Asking money for each (re)install?
Indeed, it's quite big news and I also can't recall any thread about it :/
For opinion part I don't think there "not so bad", it's outrageous taking fee this way. Totally understandable that prices rise worldwide and somehow have to cover costs and earn profit, but just raise percentage or similar....
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I am more surprised and concerned about how they can know, does that mean they track every installation and if so, how do they do that? (sorry if I sound very dumb now)
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nah, it's quite good question, as far as I understood they have some data model thing to assume appro. installs, which doesn't sound very convincing
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Well, as far as I remember, many Unity games try to smuggle out some data on game launch without asking for consent. I notice because my firewall is configured to always ask me when a new program wants to use internet, and Unity games usually do, even when they're single player. I've never checked what kind of data they exfiltrate, by my guess is it's just some stats, so here goes your potential installation tracking.
I wonder if this means it will be impossible to use Unity games in offline mode when they implement that change though... would be quite annoying as I've always blocked them from accessing internet and I'm not planning to stop doing so.
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if this means it will be impossible to use Unity games in offline mode
This would be a big no from me, I often run games offline (mainly because Steam family sharing is inadequate). I guess it depends if the game needs to phone home every time you run it, or just the first time.
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It basicly comes down to trust me bro. They cant have a tracker in the install since that would be mallware and illegal in most countries.
They also have no way to determine if something is a first or reinstall for the same reason. So they will count every install as a new one with the indirect counting method they use.
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So if you make a game, then someone could pirate it and spread it around to make you loose the income... In my opinion, a very dumb choice from Unity.
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They claims it won't count for multiple installations on one device, but can they track it so precisely? And what if you reinstall OS or change your disk? That way developers will just loose money while not getting more revenue from customers.
I'd be fine with some fee per purchase, however since developers already pay to use it, even that is on the line. But per installation? That's terrible.
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if i was into it. i know a few games id go install and uninstall. stick it to shit devs
think review bombing hurts.
/good point about OS above to kinda prevent this/
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Are they hoping to get more money from the asset flips or?
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Who installs them?
Also funny sg's hyperfocus on these all the time while nobody else cares.
The real targets are on mobile.
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The real targets are the big shots like Genshin Impact and mobile.
But that's like throwing an atomic bomb in a city to kill a high-value person. Sure, you aim for the person. But you are killing everybody else.
There are already thousands of small developers looking of how leaving Unity all together. Even if Unity changed their mind right now, probably not a single developer is going to make a game for Unity, as long as they can avoid it.
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But that's like throwing an atomic bomb in a city to kill a high-value person. Sure, you aim for the person. But you are killing everybody else.
Sadly that's always how things change for the worst.
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Genshin
Supposedly they have a different contract and are unaffected.
Or could just buy the company whole with their spare change lol.
looking of how leaving Unity
That's the best part about it.
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Who installs them?
Guess it depends if there's cards involved. Although I guess the card farmers don't ever actually install games and idling doesn't count as an install?
The real targets are on mobile.
You're right. Not that there aren't asset flips there, quite the contrary.
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I hate to spread FOMO and I doubt it's actually gonna happen but the devs of Cult of the Lamb claim they're going to remove their game at the end of the year if this goes through.
There's still plenty of time (and upcoming sales) so don't make any rush decisions because the way they communicate this feels pretty shady
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Honestly that smiley makes me feel they're just poking fun at the situation and not exactly planning on removing their game :x
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That isn't even a solution, since the people who bought it will still install it and same for the pirated versions.
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I've seen friends mention on Discord that if anyone's gonna profit from that shit, it's going to be Epic thanks to all those devs who will want to move on to Unreal Engine out of spite for Unity :/
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Their cost structure is transparent and fair at least, besides being the best engine by far.
Games takes a 5% royalty fee from gross revenue after the product’s lifetime gross exceeds $1 million (USD). This fee is due each quarter as long as the game or application remains for sale or continues to generate more than $10,000 (USD) in a quarter.
And all who want 0 cost can go for Godot.
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My thoughts? Indie studios that have met large success will remove their games from storefronts. Large development studios/pubs will jump ship to UE5 and depending on how retroactive the fees are this issue could even end up in court. This is a pretty insane move from Unity. It doesn't really surprise me in the current age of profit driven everything though.
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Not an expert on law but I think they might not need that if they don't update their games, no indie would use Unity if they knew about this. The devs won't accept new ToS and they will stop using Unity. I don't think Unity can charge them after that.
