Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

Steam's fanatical players are very sticky,
They are unwilling to leave the Steam platform. They feel that the Epic Game Mall does not have creative workshops, comment areas, or gaming communities, and Epic prohibits pornographic content, so they feel that the experience is too poor.

 

And even then, the backlash would not have been as strong if Unity had not already been building up a lot of discontent over the previous 6 years or so. Something about straw and a camel, I expect.

Hey, it's better than the other way around (~70% goes to the store), which used to be common. People forget how much incredulity Apple got when they introduced the 30% thing. "Isn't that the opposite of the way it's supposed to be? How are they expecting to make any money?" And in fact they didn't make money with 30% at first, it took a while, because it's not actually that simple. It did eventually drop to 15%, unless you make >$1M.

Epic isn't suing Apple, they tried that and lost. Also they're hypocrites, because when asked why it was OK for Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft to do it but not Apple, their response was essentially "it's fine because they don't make any money on hardware," which is 1) false (Nintendo, for one, would disagree), and 2) irrelevant.

The AAA studios aren't even paying 5%.

--Eric

 

The thing is, fanatics are almost always a minority. They can do whatever. I'm looking at this from non-fanatical viewpoint.

Current steam is poorly done. It is not improving.

 

They gave an update on their litigation efforts in their layoff.

"What about Project Liberty? We've been taking steps to reduce our legal expenses, but are continuing the fight against Apple and Google distribution monopolies and taxes, so the metaverse can thrive and bring opportunity to Epic and all other developers."

 

I wonder what Sweeney was trying to say with this quote:

from Layoffs at Epic - Epic Games

I took "continuing the fight" as continued legal action. Assuming he means something else then, but not sure what else they could do besides lawsuits.

 

I'm sure they will handle it one way or another. I do not read comments often, so it doesn't affect me personally. But the average score and stuff are really useful for me and the more people there, the scores are more relevant.

Well good luck, if you get bored, count the tumbleweed.

I don't know what you're talking about, I'm on Steam, I do not argue there about anything (I visit the Unity forums for that ), they don't make me addicted to anything, I do not collect their digital garbage either. I enjoy the excellent launcher, especially with controller on the big TV in the living room. EGS is a big pile of BS if we compare... Maybe they don't have collectible cards and whatnot, but they also don't have a lot of helpful features either. So if I pay the same price for the games I'm interested in in both stores, where will I buy them? On Steam, because that's better for me.

No, it's not. I only use it to try to predict the future from game dev point of view though. It is worth to go on Steam, because people are going there and people predictively will go there. And releasing a half-baked launcher and leaving more at the game devs won't attract more users, because also game devs don't share that extra profit with the users. So for the same price people will go to Steam instead.

 

My opinion is that there shouldn't be any digital garbage in it in the first place.

And here's the thing. This is a feature that for me is irrelevant, and lack of community nonsense makes EGS preferable. I also don't even really need a launcher. I have an OS for that. The old steam launcher was also much better.

My point is that ideally a business should attempt to cater to everybody. Otherwise we'll end up in a situation simialar to this runtime fee thing we're discussing. So far, I'd say that in the past 10 or so years the only thing steam implemented that is relevant to my gaming experience is screenshot key and that's it. Now, there's also a matter of steamVR, in a sense, t hat it is nice that it exists, but then again, most features it has by default, again, have nothing to do with my experience. I don't NEED a steam home, for example. And in a situation when I have a question about game, I need to dive into a pool of boiling feces that is steamcommunity. Amazing customer experience.

So what do we have here. I want to just play, and steam wants some nonsense like making me engaged on its platform. Our interests do not align, at the very least steam doesn't care about interests of group I'm the part of.

That'll probably lead to situation similar to runtime fee at some point.

 

I don't do bloated launchers at all, I use GOG. They also have a bloated launcher, but you aren't required to use it, so I don't. More importantly, no DRM...once I've bought and downloaded a game, it can never be revoked.

I have no idea, they definitively lost their lawsuit against Apple, so I can't see trying again working any better. Plus they're working with Apple to support Apple's VR thingy, so they can't be that upset.

