RIP Unity. First they partnered with Ironsource. Who are the people behind InstallCore it's a wrapper for bundling software installations. It tricks people into installing enough browser toolbars and other bloat to hurt their PCs. Windows Defender and MalwareBytes blocks it. Now Unity does this shit.
Godot FTW
Darn! Beat me to it! Been using it for 7 years after switching from unity and haven't looked back!
The enshittification of the tech industry continues...who's next? Place your bets.
As soon as AV2/H.266 becomes standard, i'd say Youtube would be at risk.
Edit: Added AV2 to my comment.
How would that make youtube worse?
They'll find a way, I'm sure
I'm not saying that AV2/H.266 would make Youtube worse.
I'm implying AV2/H.266 would allow us to migrate to a platform other than Youtube.
Edit: Added AV2 to my comment
Why do we need h.266 for that? (Looking at PeerTube)
Why would that be? If h265 is anything to go by, MPEG will probably charge an arm and a leg for h266, and the entire industry will pivot away from MPEG and move to AV2. I'm not even sure YouTube will ever implement h266
I had completly forgotten about AV2, my bad.
Wikipedia incorporates pay-to-win mechanics, lootboxes, microtransactions and cosmetics. There will also be a convoluted crafting system with decaying materials and several incompatible currencies for every purpose imaginable.
And that's how Unreal become a monopoly in 3d game development
What a gift for epic games. Glad I never wasted my time learning Unity.
Yep, hopefully Godot ends up being the real winner, because with as many AAA studios that have started to abandon their own in-house engines in favor of Unreal, it's starting to feel a bit like Epic is going to end up with more than a healthy share of the market.
The cheapest ad campaign for Unreal Engine in history lmao
Or arguably, the most expensive. Just not for Epic.
Goodbye, unity. It's been okayish.
I'm going to install games heaps of times so I can bankrupt any small game companies
You you really are a jerk Spez.
I was shocked until I read the username
Calm down, Satan.
The in game ads already do that these days.
Just try to hit that X, haha, tricked you!
Installing.
Any touch of the phone for 30 seconds auto installs...
Use a firewall app to block that game from accessing the internet (this obviously defeats the purpose of online multiplayer games.)
From a Cybersecurity point of view, I think this is a legit attack. Imagine a server that has many virtual machines, all of which automatically trigger the reinstall mechanism as fast as possible.
If there is not some kind of limitation on that rule, depending on how their mechanism works, you could cost the game creater a lot of money.
Why tech companies keep getting worse and worse and worse?
Do you know how many times I install and uninstall a game before I even play it? I could probably destroy a small game company on my own with this fee structure, and I'm sure I'm not alone with the constant installing and uninstalling.
Where were you when unity killed itself?
On the shitter. That's when I browse the news at least.
The entire Unity userbase:
As if Epic needed any more help completely obliterating Unity in every conceivable way.
I brought this up in another thread:
They expect Game Pass titles to have their bill footed by Microsoft.
There's kicking the nest, and then there's kicking the fucking queen bee.
I mean what are they going to do with xcloud plays? Is it just 1 install on the remote Xbox or does it count per player, which means it’s an install every single time someone plays?
I imagine a lot of the doomsday stuff people are saying are not going to come to pass (and some will!). But it’s this kind of ambiguity that always leads to this kind of speculation.
Must have come from the Reddit play book
Good way to kill your business. Way to go, you greedy jerks.
Finally, the company announced that it’s discontinuing Unity Plus subscriptions starting today to “simplify the number of plans we offer.” It says existing members on that tier will receive “an offer to upgrade to Unity Pro, for one year, at the current Unity Plus price” via email in mid-October.
Well sssshhhiitt
It's kinda amazing how Unity shot themselves in the chest with this one. No, I don't mean foot, they are now actively bleeding from the torso.
No Dev or Publisher is going to be okay with this, none. This basically leaves Devs on the hook for unlimited liability. Even with their walk back of "only initial installs" doesn't help. I myself have both a Desktop and a SteamDeck. That's possibly two installs out of the gate from one customer. Then any time I make an upgrade in the future, or heck maybe even switch Proton versions on my Deck, the Dev could be on the hook for more cash. There's zero transparency with how these "installs" are detected or counted, so there is no way to budget or plan for the expenses.
Businesses hate unpredictable fees.
They'll deal with utilities upping rates, because who are you gonna switch to in a monopoly? But if you're just a tool for them, they'll ditch you as soon as they're able and never use you again.
