![]() ![]() Some say CEO John Riccitiello is just a habitual rake-stepper: He is, after all, the guy who said developers who don't monetize their games are " f-ing idiots." Unity presumably had some idea that people wouldn't like this, so why do it? This applies equally to Unity's reassurance that game developers won't be charged Runtime Fees for games on Game Pass because it's going to charge Microsoft directly: I respect the hustle but I think it's very unlikely Microsoft (or any other distributor) is going to start forking over money just because you said so. How likely is it that miHoYo, Niantic, and Blizzard will agree to fork over a percentage of their revenues (a much smaller percentage than Unity Personal users, yes, but money is money) based on a retroactively-applied contract rewrite? Indie game developers are at the forefront of this controversy, but Unity is also used in major hit games including Genshin Impact, Pokémon Go, and Hearthstone. Among other things, it says Unity will use its own "proprietary data model" to determine how many times a game has been installed, that early access releases, beta versions, and demos will count toward the installation threshold, that games that have already been out for years (and thus have likely passed at least one threshold) will be on the hook for the fee, and that for developers who feel they've been fraudulently or unfairly charged, "we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team." To put it mildly, that's not a statement that inspires great confidence.Īs bad as all this is, there's a good likelihood that it will get worse. That thread is not smoothing the waters-if anything, it's making matters worse. Unity eventually nailed that point down in an ongoing thread on its forums, confirming that developers will be charged again if someone who owns their game reinstalls it or changes their hardware. After Unity told Axios that developers will be charged for reinstalls of their games, for instance, a Unity employee said on Twitter that they would not be. Details about the changes beyond the public statement weren't provided, and conflicting clarifications that came out after that statement only served to make matters worse. ![]() (Image credit: Aaron San Filippo (Twitter))ĭevelopers also criticized Unity for not answering some important questions about how this scheme would work, or for issuing statements that conflicted others. Aaron San Fillipo of Whisker Squadron developer FlippFly said that willingness to trash existing deals for new cash grabs " it clear it’s not safe to work with this engine." The revenue threshold will be based on sales after January 1, 2024, when the new pricing system takes effect, but sales that occurred before that date will count toward the install threshold. Aaron San Fillipo, FlippFlyĪnother big issue is that Unity has made this change retroactive: It supersedes any existing agreements with Unity that developers may have made, and it applies to games that were released even before any of this happened. They've made it clear it's not safe to work with this engine. "Install bombing," in which angry users spoof multiple installs in order to rack up charges against a target developer, is a risk under this scheme, as is simple piracy the policy also calls into question how indie developers will want to deal with things like charity bundles and Game Pass, which can bring their games to very large audiences without the attendant revenue. That sounds like a lot of money, but as we noted yesterday, there are a lot of other factors that could come into play and cause real headaches for devs. For Unity Personal, the free engine that many beginning and small indie developers use, those thresholds are $200,000 earned over the previous 12 months, and 200,000 installs one those marks are met, developers will be charged 20 cents every time someone installs their game. The policy announced yesterday will see a "Runtime Fee" charged to games that surpass certain installation and revenue thresholds. The uproar is primarily driven by two factors: Unity is attaching a flat per-install fees to games that use its engine, and it's arbitrarily scrapping existing deals and making the changes retroactive. Joe Wintergreen, a designer and programmer whose recent credits include Weird West and Stray Gods, actually launched a website for developers who want to move from Unity to Unreal, called.
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