Unity went crazy, what will happen to KSP2 (and KSP1)?

[RayneCloud]

3 minutes ago, Superluminal Gremlin said:

That sounds like insider knowledge...

I know nothing about stocks, don't quote me on that

Would could certainly make an educated Guess on "insider Trading" having happened, also,
 

Trust me, as someone whose worked with Unity since 2011 when I first learned it with the help of my former KSP 1 team mates (I was just a community manager so I didn't have a lot of reason to be in the engine doing things, but I got to watch and learn a lot.) This is not okay and sine then, I've worked on 3 other unity games, and this is an horrible decision. I suggest people watch this video.

[Royalswissarmyknife]

23 minutes ago, RayneCloud said:

Would could certainly make an educated Guess on "insider Trading" having happened, also,
 

Trust me, as someone whose worked with Unity since 2011 when I first learned it with the help of my former KSP 1 team mates (I was just a community manager so I didn't have a lot of reason to be in the engine doing things, but I got to watch and learn a lot.) This is not okay and sine then, I've worked on 3 other unity games, and this is an horrible decision. I suggest people watch this video.

I still wont forgive Epic games for ruining one of my favorite game's.

But I dont hate them as much anymore.

[asmi]

17 hours ago, Kerbart said:

So what do they want per install? $20? I mean if it's like 2 dimes it doesn't really have that much of an impact but I assume they charge a substantial amount to cause such an outrage?

The problem is not the price itself, but the fact that it's outside developers' control, and there is nothing they can do to affect that. Don't like an update a developer made to your favourite game? Write a simple shell script that installs/uninstalls the game 10000 times - and BOOM - developer has become $2000 poorer! Multiply it by a thousand of unhappy users (and no matter the nature of a change, in any large enough userbase somebody isn't going to be happy) - and that turns into $2M down! Numbers of course are made up for illustration, but the point here is that this policy is so susceptible to abuse that I feel like it's been designed to be that way on purpose. Add to that non-transparent "Trust me bro" billing, when Unity will charge devs whatever it "believes" the install count is with no way to prove it and no recourse on the dev's part, and  I can totally see why so many devs are very uncomfortable with the change, even if it won't affect them immediately. And even if this change will be walked back and/or watered down, there is still a breach of trust - and remember this is a matter of devs' ability to put bread on their families' tables, so they will take this extremely seriously.

Edited September 14, 2023 by asmi

[MechBFP]

Oh ya Unity definitely isn’t going to be able to manage this properly, this is 100% going to blow up in their face with something like a developer who made 100 sales getting a million dollar bill from Unity or some nonsense like that. 

[RayneCloud]

14 hours ago, Kerbart said:

So what do they want per install? $20? I mean if it's like 2 dimes it doesn't really have that much of an impact but I assume they charge a substantial amount to cause such an outrage?

 

So, let's talk about this statement shall we?

You purchase a game, a small indie unity game for 19.99$
Steam, will take 30-33% of that which is roughly 6.66$
Epic waves the fee on the store and will take roughly 9%, which is just a bit under that 1.99$
If you have a publisher, they're taking anywhere from 20% to 50% (especially if you have a horrible contract)
Then, Unity is charging you 0.20$ per Install..

What's  the actual developer left with? 

[Vl3d]

3 hours ago, Periple said:

You paid up front under one of several plans. There was no revenue-sharing model or any other costs related to the performance of the game. You could stop using it any time, keep selling the games you had made with it, and never pay them another dime.

Then how was Unity making money for research and improvements?

Does Unreal have a revenue-sharing model?

Edited September 14, 2023 by Vl3d

[Periple]

12 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Then how was Unity making money for research and improvements?

A Unity Pro seat costs about $2,000/year. So a small team of 10 developers would bring them about $20k/year. That ought to pay for a bit of research and improvements.

(Another problem is that instead of putting that money into improving the engine, they buy companies seemingly at random and then include what they bought as a half-baked flaky feature. Unity has been getting worse rather than better in a lot of ways! But that’s a digression.)

16 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Does Unreal have a revenue-sharing model?

Yep, they get 5% of revenue above a certain threshold. They also waive that for sales through the Epic storefront. That’s much clearer and more predictable than this pay-per-install retroactively forever nonsense! And also it’s usually possible to negotiate some other payment solution with them, pay more up front without revenue-sharing.

[MarcAbaddon]

2 hours ago, RayneCloud said:

So, let's talk about this statement shall we?

You purchase a game, a small indie unity game for 19.99$
Steam, will take 30-33% of that which is roughly 6.66$
Epic waves the fee on the store and will take roughly 9%, which is just a bit under that 1.99$
If you have a publisher, they're taking anywhere from 20% to 50% (especially if you have a horrible contract)
Then, Unity is charging you 0.20$ per Install..

