Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

In the end logic has prevailed. John Riccitiello had to leave, and I hope sense will go back to Unity. I'm the first understanding that a company needs funds, but this was just crazy. I hope I can keep my Unity Plus subscription or at least something similar. Anyway this is good news.

 

Yup. Clearly this was all down to him personally, and everything will now be rolled back to the former U(nity)topia now that he's gone, never to be repeated. Dismantle the barricades folks, its all over.

 

John Riccitiello has gone, but unfortnately, the trust has already gone at a time...

 

always-on requirement :

Can someone TGC official or anyone tell me why anyone should be expected to use Unity to develop a game with if somewhere along the line of perhaps a long dev process they are locked out and cant complete their game dev?

There are endless legitimate and reasonable reasons why a dev may not need or want to boot up Unity for an unspecified length of time. That is something personal and has nothing to do with anyone else as far as I consider it.

e.g. I have a game being prepared for release on Steam. The Steam page is up. That's it. The game is still stuck on my Computer hard disk. I have not booted Unity since before all this business started. I am not ready to release my game yet. That could be some time away. I have a lot of other related work to do, Research, marketing and so on and many other real life things as well as following this thread so I don't have time or need at this moment to boot up Unity and don't want to in any case until the trauma and stress of the 6 year dev fighting with Unity has settled down a bit. and my brain is back to some kind of stable normality. Whatever that is - cant remember!

Point being I will need to update my game again, fix any errors and so on perhaps found later. But I am in no hurry here as the game itself is complete to all intense and purpose.

I have two other Unity projects too that I may want to continue developing but that could be 1 year hence. Who Knows - when I feel like picking up the development again or not as the case may be. If I get locked out I will have to stop development and perhaps release any game anyway as is or not as the case may be...unless I am prevented in doing so by the TOS if I can understand it that is.

I don't see any of that is anyone elses business but mine alone so I don't want anyone telling me I have to boot up Unity by a certain date at all....

Next thing is I will be told that I will have to watch a few "Ads" before Unity will load and then have to have my game making dev interrupted every 15 minutes to suffer more "Ads" because it will make Unity a fortune.

Now don't give them Ideas Peter

Best Regards

 

Obviously not. However, they have responded after their share price got hammered. Assuming they want their shareprice to go up, they'll find a way to make that happen which presumably they'll try something different to the recent years.

You don't have to trust the shareholders to be Nice People to expect a better outcome now. It's entirely driven by self interest, sure, but they know the limits they can push and they have to turn Unity around if they want their shares to go from $360 million to $1080 million, and given they'll be hard pushed to scrape by on $360 million, they'll be struggling like the rest of us to earn that little bit more cash.

There's really only two options for Unity now : Turn around and refocus on what they do well, or go bust.

 

no, different. no guarantee of 'better' and you yourself basically go on to make the argument as to why that is...
it would be nice if it were true, but right now its just wilful thinking that they will do 'the right thing' for their end-users (rather than themselves) just because they they've been caught out a couple of times.

right now, i reckon the proof has to be that they manage to go more than four years without trying to move the goalposts again.

 

Nope, it does not mean that.

P.S. Feels like no real point in checking this thread again.

 

What's the logical argument that they will try to screw their users over again when the outcome is collapse of the company?

 

Why? They want our money and they are botching it, not the other way around.

Because I have contract to finish up some projects in Unity and wrapping up projects aren't two days. Besides, seeing that how many people are complete sycophants I think I will have more contracts to do in the future at least on the short term for sure. This doesn't mean I'm not investigating, using other engines, especially for my own project(s). Also catastrophe-tourism.

Why? Epic did it.

Because half is investment firm who doesn't give a F*** about the product, only the return on investment, the other half are vultures from the whale-hunter mobile advertisement field, where their day-to-day operation IS to extort and screw over as many of their users as they physically can.

 

A publicly traded company should be concentrating it's efforts into serving the best interest of the stakeholders. That's the corpo playbook and they actually have to to it. Obviously what just happened was not in the best interest of the stakeholders. It's amazing how out of touch their leadership was that they did not see this coming.

 

They don’t really have to do it, as evidenced by them not actually doing it, but also https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2311&context=facpub

 

The fact that they have tried to screw their users already, and yet were somehow expecting a different outcome.

