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• Chamber of Commerce
• CWA Union and AFL-CIO
• A Group of Venture Capitalists
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• Indie Devs - Curve, iam8bit, Finji, Strange Scaffold, Studio Wildcard
• Business Roundtable
• Former State AGs
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• A Collection of Economists

The collection of indie devs describe Xbox Game Pass as “crucial to the success of indie games” and that the FTC’s arguments “rest on theories that bear no resemblance to the market experienced by game developers and publishers in the real world.”



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“Microsoft stands alone among major U.S. video game and technology companies. At this year’s Game Developers Conference, a group of video game workers delivered a letter to Sony’s management asking the company to agree to allow its workers to organize free from retaliation and interference, and Sony chose not to respond.”


Ryuu96 said:

Still trash, "only" the initial installation triggers a fee, Lul. Demos "mostly" won't trigger fees, Lmao.

"As for Game Pass and other subscription services, Whitten said that developers like Aggro Crab would not be on the hook, as the fees are charged to distributors, which in the Game Pass example would be Microsoft."

Microsoft is going to fucking hate this.

Good luck, I imagine Microsoft has their lawyers on standby for when Unity uses their guesswork model to determine how many downloads have been made. Unity not only is making it up on the spot for how many downloads have been made, they also expect us to believe they know whether a download is a first time download or not? As if.

Either Microsoft and Sony will fight against this, or Game Pass and PS+ fees will go up and the customers will suffer as a result of Unity's stupidity, or Microsoft and Sony will avoid Unity titles being included in their services, or Unity developers will be paid worse to be included in these services. I hope Microsoft and Sony both stand up for developers and tell Unity to get fucked.

I am not even sure that Unity can actually charge MS or Sony a fee for every download of a game.  Unless MS signed some type of agreement with Unity to accept such terms, its does not seem even remotely plausible that MS or Sony would be on the hook for license change.  If by any chance Sony and MS are on the hook there probably be 2 scenarios that will happen. One, they will remove those games from the service and second they will tell Unity to go fish and meet us in court.  I doubt they will take the third option and just pay whatever Unity feels they are going to charge for a distributor of a game just because they decided to change their license. 

A move like this seems very suspect on the level where the company must be asking to be sold or looking for a cash out before going under.  Either way, I do not see this going very well for Unity in the future.



1. The FTC won't give a shit about what anyone else says because they are driven by politics and not actual facts and logic.

2. 14.2m GP users for Humans Fall Flat is insane, Lol.

3. That'd be $2.8m for Unity, Lmao.



Machiavellian said:

I am not even sure that Unity can actually charge MS or Sony a fee for every download of a game.  Unless MS signed some type of agreement with Unity to accept such terms, its does not seem even remotely plausible that MS or Sony would be on the hook for license change.  If by any chance Sony and MS are on the hook there probably be 2 scenarios that will happen. One, they will remove those games from the service and second they will tell Unity to go fish and meet us in court.  I doubt they will take the third option and just pay whatever Unity feels they are going to charge for a distributor of a game just because they decided to change their license. 

A move like this seems very suspect on the level where the company must be asking to be sold or looking for a cash out before going under.  Either way, I do not see this going very well for Unity in the future.

Yeah don't think it's possible either. But, The fact that some successful games devs will be charged per install as soon as January 1st is so f*-up, not only have they never agreed to such a clause but the only way for them to free themselves from such is to remove their successful IPs from distribution. This points out the possibility that Unity may retain some rights over the distribution of products as per the current user agreement, which could enable them to use these rights to force actual royalty from distributors.

If that's the case however it's even worse as it assesses that, by using Unity, you are not only a victim of the currently anticipated change but Unity has a hand over your own products that enable them to come up with ever so crazy short-term money grab policy.

At this point, even without considering this change's impacts, the sole context that enabled Unity to enact such half-assed money grad and the fact they are looking and willing to enact such tells me one thing Unity is dead this move simply killed it on the spot.

There's no way devs will continue to use this engine with their new projects only to become dependent on the whims of a failed CEO's shortsightedness.

This really pains me because I love geeking out with Unity and over the past few years it has become stable enough to be a favorite among indies. Since some indies of today will certainly grow to be AAA devs, the outlook for Unity to finally have a foothold in the AAA engine market share in the not-so-distant future never was as good as it was.

But now, in one blunder, this is all gone, even reversing course won't do it as there is no way the dev will have the confidence Unity won't try again with something slightly different.

The only path forward for unity is either A:

  • kick out the current Ceo's
  • Reverse courses 
  • Change policy in a way that does not enable them to do so ever again
  • Do all above in the next few days

or B:

  • Be acquired 
  • Let the new acquirer do A) and give back confidence in Unity to its users
Last edited by EpicRandy - on 14 September 2023

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Vanillaware's first Xbox release ever?



Ryuu96 said:

Vanillaware's first Xbox release ever?

XBOX BABY!!!! Wonder if the Saga game is coming too. 



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