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Gaming Company Self-Immolation of the Day: Unity have lost their fucking minds, update: Unity announces 25% reduction in workforce (1,800 employees)

Firewithin

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

Posted
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A developer has requested that Steam remove his game from further distribution.

 

4149d20f201b829370afe875effcd955cd29c6a0

My Arcade - Removing Game From Distribution - Steam News

STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM
Because of vile Unity's fee per install this arcade pack is no longer feasible. It will cost me money have it available. I've asked Steam to remove it from distribution.

 

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Jason

Jason

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:hmm:

 

Quote

Riccitiello isn’t the only executive at Unity to sell a bunch of stock the week before the company’s Runtime Fee announcement. According to Unity’s market activity on the Nasdaq, several other Unity board members sold significant numbers of shares leading up to its “plan pricing and packaging updates.” Chief among them being Tomer Bar-Zeev, Unity’s president of growth, who sold 37,500 shares on September 1 for roughly $1,406,250, and board director Shlomo Dovrat, who sold 68,454 shares on August 30 for around $2,576,608.

 

4517a135b1e3e3ae5a2e6427122127c2.jpg

Unity Bosses Sold Stock Ahead Of Scummy Dev Fees Announcement

KOTAKU.COM
CEO John Riccitiello sold 2,000 shares a week before Unity revealed its Runtime Fee

 

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

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5 minutes ago, Jason said:

:hmm:

 

 

4517a135b1e3e3ae5a2e6427122127c2.jpg

Unity Bosses Sold Stock Ahead Of Scummy Dev Fees Announcement

KOTAKU.COM
CEO John Riccitiello sold 2,000 shares a week before Unity revealed its Runtime Fee

 

 

Alright, I'm gonna address this for the last time :p

 

These sales are all part of a pre-arranged structured plan that was filed with the SEC ages ago.  Furthermore, all of these executives still own hundreds of thousands -- if not, millions -- of shares to the point where these sales are effectively immaterial.

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TwinIon

TwinIon

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Here's an interesting thread from someone who says they were working on updating Unity's pricing model last year. He lays out a good case for why Unity needed to update it's pricing model, though he's not a fan of how it was rolled out.

 

I don't think there is ever a good way to take a "free" product and start charging for it, but it makes sense to me that Unity is now sufficiently valuable to justify fees beyond the seat licensing. It does seem crazy to me that Google/Apple can take 30% of revenue and the game engine costing

 

I feel like a revenue royalty would probably have been the thing to do. They should be able to undercut Epic by quite a bit and still dramatically raise their ARPU, and it doesn't run into all the weird edge cases that devs have brought up. It's a very easy and predictable cost that is already industry standard. Give devs a year heads up, and emphasize that it's only new games built on upcoming version X and newer that need to pay after they hit that $1 million mark.

 

I think they looked at their numbers and saw how many of their customers have widely distributed games that don't make a ton of revenue and tried to come up with something clever, and then rolled it out terribly.

  • Halal 2
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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

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39 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

I feel like a revenue royalty would probably have been the thing to do. They should be able to undercut Epic by quite a bit and still dramatically raise their ARPU, and it doesn't run into all the weird edge cases that devs have brought up. It's a very easy and predictable cost that is already industry standard. Give devs a year heads up, and emphasize that it's only new games built on upcoming version X and newer that need to pay after they hit that $1 million mark.

 

Practically every developer who has weighed-in on this debacle has stated that they really have no significant issue with Unity seeking greater revenue, especially through a revenue-sharing/royalty structure.  Sure, there would've been grumbling for about two days and then everyone would've just moved on.

 

Their main complaints center around practically everything else about the execution of the plan other than its revenue-seeking aspect.

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

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51 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

Here's an interesting thread from someone who says they were working on updating Unity's pricing model last year. He lays out a good case for why Unity needed to update it's pricing model, though he's not a fan of how it was rolled out.

 

For those of us who no longer have accounts, would it be possible for you to post the thread as I'm allowing it for this subject?

