[1] The concept of meritocracy cries whenever these morons get hired. [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/technology/unity-chief-resigns-after-pricing-backlash.html#:~:text=He%20once%20floated%20the%20idea,the%20company's%20poor%20financial%20performance https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/technology/unity-chief-re....

stuaxo 2y ago
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

diggan 2y ago

> We called it “democratizing game development,” and it remains our core mission today. > However, we can’t pursue that mission in conflict with our customers Surprising absolutely no one. Either you can "democratize Y" or you can focus on building your for-profit company, where profits have to take topmost priority. But hopefully people won't fall for this after it's been abused as a term multiple times. When these companies scream they just want to "save the world", remember that it's just marketing, just like the rest of this announcement. There are better options out there. Godot probably the most mature one at this point, owned by a non-profit with the source code being FOSS, so you can be sure it'll act in your interest for the future.

mvdtnz 2y ago
Profits do not "have to" take top priority for any company, this is a widely believed myth. Any company may choose to prioritise its mission over absolute profit as long as they are clear with their investors that that's what they're doing.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  If it were true companies could never legally offer discounts, bundles, whatever. Long term thinking (eg acquire customers at less profit today) would be impossible if immediate profits always had to come first.
  - diggan 2y ago
    You think companies offer discounts, bundles or whatever out of altruism? The goal is to maximize profits with those things, although it's future profits, not immediate profit.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
      That was exactly the point I was attempting to make.
- diggan 2y ago
  Why create the standard for-profit enterprise then? If profits isn't your topmost priority, then going for a non-profit, public benefit corporation or similar would be in your best interest and more beneficial. You can still make profits with those, but there is a limit, hence people tend to go for the typical setup.

debacle 2y ago

I wish they had done this for altruistic reasons, but I doubt it. Unity is still better than Godot in a lot of ways (mainly the support ecosystem), but by March that might be different. Godot is catching up quickly. It has more momentum behind it than possibly any other open source project I've experienced.

krapp 2y ago
Honestly the best thing that ever happened to the Godot community was the Unity diaspora trying it out and complaining. A lot of that was written off as simply insisting that Godot act and feel like Unity, but given that Unity is the more mature and widely used platform, it sets the standard implicitly whether people like it or not. Also a lot of technical complaints, particularly around Godot's relatively lackluster 3D capabilities, were ironed out that may not have even been addressed if left to community momentum alone. I like Godot but its open source nature means it does have some rough edges, mostly around GDScript but framework features like tilemap implementation, model imports and physics have always been a bit wonky.
- emptysongglass 2y ago
  > I like Godot but its open source nature means it does have some rough edges, mostly around GDScript but framework features like tilemap implementation, model imports and physics have always been a bit wonky. You're attributing a lack in Godot you feel to it being open source. Given the commercial success of other open source projects like Blender, I don't think this is a fair or measured take.
  - krapp 2y ago
    Blender is a lot older and has a lot more professional investment and interest behind it. I don't doubt Godot could be in a similar state of quality given as much time and effort, but I don't think it's there yet. With open source, contribution quality is often a function of popularity attracting contributors with the necessary skillset being willing to put in the time and effort, usually for free. This isn't meant to be a slight against open source, just an acknowledgement of the tradeoffs of an open development model. Something like a game framework or model editor can't reach a certain level of maturity until actual professionals in the field care enough to contribute, because of the knowledge gatekept within those industries, and their expertise. Most free software contributors will necessarily be amateurs and hobbyists, and that will likewise limit the quality of the end product.

wokwokwok 2y ago

It’s easy to make fun of Unity for this, but at the end of the day, a lot of people are stuck in this ecosystem and this is a good outcome for them. Overall, good job.

BryanLegend 2y ago
They also have kept the unity logo splash screen being optional which is nice.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  I would say it’s entirely irrelevant to being nice. Unity demanding that every garbage tier game flaunt that it was made with Unity seemed like it was a net negative for unity itself.
  - nox101 2y ago
    Is the same true of Unreal?
    - jarsin 2y ago
      No, it's the exact opposite. You have to get permission to use the Unreal logo.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      You do not need to show a splash screen for unreal. In fact, I believe you need to get permission to do so, even if they’re only go to refuse for porn and shit. You do need to reference them in the credits.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  That is a minor thing that really annoys me. Modern games all look like NASCAR when they start.
  - OnionBlender 2y ago

lnrd 2y ago

I don't understand the hate. They did a very bad decision and had major backlash. Fast-forward one year: they rectified it completely, they greatly improved the free terms compared to what was before, they replaced the CEO and other involved executives. That's seems a sensible way of addressing a fuckup, especially considering that the plans now are very reasonable and indie-friendly.

