Unity Technologies has made a major change to how it charges developers for using its engine. Starting January 1, 2024, Unity will begin charging a fee for every time a game is installed, with fees dependent on which subscription to Unity a developer has. Once a game has surpassed a threshold of $200,000 in revenue and 200,000 installs and are in either the Unity Personal or Unity Plus subscription tier, a "Unity Runtime Fee" will be applied to the development team. Those subscribed to Unity Pro, which is a tier that Unity will soon be retiring, or Unity Enterprise, will instead be charged fees once a game has made $1,000,000 and has been installed 1,000,000 times.

Depending on which tier a creator is a part of, these new changes could see developers charged as much as $0.20 every single time a game is installed by a user after the threshold is surpassed. It has been confirmed that if an owner of a game were to install a game, delete it, and redownload it, it would cost the developer money, if they were already past the limit. This will also retroactively apply to already released games as well.

Smaller developers have expressed their concerns over these changes, with some concerned about how pirated game installs will cost them, the impact it will have on free to play titles, or that Xbox Game Pass installs will also count, and have the potential to see smaller companies put at risk because of it.

SIGH pic.twitter.com/YgJEKGVQEI

— AGGRO CRAB (@AggroCrabGames) September 12, 2023

Additionally, Unity's own CEO, John Riccitiello, sold 2,000 shares of the company stock just prior to the announcement of the new Unity Runtime Fees.

 

[Kioku]

THis is great.. It gets even better because they're doubling down on this change and acting like they're doing nothing that may cause damage to the world of gaming. Go off, king.. No, really.. Go off into the sunset and never come back..

 

[NinStar]

believe the license for Godot allows for monetizing your game. It's editing the source code of the engine that I think can't be profited off of directly.

No, this is not accurate. The MIT license is one of the most permissive and easiest licenses to understand, you can do whatever you want with the engine your only obligation is to include all necessary attributions (the copyright notice at the top or bottom of the license), and that is it.

 

[HarveyHouston]

Yes, you do not care how much money they will make, but they do. You see, companies NEVER EVER do things for the long run, ever. They are EXTREMELY shortsighted in order to fulfill those next quarter, half or annual markers so that they can say that "look at how much money we made", despite then shortly after seeing it all turn into ashes due to horrendously stupid decision making. It's always done like this, it's corporate culture, to just make enough money in absolutely ANY WAY POSSIBLE while you are the head, and then go off with as much money from said bonus as possible and then leave the company, or rather shall I say burning pile of ashes that is left behind, and have someone else carry the burden of fixing your intentionally bad decisions that you made.

And until consumers and developers alike punish such behaviour through regulations, we'll never see the end of it.

This is unfortunately very true.

 

[stanleyopar2000]

Wait what, what happened with Parsec now?
I've used it occasionally to play with some friends online, but never heard anything, like, negative regarding it?
Like, out of the loop/living under a rock here, uh

After Unity acquired Parsec, they tried to spin it towards a more corporate friendly business focused product…by removing the “gaming” focused Parsec Arcade from it.

 

[nWo]

Hope they pay the price eventually for this stupid decision. They shot themselves on the feet. Stupid fuckers.

 

[eyeliner]

I wish there were more options so devs could fight this

But they know they will get their money

There are loads of free game engines.
From Godot to GameMaker, Construct, GDevelop...

Unity has long been a tool that has had some severe optization issues.

If you really want to develop a game, just head over to Godot or GDevelop. GDevelop is dead easy, friendly and free. Godot has a steeper learning curve, but produces amazing results.

 

[linuxares]

I love how Godot searches shot up on google the last 24 hours

 

[James_]

Apparently Unity has already lost about $750 million in market cap.

Fucking amazing how much they've already sunk.

 

[Bladexdsl]

all this rage over 20c that's easily solved just charge 20c more for your games!

 

[nl255]

Afaik this monetization only affects big sellers. Like $1,000,000 revenue or 1,000,000+ installs.

So your average asset flip with 150 sales on steam won't really be affected.

It is trivial to reach 1 million installs if you can get a hundred people to set up a couple of VMs each that are constantly installing a pirated copy and then uninstalling and reinstalling it, only running it just long enough for it to count as an install.

Post automatically merged: Sep 14, 2023

all this rage over 20c that's easily solved just charge 20c more for your games!

Which does nothing against "install bombing" where a bunch of people set up a VM and some scripts to repeatedly install, run for 10 seconds, then uninstall and reinstall the game over and over.

 

[tech3475]

It is trivial to reach 1 million installs if you can get a hundred people to set up a couple of VMs each that are constantly installing a pirated copy and then uninstalling and reinstalling it, only running it just long enough for it to count as an install.

Post automatically merged: Sep 14, 2023

Which does nothing against "install bombing" where a bunch of people set up a VM and some scripts to repeatedly install, run for 10 seconds, then uninstall and reinstall the game over and over.

Even legitimate users could cost more money e.g. I own 3 gaming systems (desktop/laptop/Steam deck).

 

[DarkCoffe64]

After Unity acquired Parsec, they tried to spin it towards a more corporate friendly business focused product…by removing the “gaming” focused Parsec Arcade from it.

Oooh, I didn't know that, welp, that sucks ass, bah. And not the good kinda ass.
Guess at least you can still play local games online with friends... until I guess they'll ruin that too.

Gotta look up Parsec alternatives, lol.

 

[Guacaholey]

Afaik this monetization only affects big sellers. Like $1,000,000 revenue or 1,000,000+ installs.

So your average asset flip with 150 sales on steam won't really be affected.

They're also likely breaching contracts by trying to modify the agreement without notice. They're gonna get sued into Oblivion.

 

[IRUZZ]

They literally made that 4chan meme where a dude pirates a game and the company goes bankrupt a real thing.

 

[stanleyopar2000]

Oooh, I didn't know that, welp, that sucks ass, bah. And not the good kinda ass.
Guess at least you can still play local games online with friends... until I guess they'll ruin that too.

Gotta look up Parsec alternatives, lol.

What's sad is that the matchmaking and gaming functions work with Parsec....but there isn't a main hub anymore like what Arcade did...so its scattered across multiple hosted groups. (there's like 3-4 ragrag groups on Reddit) There was no reason why they had to remove Parsec Arcade.

Parsec Arcade technically still works....but they removed "Arcade" the hub to find players.

 

[rg]

Good luck getting this done in europe

 

[Jayinem]

This is the first time where the "pirated game installs take away money from innocent devs" argument could work...

How exactly can they know when a pirated game gets installed?

 

[linuxares]

How exactly can they know when a pirated game gets installed?

That's the thing. We don't know nor does the devs what use Unity. So will they implement a "call home" in all new unity installers? Who knows

 

[subcon959]

That's the thing. We don't know nor does the devs what use Unity. So will they implement a "call home" in all new unity installers? Who knows

Even if they did the crack would presumably patch that out? Plus doesn't everyone block cracked games in their firewall anyway? I really don't get how using piracy as a threat is going to work here.

 

[DuoForce]

I wish there were more options so devs could fight this

But they know they will get their money

Unity will only "get their money" if developers STILL choose to develop their games with Unity even after this ridiculous announcement.