[...] Too little, too late, and also insufficient. Remains to be seen what the final changes will be once this is finally announced, but it's still a reprehensible move by Unity even with these...
Under the tentative new plan, Unity will limit fees to 4% of a game’s revenue for customers making over $1 million and said that installations counted toward reaching the threshold won’t be retroactive, according to recording of the meeting reviewed by Bloomberg.
[...]
Marc Whitten, a Unity executive, said the company hasn’t yet announced the latest changes because executives are still running them by partners and don’t want to repeat last week’s communications debacle, which led to several clarifications.
One of the most controversial elements of the policy concerned how Unity would track installations of its software. Although the company first said it would use proprietary tools, Whitten said Monday management will rely on users to self-report the data.
Too little, too late, and also insufficient. Remains to be seen what the final changes will be once this is finally announced, but it's still a reprehensible move by Unity even with these adjustments. None of this addresses the most crucial issues raised by this, i.e.:
Charging per-install is still insane, limiting it for those making over $1 million is directly contradictory to their stated goal of "[generating] more revenue from the company's biggest customers," and self-reporting is both unreliable and an undue burden on developers.
Weak statements were made to the effect of this policy being non-retroactive, but it still seems that this is only partially true; games released or developed prior to the initial announcement still appear to be obligated to pay per install on every install that occurs post-2023, even if they were made and/or released under a different ToS iteration.
Even ignoring the above-mentioned issues, there is the problem of the future: If Unity's willing to do this at all, it has to be factored in as a risk that they may do it again. Furthermore, a common trend in PR disasters like these is to walk it back temporarily and reinstate the full brunt of the issue later once the fervor has died down. There is no reason to believe Unity will do differently.
Frankly, even if these changes were sufficient – and they are absolutely not – the fact remains that Unity has immolated the bridge between them and the majority of developers. Some may yet stick around due to things like lock-in, but I feel that this will mark a severe downwards turning point for the engine.
I interpreted it as meaning, they will charge up to 4% for those making over $1 million, and charge nothing for those making under $1 million. This interpretation would align with their stated...
limiting it for those making over $1 million is directly contradictory to their stated goal of "[generating] more revenue from the company's biggest customers,"
I interpreted it as meaning, they will charge up to 4% for those making over $1 million, and charge nothing for those making under $1 million. This interpretation would align with their stated goal; I assume they wouldn't contradict themselves quite so blatantly.
I agree that regardless of this backtrack, they've irreversibly burned pretty much all of everyone's trust in them though.
Yeah, there was a reason I used the word “immolate” rather than “burn.” I would be genuinely surprised if Unity made it through this all without losing a gargantuan chunk of market share.
Yeah, there was a reason I used the word “immolate” rather than “burn.” I would be genuinely surprised if Unity made it through this all without losing a gargantuan chunk of market share.
Ever a cynic, I will be surprised if they do lose the market share. Epic will follow in their footsteps because why not? The money from extracting more from the customer is probably higher than...
Ever a cynic, I will be surprised if they do lose the market share.
Epic will follow in their footsteps because why not? The money from extracting more from the customer is probably higher than market share losses. Expect them to start charging just as much.
Godot and friends just aren't up to spec. Open source is great if you're willing to bear the losses of badly managed code, but the efficiency gains from unity for any professional will be way more than worth it.
I suspect the only market they'll lose are rave hit 2d games that are above the threshold and can afford to use a worse engine.
As for long term planning and broken trust? I've never seen it kill anything. I'm skeptical it'll matter.
I think there are a couple important differences between this and other similar moves recently, like Twitter and Reddit's stuff or the WotC thing. First, there's no audience for Unity games...
I think there are a couple important differences between this and other similar moves recently, like Twitter and Reddit's stuff or the WotC thing. First, there's no audience for Unity games specifically, just for games. The other examples have audiences that you only get access to if you use their platforms, but there isn't that restriction on game engines, and the players don't care.
Second, they picked a fight with publishers when they said they'd make them pay the fees. There's huge amounts of money at stake. Most of these are companies that are big enough to have options, if they don't just want to flat out create some more. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft was spinning up a division to make their own game engine right now, which would be awful for consumers, but also for Unity for a lot of the same reasons. Other publishers might make their own investments, or throw some money at Godot to get it up to snuff.
