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General discussionUnity new pricing model(407 posts)(407 posts)
(407 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted September 18, 2023
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AstralWanderer: Rather than doing things the hard way, why not just try using NTFS compression on the games in question?
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dtgreene: What if I'm not using NTFS? (On Linux, NTFS isn't used much, and I wouldn't trust the driver to handle advanced features properly or even at all.)
NTFS is already dodgy enough... you should not use "risky features". What makes Microsoft so supreme is the high compatibility and huge support from the industry (kinda like Intel), not the "supreme system".
Post edited September 18, 2023 by Xeshra
Posted September 18, 2023
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Xeshra: NTFS is already dodgy enough... you should not use "risky features". What makes Microsoft so supreme is the high compatibility and huge support from the industry (kinda like Intel), not the "supreme system".
It's a dumb idea to rely on a particular file system for a game. My experience with NTFS on Linux has been a bit buggy. It reads/writes OK. But every now and then something gets messed up and files that exist will not show. The way I've had to correct it is to repair the drive on Windows (which only takes a couple seconds) but is a hassle.
Post edited September 18, 2023 by EverNightX
Posted September 18, 2023
If the damage is big enough it can not be restored, although it can be purely software-based... no need for a hardware failure.
Posted September 18, 2023
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clarry: For sure. Hosting isn't free, and there is no way a company could be mandated to host some piece entertainment and offer downloads for all eternity.
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AstralWanderer: Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) makes bandwidth costs negligible (see this Backblaze blog entry for some cost examples, like Amazon Web Services starting at $0.085/GB). Even if you only purchased content at a 80-90% discount, you'd have to do a lot of downloading to come anywhere near the cost of the game in question.
You don't realize how outrageously expensive that is? That backblaze article ends with "we think the world needs lower egress fees" and I fully agree.

At 0.085/GB, a game that takes a few tens of gigabytes would cost a few dollars to transfer. Now take a game like Wolfenstein: The New Order and assume GOG's cut from the 20 eur asking price is the industry standard 30% or 6 eur. That's already in the "few dollars" range, and I believe that price includes VAT. That's bad even before any kind of discount!

Now I'm pretty sure GOG is large enough to negotiate *much* lower bandwidth fees, but for smaller companies, these fees are high and cloud providers like to keep their clients hostage with high egress fees, ensuring the client does everything to keep as much of their traffic inside the same cloud provider's network -- paying out of the nose for services that could otherwise be had elsewhere cheaper.

You don't get a CDN because it's so cheap, you get one because it's an easy way to offer fast downloads worldwide without requiring you to maintain your own scalable infrastructure for that. If you look at what (traditional, non-cloud) hosting providers and data centers charge for egress, you can get much cheaper bandwidth than any CDN publicly offers.

I'll add that data transfer isn't the only cost. You will need storage, you will need backups, you will need to ensure availability as infrastructure and frontend & backend code evolves, etc. I could totally see a company doing a shift in policy that allows them to clean up their attic, so to speak.
Post edited September 18, 2023 by clarry
Posted September 18, 2023
Not sure if this was discussed already, but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9POAozSyhrY

That video has a pretty plausible theory for the reason for this "odd" Unity decision. Unity CEO is not thinking and doesn't even care how small indie developers take this; he is only interested in getting after some big fishes in mainly mobile games, like Pokemon GO, which are making unbelievable amounts of money. Unity just wants a piece of that success with this new pricing model.

That also explains why he said earlier that (mobile) game developers who don't maximize income from microtransactions etc. are "f-king idiots". Unity CEO sees low-profile indie developers, who are not trying to maximize monetization and revenue, unimportant to Unity's business, which is now to make as much money as possible.

At least that theory starts make it more sense to me, why exactly Unity decided to do this. Before this it really felt just an odd way to shoot themselves in the foot.

It also explains why they didn't consider it even a problem that e.g. pirated copies or installing the game to several computers in the household might trigger several payments; with free-to-play (mobile) games with transactions, these are non-issues. People don't pirate Pokemon GO to their phone, and it doesn't really matter to how many phones in your household has it installed because the money comes from playing those installed games, not from buying the game once.

After all, that is basically what the Unity CEO suggested earlier, that games where you pay only once are nowadays a stupid and outdated model, and "all" games should try to be e.g. free-to-play where you charge money during the gameplay.
Post edited September 18, 2023 by timppu
Posted September 18, 2023
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HIRO kun: "We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback".
It's kind of the EA loot box play book:

1 - Ask for 150% of what you want.
2 - See is there's outrage
3 - If there is back off to 100% of what you want.
4 - Get praised for listening.
Posted September 18, 2023
Yeah, that's called door-in-the-face technique. I remember EA already using it back in 2008, when they announced the phone-home DRM for PC games like Mass Effect and Spore. Guess who the CEO of the company was.
Posted September 18, 2023
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timppu: Not sure if this was discussed already, but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9POAozSyhrY

That video has a pretty plausible theory for the reason for this "odd" Unity decision. Unity CEO is not thinking and doesn't even care how small indie developers take this; he is only interested in getting after some big fishes in mainly mobile games, like Pokemon GO, which are making unbelievable amounts of money. Unity just wants a piece of that success with this new pricing model.
Still makes no sense.

