Charging "per install" as opposed to "per sale" will be goddamn awful. At best it might lead to DRM where you'll have a limited number of installs before you lose the game you bought.
Comment on Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 9 months ago
This makes sense to me, it looks like it’s $0.20 for each install, only if
- you have passed a threshold of installs
- you yourself are charging for your game
Which, I know Lemmy has issues with proprietary software, but if you are charging for your software and it’s built off this, I don’t think $0.20 is too much to pay them. Unreal takes a percentage I believe, sounds like this is a “keep the lights on” charge.
TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 9 months ago
neshura@bookwormstory.social 9 months ago
Or more cases of devs saying “Just pirate the game, it’s cheaper for us that way”
Natanael@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
Unless pirate installs trigger the fee
TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 9 months ago
We don't know how they are measuring it. If it's baked into the engine and not removed by cracking groups, it just might cost more for the devs.
makatwork@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Except steam will let you install something infinite times.
Carnelian@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Is that really how it works? That seems like a pretty egregious oversight if so, couldn’t groups of people bankrupt devs, especially small ones with small file size games that are easy to reinstall over and over?
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Hearthstone runs on Unity. I’m ok setting up a little something to let people constantly install and uninstall Hearthstone to bleed Blizzard dry… hell, once it’s discovered how your installs are tracked, I could see that leading to insane exploitation.
Fylkir@lemmy.sdf.org 9 months ago
especially small ones with small file size games that are easy to reinstall over and over?
Wouldn’t even need a small game technically. I’m pretty sure the only way to properly calculate would be running a postinstall script and someone could presumably just keep running that script
delcake@kbin.social 9 months ago
Nah, it's per device install. So unless you modify your PC enough to generate a different hardware fingerprint or go install a game on a fleet of laptops or something, most people won't be running up that counter too much.
BURN@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They’ve clarified this is not the case. Reinstalling counts as a new installation
colonial@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Depending on how they generate a hardware fingerprint, generating random ones every check is a single
LD_PRELOAD(or equivalent) away.TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 9 months ago
How many reinstalls? Because I have games I have bought 4 PCs/laptops ago, not counting some few more when I installed them in family members' computers to play with them. What about OS updates? Windows keeps insisting to move to 11.
Frankly, this doesn't sound reasonable at all. It's not even like Unity is doing any of the hosting to justiy squeezing devs like this.
aggelalex@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Virtual Machines.
PixxlMan@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That’s without a doubt not what Unity means here though
Ktanaqui@lemm.ee 9 months ago
It is exactly what Unity means; they have doubled down on the clarifications. The precise point is to charge the developer for any install a user makes once they earn a (paltry) $200K.
It’s not rocket science to see that this is a very bad, very abusive idea and its targeted to hurt indie developers the most (as larger studios like EA would be on the enterprise plan and therefore on the hook for only 1/20th of the same usage).
Some simple math says that you would have to uninstall and reinstall a $5 game 20 times to completely nullify the earnings from your purchase.
It’s surprisingly easy to rack up installs; between multiple devices, uninstalls for bug fixing / addressing, the OS breaking it, modded installs having to be reset, making space for other games, refreshing a device… and so on. And that’s not even accounting for bad actors actively trying to damage a company.
PixxlMan@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Honestly I just can’t believe it. It’s so unbelievably stupid and prone to fraud. How did they come to this decision??
vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
as already confirmed by others, it is per install, not per sale. Meaning that if you uninstall your game and mhen reinstall it, the dev has to pay twice. You buy the game and install it on your pc, and your steam deck so you can play it whenever you want? developer pays twice.
that sort of thing
Floey@lemm.ee 9 months ago
The model makes no sense.
Consider how it affects $60 AAA games vs close to free $1 games, it’s wildly disproportional and somehow the $1 game dev starts paying significantly earlier. Now consider how it affects games that make far less than a dollar per user, this is true of many free-with-in-game-purchase mobile games.
Then consider demos, refunds, piracy, and advisarial attacks.
It would have been simpler, more balanced approach, and have none of the pitfalls if they had just gone with a profit share scheme.
Justdaveisfine@lemmy.world 9 months ago
There are a lot of cases where this might suck if you’re a full time Unity dev. Getting on Gamepass was already a bit dicey as it cannibalizes sales, but now you got an extra Unity tax on that.
Give a bunch of keys to a charity auction? Guess you’re paying extra. Got a demo that’s doing wonders on Steam NextFest? Those are installs. Is your game being pirated? Those look like installs, gotta pay up.
I don’t think this will bankrupt any dev, but all those above decisions will hurt.
schmidtster@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I think gamepass doesn’t fall under you charging yourself for the game, so those devs may not be affected.
Justdaveisfine@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’m not a lawyer who can properly interpret the legalese but I don’t think this is the case.
Selling your game to a publisher or a third party to distribute it is revenue.