Well, most small dev teams will be quite ok, because Unity will have no way to track their income in most countries to begin with, unless they force the devs to submit their revenues per games, which if included into the TOS/agreement with Unity, may be problematic. I'm unsure on whether Unity has the right to request that kind of information from their customers, let alone in which country.
As long as they keep the monetary section, it'll only impact large companies, and only in places where they've got a tax return/earnings that are made public. Even then, since their accounts usually do not go into details as to how much each game brought to them, Unity will only be able to base themselves on sales figures they may find somewhere. Only the most massive stuff boast about the revenues of their biggest titles during investor calls.
Now, regarding patreon and the like, I doubt they can get the amount of profits at all, since most page only show the amount of patreons. They can estimate the minimum revenue by multiplying the amount of backers by the smallest sub... but, it is a monthly thing, so if they do not keep track of it each month, for each dev, I do not think they can get even a correct low estimation either. The dev will also be able to dispute their earning estimations, unless Unity can prove they kept an accurate track of their patreon's page and count through the entire year. Keeping that in mind, this is more than likely challengeable in most courts. A single dev may not be able to do it, but considering how many of you there are, well, I'll let you work out the next step if it needs to happen
Plateforms like steam and itch, do not share the amount of sales per products either, even less so which countries they've been sold to. Since they're differentiating 3rd world countries from the rest, I recon it'd be impossible for them to get anywhere near accurate data from anywhere online, including from steam or itch, simply due to them separating the 3rd world (how can they prove how many times the game got download from steam/tich from X country?)
So, the only way I can see them do it, is by launching some shit from the user's pc.
For their "addon" to work, the end user will have to allow it network access on their pc from windows 10 onward. For games that require a network connection, sure it'll go through. In here, or on just about every smaller communities, the users simply need to Deny Windows' popup regarding trusting the game when it asks for network access. The end, no report sent to unity.
If it comes down to it, players can simply block the network access altogether to unity' servers. I'm pretty certain some dedicated members, will simply launch Unity games, and see where the network connection goes. It's a pretty easy thing to block from hereon.
Granted, it'll require some user co-operation/interactions, but in our small circles, that's hardly going to be a big thing to obtain, hell, I block all network requests from any games unless I estimate they need it anyway.
Now, since it is per installations as well, it stands to reason that the games... needs to be installed as well. Most of the games on here, are "extract and execute", with only but a few needing an actual install. This is not to mention emulator online sites allowing to play some games online rather than having to download them. I'm not sure if unity games are a common things on those, but I've read on threads in here, that people do tend to play games through those as well. Those, should be a single install on that server as well, cutting yet again another chunk of people's playing count.
If, it runs of an execution(rather than install) of the game, and somehow knows it's been run on the machine before, this can legally be challenged, as Unity will have absolutely no way to prove their software can identify for certain than a computer is not the same, following for example a fried motherboard or SSD/HDD that needed replacement. If it does THAT, it'll have to have some entries or checks that needs to be done in the registry for example. That, can be exported and manually installed by the users as well, so the game appears to be a single install as well.
I wouldn't put it past some devs to come up with a small software, that blocks communications to the unity servers as well.
In short, I seriously doubt Unity would be able to track down the installs and the revenues for smaller devs, let alone estimate where it came from. And if it runs off estimates, without being able to legally require earning reports from smallers devs in most countries, they can not easily enforce that fee. IF they take you to court however, through discovery, they will get your earning, so it is only a valid protection IF you earn less... pending knowing if their business model is actually legal at all, since it may well be illegal in some countries.
One can make the argument, that they're trying to implement what is in essence, a sales tax. Only governments can do that, so there may be some frictions there as well once this things reaches certain ears.
I've also thought about the current situation here, every small dev, can correctly state that every version released, up to the final one, is in the test/development stage as well. Revenues based to develop the game, especially patreon, are not sales revenues, but development funding.
One could probably argue that early access sales, are also a development fund, and not an actual sale revenue. But, if they are not charging for test builds and demos, this is pretty much your easy way out anyway
I'll let you get creative with THAT part
