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
Nothing they do at this point will bring any of the goodwill back. They already messed up and no amount of walking it back is going to change the perception that they might just do it again at any moment
1,000%
I'm a year into developing my first game though and this means I don't have to abandon all the progress I've made. After I publish this game, all bets are off as to where I go...or should I say where I godot.
Have you explored what level of effort it would take for you to convert it to use another engine? There are a TON of tools people are making to assist with porting projects from Unity to any number of other engines. Sure, the tools won’t do 100% of the work, but by what I’ve been hearing, they take a HUGE amount of the tedium out of the process.
Aye. I’m not waiting for godot.
And pointedly, there was no mention of acknowledgement whatsoever of their sneaky license modifications from months ago that a bunch of people discovered after the fact.
Unity’s execs and board do not fucking care. Their opinions have not been changed. They will certainly try something just as scummy at some point in the future. It’s only a matter of time.
They don't need good will, unfortunately. They just need devs to not abandon it for Unreal or some other engine, and the cost/benefits calculation on that is going to be made by short sighted people on a project-by-project basis.
Which is exactly why anyone in a position to do so should still drop Unity like a hot potato, sunk cost or not. We can't condone this kind of behavior.
Ah, the ol [trust thermocline] (https://web.archive.org/web/20230403081519/https://twitter.com/garius/status/1588115310124539904)
I won't trust Unity with any of my future projects until I see the heads of their entire upper level management team on pikes.
Even that wouldn't bring me back. There are simply other options. Godot's good so long as you aren't planning of a console release. If your are then Epic are no angels but they haven't pulled this crap with Unreal.
If they open source their engine then at least you wouldn't need to trust them.
Give it two weeks, no one will care anymore
So future versions of the engine will still have these awful price changes? Why would anyone start using them then? Seems like if you have a choice, it's time to learn a different engine anyway
If they had just made it a 2.5% revenue share for the high-revenue games in the first place, I doubt even many game news outlets would've covered it, let alone "real" news. Now, after the massive dustup and pissing off all their customers, falling back to that may be a bit more difficult.
Sub 1 million is not going back, they are just reducing the scope. Unity is dead
Exactly. Somebody needs to explain to them what “backtrack” means…
Don't trust it. Even if it was a dry run, the only way to prevent this happening in the future is to abandon the platform completely. Fuck these people.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.
A few things:
the W reference was so early 2000s.
It's a classic
On a related note, I heard somewhere that the reason Bush “messes up” that quote is that he realized mid sentence that he didn’t want a sound bite of him saying “shame on me”.
May just be a rumor though.
You had me going until the first blunder of the old saying. Oh GWB², your antics paled in comparison to today's Trainwreckublicans.
This company will be dead in three years. No one will pin their livelihood to this engine after this
Exactly. This isn't some wack subscription fee for a game, they're directly attacking the livelihoods of industry professionals. Many studios were already having a hard time seeing the value in unity over unreal anyway. Now it's an easy choice.
As for the company... idk. I'd be surprised if they completely go away. I suspect either the company or the engine tech will be bought by Microsoft, or some other company, at some point.
I wouldn’t be that optimistic. It’ll be a less attractive engine for indie devs and smaller companies, but it’s their enterprise customers that bring in the lion’s share of the revenue, and it takes a lot more to move them. To them, it’s purely a business decision. They didn’t even notice the drama, but come the q1 2024 fiscal report they’ll notice the supplier’s cost increased, have an investigation done if any competitors offer a better deal and what the retooling and retraining costs would be, observe keeping with Unity will be significantly cheaper, and life will go on. I sure hope Godot can take over the indie scene though, that would be amazing.
Fuck Unity. Drop that shit. No love to any company.
All my homies hate Unity.
No for real though, I’ve met some genuinely excellent people in the Godot discord
Ongoing projects will probably not migrate engines as it's prohibitively expensive & time consuming, but only a really clueless dev would start a new project in Unity. I guess it's kinda the perfect scheme for a cynical short-term "investor" who's just trying to pump company revenue then dump their stock, as the results of this may not be fully realized for a few years.