--Eric

 

What we have here is that I do not think negatively when Steam does cater to other people AND me as well, you do. I can avoid all the supposedly "toxic" comments all they, everyday, you could too. But you choose to put that into the negative column, because it is catering to other people.

Don't get me wrong, however you choose your selection of launcher and store to buy your games is totally up to you, but questioning other people's choice and openly putting forward an argument that you don't like it because they are catering to other people too is not the best thing in the world.

Anyway, let's get back to discussing why and when we're ditching Unity.

 

Epic and Apple are going to the Supreme Court.

"Apple has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider a previous ruling in its fight against Epic Games that would change the rules of the App Store."

“Epic filed its own petition to the Supreme Court on Wednesday”

https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/28/a...-reconsider-a-previous-ruling-in-epics-favor/

 

That's a good question, makes me think...

...well, my particular use-case is one where I want to support modding and to be able to add a lot of post-release content easily, so I appreciate a lot of the overengineering because it's really facilitated a lot of the modularity that I've added to my game.

For instance, with the SRPs, I managed to support multiple vision modes (thermal vision, normal vision, LIDAR scanning) and each one has its own chains of post process effects and custom render passes, all of which I couldn't have done under BIRP due to certain things having to occur in a very particular order of execution.

Or for the new Input system, I plan on having VR support for my game, but to make it playable on desktop as well with keyboard and mouse AND controller. (Phasmophobia's a good example of a game that offers both VR/Desktop experiences) I want people to be able to easily rebind these controls and I used to use an asset called InControl with the legacy input system and I can honestly say that I much prefer the new Input system. It had its issues in the past but I feel like it's more or less rounded out.

Now, I'm not saying that these systems are perfect. They came with a substantial learning curve, AND they had interop issues. For instance, making the new Input System allow for gamepad navigation of interfaces made with UIToolkit was rocky for quite a while. It's working now, but it was an absolute pain point. In fact, I just spent the last 3 days solving another interop issue caused by UIToolkit having troubles with mapping 2D pointer coordinates on panels linked to dynamically-resizable render textures, but thankfully there was a solution on the forums provided by a Unity dev.

Iteration speed is not stellar.

But I get around this by using Rider's file browser to perform most file operations for scripts instead of Unity's internal browser so that a compile isn't triggered until I'm ready to begin testing. I also fastidiously maintain a file structure where the bulk of unchanging code sits in a Plugins or Standard Assets folder so that these things are compiled separately and aren't recompiled unnecessarily.

Burst compilation is also something of an issue that crops up from time to time, especially since my project makes use of DOTS for both networking and so that I can handle massive detailed environments, as well as for handling physics calculations for breakables and debris, and for rapid search queries (such as for enemy targeting and pathfinding). At present it's bearable but sometimes there are performance regressions that push that iteration time up to a minute. From personal experience they seem to be aggressively pursuing fixes when these regressions occur, but YMMV.

 

There are literal racist comments, xenophobia, insults and trolling on the platform. To see it you'll need to enter ANY steam community of any popular game.

You're saying that.... this is "supposedly" toxic and "caters to other people".

Well, I'm afraid we just aren't going to see eye to eye on this one.

 

I don't visit those places, so I do not know if they are racists or not. I know many people are using the comment system happily, I don't see the need to nuke the whole thing. If they have (I do not know I do not visit those places) problems like that, they need to work on it.

No, we do not see eye to eye on this one.

 

I'm afraid that this isn't a problem inherent to Steam, but rather, that the world has a lot of people who hold opinions that you will find offensive and you're just going to have to learn to turn a blind to it. Like, I could go on and on about the misfortunes in third world countries or how giant megacorps do giant megacorp things but at the end of the day I have neither the power nor the conviction to do anything about it so I just keep my nose to the grindstone and work on the few things I actually care about and have the power to change.

You're going to have to learn how to unplug from these things or at least block them because if you don't learn how to isolate yourself from the trashfires of humanity it will just drive you insane.

 

They have. They're not working on it. It is in the launcher, and it is not a thing you can opt out of.

The problem with this logic is even if you isolate yourself, this thing will continue being there, and if no action is taken against it, it'll become accepted behavior. Because nothing happens to those who do it.

