Unity backtracks, no runtime fee for sub $1mil or for games on current/old versions
An open letter from Marc Whitten to the Unity community in September 2023.
They're still scumbags though
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This is what they wanted to do from the beginning. They just boundary tested to see how far people would let them take this.
This is still a step backward, its just a step backward fewer people are going to push back on. But the issue is that if it is allowed, theyll slowly introduce more download tracking over time.
I do think that's just standard practice these days with "bad press" moves, but I don't think this is what Unity wanted. They never expected to have to move it as far back as they have, nor did they expect the loss in trust, which was really stupid of them, frankly. They really thought their dominance in the industry was enough that clients essentially wouldn't have a choice other than the shit options dictated by Unity and only Unity.
But not only was that dominance proven extremely fragile (and now heavily fractured), they just put themselves in the very precarious position of having to entice back clients after essentially hitting them in the face and daring them to go somewhere else. Any smart person/company isn't going to willingly leave themselves reliant on Unity ever again.
This also could be their original goal, but they tried to pull the "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" and then dialed it back to try and make it not seem as bad.
Like when the justice system adds on a bunch of superfluous charges in order to make their primary ones stick.
I guarantee their original goal didn't include "and now only stupid clients will work with us", which is my point.
Yeah, those corporate types usually can't see past their next quarterly earnings report.
The fact remains that this playbook failed rather drastically, earlier this year even, with the D&D Franchise making similar headlines, and it wasn't even enough to give them pause.
I really doubt it. This seems like a pretty typical corporate leadership fuckup and walk back. I've seen it enough from the inside to know the real source is management just being greedy and stupid, not some devious multilayered plan.
I dont really think "see if we can get away with this and if not, try to get away with a bit less" requires 7 dimensional chess level thinking. More like its a CEO's default state.
It's just much more likely that they massively overestimated what they could get away with and were surprised they couldn't. They were almost definitely scrambling here when the bad press and reactions started.
The situation and plan is shitty either way, but your case implies a level of intent and competence that I'm really skeptical about. Much more likely they figured all the app cash cows would grumble but mostly accept it after some mild pushback. Really unlikely they expected it to become front-page tech news everywhere.