So while I don't think Unity ended themselves with this move, I do think they've definitely shot themselves in the foot. They're going to be feeling the pain and the slow down for a while, while everyone else keeps moving ahead.
As someone who’s used both engines, this is pretty much the polar opposite of my experience. Unity is a crumbling mess of half-baked, competing technology, whereas Godot is reliable and just...
Godot and friends just aren't up to spec. […] the efficiency gains from unity for any professional will be way more than worth it.
As someone who’s used both engines, this is pretty much the polar opposite of my experience.
Unity is a crumbling mess of half-baked, competing technology, whereas Godot is reliable and just works. Sure, Unity can theoretically pull off better graphical fidelity, but 1) many games, particularly indies, do not need high-grade graphics to be good, 2) if you really do need high fidelity, Unreal was already better at this, and 3) you would constantly have to fight Unity to get past some niche bug, weird design choice, or lacking implementation.
I switched to Godot a while ago for many reasons. It being open source was merely one of them. And that was before Godot 4 hit and made it massively better in every regard.
Musk has shown he cares little for engagement, there’s only one metric he cares about. It’s the single line you can draw through every decision he’s made since he took over. Money.
Musk has shown he cares little for engagement, there’s only one metric he cares about. It’s the single line you can draw through every decision he’s made since he took over. Money.
I must be growing cynical by the day because I think I agree with you. There are plethora examples but the most recent one is the API cost hikes for a couple of sites. Twitter started it, outrage...
I must be growing cynical by the day because I think I agree with you.
There are plethora examples but the most recent one is the API cost hikes for a couple of sites. Twitter started it, outrage followed, now it's the norm with sites like Reddit following suit and others also tightening their API access.
Trust in both Twitter and Reddit were at an all time low yet both are still going. There are admittedly cracks in both but neither is actively sinking.
This is just more of the same.. one ventures a daring step, gets slapped down to what their users find acceptable (we heard you yada yada, we'll adjust yada yada), and the next will soon follow into the new standard.
Sigh, look at where we started with Bethesda's Horse Armor DLC and look at where we are now. The disintegrated trust means absolutely nothing. Just look at their recent Starfield sales and the absolute horrendous state of microtransactions in games.
I think both, or at least/especially Twitter, are in Titanic mode. The sinking took hours, long enough that many passengers refused to believe it was happening. It's why most of the first...
I think both, or at least/especially Twitter, are in Titanic mode. The sinking took hours, long enough that many passengers refused to believe it was happening. It's why most of the first lifeboats that launched went out half empty. They have a lot of momentum but the cracks they're showing are not just surface level stuff.
Any trust people had in Twitter as a platform is gone, most of the organizational / governmental use cases are disappearing as it becomes harder to access/trust. It's becoming less capable by the day it seems like as it's infrastructure gets downgraded or just stagnates with no-one to maintain it. The news today that Elon is apparently thinking of putting it behind a paywall is another insane blow.
More than anything is just the unreliability. For almost 2 decades twitter just worked. Even without a drop-in replacement their level of stability just isn't there anymore.
Honestly I'm amazed Twitter is still up and running. Not just due to Musk's changes slowly killing it, but mainly because the guy has posted about shutting off servers he knows nothing about...
Honestly I'm amazed Twitter is still up and running. Not just due to Musk's changes slowly killing it, but mainly because the guy has posted about shutting off servers he knows nothing about because he thinks they're unnecessary. And he also fired a good chunk of the staff who know how it runs on a technical level.
I still half-expect Twitter will just vanish overnight because it will break in a way that can't be fixed. Or at least not without spending way more money than Musk would like to.
There's a Dutch saying that goes “vertrouwen komt te voet en gaat te paard” which means “trust arrives on foot but leaves on horseback”. Basically saying it's hard to gain trust but really easy to...
There's a Dutch saying that goes “vertrouwen komt te voet en gaat te paard” which means “trust arrives on foot but leaves on horseback”. Basically saying it's hard to gain trust but really easy to lose it.
It's going to take a lot for people to ever trust Unity again. If they can pull this stunt now, they can do the same shit in the future. This is just a sign of things to come. They tried something, they received a lot of backlash so they tone it down somewhat. In the future they'll try something similar.
