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.
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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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Hopefully development studios can hold strong and continue their boycott anyway. Backing down now basically means Unity got away with it, in a sense. Plus, companies are learning from each other’s shitty tactics lately ala Twitter, Reddit, and Recently Facebook coming out with payment schemes on things that used to be free.
So if Unity does this, other software companies will probably try some similar stuff.
The games making over a million are the ones who can afford the new rates. This is so regressive. It should get more expensive as your sales go up, not down. Small devs should be charged less than big studios
Oh did they change that too? I was just going off the “capped at 4%” part. Before you only had to exceed $200k to have to start paying
Still trying to shoehorn in a “runtime fee”. That’s not going to work and with this model it’s pointless anyway. Just make it a 4% revenue for sales after $1 million. Same end results (actually potentially more in fees) without all the runtime issues. Make it apply only to a specific version and later and after a certain date and then you also don’t have the retroactive problem and the massive blowback.
They’re trying to monetize the free-to-play mobile market, which is much more lucrative than a percentage of the sales. Cunning bastards.
It works for that market too even without install fees, you just make it a percentage of revenue generated from microtransactions. It’s still tied to the game.
For every paying customer, there are one thousand installations. A quick maths will tell you why they are trying so much to be paid for runtime.
- Company makes wildly negative changes
- Public outcry occurs
- Company walks back overwhelmingly negative parts of the deal to what they originally intended to happen
- The public is placated into thinking they won the fight
We’re at step 3, y’all
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.
Or add a clause to the TOS banning retroactive updates of TOS to existing games.
AND add a clause to the TOS banning retroactive updates of TOS to existing games.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There’s no long term consequences unless you have serious competitors and Unity doesn’t really, just Unreal Engine.
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.
That’s still retroactive though.
It also isn’t any different than what was originally announced, no? It was always like that and still shit.
