How about that Unity huh

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

20 cents per install for any game which sells more than 200,000 copies

Can we get that option added to the game engines plz

[Eggcode Games]

I see a different problem there. If this is indeed what Unity introduces, there will soon be no more Unity games.

The problem:
- A game which costs $20 makes about $10 on average (due to different prices in countries). For example, MGT2 costs $25 in the US and $4.50 in Argentina.

- In countries like Argentina, the game couldn't be sold anymore, because 20 installs over the lifetime, would lower the complete revenue to $0. In the worst case, it would even cost me money if too many installations were made.

- Updates could be made very infrequently, as an update might count as an install, or players might want to reinstall the game and try out the new features because of an update. For a game that has sold, say, 100,000, and in the worst case all players reinstall the game, that would be a cost of about $2000 (for that one update).

- Players (or whole groups of players) who are unhappy with your game can raise the cost to unpredictable levels. For example, if a small group of 1000 players reinstall the game 50x a day, that would be a $1000 cost per day for the developer. Within a month, a small studio like Eggcode would go bankrupt, or would have to remove the game from Steam immediately.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

I imagine porting your game/s over to Unreal or Godot would not be feasible

[Eggcode Games]

No, that would not be financially feasible. It would simply take too long, as I have no experience with these engines. Porting on another engine would take a very long time and during that time I would have no income, which would inevitably lead to bankruptcy.

At the moment, I honestly don't know how to proceed. In the worst case scenario, many developers will be forced to remove their games from Steam on January 1. Which means that there will be no money for the development of the next game on a different engine (since you don't sell games on Steam during that time). In the default case, the old games have funded the development of a new game. Because of that quite a lot of units are sold during sales. But since the selling price of a game in Sale is too low, this option would not be possible.

Example:
- Mad Games Tycoon 1 & Mad Tower Tycoon 50% discount.
- This means that these games will be sold for $1-7 (depending on the country).
- But if too many games are sold in e.g. Russia, Turkey or Argentina etc., I pay money for this Sale instead of earning something.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

It's not a great situation. Hopefully Unity will take heed of this backlash and reverse or at least scale back what they're planning to do

No BS 95% of my games library uses Unity. It's the go to for indie devs everywhere

[Eggcode Games]

Right. But the situation looks very bad indeed. It was confirmed in the official forum that even mobile games (for example, IPhone) that are sold for $1, and are reinstalled, count as installation. That would be $0.40 per game that you as a developer would have to pay to Unity.

This is an incalculable financial risk.

Even if the invoices are sent to Valve or Apple, they will ban all Unity games from their platforms.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Unity was just tired of being used, I guess?

I'm not sure what justification they could have for that move. Some of these idiotic, greed-fueled business decisions are usually passed as "fighting against piracy" but I don't think anyone would be braindead enough to believe that in this case.

[Digihuman]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Unity was just tired of being used, I guess?

I'm not sure what justification they could have for that move. Some of these idiotic, greed-fueled business decisions are usually passed as "fighting against piracy" but I don't think anyone would be braindead enough to believe that in this case.

In this case it's purely greed. They think they've cornered a good chunk of the market and now it's time for predatory business practices.

[Panda]

I saw they already walked back the 'payment for every install and re-install' to just the initial install. Not that it's significantly better especially with the retroactive change affecting already released games, which is ridiculous.

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Unity was just tired of being used, I guess?

I'm not sure what justification they could have for that move. Some of these idiotic, greed-fueled business decisions are usually passed as "fighting against piracy" but I don't think anyone would be braindead enough to believe that in this case.

As for why they are doing it, mismanagement. They have (or had) 7700 employees. They employee more people than Nintendo (6600), Epic has 2200. They've buried themselves in debt and expenses.

[yutterh]

Dude I am so sorry man. That's really ♥♥♥♥♥♥, especially if it includes retroactive installs. So on January 1st they are gonna charge you for every game was that installed? That's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ horrible man.

[Eggcode Games]

It looks like "installations" are actually being counted. So if you install the game on a PC, laptop and Steam deck, it costs the developer $0.60. If that player were to buy a new PC or a mini-PC for his living room over time, we're already at $1. How high the error rate will be is unknown. Supposedly, Unity wants to be able to detect pirated copies or install-bombing.

Basically, it is clear that every developer can expect at least $1-2 loss per sold game.

It will probably come down to the fact that all games will receive a significant price increase. Especially in the countries where the prices are very low (or are no longer sold there). For example, a "Vampire Survivors" can no longer be sold for under $2 in Turkey, Russia or Argentina etc.

However, this does not only affect low-priced games. For example, if I put "Mad Games Tycoon 1" on sale for 50%, the price would also drop below $2 in some countries. Even there, the risk is high that I pay more money than I earn.

I guess the times when games have a sale of 80% or 90% are over then.

[yutterh]

I know it's too late to port game already in the pipeline but are you gonna switch engines after this, for future games?

[Eggcode Games]

Originally posted by yutterh:

I know it's too late to port game already in the pipeline but are you gonna switch engines after this, for future games?

Unless Unity completely reverses this announcement, I think I'll be switching the engine.

[Majber]

Originally posted by Eggcode Games:

Originally posted by yutterh:

I know it's too late to port game already in the pipeline but are you gonna switch engines after this, for future games?

Unless Unity completely reverses this announcement, I think I'll be switching the engine.

Maybe it will be for the better, Unity in some aspects is kind of junk. Its like another Bethesda game.

[yutterh]

I think you should switch anyways if your able too. This will probably happen again, even if it is reversed. Out of curiosity, which engine are you thinking of going with? I can just imagine mad games tycoon 3 being UE5 hahahaha

[Folio_Nov9m]

Originally posted by Majber:

Originally posted by Eggcode Games:

Unless Unity completely reverses this announcement, I think I'll be switching the engine.

Maybe it will be for the better, Unity in some aspects is kind of junk. Its like another Bethesda game.

I don’t think there’s any point in looking for the positive here.
However, the developers' reaction was immediate. In addition, the head of Unity (or someone in senior positions) sold some of his shares in the company before this. This may be classified as insider trading.