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As far as I know from a surface level article, this wouldn't impact the smallest developers and it's based on tier. Unity would charge $0.20 per installation with the caveat of 200,000 downloads and/or $200,000 in revenue on the free tier. Apparently, the $2,000 a year premium plan offers higher download and revenue requirements and lower fees as well. I'm not sure of the exact numbers as the article didn't mention any. Unity is going after the "whales" so to speak.
I'm not sure how it'd work, but think of bundle keys, PC game pass, demo versions of a game, etc. These could all potentially trigger the fee and then you have things like pirating too. People could even download/uninstall in a loop to troll devs/pubs and you have to "trust" that Unity has the means to differentiate between legitimate or not legitimate. It's a huge mess in the making.
I can already see devs/pubs talking about removing games from all storefronts. Which if it does happen will be a huge blow to consumers.
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I mean, how does this work with the games on GOG? No DRM, can they really know if someone installs it?
I remember from an article from 2022, and Unity was the leading engine in industry (as game count). If most of those pull their games from stores (assuming most of them are indies) that means a huge percent of games. Another point, Steam keeps games for people who bought them before a delist, so how does this work too, since people will keep installing those?
I feel like, they didn't really think the consequences. They will lose lawsuits as well as they will lose customers.
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This Unity forum post suggests Unity will be able to track installs fairly easily, although, the post in this regard is talking about piracy. To what extent or if it's ready to roll out now I couldn't tell ya.
I could be misunderstanding but I'm not tech savvy enough to tell you if it's the engine itself collecting data or some 3rd party monitoring. That's something smarter people than I would need to look into. All I know is Unity believes it's possible and that's both insane and bad imo.
As for how Steam or GOG handle it I'm not sure. Again, that's policy related stuff that is far out of my scope lol.
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Unless they use something like a spyware best they can do is guessing, which is weird for a business. Also even if they use a spyware, I can block it the way it communicate with their server via local DNS server. If that included in the engine with the new updates, that still won't affect the older games. If only they already have a tracker prior, which is more concerning.
But I agree, that's insane and this can only lead a quick cash up and a bankrupt afterwards.
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That's pretty much the problem. Unity is going to have to do a ridiculous amount of guessing and devs/pubs are supposed to "trust" them that what they find via their tracking is accurate. That's why the model doesn't make much sense and will likely open them up to a number of lawsuits when/if it goes through.
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It will, since its a digital good they are selling they have to come with hard proof about the numbers involved not the trust me bro method it appears to be now.
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Steam keeps games for people who bought them before a delist, so how does this work too, since people will keep installing those?
Since the fee is based on revenue within the last 12 months, the fee might have to paid until 12 months after delisting, but then not anymore.
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The funny thing is that they'll have to guess the revenue. One reason why they went with charging for installments is their claim that they want to make it easier for devs, so that they don't have to document their revenue for Unity to demand a share instead. If devs had to share their revenue data, all their justification would fall flat.
So the result is Unity guessing the revenue, guessing how man installs qualify as not bundle, demo, piracy or fraudulent related.
And they expect their customers to accept this on a "trust me" base. Hilarious business idea.
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Yeah, the general idea to consider installations isn't actually bad, because it's linked closer to usage than sales. But neither installations nor revenues are being tracked by an independent institution. Furthermore, adding a spyware to their engine is absolutely horrible for end users.
I get their motivation, but they should have consulted devs beforehand (or even more if they did) to find an improved, but fair licensing and fee system.
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If they will just want the last 12 months' fee, I think they want devs to buy their annual $2000 sub, basically 10,000 installs.
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For existing games, that just sounds like a bunch of lawsuits waiting to happen. For future games, that just sounds like Unity is a platform on the way out. Either way, Unity only loses.
The only question that remains appears to be: who greenlit this incredibly, intensely, insanely dumb idea?
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That smells of investors pressure and or some new ceo/chairs wanting to impress.
The likely looked at anything popular using unity (some say genshin, and mobile games) and on that alone sent the order... and it reeks of a completely desunited enviroment, the kind where no one wants to disagree or even give their opnion on what upper management decides.
And its very likely some old dude(s)- the kinds that frequently get a deciding position but dont understand tech.
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who greenlit this incredibly, intensely, insanely dumb idea?
John Riccitiello is the name. He is the previous CEO of EA and he has said that developers who dont concentrate on microtransactions are idiots. Had to resign from EA due to not meeting financial results expected. I don't doubt this is just another decision solely based on excel sheets which is supposed to increase profit.
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Indeed, every time I hear about this CEO, including the EA era, somehow is about making extra money with some "genuine" ideas. This one exceeds them all. Maybe not his idea, but as a CEO...
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I don't see this going through in 2024, as others mentioned here due to exploits that would provide a means of retaliation against developers, trolling, etc.