Why bother at all with this number-of-installs bullshit? If they want a slice of the pie, they could just ask for a percentage of the gross revenue, exactly like Unreal does. Very simple, very transparent, no bullshit and not much in the way of loopholes. Doesn't matter what the monetization strategy for the game is -- there's no way you screw over some developers whose number of installs are high but revenue per install low. It's just better all around.

The only situation where I think "number of installs" could've been an interesting metric for billing purposes is ironically some hypothetical streaming services where the customer just pays a flat subscription and gets some random game to play for a given time -- without ever directly paying for that game specifically. But they've explicitly ruled streaming out of this scheme so it doesn't matter.
Posted September 18, 2023
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timppu: It also explains why they didn't consider it even a problem
Make no mistake - these people are not stupid. It's basic business 101; create chaos, wait for the response, and then double down so people will think "oh, at least it's not that bad".

- They merged with Ironsource a year ago for 4.4b (over applovins offer for 20b as Ironsources CEO is on the Unitys board of directors).
- They tried to force it into Unity, but it backfired, and then they blamed "hackers" for smuggling in "malware".
- Board of Directors and the CEO made millions just before this announcement. They most likely knew it would backfire, for a while at least.
- Unity: "Just activate Ironsources Ad and monetization platform and everything will be ok"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOCTSp_U-KI
https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/07/24/most-troubling-thing-about-unitys-ironsource-deal/
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-ironsource-malware-came-from-bad-actors-who-tried-to-abuse-the-platform
https://www.shacknews.com/article/137095/unity-apologizes-changes-policy

Worst think is that some people are "loving" Unitys apology and slurps it like water with sugar.

Another vital thing; Reddit and TwitterX has recently changed their API access / pricing model, and this was done towards end consumers, which isn't always bright. However, they did this towards developers and other companies who usually are not. So, one could argue that this was their greedy mistake and that they counted on that this would blow away eventually.

It definitely won't.

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rodrolliv: Yeah, that's called door-in-the-face technique. I remember EA already using it back in 2008, when they announced the phone-home DRM for PC games like Mass Effect and Spore. Guess who the CEO of the company was.
Right. But say what you want about the CEO, it's the board of directors who hired him to run it for them in the first place.
Post edited September 18, 2023 by sanscript
Posted September 18, 2023
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sanscript: [...]
- They merged with Ironsource a year ago for 4.4b (over applovins offer for 20b as Ironsources CEO is on the Unitys board of directors).
[...]
To just make it clear - Unity have been contacting devs over the last couple of days and made an an offer. They will waiver the $0.2 per install fee if the devs agree to use IronSource instead of the (much) better and much more used competitor AppLovin.

And in other news, some indie developers have now been dropped from their publishers because they use Unity engine. It is basically too risky for the publishers with the new pricing structure.
Post edited September 18, 2023 by amok
Posted September 18, 2023
A tweet cannot damage control this damage. Developers need to trust in that the game engine they are using is not pulling such things at all, since they whole future depends on planning years ahead of time.

Unless Unity add some statement that they will not change their price policy ever again into their contract, no developer who knows about this will trust them again.

Sure if they roll back on the policy, developers will still finish their current projects in Unity, but afterwards they will probably look for an alternative engine.
Posted September 18, 2023
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amok: And in other news, some indie developers have now been dropped from their publishers because they use Unity engine. It is basically too risky for the publishers with the new pricing structure.
Do you have a source for that?
That would be the first time I hear of a publishing studio able to make a decision (and apply it) that quickly.
Posted September 18, 2023
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vv221: Do you have a source for that?
That would be the first time I hear of a publishing studio able to make a decision (and apply it) that quickly.
I think it's a bit of a misread from the general airs of scuttlebutt; that in the future many publishers will see Unity as a risk factor, and therefore won't publish.
Posted September 18, 2023
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Darvond: (…)
Thanks, I missed the sarcastic tone and read that as the presentation of a current fact.
Posted September 18, 2023
So Unity's big update?

Nothing's really changed, but we expect you all to report the metrics anyway.

Now would be a good time to play Entry of the Gladiators.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionUnity new pricing model(407 posts)(407 posts)
(407 posts)