Honestly, I don't blame them for not wanting to put up with Unity's unreliance. It took Unity 10 days after announcing this awful change to backtrack to a normal revenue cut. That 10 days was filled with justified outrage from a ton of developers to the point of Re-Logic donating $100k to Godot and FNA in protest.
That’s what confused me the most. When your customers are consumers, screwing them over might be no big deal. But when your customers are businesses, how were you planning to get away with something like this where anything involving fees in the 6 to 9 figures is game changing. That’s, “Cheaper to move my business elsewhere” levels of money.
Yup. They were hoping it would fall out of the news cycle and people would forget about it. Once it stretched past a week, they started to panic because people weren’t dropping it, and had to plan an announcement to save face.
The harsh truth is even if they lose half of their current users they will end up making more anyway, even with the amended changes. They planned to lose a large chunk of their user base, regardless. The “seats” model is dead now that AI is changing how game development is done from the ground up. And they needed to do this because they were never profitable (the engine’s development costs hundreds of millions of dollars) and couldn’t really compete with unreal when it came to the type of customers they could actually pay for the engine from
Sure, but if they’d implemented the revised changes they wouldn’t have lost so many users. And despite their messaging, they did already speak to some devs who’d already told them this would be a disaster, but they tried it anyway, and in a retroactive way that completely disregarded prior promises regarding changing EULA agreements, so there’s no faith in this not still changing.
Nah this went really bad for them. Even if they do make more, it will almost certainly be short term. Godot got so much free advertising. It firmly sat itself next to unreal as far as who should be choosing it, but it is definitely the inferior engine if you are making AAA. It's going to get cut from the high by unreal and the low from Godot, defold, and even gamemaker.
I don't get this weird apologist attitude. Let us not forget Unity just spent over $4 billion less than a year ago buying the malware ad service ironsource. They are not profitable because they make bad business decisions. This was one more. And in all likelihood we will see the sale of unity before too long. And it will probably be less than the $20 billion offer they had prior to the ironsource purchase.
They are not profitable because they make bad business decisions.
Exactly this. Just like how reddit very quickly made enough in reddit gold sales to cover their server costs for decades, the only reason it’s operating at a loss is because they’re running it that way.
it’s a known strategy in tech startups and most non inventory based businesses in general (think moviepass) to undercut your competition to try and get as much market share as possible, even operating at a loss, and then slowly turn up the prices on your users once they are locked into your system and make back the lost revenue over time. I don’t agree with it either, but the y-combinator business tech crowd seem to love this model, so I can’t really say if it’s a bad decision or not.
I can however, point to evidence that it’s a popular business model, if you don’t mind accepting hacker news and y-combinator articles, as well as YouTube media of startup CEOs in earnings calls, but I refuse to defend it otherwise. These are often people with lots of money and advanced stem + business degrees however, so Im not going to sit here and act like I easily know better than them. I can say it did work for Google, but this is after they already were dominating with ad revenue and had the means to slowly introduce ads into every platform they owned ( youtube, maps, android). Popular platforms like DoorDash also have yet to become profitable, despite commanding a 70% market share on food delivery.
I can cite an example of it with an inventory based company. KIA sold their cars at damn near a loss in the US for a long time to get a good foothold. And it worked. Iirc they had a bogo on cars at one point even.
80 percent of unity users don’t pay and a large percentage of the 20% remaining don’t pay close to enough to maintain the engine. they did this on purpose, so it’s their fault, but it is the truth. most large studios these days that actually hit the numbers to pay unity are doing more with AI so they are paying less and those who the changes actually were attempting to make up lost revenue from. as I said, either way the “seats” model is dead regardless.
honestly as shitty as the changes were (and of course they were trying to make profit) they were actually attempting to help devs at least financially. For many use cases the install fee would come out as less than a 1% rev share. It was the other shit that made it worse, the install counting malware proposal, and the uncertainty behind the legitimacy of the numbers. (demos, piracy, repeated reinstalls)
if you’re interested in the insight from a tech investor who is familiar with the situation from the inside, but remains unbiased as someone not employed by unity, check this link for a good breakdown of what Unity’s leadership was actually thinking when they cooked this insanity up.
Days Gone is much better than Mad Max, which was still a good game. It’s a shame Days Gone launched with so many problems because the final product is so so good. Yeah the story is a just ok and the acting can be hammy and a little uneven. But the gameplay is great and I actually enjoyed the story.