This line just amuses me. Sure, there'd be outcry no matter what changes they made, but Unity managed to announce a whole slew of purely negative changes in one day. Charging per install. Giving...
“I don’t think there’s any version of this that would have gone down a whole lot differently than what happened,” Riccitiello said. “It is a massively transformational change to our business model.”
This line just amuses me. Sure, there'd be outcry no matter what changes they made, but Unity managed to announce a whole slew of purely negative changes in one day.
Charging per install. Giving next to zero information on how they'd track those installs. Having the threshold be games with $200k revenue. Applying the fee to pre-existing games made before the new policy. Removing Unity Plus so people have to go for the $2k license. Announcing intent to bill Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for games on streaming services instead of developers.
Every single one of those decisions is bad. I am still in awe at how horrible that all is. Some of it may even genuinely be illegal. The new potential proposal mentioned in this article, with "4% of a game’s revenue for customers making over $1 million", wouldn't have gotten nearly this amount of outcry and outrage.
And to top it off, the bit about "installations counted toward reaching the threshold won’t be retroactive" is still reason for concern, because that implies they might still try to apply the fee to games that were made BEFORE this policy. Games made by developers who never agreed to this, because this damn policy didn't exist when they made the game. So games made with Unity at any point in history are STILL a potential liability.
[...]
Too little, too late, and also insufficient. Remains to be seen what the final changes will be once this is finally announced, but it's still a reprehensible move by Unity even with these adjustments. None of this addresses the most crucial issues raised by this, i.e.:
Charging per-install is still insane, limiting it for those making over $1 million is directly contradictory to their stated goal of "[generating] more revenue from the company's biggest customers," and self-reporting is both unreliable and an undue burden on developers.
Weak statements were made to the effect of this policy being non-retroactive, but it still seems that this is only partially true; games released or developed prior to the initial announcement still appear to be obligated to pay per install on every install that occurs post-2023, even if they were made and/or released under a different ToS iteration.
Even ignoring the above-mentioned issues, there is the problem of the future: If Unity's willing to do this at all, it has to be factored in as a risk that they may do it again. Furthermore, a common trend in PR disasters like these is to walk it back temporarily and reinstate the full brunt of the issue later once the fervor has died down. There is no reason to believe Unity will do differently.
Frankly, even if these changes were sufficient – and they are absolutely not – the fact remains that Unity has immolated the bridge between them and the majority of developers. Some may yet stick around due to things like lock-in, but I feel that this will mark a severe downwards turning point for the engine.
I interpreted it as meaning, they will charge up to 4% for those making over $1 million, and charge nothing for those making under $1 million. This interpretation would align with their stated goal; I assume they wouldn't contradict themselves quite so blatantly.
I agree that regardless of this backtrack, they've irreversibly burned pretty much all of everyone's trust in them though.
Yeah, there was a reason I used the word “immolate” rather than “burn.” I would be genuinely surprised if Unity made it through this all without losing a gargantuan chunk of market share.
Ever a cynic, I will be surprised if they do lose the market share.
Epic will follow in their footsteps because why not? The money from extracting more from the customer is probably higher than market share losses. Expect them to start charging just as much.
Godot and friends just aren't up to spec. Open source is great if you're willing to bear the losses of badly managed code, but the efficiency gains from unity for any professional will be way more than worth it.
I suspect the only market they'll lose are rave hit 2d games that are above the threshold and can afford to use a worse engine.
As for long term planning and broken trust? I've never seen it kill anything. I'm skeptical it'll matter.
I think there are a couple important differences between this and other similar moves recently, like Twitter and Reddit's stuff or the WotC thing. First, there's no audience for Unity games specifically, just for games. The other examples have audiences that you only get access to if you use their platforms, but there isn't that restriction on game engines, and the players don't care.
Second, they picked a fight with publishers when they said they'd make them pay the fees. There's huge amounts of money at stake. Most of these are companies that are big enough to have options, if they don't just want to flat out create some more. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft was spinning up a division to make their own game engine right now, which would be awful for consumers, but also for Unity for a lot of the same reasons. Other publishers might make their own investments, or throw some money at Godot to get it up to snuff.
So while I don't think Unity ended themselves with this move, I do think they've definitely shot themselves in the foot. They're going to be feeling the pain and the slow down for a while, while everyone else keeps moving ahead.
