The fact that these decisions are coming down from the ex-CEO of EA Games, who was the CEO when EA was voted “Worst Company in the World”, just makes all this even more entertaining to watch.
GamePass and probably most cheap sales are all going up in flames because Unity has hired a demon to lead them into oblivion.
Microsoft learned never to leave an EA exec at the wheel ten years earlier, with the disastrous launch of the Xbox One. You know, the all seeing, all knowing, all credit card charging privacy invader with its hooks permanently sunk into the internet, and a camera you couldn't cover, like it was some motherfucking episode of Max Headroom. Allow me to say, "Fuck you, Don Mattrick, and the DRM and surveillance-laden horse you rode in on."
Right. Here’s how it works: Your game is on Gamepass, and a user installs it. Now instead of Microsoft paying you $0.15, then you paying Unity $0.10, Microsoft will just pay us directly the $0.10, and you still get your $0.05! See, it’s a great deal! Everybody gets their money and you don’t even have to deal with the Unity costs! Please, don’t go!!
I’m sorry, but I’d be more terrified of Microsoft. A company worth more than nations, (current market cap puts it about the 10th richest country in the world), and who routinely tells other companies to pony up - and they do (look up a software audit if you want to see a corporate shakedown).
Sorry to nitpick, but I see the comparison of a company market cap with country GDP a lot and it’s a pet peeve of mine lol. Market cap is the value of the company, while GDP is equivalent to the total “revenue” that a country’s economy generated that year. So a better comparison would be 2022 Microsoft revenue vs 2022 GDP of a country.
Market cap isn’t even really the value of a company. It’s just the last trade price times the number of shares. If someone wanted to buy it, the price would be higher. If someone wanted to sell it, the price would be lower.
And gdp is one of the worst ways to measure the economy of the country.
You don’t need to be sorry. I guess I should rephrase my original statement to say Microsoft could buy unity, and the shareholders might not even notice in the quarterly earnings call.
It’s unclear if Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are aware of this particular change in policy, and whether they’d be willing to comply with Unity Technologies.
If they aren’t already paying royalties to Unity on behalf of the devs, then I can almost guarantee they won’t be paying royalties in the future. If they are doing that, then the devs might want to double check their revenue, because that may mean that Unity’s been double-dipping on royalties (taking royalties from distribution through Sony, MS and Nintendo, and then taking them again directly from the devs).
It’s like when CDPR said everyone could get refunds for CP2077 without talking to the stores first, then were shocked when Sony removed it from the PlayStation Store.
Yep, although at least that was a pro-consumer move on CDPR's part. It's very understandable why Sony wasn't happy about it, but it wasn't a shady move on CDPR's part. Whereas the same definitely can't be said for Unity right now.
It’s more, you gotta let your partners know before you announce something major. The reason Sony had to pull it was because they only allow refunds after a certain point on defective games, and they can’t sell a game they know is defective. So the only way they could do blanket refunds is if the game is labeled defective, which means they can’t sell it. Giving Sony a bit of a heads up might’ve meant they could have changed their policy, which would have been better long run for consumers.
Oh absolutely, I agree! I just wanted to point out that CDPR's move was at least well-intentioned so it's harder to judge them poorly for it. But you're right that communication is important in these situations.
Technically, CDPR being based in Europe were just informing people of their stuatory right to a refund within the first 14 days of any digital or online purchase. This highlighted that Sony have been managing to skirt that legislation with their policy’s and not having a proper refund system in place so they threw a wobbler and took the game down. CDPR were in the right, legally speaking, with that one.
He could be the kind of person who writes things down on his vision board, then sends his thoughts out into the universe to make them come true. Like Elon.
Yeah, because Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are companies who would never pass those costs back to the devs or down onto consumers. They'd totally bite the bullet on Unity's new royalty...
Unity are out of their minds if they think this is at all a good move. All they're going to do by pushing devs away and pissing off the major distributors is inspire the creation/adoption of a competitor.
