“A 5% royalty is due only if you are distributing an off-the-shelf product that incorporates Unreal Engine code (such as a game). Provided that you notify us on time using the Release Form, you will only owe royalties once the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in other words, the first $1 million will be royalty-exempt.”
Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.
Exactly. So if they did this in an upfront way, they would have said that starting with Unity 2024 there is this new cost structure. Then game devs can make informed choices if they want to build those types of games on the platform.
This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. Although I think I sort of answered my own question...
Personally I’m wondering if Chinese gamedev industry would “buy Godot” or do something to that effect. Japanese publishers won’t be able to do that nor would be willing to pay, so I’m guessing they’ll migrate existing to UE or wind down Unity titles, just my speculations though.
Additionally the copyright isn’t even owned by those organizations but rather retained in full by all of the many individual contributors to Godot, without a Contributor License Agreement.
So any for-profit corporate acquirer would not be able to get the Godot name, and if they didn’t want to have to comply with the Godot copyright license, they’d have to get the agreement of every individual contributor whose work they don’t want to rewrite.
In short, they are safe from acquisition in the same way that Debian is, unlike most corporate-sponsored or small-team personally-owned “open source” projects that we see here on Hacker News.
(Or, at least they say they are.)
I was formerly heavily involved in the leadership of the other major US non-profit charity that does this kind of fiscal sponsorship (and which maintained a friendly and collaborative relationship with the charity that Godot previously used). They’re not scamming you in the way of a lot of executives at VC-funded for-profit startups (and their acquirers) when they make entirely legally unenforceable statements about what will or won’t happen in the future which they don’t necessarily even believe themselves.
If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's definitely a money grab. If it's deemed illegal, i.e. fraud, I hope there is jail time. Gotta send a message.
Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?
Nope. They bought Weta tools and the investment haven't paid out and probably won't be soon if ever, now they are desperate for money.
They'll be able to get away with that then, the weasels. Sounds like they are trying to make a golden goose and kill it in one fell swoop. The latest Unreal demos look mighty fine. Sounds like we will be seeing a bunch of games use it in the near future.
I wonder if the older engines used by older games have any way to detect installs. I'd hate to see devs who abandoned their projects years ago but are still downloadable somewhere get caught up in this.
EA's former CEO, John Riccitiello took over last year. He inaugurated himself with quite a few statements, one of which was discussed here:
For me personally, C:S goes in too much on building a nice looking city and not enough on the simulation aspect.
If it's illegal, it will just be invalid. What means that people could just not pay them. There's no jail time coming out of this.
It seems more like, starting in 2024 when you get more downloads the fee would be applied.
I see people talking here about apps that have a huge user base and a very low price per purchase. I admit that segment didn’t pop into my mind initially. And I see the problem there. I also imagine the Unity execs may have missed that scenario too.
From reading all of their public communication, and with just a hint of principle of charity, I suspect they are trying to do this in the most fair minded and developer friendly manner possible.
You have to meet both volume and revenue minimums to even be subject to this. All free apps are safe. All non-profits are safe.
I think it is good Unity is receiving public feedback.
I am sad so many people are jumping to the conclusion this is a corrupt money grab.
What category of game has "a huge user base and a very low price per purchase?" Mobile free-to-play, that's what. How are those games monetized? Frequently with ads. And it's been noted elsewhere that if you use Unity's ad network, you will get a 100% discount on your per-install fees.
They knew exactly what they were doing. They merged with an ad company -- they are now an ad company. Their strategy is to make F2P ad-supported games untenable on Unity if you're not getting your advertisements from them.
I wonder how it'd have gone down if Unity had said, "From Unity version 2024 and beyond, if you have ads in your game, you must get them from us," and let that be the end of it.
That goes out the window when they make the changes retroactive.
I can't even understand how it can possibly be legal. How on earth is it even possible to say "your game which was released before we updated this license is subject to the updated version"? IANAL but that sure seems like something which would require both parties to agree to the updated terms for them to be binding.
It's very different from the situation where one party retroactively changes conditions.
> Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1). If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification. If a modification is required to comply with applicable law, the modification will apply notwithstanding this section. Except as explicitly set forth in this paragraph, your use of any new version or release of the Unity Software will be subject to the Updated Terms applicable to that release or version. You understand that it is your responsibility to maintain complete records establishing your entitlement to Prior Terms.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...
However, the clause was still in the October 2022 terms, and was still there in March 2023 [2], and was actually removed in April this year...
It's likely just an oversight, but it does feel pretty dishonest in the face of removing the github repo, its the difference between "that clause has been gone for a year" and "that clause was removed less than 6 months ago"
[1] https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service/software-legacy
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230303043022/https://unity.com...
I don’t know. I can see how it would be ridiculous if Amazon said “oh, by the way, starting next year you have to pay a cent every time you finish any of the books you bought on your kindle”
But if Netflix went “starting next year, there’s a surcharge of 1 cent per episode you watch” nobody would go “surely it can only count for episodes released from next year!
Which raises an interesting question to me: what if a developer wants out of the Unity contract? Does that mean they have to somehow break games consumers already purchased so as not to be liable to install fees?
We live in a dystopia lmao. Of course stuff like this is possible. Unity took one leap forward and pissed everyone off, they'll "fix" it by taking one or two steps back and then everyone will forget about it, just like we forget about everything else.
