Well I guess we are going to see a lot of remakes since game makers will have to move away from Unity Engine. So I wonder how fast we are going to see all these great games going into remakes because of this. So either devs will give up on there project or they will remake and we won't see any new progress for these games for a long time.
With the new Unity Tax I imagine we are going to see a lot of remakes!
- Thread starter molitar
- Start date
- Apr 14, 2018
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- Oct 13, 2018
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Dear Patrons,
Due to the recent Unity changes, I've made the difficult decision to port my game to another engine. This was a hard decision to make, but the correct one for the long-term success of the game. Due to this, and the fact that this has caused me to have mental health problems, and an untimely recent family bereavement, I expect it will be about another year before I can deliver the next update (that was due 3 months ago). I am sure you all understand and I appreciate any donations to help me through the hard times. In the mean time I have uploaded a wallpaper art of a side character you forgot even existed.
Thanks everyone, ill update you on discord in 6 months.
Due to the recent Unity changes, I've made the difficult decision to port my game to another engine. This was a hard decision to make, but the correct one for the long-term success of the game. Due to this, and the fact that this has caused me to have mental health problems, and an untimely recent family bereavement, I expect it will be about another year before I can deliver the next update (that was due 3 months ago). I am sure you all understand and I appreciate any donations to help me through the hard times. In the mean time I have uploaded a wallpaper art of a side character you forgot even existed.
Thanks everyone, ill update you on discord in 6 months.
It's not only about revenue, it's either that or a install threshold of 200k.
- Apr 14, 2018
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If you read the policy you have to pass BOTH the revenue and install thresholds. Not just one. The threshold would also be 1 million as anyone getting near 200k wouldn't be a moron and stay on Unity free and just pay the $2k USD to upgrade to pro.
People are overreacting to this. I went through real-world numbers with a couple of worried mobile clients and it's not crazy numbers. A ton less than 5% of what you pay with Unreal royalties.
The only bad thing about it is the way Unity is gathering the numbers. Unverifyable internal metrics is pretty sketchy no matter who you are.
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My bad, in my shock I have failed to see that it requires both. Thanks for making it clear.
It is still bad even for Pro it's still costly and their not sure what demo's are going to be.. another account? And a company that pulled this as many state can you trust them if you have piracy that they don't charge you. This is a big company that shows how greedy they are and I think most won't trust them anymore.
Now this is PER INSTALL! So now rethink this if your releasing an update every month that is a monthly install per person. Now if you also have mobile you have that many more installs. Since the install reports home how they going to track piracy on top of that?
Also there is no guarantee that they don't change terms as they changed after all this time they could change them at any notice.
Now this is PER INSTALL! So now rethink this if your releasing an update every month that is a monthly install per person. Now if you also have mobile you have that many more installs. Since the install reports home how they going to track piracy on top of that?
Also there is no guarantee that they don't change terms as they changed after all this time they could change them at any notice.
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it's not the only bad thing. it's insane that devs should have to pay a fee depending on what the players do with the game. it's one thing to take a fee for every game sold, then it's just like a sales tax, but why the hell should a dev pay more every time the player installs the game on a new device? whoever came up with that idea should be put in a mental institution.
So damn true.. BTW this could cause someone who does not like your game to do virtual systems and uninstall/reinstall and with AI bots this would be damn easy breaking you as a developer because you are competition they don't want! This has so many ways to be abused it's not funny. I'm no developer but I can see where this can go and it will affect us players also.
I honestly can say if your a developer and are using Unity and any of these happen to you in the future I can not feel sorry for you because a lot of people developers and players can see the abuse of this system. Developers need to get together and decide on what engine to move to because what made Unity so popular also was the add-ons for it so unless a single new engine takes it's replacement developers won't develop tools for the new engine of choice.
- Apr 14, 2018
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I disagree. There are tons of licenses like this. Amazon S3 buckets for example. The fact is when you run real numbers and not-crazy edge cases. The numbers are pretty reasonable and less than what you'd pay in common royalty %. Unlike royalties these payments are one-off.
The crazy thing is people think that Unity can develop a game engine on subscriptions only considering the cost of software development. And hey if they don't like it they can go and get some royalty-free no subscription experience with GODOT.
Or pay more with Unreal.
Should not be based on a royalty system like this when they do no work. What they should do is if you hit you for a percentage at time of final for the game for the amount of sales. They provided the tool than get a percentage but the per install is a system that I suspect will be abused badly! One bad actor could bankrupt a developer by using VMs and doing install.. change VM a bit.. reboot VM it has a new id.. install. AI script written could bankrupt a developer over time with the numbers alone.
