Unity, You Absolute Morons

[OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle]

https://www.techradar.com/gaming/unitys-plans-to-charge-per-game-install-has-developers-begging-gamers-not-to-download-their-games

Someone in the board meeting went, "Okay guys, how do we make sure that we lose as much trust and market share as possible?"

I might add that since some recent Nintendo titles have been on Unity, this has them picking a fight with a particularly tight-fisted and litigious opponent.

[Tiberius]

Origineel geplaatst door Sly Succubus:

Origineel geplaatst door Tiberius:

Yea.. like how gamers complained abt mtx 🥱 meanwhile, the industry keeps making gazzilion profit from it

Micro transactions VS Forcing people to pay to play their games
Two different issues bro, stop moving the goal posts

That 70$ pricetag didnt stop millions of players from buying starfield either 🥱 gamers are cute

[❤ Sly Succubus ❤]

Origineel geplaatst door Tiberius:

Origineel geplaatst door Sly Succubus:

Micro transactions VS Forcing people to pay to play their games
Two different issues bro, stop moving the goal posts

That 70$ pricetag didnt stop millions of players from buying starfield either 🥱 gamers are cute

Indeed, paid for it once, thankfully not monthly

Single charge VS Monthly forced fee

Again, moving goal posts

[Tiberius]

Origineel geplaatst door Sly Succubus:

Origineel geplaatst door Tiberius:

That 70$ pricetag didnt stop millions of players from buying starfield either 🥱 gamers are cute

Indeed, paid for it once, thankfully not monthly

Single charge VS Monthly forced fee

Again, moving goal posts

Not only cute, gamers also didnt bother to read i see 🥱

[🍋 Lemonfed 🍋]

so when you download a unity game on steam , does the game even call home with unity to download anything ?

they're talking about runtime ... ain't in most case steam is the one actually distributing the games runtimes ?

[❤ Sly Succubus ❤]

Origineel geplaatst door Tiberius:

Origineel geplaatst door Sly Succubus:

Indeed, paid for it once, thankfully not monthly

Single charge VS Monthly forced fee

Again, moving goal posts

Not only cute, gamers also didnt bother to read i see 🥱

I completely forgot why I had you blocked, now I remember why I had a known OT trouble maker blocked, well off to the block cell you go again (not that I care because somehow I feel you don't either.)

[BigBallinChester]

Origineel geplaatst door Ulfrinn:

Something I pointed out in the other thread about this... the CEO of Unity is one who drove EA into the ground back in 2013. Collapsed the company's stock value by about 70% after gamers started boycotting their company for pushing very user unfriendly services, like micro transactions, pre-planned DLC, even forcing customers to pay extra to play their games online. After he got fired from EA, he went to work at Unity.

So with that information, what Unity is trying to do makes a lot of sense. And if they had any sense at all they wouldn't have hired him in the first place after what he did at EA. Because of him EA is still a joke to gamers today.

HOW TF do these morons keep getting jobs. If I had a job and I crashed a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ train for being a careless moron I would not expect to be hired a few years later to cause another train wreck.

[Tiberius]

Origineel geplaatst door Your_White_Knight:

Origineel geplaatst door Tiberius:

Errr... before any of this, unity hasnt been making any profit and they're alr 3billions$ deep into debts

So they're going to basically destroy their company to save their company?... not a great plan.

Old Developers are already talking about dropping Unity like a hot rock... new Developers are looking at other Engines with plenty of them out there...

All Unity did was start to burn the bridge they're still standing on, no way back, no way forward.

Some greedy person thought "they can't do without us, we have them were we want them"

And will find out the answer is "no... not so much"

If you're 3billion$ deep in debts, double downing on scummy practice is not that illogical. Besides, scummy practice has brought this industry lots lots of money

[WhiteKnight77]

How does this differ than the terms that Epic has for the use of the Unreal Engine for small developers who wish to make a game and sell it?

[Hammer Of Evil]

unity is being pretty dirty, but i can't imagine the legality of it. they may trigger some civil action .

at the same time, this is what happens when you slack and don't make your own game engine. the owner of the engine might decide its time to pay the piper, and if you are not making your own engine, you earned everything you get.

this is just one example. other engine owners may decide to start clamping down as well. and there's probably nothing we can do about it.

i'm not supporting their move, but all i have to say to ppl who decided to build in someone else's engine - serves ya right.

[Rogue]

I avoid Unity Games Period.

[❤ Sly Succubus ❤]

Origineel geplaatst door WhiteKnight77:

How does this differ than the terms that Epic has for the use of the Unreal Engine for small developers who wish to make a game and sell it?

