Unity will quietly waive controversial fees if developers switch to its ad monetisation service - report

A fresh report into Unity's hugely-controversial decision to start charging developers when their games are downloaded has thrown fresh light on the situation.

MobileGamer sources say Unity has already offered some studios a 100% fee waiver - if they switch over to Unity's own LevelPlay ad platform.

The report quotes industry consultants that say this move is an "attempt to destroy" Unity's main competitior in this field: AppLovin.

legion,
@legion@lemmy.world avatar

Game devs: “No thanks, we’re waiving the fees by using a different engine.”

lobut,

I’d imagine that game devs, just like Unity’s shareholders, like predictability in profits. Even if it’s more expensive overall for them to move to Unreal for their next game, it could be worth it to avoid future calamity.

echodot,

The problem is because you pay per install you could end up owing Unity more money than you actually make. Especially if people uninstall and reinstall your game a bunch of times for whatever reason.

UltraFiestaMango,
@UltraFiestaMango@lemmy.ml avatar

sounds like a good way to protest

echodot,

How did a good way to protest? It’ll just rack up your bills.

The correct way to protest is just stop using their platform.

I hope the large studios that use unity sue them into oblivion for breach of contract, because changing the deal after the fact is utterly unacceptable. How a business is supposed to operate if other businesses just change the terms of the deal retrospectively.

BenadrylChunderHatch,

No it means instead of review bombing a game, you reinstall bomb it to cost the publisher a load of money.

oldGregg,

deleted_by_author

    •
    UltraFiestaMango,
    @UltraFiestaMango@lemmy.ml avatar

    okay i misread that. I thought you were meaning like, a way of costing unity more money in the end.

    empireOfLove,
    @empireOfLove@lemmy.one avatar

    Why’s it always end up being fucking ads?

    I hate late stage capitalism. I want off Mr. Bones’ Wild Ride.

    dudewitbow,

    Shareholders prefer constant steady income over one time purchases. Hence why they prefer subscriptions and ads.

    sadreality,

    Well... Peasants need this hot thing called voting with your feet and money...

    Amazing things can be done esp in 100% discretionary sectors.

    But nahh...

    Radicalized,

    Nothing will ever change.

    You know it, I know it, we all know it.

    There is only one thing to be done.

    Marxist.com

    sadreality,

    Hard to disagree but I don't like your attitude dawg

    MrCharles,
    @MrCharles@lemmy.world avatar

    Sure, bud. You do that.

    Valmond,

    Had me in the first part NGL.

    But leaving democracy because capitalism is bah? No.

    ShittyBeatlesFCPres,

    Democracy isn’t an economic system. You can have communism with democracy and capitalism without it. You maybe wouldn’t get elected as a straight up communist — like an unreformed Maoist or whatever — but democratic socialism is popular across the world.

    Valmond,

    Democracy isn’t an economic system.

    Yes true.

    Communism is both non democratic, and an economic system. You cannot have democracy and communism at the same time.

    Socialism is in the same vein, but today we often conflate it with social democracy (which seems to be the best of the two worlds nowadays IMO).

    Communism is not democratic. Read up ffs. It’s not democratic.

    Aceticon, (edited )

    Whilst Communism itself (i.e. the utopia were everybody has the same - i.e. Equality Of Outcomes - which, by the way, has never been achieved anywhere in the world) isn’t anti-democratic per-se, the only ideologies that aim to reach it, such as Marxism and all its derivatives, have it being done via the Dictatorship Of The Proletariat (hence the revolutions and then takeover of power in all the self-proclaimed “Communist” countries), which is most definitelly anti-Democratic.

    However Leftwing principles aren’t incompatible with Democracy, so Leftwing ideologies exist - such as Social Democracy - which strive for “the greater good for the greatest number” without the need for autoritarian means (i.e. using things like Universal Healthcare, Universal Education, Progressive Taxation and other such things within the context of Democracy, to make the society more equal, especially in terms of Equality Of Opportunities). None of these expects to ever achieve Communist - they actually accept that it’s impossible given human nature - but still try and make a more equal society which maximizes the quality of life for all people.