As someone who’s used both engines, this is pretty much the polar opposite of my experience.
Unity is a crumbling mess of half-baked, competing technology, whereas Godot is reliable and just works. Sure, Unity can theoretically pull off better graphical fidelity, but 1) many games, particularly indies, do not need high-grade graphics to be good, 2) if you really do need high fidelity, Unreal was already better at this, and 3) you would constantly have to fight Unity to get past some niche bug, weird design choice, or lacking implementation.
I switched to Godot a while ago for many reasons. It being open source was merely one of them. And that was before Godot 4 hit and made it massively better in every regard.
Xitter engagement is down 30% since Musk took over, that seems like a little more than a crack.
Musk has shown he cares little for engagement, there’s only one metric he cares about. It’s the single line you can draw through every decision he’s made since he took over. Money.
Less eyeballs on the platform means less advertisers spending money to be put in front of those eyeballs.
I must be growing cynical by the day because I think I agree with you.
There are plethora examples but the most recent one is the API cost hikes for a couple of sites. Twitter started it, outrage followed, now it's the norm with sites like Reddit following suit and others also tightening their API access.
Trust in both Twitter and Reddit were at an all time low yet both are still going. There are admittedly cracks in both but neither is actively sinking.
This is just more of the same.. one ventures a daring step, gets slapped down to what their users find acceptable (we heard you yada yada, we'll adjust yada yada), and the next will soon follow into the new standard.
Sigh, look at where we started with Bethesda's Horse Armor DLC and look at where we are now. The disintegrated trust means absolutely nothing. Just look at their recent Starfield sales and the absolute horrendous state of microtransactions in games.
I think both, or at least/especially Twitter, are in Titanic mode. The sinking took hours, long enough that many passengers refused to believe it was happening. It's why most of the first lifeboats that launched went out half empty. They have a lot of momentum but the cracks they're showing are not just surface level stuff.
Any trust people had in Twitter as a platform is gone, most of the organizational / governmental use cases are disappearing as it becomes harder to access/trust. It's becoming less capable by the day it seems like as it's infrastructure gets downgraded or just stagnates with no-one to maintain it. The news today that Elon is apparently thinking of putting it behind a paywall is another insane blow.
More than anything is just the unreliability. For almost 2 decades twitter just worked. Even without a drop-in replacement their level of stability just isn't there anymore.
Honestly I'm amazed Twitter is still up and running. Not just due to Musk's changes slowly killing it, but mainly because the guy has posted about shutting off servers he knows nothing about because he thinks they're unnecessary. And he also fired a good chunk of the staff who know how it runs on a technical level.
I still half-expect Twitter will just vanish overnight because it will break in a way that can't be fixed. Or at least not without spending way more money than Musk would like to.
Only really true for the latter half of its pre musk life. There's a reason fail whale became a meme
There's a Dutch saying that goes “vertrouwen komt te voet en gaat te paard” which means “trust arrives on foot but leaves on horseback”. Basically saying it's hard to gain trust but really easy to lose it.
It's going to take a lot for people to ever trust Unity again. If they can pull this stunt now, they can do the same shit in the future. This is just a sign of things to come. They tried something, they received a lot of backlash so they tone it down somewhat. In the future they'll try something similar.
This line just amuses me. Sure, there'd be outcry no matter what changes they made, but Unity managed to announce a whole slew of purely negative changes in one day.
Charging per install. Giving next to zero information on how they'd track those installs. Having the threshold be games with $200k revenue. Applying the fee to pre-existing games made before the new policy. Removing Unity Plus so people have to go for the $2k license. Announcing intent to bill Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for games on streaming services instead of developers.
Every single one of those decisions is bad. I am still in awe at how horrible that all is. Some of it may even genuinely be illegal. The new potential proposal mentioned in this article, with "4% of a game’s revenue for customers making over $1 million", wouldn't have gotten nearly this amount of outcry and outrage.
And to top it off, the bit about "installations counted toward reaching the threshold won’t be retroactive" is still reason for concern, because that implies they might still try to apply the fee to games that were made BEFORE this policy. Games made by developers who never agreed to this, because this damn policy didn't exist when they made the game. So games made with Unity at any point in history are STILL a potential liability.