The Demise of the Unity Game Engine

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00:00 - intro
00:42 - The Unity Drama
01:06 - Unity's old pricing model
02:55 - Unity Runtime Fee model
10:03 - Unreal Engine and Godot
11:12 - Why did Unity change their pricing
11:45 - How would Unity change their pricing
12:53 - Customer perception
17:09 - As an indie game dev, what will I do
17:57 - a morale hit
Recently, there has been a lot of Unity drama. As a solo indie game developer, I thought it was important to give my perspective on things.
For context, Unity Technologies, the company that makes the Unity Game Engine, announced a new pricing model.
The new Unity Runtime Fee charges game developers per additional install of their game after reaching differenet thresholds.
These thresholds depend on which Unity license you have (either Unity Personal or Unity Pro).
Due to the inaccurate nature of trying to count installs, many game developers announced their opposition to this new pricing model.
Because my current game is being developed in Unity 2D, I’ll likely finish developing it in Unity. But for future projects I will definitely consider Unreal Engine or Godot. Godot has especially caught my eye!
Let me know what you think of this Unity drama and the new Unity Runtime Fee!
#unity
#gamedev
#unity3d
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Пікірлер: 382

@jonathantreleven1823 9 ай бұрын

Technically, the police found out the so-called 'death threats' to two Unity offices were actually sent by the Unity staff themselves. This tells me that either that there is a major divide from the developers and higher-ups that some of the staff is lashing out or that the higher-ups ordered the staff to set up the death threats to gain pity points from the public. Either way, you should not give sympathy to Unity, they don't deserve it nor your attention or loyalty. 👎

@joeldelica8706 9 ай бұрын

The ones that are trying to be "sensible" and "moderate" got played by this so called "death threats". I sincerely hope they felt a bit of an ass from this "sympathy baiting".

@elhazthorn918 9 ай бұрын

Unity's even trashier than before, trying to act like the victim while being the instigator and villain.

@Karak-_- 9 ай бұрын

I wouldn't be surprised. I can imagine a few software enginers in that company being mad that no one is going to use the tools they spend time and blood creating, because the higherups are asking an unteasonable prices.

@darkguardian1314 9 ай бұрын

When the exec sold there stocks ahead of the announcement they were also screwing investors. SEC should look into Insider Trading of the company.

@paulcasanova1909 9 ай бұрын

Crazy how this whole fiasco made Godot go from not viable professionally on your resume to genuinely viable lmao

@scarm_rune 9 ай бұрын

i hope it won't stay like this because Godot is NOT ready yet

@zefellowbud5970 9 ай бұрын

@@scarm_rune "yet" the influx would probably result in faster progress in its tools and features. that said yeah definitely not "yet"

@Voyajer. 9 ай бұрын

@@scarm_rune Why not?

@assaulthetz 9 ай бұрын

@@scarm_rune Well..... People would or will probably going to assist or at least the sheer mass of numbers will force Godot to BE ready.. at least they're not alone, but we'll see.

@twenty-fifth420 9 ай бұрын

@@scarm_runeThis is an unattainable ideal that people need to stop saying. It is really dumb. There is no such thing as a piece of software being ‘ready’. Because it is both subjective and arbitrary. You can say this with literally any piece of software, both FOSS and not. This comment might as well read “I don’t know anything and I don’t like change.” Sorry if this is harsh, but if we were to judge software for being ‘not ready yet’, I would judge it based on general stability and capability, not something subjective like when is it ready like an egg about to hatch under incubation. Hell, I think Adobe is not fucking ready, their software is a glitchy mess, it is a CPU and RAM hog and yet it is the industry standard even with all the bugs. I don’t actually mean this, since this is a subjective opinion, but that is my point. No thanks, I will stick with Resolve and Blender. Not like Adobe products work great on Linux anyway…

@mickjayplays 9 ай бұрын

"I don't think it went how they planned..." Considering that their entire c-suite and a bunch of others sold and have been selling stock right before this all went down, it went EXACTLY how they planned. This looks more and more like a plan to sink the stock so they can buy it up cheaply and have near/total control to do whatever they want long term.

@anoukk_ 9 ай бұрын

Insider trading!

@dreamhollow 9 ай бұрын

That's hilarious considering no one's going to want to use Unity after this breach of trust. Looks entirely more likely this is a "pump and dump", or rather a plan to completely destroy a company and get out rich.

@Wolfrich666 9 ай бұрын

considering we are talking about the same CEO that wanted to charge money for virtual ammo, i believe its just plain stupidity and out of touch behavior.

@angelainamarie9656 9 ай бұрын

Instead they've prompted a mass-migration and probably the rise of Godot and the increased dominance of UE5, and who knows what else? Red Hat Linux went bonkers a couple of months ago and caused a bunch of people to pull out of THAT dev community too. It's like a corporate disease going on.

@michaelscalia7080 9 ай бұрын

@@Wolfrich666 From what I've heard, many of the higher-ups have done some form of insider-trading before, so it's actually plausible for this to be chalked up to malice. We're also getting word from devs that they voiced the very same qualms we've been, but months ago, and they just went right on ahead with it anyway.

@AvanToor 9 ай бұрын

Also, as a solo dev you DON'T want to be afraid of going viral and blowing up.

