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Pigbuster posted:It's so baffling because they could've just increased their share of the revenue split if they're so jonesing for cash; tying an additional fee to installs is just bizarre and complicated. It's like they got creative to avoid news articles about the revenue split going up and came up with something far worse My best guess is they want to distance themselves from f2p games. Which doesn't make a lot of sense strategically since that's where they have 90+% marketshare
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Sep 12, 2023 18:08
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The Kins posted:I suspect their choosing installs as their revenue thing rather than purchases is to try and get a cut of games that get onto Game Pass, PS+ and whatever other subscription services crawl out there.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:09
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The Kins posted:I suspect their choosing installs as their revenue thing rather than purchases is to try and get a cut of games that get onto Game Pass, PS+ and whatever other subscription services crawl out there. gently caress me that's totally it, isn't it
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Sep 12, 2023 18:10
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leper khan posted:My best guess is they want to distance themselves from f2p games. Which doesn't make a lot of sense strategically since that's where they have 90+% marketshare The announcement specifically mentioned that they'd partially waive the fees for f2p games in exchange for using unity's own ad platform. They're not trying to distance themselves from f2p, they're trying to muscle f2p games into using more of the unity ecosystem.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:12
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We weren't sure about our studio going for GODOT, but now we are 
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Sep 12, 2023 18:12
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Its the opposite. They wany to do this to milk f2p games even more. As a random example of a big unity game, last month genshin got *4 million downloads* on *mobile alone*. Probably 5 million if you include pc and ps4/5. Games with no entry fee build up downloads like crazy.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:15
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hahaha gently caress John Ricitiello
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Sep 12, 2023 18:16
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yeah this seems like a classic case of a party attempting to insert themselves as a middleman and extracting a fee
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Sep 12, 2023 18:17
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they've fallen insurmountably behind unreal engine in terms of high-spec/AAA features so i guess this is them giving up and doubling down on shovelware it's a shame because it seemed like they were turning things around, they brought on some top tier engineering talent to overhaul things but the company is such a mess that most of their work never really came together into something production-ready, and then most of that talent got laid off
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Sep 12, 2023 18:18
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Genshin and Hearthstone are big enough to reach the 1 cent per install rate. Which is a nuisance but nothing cataclysmic (as long as the "malicious installer" problem can be solved). But who would ever start a game in Unity now? They might as well lay off all their devs this company has no future beyond the GaaS games already stuck on the platform.
No Wave fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Sep 12, 2023 |
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Sep 12, 2023 18:18
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It's amusing to think that it's possible that a developer could end up owing Unity more than they make on a game.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:23
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Endorph posted:Its the opposite. They wany to do this to milk f2p games even more. poo poo the Mihoyo games use Unity? Then yeah this is totally a case of trying to hold the big games hostage at the expense of indie and smaller developers. Kinda like what Adobe does with their products (though even Adobe just charges an exorbitant subscription fee instead of all this).
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Sep 12, 2023 18:23
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mycot posted:poo poo the Mihoyo games use Unity? Then yeah this is totally a case of trying to hold the big games hostage at the expense of indie and smaller developers. Kinda like what Adobe does with their products (though even Adobe just charges an exorbitant subscription fee instead of all this).
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Sep 12, 2023 18:30
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a very classic case of short terms profits ("look at all these HUGE games we could take a cut out off!") put before long term profits ("who gives a poo poo about small time indie making less than 200k$/year? it's not like any of those ever hit it big and became mainstay studios!!!!!1!").
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Sep 12, 2023 18:30
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Yeah, apparently you need to have made 200k over the last 12 months for the fee to kick in, so this is probably angling for the big mobile sellers. Still an unfathomably stupid and overcomplicated way to do this, and coupled with the.... questionable speed at which things have gotten prioritized/fixed/implemented within the engine over the last few years, I'm considering moving even my hobby projects over to other engines sooner rather than later. Who knows what they will try after this.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:33
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Broken Cog posted:Yeah, apparently you need to have made 200k over the last 12 months for the fee to kick in, so this is probably angling for the big mobile sellers. 200k revenue is a vanishingly small amount. Even small teams need a lot more than that to break even.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:38
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yeah it's doodoo. crosspost from the Making Games Megathread:Gaspy Conana posted:Our games are right at that threshold and it sucks. $200k may sound like a lot but it's nothing when you have a publisher and 3-5 people with revshare. It's going to weaken our ability to sustain ourselves significantly.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:55
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Gaspy Conana posted:yeah it's doodoo. crosspost from the Making Games Megathread:
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Sep 12, 2023 19:29
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leper khan posted:200k revenue is a vanishingly small amount. Even small teams need a lot more than that to break even. Not disagreeing, though I think you also need at least 100k downloads, but yeah. Considering how many mobile games are made in Unity.... Absolutely boneheaded decision all around. Current CEO is starting to remind me of those vultures that get sent in to crash a company so its assets can be bought up for pennies.
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Sep 12, 2023 19:36
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Broken Cog posted:Not disagreeing, though I think you also need at least 100k downloads, but yeah. Considering how many mobile games are made in Unity.... funny story about that https://twitter.com/SauceJockey/status/1701629115529413062
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Sep 12, 2023 19:37
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lagidnam posted:The current CEO of Unity, John Ricitiello oh no
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Sep 12, 2023 19:54
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:hahaha gently caress John Ricitiello This is the real story He's a dogshit fixer CEO who comes in makes the company profitable, extracts his fee and then gets fired a year later because he doesn't know how to sustainably turn around a company, nor does he care to Probably should have seen this coming He hosed up the Battlefield franchise too
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Sep 12, 2023 20:00
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Endorph posted:funny story about that This is 2,000 shares out of the approximately 320,000 shares he got in his comp package last year. It's funny, but it's not actually nefarious, especially since the stock is up after this announcement since there's nothing wall street loves more than extracting fees for a short term gain at the expense of the long term outlook of the company
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Sep 12, 2023 20:05
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Hadlock posted:This is the real story He's also chairman of the board. And stuck into unity significantly prior to their IPO. I don't see him getting fired.