What's  the actual developer left with? 

Not much - but the Unity charge is really the least problem here. It's not even on the same order of magnitude as the other items.

[Kerbart]

2 hours ago, RayneCloud said:

So, let's talk about this statement shall we?

You purchase a game, a small indie unity game for 19.99$
Steam, will take 30-33% of that which is roughly 6.66$
Epic waves the fee on the store and will take roughly 9%, which is just a bit under that 1.99$
If you have a publisher, they're taking anywhere from 20% to 50% (especially if you have a horrible contract)
Then, Unity is charging you 0.20$ per Install..

What's  the actual developer left with? 

Steam tajes 30%, your incredibly excrementsty publisher (your choice) takes 50%. That leaves you, the developer, with 20%.

So instead of making $40,000 after all is said and done you now make $38,000 because the developer of the engine you're using wants to keep the lights on. Yes, others are taking $162,000 of your revenue but I don't see Unity as the big evil bogeyman here.

I don't think the math was that particularly hard. Especially since we all pretend to be rocket scientists.

[RayneCloud]

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

Steam tajes 30%, your incredibly excrementsty publisher (your choice) takes 50%. That leaves you, the developer, with 20%.

So instead of making $40,000 after all is said and done you now make $38,000 because the developer of the engine you're using wants to keep the lights on. Yes, others are taking $162,000 of your revenue but I don't see Unity as the big evil bogeyman here.

I don't think the math was that particularly hard. Especially since we all pretend to be rocket scientists.

Then you're not paying any attention to all the upset devs, and we do not agree. 

[Alexoff]

What if someone starts reinstalling games a hundred times a day to spite the developers? What if the Unity creators paid him a share of that money? So much room for corruption...

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, RayneCloud said:

Then you're not paying any attention to all the upset devs, and we do not agree. 

I'm in a business where when we give out products away for free customers complain that we're fleecing them, so yes, I will not agree over the severity of a 20 cent surcharge when there are other parties who take away more than half the revenue.

Time will tell; when everyone dumps Unity in favor of Unreal then we know the iron boot of Unity is indeed too much to handle.

[Meecrob]

Something tells me Unity was backed by people relying on low interest rates, and their growth stage is over.

[Alexoff]

29 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

Something tells me Unity was backed by people relying on low interest rates, and their growth stage is over.

I heard a rumor that a top executive from EA was involved. In 2011, he wanted to make reloading in battlefield a paid option. Is one dollar for reloading in the heat of battle really a lot?

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by Alexoff
audio found

[Lisias]

On 9/13/2023 at 1:41 PM, marce said:

Given that Unity decided they want to retroactively change TOS and charge the developer for every install, does that mean KSP2 will switch engine?
And how will you deal with KSP1, ask players nicely to stop installing it?

Worst case scenario - both KSPs will be DRM'd next release (to be launched before 2024), and previous releases without DRM will be withdrawn from the Stores as a way to cut losses, preventing people to make multiple installs - what tax them further without any incoming to counter-part it.

As a colateral effect, kiss mods bye-bye.  

 

On 9/13/2023 at 2:06 PM, The Aziz said:

They're backed by a huge company, so nothing will happen. T2 will just eat the cost. Also, given the general backlash, there's a non zero chance that Unity won't actually make it real, at least in current form.

Murum aries attigit. There's no way to put the genie back to the bottle.

It's clear that they want to increase the incoming my exploiting the installed base, not by increasing it. This fails to stick, they will try something else later.

They are going to milk the cash cow to the death, and then sell steaks. It's not a matter of "if", but "when".

 

On 9/13/2023 at 2:33 PM, asmi said:

I don't think it's legal to change conditions of a contract retroactively.

They are not changing the contracts. They are changing the licensing terms of the Runtime. This is perfectly legal on USA (Game Publishers do it all the time, not to mention Microsoft).

It's shady at best, but not illegal.

And if someone wins a legal battle about the older Runtimes, suddenly a zero day vulnerability will be detected on it and anti-virus will start to block the old runtimes as well Stores will be forbidden to distribute it, and then Unity Tech will "kindly" provide a patch with the new runtime (for "free") with the new licensing terms for the game developers that are not willing to refund the games.

 

On 9/13/2023 at 4:42 PM, Periple said:

Also Unity is being completely unreasonable and most likely in breach of a bunch of laws. They even want Microsoft to pick up the tab for Game Pass installs, we’ll see how that goes

Microsoft will just pass the cost to their costumers. MS will not risk challenging something they need to keep Windows users under their will.