@ignaciosuarez9732 9 ай бұрын

if it's a genuine worry, you cannot afford to release freemium games using Unity you need to be able to guarantee that the income per install at least pays the fee

@digiross7199 9 ай бұрын

On day 2 of this debacle i stopped development on a soon to be released mobile game and stopped my prototyping my dream game. I've switched to Godot and have loved it for the past 3 days. Never going back. Staying with unity would be like staying in an abusive relationship and we all know how that turns out.

@romainbiou 9 ай бұрын

Hi, I just start to do my dream game to, since 2 month. And I stop every think last week with this new. I was desapointed and i search a solution. I think about UE and Godot. It's hard to choose. You think Godot it's Ok for professionnal game ? I see game like Halls of torment or Brotato but I want to do a game with more finished design style, what did you think about ? And what about your adaptation ? It's easy to pass from Unity ? Have a good day ! Thx !

@armandostockvideos8386 9 ай бұрын

I don't know, Godot seem to be inferior to Unity and Unreal in terms of performance, especially for 3D games, I'm still on the fence about switching to godot.

@digiross7199 9 ай бұрын

@@armandostockvideos8386 in some ways your correct, godot 4 just officially came out about 4-5 months ago and the 3D performance and features are vastly improved over godot 3. As far as dev cycle godot is in its infancy compared to unity. With all the new devs on board lots of new.changes will be coming. A new official terrain editor is. Eing worked on and an asset store

@arabkittysupreme 9 ай бұрын

@@romainbiouthe engine you use is highly dependent on what type of game you want to make. If it's 2d use Godot or gamemaker (to publish a gamemaker game you need to buy the subscription for a month) but if it's 3d definitely go with UE. I'm not sure on the transition from Unity to UE but the transition from Unity to Godot is very easy. You can even use c# in Godot if you want but I recommend just learning gdscript bc it's simple and more up to date in Godot as an engine.

@ResidentWeevil2077 9 ай бұрын

@@armandostockvideos8386use Source Engine KEK

@Boss_Fight_Wiki_muki_twitch 9 ай бұрын

Unity is doing a great job ensuring the success of UE5

@WhatWillYouFind 9 ай бұрын

Better to root for open source Godot and other alternatives than the same corporate suits that helped make gaming horrible.

@fabiodx2 9 ай бұрын

Don't go UE, they are awfully quiet about this, more than sure they will do te same after unity

@jboadas 9 ай бұрын

20GB download on Linux keeps me away from UE5.3

@user-tp5yb4hr4w 9 ай бұрын

@@jboadas that's really not that much these days.

@PanduPoluan 9 ай бұрын

@@user-tp5yb4hr4wNo, but Godot's full package clocks in at less than 100 MB. Which only shows how bloated UE has become.

@TheNullNumber 9 ай бұрын

This is the next "horse armor dlc" test. Let it in now and it will only get worse. It's not about the cost, it's about intent.

@elhazthorn918 9 ай бұрын

I still resent the people who said "well you don't have to buy the armor!" Look where their complacency has us now.

@WeeWeeJumbo 9 ай бұрын

It’s so painful to look back and always see that in every case the worst thing you feared would happen is what *has happened*

@nutboy3162 9 ай бұрын

You know it's bad when my dad who doesn't even follow the games industry said that their new tos is bs

@DonC876 9 ай бұрын

I think we need to pull a Blender on Godot. Blender has become such a good program with an amazing ecosystem of addons and a hefty amount of funding through individuals and big studios. It's equally good and in some areas arguably better than Max or Maya. We (the community) have to accomplish the same thing with godot, and then we'll never look back to the days where we all developed with unity. It might take quite some time for it to get to that point, but i think Blender demonstrated that it's possible. An open source game engine, funded, supported and owned by the game development community.

@ChuckyMaster 9 ай бұрын

Exactly

@elhazthorn918 9 ай бұрын

With the number of studios leaving Unity, I think it will be inevitable Godot grows in leaps and bounds from here.

@hanniffydinn6019 9 ай бұрын

I 100% concur! Hope godot becomes the blender of games! 🤯🤯🤯

@larkendelvie 9 ай бұрын

All Indie devs need to be sure to include the cost of accountants and lawyers into their budget when they start having success. This just makes it more critical to do this early. The worst part of all of this is that they want devs to trust them to calculate the 'installs'. That is not how business works. The Unreal engine relies on customers to report their revenue and pay their royalties with Unreal auditing this reporting annually. My understanding is that this is the standard method for paying royalties. For Unity to promise they will calculate this brings up so many red flags of what kind of spyware they now have in the runtime. It just seems like they decided to publish a half baked idea that wasn't passed through all the hoops. They really should have made sure all their communicators understood the plan since all of the flip flopping explanations are really stupid.

@PhuckEwerself 9 ай бұрын

Well it is being ran by the former CEO of the company ranked the worst company in America for the years he was in charge.