Bad and greedy management dont generally change their spots, they jump ship, find somewhere to do it all over again.

We literally just watched Ricitello do this, again.

 

It might be a myth, but somehow it still ends up working that way, anyway. Perhaps because C-suite are heavily compensated with shares, so they are inherently motivated to pursue anything that boost that share value. Especially when the board consists of non-technical VC investors who don't have a clue about what their core product is about and how not to piss off the majority of its users.

 

I have already calculated the possibility of JR leaving, but he is an insignificant figure because he is not the founder, and the founder no longer exists. He cannot be compared to Tim from EPIC. Just the tail of a lizard.
We refer to this behavior as tail cutting survival.

 

Now without Riccitiello nothing stops Unity to remove for ever the cause of this crisis, the absurd and abusive Runtime Fee (now called initial engagement).

 

Wouldn't it be great if the community finds a new CEO?

You know, why stop at "democratizing game development" when you can democratize business management?

 

That's not logical reason to think things won't be different. You haven't presented a reason why they should be expected to repeat the mistake other than 'they've done it before'. Lots of people do dumb things and then don't repeat those dumb things because they learnt.

So, again, what is your logical reasoning to think that, after trying to pull this and seeing that it would mean the total collapse of Unity if they went ahead with it, the execs would choose to do just that instead of keeping their developers onboard? Or do you think that they're going to crash their share-price again and lose themselves hundreds of millions+ dollars with another asinine strategy that they now know won't work?

 

that's exactly the reason why they can't do stupid S***, because doing so loses them billions. They don't give a S*** about the product but they do want their money to go up. Trying it the way they just tried failed catastrophically. How dumb would they have to be to try the same S*** again knowing from experience that it will crash their share price? Would destroying Unity and selling it cheap really be a plus for them over growing it to a strong company? If so, why are they back-pedalling on the damage caused instead of pushing forwards for a $5 share sellout to someone?? If they want to go the 'destroy Unity' route, they should be ploughing ahead.

 

Other important step for Unity is stop of buy other companies like Ironsource or Weta Digital that few contribute to the company, in few words they need stop burn money.

 

Yes it is. Repeated behaviour is known to repeat. Refusing to accept that as a possibility is not logical reasoning.

I dont need to provide an additional reason when that is the reason. By the way its you attaching expectation to my argument, not me. Im talking about possibility, dont try and pretend I made a prediction.

Believe it or not Im aware of that. Im also aware that lots of people do dumb things and then do repeat those dumb things because they didnt learn.

You can deny the latter if you want, but its not logical reasoning.

So, again, exactly as I already answered. Reread.

Going to? No predictions here mate, try again.

But I do think that there's a possibility that they could potentially crash their share-price again and lose themselves hundreds of millions+ dollars with another asinine strategy that they didnt realise wouldnt work.
Because that's how you look at possibilities, logically.

 

I think the reddit post he talks about is key to the whole Unity future (or lack there of).

We are the news.

 

Except they didn't, they split it between two documents, one of them actually gave them permission to change and add fees. That's why I keep bringing that clause. They need make the ToS be one document to make it simpler to understand, and that document needs to remove the clause that allows them to change the terms. They got tricky, don't accept tricky.

 

Not holding my breath. JR leaving will not necessarily change the fact that whatever Unity is, it is no longer a game engine company, and their acquisitions are 'something something platform something' within their business aspirations.

 

Because this is the second time they've tried applying retroactive changes. Once is a mistake, twice is policy.

 

I'm not going to use Unity until there is further clarification on the T.O.S and wether they will still pursue the current half assed system of generating money.

I don't know about you guys but there is too much bullshit going on still that makes unity an unstable choice for the future.

 

Option C please

 

I agree. The drama is over for me. After all, I got what I wanted, which was something like a flat rate fee or anything dependable instead of that install fee.

And now, after this leadership transition, I really don't think anyone will ever dare to come up with such ideas.

 

I wouldn't place my bets on that. Same clueless people are still leading the ship, and now with JR gone there's practically 0 gamedev experience on the board of directors. JR was just the front facing man of this S*** tier leadership.

 

waiting to see how many millions the "unity developers are stupid" CEO will get.

I say maybe, $39millions?

 

In my country, it is still once every 3 days.