 

23 hours ago, Kerbart said:

So what do they want per install? $20? I mean if it's like 2 dimes it doesn't really have that much of an impact but I assume they charge a substantial amount to cause such an outrage?

1) Because is 20 cents per installation, not sell. And a sell can have many installs over the lifespan of the product.

2) Tell that to the Cult of the Lamb developer.

 

23 hours ago, MechBFP said:

Any charges will just be passed onto the consumer (you are kidding yourself if you think anyone is going to just eat that cost themselves). 

How? I had already bought the thing, the sell is done. But it will still be generating costs to the developer every time I install it again (I have a machine with a install for every last KSP versions - 1.0.5, 1.1.3, you got it.

How they will pass this cost to me?

 

7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Then how was Unity making money for research and improvements?

They weren't. They laid off 600 of their workforce last may. There's no research anymore, and I doubt it will be any further development - I'm betting that whoever is left, will be only closing issues from now on.

 

4 hours ago, Alexoff said:

What if someone starts reinstalling games a hundred times a day to spite the developers? What if the Unity creators paid him a share of that money? So much room for corruption...

Not to mention the elephant on the room: how in hell they plan to track these installs?

Someone remember IronSource? It's obvious by this time that they were planning this movement for more than a year already, way before merging with IronSource.

This is the reason I think that Unity3D's cash cow will be sold as steaks - they don't find the milk profitable anymore.

[Meecrob]

43 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

I heard a rumor that a top executive from EA was involved. In 2011, he wanted to make reloading in battlefield a paid option. Is one dollar for reloading in the heat of battle really a lot?

No, I mean all free services are going to implode this way shortly. EA this...yeah, the CEO is suspect, but its all a part of a bigger credit crunch.

[Alexoff]

11 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Not to mention the elephant on the room: how in hell they plan to track these installs?

For example, the installation will require a connection to the server that will count the installations. It seems to me that developers usually succeed in developing all sorts of dirty tricks. Usually, the best-made thing in modern games are stores with skins and boosters.

[Lisias]

3 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

For example, the installation will require a connection to the server that will count the installations. It seems to me that developers usually succeed in developing all sorts of dirty tricks. Usually, the best-made thing in modern games are stores with skins and boosters.

And how they will tell a new installation of mine from a reinstall due a Windows crash followed by a total reinstall (see Vãos on YouTube this week).

How they will tell a pirate install from a legitimate one?

How they will tell honest installs from unethical competition reinstalling the game ad nauseaum on some sort of install farm to drive them out of business?

How they intend to do that without breaking the GDPR on EU, or LGPD in Brazil? Who will be liable to the inevitable fines, Unity or the Game Developer?

[PDCWolf]

10 hours ago, RayneCloud said:

Would could certainly make an educated Guess on "insider Trading" having happened, also,

John Riccitello sold less than 1% of his shares, he lost a magnitude more money with the shares he kept than whatever he got from the ones he sold. I cannot speak about other execs because I didn't track their movements.

4 hours ago, Kerbart said:

I'm in a business where when we give out products away for free customers complain that we're fleecing them, so yes, I will not agree over the severity of a 20 cent surcharge when there are other parties who take away more than half the revenue.

Time will tell; when everyone dumps Unity in favor of Unreal then we know the iron boot of Unity is indeed too much to handle.

Let's start from the basis that this fee is completely unjustified: you installing a game once or a trillion times does not cost Unity any single resource. They also get free telemetry from Unity games so every install actually provides them an income in the form of user data. How? Unity bought InstallCore (a company well known for making a famous malware), but outside tinfoiling, Unity already has a bad track as spyware itself, both for devs and packaged games: https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/unity

Now, from the economics side for a developer, not only is this another source of your income going away (specially for those that already pay $2000 yearly per seat), but it is also not scalable until you get bumped off the free license.

TL;DR It's unjustified, screws over small devs even more for no reason, pushes developers towards implementing DRM to avoid install bombing (though they've apparently walked back that part), AND pretty much destroys any trust in Unity as a product for the last group of people that had no problem with it.

9 minutes ago, Lisias said:

And how they will tell a new installation of mine from a reinstall due a Windows crash followed by a total reinstall (see Vãos on YouTube this week).

How they will tell a pirate install from a legitimate one?

How they will tell honest installs from unethical competition reinstalling the game ad nauseaum on some sort of install farm to drive them out of business?

How they intend to do that without breaking the GDPR on EU, or LGPD in Brazil? Who will be liable to the inevitable fines, Unity or the Game Developer?

Read above. Both the editor and packaged games were pretty much spyware already. If nobody complaints about GDPR, nobody minds, and the last people who want to be in a legal fight against an industry giant are small gamedevs in their basements.