diggan 2y ago
People were kind of sleeping on the fact that Unity could at any times alter the deal to their own benefit. It wasn't until Unity did what they did, that people realized that maybe it's not a mutually beneficial relationship when one of the parts can change the terms whenever they want. So naturally, people start exploring other options that don't suffer from the same problem. Unity, realizing this, backpedals. Which yeah, makes sense, but people who got burned by the change already got burned, and they want to avoid it in the future. I understand both sides, Unity needs to make money, otherwise it won't be around. And game developers need to feel like they're making a choice they can still justify and feel safe about in the future.
- dspillett 2y ago
  > but people who got burned by the change already got burned, and they want to avoid it in the future. They likely have also put effort into moving to other frameworks, and if those are working out well enough for them there is no point making the effort to go back even with this change reverted. Same for new projects that went directly elsewhere: unless Unity offers significant benefits (and the project controllers feel that Unity can be trusted not to repeat the rug-pull later) the effort of changing stack are likely not worth it.
- sbuttgereit 2y ago
  > people realized that maybe it's not a mutually beneficial relationship when one of the parts can change the terms whenever they want. Unity's thinking they could change the terms unilaterally whenever they want and not actually being able to make it stick suggests to me that Unity misunderstood the arrangement more than the users on the other side of that agreement. Yes, Unity had the legal power to change the agreement, but clearly the market disagreed with that move and Unity bore consequences that apparently they weren't ready to bear. In the end it seems that Unity learned that legal power is not the same as market power and that they didn't have the real power to change that deal... and they learned it the all the hard way.

bob1029 2y ago

I just got started with a Unity project a few weeks back. My only goal right now is to build out a concept to see if it even makes sense to invest real time into. If I get to the actual money piles and it turns out the terms of doing business with Unity are too intolerable, I would consider swapping paths. There are a lot of developers who seem interested in the idea of making games, but they get so caught up in the intense tribalism around the various approaches that nothing meaningful comes of their efforts. I recall discussions around how quickly projects were able to be migrated to Godot. So, what's the harm in beginning somewhere else?

evanmoran 2y ago
As someone who has worked in the game industry for years both in AAA and indie, I’d say the switching costs are quite high and proportional to the team and code size. The reason it can be so challenging is a late change can easily double your preproduction time as you have to port over existing systems/tools/workflows and the bigger teams have many more of these systems. Usually this means bigger studios only changes engines at the start of new franchises or when fully rebooting old ones (For example, the new Mass Effect is porting from Frostbite to Unreal 5, but it’s only viable because it’s a super high budget reboot with new creative direction and the time to do it) It easier to switch if you’re indie, of course, but the reality is if your game is great it’s better to launch with the engine you have. And if your game is struggling gameplay-wise porting it to another engine isn’t going to help make the game better and puts the release at risk.
jncfhnb 2y ago
Porting a game to another engine is going to be a monumental task.
ClimaxGravely 2y ago
If you were really paranoid you could use a framework like ceramic where unity is just one of the many output targets. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it though. https://ceramic-engine.com/ https://ceramic-engine.com/

TillE 2y ago

The reason for doing the runtime fee in the first place is that they're bleeding cash despite being the engine behind many highly lucrative games. From a long term perspective this is very good for the future of Unity, their stock price is even up on the news, but they're going to have to do something about their cash flow situation. The 25% increase for Unity Enterprise is significant, but it doesn't sound like enough.

crunkykd 2y ago
IronSource & WETA acquisitions may have been expensive mistakes
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  After blowing $1.6B on WETA, Unity almost immediately pivoted and shutdown the company. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/11/unity-lays-off-hundreds-of-weta-digital-engineers-as-it-pivots-back-to-games/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/11/unity-lays-off-hundre...
  - FractalHQ 2y ago
    That is a tragedy. The amount of talent and brilliance robbed from the world… I still don’t understand why companies buying other companies should be a thing at all. Anti-trust solved, competition restored.
    - WillPostForFood 2y ago
      >That is a tragedy. The amount of talent and brilliance robbed from the world… That talent is all still alive, and will do brilliant things in the future. Probably moreso than if they were stuck working for Unity.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - solardev 2y ago

altairprime 2y ago

The title is misleading: > we’ve made the decision to cancel the Runtime Fee for our games customers Non-games users will still be charged the runtime fee.

dragonwriter 2y ago
The Runtime Fee was a new fee attached to Unity 6 that applied only to games (and only to games meeting certain number of downloads and revenue floors), so cancelling it for games customers is cancelling it entirely.

vyrotek 2y ago

Can't help feel like these stats were eye opening for them. There was a big shift in the community. The funnel of new Unity devs and games was drying out. https://x.com/reduzio/status/1830184668588568701 https://x.com/reduzio/status/1830184668588568701 "A year ago on Itch, Godot was about 1/10th the projects of Unity. Today its closing in to 1/3rd."

stanac 2y ago
Are those overall numbers? Looking at the "this week's projects", it's 230 for godot vs 147 for unity. Which is probably more interesting detail than overall numbers.
- sieabahlpark 2y ago
  [dead]

w4rh4wk5 2y ago

Ok. So what dumpster fire are you going to start next month?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]