Epic is different in the fact that they don't care how popular the game is, nor the users it has. It has a 5% royalty clause that only takes effect once the game has earned over 1 million in USD, and that 5% can be basically any amount, its just 5% in general of the default income a game costs, even if the game is free so basically that 5% clause wont come into effect unless the game goes up for a price, and even then only 5% of that price will ever be taken.

Edit: In effect, the 5% royalty clause can be compared to Steams take on games bought on the platform, its just a percentage of the overall game cost, so its only based off the price of the game in question.

[WhiteKnight77]

Origineel geplaatst door Sly Succubus:

Origineel geplaatst door WhiteKnight77:

How does this differ than the terms that Epic has for the use of the Unreal Engine for small developers who wish to make a game and sell it?

Epic is different in the fact that they don't care how popular the game is, nor the users it has. It has a 5% royalty clause that only takes effect once the game has earned over 1 million in USD, and that 5% can be basically any amount, its just 5% in general of the default income a game costs, even if the game is free so basically that 5% clause wont come into effect unless the game goes up for a price, and even then only 5% of that price will ever be taken.

Edit: In effect, the 5% royalty clause can be compared to Steams take on games bought on the platform, its just a percentage of the overall game cost, so its only based off the price of the game in question.

That would suck then.

Still, there is a way to bypass all but the initial download. Once downloaded from Steam, use Steam to back up the game to an external drive before uninstalling it. When you want to play the game again at a later date, install it from the back-up on the external drive and let Steam update it before playing. No more complete downloads. This is how I transferred Cities: Skylines from one laptop to another before completely moving it to the external SSD to play the game (as well as the majority of my Steam games that are installed).

[Chalupacabaras]

Origineel geplaatst door dumplingsoup:

Game-dev here, hope my response is helpful/ insightful for a lot of you.

To respond to a lot of people's comments, Unity built games makes up for like 35-40% of all games made. So there's a pretty high chance one of your top games is built with Unity, and so this game WILL effect you.

A lot of Unity's moves here will effect a lot of smaller games/ game studios (those using Unity Free and Unity Plus). So this move will greatly effect the indie market to develop their games. If they have any success with a small game they built, they'll have to start paying for installations, which when you're a small indie studio, every cent counts. This will also cost successful games more money as well.

Now a lot of you are saying "well, just use Unreal", it's not as easy to switch platforms as one might think. Almost every developer I know uses LOTS of different packages in their game to help with everything from visual assets, any game that uses networking will have some kind of package installed, there's state machines, and more. You'll likely not be able to have all of the same packages going from Unity to Unreal. Last point here is, Unreal uses C++ as their main language while Unity uses C#. It's very easy to go from Unreal/ C++ to Unity/ C#, but the reverse is MUCH harder and requires re-writing a lot of your code.

What does this mean for you gamers? You'll probably see less indie games when this change goes live. Very inexpensive games/ free games will likely start charging more.

Really disappointed with Unity on this move, it was some dumb executive who doesn't really understand the gaming eco-system and saw an easy move to make more money in the short run while hurting the company in the long run (that's a WHOLE other discussion). I hope community backlash makes them re-think this move. As for my team/ studio, we'll be looking at alternatives (like Unreal), because Unity just keeps spiraling out of control.

Last thoughts, I get that Unity needs to make money, you can't run a company without profit. Unity has tried quite a few things in the past to increase revenue but haven't had a lot of luck. There was hope Microsoft might buy them (which depending on how you look at it could've been good/bad). They went public and tried to raise money that way, but their valuation has been a rollercoaster to say the least. I know for a fact Unity has a lot of fat to trim in their organization, and they could likely cut costs by 1/3rd or more by becoming lean again, but they've gotten so big and bureaucratic with a lot of middlemen wanting to take a cut of the pie without really contributing that that'll never happen under current leadership.

Game buyer here, hope my response is helpful and/or insightful to you, Game Developer.

Unity's free subscription version prohibits a dev from selling any games on any platform, at any price. These games are easy to spot, as they come with a intro splash screen that clearly shows the "Made with Unity" logo.

There's been a considerable number of devs who have churned out free-version Unity games on the Steam platform with an actual listing price (usually between $0.49 and $1.99 USD). Many of those games are either unplayable, inoperable, buggy as hell or have run unauthorized programs like cryptominers.

Easy to exploit, easy to install payloads, easy to deploy and easy to make a lot of money on platforms that rubberstamp everything. You can call it what you like, we use the kid-friendly term "shovelware" and it's a much bigger insult than microtransactions and lootboxes.

