Unity reveals plans to charge developers per game install - plans revoked and CEO fired, lol

[mediocrepoet]

The funniest thing about this to me is that when it was first announced, I was listening to some Youtuber describe it and thought, "That's stupid and unenforceable, this guy clearly doesn't understand what they're actually doing. I'll have to look it up later." Then everything coming from Unity started confirming that, no, the Tuber was right and it really is that stupid.

 

[Orud]

https://www.humblebundle.com/software/everything-you-need-to-know-about-godot-4-encore-software

Wonder why this bundle makes an encore??

Another interesting article that appeared out of nowhere: https://impromptugames.com/movingtounreal.html

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Q: How will we approach fraudulent or abusive behavior that impacts the install count (bombing, piracy)?
A: We won’t count fraudulent installs or “install bombing” either. As part of our model, we are creating solutions to address the problem of double-counting reinstallations.

"Trust me bro"
As people have been saying about this claim, if they were that good at fraud protection there wouldn't be game piracy. But there is. Therefore unity is full of shit.
They cannot 100% protect against fraud, devs are going to get hurt by this policy. These assurances are meaningless without proof and everyone's already left. The trust is broken there is no going back.
A lot of people are calling it out as they're just going to outsource billing to an AI, this is their supposed "Fraud detection".

 

[:Flash:]

I've been ranting about this sort of licensing model where the supplier can "change their mind" whenever and however they want in relation to individual customers, as a consumer rights issue, but now you're telling me actual businesses have been signing on to this shit? Investing tens, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions in some cacses on open-ended "trust me, bro" contracts? Is Riccitiello hallucinating license terms or has literally everyone lost their fucking minds in the past decade?

Err. no, their license actually said:
If the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms. The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1).

It's just that they now pretend that their license never said that, and deleted their github repository that contained the license and allowed you to track the changes.
https://www.gamerbraves.com/unity-s...s-of-service-changes-and-updated-its-license/

 

[Grauken]

It's just that they now pretend that their license never said that, and deleted their github repository that contained the license and allowed you to track the changes.
https://www.gamerbraves.com/unity-s...s-of-service-changes-and-updated-its-license/

Always makes one wonder how the CEOs of these IT-based companies have no clue how information technology works in the real world, like they think deleting stuff is enough lol

 

[Orud]

They're digging this hole so far that I'm starting to believe that they won't even be able to make this fly anywhere in the US. What is their legal department even thinking? Are they even being consulted?

 

[Sarathiour]

death threats mean nothing. absolutely nothing. i was receiving them 20 years ago for saying oblivion sucks. they're so common they lost any meaning. real killers kill, don't threat.

Even the century before, death threat send to celebrity or politician were considered as nothingburger. I fucking hate this larp of treating a tweet by some rando the same way as the first step of a machiavellian plan concocted by Moriarty himself.
People saying means words to you never excuse yourself being a complete retard.

 

[Trithne]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16j6cip/ironsource_is_the_reason/

Haven't really seen this mentioned here yet.

I work for a studio in the hyper casual mobile games market.

We were obviously quite concerned about the pricing announcement as it appears to specifically kill our business model.

Our unity rep is telling us "no, don't worry. you will receive credits to cover 100% of installs because you use IronSource as AD provider".

With that revelation, suddenly this all seems to make more sense. I don't think its about generating revenue through the fees. Its about forcing all mobile studios that use unity (so >99%) to use IronSource if they want to continue business.

Oh look, there it is. Pretty much as expected.

That's why they're so focused on "revenue" as the threshold, because they want a cut of those IAPs.

 

[Orud]

Laff, so the Rust developer stating that 'they probably forgot about non-mobile games being a thing' was probably dead-on. Jesus christ.

They tried to squeeze the mobile market even more, but in their braindead scheme they also included all other markets.

 

[Zarniwoop]

They will just back down, or announce some less-retarded (but still very retarded) pricing scheme. It's called "the big ask".

Unity games will live on, unfortunately, and studios will continue to make use of this utterly shit technology.

 

[:Flash:]

San Francisco police reported that the "death threat" was by a disgruntled employee.

Update: San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.
https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat-offices-closed-pricing-change

 

[Trithne]

Laff, so the Rust developer stating that 'they probably forgot about non-mobile games being a thing' was probably dead-on. Jesus christ.

Option 1) They forgot that non-mobile games exist.
Option 2) They assumed that non-mobile game developers would do the math, determine that this doesn't affect them, and then shrug and go along with it instead of collectively saying "excuse me what the fuck?", because they assumed that all companies work on the same investor-brained logic as them.

I think it's Option 2 myself. It explains how a lot of their damage control is "We're trying to clear up confusion about this" and the tweet that said "This only affects like 10% of our customers, wtf why are you mad?"