Worth noting - Unity still showed utter contempt for Devs and gamers. They're still public enemy number 1.
If you're working on a game now, switch to an alternative like Godot.
I would, but I'm still waiting for it.
Any game developer that chalk this up as a big win and go back to business as usual as if nothing happened last week deserve to get rugpulled again in a year or two. Just the fact that Unity as a company is in a financially questionable state alone should be a blaring alarm to ditch the platform. Scumbags that tried to fleece game developers are still there collecting paychecks with zero consequences. Every Unity developers should have a plan in place to migrate away from the platform as soon as possible.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
Fuck Unity.
"We're sorryu it didn't work this time, we'll work harder to make sure that the next time we try again, we'll do so in a more insidious way that boils the frog slower"
Oh the damage has already been done. Trust is a hell of thing. Gained in inches and lost in miles. Let this be another cautionary tale for the rest of them.
Yeah. I imagine the only ones that will keep using Unity at this point are either the devs that are too lazy to learn something else. Or the devs that already developed games using Unity, and now that the deal is reasonable will probably keep those games on Unity, but will switch to a different game engine for any future projects.
So its still there. Just only for more succesful games.. lol
What a fucking joke
Unity Backtracks No they didn't, they updated the terms
Trust was broken. I would have hardly batted an eye if this is what was planned in the first place, but of course the greed got the best of that company at the risk of its entire customer base. Since the backtrack, Unity might have a chance at keeping its existing customers, but I'd discourage anyone new from using Unity at this point.
It still doesn't return the broken trust or conformation that the people running Unity are insane, but this is a good move and devs don't need to alarmingly port their current projects to other engines.
I want to start with this: I am sorry.
Translation: damn, we really didn't get away with this.
The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond.
We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using
Good. This is how it should've been from the start. If they bake that into the license I think people will be comfortable staying on Unity for the time being.
For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month. Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.
Also good. It should've been revshare from the start. I still don't understand how they would trust self-reported numbers but we'll see.
These are good changes. The damage isn't undone but at least current Unity devs won't be thrown under the bus. I still think they should switch to something open source in the future but they get a lot more time to decide now.
Yep, this is good as in won't rail someone already developing or have developed something on Unity, but it has a lot of "and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddlesome kids!" energy to it.
I still don’t understand how they would trust self-reported numbers but we’ll see.
Because this was primarily about mobile. And because they can sanity check by looking at home many "installs" are reported by Apple and Google. I'm convinced that's half the reason why they did the weird move of basing this on installs and not purchases (the other half or so being that they needed some way they can get more money from the bajillion free-to-play mobile games out there that Unity dominates)
And they can sanity check SOME numbers being reported by Steam/Sony/etc though console and PC matter less to them.
Also - how are they currently getting metrics for game revenue that they'd bill off of? Seems like a lot of self-reporting would be happening there too? And enforced with contracts, etc.
I still don't understand how they would trust self-reported numbers but we'll see.
This is just how this stuff works. Unity already operates with some self-reporting reliance (although afaik they don't even require a report on the personal license), since the different tiers have a maximum revenue cap before you must upgrade. Software audits are a thing, and trying to skirt them by lying on your numbers is an easy way to get fined or sued.
Every single thing they wrote there is anchored on "trust us" and trusting them is what we used to do until they broke that trust, massivelly so.
So far they have done zero to restore the trust: their entire reaction has been to pull back on the face of the massive pushback and there is not even genuine remorse at having tried it - they purelly adjusted their demands in response to the reaction, rather than show true regret, make amends and make sure people have at least some way of trusting it won't happen again.
It's like the bully that's about to punch the little kid on the face for his lunch money and a teacher appears so has to stop. He didn't "learn his lesson" and nothing has happenned to convince him to "never do it again", so he's just going to try it again at an occasion when it looks more likely to succeed.