Simple version is... If you turn blind eye to the hostile people online, in time, the only people online will be hostile. Because a new generation will grow and seeing like being an ass towards someone results in nothing happened, will continue the glorious tradition in order to look cool.

It is kinda already happened. You find a highly hostile place online and bring the issue up. The thing you'll hear is "oh, but that's just online thing! Nobody in real life does this or thinks like this!". So supposedly there are normal people in a galaxy far away, except you see none of them.

Also, you're the second person who try to downplay it to "disagreeable". I kinda expect you, for example, not to condone racism. Because in some cultures it is on the level of the ultimate insult, pretty much.

Anyway, no point in discussing it, I guess. Probably some cultural difference at play.

 

problem solved

 

Yeah, I'm doing that actively, every day.

 

Wrong. I want that menu gone. And implementing this isn't hard. Opt out of everything. Community, market, cards and so on.

"Just never click" is a variation of "just pretend there's not a pile of garbage on the sidewalk". The correct idea is to clean up.

 

Cool. And if my game's community features turn into a cesspit? Do I dedicate time to moderating that myself or do I just let it fester? Those same community features I do not want and never asked for in the first place?

 

I don't know how to answer this because this is a generalization and not a specific case. Which community features are you talking about?

 

Some people choose to use these features so they should be left in for those people. You don't get to choose that for them. You are actively clicking that button and getting yourself into this mess. That's on you.

 

You can install or write a custom skin. Basically CSS that would hide that button.

My 20 cents on the digital garbage. I prefer digital garbage over real collectibles some people really seem to enjoy. Anime, gaming figurines and toys are stuff gamers (TM) appearntly like. GameStop just sells collectable toys these days. Maybe. Just maybe the guys over at Steam know something.
I would also like to not argue about this. I don't care that much.

 

I see plenty of games without those features. This implies devs can turn them off somehow.

 

You aren't listening. I said that I want to opt out. Which means that I want everything disabled for myself. Meaning that everybody else can have whatever they want. You accuse me of making decisions for other people. How nice of you to do that. Then blame me for clicking the button that is there.

If there's a button clicking which may result in me wasting resulting inordinate amount of time, ruin my mood or waste money, and I want it gone, that is a reasonable request. I shouldn't need to tinker with CSS, that should be a client feature. That is what is called being accomodating to the requirmenents. Speaking of which, people have different degree of impulse control, and there's a fairly common situation described "a kid found a linked credit card and spent $20000 on garbage". Steam audience does have kids, despite 13 y/o restriction. You, of course, can blame parents for that, but if you own the platform, you should implement safeguards. See "facebook friendly fraud" for an example, and in case of steam, I don't know, look up AWP rifle price on the market or read about Auricom5 Golden Frying Pan.

I suppose it is a cool modern tradition when somebody who reports a problem gets blamed for something. Regarding this:

As far as I'm aware, every steam game gets a forum you're supposed to babysit and I've never seen a game without one. The best approach I saw was restricting forums to "only buyers can post", and if it becomes popular, it'll go downhill.

 

I use some of the digital garbage, such as the stickers in chat, or emojis in conversations. I also occasionally do achievement hunting in games if I like the game enough to 100% it. And I absolutely have participated in a few steam sales to accumulate digital garbage, so I can say that at least from a personal standpoint, that the digital garbage does increase sales by some factor (hell if I know by how much, though, I don't have any stats!) And I have bought games from the recommendation system too, so there's that. It's not that I want to say that people who hate the digital garbage are wrong, but that their viewpoints aren't exactly universally applicable.

 

You are no longer distributing the runtime, so I read it as no. That said, IANAL and this is not legal advice.