    This stuff has definitelly been done in practice in Democratic nations (for example those in Scandinavia) overlayed on some amount of Capitalism, though as of late with Neoliberalism (which is definitelly incompatible with it) things have been going backwards even there.

    I think it’s quite oversimplifying it to say that any ideology that aims for a more equal world is “communism” as that one is quite a specific outcome which can’t really be achieved without forcing people to do certain things against their will and, as history has shown everytime that’s tried, the outcome of taking over power to try and reach Communism is never Communism but rather a new Elite who keep themselves in power through repressing, claim to be representatives of the Proletariat (which giving themselves all kinds of priviledges the proletariat never has) and use certain slogans to try and pass themselves as leftwing.

    Judging by the Communist Party in my own country - with it’s habits of Party First in everything (even above those they claim to defend), always having things approved by unanimity in their conventions and hard-on for autocrats - I very much doubt we will ever see anybody coming from that background capable of taking their country in a more equal direction within the constraints of Democracy: they’re simply far too autoritarian, mindless slogan parroting and tribalist to be capable to, in a democratic society, create the necessary consensus for the steady and stable moving of a country towards a grand objective.

    Wodge,
    @Wodge@lemmy.world avatar

    Sir, this is a Wendys video game technology thread.

    ThunderingJerboa,
    @ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social avatar

    I mean quite the opposite. Ff you are talking about the plebs, you would have a point but the Unity changes they are now trying to force through are going to other companies who typically don't like it when you mess with their income unexpectedly. They likely will switch to a new engine with their newer projects, so they don't have to deal with a surprise change.

    empireOfLove,
    @empireOfLove@lemmy.one avatar

    I know they do, and I hate it so so much…

    lorez,

    That’s why I’m gonna buy Procreate Dreams even if I’m not an animator.

    Mac, (edited )

    Well yeah. Subscriptions make a shitload of money compared to a one-time payment.

    Maultasche,

    The ride never ends

    Rubanski,

    It’s either ads or crabs

    lorez,

    Tortoises?

    zepheriths,

    I think among us 2 just restarted development, what a shame exactly 0 cents with go to unity

    NOT_RICK,
    @NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

    Don’t you just love when a company creates a problem just to go and try to sell the solution?

    Krackalot,

    Game design 101 since the first smart phone.

    cthonctic,
    @cthonctic@kbin.social avatar

    IBM sure does suck donkey balls but I really don't think that particular thing is their fault.

    Krackalot,

    I wasn’t blaming any single entity. And really the first smart phone wouldn’t be accurate either, probably the first iPhone. Not so much brand, but popularity. Once the market became so large, and they started to realize they could get people addicted, regular games were over.

    frustratedphagocytosis,
    @frustratedphagocytosis@kbin.social avatar

    It looks like a protection racket with extra steps. An unpleasant solution presented by the problem creator. Why is this not banned?

    LazaroFilm,
    @LazaroFilm@lemmy.world avatar

    There should be a law against offering something for free for a long time, until many other businesses rely on it then make it pay to a point of breaking all those businesses. It’s one thing changing the price of a product that’s customer facing but if you market to other businesses that’s not okay. I guess it’s up to businesses to look in the contract for a clause that states that the product will be free forever or that they need X time warning before making it pay.

    hddsx,

    I disagree. If you state that it’s free until X bench make and you make the change after that benchmark it’s fine. If you don’t, then users should be able to seek compensation

    geosoco,

    Tech companies wouldn't exist. It's literally most of their business plans.

    kboy101222,

    Good.

    Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever, (edited )

    I actually disagree with this… without support programs in place. And I really don’t think governments should be funding game engines.

    The vast majority of “new” tech companies operate at a loss. It is the only way to make inroads in a market dominated by the Google and Microsoft and Apples of the world. They pull this off via crowd funding or (less so these days) venture capital.

    If they actually get the market share they then need to actually monetize. Different companies have done this to different degrees and I am inclined to put Unity in the same category as Reddit in terms of “did you really think that would at all help?”

