This strategy can backfire if your game gets popular enough. If both versions are counted separately and they each pass 1mil downloads and the 12 month revenue threshold then you’re paying the higher per-install fee brackets twice.
To demonstrate, let’s imagine a game like this has 4 million installs in the first year and uses the Enterprise plan for the best pricing structure.
Scenario A: single version
First 1,000,000 @ $0.00: $0
1,000,001-1,100,000 @ $0.125 : $12,500
1,100,001-1,500,000 @ $0.06 : $24,000
1,500,001-2,000,000 @ $0.02 : $10,000
2,000,001-4,000,000 @ $0.01 : $20,000
Total cost: $66,500
Scenario B: two versions priced separately, 2 mil installs each
Each one is the first four lines above, so the total cost is $46,500*2 = $93,000
In either scenario, additional installs beyond these 4 million cost $0.01 each (regardless of which game it’s installed on). There’s a fine line of staying below the annual revenue thresholds (or not too far above) where this strategy does save you money.
I do remember seeing one of their terms saying something along the lines of “similar games will count as one” for the purposes of installs+revenue, that or someone mentioning it. Can’t seem to find it anymore, maybe they removed it? EDIT - Found one mention of it, “Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project”, Unity probably went back on this one, as it’s not listed on the FAQ right now
Though considering Pokemon Shining Pearl/Brilliant Diamond runs on Unity, I doubt they’d want to let such a high selling game go untaxed.
Just goes to show nobody at Unity bothered to think this shit through. With the clause they’re going to have so many lawsuits with similar-but-not-same games, without the clause devs can dodge the fees like this.
The terms have been changing every day, it’s such a shitshow. Like maybe they should’ve discussed and ironed out the specifics with the community before changing everything idk.
Unless we sell less of it than the arbitrary sales number we used a bunch of estimated pseudo math on to ultimately guess. Because if we sell less than that number we pulled out of our rectums with a faulty Excel sheet, we'll just shut the thing down immediately. Because, you know... fuck you.
If people stopped renting games developers would start selling them again. Until then, the incentive is for them to keep pulling this nonsense.
There’s a difference between a game having online elements, such as a MMO, and games that require a connection just so they can keep charging you. Even in the first case though, you should own the client, and ideally it either has a single player mode, or the developer releases the code for a basic server when they shut it down.
That’s why I stated that it should be illegal to promise product while selling a undefined time limited license, there should be a clear minimum time stated when you “buy a subscription” for (single player?) games.
Fair, stating a time-to-live when you’re paying might make some people think twice. At this point though, I think people need to just not be paying unless they get to keep it permanently. Paying for access to the online portion is fine, but the rest should keep working and you should be able to get your data out of the developer’s system.
the problem is that we’ve allowed this to happen. all mobile games function this way, the “rug” can be pulled at any time. all that money you spent on gacha pulls, was it worth it?
the problem goes back innocuously to MMO subscriptions, i think. which had a valid reason for existing, but an MMO can be “rug pulled” at any time as well, thankfully most of the greats have stayed up (wow, ffxi, eq) but ONE DAY they will be gone forever, relegated to private servers only.
lemmy.world
Aktywne