Oh I don’t think they imply they will cover the costs. More like the only ones to know exactly the installs will be them, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo , and that’s why is done this way. Also to simplify the billing as well they already pay them for putting the game in their respective stores in one way or another.
Of course they could put a remote call that notified back to them in the game engine… and probably will work this way for PC, but probably the console companies might not be too happy about it.
Only loosely, definitely not in the precise way they say they will do it. If they even could do that, it would be a massive privacy violation the likes EU would not be too keen on.
“And won’t natively run switch games. Players will have the opportunity to purchase their favorite titles in our new eshop available exclusively on our new console” - Nintendo probably
You think they’d call it the Switch 2? No, it’ll be way more vague about being a successor vs an upgraded console. New Switch, SwitchU, 3Dwitch, Switch Swatch, Sandwitch, SwitchPlus, Switch Yellow, Switch One. I’d bet on any of those.
I mean Nintendo has been pretty good with backwards compatibility so I’m hopeful they will do that again. That will be the only thing that could push me towards buying a new nintendo console atm. I would sell my switch lite to add to my new switch fund lol
Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft Lawyers united... that's an enemy you don't want to fight. Each department alone is scary enough. All three of them? Now, that's something you want to be on very solid ground for.
Looks like Microsoft is now entirely focusing on selling games rather than selling Xbox. I read somewhere that eventually they’ll bring the Game Pass to Play Station and Nintendo. It’s no surprise if they do so because last year they earned more money on Game Pass than selling hardware.
They’d love to have GamePass on Switch and PS5 already, Nintendo and Sony are the roadblock because they don’t want to lose the share of cash and hours of playtime on their own platforms.
Admittedly, that's helped by them doing terribly at selling hardware.
But also, screw gamepass and the subscription model overall. If we're gonna crap on Ubisoft for their recent foot-in-mouth episode let's be consistent and call all of it out. I'm cool with this as long as I can keep buying these in boxes.
I honestly don’t hate game pass, it’s great for trying games id never even consider buying and if I really like the game and it’s off of game pass I would purchase it. Or if you have a group of friends that like to hop between co-op games you can do that too.
Like the Yakuza game series they have all of them currently on game pass, but the new one won’t be and I’ll definitely be buying the game.
But if it gets to the point where Ubisoft goes and every studio starts making their own, I don’t think that will work if they don’t have the game catalogue to support it, that would mean Ubisoft could just start churning out horrible games to build their stupid catalogue.
Sure, it has its uses. So do the subscriptions from Ubisoft or EA, though.
All I'm saying is that the digital distribution outlets that people like and have a good reputation (Game Pass, Steam) still have all the downsides that people love to get mad about in the alternatives they dislike. That doesn't mean you should refuse to use the ones you like, but you should probably keep an eye on the effects it has on the art form and the industry.
I do see that since it’s Ubisoft, they could still push for games on the subscription service but in reality I could see the games being loaded up with micro transactions.
Or it could turn into a convoluted game demo service, where you can play a portion of a game then they hit you with a pay wall, and since you’ve already played X% of a game they could view it as more likely to buy.
OK, but that's not how reality works, you're making up offenses that nobody has committed because you've decided a particular brand is "bad" while ignoring actual offenses from brands you like and so have decided are "good".
So no, I'm gonna have to say your hypotheticals don't make their offerings any worse (or better) than Microsoft's or Valve's. Now, the pricing and lack of content? Yeah, we can talk about those. But those don't have anything to do with preservation concerns, lack of ownership or content churn, which are all legit issues with all digital distribution and subscriptions.
But if it gets to the point where Ubisoft goes and every studio starts making their own, I don’t think that will work if they don’t have the game catalogue to support it, that would mean Ubisoft could just start churning out horrible games to build their stupid catalogue.
I feel like we’re starting to see a rerun of the streaming service wars - if this takes off across the industry I can definitely see people going back to piracy. I don’t want game pass, ubisoft+, Blizzard Prime, Nintendo Online Super Premium Expansion Pass or whatever stupid names these companies come up with just to play a few games that I’m interested in, just because they’re spread across different publishers.