And again, publishers will care about this too, since their whole job is distribution. Any Dev looking to sign with a publisher, even a subscription service like GamePass, will now be asked which engine they're using, and I bet you 9/10 times the Dev will get rejected if they're using Unity now. That puts even more pressure on Devs not to use Unity.
Unity will price gouge their existing customers(Devs), but will ensure that nobody ever buys their product ever again. At this point I doubt their reputation will ever recover even if they can walk this back. The fact that they believe they can unilaterally add enormous fees at the drop of a hat means they've ruined any trust their customers had in them.
Unity: I can charge you any fees I want, any time I want.
Nevermind desktop games.
The real hit is free mobile games. Paying per install can be crippling when you naturally have low retention rates.
You can accidentally success yourself into debt if you don't have preditary monetization.
I'm building a game ATM that's meant to be fun and fair, monetization is really low. If it shot up as a front page item for some reason that now went from a huge success to a massive stress point as the number of installs would easily put me into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to unity overnight.
Who TF wants to take on that kind of risk? Does this not push mobile games into being even MORE preditary?? Since it's now impossible to build a mobile game with Unity, and just release it as something free.
preditary
Predatory
I don't mean to be rude, just giving a heads up since it's written there twice with the same spelling
How would they even track that it was "only the initial install", and what's the metric for that? If i need to reinstall my OS due to a crash, is that a second install for the game?
How about if I replace a piece of hardware that fails, is it considered a new system with a new install?
The whole idea that they can claim additional fees for an "install" is ridiculous.
Time for Godot to shine brighter
Is this a cry for help? Do we need to get them some therapy?
Fuck unity tech, they haven't made a single intelligent decision in 10 years.
The engine was perfectly fine and they ruined ALL OF IT.
I wasted so much fucking time because of them, everything they do is garbage.
Just let them go bankrupcy.
As someone who's been following Unity's development since 2.0, this doesn't surprise me. They've always struck me as a company that doesn't care about developers. And while all companies are trying to make money, there's a difference between "pay for our product because we need money to operate" and "we love Adobe's subscription model and want to outdo them - and we will squeeze you as much as possible." Have a little heart, Unity.
Can't wait to see what damage control mode looks like on this one.
Just another example of 2023: Enshittification.
Wᴇ ᴀrᴇ ᴛʜᴇ Cʏʙᴇrᴛʜᴇᴍ. Uᴘɢrᴀᴅᴇs ᴀrᴇ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴜʟsᴏrʏ!
(I commented in the wrong thread, but am still getting upvotes...)
Don't worry, Devs. I won't be buying any unity trash ever again.
They do know unreal engine 5 is a thing, yeah?
This only makes sense. Unity is a very big part of what makes a game work and building and maintaining the Unity engine costs a lot of work. They deserve some share of the money made on a game. That share should ideally be proportional to how much money is made by the developer, which should be proportional to the amount of times the game is downloaded. And this is only one of their plans. There are other plans as well. So maybe someone can explain to me why this is not just a sound business decision apart from: I don't want to pay any money?
Unity already charges money once you hit a certain revenue from your game, it's only free if you don't get a lot of sales.
More importantly, according to the article, when questioned it seems Unity hasn't given any proper thought into this model.
If a user installs the game and then uninstalls and reinstalls, it counts as 2 installs that must be paid for. Not only is that unfair, it can lead to abuse. Angry with a change the developer made? Uninstall and reinstall 30 times (automate it) and you will actually cost the Dev money.
What about pirated copies? Unity will still "phone home" and the result will be a developer paying for 1mil installs that he earned nothing from.
What if your game is free to play?
There were some other issues like that mentioned too (in the twitter post in the article).
which should be proportional to the amount of times the game is downloaded
I have a 500GB SSD and >300 games. Do you have any idea how often I uninstall and reinstall games? Even smaller Indy games?
This comment section has you covered: to bankrupt a small game company, let's reinstall the games numerous times!
Also, their previous monetization methods are already proportional AFAIK.
"This only makes sense. Ovens are a very big part of what makes food and designing and building the ovens costs a lot of work. They deserve some share of the food made in the oven. That food should ideally be proportional to how many edibles items are made by the chef, which should be proportional to the amount of times the food is baked. And this is only one of their plans. There are other plans as well. So maybe someone can explain to me why this is not just a sound business decision apart from: I don’t want to give away my baked food?"
It's clearly not an oven, but an ingredient.
Holy fucking shit... The game concepts and mechanics are the ingredients!
