#unity engine

[necromancy-enthusiast]

To help everyone understand the gravity of the situation with Unity's recent bullshit, here are some games made in unity:

Cult of the Lamb

Bendy and the Ink Machine

Untitled Goose Game

Road 96

Cuphead

Power Wash Simulator

Genshin Impact

Getting Over It

Inside

Tem Tem

Kerbal Space Program 1

Kerbal Space Program 2

Rust

Rimworld

Outer Wilds

Dream Daddy

Thomas Was Alone

I Am Setsuna

Tunic

Night in the Woods

Pony Island

Return of the Obra Dinn

Among Us

Pokemon Go

Hollow Knight

Ori and the Blind Forest

Ori and the Willow of the Wisps

Vampire Survivors

Two Point Hospital

City Skylines

The Long Dark

Firewatch

Oxenfree

Subnautica

Subnautica: Below Zero

Fall Guys

Many, MANY MORE

Unless you only play tRIpLE A titles this will most likely affect a game you like. Hell, it can even affect really big games like Pokemon Go.

For a long time, starting years and years back, a lot of people have been talking about the preservation of games and being against moving to digital only games for reasons like this, and how the greed of various big companies in the game industry will negatively impact access to games and their preservation. It's happening. This will impact games that are already out. This will impact games being made. This will impact games made in the future. So if you care even a teensy tiny bit about a single game made in unity, or you care about the future of game development period, I suggest you pay very close attention.

A good article from an indie developer detailing the changes and exactly how it screws devs over:

[lastoneout]

Actually, this Unity mess makes sense when you learn that they've got the guy behind such brilliant ideas as "we should charge players per bullet in fps games" and "all together the Sims 4 expansion packs cost over $800" running the goddamn company.

[auranym]

indie games are safe!!

good news! unity has walked back a lot of the runtime fee!

they made a blog post outlining their new terms, the link is here. but if you want a sparknotes version, here's the highlights:

1. the runtime fee is not retroactive. previously released games are safe.

2. the fee only applies to the next major version of unity. developers can choose not to upgrade if they don't want do deal with it.

3. the fee is opt-in and number of installs is self-reported. if they'd prefer, developers can instead pay a 2.5% revenue share. (for reference, unreal is 4%.)

4. interestingly, the splash screen is being completely removed. this is probably a way to improve their reputation.

overall, this is a HUGE improvement! but, if I remember right, there was not any revenue share before, so, we are not at the same point we started. unity will still be taking a larger cut of developers' revenue if they choose to use newer features. but, it is nowhere near as drastic as we thought it would be.

overall, I think we're in a stable spot now, but I also think unity has lost most if not all of the trust it had. especially with indies. there has already been a mass exodus, and I kinda hope that will keep going.

[melblur]

In case you're wondering how the Unity Engine subreddit is doing right now:

[blackfeatherdragon]

the amount of games made with unity though...

night in the woods, ori, cuphead, untitled goose game, hiveswap, hollow knight and silksong, pokemon bdsp, pokemon go, fate: grand order, fire emblem engage, genshin impact, doom (switch port only), ultrakill, among us, yugioh duel links, yugioh master duel...

so many games Will be impacted it's not even funny. Fuck Unity.

[roadarchie]

follow me if you liked this post :) I made the image

[auntie-communism]

this unity mess is insane

besides the crazy fucking retroactivity part (which admittedly could actually be worse), I think my favorite part of this mess is what counts as an install

demos count towards installs (but not towards the $$ requirement, so if you release a demo that gets 200,000 downloads you're """fine""" until your hit 200000 download game releases and you start rolling in the dough)

installing a game for the first time counts

reinstalling a game for any reason counts

I would assume that any game that uses a janky patching process that basically reinstalls the whole thing would also count

Local streaming (from device X to device Y) counts as an install for each device

Presumably cloud streaming also counts as an install

Pirated installations (assuming that a crack doesn't neutralize the engine's ability to phone home) count as an install

Apparently playing the game in browser would also count

If you change your hardware (upgrade your motherboard, etc), that counts as an install

ios offloading your unity mobile game and then you choosing to reinstall it counts as an install

[vexwerewolf]

Unity: WotC? WotC?! You think WotC deserves "Worst PR Fuckup of the Year?" They're NOTHING! We can do so much worse than them!

[magichats]

all the news going around with unity's really got me worried for games that are already several years into development like Hollow Knight Silksong and Billie Bust up.

Just rough because I don't suppose a whole lot of games are going to be able to pivot game engines, let alone so late in development. Like it is easier said than done to pivot early in development but i've been following the development of several games that are years in at this point and the fact that they're grandfathering older titles into this is just... it's just bad.

The potential loss of games in terms of archival on such a massive scale....

[wagabagabog]

about that unity thing goin down

[netscapenavigator-official]

I think the real, worrying, on-going problem with Unity is the fact that the investors and CEO no longer have incentive to keep the company alive.

