I'm not entirely sure what they mean by that but if they're relying on Unity Engine Telemetry inside the game "pinging" a remote server to say "Count this as another install for x game", such unwanted outbound connections are easily mass blocked with a whitelist based firewall. I've been running one for years and take great delight in seeing the multitude of telemetry crap fail to phone home. They probably didn't think of that stuff at all, so once reality sinks in they'll either change their mind or double-down on stupid (try and force online activation...). Either way it smells of desperation.

Unreal Engine's share was not big enough, apparently... yay....

I'm trying to understand what do they mean, but nobody know right now (I don't even sure they (at Unity) know).
They said that thay will count only the first installation of a game (not reinstall), based on this tweet:
https://twitter.com/unity/status/1701689241456021607
Most people seem to think this will be kind of random so I don't think games will be forced to go online (and I tried the build of my experiments games and they do not phone home right now and they can work offline, you can remove all packages that try to phone home).
I will update this once I know for sure but if they do not force phone home I think the only way for them to understand the "installation count" is to ask stores like gog, steam, play store, apple store, to share the data... so if, for example, a developer decide to sell the game on their own website unity will need to ask that developer to share the installation data... kind of a weird system.

if they ever think about the offline install use case... I don't think they actually have a fucking clue of what they are doing....

I'm pretty sure it's the publisher that would be the entity.

Wouldn't be funny/interesting if the new price model is actually based on installation number and not copies sold?
It would open the door to "install bombing" and take small devs out of business pretty fast.

Too much power to social media mob and "no chinese language" mob, ahem, GaMeRs.

This is really crazy.

1. This probably would lead to some kind of online activation method being included to track installs. So what would that mean for a store like GOG.
2. What would happen to free, demo, charity keys etc.?
3. Also would the dev/pub need to pay a fee everytime a game is installed, even though it was purchased only once?


From the responses on the internet, I am getting the vibe that smaller devs are less than thrilled with this development.

They already do the tracking as the telemetry send info about your system in the first start anyway.

No sources, just what I heard years ago.

Are the Unity fuckers that eager to kill their (quite shitty) product?
This new model is not sustainable for most devs and I see many switching to different engines...wait, I meant engine...
Hooray Epic Games is going to get even more revenue now. *sigh*

This is bad news all around, I don't want to know how many devs are thinking of pulling their games from stores like gog.

Edit: Hopefully either the backlash is too big for them to go through with that insane idea or devs abandon Unity in droves and Unity Technologies loses out on a huge chunk of their revenue.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/

this is nuts..
they actually ask money for multiple installations and demos...
this is so stupid I'm just uninstalling unity right now... time to move to godot or unreal (I will try both).
Thank god I'm just a hobby game developer (I work as a web developer for a company so I will not lose anything) but I wish they will go back... Many great games use unity (and I just supported the new anima game that will of course use it).
I don't want a stupid corporation to fuck so many people... Maybe a class action will work... I'm not in US but I know it can be done there.
This is not 100% true... You can remove telemetry right now. So for now the game can be 100% drm-free..
Still we don't know what will be true with this new shitty system.

I know this is CRAZY, but hear me out.

What if the people who made games actually...knew how to make games? Then they would not have to use someone else's engine.

Apparently, it applies to already published Unity games. Previous installs will count toward the threshold, but only new installs will actually trigger the fee.

(There's still other issues, like automated installs to try to bankrupt the developer, or the developer being charged for pirated copies of their game, or the fact that this fee structure makes freemium models not workable.) At least the personal edition of Unity will have something I consider to be DRM. To use it, you must connect to the internet and sign in with an ID and password. If you do not connect for 3 days, you won't be able to use the Unity editor. This sounds like DRM to me.


Yes, though the paid version will have lower fees. I've noticed this, from reading discussions on the subreddits r/gamedev, r/unity3D, and even r/Godot (even though Godot is not affected by this).

There's also been some discussion on a couple gamedev Discord serves I'm on.

I'll just say there's a reason I insist that the games I make have no proprietary dependencies. (Excluding things like libc.)

Heard it's the same person who was in charge of Electronic Arts during the period it was most hated.

Apparently charity keys are exempt.

From what I understand, it is based on installation number.

(I'm *really* hoping they change it to something more sensible.)
"engines" is right; there's been talk about switching to both Unreal and Godot.

It seems like they really want to bury their engine. Even if they pull back now the damage has already been done. Who would trust a company that pulls such a dick move any more?