@tylerbreau4544 9 ай бұрын

TBH I think part of the problem is publishers and platforms. There is trade-offs but from my understanding, the devs themselves trading significant portions of profit. Correct me if I'm wrong but... Publishers handle marketing and the logistics of getting the game to consumers. They also staple their branding on the game. This use to mean higher quality bigger games. In return of their resources, they obviously want to profit off of the game. With the platforms like steam, app stores, console app stores, selling your game there also takes a significant cut of profit. Of course in the past, there was the cost of doing business with retailers. Still based on numbers from other youtubers, I'm hearing that devs only see like 50% (give or take 10-20%) of the revenue... Before having to pay their own employees. The actual people building the game. It very much sounds like a trickle up economy. Now unfortunately, the visibility that comes with using established platforms, especially platforms that are designed around distributing video games like Steam, is extremely powerful in generating sheer quantity in sales. Such a thing may be extremely difficult to avoid or work around. Publishers handle a lot of legal work and logistics and perhaps even translating to other languages, but really I wonder how much work they are saving and the total cost of that work. Besides, many publishers are extremely greedy and don't necessarily care about the game. They care about shareholders. Combine with extremely predatory contracts between dev studios and the publishers that sometimes comes up... Things like the publishers owning the IP instead of the people who actually came up with the idea and made it. On top of dependency on the publishers giving them power to basically force devs to add certain kinds of monetization, not that it's always the publisher. Sometimes a higher up in the dev studio might want the same monetization anyways. Either way, going without a publisher is likely difficult, but I do wonder if what they provide are really worth the cost that dev studios pay - Independence, revenue and profits, and security of their own IP.

@jackstrife3821 9 ай бұрын

Wow, very ignorant take.

@bobsmith8510 9 ай бұрын

@@jackstrife3821are you trying to be unhelpful?

@natam1616 9 ай бұрын

godot

@dreamingacacia 9 ай бұрын

I heard the threat was from the employees there. So the employees are also not getting on board with this decision.

@captainpawpawchannel 9 ай бұрын

They have nothing to say in a capitalist system as they don't own the company

@fumetsusozo 9 ай бұрын

Yeah somehow he didn't hear the full story on that part. The threats were indeed from workers within the company itself.

@Vastin 9 ай бұрын

Given that all their jobs are at risk if the company goes under because of one imbecile at the top who's so detached from reality that he thought any of this would actually fly - I can't image that many of them went along with this idea internally.

@ResidentWeevil2077 9 ай бұрын

@@Vastinanyone in their right mind wouldn't agree to what Unity intends on doing. And with the massive amount of backlash resulting from this mess, Unity is effectively dead in the water. No amount of backpedaling would ever help regain the trust that Unity broke. Yes, this truly is a case of "late stage capitalism". I'm all about making money, but not at the expense of everyone else who helped grow the foundations of a business and company.

@Vastin 9 ай бұрын

@@ResidentWeevil2077 This is the part of capitalism that I despise. It's a great system in many respects - but this point where a company's executive incentives can become so completely divorced from what their consumer base wants or needs, or even what's remotely healthy for THEIR OWN COMPANY is a devastating indictment of the economic model. I remember in the 80's where there was a phase where 'vulture capitalists' just destroyed companies one after another because they could make a few million quick bucks off of the corpse of an otherwise perfectly functional company worth far more than that - just because it a quick way to make money for themselves personally. Still happens of course - this might even be a case of that here.

@ajonescouk 9 ай бұрын

I'm only a hobby programmer working on a little game project. I'm sure Unity don't care about me as I'm unlikely to make them much money. Very familiar with business apps on C#, though. This whole thing has made me convert my progress so far to Godot and I'm loving what I'm seeing.

@ParGellen 9 ай бұрын

The threats were investigated and found to be done from someone inside Unity. Probably the CEO himself trying to save face.

@armandostockvideos8386 9 ай бұрын

it was an employee in social media, I think it was mentioned in an official police report.

@elhazthorn918 9 ай бұрын

@@armandostockvideos8386It would suck to be Unity's social media person right now. I sympathize with them, even though they did make that threat.

@Ei-mx1we 9 ай бұрын

While I feel for the devs who were trusting enough to go with a commercial engine in the first place, I think this is a net positive for the game dev community. Perhaps the best thing that's happened in awhile. So many people are gonna start sticking to open source software to prevent ever being screwed over again, and that software is gonna get such a development boon. Godot was already making massive new improvements even before this. God, it's so satisfying to watch those corporate lizards shoot themselves in the foot this hard.

@robinvegas4367 9 ай бұрын

I'm betting the gatekeepers are gonna head straight to Capitol Hill and cry about "safety violations" from this evil, unregulated thing called open source.

@reznovvazileski3193 9 ай бұрын

I think the majority will go with unreal 5 though since epic has an incredibly favorable program for small studios trying to get into game development as well as their engine. But yeah Godot will get a massive boost as well compared to unity just slowly increasing their chokehold on the market.

@AR-ym4zh 9 ай бұрын

I'm a SWE student and was just getting ready to hop into Unity. Nope. Lol. Was looking for an excuse to learn Godot instead anyways. The difficulty with console ports, current levels of adoption/ease of finding learning resources, etc. pale in comparison to the level of stupidity I'd display by learning/using Unity after this clusterfuck. Possibly the worst business decision I've ever seen a company make.

@tysonvienneau1830 9 ай бұрын

Just remember, the three triple A Titans have games in Unity. This goes through, Unity will have not one, but three giant corporations against them, and they're not going to be kind And one more thing, that death threat? It came from one of the workers IN the offices of Unity. The only reason they sent that out was to garner pity from people. Truly they are scummy

@Katie-hj5eb 9 ай бұрын

Yeah you basically said what I was expecting. Which is that devs will finish their unity project because its to costly to switch mid development, but won't go back to the engine for any future projects because of the volatility. Im sure many many will do the same.

