Board 8 > Unity plans to start charging devs per installation

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16hgmqm/unity_wants_108_of_our_gross_revenue/

Oof

https://twitter.com/unity/status/1703547752205218265?t=8CK9cvkHo4l8fCnY7QDXLA&s=19

Lol, we'll see what "changes" happen

Bane_Of_Despair posted...

https://twitter.com/unity/status/1703547752205218265?t=8CK9cvkHo4l8fCnY7QDXLA&s=19

Lol, we'll see what "changes" happen

What the fuck took them this long? It's way past the "too little, too late" point.

Just furthers the idea of unity against Unity. They need to fire a few suits, including the CEO, and get rid of this policy altogether, and even then they wouldn't be able to save face. Keeping it as is would bankrupt devs, as highlighted in GTM's post above, and that knowledge means nobody will use their engine any longer.

I repeat: The CEO knew this would generate a lot of negative press covfefe and sold his holdings in the company. The fact that he still went through it should cost him his job.

Unity has pretty much always been heading to bankruptcy - when they do, please dont think of this debacle as the cause.

Insolvency is the root cause that led to this. But lots of companies end up scrambling to come up with revenue after going public. Many succeed by making good choices despite the pressure. This was not a good choice. So yeah it's not the root of failure, but it's a bad fork in the road they went down.

Also, I don't know if this will cause them to fail at all necessarily. They will lose game devs, but they have already pivoted hard away from indie games to movies and bigger games. Those will stick around and they'll make decent money that way. They just won't be the default name you hear when talking about game engines.

https://www.humblebundle.com/software/everything-you-need-to-know-about-godot-4-encore-software?partner=wario64

BlueCrystalTear posted...

What the fuck took them this long? It's way past the "too little, too late" point.

Just furthers the idea of unity against Unity. They need to fire a few suits, including the CEO, and get rid of this policy altogether, and even then they wouldn't be able to save face. Keeping it as is would bankrupt devs, as highlighted in GTM's post above, and that knowledge means nobody will use their engine any longer.

I repeat: The CEO knew this would generate a lot of negative press covfefe and sold his holdings in the company. The fact that he still went through it should cost him his job.

I did some googling.

https://www.marketbeat.com/instant-alerts/nyse-u-insider-buying-and-selling-2023-09-08/

Unity Software Inc. (NYSE:U - Get Free Report) CEO John S. Riccitiello sold 2,000 shares of the business's stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, September 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $40.00, for a total value of $80,000.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 3,211,394 shares of the company's stock, valued at $128,455,760. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1193857/000181080623000163/xslF345X05/wf-form4_169420518678431.xml

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unity-software-incs-president-ceo-050515124.html?guccounter=1

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

So he sold 80k's worth, but the the 3.2m shares he still holds would have gone down by over $10m in value.

Not to defend him of anything, but I just don't think that particular accusation sticks.
I didn't do much googling on the other two execs who sold more earlier though.

wow unity is worth a lot

would be a shame if something happened to it

Sounds like there's money to be made shorting it.

https://twitter.com/Toadsanime/status/1703714817830211845

This opens up a lot of interesting problems with whatever the hell Unity's stance on charging for bundles this week is.

What if a developer wants to include a game in a charity bundle, assuming the install fee would be waived, only to be put on the hook for political biases? Gee, what are the odds that, say, a dev puts a game in a charity bundle to support Trans issues, then a group of internet troglodytes get all mad about it, spam Unity to protest, and then Unity caves and orders the developer to pay?

GuessMyUserName posted...

https://www.humblebundle.com/software/everything-you-need-to-know-about-godot-4-encore-software?partner=wario64

Suh-weet.

Grand_Kirby posted...

a dev puts a game in a charity bundle to support Trans issues, then a group of internet troglodytes get all mad about it, spam Unity to protest, and then Unity caves and orders the developer to pay?

without opening the article I'm going to take a stab that that's why the children's hospital "doesn't count" because it's "political"

GuessMyUserName posted...

https://www.humblebundle.com/software/everything-you-need-to-know-about-godot-4-encore-software?partner=wario64

Why yes, I love giving money to Wario64.

But do note the fine-print here:

Redeem your keys. All of the courses in this bundle are redeemed on the Zenva Academy website.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with them, I'm not familiar with them myself, but just know that the bundle will require registering at an outside site.

Grand_Kirby posted...

https://twitter.com/Toadsanime/status/1703714817830211845

This opens up a lot of interesting problems with whatever the hell Unity's stance on charging for bundles this week is.

What if a developer wants to include a game in a charity bundle, assuming the install fee would be waived, only to be put on the hook for political biases? Gee, what are the odds that, say, a dev puts a game in a charity bundle to support Trans issues, then a group of internet troglodytes get all mad about it, spam Unity to protest, and then Unity caves and orders the developer to pay?

