Charging per install has to be the most out of touch insane choices they could have made.
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There is zero rationality behind the decision, especially given that it’s retroactive and there’s no language in their decision that handles unique user versus multiple users versus multiple accounts.
I’ve had two gaming PCs over the last ten years. On my last one, I replaced the hard drive twice, and I’m on my second hard drive on the newest one. With each hard drive replacement, I’ve had to reinstall all my games. I’m not paying for all of them again with each install but just getting the same files off Steam and installing again. According to this decision, the devs of these games would have had to pay Unity four extra times just due to my hardware upgrades. How is that on the developer at all, and Lord help us if Unity tries to run some BS where players have to pay for each new installation.
The entire gaming industry, even from the “disc era”, doesn’t work with a cost per install model.
Someone claims here that if you use Unity's internal Ad API then you will make that money back, giving people who put ads in their games a free pass.
If true, Unity is trying to force indie devs to enshittify their products.
That's exactly what they're trying to do because their CEO is a nut job crazy man who's grasp of business economics is embarrassing even when compared to my cats.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse…
How can be retroactive?
I mean legally. The devs agreed to a contract, it can't be changed with different economic terms later
If someone published an Unity game 4 years ago, has now abandoned the project, doesn't release any update, why needs to pay a per install fee "for supporting the runtime"? The version is now ancient. I could understand if it was "from version xx.yy"
They actually explicitly stated as such:
Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs?
A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data.
Doesn't steam let you download games you purchased that have since been removed? Will they try to bill developers still in this case?
Not to mention that it's such a sudden announcement. I mean, sure, they gave people 3 months notice in advance, but when you consider the scale of many games probably take longer than 3 months to make the decision AND actually make the switch (or make up for the switch), it's cause for quite a bit of harm.
Granted, the majority of people may not be affected by it due to needing to meet a requirement of like earning $200,000 and 200,000 installs at a minimum, but I feel like the once you reach that, it's just downhill from there.
In addition to your example of costing the devs for reinstalling the game, you now have to consider the possibility of a user (or group of users) maliciously reinstalling their games to financially damage the developer. Sure, Unity says they'll have fraud detection for stuff like that, but then it's literally up to the people you owe money to decide whether you should pay more or less money to them.
This feels so wrong to me that I feel like they must be going against some law, or they need to be sued to set precedent. I'm not a lawyer, I just think this smells completely like a giant corporation scamming people.
I can't believe Godot surpassed Unreal in interest. Astonishing moment.
I really hope Godot becomes the Blender of game engines.
This is a funny analogy because Blender was a game engine at one point and failed.
It was decided that game engine development was over complicating the goal of Blender. It detracted from actual 3D software development resources and trying to make all blender features seamless with it was nearly doubling potential work.
I believe in the open-source world, this is called "mission creep". It means when a project gradually expands its scope and mission until it becomes unmaintainably broad.
I really want a game staring the default cube now.
The final boss would of course be a doughnut.
Default Cube is a playable character in Super Tux Kart, although unofficially through a user created addon which can be downloaded through the game’s addon feature.
Actual awnser?
Well Unity Made a announcement to make Devs pay per Download and many devs straight up said their games will be deleted the day these changes are made.
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Unless you have anything to do with Unity, because there are no winners in this shitshow.
Oh, Unity will lose too.
Somehow, I keep remembering Reddit.
Reddit didn't retroactively try to steal money from developers. Also a game engine doesn't need a community to exist, it just needs to be good, a community is helpful but not required.
I mean, reddit retroactively stole money from redditors. Any gold/coins you paid for? Gone. Why? Because.
This is reddit api Desaster but worse.
And they tried to pivot by saying it would be by device forcing devs to collect and share their users' data.
Wich is a violation of EUs GDPR...
People switching to Unreal are like the ex-Twitter users who went to Tumblr and Threads.
Certainly Godot is the safer bet (probably why they are surging so much more right now), but Unreal is nowhere near as bad as Threads. Unreal is open source, and the license specifically forbids Epic from making retroactive changes like Unity just did:
- The Agreement Between You and Epic
a. Amendments
If we make changes to this Agreement, you are not required to accept the amended Agreement, and this Agreement will continue to govern your use of any Licensed Technology you already have access to.
Unreal is not open source, it's source-available. Open source generally gives freedoms like redistribution, yet that is explicitly not allowed by Unreal. To get access to the source, you need to agree to a licensing agreement with them.
That said, source-available is a lot better than most proprietary software licenses.
You're confusing "free" (as in freedom) with open-source.
ETA: you're correct that Unreal is source available, but a lot of what you listed is not required to be open source.
What did I mention that's not part of the open source definition? Btw, I'm using this one, and only mentioned redistribution, which is the first one:
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
The next big part is able derivative works, which is also not allowed as part of the Unreal license AFAIK.
I could see this encouraging a whole new form of brigading. Imagine if a developer pissed off the community, thousands of people could go about uninstalling and reinstalling the game over and over, driving up the engine monthly bill for the company.
Did they put anything in place with their new rules to prevent this from being abused?
I spent the last 10 hours trying to learning Godot, and I love it! Seems like a mix of the best things from Unity and Blender.
Well thats another company imploding on itself, really colors you surprised, sinks you, causes your submarine to turn into a crushed soda can.
It's what happens when you make a company public and all they want is return on their investment yesterday.
Feels like I'm living the Pathfinder 2e boom again, I love it. Could they send the Pinkertons to the Cuphead studios next to perfectly do everything wrong
The nice thing about a company being run by evil people is that you can rely on them to eventually do something overtly evil, and then everyone will be aware they are evil.
Because people learn their lessons only when they get punched in the face
2022: OnlyFans wanted to ban porn
2023: Unity wants to kill free-to-play games