@liquidsnake6879 9 ай бұрын

Nobody can take you to court over a policy change that applies retroactively but which you were not made aware of when the installs in question took place, if Unity attempted such a lawsuit, it would be thrown out in minutes. However, they can block your Unity account unless you pay which is likely what would happen. You can then sue THEM over again, retroactive billing of things that were not agreed upon when the games were originally released, again you'd have a very high chance of winning such a lawsuit, but this can definitely impact any game released after the policy change.

@Vastin 9 ай бұрын

Yeah, the lawsuits regarding this change would be thick and furious - and no question that MS, Sony, and likely Valve would be there in the mix, given that they are somehow supposedly on the hook for install fees thru their platforms despite the fact that they agreed to NOTHING regarding any of this.

@macdaddymario 9 ай бұрын

@@VastinDont forget Pokemon GO is unity. Nintendo may have to suck it up and throw its weight around for the good of the industry this time.

@Vastin 9 ай бұрын

@@macdaddymario Yeah. This whole thing is... it's just insane. That's pretty much the only word that encompasses it. I don't get it.

@landonp629 9 ай бұрын

Correction, they CAN take you to court. You can file a lawsuit for anything you want, warranted or not. They are unlikely to win, but this could still costs thousands in attorney and court fees. If they file a lawsuit, bad or not, and you don't respond - they win by default, even if they had no standing.

@LurkingCrassZero 9 ай бұрын

Unity is finished. Even if they reverted to the original model of pricing, the trust is completely gone now.

@terrykrugii5652 9 ай бұрын

What Unity was hoping for (probably): Devs would see this change, upgrade to Unity Pro to avoid fees, start charging customers on a PER INSTALL basis (think the old EA computer disc model where you got only so many imstalls per disc before the disc was useless, but worse). What actually happened: Devs started shopping for new game engines en masse, shut down/push back projects that were already being built on the unity engine until they could be properly ported to their new engine of choice, start pulling games off of platform stores, generally getting the attention of gamers, developers, AND publishers. And overall making themselves into the new anti-christ of the gaming world that everyone in this space can get behind on shitting on.

@terrykrugii5652 9 ай бұрын

@@user-uq2ko4jq2v i know for a fact they did, I owned a copy of Spore and that was one of the things I griped hard about to my friends

@ghb323 9 ай бұрын

@@deadmeme897*graphics card*

@camelm3istr 9 ай бұрын

Godot said they’re looking into adding console support.

@ignaciosuarez9732 9 ай бұрын

it's not so simple though consoles have the closest paradigm to software to exist in the retail consumer market, they will have to compromise parts of Godot or interfaces to be non-FOSS to be compliant to console licensing

@aquageist 9 ай бұрын

On top of the free->pro pipeline, they've also been having their account managers offer up to 100% install fee waivers for devs who switch over to Unity's ad service from their competitors or were already using it. I think that's their actual plan. Use their lucrative side service and put ads in your game, or else pay the install fees.

@syriuszb8611 9 ай бұрын

To be accurate: "Use their lucrative side service and put ads in your game, or else *go bankrupt* ".

@elhazthorn918 9 ай бұрын

Which is super scummy of them.

@augustday9483 9 ай бұрын

"Nice game you got there, would be a shame if you got install bombed and went bankrupt from these fees. Tell you what, since I like you so much, I'll just waive these silly little fees if you do something for me. Don't worry it's nothing important, just need you to install some telemetry and spyware into your game and we'll make all these problems disappear..."

@Alche_mist 9 ай бұрын

Fun thing is, I'm also in the TTRPG space and guess what: Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast did basically the same (similar ploy fueled by corporate greed, similar community outrage and backlash, similar radio silence, similar trust destruction) with basically the same outcome. Turns out, sh!itting on nerds' heads seems like not the wisest company choice.

@dominikyszkowski7663 9 ай бұрын

I'm no game dev (hopefully yet) but i can't imagine now trusting Unity that they won't think of other dumb sh*t in the future... Living in a stress that one day they come and tell somone to pay them millions just because.

@infinity6010 9 ай бұрын

I understand him

@Vysair 9 ай бұрын

embrace godot engine

@yawarapuyurak3271 9 ай бұрын

I have a RTS/RPG game that I've been making on Unity for 3 years. I was like "fuck it", I ain't compromising my baby for this shit. I'm now learning "RPG in a box", an engine specialized on RPGs made with Godot (a game engine made with a game engine lol). Recommend it for beginners. I'll make a demo with it, testing features and playability of it all. And if I feel limited, I can always go to Godot, which is Open Source.

@dominikyszkowski7663 9 ай бұрын

@@VysairI actually am :) since a while im messing in GODOT and I'm happy because i was hesitating awhile back which engine should i tackle and learn and I'm happy with my choice .

@tohrruu8308 9 ай бұрын

Even as a developer that wouldn't hit the thresholds, it just puts into question how far they will go. It's $200,000 now sure, but what's to say they won't start charging per install at $100,000? $50,000? $10,000? $0? I just can't trust their judgement or motives at this point so I've started making the switch to Godot.

