Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off
theverge.com
Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off::Unity has announced that starting on January 1st, 2024, it will implement a new pricing model that will charge developers based on how many times a game was installed.
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From what I understand this change will retroactively apply to games released in the past as well. I think that's a rather scummy move on Unity's part. "I've altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."
And it's not like game devs have been using a free product. They already pay for it through expensive licenses per developer.
If the justification on Unity's part is true, that for each install of a Unity game the runtime environment needs to be downloaded from their servers, then maybe they should look into fixing that rather than nickle and diming their customers for each individual install (customers in this case being the game developers)
If by “scummy” you mean “questionably legal” (obligatory IANAL), then yeah.
I also do anal!
I'm no legal expert, and I have no familiarity with Unity's licensing terms. So I didn't want to outright call what they are doing illegal.
For all I know they did technically have a clause in their licensing agreement that allows them to do this. But that wouldn't make it any less of a scum move imo.
It'll be interesting to see what the lawyers will make of this.
I read in a other thread, that they're not doing it retro actively on paper. Its part of the new terms for new licenses.
But since their licenses are perpetual and need to be renewed constantly, it will affect everyone when they hit the next cycle. Everything released afterwards is then affected. This even includes current projects in the works and even finished ones when you want to do a bug fix. That way, they seem to be "safe" to do that legally.
By why fix a problem when you can just charge more for a solution!? Jeeze it's like you've never done a capitalism before.
Nothing is downloaded from Unity servers. This is an attempt at recouping money from developers making over 1M per year.
It's not recouping if they were never owed it... This is a shakedown, pure and simple.
This is not the point I was trying to make. Replace "recoup" by whatever term you see fit I don't think they are owed this money either. They are trying to cut on their quaterly losses tho, which are massives.
Yes, that's what I said: they were never owed it.
According to the article, it's not retroactively charged, but still bad if your game is about to come out and you haven't accounted for this.
https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-reveals-plans-to-charge-per-game-install-drawing-criticism-from-development-community
Other articles I have been reading on the topic do mention it:
When I say that it applies retroactively, I mean that it applies to games released in the past.
It's true that they are not retroactively charging devs for past downloads. That would have been even worse.
So if i want to ruin a developer, I only need to install and deinstall all day?
Unity walked back from charging per installation earlier today. Now they will be charging per device it is installed on.
It doesn't solve the core problem, but it at least prevents install-bombing like you are suggesting
https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-backtracks-slightly-on-plans-to-charge-developers-for-game-installs
I'd be interested to know how they're going to track this? They'd need to create some sort of fingerprint for each device, and store it together will all already installed games / software in some sort of database in perpetuity.
Saw this screenshot on Mastodon. They won't tell how they're going to track it exactly but it sounds like some weird estimation work.
My 100 VMs are just ripe with anticipation
Well, it makes it a bit harder to inflate the rates but not impossible.