Developers fight back against Unity’s new pricing model
Developers fight back against Unity’s new pricing model
www.theverge.com Developers fight back against Unity’s new pricing model
The fight between Unity and its customers is escalating.
56 comments
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If you look closely, you'll notice the Unity logo is constructed of 3 arrows, all pointing in the directions that their user base is going
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This. Who in their right mind is going to develop their game using Unity after this? Their only revenue source from the point forward is going to be games already published.
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The game developers affected by Unity’s new pricing model are striking back. A collective of developers across 19 companies, mostly based in Europe and mostly developing mobile games, has put out an open letter urging Unity to reverse course on its recently announced pricing model changes. The letter contains some of the same sentiments expressed by other developers this week but with one big twist.
“As a course of immediate action, our collective of game development companies is forced to turn off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization across our projects until these changes are reconsidered,” the letter read.
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That's wild. Good for them.
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Too late, the damage is done. A lot of people are getting off the Unity bandwagon.
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Yep. Even if they reverse course, they can't be trusted not to make a similar retroactive change in the future.
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I'm actively avoiding unity games and unity development, so there's that. Can't put that genie back in the bottle. They massively fucked up.
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I don’t understand how unity has any legal standing to retroactively charge new fees to developers who have already made their games. You’re only required to abide by terms agreed to in a deal as it was written at the time of agreement. Isn’t that literally how EVERYTHING works?
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Even in their old TOS they said if you didn't agree with any future TOS updates they could stay on their current version and the old TOS applies.
But obviously they deleted that part in April, which makes this much worse and most likely illegal.
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Unity doesn’t give out perpetual licenses any more, it’s a subscription model. If you don’t like it, you can leave at any point in time, but then you also don’t have a license to distribute their engine along with your game.
The problematic part (for Unity) is that they used to have a clause in the contract that said that you could keep using the old license terms as long as you didn’t update the engine. They removed that last year, but developers who are using an older version than that should be able to have a chance at the court. The problem is just that small indie devs don’t have the money for this multi-year legal battle.
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This feels like Reddit all over again. There's no saving it, their CEO has long touted the "gotcha removed!" approach to extorting money from users and called people who didn't "fucking idiots". This is all he knows.
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Let's boycott it until October 1st, that'll show them! /s
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God what a useless fucking gesture.
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I feel proud of myself that I left that sinking website, never to return. It always sucks when CEOs have their heads stuck so far up their own asses.
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So far the most popular games ive seen pushback from are Slay the Spire, Cult of the Lamb and Darkest Dungeon. Those games also have the benefit of dedicated fanbases. Those people will easily follow them.
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Follow them where? They've made their games in unity. If unity sticks to its guns, those studios are fucked.
Time to go open source. Godot, etc. But, that could take a LONG time to rewrite.
I feel for them.
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Slay the Spire in their statement specifically said theyre looking into other engines. I meant that if said games were ported the audiences would follow.
They didn't say it but I'd assume for Spire they're looking at Godot.
Honestly wouldn't be surprised if we see developers make tools to more easily port over games to Godot from Unity.
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I swear Cult of the Lamb said their goods delete it come Jan 1st.
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The thing that’s crazy is there are some Wall Street analysts who are more bullish on Unity in our current context, which is hilarious to me, because given how they’ve (perhaps illegally) pissed off so many different and critical parts of their ecosystem, the only clear trajectory I see for Unity at this point is down.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
“As a course of immediate action, our collective of game development companies is forced to turn off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization across our projects until these changes are reconsidered,” the letter read.
Beyond monetary concerns, developers are also angry because the new pricing represents a breach of transparency Unity established with regards to its terms of service.
The action caused outcry in the community, and in response, Unity reinstated Improbable’s license and committed to keeping users informed for future terms of service changes.
According to an email reviewed by The Verge, a Unity representative acknowledged that the company’s ad monetization programs had been paused for an app and remarked that it was likely because of the new fees.
“The new regulations from Unity will affect every project that doesn’t generate sufficient income per user,” said Nikita Guk, CEO of PR firm GIMZ, who organized the letter.
“Pushing developers to either migrate to alternative game engines or place even greater emphasis on monetization, at the expense of creating immersive gameplay experience.”
The original article contains 893 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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Is there's a way to know the game engine of the games I have on my Steam account?
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If you go to a game on Steam, find the gear icon, go to Manage and select Browse Local Files...
For most Unity games you will find a file called "UnityCrashHandler..." executable right in the folder that opens.
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Not easily, but if you become a game developer you can start to tell at a glance. Unity games have a very specific type of jank and look + feel. (So do Unreal, Source, and Godot games.)
Even if a game is highly stylized, a Unity game always "feels" like a Unity game. Kerbal Space Program, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, Pokemon Go, Cuphead, Untitled Goose Game, Cities Skylines, Valheim, etc. It's a combination of physics, shaders, and input latency that's hard to put into words.
The closest I've come to seeing a game that breaks out of the "made in Unity" feel is Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, which was made in Unity but pretends to be made in Source (the original Stanley Parable was made in Source).
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I hope this will have an impact.
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Unity engine sucked anyway
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We'll definitely be seeing more variety in output, hopefully, going forward.
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Honestly I agree. If you are building a game with the same mechanics of other games that already exist its fine. Once you reach a point where to need access to the engine code itself to make something a reality, you are fucked.
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56 comments