Unity will quietly waive controversial fees if developers switch to its ad monetisation service - report
3 years ago by geosoco to c/technology
A fresh report into Unity's hugely-controversial decision to start charging developers when their games are downloaded has thrown fresh light on the situation.
MobileGamer sources say Unity has already offered some studios a 100% fee waiver - if they switch over to Unity's own LevelPlay ad platform.
The report quotes industry consultants that say this move is an "attempt to destroy" Unity's main competitior in this field: AppLovin.
Shareholders prefer constant steady income over one time purchases. Hence why they prefer subscriptions and ads.
Nothing will ever change.
You know it, I know it, we all know it.
There is only one thing to be done.
Marxist.com
I mean quite the opposite. Ff you are talking about the plebs, you would have a point but the Unity changes they are now trying to force through are going to other companies who typically don't like it when you mess with their income unexpectedly. They likely will switch to a new engine with their newer projects, so they don't have to deal with a surprise change.
I know they do, and I hate it so so much...
The ride never ends
It looks like a protection racket with extra steps. An unpleasant solution presented by the problem creator. Why is this not banned?
I wasn't blaming any single entity. And really the first smart phone wouldn't be accurate either, probably the first iPhone. Not so much brand, but popularity. Once the market became so large, and they started to realize they could get people addicted, regular games were over.
I'd imagine that game devs, just like Unity's shareholders, like predictability in profits. Even if it's more expensive overall for them to move to Unreal for their next game, it could be worth it to avoid future calamity.
The problem is because you pay per install you could end up owing Unity more money than you actually make. Especially if people uninstall and reinstall your game a bunch of times for whatever reason.
sounds like a good way to protest
How did a good way to protest? It'll just rack up your bills.
The correct way to protest is just stop using their platform.
I hope the large studios that use unity sue them into oblivion for breach of contract, because changing the deal after the fact is utterly unacceptable. How a business is supposed to operate if other businesses just change the terms of the deal retrospectively.
Lol nope. Not even fucking close. You’re gonna die, Unity. You have only yourself to blame.
Screw this. Boycott unity.
The conspiracy theorist in me says Unity planned this whole thing out to get less resistance on this thing they actually wanted to roll out; announce a super shit change that will intentionally outrage everybody, then say “ok, we won’t do it if you agree to use this other shitty model instead”.
Anyways, big shoutout to Godot for existing as an open-source alternative.
Hey remember that time Unity bought IronSource so they could integrate ads more aggressively? Unity stopped being a game engine at some point they're just an ads company now
There should be a law against offering something for free for a long time, until many other businesses rely on it then make it pay to a point of breaking all those businesses. It’s one thing changing the price of a product that’s customer facing but if you market to other businesses that’s not okay. I guess it’s up to businesses to look in the contract for a clause that states that the product will be free forever or that they need X time warning before making it pay.
Good.
Changing from free to paid is fine. Doing it retroactively is not.
Once a game is in development using their product the terms need to stay the same.
The vast majority of “new” tech companies operate at a loss.
This is a bullshit hypothetical that has no relevance for Unity. Unity is a well established company, that has been very successful after they revised their model to be more Indie friendly. This is a money grab attempt pure and simple. And it's a money grab that is so bad it might actually kill Unity.
I'm pretty sure that when Unity was headquartered in Denmark it made a profit. But I may be mistaken, because it was hyped as a danish enterprise success.
When they changed the license to be more Indie friendly a few years back, that too was hyped as a huge success.
But I can see on Wikipedia that Unity Software Inc. has a negative net income of $921 million on revenue of $1.4 billion.
That's an insane loss, meaning that they basically operate at 50% loss! How or Why they ended up that badly is beyond me. It's so bad it smells like something is not quite right with those numbers.
My problem with it is not monetizing; it is the changing of your monetization to affect games that were sold under a different model. If this was just the new TOS, ok fine. It would suck, but it's their right to make whatever shitty monetization they want. But retroactively inflicting this on games? Shocking the development world with only a few months warning when game development takes years? No, that is not ok.
This is such a dumb move.
Forget about ethics for a minute, if there is an alternate option that doesn't cost as much money then developers would obviously make use of that option so in any environment where alternate options exist companies have a limit of how obnoxious they can be and get away with it.
Somehow unity forgot that Unreal and Godot exist.
Crypto is a hell of a drug.
It wasn’t really just crypto. The American government subsidized a lot of loans and did a lot to stimulate the economy post 2008. Those policies are now catching up to us. Crypto didn’t help anything, but it also wasn’t the root cause.
Elon Musk: speedruns enshittification on Xitter
Unity: "Hold my beer"
It's enshittification all the way down
The first one was assholish, but this one is outright insulting.
AppLovin? What kind of a stupid name is that? What, are they trying to be an Irish R&B singer?
Unity have yet to discover that nothing happens quietly on the internet.
And so continues the downward spiral of the enshitification of video games.
Fuck you, Unity.
say this move is an "attempt to destroy" Unity's main competitior in this field: AppLovin.
This is the best advertisment ever. I've messed around in Unity a few times and would've recommended to people interested in a framework. But I guess I got a new platform to talk about.
I think among us 2 just restarted development, what a shame exactly 0 cents with go to unity
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Why's it always end up being fucking ads?
I hate late stage capitalism. I want off Mr. Bones' Wild Ride.
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