1. Every update (new install)
2. Person gets a new drive which is common anymore (new install)
3. Upgrade hardware so hardware ID changes enough (new install) (proven by Windows itself with activation)
4. Person downloads does not like game requests refund in time limit on Steam (install with no income)
5. Piracy (popular game new install)
6. Every Demo (new install)
7. It has to phone home (affects players PC) Now player goes to a new city or state (probably phone home get detected at a new region) (new install)
8. Someone does not like developer or studio uses AI bots to do multiple installs on VM systems (new installs)
With this type of potential abuse and you can ONLY take the word for it from Unity you could get stuck with a very large bill making you bankrupt as a developer! This system is only asking to be abused by Unity to make money and others to break or destroy developers themselves.
Unity knows what they are doing and they sure as HELL know how this can be abused and that abuse is ONLY in there favor they have no reason not to use it. It is only there word when they bill you for installs when you know that there is no way you sold that many but what are you going to do to fight a large corporation? No I would never trust them if they wanted to be fair it would be a percentage of sales just like any patents do when they patent your product they take a percentage. So if game sold $100K than it should be based on a percentage of what would be considered the profit after development cost like any real product would.
Now the overall goal is to make money as a company so the ONLY reason to do such a license is that the numbers show that this will make them money. Only they know the true numbers that ANY game install gets. So they know that in reality most games hit over 200K so they can make money this way or they would not do it. They can claim oh you had 300K installs so your game sold for this month so you made more than 200K. Is it in there interest to remove every piracy of a game? No these corporations are not your friends so your trusting them on an honor system I sure as hell would not.
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- Apr 14, 2018
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So your objection is not with the licensing system but the method of determining the number.
I totally 100% agree with you. I think Unity will be forced to change it as billing on an estimate probably isn't even legal. The way they collect the install data will need to be clarified.
However, if Unity came up with a way you could 100% verify / not abusable method to determine this install number would you be fine with it?
Also in terms of fake installs. You can do that with Amazon S3 buckets. Repeatedly access a bucket with random ips which racks up chargers the owner for each read access. In fact, it could be easier as you just need to access some images urls from that site. People could bankrupt tons of websites they don't like!
It doesn't happen because Amazon can detect this behavior. This idea that you'll be able to do it with Unity is just not a realistic concern. Unity has already updated the FAQ that demo\updates\re-installs won't count I'd imagine using similar methods.
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- Feb 12, 2020
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Hahaha its like every excuse merged into one super excuse.
Unity is also in the hands of a CEO that really does not believe in it either.
The CEO of unity is a EX-EA CEO who Said players should be charged a dollar for a magazine reload on Battlefield and also Said that anyone that creates a game without thinking about The monetization is a idiot.
From Gamerant
From The Vergej
The CEO of unity is a EX-EA CEO who Said players should be charged a dollar for a magazine reload on Battlefield and also Said that anyone that creates a game without thinking about The monetization is a idiot.
From Gamerant
Seems CEO has been selling major shares through out 2023 Riccitiello sold 50,610 shares during 2023.
From The Vergej
Who wants to trust a CEO that hates game developers basically? He is a CEO of someone who hates game developers but CEO of a Game Developing Engine company that does not sound promising or reliable at all. This CEO destroyed EA big time now he is in charge of Unity and announces this so is he out to destroy Unity now.
There is no questioning that it is bad, especially how they took their ToS down to sneak changes in (including how new policies wouldn't apply to old builds of Unity), and many other shady acts. Not just this time, either.
However, those policies will directly affect very few of us. Indirectly? Yes.
Those that will need to switch are mostly big studios and successful sfw mobile devs.
However, those policies will directly affect very few of us. Indirectly? Yes.
Those that will need to switch are mostly big studios and successful sfw mobile devs.
- Jun 10, 2017
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In short for those who want a thread TL;DR: It's a dick move, but dick moves aren't necessarily always impacting.
amazon s3 buckets are not the same. you can close your bucket or remove shit from it as you want if you think you lose too much money. here we're talking about games that are out of the hands of the dev since they can't control what anyone does with them. they can't stop the games that are out there.
One side effect we could see are more devs implementing (and wasting dev time on) anti-piracy measures.
- May 8, 2023
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I've played enough crap Unity games to know that any halfway decent unity game is 100% the game dev's skill and effort and 0% the game engine developer's.
This is absolutory shameful.
This is absolutory shameful.
- Nov 25, 2019
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