The overhauled Runtime Fee policy plan being considered by Unity Technologies will cap the fee to 4% of the game’s revenues over $1 million.

While the changes aren’t official yet, Bloomberg got hold of a meeting recording where Unity executives outlined the new plan, which reportedly caps the Runtime Fee at 4% of the game’s revenues over one million dollars. Developers will also be asked to report the installation figures themselves instead of being forced to deal with Unity’s proprietary technology. Lastly, the installation threshold won’t be retroactive, so only new installations made after the policy’s announcement will count toward reaching the Runtime Fee thresholds.

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78 points
  1. Company makes wildly negative changes
  2. Public outcry occurs
  3. Company walks back overwhelmingly negative parts of the deal to what they originally intended to happen
  4. The public is placated into thinking they won the fight

We’re at step 3, y’all

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46 points
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Yeah and it won’t work this time.

Unity is B2B, they tried to change the deal retrospectively. That’s toxic to a business relationship, it’s not viable to do business with such a company because they may try to do it again.

The only thing they can do now is fire the CEO.

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16 points

Or add a clause to the TOS banning retroactive updates of TOS to existing games.

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18 points

Like they already had but sneakily removed

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9 points

AND add a clause to the TOS banning retroactive updates of TOS to existing games.

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2 points

Oh yeah I’m sure that will work

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8 points
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Which is exactly the plan. Short term cash boost and loss of trust followed by a new CEO who builds that trust again. Rinse and repeat.

The current CEO gets a golden parachute and the investors get some quick cash and likely buy more stock when the value falls.

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1 point

I hope you’re right! Just drawing attention to this page of their playbook.

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17 points

I mean you definitely got a point, but don’t forget that there are long term consequences. The trust is completely gone (which is needed if you invest in this game engine and you will probably see the unity market share drop in the coming year.

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4 points

But don’t you think that pretty much this debacle resembles Reddit and by now most of the users are back to their platform, exactly what they wanted.

Only the nerds and some mods left their platform permanently but percentage wise the number is probably very low and now Reddit is probably earning even more than before. So it is a win win situation for them.

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3 points

The big difference is Reddit isn’t taking a portion of their wages. It was purely moral outrage.

Things are different once money is involved.

Choosing an engine is a business decision for a lot of people and using a free alternative that isn’t quite as feature rich sure seems like the better option now.

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1 point

Idk why everyone is like “well Reddit won and we’re just on Lemmy because we’re nerds and no one believes in FOSS anyway”. Yes, I get you, there’s currently not much consequence visible for the Reddit debacle. I genuinely think we’re in the middle of a slow and painful death to Reddit. A lot of big companies don’t implode, but they die slowly in front of their competition. Yeah, currently we only are a fraction of users compared to Reddit, but if people truly believe in Lemmy as the better platform, this will be competition.

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1 point

Pssh, long term consequences are for the next CEO. I got my bonus and stock options.

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1 point
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I agree- hopefully we can remember long enough for it to really matter in the long term. Just wanted to bring attention to this cycle because it’s been happening a lot lately (Facebook, DnD, etc) and I think the companies are starting to copy eachother.

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1 point

There’s no long term consequences unless you have serious competitors and Unity doesn’t really, just Unreal Engine.

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5 points

Maybe not today, but getting serious competitors is another long term consequence.

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