@stickguy9109 9 ай бұрын

And also like having limits bugs me. If we had that back then I wouldn't have choosed unity. I know I am probably never going to reach that threshold but I keep going dreaming that maybe someday I will. If you take that away from me I have no reason to stick around

@deathofthemagi 9 ай бұрын

Quick correction, when they say this applies retroactively, they do not mean past installs are being counted. What they mean are that games that are already released or are already in development will also get this new per install pricing from the point that it goes into effect. This is important because previously the unity TOS said that whatever version of unity you build your game with, you will be bound by the TOS that correlates with that version of unity. They have removed that which is what we mean by applying it retroactively, they changed the contract that we signed up for. And yes that is scummy and is the reason i am moving to UE but it is important to not spread incorrect information

@Paltse 9 ай бұрын

Their publicist will be on the curb soon for not communicating better.

@thedude7319 9 ай бұрын

techno feudalisme belongs where old feudalisme lies, 6 ft under the ground and in the past

@zackmackeil3754 9 ай бұрын

I would definitely say that some of the employees at Unity disagree with this move since that threat that closed those offices down came from an employee, and it was the only threat. No one outside of Unity actually threatened them...They lied about it, and got the media to lie for them as well (though in the Media's defense they were probably just told what happened by Unity and wrote it assuming it was true)

@macmcleod1188 9 ай бұрын

Which you should never do. The media should have said, "show us the police reports" and then followed up on them.

@zackmackeil3754 9 ай бұрын

@@macmcleod1188 if you were looking for someone to disagree with that I'm afraid you're out of luck lol. I'm mostly trying to abide by Hanlon's Razor: it probably wasn't malice, it was probably incompetence.

@macmcleod1188 9 ай бұрын

@@zackmackeil3754 It's a good principle along with Occam's. And nope-- don't tend to seek disagreement tho I won't shirk from it.

@anoukk_ 9 ай бұрын

I personally also don't like that unity tracking me with every game install

@MisterNightfish 9 ай бұрын

Prior to this whole debacle I had no idea John Ricc-whatever was the CEO of unity. But once I learned this fact, I was surprised he didn't charge people for every line of code earlier.

@astout6494 9 ай бұрын

I just started my game development journey and I enjoyed Unity until this. Im just going to switch to unreal

@thatHARVguy 9 ай бұрын

You know those web browser games built on Unity? If you refresh the page that's considered an "install". Hell, just loading the game is an "install".

@Kate_Hanami 9 ай бұрын

they need to go into damage control mode, the damage already is done, so they need to start mitigating immediately the ship already sailed, so they need to focus on surviving the trip because the ship is already half-way sunk

@_fawkes 9 ай бұрын

The ship needs to sink. And maybe some years down the line, either a better company takes over Unity or some ex employee releases the source code and makes Unity open.

@Kate_Hanami 9 ай бұрын

@@_fawkes you didn't paid much attention, did you? the ship is already sinking and they need to focus on surviving the trip now

@billbill7187 9 ай бұрын

When it comes to the death threats people are often leaving out that it was one of their own employee making the threat (not that its alright, but i think that also has to be mentioned as well)

@elhazthorn918 9 ай бұрын

It definitely changes the ecosystem. Unity's trying to look like the victim here.

@billbill7187 9 ай бұрын

@elhazthorn918 yeah, it either shows that the changes were so unpopular that an employee became deranged, or they tried to distract everyone with a hoax to cover themselves, distract the public, and play the victim. Either way it's bad, and I'm not sure what's worse (I guess the former is better since nobody was actually at risk, but still)

@Midicow 9 ай бұрын

Revenue isn't net income. You have to first take into account all the pyramid of taxes and fees and salaries and such. Then you get what the company is actually making.. and its after THIS point where the install tariff kick in and takes money from the developer, making it a significantly larger actual portion (or sometimes even more than what they can expect to make, putting them into debt to unity).

@wacky.racoon 9 ай бұрын

me: laughing from homemade game engine with unfinished game for years... edit: also crying

@Wolfrich666 9 ай бұрын

now is a good time to try Godot.

@centdemeern1 9 ай бұрын

Godot is actually working on getting better console support going

@scarm_rune 9 ай бұрын

how about they fix the buggy mess godot is first?

@elhazthorn918 9 ай бұрын

I agree. Godot CAN export to consoles, it's just a rigamarole, needing to apply for console SDKs and stuff. And getting another company to help you with that means a huge chunk of money to them.

@jwarendsen 9 ай бұрын

Your half right about the short term gains I think, they just want to have a few profitable quarters so they look more appealing to sell themselves. To either a Microsoft or an Apple (who are all in on Unity for their headset.)

@martenkahr3365 9 ай бұрын

Nah, all the C-suite people in Unity have already been regularly their stocks in the company before this announcement for the past three-ish years. If this is about manipulating stock price, then the idea is probably to either short their own company (which will probably end with not just criminal charges but also the other shareholders suing their pants off) or to crash the stock really low so they can buy up a controlling interest when the price bottoms out. More likely though, what they were really looking for was to blackmail indie devs to package their ad malware into their products in exchange for waiving the runtime install fee, so they start getting value from buying that malware developer for something like 4 billion a few years back.

