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MossBear, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

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.

Jargus, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

Unity has really gone downhill after they got the former EA CEO.

pinkdrunkenelephants, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

Welp, guess it’s time to uninstall Unity

SamboT,

That’ll be $10.

pinkdrunkenelephants, (edited )

You know, at some point Microsoft and Apple are going to enable developers to charge people to uninstall software, and that’ll be the driving force that finally forces the public to adopt Linux en masse.

I_LOVE_VEKOMA_SLC,

Nothing is ever going to not happen as much as this.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

Oh, I hope you’re right.

redcalcium, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

I’m sure this will give a boost to Godot development.

lycanrising,

as someone who was reasonably deep with unity, the alternatives really are quite thin - Godot is a big contender or otherwise it’s time to pick up some Rust game development

stevedidWHAT, (edited )
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

Is Rust a game engine?

I’m familiar with the coding language but I wasn’t aware of any game engine stuff outside of developing your own

cheesemonk,

There are several projects to build a game engine in rust. The one I hear about most is Bevy. No experience with any of them personally

stevedidWHAT,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks for sharing, I’ll check it out. Games in rust could help that whole endeavor in finding insecurities and whatnot even faster with game hackers and whatnot too

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Stride might be worth looking into if you’re going for 3D stuff, it uses C#

nix,
@nix@merv.news avatar

Godot has Rust support with GDextensions

stevedidWHAT,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

GODOT SQUUUUUUAAAAAD

MossBear,

It already has. The Godot Developer Fund went up by $4,000 yesterday alone.

Lemminary,

Ngl, I did visit their site right after reading the news. My next project will be using it. I hope it catches wind with this!

drphungky,

Ha, yeah my immediate thought was imagining a situation like:

Godot Developers who have not yet read the news: “Huh. Why do we have 1000 new pull requests today?”

lycanrising, (edited ) do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

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.)

edit: i forgot they had moneitzation limits too, so no - this situation wouldn’t quite happen until they earned $200,000 in revenue. Though the potential to go viral and find yourself underwater because of the massive unity bill in comparison to your income is still a possibility

Buttons,
@Buttons@programming.dev avatar

So I only owe them 10 million if I’ve made $200,000?

mintiefresh, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds
@mintiefresh@lemmy.ca avatar

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?

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Godot, definitely. Or GDevelop, if you want an experience akin to Construct3 and an end product that’s entirely javascript+html, but with a FOSS alternative

lycanrising,

depends on your platform and your level of experience. Both unreal and godot have steep learning curves depending on where you come from. GDevelop is very accessible but also caps out quite fast. Great for making prototypes and getting simple games out there but depending on your level of ambition you will probably outgrow it sooner or later.

bennieandthez,
@bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Unreal has similar business model, so Godot.

ChaoticEntropy, (edited ) do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds
@ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk avatar

It is chargeable if you have made a certain amount of income on the game in the last 12 months, which should hopefully prevent too much impact on existing games.

Not content with their subscriptions, they now want a revenue share.

ICastFist, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

For Unity Personal and Unity Plus users, the thresholds are $200,000 in revenue a year and 200,000 lifetime installs.

The fees also vary, with Unity Personal developers having to pay the most for every install above the threshold ($0.20)

So, if you get 200k lifetime installs but don’t get the 200k revenue a year, you don’t have to pay it?

Existing games built on Unity will also be hit with Runtime Fees if they meet the thresholds starting January 1.

OOOHOOOOO BOY, now, that’s going to hurt a fair amount of people!

Also, what about web play? I guess that’ll only count towards revenue, but not towards downloads?

wax,

If their licencing agreement permits retroactive changes like this, that is reason enough to gtfo

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

I sure feel glad to never have gotten into developing with it. When I saw that a blank project generated a ~231MB executable back in 4.1 or so, I simply ditched it.

Licenses that allow retroactive changes are terrible for the end user, fuck up the company’s image and might give a significant boost to competition. Hasbro trying to pull that shit with DnD earlier this year comes to mind.

FaeDrifter,

Our terms of service provide that Unity may add or change fees at any time. We are providing more than three months advance notice of the Unity Runtime Fee before it goes into effect. Consent is not required for additional fees to take effect, and the only version of our terms is the most current version; you simply cannot choose to comply with a prior version. Further, our terms are governed by California law, notwithstanding the country of the customer.

Yup lol.