 

Someone mentioned an array of services, which app stores provide for the 30% cut. Fact is, when this whole thing started it was in the dawn of Apple app store so they just slapped the 30% revenue. Play store followed. Times were simpler, people were making few apps, no subscription models, little money, little business. At some point dev realised that their work had more value and long term support of a product cannot be easily accounted for by sales of said product. That's how the subscription model emerged. This was perfect for app stores. Also from financial stand point it is better because it offers clear perception of revenue over a longer period of time. This offers a lot of flexibility when growing a business - it's one thing to sell $2mln in annual subs around Christmas/New Year and be stable for the rest of the year vs hoping to have stable sales throughout the year and stress about churn rates. We are at a stage where most apps, even basic ones like calculators and calendars, thousands of to-do apps, etc ask for a monthly subscription. I personally support the model because it provides a steady income for developers. It, also, encourages updates and perpetual support with fresh content. On the other hand a lot of apps, which followed the traditional models, either became stale, were abandoned, or went broke over the long run. At the end of the day no one forces people to subscribe for anything. Tools to make such apps are readily available and there are plenty of tutorials that one can use to build whatever they want if they are fighting the big guy. Be realistic about the scale tho - some people here were going for a weekend hackathon to build a game engine. It's unrealistic.

I see many people in the gaming industry as more traditional and idealistic in that they want to make a product, sell it and maintain a sense of pride that they do not have micro transactions, ads, all sorts of modern monetisation mechanisms, etc. Many of these developers shun the ones who are on the opposite spectrum and aim for profits through modern monetisation mechanisms. I truly respect the old school crowd (sans the hate and the requests that everyone should follow their traditional way of making/selling games). However, business is business and many people believe that what they create should survive for many years of improvements (think - DLCs, hiring/firing people, the whole jazz)... Every company is different.

What I find worrying is that many companies are trying to take a revenue cut - from the 30% to the 2.5% to the 0.3%... These % add up quickly and eventually leave little for the creators. Remember, this is before gov. tax, salaries, etc... I believe that there should be some ceilings to what one pays to all these companies - probably the inverse model - 15% up to 1mln, and then gradually less % depending on volume. Usually businesses offer discounts for volume. With app stores it's the other way around - free to start but the more you make, the more they take. In that regard Unity seem to be doing a fair pricing which takes down the % with higher volume with their latest plan... I can hardly understand how these corporations fail to see that by limiting opportunities for their potential success stories (all of us) they are limiting potential revenue on their end. This is why we have CEOs complaining that there is lack of unique content (games, movies, etc.) and how most of the big hits are repackaged old franchises. The risk is too high for something new.

We'll see how things roll out. Fact is that corporations want a piece of the pie and the whole "indie" term turned out to be not so indie after all. We all work in one way or another for Apple, Google, Unity and whoever... As someone mentioned in the previous posts - the only true alternative is to build in Godot, publish on your own website, and let people buy from you directly, etc. This is not sustainable for many. Based on this new reality I perceive the 2.5% Unity plan as acceptable for my venture. The reality is that a $2000 Pro plan over 12 months comes down to 5$/day. I see this as a reasonable target.

Also, someone was trashing big corporations, and how they are evil and ripping small folks, etc. The reality is that these same corporations are the reason why we are in their forum, why we spend so much time learning their technology, building forward thinking experiences for people and in the process making a living for ourselves. The modern software landscape is way more complex, due to the big investments that were made to make all these projects a reality.

Recently I saw "Tetris" - Apple's movie about the classic game. I think it was well made. I was surprised to learn that they were bargaining for 1$ per install back in those days. Business is business. Creative is creative. There will always be the battle between the two so learn to navigate, be flexible and adapt to the changes. Bitterness and stress kills creativity.

Someone was wondering about my background - last job was in big tech. Feel free to hate me even more

 

A wild wall of text has appeared. You roll a 1 and only manage to interpret the silly statement at the bottom.

 

While I'm no fan of Epic (not by any stretch), I think there's a bit of difference between laying off staff and trying to change your pricing such that some customers would be changed in excess of 100% of their gross. I mean, just a little bit.

 

I wasn't but I could guess. I am standing in awe in front of the mountain of sycophancy you're displaying towards multibillion dollar corporations.

 

I'm sorry for misinterpreting your intentions, but I'm working with whatever little information you explicitly state and I have to interpolate and extrapolate the rest. I get that you're upset and that having to pedantically explain yourself to individuals like myself is even further upsetting but I'm not doing this on purpose.