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

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From Unity earlier this afternoon:

 

Quote

 

We want to acknowledge the confusion and frustration we heard after we announced our new runtime fee policy. We’d like to clarify some of your top questions and concerns:

 

Who is impacted by this price increase: The price increase is very targeted. In fact, more than 90% of our customers will not be affected by this change. Customers who will be impacted are generally those who have found a substantial scale in downloads and revenue and have reached both our install and revenue thresholds. This means a low (or no) fee for creators who have not found scale success yet and a modest one-time fee for those who have.

 

Fee on new installs only: Once you meet the two install and revenue thresholds, you only pay the runtime fee on new installs after Jan 1, 2024. It’s not perpetual: You only pay once for an install, not an ongoing perpetual license royalty like a revenue share model.

 

How we define and count installs: Assuming the install and revenue thresholds are met, we will only count net new installs on any device starting Jan 1, 2024. Additionally, developers are not responsible for paying a runtime fee on:
- Re-install charges - we are not going to charge a fee for re-installs.
- Fraudulent installs charges - we are not going to charge a fee for fraudulent installs. We will work directly with you on cases where fraud or botnets are suspected of malicious intent.
- Trials, partial play demos, and automation installs (devops) charges - we are not going to count these toward your install count. Early access games are not considered demos.
- Web and streaming games - we are not going to count web and streaming games toward your install count either.
- Charity-related installs - the pricing change and install count will not be applied to your charity bundles/initiatives.

 

 

THE INSTALLATIONS ARE THE ENTIRE PROBLEM! 

 

IN FACT, YOU COULD PROBABLY EARN A HIGHER ARPU BY GOING TO A STRAIGHT PERPETUAL LICENSE ROYALTY MODEL AND PRACTICALLY EVERYONE WOULD JUST GRUMBLE, SHRUG, AND MOVE ON!

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Ghost_MH

Ghost_MH

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21 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

- Charity-related installs - the pricing change and install count will not be applied to your charity bundles/initiatives.

 

How would they even know to differentiate? Earlier this year Humble Bundle had this bundle. How would Unity know that my copy of Calico on Steam is from that specific Bundle and not just fully paid for on Steam or Humble Bundle?

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

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2 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

How would they even know to differentiate? Earlier this year Humble Bundle had this bundle. How would Unity know that my copy of Calico on Steam is from that specific Bundle and not just fully paid for on Steam or Humble Bundle?

 

Absolutely no one has the foggiest idea as to how that's even remotely possible which has led to the notion that:

 

(a) Unity has no clue either and are just throwing bullshit against the wall to see what sticks, or

(b) Unity actually can tell the difference because there's "something" in the engine's code that can report that information back which opens up a whole other can o' worms

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Ghost_MH

Ghost_MH

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24 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Absolutely no one has the foggiest idea as to how that's even remotely possible which has led to the notion that:

 

(a) Unity has no clue either and are just throwing bullshit against the wall to see what sticks, or

(b) Unity actually can tell the difference because there's "something" in the engine's code that can report that information back which opens up a whole other can o' worms

 

The only thing I can imagine is if they worked with the likes of Humble Bundle and itch.io to keep track of charity sales and then deduct that count from the installation count. However, if they're going that route, why even track installs and not instead track sales? I imagine it's go go after F2P revenue, but that could be tracked differently. Not that it even matters because if someone installs the game on their PC and their Steamdeck, their charity purchase would still count as at least one install.

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finaljedi

finaljedi

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5 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Absolutely no one has the foggiest idea as to how that's even remotely possible which has led to the notion that:

 

(a) Unity has no clue either and are just throwing bullshit against the wall to see what sticks, or

(b) Unity actually can tell the difference because there's "something" in the engine's code that can report that information back which opens up a whole other can o' worms

 

I mean they're Steam codes usually, does the game engine know where the purchase originated?

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

Posted
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3 hours ago, Brick said:
cult-of-the-lamb-deleted-steam-roguelike

Cult of the Lamb dev says it will delete the game on January 1 | PCGamesN

WWW.PCGAMESN.COM
Cult of the Lamb dev Massive Monster says it will delete the roguelike on January 1 following Unity’s plan to charge game-makers per player download.

 

 

 

They aren't being serious.

 

https://x.com/cultofthelamb/status/1702091821273461176

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