PC Unity planning on charging developers *by individual installation* in the near future.

Yeah, the whole thing sounds insane, but Meganoth does have a good theory about the negotiations.

Happens all the time. I'm negotiating right now on a job for a company known for lowballing so I asked for way more money than what I am willing to accept so they have room to negotiate but I still get what I want and everyone feels like they "won" something.

I still think someone over at Unity needs to put down the crackpipe, they must have been hanging out with Netflix execs and said "hey, hold my beer"

 
Obsessive Compulsive said:
haha true, I dont know if that is a good or bad thing that Im not making that much. I would never expect to make money from something I distribute for free but that comes full circle to unity. They released this as a free engine. To do this now and to devs in mid production. Plus the wording being some what vague as to whom and why this applies. Its very shady. Like they were just testing the waters to gauge the reaction seeing as they are already changing the approach after a single day

While I was just using myself as a vague example of the absurdity to it, I have friends that have produced very popular mods that have made them close to 200k a year so far. Not for 7 days, but rather in another game produced in unity. It doesnt last forever since game popularity dwindles quick. Its amazing the money in gaming if you get lucky. Between the sponsors, advertisers and direct sales, there are insane funds which is why we see these goofy schemes creep up from unity.

I hope your project goes well
Click to expand...
Makes sense.  I wonder if they could count advertising and sponsors in that cost.  I'd imagine it would have to be only direct sales figures.  They'd have a hard time knowing what other income you could make from something.

 
Pille said:
I think this view is rather naive (this is not meant to be offensive!). Neither do we know whether individual users can be reliably distinguished, nor do we know what counts as an installation. So we can't foresee how elaborate it is to generate fake installations and/or users. It all depends on the effectiveness of Unity's countermeasures. The consequences are unforeseeable. 

Users may suffer from this in the form of delayed releases and canceled/disappearing projects. Of course, I'm not talking about 7 Days here.
Click to expand...


Agree. Reinstalling a game is also very common to get rid of bugs. For example, I always reinstall when a new alpha drops, still, had to reinstall A21 twice because I was getting an annoying bug with electric fences.

 
doughphunghus said:
So....did  Oracle or a VC firm buy Unity?

(kidding, but also sorta not kidding maybe they did have a change in mgmt or something?)

the "delete and reinstall is 2 licenses, if true, is complete BS and aside from 7D2D, i would "boycott" buying a Unity game ever again, much like I boycott anything associated with EA today (but for different reasons: basically they always have overpriced beautiful unfun games)
Click to expand...


BTW the current CEO at Unity is a former EA CEO, who once said this on a stream:

"Now what causes higher margins with digital, a couple of things... [skip a line]... The second thing and this is a point that I think might be lost on many, is a big and substantial portion of digital revenues are microtransactions.

When you are 6 hours into playing Battlefield, and you run out of ammo in your clip, and we ask you for a dollar to reload, you’re really not very price sensitive at that point in time (laughter in the background). Um, and for what it’s worth the cogs on the clip, really low, and so, um, essentially what ends up happening and the reason the play first, pay later model works so nicely is a consumer gets engaged in a property they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game, and then when they’re deep into the game they’re well invested in it, we’re not gouging, but we’re charging, and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high.

As a personal anecdote I spent about $5000 calendar year to date on doing just this thing, this type of thing, on our products and others, um, I can readily attest to how well it works, um, but it is a, it’s a great model and I think it represents a substantially better future for the industry…"
Click to expand...

 
So here is a question.
If say I for instance have 7 days installed in my steam install default directory.
And have an alternative hard drive with all, of the prior alphas on it. I, being a
a compulsive technology hoarder of sorts, copy the version that I am going to play
to the default directory and delete the other. No worries, I make copies once the

game is verified, so no loss.
Does that mean that i still am considered to have one installation?

The reason I ask and why i archive the way i do is because, If you are doing an install

and it is corrupted from steam download or a bad sector. if you have to re-download

it then is that considered two installs?

 
meganoth said:
* Essentially this is an issue between Unity and game companies using Unity, not endusers. If anyone doesn't buy a unity game anymore because of this he will hurt the game companies more than Unity. For future games lots of developers might switch to other engines if unity's price policy is too risky or too expensive for them. If they don't change then Unity may be right with their opinion that they didn't charge enough until now.

* Still, the announced policy sounds like their brains were clouded by illegal substances when Unity came up with that plan 😉. Or they knew they would get flak anyway and wanted something to backpedal from so the developers would think they achieved something in the end. Sort of like negotiations are always started with extreme positions so the middle ground everyone agrees to eventually is nearer to the wanted result. 

