Godot.
Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds
Submitted 1 year ago by lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-adding-a-fee-for-each-time-a-game-is-installed
Comments
MossBear@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Jordan117@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Context: godotengine.org
leprasmurf@lemmy.geekforbes.com 1 year ago
Some more context: Godot established the “Godot Development Fund” to accept donations directly (lemmy.ml/post/4815592).
Cossty@lemmy.world 1 year ago
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Their tagline is on point.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I only code in Guffman
Gork@lemm.ee 1 year ago
This is a good way to incentivize game developers to just not use Unity and just some other engine that does this.
Great for short term profits which makes the quarterly statements look good, but bad for long term sustainability.
commandar@kbin.social 1 year ago
The CEO of Unity used to the the CEO of EA.
It explains a lot.
BarterClub@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
A CEO who can’t manage. Shocker.
Skoobie@lemmy.film 1 year ago
Short term profits making quarterly reports look better to stakeholders. Isn’t that how 80% of these bigwigs get their job in the first place? We should be calling it the Zaslav Model at this point 😂.
Gork@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Just because it looks better to shareholders now doesn’t make it a good business decision. I swear the majority of CEO types don’t give a damn if the company goes under in a few years because they either:
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Have a golden parachute in place by sucking up to the Board.
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Will move on to another CEO position at another company before it folds. Bonus points if they golden parachute on the way out.
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Murais@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Oh hey, look.
The former CEO of EA made a greedy, short-sighted decision to fuck over his entire customer base.
I am shocked, friends.
SHOCKED.
obinice@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s not that guy that looked like a supervillain every time he got up on stage at E3, is it?
Gestrid@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Not sure about that, but he is a boss character in not one but two Suda51 games. (Suda51 was apparently screwed over by the guy was, at the time EA’s CEO.)
Murais@lemmy.one 1 year ago
reversebananimals@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The person who runs Unity is a shithead.
DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Oh, he was a former CEO of EA. That explains a few things.
half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A Big fucking idiot
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
This is why they shut down Parsec Arcade. Cause they’re an asshole
AWittyUsername@lemmy.world 1 year ago
We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed," the company explained in adding the fee.
Ok and??
grayman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Every copy costs them money. Don’t you know how digital copies work?!
Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Guys they’re artists. They deserve to be paid every time you play any game. You wouldn’t steal a car
sebinspace@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Like… wow, that’s what the engine is! Fucken doinks.
Chickenstalker@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Firstly, how dare you! Secondly, unity is made from a limited resource, which is whale balls. For every download of unity, a whale loses one of its balls. Think of the whales!
2ncs@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So if Microsoft published a Unity developed game on Windows, Microsoft could easily charge a $0.20 free to the unity team for installing the Unity Runtime on their OS.
Not being completely serious there. Honestly thought, did the CEO not realize if they start doing this, what’s to stop another company from doing that to them. Things like mp3, where developers need to pay a license for, could then be charged in a similar fashion for each install.
Coreidan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
More enshitification. This is the kind of stuff I’ve grown to expect from tech companies. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are bleeding money due to interest rates and they need any way possible to stay afloat.
AngryAnusHornets@lemmy.world 1 year ago
[deleted]nothingcorporate@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s the definition of capitalism
Angius@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They haven’t been profitable for, like, past half a decade or so. Each year brings bigger and bigger losses.
Seeing how the CEO sold 50k shares over the last year, and another 2k not long ago, I can see it being the last hail mary to extract as much money as possible and sell the company to Microsoft/Apple/Facebook/Whoever is willing to buy
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 1 year ago
Oh yeah… I can’t see this being weaponed by the bad side of the consumers.
Game comes out, it does something stupid or just “woke” and pisses people off. They attack the dev by installing more copies.
lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I got some clarifications from Unity regarding their plan to charge developers per game install (after clearing thresholds)
- If a player deletes a game and re-installs it, that’s 2 installs, 2 charges
- Same if they install on 2 devices
- Charity games/bundles exempted from fees
Regarding this being abused by bad actors:
Unity says it will use fraud detection tools and allow developers to report possible instances of fraud to a compliance team
nature_man@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That clarification makes it even worse, this is obviously an attempt to push free to play or indie games out the window while making major bank.
The fraud detection will not help at all to prevent abuse especially in cases like steam family sharing where other “users” won’t have to pay to install the game!
There’s literally no reason to charge per game install here, the only possible reason is greed
BURN@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So basically they’re explicitly condoning it. That’s not just bad, but even worse that they’re doubling down that a delete+reinstall will charge the dev twice.
This will end a lot of indie projects and they’ve basically destroyed their good standing in indie dev circles.
carpelbridgesyndrome@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
So once a game stops selling it had better hope its player base dries up and stops reinstalling it? The way that is phrased makes it sound like you could net lose money over the long term if sales decline and people keep reinstalling it
Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 year ago
Also, what counts as an install? Ive seen many unity based games that don’t have an installer and just run standalone? Would a standalone game count as already installed? Is it a first run thing in that case? Honestly this, and the additional clarification raises more questions than it answers?
TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 1 year ago
This might kill entire indie projects.
9point6@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There’s other engines, this will kill unity
TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 1 year ago
I know and thank goodness for that... but there will be projects that simply won't be able to afford to move to entirely different engines. It's a lot of work that might have to be redone.
BURN@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Honest question though, what other small engines have the support and features of unity while also having the permissive licensing they used to have?
At least when I was looking into engines unreal and unity really stood out as the only useable free engines.
TheRagingGeek@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I have a friend who has been moderately successful in the game creation space and he is saying he wants to just give up at this point because of this change.
BURN@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I can’t even blame him. I would too. This is essentially a situation where the only option is going to be a rewrite from the ground up in a new language and new engine.