@Vastin 9 ай бұрын

I mean, the problem isn't just this fee - it's that you're working with a 'partner' who think's it's acceptable business practice to change their entire pricing methodology on existing licensees and finished products. Like, that isn't ok in any world. There's literally nothing stopping such a company from saying: "hey, you know what? We've decided that install fee should be $5 per install, effective 5 seconds from... now." OR " Hey folks! You'll all be excited to know that all existing and future games powered by Unity Runtime now feature a 75% revenue sharing plan!*" (* no exceptions or opt outs - revenue shares will be calculated on all prior revenues earned since 2020.) I mean, they just indicated that they can and will change the rules unilaterally AND retroactively at a whim so there's nothing stopping them from going for broke - particularly with whatever developers still remain on the platform after everyone else has fled. Those developers will have proven themselves to be inescapably 'locked in' if they're willing to take this sort of abuse, so there's pretty much no limit to how much Unity would be able to kick them at that point.

@joshstormin6580 9 ай бұрын

My game engine indecisiveness came in clutch this week

@tylermansmann2843 9 ай бұрын

You pointed out the fact that they seem to be aimed squarely at mobile games, and I think this is VERY intentional. Unity bought a mobile ad company and wants people to switch to their ad platform over competitors by forcing them to do so for a fee waiver

@zee6506 9 ай бұрын

unity forgets the only reason they have customers is because of good faith and accessibility. We have other platforms like Unreal Engine, lumberyard (Which, if you've played star citizen, you know can do a LOT), and even more specialized engines like voxel that are making great progress. I hope they roll back these fees but if I'm being honest, our company will take our business to Epic Games after our current project is complete. It's not very comfortable knowing unity can pull a rug from under us at any moment.

@CasperNotGhost 9 ай бұрын

Can't somebody just make a system that will constantly create new device VM and install a game on it and remove the vm, in a loop? This will cost game devs a lot of money

@Tomas-yg1xz 9 ай бұрын

Pretty sure you can. Or you could just capture the auth messages that are being sent out during an install and send a bunch of them with fake randomized data. Much easier and faster than constantly installing a piece of software.

@anoukk_ 9 ай бұрын

20 cent's is just wayyy too high per runtime. It should cost the runtime spammer significantly more money in terms of power usage than the fee they are gonna add to the devs bill. Runtime does not cost that much to run.

@zirconiumdiamond1416 9 ай бұрын

Would probably be more involved than that. The runtime doesn't phone home, so they are probably getting installs more like how Nielsen ratings are collected, where a subset of people are chosen to see what games are installed. Merely creating new machines and installing won't do anything. However, unlike Nielsen, they almost certainly won't be reaching out to individuals to sign them up. Instead, they are probably going to get the data from a data broker, who gets the data from some spyware that tells the central server all the programs it sees, and then some factor is applied that relates the sample to the full population. So, when you create your VMs, make sure to install them with as much adware, dodgy system utilities, and social media apps as possible.

@RiftTraveller 9 ай бұрын

I have heard that publishers have taken notice too. A lot of the industry has come to a halt to see what happens next.

@xSkittlesxNewbx 9 ай бұрын

If people accept it, then everyone else will do it to the consumer, the key is, is to go cold turkey on it, and have nothing to do with unity, which would send the message that it won't be tolerated, but, I may only dream, for we as people, are nowhere near united, dedicated, or persistant enough to go through with anything that would actually help us, instead we'll moan and complain as it happens while paying money for it, and start a never ending cycle of allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of.

@RiftTraveller 9 ай бұрын

@@xSkittlesxNewbx A lot of indies and mobile developers seem to be uniting. I haven't heard anything about the biggest players though.

@Ladywizard 9 ай бұрын

@@RiftTraveller There's a reason we have a nickname for Nintendo lawyers of ninjas....

@petersmythe6462 9 ай бұрын

Unreal and Unity are both digital vampires. The difference is that one has a flat % tax bracket that's easy to understand, and one has a fee which is a highly variable % that changes by orders of magnitude depending on monetization method, price, platform, piracy, installation method (especially for pirates), user, pirate or even third party outrage (reinstall API bombing), and whether or not Unity's proprietary algorithm decides "fuck this gams in particular for no reason."

@petersmythe6462 9 ай бұрын

Oh, and regarding the ability to contest the install count: 1. What makes anyone think Unity will give them a fair trial? Unity has already said they believe their algorithms to be accurate and that the developers are the ones who have to appeal with evidence if they disagree. Translation: all of the burden of proof will be on you, the developer, to prove that certain installs are not legitimate. 2. Why would we expect Unity to respond fairly and quickly to such appeals with a real, unbiased, competent investigation by humans rather than just having a bot that replies and pretty much dismisses 90% of cases.

@eleven0624 9 ай бұрын

I'd like to point out, based on wording so far (which is not complete) they will not allow games to be eligible to upgrade the license they were made on. From the language of the retroactive component, if you extrapolate that, once you use the personal threshold you will be stuck with it.

@johnnyfatsacks5209 9 ай бұрын

Unless they specify those thresholds as 'per licence' I wouldn't count on stacking licenses.

@blankadams3120 9 ай бұрын

Ah, yes, the threats of violence against Unity... that came from the office that got shut down temporarily.

@Konitama 9 ай бұрын

Cult of the Lamb devs were joking about deleting their game

@pushthebutton4602 9 ай бұрын

You forgot to say that it was a Unity employee who threatened Unity employees on Social Media. It's a big difference if it had been a Unity customer. They want us to feel sorry for them, there they post it as if it was a customer who did it.

@elhazthorn918 9 ай бұрын

Yes, this is an extremely important point! Unity is trying to look like the victim, despite being the instigator and villain.