 

[Ravielsk]

I strongly suspect that is some sort of insider trading. The level of retardation behind the install fee is so profound that it has to be. On top of being utterly illegal its also financially suicidal even for bigger studios. Paying what amounts to millions because people reinstalled a executable(through a service that Unity itself has nothing to do with no less) is a complete ripoff even if the fee was a singular cent. On top of that to even make it possible unity has to have a phone home function forced into the engine which in essence means that every Unity game automatically becomes a security hazard. Because how can unity guarantee that 5 years from the release of the game some hacker will not use it as a gateway into your PC, phone or console?

The answer is they cannot and if such a thing were to happen Unity would get sued into the ground for knowingly introducing a security loophole onto the device. That said even if this is some insider trading scam I do not think it going to work. The backlash is not some kneejerk reaction to something that ultimately barely matters but a serious breach of trust on all levels. Sure maybe you can buy the shares for literal pennies right now but who is going to buy them from you? People are already jumping ship and will not return even if Unity got on its knees and started begging for forgiveness. Nobody is going to invest into a company whose product nobody wants even for free.

 

[Bohrain]

In the bigger perspective, Unity is a company that hasn't made any profit since it was founded in 2004. Since Riccitello became the CEO in 2014 they've spent something like 6.6+ billion $ on acquisations from what I counted from the wikipedia page. Because of that and probably general IT boom hiring spree, they have more staff than Epic and Valve put together. But since the covid era boom in IT ended, their market cap plummeted and I reckon the Riccitello and other geniuses felt the urge to make the company profitable. No matter how risky or retarded the method in question.
As a side note the little red line is around the time that malware company announced they'll buy their stock and fuse into them, it didn't appear to affect their valuation too much.

 

[Aemar]

Always makes one wonder how the CEOs of these IT-based companies have no clue how information technology works in the real world, like they think deleting stuff is enough lol

Riccitiello is a money guy who doesn't give a shit about game software or anything related. He thinks those game devs who shun pure greed-based monetization are fucking idiots.

 

[Bohrain]

From Riccitello's perspective (any) software should be used to milk the user out of money by charging on every feature and basic functionality. The idea of the customer detesting that and not touching that kind of product again is an alien thought to him, or something "the engineers or guys at marketing will figure out". Probably went to the same schools as the guys in the music publishing industry who wanted to get licence fees if someone heard a ringtone in public, or those DVD's I think Disney patented that oxidise and become unuseable in a week.

 

[Icewater]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16j6cip/ironsource_is_the_reason/

Haven't really seen this mentioned here yet.

I work for a studio in the hyper casual mobile games market.

We were obviously quite concerned about the pricing announcement as it appears to specifically kill our business model.

Our unity rep is telling us "no, don't worry. you will receive credits to cover 100% of installs because you use IronSource as AD provider".

With that revelation, suddenly this all seems to make more sense. I don't think its about generating revenue through the fees. Its about forcing all mobile studios that use unity (so >99%) to use IronSource if they want to continue business.

Oh look, there it is. Pretty much as expected.

That's why they're so focused on "revenue" as the threshold, because they want a cut of those IAPs.

As you said, there it is.

This decision only made sense in the context of Unity believing it could throw its weight around and force its customers to nickle and dime their own customers to compensate for the loss.

Oh and, for funsies:

ironSource Ltd. is an Israeli software company

Oy vey goyim, don't you know that you exist solely to fund G-d's chosen people?

 

[Infinitron]

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

I mean never mind getting dropped from digital storefronts, I'm pretty sure the EU (and say what you want about them) are going to drop a fucking bollock once they get wind of this.

Yes, by 2027 we can expect them to start assembling committees and issuing statements so that in 2031 there may be legal action against Unity that will have been out of business for 5 years by that time. :D

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Infinitron has been webcomic doesn't do justice to actual FAQ.
https://unity.com/pricing-updates

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024?
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. For more details on when the fee may apply to your game, see When does the Unity Runtime Fee take effect?

Who is charged the Unity Runtime Fee?
The Unity Runtime Fee will be charged to the entity that distributes the runtime.

 

[Mise]

Regarding the death threats they've received and they had to shut down offices for.

Anyways I'm still not interested in joining Unreal(why give the monopoly to Epic? Things will be even worse than it is now), as I don't make a million dollars and I don't have tons of downloads for the real shittery of this new policy to kick in, but holy hell do they bury themselves deeper and deeper.

 

[Karwelas]

Worth to remind this too!

 

[RobotSquirrel]

We now have a live updated list of studios in the boycott.
https://twitter.com/FuckedByUnity

Very appropriate name.

 

[Gargaune]

Err. no, their license actually said:
If the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms. The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1).

It's just that they now pretend that their license never said that, and deleted their github repository that contained the license and allowed you to track the changes.
https://www.gamerbraves.com/unity-s...s-of-service-changes-and-updated-its-license/

Okay, so that's the missing piece, thanks. Well, it seems cut and dry then, prior licensors can tell Riccitiello to sit and spin and new ones can go to the competition.

 

[Caim]

Who are these people.

Alongside the members of the 60s and 70s rock band the Literally Who there's the people behind Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, Slay the Spire and Among Us.