| Verter said:
I wrote that post in this thread because this is the only forum I visit. But, to be honest, I don't remember every post here either and, since I've also read a bunch of opinions in other places, maybe I'm contaminated from those. I've actually seen a good number of people (even in real life) forming their opinion based solely on that of some developers or youtubers that they follow, without actually consulting the original sources, but maybe I was wrong when I assumed that that's the case here too. In general, I think the level in VGChartz is higher than in many other webs. That said, I'll expand on some of my points (although I agree with you on several of them). About the well-implemented fee, what I meant was that, if the Unity Runtime Fee were well-implemented (which it isn't), I wouldn't mind it. That was probably bad wording on my part (because it was too late when I wrote my post and I was quite sleepy), but, yeah, I don't think this fee is well-implemented (rather the opposite, and I think that's something we strongly agree on). Anyway, what I consider a well-implemented fee is one that is based on monthly revenue instead of monthly installations. If the Unity Runtime Fee was implemented like that, then all of its problems (but one) would magically disappear, in my opinion:
The only problem that would still be left with a fee like that is that the companies that already have successful games in the market would have to pay from day one without having much time to fully prepare for that. And the solution, in my opinion, is to delay the fee to 2025 in order to give them enough time. Other than that, I think that the other aspects of the fee are not actually bad. I mean, they are bad for the consumers in the sense that we have to pay for something that was previously free, but nothing else. So, regarding that and the other services that you mentioned (JRE and .NET), those are free because they are provided by companies that have other offers as their main source of revenue: Oracle sells cloud subscriptions for businesses, and Microsoft... well, tons of things. But Unity Technologies, apart from some occasional deals that they may have with some other company, only has one reliable source of income, which are the premium Unity subscriptions. For the sake of comparison, their main competitor (and the only one in the professional space), Epic Games, has a fee that applies from the very first dollar that you make using their engine, and that's despite them having other stable sources of income (particularly Fornite). So, in spite of this fee, Unity is still more user-friendly than its main competitor in terms of how much money it takes from its users, and therefore I wouldn't say that this measure is particularly greedy in this case. That doesn't mean that the people behind it aren't greedy, because in some way part of their job is being greedy. But that's not a problem of Unity alone, but of the society as a whole, because this and other negative behaviours and ways of acting are deeply rooted in the way we've built our modern economical and sociopolitical systems. They just become more evident when we see them in certain scenarios where their reach is bigger, like when some big fishes decide that their company is not making enough money and want to find a solution for that. But I'm digressing. Back to the topic in question, those hundreds of developers that you shared that are uniting against Unity are indeed a vocal minority. You're severely underestimating how HUGE Unity is: according to the figures provided by Unity themselves in a report from 2022 (which is the last one in which they provide those figures), they get their data from 230,000 users. Even if one tweet from the Twitter account that you posted would equate to one developer (which is not the case), that's still less than 600. Of course, I know that the number of tweets will keep increasing over time, so let's say that it reaches 10,000 in the end... That's still less than 4.35% out of 230,000. And, from that little percentage of developers, only a portion of them is actually going to switch to another engine, because the reality is that switching to another engine is not that easy: not only it takes time (and in many cases money) to learn how to use a different engine from scratch, but it's also likely that you've created your own extensions for it, or you've bought assets from the Unity Store (which are optimized for the Unity engine and in some cases exclusive to it), or you already have a list of professionals who you've worked with and who you know you can trust, and who are of course Unity specialists, etc. So, yes, there are many developers who have lost trust in Unity, and of course Unity is going to lose some market share after this, but I believe that the actual impact is not going to be as big as many people think. And that's without taking into account the fact that there are only two trully professional game engines, Unity and Unreal. People are talking about Godot and other engines like GameMaker, but the reality is that all those are mostly out of the professional circuits. Good luck finding companies that are hiring Godot or GameMaker developers. Which leads me to another point: most of the developers who are united against Unity are independent solo devs or small teams (of about 10-20 people at most) making their own games, but those are not representative of the industry at all. In reality, the vast majority of Unity developers are wage earners who work for big or midsized companies and therefore are not going to be affected by these measures in the slightest, because at the end of the month they're going to get paid no matter what. And those companies where they work, which have tens or even hundreds of Unity developers working for them, are not going to switch to another engine, because that would be really expensive for them. What they're going to do instead is increase a bit the price of their future games, or add a couple more microtransactions here and there, or charge a bit more for the MTX that they already plan to implement, or put one or more ads in their games... In summary, thinking of ways to make their games more profitable. So, in the end, they're not going to pay for the Unity fee —they're going to make their customers pay for it instead, and their customers aren't even going to notice. In fact, that's one of the shittiest parts of this Unity fee, more that the retroactivity (in my opinion): if the fee is tied to installations instead of revenue, the amount of revenue you get doesn't affect how much you pay for the fee, so to compensate... you just increase your revenue. If you charge 20$ for your game instead of 19, and one million people install your game, that means that, by the time you've got to actually pay the fee, you've earned one extra million dollars. You can pay a lot of Unity fees with that money... And how many customers have you actually lost in the process of adding that extra dollar to the price? Maybe a chunk, but not as big an amount to make it not worth it. Of course, this is just a theoretical example, but I believe things like this are actually way more likely to happen that the fall of Unity or a generalized