They all sold massive amounts of stock before making the change. They knew this would kill Unity. They don’t care. In fact, they’re doing it on purpose. They sold their stock high, gave the company its death knell and now they’re just waiting for some trickle of extra revenue to be brought in by game developers when the change goes into affect, and once developers and gaming corporations start switching away from Unity, they’ll fold the company, not care, and be richer because if it.

Unity is dying on purpose, and there isn’t anything that can be done.

[safetycgreen]

For everyone who's seen the unity "backtrack", please remember that the runtime fee is still absolutely bullshit and you should absolutely not use unity where you can. They've played their hand and decided that they can squeeze money from whatever bullshit they think they can get away with. DO NOT USE UNITY, DO NOT LEARN UNITY, DO NOT MAKE CONTENT FOR UNITY.

This is still an awful tos and absolute poison for the gaming community and the developer community. Install fees are poisonous for everyone.

[lastoneout]

Unity is fucking up so bad rn that I saw several indie devs on twitter saying they did the math and it would literally be cheaper for them to hire a small team to port their games out of Unity rather than pay the install fee. Like if Unity had a monopoly they could MAYBE get away with this bcs there wouldn't be any other options, but I can think of at least three different game engines off the top of my head rn(and it's entirely possible for a studio with the right resources to just make their own) so the CEO has literally, in ONE day, made it easier and cheaper for everyone to just stop using his product than to pay the fees they're asking for. This dude is speedrunning destroying his company. He saw Elon Musk nuke twitter and went "hold my beer". Fucking incredible. I'd almost think it was on purpose if it wasn't so goddamn stupid.

[knittedbond]

haven't seen a solo post about this yet: Mega Crit (the devs behind Slay The Spire) are delaying their next title and migrating to a different engine after Unity's Runtime Fees change

[onestepbackwards]

I've been following the Unity situation and its so fucking insane like holy shit. We have everything! - Absurd fees for devs! That may or may not be retroactive and illegal, but we won't say until you cause a stink about it! (We totally aren't shh we wouldn't break the law. Totally :) ) - Getting rid of one of their levels of subscriptions during all of this, The 'Plus Plan', and allegedly putting you on the more expensive 'Pro' subscription if you auto renew! - Insider trading! Selling their stocks not even a week before they released this new change in their company! x x They've since backpedaled from what their original plan was. Originally, they told everyone that every Install, reinstall, dlc, demo, and pirated copy would now cost a fee (with few exceptions, such as charity games and bundles) It's not hard to see how this could tank an indie company with ease. Mad at a dev/company? Just mass install/uninstall. Now they are apparently saying that 'nonono! We only meant the original install :)' Which also opens the door as to how they are tracking installs. They so far have seemed to be avoiding as to how on earth they are going to do that without breaching privacy on a computer. Especially when it could just be easier to make a fee based on purchases, but no. x

So you know, don't worry guys, they have their own 'proprietary data model.' But so far (As i type this, or am aware of) have not given details about how that model works. When asked about stuff such as Xbox Gamepass, Unity mentioned it would be Microsoft paying for the fees. As of now, I have no idea if Microsoft was even told this, and I doubt they are going to agree to it either out of nowhere. x Another fun thing, is if you change your Unity plan, you are added to the revenue threshold immediately. Interesting that this is after they sneakily got rid of their Plus plan, which a lot of devs seemed to use.

And interesting enough, they seem to contradict themselves from their QnA and their official twitter post regarding Demo's and Early Access, or at least tried to be sneaky about the wording?? x x

They won't charge for demos or early access, until they do, apparently. Or if the demo has data that can be transferred to the main game, anyway. Unity also claimed this would only affect 10% of its users. Which is funny when you look at all the Indie devs and studios who are coming out on twitter saying that this actually directly hurts them. Not to mention all the people that have spent years learning this engine, for themselves, or so they can apply to companies using it. And now all of that was just spat on by Unity themselves. There's also the games that have been out and are built on this engine, and can't just be tossed and rebuilt. Such as Among us, Genshin Impact, Pokemon Go and the Diamond/Pearl remakes. Overall, it's a huge mess. Unity majorly screwed up. I'd recommend looking into what games you like, and if they run on Unity. If you don't have them yet, you may want to purchase them so they are in your steam library, or whatever console you play on. With the uncertainty of all of this, I wouldn't be surprised if some companies delist their games on steam. If you buy from them now, you'll still be able to support the devs before Unity implements this new fee plan. Plus, since you paid for them, they will still be on your console/in your steam library. Please stay safe ya'll, and support your local game devs during this storm. They need it.

[dontaskchaosandco]

Reminder that John Riccitiello is the current CEO of Unity. He should be held directly accountable for any anti-consumer practices. Stop letting people like this hide behind their brands.