The problem with things that should or shouldn't be is that they are wishes.
As the adage goes: "wish in one hand, crap in the other. see which one fills up faster.
Unity is full of things that I wish they would fix but I have a game to finish so whenever possible I'll dig into the source and do what I have to do to make it work. It's a pain, it's a burden, I hate it, but at least I get somewhere. If I can't fix it, then I learn to accept it or at least shelve it while I work on any of the other zillion things that require my attention. I realize that this may sound cold and unfeeling towards your troubles but it's the only actionable advice I can give.

Yes, the forums are absolutely full of people with clashing opinions and there are always furious arguments going on, some of which are unhinged, some of which are valid. The thing is, I always make a value judgement as to whether or not it's worth my time and effort to bring someone around to see things my way or even to engage with them. A lot of forums are completely neglected by devs and that's fine too. I don't think that Steam will come after you if you leave them unmoderated. If there's an actual problem that requires a moderator's attention, such as a violation of TOS, Steam's very own moderators will put that person in their place for no additional cost (it's probably covered by that 30% they take)

 

Did you miss Unity laying off massive amounts of their workforce in the past year? Also, business models and layoffs have a direct relation.

 

Hey if they laid off a whole bunch of IronSource staff...

Let's hope JR can do for IronSource what he did for Bullfrog and Westwood

 

No, I missed the part where Epic attempted to make a retroactive change in Unreal Engine licensing. It won't shock me if they do, but I haven't seen it yet.

 

They didn't. They did laid off a lot of game devs. Like people who were there for years. Like Gigaya team.
Just like Epic did today, they didn't just "trim the fat" as many of a-holes put it. I saw a couple of people on twitter, lead tech writer from the learning team, UX/UI for Fortnite, a big chunk of Mediatonic on various positions... this is not fat.

 

Hardly; online app stores existed years before that. Apple didn't invent them; they did however cut the fee way down to 30% to attract developers. It was a considered move (initially it lost money and was essentially a way to push iPhones) and there was no "slapping" involved.

Haha, no. Some devs were earning millions by charging $1 or $2 for apps. Most earned little or nothing, which is still the case today, subscriptions or no.

This is the real answer: it's better for the bean counters in companies. You "support" that model but do you personally actually subscribe to those calculator apps etc.? Be honest.

Haha, no. We were here long before Unity became a big evil corporation, and in fact we used to spend a lot more time on the forums then.

Yeah, it was clear you have no clue about game dev, so maybe not a good idea to pretend that you do.

Problem is that Unity == IronSource. They merged; it's not a subsidiary that they can kill or sell off.

--Eric

 

Just wait for Fortnite money to run out. It's already rapidly shrinking, hence the layoffs. They won't repeat Unity's mistakes with the announcement, but business model change or revshare increase is not unlikely.

 

Indeed, and now the population of the forums has shrunk tremendously to the point that you're unlikely to actually receive help now. Scripting appears to have recovered slightly but at one point it was full of threads with no replies (not counting any of the copy/paste responses by a certain individual). General Discussion is now dead.

 

ye and he knows 2 people .so if 1 left he think that half of unity users moved.
people jumped and feel lonely in their garbage engines and try to get more podavans.so their move dont look that stupid.

 

Like I said, I'd be about as shocked as Captain Renault... but I can't really compare the two until it happens. Epic's willingness to toss users of UE under the bus should have been clear from "Project Liberty" (aka "Project We Want A Bigger Slice of the Pie"). If you want guaranteed licensing, you suck it up and either go open source (and fix the problems yourself), or completely write your own tools.

 

Tell me more about these steam games without forums.

 

I hope Epic wins they already have a partial win. Apple is absolutely predatory with its rules, and they apply them very arbitrarily. I had an FPS game rejected from the Mac store 9 or 10 years ago because the day before a mass shooting had occurred and they were rejecting all “violent games because of the current political situation.” I ended up releasing on Steam. I hate Apple with passion.

 

I'm not a particular fan of Apple, but Epic clearly and knowingly violated their contract. For all the reasons Unity was wrong here, Epic is wrong there. Even if you agree with what Epic wanted to accomplish, entering into a contract in bad faith is not the way to do it.

