https://www.engadget.com/unity-will-start-charging-developers-each-time-their-game-is-installed-214851801.html

https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/

So apparently Unity is going to charge for installations after passing both a minimum revenue threshold from the last 12 months and a minimum lifetime install count. More details in the links, but if this is true, they just killed their own engine. Noone is going to take this willingly, especially free to play games that make no money, or already finished games that cannot just change to another engine. Thoughts?

Yeah this is a garbage move that has the potential to really harm developers.
Some devs are already saying they'd have to scrap projects and start again in a new engine as they just wouldn't be able to afford the cut Unity would take from them.

Hopefully this crashes and burns and the company is forced to walk back on it.

So basically, UE wins by doing nothing while it's competition willingly shoots itself in the foot ...

Joyous moment

Unity is by far the most popular engine among indie developers.

Indie developers.

CEOs Read the Room Challenge: impossible

Even crazier, too, that it's per install. If a player buys your game (one-time fee), but deletes after a while, re-installs... you know, something people do, that's money the developers aren't getting back. And also how better-selling games actually have a decreased rate, for obvious reasons - you don't wanna mess with the people who are actually making money.

Ugh, dude, it's just despicable. I'm so fucking tired of rich higher-ups exploiting everyone in the world for a profit margin. Messing with people's lives. People who have to make a living, instead of being born with one.

Anyway let me just stop here, no one wants a long-form rant at this point

edit: by the way this engine is called UNITY!!! Hahahaha jesus fucking christ

Oh boy they're even taking the discount for the rich approach like Steam except even worse here. Yea this just seems like a baffling move, they're alienanting the main group of developers that are likely to choose their engine over Unreal.

Edit: Okay read the article more closely and it seems I wasn't entirely right since you only have to start paying the fee after you've passed a significant threshold (200,000 lifetime installs and $200,000 made in the last year) so basicly we've got this weird curve where small games don't have to pay, medium sized games have to pay a lot and really big games pay a little bit. Weird shit, but glad it won't affect the smallest games though.

The problem is not as much that they need to pay now (Unreal Engine for instance also asks for a 5% of the sales if those go over 1M), but more that they need to pay retroactively for games that have been released long before this policy came into existance, and that they'd have to pay per install instead of per sale. These will now be wholly unprepared for that kind of extra payments to come.

Also the fact that it's a flat rate and not a percentage, which means that games with a very low price tag (Like Vampire Survivors) are punished disproportionally s they have to give away a luch larger chunk of the revenue now than they did before.

Finally, for games that are supposed to release on subscriptions services like Gamepass, it's the owner of the subscription service which would have to pay. If all current 25M Gamepass subscribers would download a game made with Unity, Microsoft would have to pay them 5M for those downloads. As a result, I expect those to become wary of games made in Unity and not let them into their subscription services anymore, as those would cost more than they'd earn from them.

*Edited for clarity

Imagine somebody pirates your game, it gets downloaded illegally a million times, and you have to pay Unity $200k for the privilege of being pirated.

My only opinion about it is they are tired of their business and wants to scrap all money they can before selling it

Well, time to learn how to use godot