#online bill paids

[folkloregirlfriend]

I AM SO EMBARRASSING KILL ME

[californiaquail]

i went into a chase bank today to see if i could close my account because i am tired of getting charged $12/month for being broke and unemployed and while the banker was trying to convince me not to do this she was like "i just love us so i don't like seeing people leave us" and like first of all maybe try cutting out the bullshit fees then and also refunding me but second whoooooo shills for jp morgan chase like that. "i just love us" ??????????? girl i know they are not paying you enough to act like that. she also tried to get me to get a credit card but i declined. and then immediately walked across the street to a local bank to ask them about getting a credit card.

[theragamuffininitiative]

I really need to find a new job. But like. What if I curled up in bed on this rainy afternoon and finished rereading The Scarlet Pimpernel instead.

[softerseasons]

At least once a week I think about my ex, a cis lesbian, who stated to my trans boyfriend-at-the-time and me (identifying as a trans man at the time) that she knew exactly what it was like to come out as a trans person because she had to come out as Cis to her father Multiple Times because he was convinced she was a trans man

[cinemacrypt]

So so so fucking angry tonight

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

FucksSAKE we're desperate and I'm fucking sick of begging for money so does anyone want some emergency art commissions. Like. Say a fiver for a quick sketch, maybe 10 to 15 for something with flat colour?

[cator99]

The Owl House anon, I just sent my ask because you sound like someone who watched Steven Universe, back in the day. I thought you might be watching TOH then

another one of those "damn the hate mail game on this website is insane" moments

[vulcanette]

there was like 5 days packed into today. Too much Day happened today. for me. Excess day. I need a negative five day Day to restore balance

[turquoisepearl]

I don't disagree with what coaches like Kim Velez and Shelly Bullard say. In fact, once upon a time they helped me simplify the law and they (at least Kim) have been open about all the content you "need" being completely free.

However, I can't help but be absolutely shocked at the price they take to basically repeat "everyone is you pushed out" 100 times. I mean, ~$800+ dollars for Kim Velez "glow tf up" program and the DISCOUNTED price of "only" $100+ for one of Shelley's programs.

No offence to these coaches but guys, everything is for free online. Only reason y'all get stuck is because you keep telling yourself you're stuck and can't manifest. Y'all do anything BUT putting it into practice. PLEASE don't spend your hard-earned money for programs like this, especially not in this economy lol.

[boyapologist]

still one hour of standby to go I'm going insane

[rhys-ravenfeather]

Did my mind REALLY keep me up last night worrying about nothing?!

[miss-floral-thief]

Moms calling uncle to pick up mail but spam aside they might as well forward it to his real address lol

[bonefarm]

While we are on the subject - financial abuse is not always just physically taking money away or not having a savings account or escape stash. For a lot of people it is the other spouse sabotaging your credit score, constantly overspending, and you being unable to trust that joint household bills and loans are paid. Did you know that once you add an authorized user to your bank account it’s nearly impossible to remove them without their permission? Did you know that your spouse, who likely knows your birthday and SSN, can often gain access and reset passwords for any online accounts and create new ones?

Financial abuse will ruin your life and there’s really nothing except significant time that fixes it. If you are in a situation where you think this might happen to you you should freeze your credit with all three major agencies. You can find info on how to do this at USA.gov/credit-freeze

This is not something that only happens to tradwives. You are not exempt because you are independent or competent.

[mochapanda]

im gonna drink and play video games until i die of alcohol poisoning

[communistkirby]

Help a Black trans dyke follow her blue-collar dreams!

(id in alt text)

yo! for those who don't know me, my name is Beryl (she/they/it/xe pronouns), and i am a disabled afrolatine trans woman living in the south with my husband, who is also disabled. we moved down south to escape homelessness and an abuser, and while we are fortunate to be living in much more affordable housing than we were in before, we still have rent and other bills to pay even though my husband is too sick to work and has been crowdfunding online for our survival for years. i have always wanted to become an electrician, and have an opportunity to apply to my local electrician's union as an apprentice, where i will be paid and trained and have a guaranteed job once my training+apprenticeship are complete! the only downside is, the application costs money we dont have right now, and i also have to pay to get copies of documents i need for my application, and to get my license back (i have been without one for nearly 3 years after losing it and being unable to get my license renewed). i am going to need a total of $90 to cover the application fee itself, all the costs associated with getting my driver's license back, and getting the last document i need for my application mailed to me. having this taken care of would be beyond huge for me, as i would be able to apply for and begin earning money for myself instead of having to rely on donations, and it would take a MASSIVE strain off of my husband, who has worked himself sick trying to help us stay afloat, both through crowdfunding online and in the past working at regular jobs even though he was in no state health wise to do so. i have venmo and cashapp, and my husband has paypal if folks prefer that to chip in (if you send thru paypal leave a plug emoji so my husband knows its for me!) thank you so much.

(please do not tag this post unless it is for an accessibility reason!)

[treasure-mimic]

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: 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. 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.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.