loss of trust in the company. Do you remember Netflix and the password sharing outrage, for example? Well, I'll let you guess which company has increased its number of users in the last quarter and its revenue year-on-year. And in a few months from now many people will not even remember or care about what happened. Of course, this is not the same situation, but there may be some similarities. My guess is that Unity will initially lose some market share (nothing huge, maybe not even two digits), but increase its revenue when the fee starts rolling. And, after enough time has passed, most developers will get accustomed to the new status quo and just accept it as the norm. Unity has already said that they're willing to lower the fee for those who are retroactively affected by it, and the rest of developers will start to plan their games with that fee already in mind. So, once the dust settles, most of its users won't care that much, except for a few annoyances. And, if Unity decides to make something that is not actual crap and link the fee to the revenue instead of the installations, then even less users will care about it, because those unnecessary annoyances won't be there. Also, there has been no shift in priorities, like the developers united against Unity are saying, because, in the end, even if the implementation of the fee is quite shitty (which it is), the fee itself is only a natural step in the common cycle of a business: attract customers, retain customers, exploit customers, repeat. We just happen to be in the "exploit customers" phase with Unity. But the vast majority of companies in the industry are run by people who actually share that bussiness-oriented mentality, and they themselves are most likely applying those same principles to their own businesses, so those people won't mind much about this issue, because, as I said, they will just find ways to pass the fee to their own customers. And, as for those other developers who don't share the same mentality and actually think that there has been a shift in priorities for Unity, they are either working for the former or complaining on Twitter. That's quite sad (and a bit raw), but mostly true, I'd say. The most positive scenario, in my opinion, is that this controversy gives enough impulse to Godot (or any other engine, for that matter) to eventually become a relevant actor in the professional space, because that would mean more competition, which is good. I'm not sure how likely that is to happen, however. And, in any case, most of what I said is just an opinion and I could be wrong (I kind of hope I'm wrong, actually). |
I agree with some and disagree with others but damn that was a huge post so I'd only make a few highlights.
About the fee implementation, I would not mind either if something actually thought true and fair was implemented but it's simply not the case as we agreed to. There are also some reposts that worker at Unity voiced their opposition and highlighted many of the shortcomings prior to the announcement they were simply ignored. The problem is that describing the move as shitty does not come close to actually rightfully describing it. it was easy to see the issue, the issue reportedly had been identified but ignored and they went through with it against basic logics.
So, regarding that and the other services that you mentioned (JRE and .NET), those are free because they are provided by companies that have other offers as their main source of revenue: Oracle sells cloud subscriptions for businesses, and Microsoft... well, tons of things.
they are still products maintained by Oracle and MS for the sole purpose of making code written and compiled for java/.net respectively work on intended hardware/OS. Those are supposed to be the investments you make so that your tools actually work. Without it, Unity simply has no value and it is actually already monetized by the value it procures to unity. Now Unity can charge for it if they but it's a very uncommon practice to do so and again we come back to how shitty they intend on doing so. As you mentioned there are other ways to monetize it, another way would have been to include an ad spot for a first boot after installation. But that is another part of the issue, anyone can though of better solutions in a few minutes than the one a supposedly experienced and stable entity brought to the table.
Those hundreds of developers that you shared that are uniting against Unity are indeed a vocal minority
Disagree on this, one thing that I haven't seen is any form of support from a third party on this. You are free to see them as a vocal minority but they appear to be more akin to a representative sample.
You're severely underestimating how HUGE Unity is: according to the figures provided by Unity themselves in a report from 2022 (which is the last one in which they provide those figures), they get their data from 230,000 users
I think you are severely underestimating how many of those are simple hobbyists using the free tier without any real intention to commercialize a product out of it. The Twitter feed I linked is to the contrary mostly constituted of serious actors that are actually paying license and revenue to Unity. And even for the hobbyist the move is still crappy if they ever had any hopes of maybe... That is why Godot exploded in usage overnight and I understand them, I used to also geek out with Unity now I'll be doing so on Godot or another when I'm doing so again.
Which leads me to another point: most of the developers who are united against Unity are independent solo devs or small teams (of about 10-20 people at most) making their own games, but those are not representative of the industry at all.
As said just above it's much more about hobbyists and while they are not impacted they don't bring Unity any revenue either. But I disagree about the last part, those 10-20 people or fewer teams are very representative of Unity customers as it's currently constituted.
In fact, that's one of the shittiest parts of this Unity fee, more that the retroactivity (in my opinion): if the fee is tied to installations instead of revenue
Yes that's why people have been reacting that much any other way and we would not be exchanging whatsoever.
common cycle of a business: attract customers, retain customers, exploit customers, repeat
Whether or not the cycle is natural or not, I find it quite natural that customers will push back when they are at the being exploited phase and more so when it's as blatant and illogically done as this time around.
The thing is Unity started it was good but they were inexperienced and unstable, I remember geeking out with it just to see updates wreaking havoc in what I managed to do, even updates that broke things like meshes collision detection. Unity has stabilized since and the addition of Riccitiello and his experience was supposed to be a warrant of that stability. Yet this happened and Unity just showed how inexperienced, disconnected, illogical, and jumping the gun they are as soon as they smell money. It's one thing to want more revenue quite another if you want it so badly you lose all logic in the process without taking time to think things through.
Last edited by EpicRandy - on 21 September 2023