I’m sorry, but free for online multiplayer is only a thing for consoles if the game itself is f2p
So you can play apex or ow2 multiplayer on your console for “free” but any other game that isn’t explicitly f2p, you will need an online subscription like ps plus/ Xbox live etc
My subscription expired months ago and I play all sorts of games, even some that I downloaded free before my subscription ended that arent in the store anymore. Are those all free to play? If so, what is an example of a non f2p game?
Can you give examples of the games you’re talking about?
So free to play games are things like Fortnite, halo infinite, overwatch, etc. Usually multiplayer based games. Even on console, you can play online multiplayer for those games without an xbox live or ps plus subscription.
Most games don’t follow this model. Take FIFA for example. You can buy the game and play it on console. But if you want to play online multiplayer, you will need to have an Xbox live/pls plus subscription for that.
Obviously there is nothing like this for pc games. Except for mmos or something like that, online multiplayer doesn’t require a subscription.
Sure, here is a list of some games that are still playable and accessible online even though I no longer pay for any subscription:
-Master Hunter World -Wolfenstein II -Grand Theft Auto V -Watch Dogs Legion -Resident Evil VII -Last of Us -God of War
There are a few more, but some I assume fall into that category, like COD. I do get a frequent notice encouraging me to subscribe or I may not be able to access some features or games but I have yet to run into that with existing stuff.
Update, it still doesn’t make sense but now I have no access. The moment I signed into the store and bought Baldurs Gate 3, I lost access to all my games offline or on. How I was able to previously play unsigned in is beyond me. Probably accepted some update when signing in and was previously grandfathered into really old terms would be my only guess.
Yeah none of those give me free online access after I cancelled my subscription. You sure you aren’t still enrolled through the remainder of your subscription period? If you cancel renewal, you still have access till the end date is up on your previous purchase.
I am not sure what’s going on to be honest, I guess I should count myself lucky and hope Sony doesn’t catch on. I have no payment linked, so it’s not auto-pay and the subscription ended like 2 months ago. I checked my wife’s account and she has no subscription linked either. I can’t access any new games or content needed with a subscription obviously, but current stuff mysteriously still works… I wish I had downloaded more games, I thought that they would have been inaccessible after the sub ended.
So update! I just had to sign in to buy Balders Gate. Now none of my games work that I previously downloaded, offline or on. So weird. Wish I played through a few of those before connecting.
I picked up Days Gone well after it released, and didn’t have the bugs, and got well and truly invested in it. Mad Max wasn’t a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but Days Gone felt like it had more content in the world. I loved both, but probably Days Gone.
Good! Love the games. I just hope on the third one they actually finish developing the game before release.
Jedi Survivor just finally got finished after releasing 5 months ago. What I mean is they just released an update that makes performance mode run really well. Prior to this update, it ran horribly. So much so that despite buying on day one, I flat out refused to play it until it got fixed. And thank goodness it did because it’s a wonderful game and I’m really enjoying it.
Let’s not forget how the bounty hunter missions were completely broken, to the point that you couldn’t even start the quest line at any point in the game. I beat the whole game wondering “what the fuck is that big area in the pause menu that’s still locked?”
Also, you still can’t unlock the third garden on Pyloon’s roof in some saves (mainly mine).
I couldn’t give less of a shit about performance bugs, but the fact that core content in the game is still locked because of fucking trigger bugs is mind bogglingly embarrassing.
Still loved the game, though - my favorite game of 2023 (not saying it was the best of 2023, I just really liked this one).
A monopoly is a monopoly. Just because Steam is a good store today doesn’t mean they deserve to hold a monopoly over the pc gaming market. So what happens when Valve has crushed every competitor? Gamers and devs have nowhere to go if Steam turns to shit. Eventually there will be a change of guards at Valve’s C-suite when Gaben retires or is dead. There is a good chance that those new execs will hollow out Steam and extract all the value out of it for their own benefit by screwing over the customers and developers. And they can get away with that if there is no competition. Competition is what keeps Valve in check.
Doesn’t matter. It’s still competition. They motivate Valve to create a better store and keep it that way. Since that is Valve’s unique selling point and what distinguishes them from the competition. Therefore I believe devs should make their games available on every storefront. Not just the best one, to give customers a choice.