If I was an indie game dev I’d be questioning my future right now too.
The_v@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This will kill new development on the engine and older games without who have a limited number of users.
The ones halfway or more through development to recently launched will have to move to subscriber model or a shit-ton of ads.
In the next 3-5 years however their profits will likely be up. So some larger company will likely buy them out.
Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think we need to kill everything so this is a good start. Snake blisken LA
TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 1 year ago
Indies are the ones who deserve to die the least.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is 100% targeted at bleeding indie game developers dry in hopes of taking some of that sweet viral cash from devs like the one who made Vampire Survivors. They see that indie devs are charging $3-5 for their games, and so they aren’t hitting the $200k threshold unless they go viral, so Unity is charging by install, not just by total revenue. I hope that the ESA or other interested groups take legal action against this retroactive greed.
Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Has to be a smarter way than this. This is just going to make devs go back to activation limits.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 1 year ago
After seeing the way WotC handled DnD and MtG, and the way Musk has been dragging Twitter through the shit, I really believe that shareholders are trying to take what they can while they can and peace out. No one is looking at the long term anymore. Everyone just wants theirs, fuck everything else.
hal_5700X@lemmy.world 1 year ago
RIP Unity. First they partnered with Ironsource. Who are the people behind InstallCore it’s a wrapper for bundling software installations. It tricks people into installing enough browser toolbars and other bloat to hurt their PCs. Windows Defender and MalwareBytes blocks it. Now Unity does this shit.
AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“Runtime fee” is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard im the programming world, I think we hit a new record of low
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Beyond what this means for Unity and the indie gaming scene, I’m concerned about copycats.
With how big Unity is for hobbyists, I’m worried this might have an “Apple” effect, where other runtimes (even non-gaming related) begin to try this.
Natanael@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
I’ve heard of proprietary code libraries before with expensive licensing, but still nothing this dumb
Alpharius@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Unity’s CEO was EA’s CEO too. He is the guy who shaped EA into the greedy company that it is today. I’m literally not surprised
Jaysyn@kbin.social 1 year ago
This is great news!! For Godot.
WuTang@lemmy.ninja 1 year ago
rule 1: get user by giving free candy rule 2: let’s them build their product, workflow on your tools rule 3: harvest.
MossBear@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just a reminder that if Unity developers with pro licenses coming to Godot contribute even a small fraction of what they might have paid for those licenses on Unity, Godot can develop even faster.
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 1 year ago
I’m sure this will give a boost to Godot development.
MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You guys should check out Stride if you are looking for another C# based engine. It’s open source, but pretty rough around the edges right now.
Or, go for Godot for something more mature.
lycanrising@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is absolutely mad vendor lock in. I’m doing the maths and if you create the next flappy bird and it goes viral and gets 50 million downloads in a month, you’d owe unity $10 million dollars before you’d even received your first monetization cheque (you did launch with a full monetization plan, right? right? oh.)
WhoRoger@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Sounds like another problem we have thanks to DRM and telemetry.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 year ago
This is incredibly scummy. Not just for the obvious reason, but also because this is a business to business deal that developers have little room to avoid. It essentially encourages per-install charges for users, or at least limits on how many times you can install the software - which is completely unreasonable, they should only ever limit concurrent installations. If I want to upgrade to a new computer I should be able to move all my software over to it.
Sharpiemarker@feddit.de 1 year ago
Get. Fucked.
mintiefresh@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Man I was just getting into game development and learning Unity.
I guess it’s time to pivot into Unreal or Godot or something.
Anybody have recommendations?
Walop@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
So… If the Unity’s secret spyware and algorithm suddenly decides to count an update as a new installation, you suddenly get slapped with a huge bill. Especially if you release multiple small patches and your whole player base is counted multiple times.
sebinspace@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Me, a hobbyist that never planned to sell anything I made: chortle my balls, Unity Tech!
AndreasChris@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Wow that is such a bad idea… I… I’m honestly speechless. Who thought if that? I mean…
Jargus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unity has really gone downhill after they got the former EA CEO.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Well this is bullshit but is there anything I as a non-developer can do about it?
mojo@lemm.ee 1 year ago
That’s pretty awesome of them to do such a great Godot advertisement
pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Welp, guess it’s time to uninstall Unity
nogooduser@lemmy.world 1 year ago
How can you have a deal in place and just say “you’re giving me more money” and think that that’s ok?
I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further. - Vader
TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 1 year ago
Tech companies badly need to get their shit kicked in to stop with this "I have the right to change the terms unilaterally anytime"
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This might actually lead to that, depending on what kind of lawsuits arise from this change. Which could mean there will be pressure from others who don’t have a stake in the “unity install fee” game but do have one in the “wants to change terms at a whim” game.
Or maybe it will threaten the “by continuing to use this, you agree” clause instead and open up a path to continue using a previous license agreement if you don’t like a new one.
AndreasChris@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t believe that is legal. That’s just absolutely ridiculous.
Syndic@feddit.de 1 year ago
I can’t imagine that it is.
If that’s the case then they could simply up the charge next year to $10 to get even more money for doing absolutely nothing. And then to $20 the next year and so forth. There’s no sane court anywhere in the world who would say “Yeah, that sounds reasonable!”.
AeroLemming@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I mean, that can’t be legal, right?
Tolstoshev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It used to be illegal. Part of anti-trust was forcing IP owners to license their technology to everyone at a reasonable price. That means that reddit’s API price gouging would also have been illegal and tesla and apple would have had to license their FSD and OS to other hardware manufacturers. This ability to control other companies through abusive pricing and licensing lock-in is classic monopoly violation that the govt has stopped policing.
Psaldorn@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Jokes on them, I never finished a unity project.