Edit because forgot: Unreal is not the replacement for Unity, Godot is.

Edited September 14, 2023 by PDCWolf

[Lisias]

40 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

AND pretty much destroys any trust in Unity as a product for the last group of people that had no problem with it.

These CEO guys, they are not stupid. They know it. It's the reason I'm convinced Unity is going to cash whatever they can and ditch the engine, perhaps selling it to someone else.

They are quitting the milk business and entering the steak one - using the old cash cow as Startup.

 

40 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

If nobody complaints about GDPR, nobody minds, and the last people who want to be in a legal fight against an industry giant are small gamedevs in their basements.

And so they will just pay the racketeers, and will need to make the money somehow to keep afloat.

It's the reason I think that the developers that will linger will be the ones that will screw their users the same, because I don't see a way of survive this ordeal otherwise.

What's essentially a self realizing prophecy: since I think Unity developers will be forced to screw me over somehow, I will avoid games made on Unity to avoid getting screwed, what makes the developer's life harder by decreasing their incoming, forcing them to increasing their revenue by exploiting the current user base instead of increasing it, screwing users that so will avoid Unity games. Rinse, repeat.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made less entertaining.

[MechBFP]

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

But it will still be generating costs to the developer every time I install it again

No it won't. See Spicats Twitter link above. Now that of course is assuming they can do that properly, but regardless they shouldn't be.

Edited September 15, 2023 by MechBFP

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

No it won't. See Spicats Twitter link above. Now that of course is assuming they can do that properly, but regardless they shouldn't be.

Do you trust them?

Quote

“Regarding fraud or piracy, we do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point,” a Unity spokesperson tells Digital Trends. “We recognize that users will have concerns about this, and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.”

https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/unity-runtime-fee-piracy-subscription-bundle-clarification/

They will be the one counting the installs, they will be the ones deciding when if they are wrong about it. Ah, yes, they will be the ones that will lose money if they find they counted something too much.

Essentially: "We are going to decide, using our own methodologies, how much to you own us every month. If you find we made a mistake, submit a form to our compliance team, those salaries are paid by the fees we are charging you, so we can analyse your case". (and I had to control myself to do not purposely misspell "analyse" here).

Edited September 15, 2023 by Lisias
tyops as usulla...

[Vl3d]

I just want Unity to be competitive, do good research and flourish. Unity has allowed a great number of devs to find financial success. I think they should have a revenue stream that allows them to compete with Unreal and be a foundation for the games of the future. We're arguing specifics, but I don't see a real problem after reading the conditions.

[Periple]

3 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I just want Unity to be competitive, do good research and flourish. Unity has allowed a great number of devs to find financial success. I think they should have a revenue stream that allows them to compete with Unreal and be a foundation for the games of the future. We're arguing specifics, but I don't see a real problem after reading the conditions.

Me too and so does EVERYONE at studios that use Unity, and lots of people who don't!

The problem is that in recent years Unity has made loads of decisions that make it worse both as a platform and as a service. From Unity Inc's PoV, Unity the game engine is actually bad — they have about 3000 engineers on it and it may not even be breaking even. Unity get their money from their advertising platform. 

So from Unity Inc's PoV, to be more profitable, they need to:

1. Reduce costs or increase revenue from the game engine division
2. Push/nudge/force more customers into using their advertising platform
3. Get rid of unprofitable customers, i.e. anyone who isn't using their advertising platform.

In other words, they don't give a toot if nobody makes another premium* game on Unity. They want the FTP mobile developers, and they want them on their advertising platform. Everybody else can go fly a kite. It's not a game engine business, it's an advertising business.

The upshot is that for example I can't trust them to support our studio anymore. Even if they roll back this change, the incentives aren't there.

My best hope at this point is that Apple outright buys them, kicks out the top management, sells off the advertising platform, and invests massively in the game engine. They need this to sell their fancy new virtual headset, and as a bonus the Mac and iOS devices might finally become the excellent game platforms they ought to be if Apple just could be bothered.

*In this context, "premium" means any game where you pay for it up front instead of indirectly through ads or microtransactions.

[MarcAbaddon]

As mentioned previously: there is a lot to criticize about Unity's decision.  And it was a terrible stupid decision to go after installs instead of purchases. But on purchases the 0.2$ charge would be entirely reasonable, especially if it goes into engine development.

But the insider trading thing regarding the CEO is silly. We are talking about 80k $ in shares from someone in a position where sales have to be pre-registered. 

If anything look at the investors and not the CEO for this move. The CEO (even though he behaved terribly in the past) has been in charge for a long time.