When you put it that way, Unity could have come out of this price change looking like heroes with better messaging.
Serious games pay the $0.27 fee moving forward, and (hopefully) that comes with some new value add for end users (such as contractually enforced no advertising, cross-platform something something).
Ad-supported games use a different engine with different rules, and end users get the “free to play” benefit.
(The retroactive thing is obviously bullshit; I wonder how many studios will simply refuse to pay and jump ship for future titles.)
It was on HN this morning.
The highest possible fee seems to the $0.20 (only if 100% of your users are in the US and a few other rich countries). Also it only seems to the there to encourage everyone on Personal/Plus to upgrade to Pro (before these changes you were already required to do that if you company revenue was above $200).
Realistically it's going to be closer to $0.02-0.05 per install.
Which you now need to pay to get rid of the Unity splash screen. Why they haven’t learned the lesson of only poor developers (and therefore, largely shovelware and bad games) showing their splash screen is a really bad idea I’ll never understand. I suppose this will technically help with that.
Realistically it’s closer to 3-5 cents per install. Where did you get 27? Even personal/plus is cheaper than that in the worst case (ie. 100% of your users are in NA, the richer parts of Western Europe etc)
No no, you don’t understand, that’s exactly what they want
The incentives don’t work that way. The CEO gets his bonus and ability to sell shares if he pleases VCs and VCs are looking for bagholders for the company. So the CEO creates a revenue narrative to sell to institutional investors so they take an increasingly mediocre asset from the VCs at a premium.
The pattern is all around, exactly the same as Reddit for example.
As a game designer - there is zero built in incentives for the C level of a publicly listed company to do what’s good for the company long term. It’s much better to get rich quick and cash out.
It’s just that the desperation is now now sky high and narratives for the next earnings call need to be generated quickly
Another comment already said this, but I feel it's worth emphasizing: Unreal Engine does not have a runtime fee. You don't pay per install.
Over 1B games sold on the switch: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/1-billion-switch-games-hav...
We can assume at least one game per Quest was sold: https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-sales-20-million-retention-st...
Hard to figure out the mobile numbers.
As for the quest sales, that's another 4mn.
It seems extremely foolhardy to cause this much damage to their reputation and potential growth as a multi-billion dollar company (market cap of 13bn) for 50-100mn a year of additional revenue.
Zero of them would be paying $0.2 per instal. Probably much closer to $0.03-0.05.
Nobody could ship games in the Switch using the personal edition and nobody who understands basic math would be paying $0.2 even after these prices go into effect
This sounds like a plausible motive. There's a handful of huge games using Unity that together generate upwards of 20bln annually, such as Pokemon GO, Honor of Kings, and Genshin Impact. I'm guessing their soundbite of "developers being excited" over the change is with those behemoths in mind, and not the other games that are barely making ends meet.
These particular successful games are still going to save millions compared to Unreal, while the change means that everyone else would now be more profitable with Unreal. Pokemon GO alone would have made Unreal $100mln+ a year with the 5% royalty, while paying considerably less with Unity's new scheme. Even at a billion downloads it's only $10mln in comparison.
It sounds like Unity is shifting their focus from the long tail where they were successful charging annual subscription fees (and ads), to the head that's generating orders of magnitude more revenue.
To be fair only F2P games that makes less than ~$2 per user might be more profitable. For almost everyone else above the 1 million threshold Unity would still be cheaper.
https://blog.unity.com/news/unity-forms-new-venture-to-manag...
How can they make this apply retroactively though? For already shipped titles, if I'm no longer providing updates anymore, how can they force me to pay money?
I'm aware that games no longer have a final shipping date, with early access and all, and as a dev I'd likely would want to offer continued support in such a scenario.
But the way I understand it from the overall public reaction, is that they're trying to charge customers for existing titles, retroactively, in perpetuity going onward. This would be a one sided ToS change which only benefits them, which they push the customer into agreeing. Such a practice is mostly unenforceable in a lot of jurisdictions around the world.
I guess they didn’t like the thought of not being able to perpetually milk their customers and wanted to increase their cut outside of the editor fee.
From what I understand though, Unreal is just licensed based on revenue and all the editing tools are free. Unity had the opposite approach previously. They’ve decided they want a cut of both pies.
The way the go about this makes it seem that you enter a contract that you can never reasonably exit out of, as in order for you to stop having to pay, you'd have to convincingly prove that you forced every customer to uninstall your app, i.e. that there isn't at least one install left.
This sounds absolutely bonkers to me.
They’re going to (already have) damaged their reputation beyond repair. This isn’t typical consumer strong arm tactics. Their clients are businesses who already have alternatives. If one of my vendors abruptly changed our agreement like this, there’s no question I’d quietly phase them out ASAP.
I would still oppose it because I don't want every installer to spy on me as a user. I'm glad it happened in a way that spurred so much resistance instead of a slow frog-boil.
Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a run-time fee, similar to Unreal Engine. And they would slowly discontinue support for the older versions on a specific schedule.
There are new devices coming out like the new Switch, the Apple Vision Pro, and then the new features Unity is adding like AI, just add those to the new versions that have the run-time fee. People will upgrade to it on their own terms!
By making it retroactive and forcing it on everyone, they have basically screwed over their existing customers who shipped games expecting a certain cost structure and now it is higher.
Deleting this GitHub license archive repo where they make it clear that their license changes are likely unenforceable is icing on the cake.