@nwotyzarc 9 ай бұрын

I'm a solo game dev and was making a f2p mobile game with unity for the past 2 years. I even quit my job 6 months ago to fully focus on the development and release it next january. But now I will risk going broke, if I get too many downloads and reach the revenue threshold, but my average income is

@sean7221 9 ай бұрын

Porting over to Godot isn't an impossible task, Caves of Qud Developer did it in 10 hours

@Hex-kt2vr 9 ай бұрын

With regards to all of your efforts, this is a good lesson to keep in mind - never put all your eggs in one basket. Learn alternative programmes for situations like this.. apply it anywhere in your life.. its much less stressful. good luck and keep going!

@doksher4771 9 ай бұрын

Great video! Thanks for the thorough explanation.

@sundercats685 9 ай бұрын

This has nothing to do with Unity and its impact on the game world but more a tale of insider trading. Follow the stock, look who has it and who sold it off before this OBVIOUS debacle. Lawsuit, ppl.

@Dherkin_McGhurken 9 ай бұрын

16:52 Well if Unity didn't want threats they should tell their employees to stop making them, lol.

@Dacamster101 9 ай бұрын

0:49 - Note to self: when future me is curious about the market share and comes back here to see changes.

@papasalvo 9 ай бұрын

Wait hold up......ITS RETROACTIVE!!!!!!!

@SeanForeman 9 ай бұрын

A sane look at the unity situation. Well done

@rmt3589 9 ай бұрын

0:06 I can't tell if you said "milk" or "melt", bit both are applicable.

@rafalfaro 9 ай бұрын

Don't forget Unity personal now will require internet connection every 3 days

@themaster8432 9 ай бұрын

I must remind people that its not Unity devs who are to blame.. Its the leadership, specifically that asshole that previously worked for EA and also did this kind of crap there.. If they fire him, retract and leak all of the interactions with that sleezbag to the public, then I think they can be forgiven.. Dunno bout you, but I would love to see corruption, greed and evil getting punished, rather than holding a grudge against the innocent devs, who are just doing their jobs.

@user-FucXYou 9 ай бұрын

Door in the face technique. Present a unrealistic offer that the client won't accept. Then present a second offer that is more reasonable than the former.

@gc3k 9 ай бұрын

It's an unfortunate turn of events, but I don't agree that it's a net negative. There really isn't much to Unity's appeal that you can't get elsewhere, except "it just works." And now that it no longer works there's a mass exodus to Godot, Unreal and other engines. Unity will be forgotten in a year

@zZiL341yRj736 9 ай бұрын

Same vibe with the announcement of Xbox One, you buy the game but loaning it to your friend requires a payed code.

@sekaiology 9 ай бұрын

How would it work for WebGL? Nobody really installs anything that way, just caches the game if enabled.

@jamesverner9132 9 ай бұрын

What if we don't pay? What do they plan to do next? Dear government our bullshit didn't work. Make like a Pinkerton and shake them down for us.

@savage5757 9 ай бұрын

I wanted to add Castlemancer to the wishlist, but I saw that the game does not support my native language, changed my mind

@DmitryTomat 9 ай бұрын

My language is not there either, even in text form, even in the game menu

@darkguardian1314 9 ай бұрын

16:50 That was a Unity employee making the threats. Games journos and Unity are making it look like gamers did it. Worse no correction in this video regarding it. Remember Linus…

@akumaking1 9 ай бұрын

Boycotts everyone!

@corneliusfrylinck4254 9 ай бұрын

Might be going exactly as they planned, before the whole ordeal the CEO and a few other high-level executives sold a lot of shares, so it seems there's a bit of insider-trading there. Also the CEO cause EA to become what they are now, so no way Unity would hire him expecting anything else

@Akab 9 ай бұрын

16:50 those threats supposedly came from one of their own employees

@floramew 9 ай бұрын

Didn't several of the C-level folks sell a bunch of their shares like a week prior? I've heard so many allegations of insider trading like dang

@seyproductions 9 ай бұрын

I like the game that was being played in the background at around 5 minutes, especially the visuals of the ice spell cards.

@scottpelletier7095 9 ай бұрын

Unity may have also uncorked a can of worms for the end recipient of their "runtime". Someone with 50 games installed made in Unity,,,why would they have needed to install 50 piecemeal runtimes.

@donwald3436 9 ай бұрын

There is no long term thinking when the CEO earns bonuses quarterly.

@maxwellsmart3156 9 ай бұрын

"Fiscal obligation to share holders" meaning CEO does everything in his power to raise share prices to get their maximum bonus. Usually layoffs to bolster the bottom line. I suppose when you have a 50% market share you either squeeze the customer, try to increase market share, or try to increase the market. The laziest thing to do is layoffs and squeeze the customer base but this also risks destabilizing the very thing that made the product successful in the first place and could backfire. Lesson learned is not to get locked into a product.

@bigedwerd 9 ай бұрын

Maybe I'll go back to XNA. Those were the days.

@ByteOfMichael 8 ай бұрын

I've always wanted to try and learn XNA but was immediately confused haha

@bigedwerd 8 ай бұрын

@@ByteOfMichaelyou could always try FNA 😂

@dalfifran7572 9 ай бұрын

This is outrageous scheme, it goes further to the future *"You own nothing and you shold be happy"* in many aspect of our world today. It shouldn't matter how many people "install" and using it, the game devs already bought the software to use it. Imagine if Adobe charge Mr. Beast video per view on KZfaq because they create it using their software such Adobe Premiere and After Effects. Or if Microsoft charge user based on how many people read their document created in Microsoft Words. It's Effing INSANE! Anyone shouldn't be OK with this and the road it's going.