What’s funny and sad is that about 3 years ago on r/godot, I had an argument with a Unity fanboy over this exact thing. He was demanding someone give him a reason that Godot should exist, when, in his humble opinion, Unity did everything and did it better.

My take was that you don’t actually own your Unity-made game. You might own the assets and trademark, but as long as you’re licensing the engine, you are subject to the whims of Unity.

Of course that was theoretical, until today.

Syndic,

I’m pretty sure that even if the license agreement does have such language that it won’t uphold in court. And there are enough big companies using Unity for this to go to court if they try to come to collect.

I mean seriously, if that would be legally possible, nothing would prevent them from uping the charge to $10, $20 or even $100 per installation, applied retroactively.

trustnoone,

I think they have the web play question in their FAQ somewhere and it does include as a download. There’s no real way to know how their telemetry is calculating this though.

trustnoone, (edited )

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games?

A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included

…unity.com/…/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-upd…

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Wow… I expect that WebGL telemetry to be less reliable than from an installed app. “No cookies found, guess this is a brand new download, chaps!”

HawlSera, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

And that’s why we need more than one standard

smileyhead,

deleted_by_author

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  • HawlSera,

    Play an AAA game in the past… 10,000 years?

    smileyhead,

    deleted_by_author

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  • CosmicCleric,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    Popular does not mean standard

    Depends if you mean generally considered by the public, or specific to an organization that definds standards.

    I think we both know he meant the former, even though you replied to him like he was saying the latter. AKA, “Ackshully…”

    HawlSera,

    It kinda… does

    Muffi, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

    Well, guess it’s time to learn Godot.

    ICastFist,
    @ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

    As someone who’s using Godot and giting gud at it, I hope you enjoy it. For programming, you can go with either its GDScript (python) or C#, so Unity veterans shouldn’t have much trouble.

    Lemminary,

    That’s great to hear. C# has grown on me so much lately! It’s like TypeScript but not sucky.

    vitriolix,
    @vitriolix@lemmy.world avatar

    GDScript (python)

    I think GFScript is it’s own language, but looks definitely inspired by Python

    clutch, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

    Unity going the way of Reddit

    Architeuthis,
    @Architeuthis@awful.systems avatar

    Enshittification

    Once [a company] can make more money by screwing its customers, that screw-job becomes a fait accompli.

    bighi,

    Capitalism, yay!

    Raz, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

    Wanna bet he secretly has a bunch of Epic Games stock?

    Lemminary, (edited )

    They did sell their thousands of shares before this shit so I wouldn’t be surprised

    Raz,

    Looks like they know very well what they are doing. This seems illegal, but we all know they get away with it.

    Walop, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

    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.

    Natanael,

    Also piracy lmao

    Zacryon, (edited )

    According to the article only installs on new devices are counted.

    Furthermore this only takes efrect after a certain threshold of revenue and installs.

    Walop,

    The clarification on Xitter states deleting and reinstalling is 2 charges, the same as installing to 2 different devices. twitter.com/stephentotilo/…/1701679721027633280?s…

    Not_Alec_Baldwin,

    That’s madness.

    Imagine the player outcry being too just uninstall and reinstall games over she over to punish the devs.

    dan1101,

    Yeah as petty as some people are over games I can see a developer pissing them off and a bunch of players banding together to uninstall and reinstall games over and over. They could even script it. Bad idea all around.

    CosmicCleric,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    This, so much of this.

    WoW players doxxed the devs (lots of pizza was ordered) once, as they were pissed over real IDs being introduced to the account for the game.

    Ktanaqui,

    Except that that is a back pedal on their part and their FAQ plainly says they actually have no way of tracking what is a new install versus a re-install; which is why they decided to count all installs to begin with.

    TWeaK, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds

    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.

    Murais, do games w Unity adding a fee for devs for each time a game is installed, after certain thresholds
    @Murais@lemmy.one avatar

    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,
    @obinice@lemmy.world avatar

    It’s not that guy that looked like a supervillain every time he got up on stage at E3, is it?

    Gestrid, (edited )

    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 who was, at the time EA’s CEO.)

    Murais,
    @Murais@lemmy.one avatar
    Skyhighatrist,

    Well… not that shocked.

    CosmicCleric,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    Way to ruin a comedic moment.

    runner_g,
    CosmicCleric,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    I get the reference, I love that show, even though Bender may not approve, because I’m just a meat bag.

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