Steam was great before epic and has been adding killer features since before egs came along. EGS tactics to win over steam users is to be anti competitive…
Like Walmart coming into a town to compete with the stores already there and then putting them out of business? Then moving onto the next town to compete again?
competition is good when the rest of the competition is able or good. EGS is so shit it has to buy exclusives and give out free games and it still doesn’t work. There has to be some equality in quality to have any chance of making steam better otherwise they just exist to make anti competitive moves, what is steam supposed to do? Also pay for exclusives?
When their launcher is literal malware or they engage in anti-consumer practices like exclusives, no, they are not good for the customer.
(Not that any publicly traded company can be good for the customer, mind; by definition they can only be good for the shareholders; any benefit they might accidentally provide to the customer or to society is an inefficiency that will eventually be corrected through enshittification. The only reason Valve isn’t entirely harmful is that they aren’t publicly traded yet.)
The only thing Valve has done with Steam that apparently is anti-competitive, is actually having a decent product with good features and no one else is capable of actually delivering parity with it to be a viable competitor.
A natural monopoly is a far cry from one built through anti-competitive practices, and easily toppled by competent competitors.
Perhaps if Valve’s competition was competent, there would be better options.
True. But Google became the number one search engine by creating a better product and basically got a natural monopoly. And now look what kind of monster the company has become.
Just because Steam is a good store today doesn’t mean it will stay that way in the future. Therefore I rather not see Steam be the only game store left in the pc gaming space.
Well no. Google used to steal results from other search engines initially.v And then suppressed search results for competing products for at least the last 20 years.
Then get mad at the weak-ass competition. Start a fire under their asses to make something that is actually just as good, if not better.
Punishing the one good product for being good is just gonna lead to there being no good products and only shitty ones just as much as your slippery-slope scenario. 🤦♂️
But they haven't crushed any other competitor through any mechanism but having a dramatically better product.
They don't force you to be exclusive to be on steam. They don't force you to implement any of their Steam stuff. They are very permissive unless you do shit that potentially exposes them to liability down the road, like the NFT nonsense.
And they let you generate keys for literally free to sell on other stores.
All their stuff companies use is because it's things customers value.
When they started, they did used to force you to use products edit: aside from their own games(fair cop), some 3rd party games like Lost Planet also required it.
Certain games, and not just valve games, you'd buy in a store and the disc would force you to install and create a steam account to play the single player offline game.
They're a distribution mechanism. If you buy a Steam game you need Steam. Allowing developers to require Steam to play their game is not anticompetitive or in any way unethical.
They didn't force any developer who wanted to sell games on Steam to only sell games on Steam. That's what would be anticompetitive and abusing their market position. Games choosing to only distribute through Steam because there's no other storefront that wouldn't be a worse value if it was free isn't Steam doing something wrong.
Looks like it was a console exclusive before it released on Steam, if you're talking about Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (which is the only one I can find by that name).
Do you have more information about the release? Or perhaps it's a different game?
They didn’t force any game to use Steamworks, developers and publishers chose to use it because it offered a lot of good middleware. And of course it requires Steam to use Steamworks.
That’s not at all what a monopoly is, it’s simply the absence of competition aka the market position. You don’t have to engage in anti-competitive practices to havw a monopoly, I don’t get why that’s so hard to understand for many here…
Other games aren’t a competition for a platform like Steam, that’s a different market. Steam has a monopoly because they have a extremely dominant position without real competition in their sector, they don’t have to engage in anti-competitive practices against games outside of steam to have that…
Fuck, this is so stupid it’s hard to even responde… Steam has a monopoly on game distribution but Minecraft isn’t a Steam competitor just like Fortnite isn’t a Play Store competitor! I am done with this thread, it’s frustrating to try and explain so many people such basic things if they don’t want to hear them!
That’s it? The Blood of Llathander thing? I found that my first playthrough! It wasn’t even easy to miss unless you just completely fucked off on the first puzzle.
It’s times like this I wish we did things more like china. The one person who is actually responsible for this change is going to get a huge payout, but the same can’t be said for everyone else at the company whose lives are going to be completely thrown off from the incoming layoffs.
They have over 7,000 employees they need to lay people off anyway. The reason they’re not profitable is because they’ve massively overextended themselves. Why did they buy Wetter, utterly bizarre purchase choice.
If they had a sensible number of employees and didn’t buy random companies every 5 minutes they’d be profitable.
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