 

Let’s see what the Supreme Court says. Monopolistic behavior is illegal. You do not have standing unless you have damages. Apple cannot just make up illegal contracts.

 

Apple does not allow third-party stores, but Android does.
Although there are more pirated games on Android and fewer pirated games on Apple, they still exist.
Apple requires the use of a metal graphics interface for game writing, and Opengl will not receive hardware acceleration in the future. They have angered authors who use Opengl to create games.

 

Frankly I'll be shocked if SCotUS grants cert. I watched the case and, based on what was there, the ruling appears to be sound.

(Writs of Certiorari where only granted to 2-5% of cases)

 

It's kind of sad in a way. Their love of steam is largely nostalgia based. They think of Gabe as they do Santa Clause. For years they have associated something they cherish with valve: Gaming that really gets stuck in your head. Valve had a brilliant ad campaign fostering this image, say what you want about them, they are very good at what they do in many areas. They are a quality company, but they deal in monopoly, not really their fault, that's just how this late stage capital system works.

And lets not gloss over the absurd value that Steam represented when they first came out, they were the only dog in the fight for digital publishing, they didn't have to staff people in stores, they didn't have to manufacture instruction manuals, boxes, physical media. It was pure profit, and because of the sheer convenience and low price point they could sell far more product, could have INSANE deals to get people hooked while taking 0 financial risk. It was the ultimate being at the right place at the right time moment, and Valve executed brilliantly creating the ultimate service. (Take note Unity, they built TRUST)

This is all interesting because Unity is in a very similar position in our eyes, to us game devs Unity was the Santa Clause of game engines. The difference here is in the consumer of the product and how discerning they are, and how much they have invested. A game developer can't afford to look on the past with rose colored glasses and is far more intimate with the product which is why we saw the recent backlash (as well as the decline of company competency).

I have mixed feelings about Valve, their store is pretty great, they're the best at what they do, in many ways they earned that success, but at the end of the day, they are an economic behemoth because of the monopoly they enjoy. It's another instance of a massive company sucking up all the profits and not really executing on those profits. It all translates into big yachts and huge mansions, their money doesn't really feed back into the gamedev ecosystem.

BUT! They did try, they invested hugely into VR, into new systems, into many new ventures. They at least continue to push the medium and invest here and there. In this respect they are doing better than Unity.

Could you imagine if valve announced they were taking all their money generated from gaming, and invested massive amounts of it into a huge work force that was tasked with opening casino's? Like if they were showing themselves to not be interested in gaming any more? How long would their customers stick around? How long would they give Valve money to fund them pivoting away from producing the thing that they see value in?

It's almost as if the world has found itself in this global funk. Our markets are so advanced at this state that monopoly and word of mouth trounces interesting new startups. New markets aren't able to snowball any longer because investors and algorithms know the value in things staying the same. No one wants to take the years and years investment to start something new, and if they do it's almost impossible to get the right sort of user feedback to grow into the best version of your product because the markets are so astroturfed that you will never slowly grow market share and become an emerging product.

For a multitude of reasons: greed, laziness, tribalism. CEO, employee and consumer alike, we share in this decline. We are like a collective of grown children using the mechanisms of yesteryear, refusing to grow up, suck it up and push forward with our own visions, our own plans, because the bar is now very high and that requires hard work. The gaming industry has become the Lord of the Flies in recent years.

The good news is that this is becoming very obvious. Hopefully before everything collapses we do something about it.

 

This is something worth watching. Both inside and outside of Unity.

 

Sure but this is Apple so they have a much better change with such a large corporation.

 

I'm not sure that is correct.

"IronSource, valued at about $4.4 billion, will merge into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Unity via an all-stock deal. Each ordinary share of IronSource will be exchanged for 0.1089 shares of Unity common stock, the companies said.

After the deal completes, Unity stockholders will own roughly 73.5% of the combined company and current IronSource shareholders will keep about 26.5%. An up to $2.5 billion share buyback program will be effective when the transaction is closed, Unity said."

I'm guessing ironSource wanted it portrayed as a merger as well as those 3 board seats.