Does a pizza contain an oven? No. Does a pizza contain tomatoes? Yes. Therefore tomatoes are an ingredient and an oven is not.
Does a game contain Unity? Yes. Therefore Unity is an ingredient.
The game ships with Unity which handles the rendering, physics, sound and a whole bunch more. Basically Unity is a pizza base, but it gives you a bunch of toppings too. The developer combines the base with the toppings and voila you've got a game. Not saying that last part isn't hard, but a business model where Unity, or any game engine for that matter, is charged proportionally to the amount of installs isn't a totally unreasonable business model.
They deserve some share of the money made on a game. That share should ideally be proportional to how much money is made by the developer
Yes, and that is what they already do, as does Unreal.
which should be proportional to the amount of times the game is downloaded
Eh, no. How many unique times a game is uninstalled, perhaps, but not how many over all. That's clearly stupid.
By that logic Microsoft should also be able to charge for any software installation that happens on windows. That also means any and all installations for the customer should be single use, because now all installations cost money.
Would you be willing to pay a certain amount of money any time you want to install some software, doesn't even matter if you've already paid for it? Because that's the business plan you call "sound".
I call that stupid.
Yeah, you can call that stupid, but I am not stupid. But regardless of your insult, let me talk to you.
I am not sure which Microsoft product you are talking about, but certain Microsoft products are indeed charged this way. It is called an OEM license and while typically every OEM license is negotiated on different terms (per license, per revenue, per download, per install, per duration of usage, etc.), the basic idea is usually that some amount of money will be made by Microsoft proportional to how much use your product is getting. In the Enterprise world it is also common to charge by how much value the user is getting out of the product, which whole sales departments are trying to figure out on a case by case basis with complicated excel sheets. I mean, it is not like Unity invented this model. In fact, Microsoft got as big as it got by selling a pay per copy version of MS-DOS to IBM.
Unity is an ingredient that makes games work. The game is made with Unity and is shipped with the Unity engine packaged inside, just like any other ingredient. So explain to my why Unity can not define some metric which will highly correlate with the amount of usage and charge based on that metric?
So what I get from Unity's site is that they will charge per download. So yeah, potentially you can download a game three times to three different devices or even to the same devices you've wiped. But I would claim that generally speaking the number of downloads is a good indicator of how often a game is used. If you don't like a game you are generally going to download it only once. If you really like the game you are likely to download it again and again to new devices and after wipes. It isn't perfect for sure, but every other metric you can come up with also has a fair share of problems. Maybe you tell me which one is the one that does not have any problems and is still simple enough to bill upon?
I am not sure which Microsoft product you are talking about, but certain Microsoft products are indeed charged this way.
Windows. If Unity is a large part of what makes games work then Windows is arguably an even larger part of what makes most consumer software work. If it's acceptable to charge for Unity usage then it should also be acceptable to charge for Windows usage. After all if you want to install Unity development tools on Windows you need to use Windows. Then following your logic that means Microsoft should be able to charge, in this example charge Unity Technologies, every time someone installs the Unity development tools because the tools literally won't work without Windows.
And if this became the norm then that cost will be offloaded to the customers. That would mean if you've built a new computer and want to play Skyrim you're going to pay x amount to install Chrome (or Firefox), then pay another x amount to install Steam and finally pay another x amount to install Skyrim. That's stupid.
Maybe you tell me which one is the one that does not have any problems and is still simple enough to bill upon?
It's called licensing and Unity developers already pay a licensing fee per year and, in theory, also per user. Some companies reuse keys (not unique to Unity or game dev) between developers because they can get away with it as just the "per user" part is already too hard for licensing companies to properly track and bill.
And to be clear I never said you're stupid. I said your idea is stupid. Smart people can have stupid ideas as well.
Yeah, so Windows is indeed a large part of why software works, but it is infrastructure which is packaged separately. Your reasoning can be extended into even further absurdity, like we should pay Intel each time we run software, etc. But this is just not how Microsoft and Intel operate. They're not part of the product, but just make the product work. It's not like we get another Windows version and Intel chip with each game.
Think of Unity like a frozen pizza bottom. What the developers needs to do is put some ingredients on top and it can be sold. The frozen pizza is clearly sold with the pizza bottom. Should the developer not have to pay per pizza bottom? You can bake the pizza in your oven, but the pizza developer doesn't need to pay for the oven. They can assume people have that in place; it is simply a requirement in order for the pizza to be consumed.
