This is still completely unacceptable. They just changed the threshold so as to not charge devs whose games don’t sell at all. It does nothing to address any of the other concerns.
Our Unity Personal plan will remain free and there will be no Runtime Fee for games built on Unity Personal. We will be increasing the cap from $100,000 to $200,000 and we will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.
No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee.
Okay, fine, we won’t bankrupt you if your game doesn’t sell.
The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity.
Okay fine, you won’t retroactively bill us. But you still never answered how we can trust the install numbers that your tool supposedly collects, whether we will be billed for people pirating the game, whether botnets can immediately spike up our costs out of spite, how this affects Game Pass/PS+/donated licenses, etc.
And where are the assurances that you won’t randomly decide to update the policy again in the future? I also can’t imagine they’ll let people keep using the version of Unity without runtime fees in perpetuity.
Sensationalist media will grab at anything, really.
I mean, the Nintendo thing started with an email Phil Spencer replied to titled “random thought,” and the email was basically a lot of “Yeah that sounds great, but here’s why it’s not going to happen. But sure, though, it would be nice to own Nintendo, and I know a guy who’s been trading some of their stock if you wanted to maybe buy some.”
Well we all knew that much at least. It was originally announced to be released in 2022 but they pushed it back almost a full year to 2023. Guessing when development slowed due to salvage work needed for Fallout 76 and then likely a mandate from Microsoft to polish it more before release.
The thing I always thought would be in the Switch’s benefit is if the dock itself also contained hardware. On the small handheld screen, the quality looks fine enough at lower resolutions, but then looks pretty bad when blown up on a 4K TV. If the dock had additional expandable hardware to boost performance when docked, that could go a long way to help it keep up.
Have you been spending hours trying to pass a level? Or maybe you are completely addicted to a newly bought game. Do you have a question about a game or would like to share something else? In the Weekly Discussion Thread, you can do it all!...
Starfield and Final Fantasy 14. Both have been hard to find time for with general lack of time in life.
Starfield: still enjoying it a lot. I know it is going to bore me eventually, but for now the exploration and personal narrative I’ve been rolling with have been enough to keep me interested.
FF14: My static fell apart and we’ve given up on Savage raiding for this tier. There is a huge backlog of activities I haven’t been able to do this whole time while Savage prog occupied 90% of my time in-game, but now I can’t choose where to start.
To say it’s been a bad week for Unity is the understatement of 2023. First they announced a terrible new Pricing scheme, then their customers revolted, as the week goes on though, it gets worse and worse for Unity, from threats from an employee shutting down their offices, to more studios threatening to leave, to scummy secret...
Unity is planning to charge a flat fee of $0.20 per install over the entire life of a game. A Triple-A developer can release a game for $70 and it earns ten million dollars. Assuming every customer installs the game maybe three separate times on average over their lifespan, Unity’s gonna take maybe about $85,000 in total in runtime fees. If the game had been developed in Unreal, Epic would have taken $450,000.
But let’s say an indie dev makes a great game in Unity, sells it for $5, and it goes viral (like Vampire Survivors). They make ten million dollars, Unity takes 20 cents per install, and assuming the same install rate, the bill comes to $1.2 million, over 14x what the AAA developer is paying. Epic would have still charged $450,000.
With the AAA example, Epic’s 5% may seem steep for games that cost a lot per unit, but at least when a game stops making money, they stop charging money.
For Unity’s runtime fee, though, as people buy new PCs/consoles/phones and install their library of games to them over and over, the developer keeps getting billed with no profit coming in. Effectively, the more games they have out there in the wild, the greater a financial burden a developer has. They’ll be living in fear of some Reddit post sending 10,000 people in /r/gaming down a sudden nostalgia trip and wake up to a $2000 bill the next day with seemingly no explanation.
And this is to say nothing of the problematic nature of how Unity would even accurately assess the install count of a game, or differentiate paid copies from promotional or pirated copies (which I doubt they will). Or if a developer wants to bankrupt a rival developer, how they could just rent a click farm in Malaysia to install a game over and over again and rack up a bill too high to afford.