It actually floors me that people don’t understand this. It’s the tried and tested subscription model business plan.
Create a compelling service > gain market share > crush competition > ramp up prices and introduce anti-consumer policies
And contrary to popular belief, GamePass isn’t making money. There’s a reason MS are very tight-lipped about saying whether it’s profitable or not, and why they hide GamePass within another segment in their financials.
Shit, look at the FTC leaks where Phil Spencer says nowhere near enough people have subscribed to GamePass to make it viable (no wonder they want it on more platforms!). Microsoft will up prices.
And people here will say “yeah but then I’ll cancel, I already have a large game library” - yeah, you do. But a kid in 10 years that has no games library, only GamePass? He won’t say “man, another GamePass price hike? I’m gonna cancel”, because his choice is between another, say, £18 per month (I just went with what I was paying for Netflix, idk what it’ll be), and having to drop several hundred/possibly over £1k just to get all the games he wants back. Games he will probably have to buy across 3+ different launchers.
Microsoft is in it for the long haul. Subscription Office software, GamePass, rumours of subscription options in Win12. MS doesn’t want your money now, they want money from you continuously and from any family you build (remember: if you have kids, they’ll use this stuff too, and you’ll be paying for it… until they’re an adult, then they’ll be hooked on it and probably pay for it thereafter).
You’ll be paying until the day you die and your children will pay from being 18 until they die.
They’re horrible at making games too. Their biggest games have been IP conceived and developed externally and once they took them over they’ve run them into the ground of mediocrity. In over twenty years I don’t think any developer or franchise has benefited from Microsoft owning them.
I'm not sure who "they" is in this scenario. If it's Microsoft Games Studios... well, yeah, they're a publisher. You just described what a publisher is.
I think if we're talking about their recent publishing strategy they've certainly been on a bit of a rut. There's still some interesting stuff happening with their IP. They got Relic to make a surprsiingly faithful Age of Empires, people do like Microsoft Flight Sim, that type of thing. But still, yeah, they've made a lot of purchases and we haven't seen new games coming out from most of those to justify those purchases, which does speak to a bit of a struggle to find a direction. That Hellblade sequel looks intriguing, but for a publisher with a lot of fully owned studios that has been fighting claims of monopolistic practices for their high profile acquisitions their output from that stable hasn't picked up pace yet.
I get it, games take forever to make now. That Hellblade game has been marketed for as long as the Xbox Series has, and that came out in 2020. Still, that itself is a problem. If the big oil tanker is hard to steer you have to plan your turns before you get to the icebergs. I do genuinely hope they get it together, though. That's a lot of talent, IP and potential to let run on idle for too long. Or worse, to fail in the context of a major corporation and stop getting support.
They got Relic to make a surprsiingly faithful Age of Empires, people do like Microsoft Flight Sim, that type of thing.
“Their biggest games have been IP conceived and developed externally” so not really a counter argument to phillaholic when you mention two games outsourced to external developers.
Kinda. This is the exact opposite of that, in that they control the IP and went out to find an external dev with lots of subject matter expertise to make it.
On paper I'd say that's better than them buying Relic off of Sega, but then Sega fired a bunch of people at Relic this year, like everybody else, so what would have been better is very much up for debate.
But also, screw gamepass and the subscription model overall.
If GamePass meant “you just get everything”, I see a case for that but GamePass isn’t that. It’s “Here are a few Microsoft 1st party games scoring 7/10 other games cycle in and out like Netflix and you get no DLC so when you buy DLC and the game cycles out, you’re out of luck”
I'm not sure if you read my comment backwards or you're just agreeing with it?
Anyway, yeah, I think hte big problem gaming subs have is that unless you have first party ownership over every game in existence you can't do the Netflix thing of pretending to be selling the only expense you're ever gonna need. The way games work you engage with them too long and they cycle around too fast, so even if there is a big pool of games they offer it's just a big fat pit of FOMO and feeling bad for seeing that game you're mildly interested in come and go without actually having played it. I already have a stressful backlog without adding the pain point of monetizing my not getting around to all the games I'd like to play.