However, if you are going to ship a Microsoft product as part of your product, you can sure as hell expect Microsoft sales people on your doorstep. They'll negotiate an OEM deal and it'll surely depend on things like: number of installs, number of downloads, number of users, time used, value extracted by the users, revenue made by you, etc. I've ran a big company for many years and did a number of OEM deals during that time (both being OEMed and OEMing). This is only reasonable.
RIP Unity. First they partnered with Ironsource. Who are the people behind InstallCore it's a wrapper for bundling software installations. It tricks people into installing enough browser toolbars and other bloat to hurt their PCs. Windows Defender and MalwareBytes blocks it. Now Unity does this shit.
Godot FTW
Darn! Beat me to it! Been using it for 7 years after switching from unity and haven't looked back!
The enshittification of the tech industry continues...who's next? Place your bets.
As soon as AV2/H.266 becomes standard, i'd say Youtube would be at risk.
Edit: Added AV2 to my comment.
How would that make youtube worse?
They'll find a way, I'm sure
I'm not saying that AV2/H.266 would make Youtube worse.
I'm implying AV2/H.266 would allow us to migrate to a platform other than Youtube.
Edit: Added AV2 to my comment
Why do we need h.266 for that? (Looking at PeerTube)
Why would that be? If h265 is anything to go by, MPEG will probably charge an arm and a leg for h266, and the entire industry will pivot away from MPEG and move to AV2. I'm not even sure YouTube will ever implement h266
I had completly forgotten about AV2, my bad.
Wikipedia incorporates pay-to-win mechanics, lootboxes, microtransactions and cosmetics. There will also be a convoluted crafting system with decaying materials and several incompatible currencies for every purpose imaginable.
And that's how Unreal become a monopoly in 3d game development
What a gift for epic games. Glad I never wasted my time learning Unity.
Yep, hopefully Godot ends up being the real winner, because with as many AAA studios that have started to abandon their own in-house engines in favor of Unreal, it's starting to feel a bit like Epic is going to end up with more than a healthy share of the market.
The cheapest ad campaign for Unreal Engine in history lmao
Or arguably, the most expensive. Just not for Epic.
Goodbye, unity. It's been okayish.
I'm going to install games heaps of times so I can bankrupt any small game companies
You you really are a jerk Spez.
I was shocked until I read the username
Calm down, Satan.
The in game ads already do that these days.
Just try to hit that X, haha, tricked you! Installing.
Any touch of the phone for 30 seconds auto installs...
Use a firewall app to block that game from accessing the internet (this obviously defeats the purpose of online multiplayer games.)
From a Cybersecurity point of view, I think this is a legit attack. Imagine a server that has many virtual machines, all of which automatically trigger the reinstall mechanism as fast as possible.
If there is not some kind of limitation on that rule, depending on how their mechanism works, you could cost the game creater a lot of money.
Why tech companies keep getting worse and worse and worse?
Enshittification
Do you know how many times I install and uninstall a game before I even play it? I could probably destroy a small game company on my own with this fee structure, and I'm sure I'm not alone with the constant installing and uninstalling.
Where were you when unity killed itself?
On the shitter. That's when I browse the news at least.
The entire Unity userbase:
As if Epic needed any more help completely obliterating Unity in every conceivable way.
I brought this up in another thread:
They expect Game Pass titles to have their bill footed by Microsoft.
There's kicking the nest, and then there's kicking the fucking queen bee.
I mean what are they going to do with xcloud plays? Is it just 1 install on the remote Xbox or does it count per player, which means it’s an install every single time someone plays?
I imagine a lot of the doomsday stuff people are saying are not going to come to pass (and some will!). But it’s this kind of ambiguity that always leads to this kind of speculation.
Must have come from the Reddit play book
Good way to kill your business. Way to go, you greedy jerks.
Well sssshhhiitt
It's kinda amazing how Unity shot themselves in the chest with this one. No, I don't mean foot, they are now actively bleeding from the torso.
No Dev or Publisher is going to be okay with this, none. This basically leaves Devs on the hook for unlimited liability. Even with their walk back of "only initial installs" doesn't help. I myself have both a Desktop and a SteamDeck. That's possibly two installs out of the gate from one customer. Then any time I make an upgrade in the future, or heck maybe even switch Proton versions on my Deck, the Dev could be on the hook for more cash. There's zero transparency with how these "installs" are detected or counted, so there is no way to budget or plan for the expenses.
Businesses hate unpredictable fees.
They'll deal with utilities upping rates, because who are you gonna switch to in a monopoly? But if you're just a tool for them, they'll ditch you as soon as they're able and never use you again.
