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

[Glop_dweller]

So if a developer quits Unity, and closes their account; stops paying them... Does that affect the customer's ability to reinstall their game?

 

[sebas]

Those clarifications from Trese are overly optimistic. I have a PC, a Steamdeck and Mac I carry around. I also have a love-hate relationship with Star Trader: Frontiers.

 

[Crispy]

This brings up sort of an interesting conundrum.

What if someone, let's say for example Limbic, whose M&M X is still available on Steam, says to Unity Technologies that they can't afford to pay these retroactive royalties, and turns around and "blames" Steam for having the game even still available to purchase, or, more to the point, reinstall? Steam will, of course, laugh it off, which I guess would lead to Limbic demanding their game get taken off Steam, which then results in a new lack of income? How do you weigh that potential income vs. the theoretical number of times owners of M&M X will want to reinstall it some day?

This could have all sorts of bizarro implications.

 

[NwNgger]

I can not fathom the depths of retardation that caused this to happen. How did not a single person bring up "What would happen if someone just repeatedly installed and uninstalled a program?"? Not a single person? Even ole Bill Gates was talked out of limited installs for Windows Vista. Even HE fucking saw how retarded this would be. Someone at Unity must really want that company gone. And infiltrated it Eve Online style before destroying it from within.

 

[Tacgnol]

I can not fathom the depths of retardation that caused this to happen. How did not a single person bring up "What would happen if someone just repeatedly installed and uninstalled a program?"? Not a single person? Even ole Bill Gates was talked out of limited installs for Windows Vista. Even HE fucking saw how retarded this would be? Someone at Unity must really want that company gone. And infiltrated it Eve Online style before destroying it from within.

Someone probably did, but the retarded CEO didn't care or understand.

 

[karoliner]

Fucking dystopias man...

 

[Mise]

Trust me bro, I will figure it out, I know how stuff work.

 

[Avonaeon]

If this is retroactive, I imagine a lot of Unity games would disappear from Steam, like King Crispy 's example. One potential benefit could be more people going over to Godot and giving its development a boost, but it doesn't outweigh the negative of this baffling decision.

 

[JamesDixon]

Some clarifications.

Surprise fees sounds like raping your ass to get to your wallet.

 

[Spectacle]

Steam could include the Unity runtime as part of the steam client. That way Unity games sold on steam could technically be "DLC" for the steam client rather than separate installs. Or maybe someone else could make a "base unity game" that everyone else could hook into.

 

[ultra loser]

Is it not possible to disable the telemetry shit in jewnity? Or what happens if you block their servers, the game won't install?

 

[deuxhero]

I can not fathom the depths of retardation that caused this to happen. How did not a single person bring up "What would happen if someone just repeatedly installed and uninstalled a program?"? Not a single person? Even ole Bill Gates was talked out of limited installs for Windows Vista. Even HE fucking saw how retarded this would be. Someone at Unity must really want that company gone. And infiltrated it Eve Online style before destroying it from within.

My first thought was how uninstall/reinstall would work if that really was based on installation.

Another question is "Doesn't this make every Unity game defacto have DRM that needs to call home after install?" Physical releases of PC games still happen as LE things.

 

[Azalin]

My God,how it possible for the people at Unity to be this retarded?

John Riccitiello at the helm.

Eh,never mind

 

[Eisen]

Time to switch to Godot, I guess.

A shame that GDScript is a mediocre language and C# integration is weird

 

[deuxhero]

Steam could include the Unity runtime as part of the steam client. That way Unity games sold on steam could technically be "DLC" for the steam client rather than separate installs. Or maybe someone else could make a "base unity game" that everyone else could hook into.

Nah, Steam should just say "Starting Jan 1st 2024, we'll be charging Unity Technologies $0.25 per installation of a Unity engine game."

 

[Bohrain]

Who would've known that John Riccitello was going to be the man that made Godot popular.

 

[Spectacle]

Who would've known that John Riccitello was going to be the man that made Godot popular.

I thought we'd be waiting forever..

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Wow. Just fucking wow.

Implementing this retroactively is most definitely legally unenforceable, and Unity is going to be in deep shit if someone calls their bluff and actually takes them to court over it.

 

[Fedora Master]

I hope this kills Unity and consequently all the utter trash that gets made with it.

 

[lycanwarrior]

Aren't the Pathfinder games by Owlcat made with this engine?

 

[RobotSquirrel]

This is so gonna get fucking botted. What an absolutely brain dead decision.
You've basically made every product made with Unity always online and taken even more decisions away from game devs. How the hell is offline play going to work if the engine phones home?
And you've also pretty much destroyed the idea of fair free to play titles, they'll have to aggressively monetize it now.

What a disaster.

 

[gabel]

Oh, who could've thought the entire industry mainly relying on 2 engines might backfire..
lel

 

[Viata]

Already looking for a job in some chinese "install/uninstall" farm to destroy some triple A devs.

 

[Gerrard]

Reading that title made me remember one former EA CEO who suggested charging players for in-game ammunition. Spoiler alert: that guy is now the CEO of Unity. You can recognize these retards by their MO.

So like The Hunter did?

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

An "Install" also means EACH TIME a game gets streamed (like from stadia) or brought up in a web browser. So If I streamed a game 5 times/sessions, it would cost the dev 5 times.