 

Slay the Spire devs are switching to Godot:
https://twitter.com/MegaCrit/status/1711510914124726675

 

Me too.

 

If you happened to be worried that either of the CEOs will or would starve or something, no fear!

https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1711737246754501027


The link in the tweet: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001810806/d53de2ae-5397-4ea9-a23d-41ea824f52c6.pdf

Now, compare this to the "severance packages" Unity workers got when they got booted.

 

Do you honestly think any publisher would willingly relinquish a percentage of their share? I highly doubt such a scenario would ever occur!

If they were required to give up 5% to Unity, that 5% would be in addition to the original 30%. In such case, they would ask for 35% instead of 30%.

 

According to this document, the new CEO will have a starting base salary of USD $93,333.34 per month. I'm certain that should be enough to grab a few hot dogs on the way to the office.

 

Nah, people don't get to be CEOs for nothing, those are the kind of people who ask their assistants to pick up a couple on the way to work (but don't be late) and "let them" (the assistants) pay for it.

 

With this waste of money Unity have not salvation.

 

Riccitiello leaving means literally nothing so long as the company remains public. The incentive structure remains, and John will be replaced with someone who will do the same things but with more sleight of hand.

 

I don't see any reason for me to go back to Unity no matter what they do.

Unreal Engine 5 is doing quite well for me and it seems easier to develop with.

My only regret at this point is I didn't take the plunge earlier.

 

One has to wonder WTH is going on within the walls of Unity after all these years of malfunction. Is it a madhouse of people screaming I told you so at one another? Or is it just dead and solemn as everyone knows that plane has crashed into the mountain. You have to figure animosity is high as the majority of the company sits on their arses and collects a nice paycheck, while the grunts are either burned out or just have their work squandered on ill formed pipe dreams.

The real question is who's in control? What's their ultimate ambition? Why? Who do they convene with to plan the future?

It's so weird, we live in this world where we have absolutely no representation, no communication, no trust. Just a bunch of very sheltered morally righteous people who think they're better than everyone is total and utter control of everything.

Do they think everything that's going on in the world is ok? Do they have any sense of obligation to stop ruining everything? Or is everything just going to continue to decline in this twilight zone episode that's been going on too long?

 

Yes.

 

Just a symptom of late stage capitalism. The leaders of these companies are so far removed from the products and their users that they can't make the right decisions by design. Their only concern is how to increasingly extract more wealth for themselves and if their poor attempts fail, they always fail upwards. Riccitiello did the same exact thing at Unity he pulled off at EA, like beat for beat.

So the only way forward is outside the system. FOSS is the only future there can be.

 

At least the memes are great:

 

FOSS isn't outside of the system. It's a free meal to corporations. Capitalism's sad state is that no matter, if it's free, those same companies and corporations will take your free tool and choke you with your own creation, as long as money to be maid, they will step on your head to grab it.

 

It's outside the system in the sense that core engine tech is not for profit driven. It's a different culture. The core engine people who are FOSS absolutists and the community built around it won't ever support hostile corporate takeovers. So corpos can only work in the periphery on things like services and products i.e. The Red Hat model or at least how it used to be pre-current leadership.

 

Why would Steam even consider B? They have no contact with Unity. They have contacts with developers.

They are FAR more likely to sue the pants off unity for the actual harm of making developers take their games down.

 

No, David Helgason is still there.

You don't understand how business bros think. "OK, so screwing over the users didn't work, but that's because we didn't screw them over hard enough!"

You cannot have any hostile corporate takeovers in that situation. There is no company to take over, and no shareholders. Even if it was possible, others can just take the code and continue development as usual.

--Eric

 

I don't understand this policy.
Installations don't always make money to an indie developer why his fee should be based on that?
If Unity would take 5 or even 10% of revenue that would be at least clear and fair to the users. But taking money for something that not makes money to a developer is not fair at all IMO.
So i will not use it anymore. I wasted 3 years..
Good luck to all!

 

You can just ignore the installation nonsense and they will only take 2.5%. For now.

 

It's really fascinating to watch people get stressed out over an overly complicated formula that they don't see all the options or how to interpret every key element.

If the ensuing ambiguity drives people away, you gotta wonder why they chose to word it and structure it the way they did?