Not only that, why is it whenever they develop these systems and come up with these new ideas, it's always the big corpo that gets a discount? For up to 100k downloads of your game after the initial 200k, a personal user would pay 20 cents per install, while a corpo would pay 0.125. At a million downloads, the personal user is still paying 20 cents, and the corpo is paying 0.01 cents per install. If you go over a million(assuming I understand it right), a personal user still pays 2 cents per install, while a corpo pays $0.005, so 4 times less for every download.. Like, aren't they the same number of installs? Boo hoo help the corpos?
Basically if you were a big corpo and were jealous of someone's success and you wanted to shut down a small indie developer, for every 5 times you download their game and reinstall it you just charged that dev $1. Fuck it, you could set up a bot, go to a starbucks parking lot, set it to install, uninstall, repeat and you just send a dev free fees. Tons of unity games, especially 2d, jrpgs, low poly, etc. games only consist of a few megabytes to a few hundred megabytes. As an example, vampire survivors is around 700mb. With a 20mb down connection, you could download the game in less than a minute(35 seconds but maybe assume another 25 for steam to install and process this so we'll make it a whole minute), so every minute you can charge the dev $0.20, and every hour, $12. In one hour of trolling you could charge more than 2x the games cost to this developer as the game retails for $4.99.
I guess as a small time dev, you can also list your game on unity, and you just delist it before it hits both those thresholds. I assume they wont charge you for existing users downloading and reinstalling in perpetuity after the game is delisted, that'd probably just be a lawsuit if that was allowed, as someone could still troll even if the game is delisted. Thankfully this seems to not apply to those devs who pay the steam fee and make their game free to play even if they have no model to make money from it as in app purchases, as the game would never reach it's $100k profit threshold. So maybe more free to play games?
We gotta give it to unity for literally throwing their engine in the trash and giving more market share to Godot and even more than it already has to Unreal.
I can't see this going through and see it coming from a dumb ass corpo idiot who thought he had the new brightest idea to make profits and there wasn't anyone nearby with enough power or who didn't give a shit to tell him he's going full retard.
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https://twitter.com/ScottTRichmond/status/1701631419125276721
If this is real then they made some quick buck.
Also looks like Unity will have a tracker on your machine for the future installations.
I don't need to say more but current CEO from Unity is John Riccitiello. Remember EA?
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This is absolutely insane, not only are they nuking their reputation forever but this could also mean that a bunch of games are going to get removed from stores just to prevent further losses, Unity has in essence caused an extinction event for indies. Even worse, there's the possibility that some devs might delete or purposely break their repositories in an attempt to prevent from re-downloading games they already own, so there's a chance that some games are gonna go poof and disappear if this goes through.
At this point the only thing that could potentially restore some credibility in the company is if they very publicly kick out whoever is in charge and approved this nonsense and then retract the decision, but that ain't gonna happen. In the short term I just hope devs start migrating as many projects as possible to other engines to send the message that they won't play ball, and I also hope the lawsuits start rolling asap.
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ill have you know, ive always hated the unity engine.
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The window for abuse is wide open for a per-installation model like this, from devs being charged for pirated copies with the install tracker code intact to angry gamers re-downloading it in large groups to rack up the charges in protest of whatever aspect of modern gaming(tm) has riled them up this time. I got a chill up my spine since I'm the kind of person to re-download a game from my backlog, saying "I'm gonna play this one tonight!" and then by the time it's downloaded I'm doing something else, I forget about it by tomorrow, then weeks later I uninstall and the cycle repeats for another game. I couldn't imagine taking money out of a dev's pocket just for my little bad habit...
Most likely though, the devs will jump ship to UE or Gamemaker, not to mention the genre-specific engines like RPGmaker or Ren'py will be fine. I hope that gamers will stand in solidarity with the devs on this one but this is tricky since a consumer boycott hurts devs as well.
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Supposedly the reinstallation is only charged if you install on a new device, or use Game Pass (in which case M$ is the one paying according to Unity, M$ has yet to respond to this).
I imagine this is targeting the mobile market, specially gacha re-rolling, since now, every time you re-roll using something like an emulator to 'change' your instance, it'll count as a new installation.
How are they going to keep track of it all? They basically just said ''trust me bruh'' on their latest response lmao.
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Thank you for the clarification! It does make more sense from a Gacha whale-hunting perspective. I'm also interested in how on earth they can 100% prove their tracking, and what recourse a dev would have if they wanted to open a dispute over the numbers. I'm dead curious if they they're just gonna pull a "we investigated ourselves and found ourselves innocent"
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Yeah, the plan is retroactively change their contracts with the developers, AND THEN go after Microsoft. Suuuuuuuuuure. Microsoft is going to pay them right now.
