Taking a fixed percentage of the profits/revenue is reasonable. Taking a fixed amount of money for every install is insane.
Taking profits means that:
They know the developer is making profits
There are actually profits - no one will ever be charged for money they don't have
It can all be traced and taxed fairly and legally
Non-profit developers aren't punished
Doing it based installs is none of that.
It's insane. It's a stupid idea from an idiot who probably arrogantly ignored everyone who told him it was a stupid idea.
If I was a shareholder of Unity I would want this moron investigated for selling shares and then tanking the company.
No doubt they are going to buy shares at the lower price before they announce a total reversal or this plan.
Or one of their friends. Or their kid's friends.
Tracking revenue of thousands of developers over the whole world is impossible. Maybe put yourself in Unity's position?
And tracking the installation of games across millions of machines is more reasonable?
It's based on downloads. It is easy to track those.
"We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share." https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates
Games qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee after two criteria have been met: 1) the game has passed a minimum revenue threshold in the last 12 months
So revenue still need to be tracked like it was before so they know when to start charging. This just adds another metric to track, not replacing anything and does not make anything easier.
Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share
This from the CEO of unity John Riccitiello who introduced loot boxes at EA and famously called developers that don't have ongoing monetisation of games fucking idiots. Yeah, fuck that shit. This will just penalise developers that sell their game and don't constantly try to grab as much money from their user base as they can. Exactly what he wants to see. Fuck that guy he seems to destroy everything he touches.
Once you've begun collecting money for your product, you'll need to track gross revenue and pay a 5% royalty on that amount after $1 million USD in gross revenue is earned.
Also, right now Unity forces you to take a subscription to their paid version when you make more than $100k a year.
I was wondering how they would do it with tiny companies using excel spreadsheets to track... but if it's only 1M+ companies they have to have decent books, so that makes it easy.
Once you hit a $1m target, they'll be wanting to see your books yeah. That is a much smaller number and doable. Believe me, tracking revenue of other companies is a pain in the ass though. I've done a number of OEM deals and revenue based OEM deals are much more complicated than usage based OEM deals.
Taking a fixed percentage of the profits/revenue is reasonable. Taking a fixed amount of money for every install is insane.
Taking profits means that:
Doing it based installs is none of that.
It's insane. It's a stupid idea from an idiot who probably arrogantly ignored everyone who told him it was a stupid idea.
If I was a shareholder of Unity I would want this moron investigated for selling shares and then tanking the company.
No doubt they are going to buy shares at the lower price before they announce a total reversal or this plan.
Or one of their friends. Or their kid's friends.
Tracking revenue of thousands of developers over the whole world is impossible. Maybe put yourself in Unity's position?
And tracking the installation of games across millions of machines is more reasonable?
It's based on downloads. It is easy to track those.
"We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share." https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates
So revenue still need to be tracked like it was before so they know when to start charging. This just adds another metric to track, not replacing anything and does not make anything easier.
This from the CEO of unity John Riccitiello who introduced loot boxes at EA and famously called developers that don't have ongoing monetisation of games fucking idiots. Yeah, fuck that shit. This will just penalise developers that sell their game and don't constantly try to grab as much money from their user base as they can. Exactly what he wants to see. Fuck that guy he seems to destroy everything he touches.
It's what Unreal does:
Also, right now Unity forces you to take a subscription to their paid version when you make more than $100k a year.
I was wondering how they would do it with tiny companies using excel spreadsheets to track... but if it's only 1M+ companies they have to have decent books, so that makes it easy.
Once you hit a $1m target, they'll be wanting to see your books yeah. That is a much smaller number and doable. Believe me, tracking revenue of other companies is a pain in the ass though. I've done a number of OEM deals and revenue based OEM deals are much more complicated than usage based OEM deals.