@reznovvazileski3193 9 ай бұрын

It bears noting that it matters a LOT what they define as a "new device". How do they track which device is new or not? Because here in EU we have a lot of countries using dynamic IP which results in a metric fkton of services and websites and even triple A games sometimes, to ask me to relog and redo the security check even though I told them to remember me. Because the different IP makes them think it's no longer the same device because that's how a lot of companies cheap out on checking what is and isn't a new device. Usually it's a minor inconvenience for me. But this will cost these devs millions if Unity tracks "new device installs" like this because every re-install in a dynamic IP household will count as a new install at that point.

@lifeon2wheels86 9 ай бұрын

What do you think of GamemakerStudio2?

@draftingish4833 9 ай бұрын

There is no way for Stacking, or else teams of 3 or 4 wouldn't care. Plus its the merger they had with the Advertising Company, They are pushing people on their platform instead of a competitor, and giving them a sweet heart deal to use their advertising services instead of a competitors so you wont get hit by a fee that used to not exist.

@Kedde1788 9 ай бұрын

What game is running in the background at 3:38?

@senormarston 9 ай бұрын

They must do a u turn and cut the bs. We need competition and Unity is one of the most popular; get their shit together and don't try to screw consumers. If we allow, corporates will always f**k us in the ass every chance they havr

@avgjoesgamin9935 9 ай бұрын

the CEO will be forced out by the board before this ever goes into effect.

@jackochainsaw 9 ай бұрын

With regards to Hearthstone, if they really don’t want to pay that unity fee they can migrate it to another engine. Lots of big titles could do this.

@ghostface9894 9 ай бұрын

Yeah, that is completely disgusting. I am not a game dev myself and I want to start, and just seeing this is absurd. I'm glad I am not interested in unity anyway. Forcing people to get a certain plan is just plain greedy.

@HalkerVeil 9 ай бұрын

Something people should consider before choosing a new engine is that Unreal (Epic Games) can do the exact same thing at any time.

@ssokolow 9 ай бұрын

As a player who cares about the developers whose games I buy, this makes me glad that my policy was already to buy single-player games DRM-free and then install and run them sandboxed off from the Internet to ensure the copies I'm archiving won't do something like crashing on startup if Unity ever goes bankrupt and the analytics servers go away.

@7th_CAV_Trooper 9 ай бұрын

Unity, "this is fine."

@HalkerVeil 9 ай бұрын

They actually wanted to kill AppLovin since they own IronWorks. And instead they killed themselves.

@petersmythe6462 9 ай бұрын

>Someone pirates your game. >Doesn't have a user account so needs to a fresh install every update from piracy site. >They have 2 machines and always install 3 times on each because they play with a lot of mods. >After 30 updates they finally pay you $15 to get a user account because you added multiplayer and an ingame mod manager in the vanilla game and they're tired of doing all that manually, plus multiplayer is awesome and most servers require authentication. >Net loss of $21 on user who pirated AND bought your game.

@vincent-rz1pr 9 ай бұрын

The tone is too cheerful

@saadiftikhar3317 9 ай бұрын

People still have brains. Sanity prevails

@blunderingfool 9 ай бұрын

Hey, to clarify, Vampire Survivors JUST finished an engine swap not too long ago... to unity. And then this whole thing happened. The dev is looking at doing another engine swap on account of the support they've seen since release. Personally, I'd be going after Unity for damages.

@ignaciosuarez9732 9 ай бұрын

on the bright side they must have it as ready to swap engines as it gets

@rxjtc 9 ай бұрын

You missed talking about Unity waiving the fee if a game developer switches to their ad platform away from a competitors' (e.g. Applovin).

@potato051489 9 ай бұрын

Hey fellow Game Developers, remember that cool-hip game you made 5 years ago and could have made somewhere else. Well we've calculated the installs you earned from when you first made the game, oh and those super fun DLC packs- welp, those are also installs. Quite a pickle huh, don't worry we've got you covered. We've decided to pull your game from our servers and any stores until you pay us what's owe. Remember, your success is because of us.

@maryayala7698 9 ай бұрын

So just never report revenue

@czjmaster 9 ай бұрын

My name is JJ, I'm the founder of MoonMiningHe3 and I have a question. What about a situation where we use the Unity engine, but the game is in a browser, we have a different earning model, we don't make money from selling the game but from selling NFTs for the game. This is a new technology on the blockchain where players can monetize their time in the game. Thank you and greetings from the Moon 🚀🌒

@DeadlyDan 9 ай бұрын

It's not just bad for small games. It's bad for budding developers who are just getting started out with a view to eventually going pro when they have a revenue stream. E.g. I have to use personal because i've not released a game and don't have the funds to pay for Unity Pro, this will mean it's a essentially a tax for being a start up... It's anti-entrepreneurial and favours big and established game developers.

@Hossimo 9 ай бұрын

You forgot Unity Plus, which I used for years. Then on the same day as all if this then retired it for Pro. So now i either pay 4x more to have the splash screen removed, or move on... i chose to move on.