They’re still scumbags though
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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.
Yeah I have. There’s a couple of promising programs that everyone should know about:
https://github.com/V-Sekai/unidot_importer
https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot
But for me, I’m too new to programming to pick up another language very quickly to do all the manual stuff right now. Anyone more skilled than me should definitely check those links out.
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.
Give it two weeks, no one will care anymore
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the engine costs several hundred million dollars to maintain
I just don’t understand this. Godot is fairly comparable in scope and while it is behind Unity somewhat it also has a tiny fraction of the budget. Sometimes just throwing more money at a product does not make it any better any faster.
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…
Is it even reducing the scope? I swore they had some language about only taking a cut after the first $1 million before. Something like "if you sell $1,000,001 then our cut would only be 5¢”
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.
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.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
Fuck Unity.
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:
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Unity is still bleeding money. They have a product that could be the basis for a reasonably profitable company, but spening billions on a microtransaction company means it is not sufficient for their current leadership. It doesn’t seem wise to build your bussniess on the product of a company whose bussniess plan you fundamentally disagree with.
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It would be the best for the long term health of bussniess-to-bussnies services if we as a community manages to send the message that it doesn’t matter what any contract says - just trying to introduce retroactive fees is unforgivable and a death sentence to the company that tries it.
the W reference was so early 2000s.
It’s a classic
You had me going until the first blunder of the old saying. Oh GWB², your antics paled in comparison to today’s Trainwreckublicans.
George W. Bush is still the torture president, the surveillance state president, the police state president, the war on terror president and the war profiteering president.
Oh and the signing statements president.
Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize in his first year just for the act of Not Being Bush.
Not to bash Obama, but how many of those things did Obama stop doing? GIMO is still open, five eyes was started under him, and Biden was the one that pulled troops from Afghanistan.
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“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”
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.
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.
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.
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.
to late.
Are they moving the goal posts and then only putting them partially back when called out?
More corposcum lies.
That section of the TOS was removed in 2023