And again, publishers will care about this too, since their whole job is distribution. Any Dev looking to sign with a publisher, even a subscription service like GamePass, will now be asked which engine they're using, and I bet you 9/10 times the Dev will get rejected if they're using Unity now. That puts even more pressure on Devs not to use Unity.
Unity will price gouge their existing customers(Devs), but will ensure that nobody ever buys their product ever again. At this point I doubt their reputation will ever recover even if they can walk this back. The fact that they believe they can unilaterally add enormous fees at the drop of a hat means they've ruined any trust their customers had in them.
Unity: I can charge you any fees I want, any time I want.
Nevermind desktop games.
The real hit is free mobile games. Paying per install can be crippling when you naturally have low retention rates.
You can accidentally success yourself into debt if you don't have preditary monetization.
I'm building a game ATM that's meant to be fun and fair, monetization is really low. If it shot up as a front page item for some reason that now went from a huge success to a massive stress point as the number of installs would easily put me into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to unity overnight.
Who TF wants to take on that kind of risk? Does this not push mobile games into being even MORE preditary?? Since it's now impossible to build a mobile game with Unity, and just release it as something free.
Predatory
I don't mean to be rude, just giving a heads up since it's written there twice with the same spelling
How would they even track that it was "only the initial install", and what's the metric for that? If i need to reinstall my OS due to a crash, is that a second install for the game? How about if I replace a piece of hardware that fails, is it considered a new system with a new install?
The whole idea that they can claim additional fees for an "install" is ridiculous.
Time for Godot to shine brighter
Is this a cry for help? Do we need to get them some therapy?
Fuck unity tech, they haven't made a single intelligent decision in 10 years.
The engine was perfectly fine and they ruined ALL OF IT.
I wasted so much fucking time because of them, everything they do is garbage.
Just let them go bankrupcy.
As someone who's been following Unity's development since 2.0, this doesn't surprise me. They've always struck me as a company that doesn't care about developers. And while all companies are trying to make money, there's a difference between "pay for our product because we need money to operate" and "we love Adobe's subscription model and want to outdo them - and we will squeeze you as much as possible." Have a little heart, Unity.
Can't wait to see what damage control mode looks like on this one.
Just another example of 2023: Enshittification.
Wᴇ ᴀrᴇ ᴛʜᴇ Cʏʙᴇrᴛʜᴇᴍ. Uᴘɢrᴀᴅᴇs ᴀrᴇ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴜʟsᴏrʏ!
(I commented in the wrong thread, but am still getting upvotes...)
Don't worry, Devs. I won't be buying any unity trash ever again.
They do know unreal engine 5 is a thing, yeah?
This only makes sense. Unity is a very big part of what makes a game work and building and maintaining the Unity engine costs a lot of work. They deserve some share of the money made on a game. That share should ideally be proportional to how much money is made by the developer, which should be proportional to the amount of times the game is downloaded. And this is only one of their plans. There are other plans as well. So maybe someone can explain to me why this is not just a sound business decision apart from: I don't want to pay any money?
Unity already charges money once you hit a certain revenue from your game, it's only free if you don't get a lot of sales.
More importantly, according to the article, when questioned it seems Unity hasn't given any proper thought into this model.
If a user installs the game and then uninstalls and reinstalls, it counts as 2 installs that must be paid for. Not only is that unfair, it can lead to abuse. Angry with a change the developer made? Uninstall and reinstall 30 times (automate it) and you will actually cost the Dev money.
What about pirated copies? Unity will still "phone home" and the result will be a developer paying for 1mil installs that he earned nothing from.
What if your game is free to play?
There were some other issues like that mentioned too (in the twitter post in the article).
I have a 500GB SSD and >300 games. Do you have any idea how often I uninstall and reinstall games? Even smaller Indy games?
This comment section has you covered: to bankrupt a small game company, let's reinstall the games numerous times!
Also, their previous monetization methods are already proportional AFAIK.
"This only makes sense. Ovens are a very big part of what makes food and designing and building the ovens costs a lot of work. They deserve some share of the food made in the oven. That food should ideally be proportional to how many edibles items are made by the chef, which should be proportional to the amount of times the food is baked. And this is only one of their plans. There are other plans as well. So maybe someone can explain to me why this is not just a sound business decision apart from: I don’t want to give away my baked food?"
It's clearly not an oven, but an ingredient.
Holy fucking shit... The game concepts and mechanics are the ingredients!
