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Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23870547/unit-price-change-game-development

Review bombing, meet revenue bombing.

Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off::Unity has announced that starting on January 1st, 2024, it will implement a new pricing model that will charge developers based on how many times a game was installed.

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SQL_InjectMe

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Meh if you have $200k+ in sales last year then you have enough money to pay the most important vendor of your product

orizuru

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The margins on the gamedev industry are not that large, you should read some testimonies from veterans. It's a ruthless industry.

Games take years to make, and you can't change engines now if your game is about to come out.

ArmoredThirteen

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If you're lucky $200k could pay back one full time employee for a year and get you some marketing. If you're an indie dev trying to get off the ground that full time employee wage likely wouldn't even be the same person it would be a series of contract workers. If it is your first game you have a ton of legal things to set up for the company and IP as well. Then there are store fees to pay for the privilege of being allowed to sell your game. Maybe you're testing the waters on something and selling a game for a dollar, free tier license, it goes bigger than you expected, now a full 20% of sales (assuming a single install per sale) is going to Unity, plus store fees. Your game uses an online service that financially doesn't scale well because you didn't expect 200,000 people to play your game? Hope you can cancel it quick or those API call fees are going to hit hard too. $200k is nothing in game dev land and this change kinda lasers in on indie devs hoping to break into the industry.

Hexarei

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They already paid for it though, in most cases per developer.

CouldntCareBear

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And if you upgrade to an annual 1600 dollar pro license that becomes a million dollars and a million installs before any per install pricing comes in.

Doesn't seem wild to me.

Elderos

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You're getting downvote, but it is kinda fucked up that we all praise Steam, yet they are, along with other storefronts, taking a 30% revenue cut from every sales. There is a reason gamedevs are strangled for money. Unity's move is tone deaf, but not only it can never realistically make up 30% of your gross, it only affects developers making over 1M per year.

Not to excuse them, but if we're to be outraged we should at least consider the whole problem.

Anyway, I am sick of this system where all the money is funnelled by middle-men. It happens virtually everywhere and apparently it is catching up to the digital world too.

greenskye

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Am I the only one who doesn't really feel that 30% is that ridiculous of a cut? Typical markups for retail are at least 50%. While steam doesn't have physical storefronts or retail staff, they do actually provide a lot of value with their software. Now other launchers I think we can argue aren't earning their 30% cut, but steam provides numerous useful APIs, community forums, mod hosting, built in social and multiplayer features above and beyond the simple distribution and payment processing required by a digital storefront.

My issue with unity's pricing is that it's cost a) isn't tied to how it's used and b) is unbounded. Let's take a game like terraria for example. If they had used unity to build it, terraria would now suddenly be on the hook for new charges related to their game. I would at most expect unity to charge for new versions of their software as they were used in development. If my game was completed years ago, why would I continue to owe them money for a completed transaction? Secondly, terraria is the sort of game where users might frequently uninstall and reinstall as new updates come out. I'm now disincentivized to make new updates (especially free updates) that might cause my users to reinstall my game and end up costing me more money.

Elderos

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I am not defending the absolutely awkward pricing model of Unity.

Do you think we should also give them a flat 30% then? 1/3 of your gross is massive, and we could argue Unity is just as important in the execution of your game.

As far as I am concerned the comparison with retail does not hold. Retail runs on thin margins. Steam on the other hand is absolutely massive and afaik is one of the most, if not the most profitable business per employee in the USA. It is absolutely greed. They have nice features but we're all forced to pay whether or not we use them. But of course this is Gabe, the guy who tried to replicate 1:1 the absolute horrible business model of MTG on digital. Billionnaire gonna billionnaire.

Kes

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Unironically this is the one area where Epic Games is absolutely in the right. They have a 12% royalty on games sold on their platform and a 5% royalty on sales over $1 million for games made with Unreal Engine, with the UE royalty being waived entirely if it's sold on the Epic Games store. They get a reasonable cut for maintaining one of the most powerful game engines and charge nearly a third of what Valve does for their storefront. If the Epic Store wasn't so dog shit, they'd be an actual competitor to Valve

Elderos

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You'd be crucified in most communities for pointing out something like that though. Brand loyalty and addiction to outrage is rampant with gamers and tech enthusiasts.

chakan2

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it only affects developers making over 1M per year.

No...looks like Unity pricing kicks in on your first install...It increases as your install base increases.

Elderos

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Absolutely not.

You don't pay a dime until your game sells for 200k per year, at which point your quickly forced to go pro. It is not then until the 1M mark that you owe money. It is right there on the pricing page, did you read it?

chakan2

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Yea, the pricing model specifically calls out 1-200k installs.

Elderos

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Installs don't matter until you make 200k dollars per year, or over a million dollars on pro. I am not sure how I could be more clear.

chakan2

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The OP article says otherwise.

Elderos

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What? The revenue threshold is mentionned over and over again, there is even a table with the revenue brackets. The info is right there, in the article and in the Unity blog post. Are you so addicted to outrage that you won't even get your basic facts right? I am done here.