    Because if the company can’t actually try to make a profit? They will go out of business, at best.

    And while I think there are definitely problem spots, this… doesn’t actually bother me all that much. It fucking sucks for the developers and I do think there need to be “grandfather” clauses for those who already have products (curious how many people are trying to pull out of Fanatical or Humble bundles right now). But this is fundamentally no different than if unity went out of business today. Any developer worth their salt would need to sunset their games or start a port. Because the unity engine is a massive attack vector and vulnerabilities will be found. And it is better to be most of the way to a godot/unreal port when the CVE is published.

    Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever,

    Just to add to my last point a bit:

    This is actually very common in software development. Nobody is dumb enough to write ALL of their own software (okay… there are a few orgs…). So you are going to be dependent on third party libraries. Some are free and open source with licenses that aren’t GPL. Others are licensed for a small fee from other companies. And many are in the middle somewhere where you pay for support, but can use the software regardless.

    And… companies change licenses over time. Open source projects change licenses over time. And sometimes, that means you can’t use it anymore. Or you don’t want to use it because the team really dropped the ball and it is a piece of shit. And that is when you get an all hands on deck to replace it.

    One of our major partners recently dicked us over REAL hard by changing the terms of a license we were discussing with them to a MUCH worse one. And we are being pretty public about how unprofessional that was and “accidentally” talking about it when other partners ask us what tech we are using to do X. Mostly in the context of “Well, we were previously dependent on using Y but they actively misled us before changing their license. So we are in the process of migrating everything to Z”.

    But… regardless of how salty we are and how much we and others are doing to poison the reputation of that company to those who hadn’t interacted with them before: We need to finish the port to use Z.

    Buffalox,

    The vast majority of “new” tech companies operate at a loss.

    This is a bullshit hypothetical that has no relevance for Unity. Unity is a well established company, that has been very successful after they revised their model to be more Indie friendly. This is a money grab attempt pure and simple. And it’s a money grab that is so bad it might actually kill Unity.

    jaaval,

    Unity technologies has never made a profit since it was founded. It’s still a company aiming at growth by burning money. Their losses have only increased since they went public.

    Buffalox,

    I’m pretty sure that when Unity was headquartered in Denmark it made a profit. But I may be mistaken, because it was hyped as a danish enterprise success.

    When they changed the license to be more Indie friendly a few years back, that too was hyped as a huge success.

    But I can see on Wikipedia that Unity Software Inc. has a negative net income of $921 million on revenue of $1.4 billion.

    That’s an insane loss, meaning that they basically operate at 50% loss! How or Why they ended up that badly is beyond me. It’s so bad it smells like something is not quite right with those numbers.

    Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever,

    I took a look at some of their investor reports while trying to explain this earlier but couldn’t make heads or tails of what was additive and what was descriptive.

    But at a high level: It is very believable

    Let’s take a step back for a moment and look at nVidia. It is a VERY common statement (I think even Jensen has said it?) that nVidia is not a hardware company: They are a software company. They spend a LOT of money on Solution Architects/Engineers which are basically people that you buy the time of when you make a large order. They work with you to make your code more performant on nVidia hardware and are why so many games (and everything else) blazes on nVidia but struggles on AMD (less so these days) and Intel (ha!).

    I believe Epic does the same with the Unreal Engine

    And, presumably, Unity does the same for Unity.

    And those people are pretty well paid and only have so many cycles per day. That drastically increases your Sales/Marketing department cost but is pretty much a necessity to function in a market dominated by… the companies who have been doing that for decades.

    And then you just have product development. A LOT of money is thrown in to trying to make the next Nanite or whatever in an attempt to distinguish your engine and get market share when the next wave of games release… two or three years later. Which is the other issue. Every expenditure is about making profit 1-16 quarters later.

    Another aspect people don’t really understand: The major middleware/hardware companies always have their eyes out for new tech. And it is not at all uncommon to give a professor (or even a grad student) a giant sack of cash to work for the company for a year or two to implement feature X. Which is in addition to the army of Software Engineers who make feature X stable and performant.

