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The Unity update
🕑 Added 2023-09-25 05:12:17 +0000 UTCThanks to tireless campaigning from across the game development scene, Unity has massively backpedaled on its controversial new pricing model.
The new version (read it here) fixes the main issues with the original announcement:
The threshold has been increased to only impact games that see at least one million downloads and $1 million revenue (from the last 12 months), so truly only the most successful games will be affected.
You can pick whether to be charged by either revenue or initial installs - whichever is lower. And this data is now self-reported, meaning that developers are in charge of tracking sales / installs rather than Unity. This removes the worry of getting surprise charges from Unity.
And most importantly, the changes are no longer retroactive. Games already on sale won't be affected, and neither will games made on versions of the Unity editor released before this fee update.
It's a much more palatable system, and I thank Unity for listening to the community and making these changes.
But I am certainly still wary. The fact that Unity ever felt it had a right to retroactively change its payment model is an unbelievable worry for game developers. There have long been signs that Unity cares more about appeasing its shareholders than supporting game makers - and this sorry, embarrassing affair is the loudest signal yet.
So I'm glad that I'll still be able to use Unity for projects going forward. It would have been awful to have to give up on such a useful and powerful game engine. But I'm also looking forward to learning other engines too.
For now, though, I'll be finally getting back into game development in October after a long time away. I've got some other videos up my sleeve so the channel isn't completely dead while I work on the game - and I'll have some progress to share on the development in early November.
Cheers!
Mark
Comments
Emil Johansen
Centrally: The logic that now Unity is evil and any alternative is a better choice by default - sportsteaming it at max velocity - is about as sound as that leading people to vote EA worst company ever in a world full of companies abusing people and planet as fast & hard as possible.
Emil Johansen
Unity used to be an uncharacteristic relatively safe harbor. That has obv. changed now and it's a good wakeup call for devs, habitually applying it to everything, to do a broader tech review on their next project.
Colin Bellino
To me, the "open letter" and lack of accountability in the following Q&A made it even worst. It is now clear Unity (the company) isn't going to stop, they have been doong things like that a few times now, and the excuses are always the same. They still did what their TOS stated they would never (again), their C-suite did not apologise (or even react), they are still an ad company with people who made malware on the board of directors, and so on. Unity (the product) might survive for a while, but the company can't survive as it is now (look at their financials), so to me it's an insane risk to bet our business on a third party that clearly cannot be trusted...
Christopher Cowley
As soon as I saw the announcement I knew this was going to be walked back eventually. Not sure why they thought the community wouldn't be on fire. I had already switched to Unreal back when they announced their new revenue cap and engine features. Good luck to any devs here still staying with it and for those who switched, welcome to Unreal!
It's truly unfortunate that we have to sift through changes and read between the lines for a glimpse of hope that the game engine company cares about the game development users. Enough is enough for me. I'll still be around for Mark and crew, but Unity isn't the engine for my development anymore.