As others pointed out, the current CEO and board at Unity must go and a legally ironclad guarantee they can't try this again needs to be put in place before any serious game developers are willing to risk using Unity again.
These are a lot more reasonable terms, but remember that the people who designed the outrageous policy is still very much in charge at that company. They'll keep pushing to see what they can get away with, they just fucked up by pushing too much at once instead of building up to it.
Or push too much so when they "backtrack" they still get some of what they wanted.
I had a feeling this would be the case. It's the new scummy thing to do. Set your prices ridiculously high, sparking outrage. Then, backpedal a little to quelch the unruly and everything just goes back to normal.
Unity is now scum.
The weird part is that the 2.5% royalty fee isn't even outrageous. it's literally half of what Unreal takes. Sure Unity also has the licensing fee for pro and enterprise packages, but for any company making +1mil in revenue the licensing fee is a non-issue. This is all speculation but I imagine if they had originally come out with the 2.5% deal (I'm excluding the "initial engagements" part because that is still fucking stupid IMO) you'd hear developers be grumpy about it but there wouldn't have been any widespread outrage. The reasoning is what I already alluded to, Unreal takes 5% under the same conditions. In that sense I very much doubt they were trying to do the "door-in-the-face" technique, the second offer is too reasonable and the first offer was too insane. They knew how insane the initial offer was, their engineers explicitly told them it's a horrible idea. Those same engineers gave their resignations when the management decided to go forward with it anyway.
I also doubt it's going back to normal either. It'll seem normal for a while because there are plenty of games in development (or being supported) right now that use Unity, but I imagine the gaming industry will slowly turn away from Unity, unless Unity does something to regain the trust of their customers.
I hope developers move away anyway.
An apology, to people like this, is just the thing that lets you get what you want, despite doing what you want.
That's all it is. Just an annoying little ritual they have to do for some reason.
Lol, imagine grabbing your customer's head, blasting a massive fart in their face, and then trying to say, "Just kidding! Just kidding!" when they get pissed off and leave.
Unity can get fugged.
Fuck that.
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.
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.
Unity or not Unity, I have some important questions to ask. What was that allowed them to make such a move? A flawed license? A flawed law? Is there anything that would prevent other similar companies from doing exactly the same thing? We can hate Unity all we want and abandon it (I encourage it myself too) but isn't the underlying problem still present?
I'm not a lawyer, I don't know the answers. Anyone more knowledgeable here?
Everything depends on a subscription now, so you are always one TOS update from being fucked. With enshittification setting in, I'm expecting to see this move pulled over and over. Just wait till AWS tries it. Or WordPress. Could singlehandedly tank the internet.
Protest works, people.
I’ll still never trust them, though, and am working on transferring my projects elsewhere.
No, this was the plan all along
The CEO has been selling stock and now he is going to buy it back for a profit.
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unity-software-incs-president-ceo-050515124.html
More corposcum lies.
That section of the TOS was removed in 2023
Are they moving the goal posts and then only putting them partially back when called out?
Not great but it is nice to see people actually say the words "I am sorry" when they fuck up as oppose to skirting around an apology.
its not nice. Stop being stupidly naive. Theyll just try again another time.
In case you haven't noticed yet (I mean, just look at modern Politics), words carry no emotional load for sociopaths.
They're tell you whatever they thing will better get you do to what they want, quite independently of them believing it or not.
Saying "Sorry" means zilch for these people.
I don't think they can come back from this. Everyone knows they will try again, just slow enough to not make big headlines. Unity is just too risky now that they showed their hand. I mean, its a former EA executive FFS.
If they didn't completely delete the new fees, they can still eat shit.
Well, this seems like a relief since it may mean that games that have been released already or are works in progress won’t be greatly affected. Hopefully it means that more devs will move from Unity for their next project.
Saw a bunch of people singing praises for them on the Twitter thread, real shame. Hopefully people move away from the abusive relationship that is Unity.
