Recent searches
Search options
Unity is introducing a new per-install fee. According to my calculations (see chart) it's a bankruptcy death-trap?
https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates
Shockingly, the owed percentage is unbounded and can exceed gross revenue, since the owed amount depends on installs, not sales.
For games that are in bundles, subscription services, are free-to-play, or just highly pirated, the install count can be very high while the revenue per install is very low, which is where this fee structure is super dangerous.
An alleged Unity employee (looks legit) posted that Unity is aware developers may lose more per install than they earn, even to the point of bankruptcy but that they would "fix this with the customer to not bankrupt them".
https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/page-55#post-9299384
But look: No serious business would leave a matter of potentially going BANKRUPT to be addressed by some future ad-hoc fix at another company's whim. That stuff needs to be up-front and contractual, even with companies you trust, let alone with Unity!
The previous charts was for the Unity Personal license, here's the corresponding one for Unity Pro.
This fee structure is more complex so I had to make more assumptions (see chart text).
Here are the chart formulas if anyone wants to check my math:
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/tstho8halt
@runevision this graph is great, thank you!
@runevision They said that bundles would not apply, but then also said this… so it’s any one’s guess… https://twitter.com/unity/status/1701689241456021607
@slembcke Yeah. I forgot if it was all bundles or only charity bundles (where developers see no revenue)? Either way, they have no way of tracking which activations come from bundles or not.
@runevision it's an attack vector that malevolent mobs are gonna love
@runevision awesome graph!
To be fair, most devs would switch to Unity Pro pricing at that scale, which comes with a bigger cap and reduced pricing in tiers. The results look a lot more palatable, but the blackbox issue of initial install tracking remains, at the very least.
Which is probably the point for Unity, getting you into a SaaS yearly vendor lock while the project is actively selling.
Would you be up for plotting the Pro pricing? I'd love to see it in comparison. No worries if not.
@datablob The Pro pricing is more complex and I'm not up for it, sorry. Unity really should make charts like this available themselves so people can see how it will affect them.
@datablob I tried to plot the Pro pricing after all. Here it is:
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@runevision/111063819134799330
@runevision You're a 
️ thank you
@runevision On a very simple level I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being a marginal cost per user, and this is standard business practice in most sectors. It’s scalable, easy to account for, and marginal prices cover it.
But this is from a product that is the market leader specifically in the “give the product away free, monetize separately” domain. That’s what makes this so jarring. It’s like nobody thought about who the current big customers are.
@kylotan It's NOT easy to account for number of installs. Do you know for your games how many devices each customer installed it on, and how often someone uninstalled it only to later reinstall? Do you know the ratio of legit sales to cracked pirated copies?
Apart from that, for certain business models the fee is prohibitively high. Even for premium games, putting it on 90% discount on Steam is now super dangerous, as is Steam Fest demos where a full game is made free to try for a limited time.
@runevision Sorry, I wasn’t clear - I meant ‘account for’ in the financial sense (i.e. accounting). One cost per use is straightforward.
Right now I’m laughing at how this announcement has been pushed out when there apparently isn’t an agreed method for counting installs - at least not that Unity are revealing. They made their own FUD.
I’m not concerned about low price business models going away though. I don’t think they are a good thing for gaming.
@kylotan Ah ok. Well I don't know how it helps us that this won't be an accounting issue if it's a huge budgeting and risk assessment issue. :) And yes, agreed it's mind-boggling how they've announced this without knowing how to implement it.
@runevision The level of “trust me, bro” built into this plan in general is pretty hilarious ;)
@AngryAnt Yep!
"You owe me this much money, trust me bro, I got proprietary estimates n' shit"
"Don't worry, bro, I'm listening to all my valued developers, I hear what you're saying and bro, I would never fuck you over again, even if the contract says you'll be fucked, we'll just work something out, you and me and my audit team, right, nice and easy, just trust me, bro"
@AngryAnt @runevision "trust me" says the company that already shanked you
@runevision @doppioslash "fix this with the customer" could mean anything, really, including trying to force some shady monetization and ads on them
@runevision this will be get a bill that you have to challenge and you’ll be lucky if they even respond