* If anyone thinks TFP would switch to whatever engine for 7D2D, forget it. No matter how much it costs in licence fees, switching engines would almost surely cost more, and a lot more time. 7D2D will be released with Unity.

Also they surely have a Unity Pro subscription and will pay less than the .20 cent per installed game.  Statistically most players will have the game installed only once, and even if someone installs the game on virtual machines to harm TFP it would be a drop in an ocean. And Unity can simply add a limit to the maximum installations per user that would have to be payed to make it impossible for an internet mob to perceptibly harm TFP through creating lots of parallel installations.
Click to expand...


I mean i have installed and uninstalled this game like 15 times already. And if the modders keep working after gold, there will be a ton of mods. A lot to explore and with that it´s highly possible that many people install and uninstall a few times.

Not to mention all the angry users wich will do it out of spite. Imagine No Man´s Sky would have had that pay model for their game back then at the orignal release. A big part of the gaming crowd would have installed and uninstalled like there is no tomorrow because they were angry.

That could very fast be a money grave with no bottom if things go wrong. It could easily cost more than switching engines in the long run. What would TFP do if paying Unity reaches the point where they would acutally loose money because people installed to often? I mean look at some people on the steamforums, i have seen at least 20 people from only the last month of reading that would gladly waste their time with a ton of installs and uninstalls and i only read a few topics over there.

I can just assume that you are right with your extreme starting position theory. Everyone with 2 braincells left must know that what they try to offer now can only be the end of Unity in the long run.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I wouldn't worry about it yet, not least till the dust settles.

I think Unity is just @%$#ed at this point. They can walk back this entire proposal, but they can't walk back the intention behind it, and while existing games may find it impossible to port to a new engine, you can bet everyone will be remembering this come time to make the next game.

More importantly, while everyone is focusing on what a huge blow this would be to indie devs, they're missing the big players affected by this. Just to name a few:

miHoYo/Cognosphere (Genshin Impact)

Nintendo/Niantic (Pokémon Go).

Disney (a bunch of stuff).

I hear those guys got lawyers, and not ordinary ones but Lawyers, with a capital LAW.

Or how about Unity's plan on how to deal with "install spam"? They actually didn't walk back those charges - not exactly. When asked this afternoon about users on Game Pass trying to financially obliterate a dev by installing millions of copies of a Unity game on Game Pass, Unity's reply was "oh, we'll just bill Microsoft for those installs". Yes, Microsoft.

 
@FramFramson They want to charge Microsoft for games where they have no legal contract with Microsoft about that game? I don´t think that´s even possible. Not even in the US where marketing regulations are very loose.

It might be a possibility that the developers of the game try to charge Microsoft, but Unity themselves? No. That´s like the company who delivers the parts to General Motors asking the car dealership to pay for the parts even if the dealership already paid for the car to GM.

I wonder if they even can do this in the EU. I mean they had a legal contract with terms and conditions. Changing the payment 10 years after that should not be possible tbh.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
pApA^LeGBa said:
I mean i have installed and uninstalled this game like 15 times already. And if the modders keep working after gold, there will be a ton of mods. A lot to explore and with that it´s highly possible that many people install and uninstall a few times.
Click to expand...


I wrote my post AFTER the Unity guy already declared that installing and uninstalling would not cost again (see the link doughphunghus posted) 

So we are only talking about parallel installations on **another device**. Another device is NOT another directory on the same harddisk, it is another hardware altogether (like PC and steam deck or two or more PCs). The only crux or problem here might be if a virtual machine can be faked as looking like a different device.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
FramFramson said:
I wouldn't worry about it yet, not least till the dust settles.

I think Unity is just @%$#ed at this point. They can walk back this entire proposal, but they can't walk back the intention behind it, and while existing games may find it impossible to port to a new engine, you can bet everyone will be remembering this come time to make the next game.

More importantly, while everyone is focusing on what a huge blow this would be to indie devs, they're missing the big players affected by this. Just to name a few:

miHoYo/Cognosphere (Genshin Impact)

Nintendo/Niantic (Pokémon Go).

Disney (a bunch of stuff).

I hear those guys got lawyers, and not ordinary ones but Lawyers, with a capital LAW.

Or how about Unity's plan on how to deal with "install spam"? They actually didn't walk back those charges - not exactly. When asked this afternoon about users on Game Pass trying to financially obliterate a dev by installing millions of copies of a Unity game on Game Pass, Unity's reply was "oh, we'll just bill Microsoft for those installs". Yes, Microsoft.
Click to expand...


This is the moment where the lawyers employed by Unity try to apply for an extended vacation so they aren't around when their boss tries to convert his announcements into legal documents 😁

 
This is kinda scary, I don't want them to ravage TFP. And there is NO way they can transfer this to another engine.  