Does a pizza contain an oven? No. Does a pizza contain tomatoes? Yes. Therefore tomatoes are an ingredient and an oven is not.
Does a game contain Unity? Yes. Therefore Unity is an ingredient.
The game ships with Unity which handles the rendering, physics, sound and a whole bunch more. Basically Unity is a pizza base, but it gives you a bunch of toppings too. The developer combines the base with the toppings and voila you've got a game. Not saying that last part isn't hard, but a business model where Unity, or any game engine for that matter, is charged proportionally to the amount of installs isn't a totally unreasonable business model.
Yes, and that is what they already do, as does Unreal.
Eh, no. How many unique times a game is uninstalled, perhaps, but not how many over all. That's clearly stupid.
By that logic Microsoft should also be able to charge for any software installation that happens on windows. That also means any and all installations for the customer should be single use, because now all installations cost money.
Would you be willing to pay a certain amount of money any time you want to install some software, doesn't even matter if you've already paid for it? Because that's the business plan you call "sound".
I call that stupid.
Yeah, you can call that stupid, but I am not stupid. But regardless of your insult, let me talk to you.
I am not sure which Microsoft product you are talking about, but certain Microsoft products are indeed charged this way. It is called an OEM license and while typically every OEM license is negotiated on different terms (per license, per revenue, per download, per install, per duration of usage, etc.), the basic idea is usually that some amount of money will be made by Microsoft proportional to how much use your product is getting. In the Enterprise world it is also common to charge by how much value the user is getting out of the product, which whole sales departments are trying to figure out on a case by case basis with complicated excel sheets. I mean, it is not like Unity invented this model. In fact, Microsoft got as big as it got by selling a pay per copy version of MS-DOS to IBM.
Unity is an ingredient that makes games work. The game is made with Unity and is shipped with the Unity engine packaged inside, just like any other ingredient. So explain to my why Unity can not define some metric which will highly correlate with the amount of usage and charge based on that metric?
So what I get from Unity's site is that they will charge per download. So yeah, potentially you can download a game three times to three different devices or even to the same devices you've wiped. But I would claim that generally speaking the number of downloads is a good indicator of how often a game is used. If you don't like a game you are generally going to download it only once. If you really like the game you are likely to download it again and again to new devices and after wipes. It isn't perfect for sure, but every other metric you can come up with also has a fair share of problems. Maybe you tell me which one is the one that does not have any problems and is still simple enough to bill upon?
Windows. If Unity is a large part of what makes games work then Windows is arguably an even larger part of what makes most consumer software work. If it's acceptable to charge for Unity usage then it should also be acceptable to charge for Windows usage. After all if you want to install Unity development tools on Windows you need to use Windows. Then following your logic that means Microsoft should be able to charge, in this example charge Unity Technologies, every time someone installs the Unity development tools because the tools literally won't work without Windows.
And if this became the norm then that cost will be offloaded to the customers. That would mean if you've built a new computer and want to play Skyrim you're going to pay x amount to install Chrome (or Firefox), then pay another x amount to install Steam and finally pay another x amount to install Skyrim. That's stupid.
It's called licensing and Unity developers already pay a licensing fee per year and, in theory, also per user. Some companies reuse keys (not unique to Unity or game dev) between developers because they can get away with it as just the "per user" part is already too hard for licensing companies to properly track and bill.
And to be clear I never said you're stupid. I said your idea is stupid. Smart people can have stupid ideas as well.
Yeah, so Windows is indeed a large part of why software works, but it is infrastructure which is packaged separately. Your reasoning can be extended into even further absurdity, like we should pay Intel each time we run software, etc. But this is just not how Microsoft and Intel operate. They're not part of the product, but just make the product work. It's not like we get another Windows version and Intel chip with each game.
Think of Unity like a frozen pizza bottom. What the developers needs to do is put some ingredients on top and it can be sold. The frozen pizza is clearly sold with the pizza bottom. Should the developer not have to pay per pizza bottom? You can bake the pizza in your oven, but the pizza developer doesn't need to pay for the oven. They can assume people have that in place; it is simply a requirement in order for the pizza to be consumed.
However, if you are going to ship a Microsoft product as part of your product, you can sure as hell expect Microsoft sales people on your doorstep. They'll negotiate an OEM deal and it'll surely depend on things like: number of installs, number of downloads, number of users, time used, value extracted by the users, revenue made by you, etc. I've ran a big company for many years and did a number of OEM deals during that time (both being OEMed and OEMing). This is only reasonable.