    Buffalox, (edited )

    They work with you to make your code more performant

    I wasn’t talking about whether they have expenses, If I recall correctly they have about 7000+ employees.

    Generally that kind of company only collaborate on huge projects, smaller projects don’t get that level of service, bust are generally referred to a developer forum, where their questions may be answered by in-house personel. This is as I understand it common, but I’m not a pro gaming programmer, although I used to know a few decades ago.

    Fun fact, the story now is that it was a Unity employee who made the death threat!?

    jaaval,

    It was a private company back then so I don’t think there is financial info available. But at least it seems that the reports they filed for IPO indicated they had made loss for a few years prior.

    MrCharles,
    @MrCharles@lemmy.world avatar

    My problem with it is not monetizing; it is the changing of your monetization to affect games that were sold under a different model. If this was just the new TOS, ok fine. It would suck, but it’s their right to make whatever shitty monetization they want. But retroactively inflicting this on games? Shocking the development world with only a few months warning when game development takes years? No, that is not ok.

    chiliedogg,

    Changing from free to paid is fine. Doing it retroactively is not.

    Once a game is in development using their product the terms need to stay the same.

    foggy,

    Time to polish off my unreal dev skills, something tells me those jobs about to be hot.

    Redo11,

    Better off with Godot

    foggy,

    No, I’d be better off polishing off my existing skills using a technology that currently holds a significant market share in the industry.

    eskimofry,

    Technically concepts do that… not tools. You can do the same bashing with a hammer or a wrench

    sebinspace,

    Unity have yet to discover that nothing happens quietly on the internet.

    echodot,

    This is such a dumb move.

    Forget about ethics for a minute, if there is an alternate option that doesn’t cost as much money then developers would obviously make use of that option so in any environment where alternate options exist companies have a limit of how obnoxious they can be and get away with it.

    Somehow unity forgot that Unreal and Godot exist.

    stigmata,

    Honestly, if I had any stake in them I’d be wondering why Unity is so desperate for money.

    BURN,

    Every tech company is desperate for money right now. Funding isn’t coming in at the same rate it did for the last 10 years and now everyone is desperately trying to make a profit.

    RizzRustbolt,

    Crypto is a hell of a drug.

    BURN,

    It wasn’t really just crypto. The American government subsidized a lot of loans and did a lot to stimulate the economy post 2008. Those policies are now catching up to us. Crypto didn’t help anything, but it also wasn’t the root cause.

    itsaghostcar,

    AppLovin? What kind of a stupid name is that? What, are they trying to be an Irish R&B singer?

    geosoco,

    They hired the same marketing firm to come up with a name that McDonalds' used.

    funktion,

    It was either that or Mohammed

    derpgon,

    I heard it could’ve been Aladeen, but they didn’t know if it was too positive or negative.

    BURN,

    I’m pretty sure this is just unequivocally worse. This is how Ads end up in paid games. Unity is speed running their complete collapse as the dominant player in the market.

    frezik,

    And there’s the two-step. Don’t come right out with what you want. Come out with a bad option, then switch over to the option you wanted when everyone complains.

    Hiccup,

    Fuck unity. Use anything but unity.

    tal,
    @tal@kbin.social avatar

    The closest competitor is, what, Unreal Engine? That's more costly.

    havokdj,

    Godot

    Poggervania,
    @Poggervania@kbin.social avatar

    The conspiracy theorist in me says Unity planned this whole thing out to get less resistance on this thing they actually wanted to roll out; announce a super shit change that will intentionally outrage everybody, then say “ok, we won’t do it if you agree to use this other shitty model instead”.

    Anyways, big shoutout to Godot for existing as an open-source alternative.

    drphungky,

    That’s not a conspiracy theory that’s like entry level MBA stuff.

    gravitas_deficiency,

    Lol nope. Not even fucking close. You’re gonna die, Unity. You have only yourself to blame.

    Valmond,

    Ooh yeah FOSS forever!

    ArmoredThirteen,

    Hey remember that time Unity bought IronSource so they could integrate ads more aggressively? Unity stopped being a game engine at some point they’re just an ads company now

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