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Sep 12, 2023 20:06
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:hahaha gently caress John Ricitiello quote: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.
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Sep 12, 2023 20:18
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mycot posted:poo poo the Mihoyo games use Unity? Then yeah this is totally a case of trying to hold the big games hostage at the expense of indie and smaller developers. Kinda like what Adobe does with their products (though even Adobe just charges an exorbitant subscription fee instead of all this). The joke is that the totals are peanuts for the big games, because they're going to hit the threshold where the vast majority of users only cost them one cent each. It's the ones whose downloads are mostly at the 0.15 and 0.075 threshold that are getting squeezed the worst
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Sep 12, 2023 20:20
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Lemming posted:The joke is that the totals are peanuts for the big games, because they're going to hit the threshold where the vast majority of users only cost them one cent each. It's the ones whose downloads are mostly at the 0.15 and 0.075 threshold that are getting squeezed the worst A $0.15 CPI increase is massive, and it hits exactly the games that can't afford it (unproven games from teams of all sizes). I don't see how you can pick unity for f2p mobile dev with this. The unit economics don't work.
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Sep 12, 2023 20:29
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Hogama posted:The insider transaction history for Unity Software Inc shows a clear trend: over the past year, there have been 49 insider sells and no insider buys. yeah that's not great doesn't matter if you're chairman of the board if you're gonna sell the company for parts
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Sep 12, 2023 20:33
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Hadlock posted:yeah that's not great Who can get rid of him? Would require some activist investor coming in and buying a huge amount of the company. And the Saudis don't seem to be lighting more money on fire for video games right now. MS has its hands full with ATVI. There's only so many players that could step in if they wanted to.
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Sep 12, 2023 20:36
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As long as they can keep selling off their stake in the company for more than they paid for it, he's doing his job As long as they liquidate whatever it was they were planning on doing, then he's doing his job His job is to be accountable the shareholders/board not to game developers or the long term health of the company. I don't think they've entered the "unhealthy/unsustainable business" part of the curve yet where he would get fired but this is a big red flag that they might be headed in that direction
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Sep 12, 2023 20:59
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https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1701679721027633280 'charity bundles exempted from fees' how can you possibly tell what installs are from charity and which arent
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Sep 12, 2023 20:59
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Excited for the first game to get caught in the middle of the culture war for which people make install/uninstall scripts to drain the devs of cash
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Sep 12, 2023 21:00
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https://twitter.com/unormal/status/1701673961795313778
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Sep 12, 2023 21:09
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Hadlock posted:As long as they can keep selling off their stake in the company for more than they paid for it, he's doing his job Unity's last killer feature is that targeting the mobile platform is pretty drat easy, and this is otherwise an obnoxious problem to solve. Godot doesn't do this (yet). My take here is that Unity is basically dead the second Godot has an easy way to deploy to mobile devices. Unity has a lot of momentum from the past but it's relevance is slowly fading. Among my the dev circles I talk to, I don't know any non-mobile games that are seriously looking at Unity today as a starting point among any of my contact in the industry. The majority are getting on the Unreal train and some now have enough confidence in Godot to dive in. Unity's market cap is $15B today. I bet it's half that in 3 years.
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Sep 12, 2023 21:10
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if you think about genshin impact we will charge mihoyo one dollar
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Sep 12, 2023 21:16
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Endorph posted:https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1701679721027633280 Can't wait to watch TV while mindlessly downloading and deleting games over and over from publishers I am mad at.
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Sep 12, 2023 21:17
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Endorph posted:https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1701679721027633280 If it's a charity bundle, it's usually popping out a code for you to plug in elsewhere, no? The logic is basically that you're "printing" new copies of the game, they're allowed to change the terms for future new copies absent a current term agreement cf. poo poo like music in GTA, and therefore there is now an n cent a copy base fee that they'll waive if you can show you donated them to Humble but that they demand if you had Google or Apple or Microsoft or Steam print them even for free/a flat fee. Extremely dumb from a business/PR standpoint, obviously a "gently caress you we get paid even if you bomba unless you let US take that cut off the top", but not hugely outlandish in the how.
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Sep 12, 2023 21:18
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Endorph posted:if you think about genshin impact we will charge mihoyo one dollar Seems very obviously aimed at Mihoyo over Genshin and Honkai, yeah.
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Sep 12, 2023 21:21
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Mandoric posted:The logic is basically that you're "printing" new copies of the game, they're allowed to change the terms for future new copies absent a current term agreement cf. poo poo like music in GTA, and therefore there is now an n cent a copy base fee that they'll waive if you can show you donated them to Humble but that they demand if you had Google or Apple or Microsoft or Steam print them even for free/a flat fee. Extremely dumb from a business/PR standpoint, obviously a "gently caress you we get paid even if you bomba unless you let US take that cut off the top", but not hugely outlandish in the how. if you tell them, iunno, you gave 1000 copies out as part of a charity bundle and they waive the equivalent of 1000 installs, but one of those people decides to install it 50 times, how can they tell the difference here.
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Sep 12, 2023 21:22
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I'm still wondering how they'll actually track stuff like "Deleting and installing the game multiple times". Aren't most Unity games run from a standard .exe without installers? Are they just expecting Steam or GOG to notify them every time someone reinstalles a Unity game?
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Sep 12, 2023 21:24
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