There has been a fuss for several days now about a new payment model that Unity, known for the Unity engine, has announced. The new system will come into effect from 2024 and is of course intended to bring in more money for Unity, but there is concern and anger among developers. “A catastrophe,” it sounds.
But what exactly is going on? In short, Unity wants developers to pay an extra fee of $0.2 when one of their games, if created with the Unity engine, is downloaded and installed. This fee is in addition to the subscription fee that must be paid in any case to be able to work with the Unity software.
However, this fee only has to be paid above a certain limit. For example, the game in question must have generated $200,000 or more in the past 12 months and must have had at least 200,000 total installs. In this way, according to Unity, small developers and games would be spared and only the big fish, who would make a lot of profit with their games anyway, would have to pay a little more.
However, this does not reassure many developers. Many find the concept of linking a fee to installations of games simply absurd and some point out that you can quickly reach those 200,000 installations, even as a small developer who does not earn much from it. Add to that all kinds of other costs and that extra fee that Unity will start charging could well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back towards bankruptcy.
Moreover, there are also many practical questions that are raised that suggest that Unity has not thought everything through. For example, trolls could try to hit a developer through what is now called “download bombing” or “install bombing”. Then someone could download and install a game several times to charge its creator.
There are also questions regarding demos, games that are distributed for free and games that are included in a subscription service, such as Xbox Game Pass.
After an initial storm of criticism, Unity tried to clarify some things, but it has not yet made things any clearer, let alone that after that explanation it suddenly seems like a good idea that the gaming community agrees with. .
For example, Unity announced that there is a system in place to prevent “install bombing” and that “most demos” will not have to pay a fee. Microsoft would have to pay the fee for Game Pass games, but in that case it is highly unclear who exactly is responsible for those fees and when. Moreover, there is a good chance that such costs will be passed on by Microsoft in some way.
In short: chaos and uncertainty surrounding a new payment model that Unity wants to launch and that is making many developers, large and small, angry. Some have also threatened to leave Unity and move to the Unreal Engine. However, there is another trick: even if you switch to another engine, your old games will of course still run on Unity, and as long as new installations are made, you will still have to pay.
Unity does not seem to have any immediate plans to adjust their plans for the time being. Instead, they mainly try to explain the new system better, as if the outside world and gaming community did not understand it properly.
2023-09-14 13:06:00
#Outrage #Unitys #payment #model #developers #call #catastrophe