It's been tried multiple times and it just doesn't work. Physics (the speed of light) ultimately dictates latency. Streaming only works for a rather small subset of games that doesn't rely on reaction time or latency at all. And then only works for people who play those games a lot (you're not going to sub to a streaming game service if the majority of the games you want to play don't work on it). There's a reason Google Stadia died.
The only reason anyone wants to sell consoles is to get you locked in that ecosystem and sell you games. They don't make a profit on the hardware, Xbox game pass is their headstart into purely game sales, well a subscription and cloud service that everyone is trying to jump on right now.
When they lock you into their hardware they get commission on third party game sales as well, or don’t have to pay other people commission on their first party game sales. Traditionally this is how console manufacturers made the bulk of their money but now Microsoft has game pass so they want to get it in front of as many people as possible I guess.
I wonder if Sony would allow gamepass in their ecosystem. That said, if this is true then we are likely to see Microsoft leave the console hardware market.
No fucking chance Sony’s going to let a rival set up shop on their own consoles. Not even a possibility. Look at how much Apple and Google fought with Epic over keeping them off their phones. And that’s just over a secondary app store on a device that can do a million different things that the parent companies can still find ways to monetize. You’re talking about a competitor selling a subscription to bypass PlayStation’s only source of sales. Sony will fight that with everything they’ve got and no cut of the subscription fees will ever be enough to change their minds.
Plus the Epic lawsuits set a precedent that if you provide zero support for third party stores (Apple) you’re fine, but provide second class support (Google) and you’re going to get fucked.
Looks like Microsoft is now entirely focusing on selling games rather than selling Xbox.
If that were true, they would have discontinued Xbox already. You are falling for their lie that they aren’t trying to lock people into a closed ecosystem.
They thought they’d be able to slip this change through and people would just pay it. They were expecting a big payday, not a storm of bad press and angry people.
Also now Deva are gonna be skeptical of proprietary game engines. It's too big of a risk to develop on anything proprietary now that this is on the table as a thing that could happen. Change won't ahppen overnight but expect FOSS game engines to start getting big
No they won't! There's no way any of the big console manufacturers will ever agree to those terms, ESPECIALLY Nintendo. Microsoft would just buy Unity out before paying that ransom. You be smokin' some bigtime crack, Riccitello.
I think they even played that plan wrong. All MS has to do is announce that unity games won’t be allowed on game pass anymore and the value of unity will drop. It’s probably already in freefall with few new games from this point onwards targeting it.
That’s by design. Force your opposition to sell, bankrupt them and write off the loses. Shrink the industry and force players to sign up for your subscription services.
I’m not a fan, but it’s hard to see this wasn’t their plan from the get go
What really gets me, and this touches on your comment, is that the execs said that they need to have the teams make what they specialize in. And then they turn around and force all the studios to make games that not at all anything they’ve ever made before.
The industry historically hasn’t shrunk when studios close like this. There just ends up being more bespoke studios all over the world with former developers from those studios.
The sad part is this might actually end up being a net positive in the long run. Their two biggest acquisitions were Bethesda and Activision-Blizzard, one company that has started their decline and another that is deep into it.
Microsoft pissing away $100B to buy these companies only to turn around and kill them 5-10 years later will end up breaking up the gaming conglomerates that have killed the western games industry. The only sad part is all the people that will lose their jobs and all the classic IP that will be squandered.
The CEO of Unity did sell off most of his own stock in the company shortly before the original announcement. It’s an open-and-shut case for insider trading charges if ever I had heard one.
I wonder how they’d enforce that exactly since none of those companies are likely to have a contract with Unity that says they’d pay anything like that. Their distribution contracts are with the studios… and the studios, if they keep their subscriptions would be the ones contracted with Unity. Good luck telling MS or Sony that your little indie company bound them into a contract with your engine vendor.
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