Wow, wait until Unity learns about every single other charity

Waiving the fee for charity bundles was never gonna happen anyway though so this doesn't really change anything, it's just extra evidence for how generally shitty they are

New changes: Limited to 4% of total revenue for the game. Also, installs done before 2024 don't count towards the minimum before charges start, and the game has to make at least $1M. I'd say this eliminates most of the problems with the new system, since that's less than what Epic charges for royalties on Unreal...

Except that it applies to games made before this change was announced, which is very silly and probably illegal. Still, this is enough that it probably won't cause games midway through development to swap to another engine, which would likely be far more costly.

Is that official now? I did read that Unity was considering that.

It doesn't really matter what change they make, they've shown want they are willing to do.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

It doesn't really matter what change they make, they've shown want they are willing to do.

Of course it matters. This stuff makes a major difference to developers' and publishers' bottom lines.

TeamRocketElite posted...

Is that official now? I did read that Unity was considering that.

Not quite, they're still finalizing details, but it sounds like this is what it's actually gonna be (or they'll backtrack even more).

UshiromiyaEva posted...

It doesn't really matter what change they make, they've shown want they are willing to do.

Then again this is late stage capitalism, everybody is willing to do extremely stupid shit for just a little more money.

Companies need to lawyer up because there is a risk of this happening with any service providers.

https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-reportedly-considering-cap-on-hugely-controversial-per-install-fees

Seems likely, it's coming from Shreier's Bloomberg report, but that's paywalled.
Still find it weird how in an era of tech companies laying off people and trimming the fat, Unity's still got 7700 employees. Surely that number can be reduced.

MacArrowny posted...

Of course it matters. This stuff makes a major difference to developers' and publishers' bottom lines.

I guess I should clarify that it's not really going to effect any studios early in development or who are deciding on what engine to use for their game in the future. Nobody is going to pick Unity after this.

I imagine anything with a runtime fee at all will be a nonstarter for a whole lot of people.

Realistically the runtime fee is probably going to hit the max of 4% for a ton of people so this ends up looking pretty identical to the flat rate standard set by Unreal - just reached through a bunch of stupid backpedaling after loosing a completely needless PR disaster that literally anyone outside the C-suite would've known was going to be horrible.

The retroactive stuff is still really stupid and definitely feels like it exposes them to a bunch of unwanted legal attention - especially in Europe - so if they don't walk that back as well that'll really be something.

It's like they know that if they don't make it retroactive, then a lot of studios just won't use them going forward so they have to make it retroactive to get any appreciable revenue in the first place.

as someone who will apparently be a lawyer in exactly a month, I just want to say lmfao unity good luck in court

voltch posted...

Still find it weird how in an era of tech companies laying off people and trimming the fat, Unity's still got 7700 employees. Surely that number can be reduced.

I can think of a way to reduce it to 7699 at least

Right, but then you still have the people who appointed him and then you still have to find someone who can actually turn the ship around.

Who thinks it goes to 0 and when?
Lot of $$ to be made there.

GuessMyUserName posted...

https://www.humblebundle.com/software/everything-you-need-to-know-about-godot-4-encore-software?partner=wario64

Lame to charge for courses for an engine that is 100% free and has a ton of free resources online already

But you see, it's NOT lame to give money to Charity and Wario64!

And I guess Humble for their cut.

Looking at the yahoo ticker price history.
He was appointed EA CEO when the price was in the 50s and left with share value at around 17.
EA is currently at 120. Heck at at one point it was 11 under him.

Looking at other big publishers over the same period, they either went up or down by a lot less.

While I don't think it's fair to accuse him of insider trading, I do think it's very fair to question why they put him in charge in the first place.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/1/AABgm0AAE20h.jpg

Makers of the thirteenth best-selling game of all time coming out with money and a statement.

wow, thats very cool of them.

Wow, actual new Unity terms even better than the proposed ones. Fees cap at 2.5% of revenue and aren't retroactive to existing games. Feels like there'd be zero uproar if they had this from the start...

Yeah nothing about the new deal is wrong. The rev share is still not a slam dunk considering they charge a subscription, unlike Unreal, so it could still cheaper to use Unreal in some cases. But it's fine. The key thing is the pricing is not retroactive, so you can finish your current game on the current LTS for 2.5 years with the old pricing. That means they can (and most definitely will) raise the pricing later and you can still choose to opt-out by staying on the old version, within reason.

The other egregious thing they fixed is removing Plus, since now Personal seems to act like Plus was previously, except for free. That's nice.

And yet no one's trust has been regained. The current LTS pricing will expire in 2025, so the message is to finish your game and then learn another engine before 2025 so you can leave Unity behind. That's a fine result imo.