You tell us to "think of the indies". You tell us to "think of the developers". You tell, tell, tell, but you don't listen to a word we say about how bad the quality of the games are. You're not the ones who have to fix our machines when your games deploy malware. You're not the ones who have to deal with the LACK of indies because the AAA's that produce dumpster fires like Overwatch 2 and Starfield need awards they don't deserve.

If Unity's new policy change is true then those devs should prepare for a tsunami of installs by the Steam community. In terms of payback for all the crap we've had to put up with in silence over the past several years -- like Hearthstone, Bobby Kotick and censorship -- I can't think of a better example of "get woke, go broke."

[Adversary]

For the record, the CEO of Unity Technologies, John Riccitiello, used to work at EA and also sat on the ESRB. So it goes without saying that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ needs to leave the industry.

[Adversary]

Origineel geplaatst door Chalupabaras:

Origineel geplaatst door dumplingsoup:

Game-dev here, hope my response is helpful/ insightful for a lot of you.

To respond to a lot of people's comments, Unity built games makes up for like 35-40% of all games made. So there's a pretty high chance one of your top games is built with Unity, and so this game WILL effect you.

A lot of Unity's moves here will effect a lot of smaller games/ game studios (those using Unity Free and Unity Plus). So this move will greatly effect the indie market to develop their games. If they have any success with a small game they built, they'll have to start paying for installations, which when you're a small indie studio, every cent counts. This will also cost successful games more money as well.

Now a lot of you are saying "well, just use Unreal", it's not as easy to switch platforms as one might think. Almost every developer I know uses LOTS of different packages in their game to help with everything from visual assets, any game that uses networking will have some kind of package installed, there's state machines, and more. You'll likely not be able to have all of the same packages going from Unity to Unreal. Last point here is, Unreal uses C++ as their main language while Unity uses C#. It's very easy to go from Unreal/ C++ to Unity/ C#, but the reverse is MUCH harder and requires re-writing a lot of your code.

What does this mean for you gamers? You'll probably see less indie games when this change goes live. Very inexpensive games/ free games will likely start charging more.

Really disappointed with Unity on this move, it was some dumb executive who doesn't really understand the gaming eco-system and saw an easy move to make more money in the short run while hurting the company in the long run (that's a WHOLE other discussion). I hope community backlash makes them re-think this move. As for my team/ studio, we'll be looking at alternatives (like Unreal), because Unity just keeps spiraling out of control.

Last thoughts, I get that Unity needs to make money, you can't run a company without profit. Unity has tried quite a few things in the past to increase revenue but haven't had a lot of luck. There was hope Microsoft might buy them (which depending on how you look at it could've been good/bad). They went public and tried to raise money that way, but their valuation has been a rollercoaster to say the least. I know for a fact Unity has a lot of fat to trim in their organization, and they could likely cut costs by 1/3rd or more by becoming lean again, but they've gotten so big and bureaucratic with a lot of middlemen wanting to take a cut of the pie without really contributing that that'll never happen under current leadership.

Game buyer here, hope my response is helpful and/or insightful to you, Game Developer.

Unity's free subscription version prohibits a dev from selling any games on any platform, at any price. These games are easy to spot, as they come with a intro splash screen that clearly shows the "Made with Unity" logo.

There's been a considerable number of devs who have churned out free-version Unity games on the Steam platform with an actual listing price (usually between $0.49 and $1.99 USD). Many of those games are either unplayable, inoperable, buggy as hell or have run unauthorized programs like cryptominers.

Easy to exploit, easy to install payloads, easy to deploy and easy to make a lot of money on platforms that rubberstamp everything. You can call it what you like, we use the kid-friendly term "shovelware" and it's a much bigger insult than microtransactions and lootboxes.

You tell us to "think of the indies". You tell us to "think of the developers". You tell, tell, tell, but you don't listen to a word we say about how bad the quality of the games are. You're not the ones who have to fix our machines when your games deploy malware. You're not the ones who have to deal with the LACK of indies because the AAA's that produce dumpster fires like Overwatch 2 and Starfield need awards they don't deserve.

If Unity's new policy change is true then those devs should prepare for a tsunami of installs by the Steam community. In terms of payback for all the crap we've had to put up with in silence over the past several years -- like Hearthstone, Bobby Kotick and censorship -- I can't think of a better example of "get woke, go broke."

Given that ESG is spread via investment it's more get broke, go woke, ultimately croak.