1 yr. ago • 95%

Unity makes major changes to controversial install-fee program ...😑

arstechnica.com Unity makes major changes to controversial install-fee program

No fees for Personal tier or old/current projects, new 2.5% revenue cap, and more.

20 comments

This is standard business tactics.

Do not fall for it.

An absurd change followed by rolling it back to an “acceptable” version that is still worse than their original position prior to the initial announcement.

This is a psychological manipulation.

And more to the point it ignores the issue of their violation of trust and consistency.

This is still precedent, they still showed their hand.

They want to have “passive income” at your expense.

Learn Godot.

79
"Okay, okay... Let's admit that our old idea of pi**ing all over your heads may have gone a little too far....

So, here's the deal. We will pi** a bit on your left shoulder ...BUT! But, but, but.... It will be UPWIND!! SEE!? Upwind!!

So basically, you'll be missed most of the times! Basically like never get hit at all!" 👍

51
- Don't worry, 90% of our users won't have to pay anything at all! Just ignore that like 50% are people who downloaded Unity to mess around for a bit and never made anything other than a "hello world" or similar.
  
  19
  
  way more than 50% lol
  
  4
- I've pooped in your soup and removed the poop when you got angry. You're still gonna eat the soup, right?
  
  10
Far too little, far too late. Even if this was the most glowing revision ever (it isn't, but even if it was), the trust is gone.

45
- I know I won't be using it. There is no guarantee that they won't do something similar in the future.
  
  14
  
  And therein lies the rub.
  
  They’ve proven they can’t be trusted. The people who devised and attempted to enact this plan - the exec team - have not gone anywhere, and they aren’t going to. They have shown the industry who they are, and they clearly don’t give a shit about business ethics or even legality (the AppLovin shit smells an awful fucking lot like anticompetitive market interference). They will definitely try something similar in the future.
  
  10
  
  They can just creep up the fee bit by bit and they can say, hey it's not as bad as that runtime fee we announced in 2023
  
  4
Just the fact that they'll spy on me when I install a game, makes me want to avoid buying unity games forward.

In fact, they certainly already have some analytics, so yeah, I'll avoid unity for my games from now on...

20
So this was the actual deal they were going for. We'll see if the big players will stick with unity.

16
It doesn't matter.

They showed their hand. They can and will change pricing after the fact. Who would want that kind of liability on their product?

12
I still think its a terrible idea to start a new project in unity, but for developers who are too far into a project to reasonably switch without spending a lot of time or money (like Ultrakill or Silksong), this is good as it means they can finish their games without having to worry about a passive income loss which could put them out of business.

9
fair changes, but the ONLY way forward is to fire riccitello. i don’t see how anyone can trust them again until that happens.

removal of the retroactivity piece will likely appease a large number of devs tho (dunno if it’ll be the majority but that was the biggest wtf for me)

8
- As that's what I want to see also. But Spez is still Reddit CEO, Bobby Kotik is still Blizzard's CEO... I guess Riccitello will stay there for a while
  
  3
  
  The unfortunate cushion of being a rich powerful asshole
  
  1
"I am sorry," Unity executive and industry veteran Marc Whitten said in the blog post.

4
sound of me spitting I'll wait until next year to see what's really gonna happen.

3

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