This almost fell under the radar today in the wake of the Paper Mario TTYD hype. Given that Super Mario RPG is the predecessor to Paper Mario in a number of ways, it’s an interesting time to be a fan of this type of game.
This. We’re only just now feeling the sting more keenly in a number of ways because companies are desperate to stay the course with increased profits year over year despite there being a massive global economic slump.
The 2010’s were full of venture capital pumping money into companies, and when we asked, “How is this business profitable,” they’d respond “Just trust us, bro.” Well, now the well has dried up, the venture capitalists are here to collect, and we all get to be surprisedpikachuface.jpg watching this trainwreck unfold in slow motion.
I’m just a little bit late to the Baldurs Gate 3 party, but I searched on here and didn’t see much follow up discussion about it after the review thread. I’m also trying to submit more to Lemmy so the communities can grow, so I thought I’d bring it back up now that it has been out for a few weeks....
Yeah, at least Microsoft is invested heavily in backwards compatibility, is still allowing people to download purchases they’ve made, and are continuing to offer backwards compatible Xbox games for Series X.
I mentioned this in another thread, but this is less Nintendo closing down a store full of games that cannot be found anywhere else, and more like Steam dropping support for Windows 7.
It sucks to lose access to digital content on the original console, but I am at least glad that they are continuing to offer access to digital Xbox 360 games/DLC that are backwards compatible on Series X, and that folks can still download content they own.
This is akin to Steam declaring that it will no longer support Windows 7. Which is actually happening at the end of this year.
So, yesterday I broke my dominant arm. Yay! For the next 6 weeks, I have a cast, and at least for now, I can’t use my right hand or arm at all (I am typing this with my left hand)....
Unity apologizes and updates their infamous Runtime Fee (blog.unity.com) angielski
Microsoft - keep your filthy hands off Valve, leak shows MSFT would buy Valve (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
FTC fails to redact Microsoft document, revealing an old Bethesda release schedule (lemmy.world) angielski
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/152884184065507328/1153553505022390292/image.png
This is Microsoft’s new disc-less Xbox Series X design with a new controller (www.theverge.com) angielski
Microsoft Next Console Coming 2028 (www.gamescensor.com) angielski
Nintendo switch 2 akin to PS4/XBO power (kotaku.com) angielski
Nintendo, one generation behind once again.
The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion - 18-09-2023 (lemmy.world) angielski
Have you been spending hours trying to pass a level? Or maybe you are completely addicted to a newly bought game. Do you have a question about a game or would like to share something else? In the Weekly Discussion Thread, you can do it all!...
Unity ...It Just Keeps Get Worse (youtu.be) angielski
To say it’s been a bad week for Unity is the understatement of 2023. First they announced a terrible new Pricing scheme, then their customers revolted, as the week goes on though, it gets worse and worse for Unity, from threats from an employee shutting down their offices, to more studios threatening to leave, to scummy secret...
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door | Nintendo Direct 9.14.2023 (www.youtube.com) angielski
Super Mario RPG | Nintendo Direct 9.14.2023 (www.youtube.com) angielski
Creators of Slay the Spire will migrate their next game to a new engine if Unity doesn't completely revert their changes (nitter.net) angielski
Picture taken from their Twitter
State of Play returns tomorrow, with a focus on upcoming indie and third-party releases (blog.playstation.com) angielski
Dragon Age Dreadwolf keeps getting delayed internally, report claims | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Charles Martinet’s 6 most iconic video game performances (www.digitaltrends.com) angielski
I am LOVING Baldurs Gate 3 angielski
I’m just a little bit late to the Baldurs Gate 3 party, but I searched on here and didn’t see much follow up discussion about it after the review thread. I’m also trying to submit more to Lemmy so the communities can grow, so I thought I’d bring it back up now that it has been out for a few weeks....
End of the road: The Xbox 360 game marketplace will shut down in 2024 (arstechnica.com) angielski
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Store to close in July 2024 (www.theverge.com) angielski
PC Game Recommendation for a Broken Arm? angielski
So, yesterday I broke my dominant arm. Yay! For the next 6 weeks, I have a cast, and at least for now, I can’t use my right hand or arm at all (I am typing this with my left hand)....