@faatal hopefully this won't effect the game too much 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
meganoth said:
This is the moment where the lawyers employed by Unity try to apply for an extended vacation so they aren't around when their boss tries to convert his announcements into legal documents 😁
Click to expand...


I mean, this is pretty much my thinking. It's one of those cases where the C-suite guys decided they knew better than their lawyers "but it says right here we can change the terms any time!"

In just one day they've had a massive wave of bad press not just in game media, but mainstream media, a stock value that's already dropping, who knows how many angry emails and phone calls from devs, and what has to be a non-zero number of letters from lawyers.

I was kinda-sorta worried last night, but I'm increasingly confident that they've screwed up hard enough that if they refuse to walk the whole thing back voluntarily, they're going to be forced into doing so when they eat a class-action suit.

This is why you don't let your CEO stick your company's wiener in a wasp's nest, kids!

EDIT:  Another big player using Unity is Innersloth (the Amongus guys), who've now stated publicly that they will damn well rebuild their entire game in another engine if they have to.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
FramFramson said:
I mean, this is pretty much my thinking. It's one of those cases where the C-suite guys decided they knew better than their lawyers "but it says right here we can change the terms any time!"

In just one day they've had a massive wave of bad press not just in game media, but mainstream media, a stock value that's already dropping, who knows how many angry emails and phone calls from devs, and what has to be a non-zero number of letters from lawyers.

I was kinda-sorta worried last night, but I'm increasingly confident that they've screwed up hard enough that if they refuse to walk the whole thing back voluntarily, they're going to be forced into doing so when they eat a class-action suit.

This is why you don't let your CEO stick your company's wiener in a wasp's nest, kids!
Click to expand...
That's what's my hope is, unity will get there @%$# slammed in the toilet seat

 
4sheetzngeegles said:
So here is a question.
If say I for instance have 7 days installed in my steam install default directory.
And have an alternative hard drive with all, of the prior alphas on it. I, being a
a compulsive technology hoarder of sorts, copy the version that I am going to play
to the default directory and delete the other. No worries, I make copies once the

game is verified, so no loss.
Does that mean that i still am considered to have one installation?

The reason I ask and why i archive the way i do is because, If you are doing an install

and it is corrupted from steam download or a bad sector. if you have to re-download

it then is that considered two installs?
Click to expand...


Unity has backed off a bit and now claims they will magically somehow figure out what is a reinstall versus what is a new install, but anyone with any technical knowledge knows they can't guarantee that, ESPECIALLY while also not tracking individual users as they claim they will not.

Further, no matter what magic they say they're going to implement with this, someone will find a way to spoof installs and bomb gamedevs with install charges.

 
Yukkuri said:
Unity has backed off a bit and now claims they will magically somehow figure out what is a reinstall versus what is a new install, but anyone with any technical knowledge knows they can't guarantee that, ESPECIALLY while also not tracking individual users as they claim they will not.

Further, no matter what magic they say they're going to implement with this, someone will find a way to spoof installs and bomb gamedevs with install charges.
Click to expand...


Good point about the tracking. Theoretically they could make arrangements with licence platforms (i.e. steam, xbox, playstation store, ...) so that they report back total number of installations on a new device (and yes, the aforementioned platforms could track that easily), but the platforms will want to be payed for that service and it doesn't work with games distributed by GOG. 

So their only possible route would be to either

1) track users, or

2) forbid distribution without tracking (on GOG, etc.) or

3) ignore the gog problem completely

1 and 2 will most certainly lead to @%$# storms and lots of developers dropping them.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
What Innersloth said on Twitter brings up another good point about this.  Game companies that allow their game to be installed for free if you have a subscription service (EA Play, XBox Gamepass, Google Play Pass, etc.) while also selling the game and who decide to keep using Unity will likely look to drop all such services as they will boost installs significantly and cause untold extra costs for the developers.  Because they'd also be selling their game, they'll have enough income to be charged for every one of those free installs.  This has a good chance to cause a lot of lawyers from these large services to go after Unity for this.

 
warmer said:
The cost of an install is miniscule. Why are people making this such a huge deal?
Click to expand...


It's not the cost to the end user (who won't see a thing), but to developers.  Those are the people that are voicing their concerns loudly about this announcement from Unity.

Besides the number of installs being an issue, there are also legacy games that are not bringing in revenue for the developer - but being charged for it.  Without knowing how this information is going to be tracked (Unity has told the developers that they should just trust them when they send them the bill), you can see situations where someone buys the game, upgrades their computer, and a new install triggers the fee.  The developer doesn't see any new revenue and the player is not doing anything wrong, but having a bill be sent to the game developer years after it was originally purchased by the player is a knife to the heart of the developer.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top