Unity’s new “per-install” pricing enrages the game development community
arstechnica.com
Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.

Unity’s new “per-install” pricing enrages the game development community | Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.::Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.

  • ???@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    1 year ago

    So out of every 1M downloads, that’s $200,000 to Unity’s pocket and out of the pockets of developers. Am I doing this math right?

    • TurnItOff_OnAgain@lemmy.worldEnglish
      721·
      1 year ago

      Not downloads. Installs. They also count re installs. So if you. Install a game, play it, remove it, then install again later that is an additional charge to the dev.

        • kaitco@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          1 year ago

          You’ve entered into a brand new era of trolling game developers by directing costing them for the fun of it.

          • douglasg14b@lemmy.worldEnglish
            14·
            1 year ago

            I can even automate it for pennies.

            Spin up 100 digital ocean droplets with Terra form. Install steam, the game, open the game, let it crash. Kill the droplet and do it again.

            For every $0.70 I spend, I could get ~2000 installs. Per hour. Costing some dev up to $400/h

        • lobut@lemmy.caEnglish
          141·
          1 year ago

          They don’t count reinstalls.

          You can tell because they totally promise and definitely won’t let you see how their system works because it’s “proprietary”.

      • tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.ukEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        So… if your game becomes the most pirated game in history, you’re on the hook for millions off zero income.

        Way to go Unity…

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        51·
        1 year ago

        If I’ve read this right, they don’t count re-installs on the same hardware, so just “I don’t want to play this anymore” uninstall -later- “I want to play this again” reinstall won’t count as two installs. But reinstalls of the same license on different hardware does, so “I just bought a game! Let’s play it on my aging gaming PC” installs I just bought a new gaming PC, let’s see what that game looks like on high graphics settings installs again does count as two installs and the studio will…bewilderingly…be charged twice for that one sale.

          • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            You’re not the first to consider that possibility. It seems possible to grief a studio by repeatedly installing games in virtual machines and running up their Unity bill.

            The question of “what about pirated games” has also come up. Are developers going to be charged per install of pirated games? Unity’s answer to this has been an LTT brand “Trust me, bro.”

    • Korkki@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      1 year ago

      Plus on top of all the other subscription fees.

      it’s not even really about the money, even if it will fuck the devs and ruin projects and lives, but the breach of trust and a mark that more shit is probably on it’s way if this goes through. Unity owns a ecosystem that many people depend on and now they really start squeezing. It’s not right.

      This is why things that act as commons should be either nationalised or replaced with free software.

      • ???@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        I agree. This dipping of fingers into the pockets of devs errodes trust.

      • panachemidi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        42·
        1 year ago

        Plus on top of all the other subscription fees

        False. This 200k number assumes you would stay on Unity Personal, which breaks EULA anyway since you’re required to buy Unity Pro once you have more than 200k in revenue and funding.

        The real cost for 1M installs, under Unity Pro, would be 62k$, to which you’re adding 2k annually for every seat of Pro you need, that’s it. Again, this assumes you’re making upwards of 2M$ annually. As soon as your game falls back under that, there’s no runtime fees anymore.

        Compare with Unreal, where as soon as your game made 1M$ revenue over its lifetime, you’re on the hook for the 5% revshare perpetually. Over time, there’s loads of situations where that will stay more expensive.

        • Exec@pawb.socialEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Compare with Unreal, where as soon as your game made 1M$ revenue over its lifetime, you’re on the hook for the 5% revshare perpetually. Over time, there’s loads of situations where that will stay more expensive.

          The difference between that and Unity that with Unreal it’s predictable.

    • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Not necessarily. It depends on the Unity license being used and it scales based on installs. So higher tier license and more installs makes each additional install cheaper. But if they are using the free license, it stays at 20c per install no ‘discount’ at any install counts. It is a bit convoluted: https://unity.com/runtime-fee

    • cooopsspace@infosec.pubEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      Basically unless you’re going to make a sellout game, it might cost you money to make a game.