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Actually besides UE5, the most talked about engine atm seems to be Godot.
Other then your post I don't think I've seen anyone mention Gamemaker since this Unity fiasco started.
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Supposedly, it won't charge for reinstalls, unless they're done on something like Xbox Game Pass (they'd charge Microsoft) or it's on new devices. So, re-rolling on mobile games will now bankrupt a company. This is a really dumb idea overall, also, they can get absolutely demolished by lawsuits, you can't just change your rules, after someone accepted a previous version of those, what will happen with games that already use Unity before they implement this next year? If the developers do not accept the new ToS, then is the game removed? will they forcibly update it? I have no idea, and whoever came up with this stuff, probably knows even less.
One thing is sure, this killed Unity, new projects that are still on time will shift to UE5 or other engine, and many developers are already expressing how they'll never develop with Unity again, even if they revert this decision.
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Supposedly a lot of Unity employees brought up concerns over this and were ignored.
A lot of people are talking about this being related to insider trading, with the CEO having sold a lot of stock just before this.
The company also had a net loss of $193 million last quarter (though to be fair its better then previous quarters).
This could be the start of the end for Unity.
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Per Install would mean they are wanting to make Unity a form of DRM on top of being an engine wouldn't it?
Either way, not a good idea Unity...not in the slightest.
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Imagine trying to install a Unity game and getting the message "Sorry, this developer only pre-paid for 500 installations, which have run out, so you can go to hell".
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"Tracking" just phones home and sends telemetry, whereas DRM is meant to control access to the software. So tracking isn't really the same as DRM. That said, who knows what's next? With decisions this bad... anything could happen.
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Even if Unity backs out at this point, I doubt most people will give them a second chance. They've ruined the trust the vast majority of developers might have had in them and that's not something they can walk back.
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Similar thing happened with GameMaker. They switched to subscription-based business and many devs bailed-out. They even gave some subscription time to their old users, and it wouldn't cut it. For example, they gave me ~4 years worth top-tier subscription however I stopped using GameMaker and learning Godot for some time. Some people chose Unity over GM, I cannot describe their anger right now, those poor souls. :/
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I'm curious how these tracking thingies will legally play out, especially in the European Union.
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It won't it would be close to malware in setup. I even heard rumors that the unity company bought out a malware company or something. Could be related maybe, I dont know.
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It would be close to malware in setup
Spyware, technically speaking.
The good old "phoning home" strategy they use to serve targeted ads, repurposed to track installs (and who knows what else).
I even heard rumors that they bought out a malware company
Yeah, that's true.
Well, whether to call ironSource a malware company is debatable, as they technically never developed actual malware themselves, but their first product, installCore, is unanimously considered PUP/PUA by antimalware vendors, because it does help third parties bundle unwanted stuff, ranging from annoying to outright malicious, with legit exes.
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They don't need to know any personal information covered by GDPR to know how many installations were made. And Steam can provide such info for sure.
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As others mentioned, Steam is not the only portal to Unity games. But the main reason they are walking on thin ice is that they want to make developers pay for the games that are already out, even if this is something they keep giving contradictory responses.
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they want to make developers pay for the games that are already out
I think this is very bold speculation since no one knows how it'll work exactly.
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I guess this is what people dislike a lot. Check in the FAQ, the "Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024?" section. It's "Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024."
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It's still unclear how they're going to count the installations, especially for Personal version.
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True. That's exactly the point, they didn't really think that through. They keep giving contradictory answers on different channels. I'm not accusing them, because it's still unclear how they pull this through, but throwing something out, then slowly backpedaling on things after some backlash, won't really help their cause on the long run.
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I take this won't end well on how many games will in future use their engine...
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I have checked and haven't seen a topic here so far which surprises me a bit (maybe I searched for the wrong keywords and there is a thread). I have now seen some remarks on two Discords and looked up the news myself now. Basically, Unity does intend to change their licensing model which also includes a fee for each install of the game being made (after reaching certain tresholds).
My first reaction was that this is absolutely ridiculous to ask for money for (re)installs. Unity does not have higher costs just because someone installs games multiple times or different devices. In worst case this leads to situations where developers try to save their hide and limit the number of installations (just one time?) Or have to ask money themselves every install to cover the costs.
Then after reading the actual news announcement, I still think that the idea is ridiculous. But if I understand the system correctly, it is not as terrible as I initially believed, though STILL terrible. As there are certain situations, where it could lead to troubles like for example a free weekend after an initial sales phase. Also, I think I already read the "clarified/backpadelled" version and the initial text described a worse version.
So, what are your opinions on the topic?
EDIT: Example information
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2067920/view/3721717841527261981
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