This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Nothing they do at this point will bring any of the goodwill back. They already messed up and no amount of walking it back is going to change the perception that they might just do it again at any moment
1,000%
I'm a year into developing my first game though and this means I don't have to abandon all the progress I've made. After I publish this game, all bets are off as to where I go...or should I say where I godot.
Have you explored what level of effort it would take for you to convert it to use another engine? There are a TON of tools people are making to assist with porting projects from Unity to any number of other engines. Sure, the tools won’t do 100% of the work, but by what I’ve been hearing, they take a HUGE amount of the tedium out of the process.
Yeah I have. There's a couple of promising programs that everyone should know about:
https://github.com/V-Sekai/unidot_importer
https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot
But for me, I'm too new to programming to pick up another language very quickly to do all the manual stuff right now. Anyone more skilled than me should definitely check those links out.
And pointedly, there was no mention of acknowledgement whatsoever of their sneaky license modifications from months ago that a bunch of people discovered after the fact.
Unity’s execs and board do not fucking care. Their opinions have not been changed. They will certainly try something just as scummy at some point in the future. It’s only a matter of time.
They don't need good will, unfortunately. They just need devs to not abandon it for Unreal or some other engine, and the cost/benefits calculation on that is going to be made by short sighted people on a project-by-project basis.
Which is exactly why anyone in a position to do so should still drop Unity like a hot potato, sunk cost or not. We can't condone this kind of behavior.
So future versions of the engine will still have these awful price changes? Why would anyone start using them then? Seems like if you have a choice, it's time to learn a different engine anyway
If they had just made it a 2.5% revenue share for the high-revenue games in the first place, I doubt even many game news outlets would've covered it, let alone "real" news. Now, after the massive dustup and pissing off all their customers, falling back to that may be a bit more difficult.
Well even going back on their announcement completely would not mend this. They showed they don’t care about their clients and will screw them over at the first occasion. You can’t build a business when the fondation is built on a time bomb.
Yeah, if they didn't do this and literally just said "from this future version royalties from high earners will need to be paid, as we need an income source. The old version will be a LTS release." and it would have been literally fine.
But retroactively screwing people like this? Obviously they will lose trust, and I do not understand how they didn't understand that.
Because the people who made the decision aren’t people familiar with the product or the community it caters to. They only see numbers and how mug the numbers could be…
Sub 1 million is not going back, they are just reducing the scope. Unity is dead
Don't trust it. Even if it was a dry run, the only way to prevent this happening in the future is to abandon the platform completely. Fuck these people.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.
A few things:
Unity is still bleeding money. They have a product that could be the basis for a reasonably profitable company, but spending billions on a microtransaction company means it is not sufficient for their current leadership. It doesn't seem wise to build your bussniess on the product of a company whose bussniess plan you fundamentally disagree with.
It would be the best for the long term health of bussniess-to-bussnies services if we as a community manages to send the message that it doesn't matter what any contract says - just trying to introduce retroactive fees is unforgivable and a death sentence to the company that tries it.
Any game developer that chalk this up as a big win and go back to business as usual as if nothing happened last week deserve to get rugpulled again in a year or two. Just the fact that Unity as a company is in a financially questionable state alone should be a blaring alarm to ditch the platform. Scumbags that tried to fleece game developers are still there collecting paychecks with zero consequences. Every Unity developers should have a plan in place to migrate away from the platform as soon as possible.
This company will be dead in three years. No one will pin their livelihood to this engine after this
Exactly. This isn't some wack subscription fee for a game, they're directly attacking the livelihoods of industry professionals. Many studios were already having a hard time seeing the value in unity over unreal anyway. Now it's an easy choice.
As for the company... idk. I'd be surprised if they completely go away. I suspect either the company or the engine tech will be bought by Microsoft, or some other company, at some point.
Worth noting - Unity still showed utter contempt for Devs and gamers. They're still public enemy number 1.
If you're working on a game now, switch to an alternative like Godot.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
Fuck Unity.
"We're sorryu it didn't work this time, we'll work harder to make sure that the next time we try again, we'll do so in a more insidious way that boils the frog slower"
So its still there. Just only for more succesful games.. lol
What a fucking joke
Trust was broken. I would have hardly batted an eye if this is what was planned in the first place, but of course the greed got the best of that company at the risk of its entire customer base. Since the backtrack, Unity might have a chance at keeping its existing customers, but I'd discourage anyone new from using Unity at this point.
I had a feeling this would be the case. It's the new scummy thing to do. Set your prices ridiculously high, sparking outrage. Then, backpedal a little to quelch the unruly and everything just goes back to normal.
Unity is now scum.
These are a lot more reasonable terms, but remember that the people who designed the outrageous policy is still very much in charge at that company. They'll keep pushing to see what they can get away with, they just fucked up by pushing too much at once instead of building up to it.
It still doesn't return the broken trust or conformation that the people running Unity are insane, but this is a good move and devs don't need to alarmingly port their current projects to other engines.
I want to start with this: I am sorry.
Translation: damn, we really didn't get away with this.
The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond.
We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using
Good. This is how it should've been from the start. If they bake that into the license I think people will be comfortable staying on Unity for the time being.
For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month. Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.
Also good. It should've been revshare from the start. I still don't understand how they would trust self-reported numbers but we'll see.
These are good changes. The damage isn't undone but at least current Unity devs won't be thrown under the bus. I still think they should switch to something open source in the future but they get a lot more time to decide now.
Yep, this is good as in won't rail someone already developing or have developed something on Unity, but it has a lot of "and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddlesome kids!" energy to it.
This is what they wanted to do from the beginning. They just boundary tested to see how far people would let them take this.
This is still a step backward, its just a step backward fewer people are going to push back on. But the issue is that if it is allowed, theyll slowly introduce more download tracking over time.
Lol, imagine grabbing your customer's head, blasting a massive fart in their face, and then trying to say, "Just kidding! Just kidding!" when they get pissed off and leave.
Unity can get fugged.
Fuck that.
An apology, to people like this, is just the thing that lets you get what you want, despite doing what you want.
That's all it is. Just an annoying little ritual they have to do for some reason.
Unity or not Unity, I have some important questions to ask. What was that allowed them to make such a move? A flawed license? A flawed law? Is there anything that would prevent other similar companies from doing exactly the same thing? We can hate Unity all we want and abandon it (I encourage it myself too) but isn't the underlying problem still present?
I'm not a lawyer, I don't know the answers. Anyone more knowledgeable here?
Everything depends on a subscription now, so you are always one TOS update from being fucked. With enshittification setting in, I'm expecting to see this move pulled over and over. Just wait till AWS tries it. Or WordPress. Could singlehandedly tank the internet.
~Unity Backtracks~ No they didn't, they updated the terms
Protest works, people.
I’ll still never trust them, though, and am working on transferring my projects elsewhere.
I hope developers move away anyway.
Are they moving the goal posts and then only putting them partially back when called out?
If they didn't completely delete the new fees, they can still eat shit.
Not great but it is nice to see people actually say the words "I am sorry" when they fuck up as oppose to skirting around an apology.
I don't think they can come back from this. Everyone knows they will try again, just slow enough to not make big headlines. Unity is just too risky now that they showed their hand. I mean, its a former EA executive FFS.
