Devs React To Unity's Newly Announced Fee For Game Installs: ‘Not To Be Trusted’ 

Quote:Unity, the cross-platform game engine that powers games like Rust, Hollow Knight, and Pokémon Go, has introduced a new, controversial fee for developers, set to take effect next year.

The new Runtime Fee, announced in a September 12 Unity blog, is based on the number of installations a game built with the Unity engine receives, as well as the revenue it generates. Though it won’t start until January 1, 2024, the Runtime Fee will apply to any game that has reached both a previously established annual revenue threshold and a lifetime install count.

This is nightmarish.

If  you're a hobbyist, now's the time to get into Godot Engine, if you can, the most viable and well-supported FOSS alternative to Unity. But, obviously, it's not Unity, and this is going to be nightmarish for people in the industry.

https://twitter.com/cultofthelamb/status/1701715971663425897

Quote:Buy Cult of the Lamb now, cause we're deleting it on Jan 1st. ?

https://twitter.com/InnerslothDevs/status/1701731398498013575

Quote:We use Unity to make [Among Us].

This would harm not only us, but fellow game studios of all budgets and sizes. If this goes through, we'd delay content and features our players actually want to port our game elsewhere (as others are also considering). But many developers won't have the time or means to do the same.

Stop it. Wtf?

Friends have informed me of something very interesting about this:

Unity bosses sold stock days before development fees announcement, raising eyebrows

Quote:Unity executives sold thousands of shares in the weeks leading up to last night's hugely controversial announcement it will soon charge developers when one of their games is downloaded.

Behind the scenes, CEO John Riccitiello shifted 2000 shares last week on 6th September, as noted by Yahoo Finance, which noted this move was part of a trend over the past year where the exec has sold more than 50,000 shares in total and bought none.

Several others on Unity's board of directors also sold shares in the past few weeks, including president of growth Tomer Bar-Zeev who sold 37.5k shares on 1st September, for around $1.4m. Shlomo Dovrat, meanwhile, sold 68k shares on 30th August for around $2.5m.

https://twitter.com/ScottTRichmond/status/1701631419125276721

Quote:Pretty cool to see #unity execs performing actual insider trading by selling shares mere days before the obvious shitshow that is now the pricing structure changes.

And an interesting story from last year:

Unity CEO apologises for criticising mobile developers who don't prioritise monetisation

Quote:Earlier this week, Riccitiello was slammed for stating that mobile developers who don't seek to squeeze monetisation from their smartphone games represented only "a very small portion of the gaming industry", calling them "the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people" that were also "some of the biggest fucking idiots".

something i find interesting from the flash dev side of things - apparently this is all too familiar for them

https://twitter.com/jmtb02/status/1701981161692774726

Quote:why are veteran Flash devs saying "oh god not again?"

In 2012 Adobe announced a 9% fee on net revenue (over $50k) for using hardware acceleration + other modern features (especially those geared towards console/PC development)

Many flash devs made the move to Unity

Adobe will charge a royalty for use of “Premium features” in Flash Player

Quote:Adobe has announced that from August 1 2012, developers who make use of hardware-accelerated Stage3D in Flash Player, in combination with Domain Memory, will pay a 9% net revenue share as royalty. Net revenue is what remains after taxes, payment processing fees and “social network platform fees” (sounds like Facebook) are deducted.

this sounds like it would be lower-impact than the unity changes, but i remember hearing one time from a flash developer presentation that a lot of flash developers made a lot of money. according to a somewhat dubious source (below), some flash game websites back in the day (kongregate and armor games come to mind) gave developers money every time someone played their game

[Necro] how much money does a person make on armorgames?

Quote:The developers that don't work for Armor Games get ad revenue they receive from their games. Every time someone plays it they get a little bit and it adds up over time. An example would be Kongregate, I've submitted a flash game on there and I've received a dollar or two in ad revenue, but I only get about 40 cents of that because Kongregate takes some, the game I submitted has about 300 plays.

You can make a living off of being a developer, but your games have to be good. Or as some people do on Kongregate, submit a whole bunch of small flash games to get revenue.

Quote:As a developer, I can confirm that Armor offers a great deal for developers and are very easy to work with. If it has an Armor logo in it, then Armor has paid the developer hard cash. No exceptions. 

apparently there is a page detailing sponsorship pay rates for armor games, but web archive is very slow right now and i cant grab it

Among Us dev predicts install fee "concessions" instead of reversal after call with Unity

Quote:In an X thread posted last night, Willard explained he "just got off a call with Unity" and claimed "the vibe of the meeting was that there will probably be more concessions for developers." Notably, he added there was a sense the company is currently unwilling to fully back down. As a result of that conversation, Willard said he's going to set up meetings with other platforms after Tokyo Game Show. 

Sharing more details, the Among Us programmer said Unity seems to think the situation will blow over if it convinces a large portion of its userbase that they won't be affected. Yesterday, the company issued a clarifying statement to explain that less than 10 percent of devs would be impacted by the new fee, and claimed charges incurred by titles on Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus, and similar subscription services will be paid by distributors—so, in this case, Microsoft and Sony.

If anything, this has made me want to pick up game dev (with Godot or something else non-Unity) again.

I also recently learned that apparently making indie games for the Game Boy is easier than ever, but I haven't looked much into it. It was something I really wanted to do as a kid, though...

This event is almost a fond memory for me now because this is what finally reignited my passion for programming. Thanks Unity for fucking everything up so bad I fell back in love with making video games!