Unity start to make more revenue!

Unity got a big option to increase their revenue as a company.
But the company hardly sleeps on it so far.


Idea:

Unity payment system/ provider:

Instead of giving a cut of 15-30% of each in-app purchase to a google play store, offer an official unity payment system. (example)


As for the google play example they accept third party payment providers such as stripe or xsolla.
One unity has its own payment system it should be across platforms.(unity)
With a fairer price cut.

Note. Some stores don't accept that (like apple) but there is also use cases specially in VR/AR where we are not using stores. (specially in the health sector)


And we currently have to deal with manual payments or third party.
We rather would give that cut to unity.


A quick solution would be to acquire someone and integrate / change it to the unity solution.

Would still be a way more useful acquisition than buying overpriced weta.
But I speculate there where some other interest ongoing than the best for the company.
Where are the practical result of acquiring weta? ( almost 2 year later)


Unity software store (Secondary idea):

A place to distribute unity apps to any platform. A price cut of premium titles goes to unity.
More complicated and time extensive. Not entirely sure about it but should be considered.

 

Idea. Instead of proposing this on the forums, join unity technologies, reach high position, and propose those ideas there.

 

Other than a stock value pump up and claiming Unity had a hand in making Avatar 2 (somehow); it remains to be seen where the tool distribution is currently at. Unity said they want to do it and id be curious to try them out; but I don't think anyone should hold their breath.

Its taken Epic atleast 5 years to build their own store/distribution platform and get it to a place where it can compete with other stores. If Unity is struggling to make revenue, I don't think they would invest in something that long-term and likely a massive money sink before income. Plus in 5 years time they would already be 5 years behind EGS. I think it would be smarter to collaborate more with Steam, EGS, Itch, Google Play, etc and integrate better APIs & tooling for the platforms and create smoother workflows for publishing.

 

Yeah was not sure about the secondary idea.

But dont make the first idea fall under the table for that one.

It is a major stream of revenue.

 

Is a payment provider on desktops really necessary? People just stick to Steam...
On Android and IOs there's almost no chance of pushing this trough. Epic had their main cashcow, Fortnite banned from iOS when they added a payment option circumventing the 30% cut Apple gets! Now they are suing through multiple courts to achieve that OS providers are not allowed to monopolize on their stores to this extent.
Unfortunately so far they do hardly have success since the courts do not see a monopol as long as android is an alternative albeit they have similar rules...

So there's no point in Unity trying this because the games that use that service would not be allowed in the iOS store and possibly not the playstore either.
What remains are dekstops (since console manufacturers would not allow this either) but there is already competition.

 

We are creating VR health sector software for the use in private clinics.
Our customers dont have steam.

And more and more none gaming use cases emerge in AR / VR

And not all of them want to go through the pico / meta store

 

Weta certainly had its own paragraph in the credits!
Whether the engine itself was involved has not been completely clear to me either from that blog entry recently.

@DavidZobrist
That sounds a lot like BtoB products though. Doesn't that usually work with direct transactions, dedicated contracts and so on?

 

Some part of Weta is heavily involved in The Last of Us.

 

@DragonCoder

yep we do the direct contract thing.
But we also think about making that process more scalable. (withouth hiring so many people for sales)
Having the software free to download but requiring a subscription / iap. And the option for them to pay directly online.
Right now we consider to use Xsolla / stripe, giving them the cut.

 

Interesting idea, but didn't Epic Games get in some hot water with Apple for trying to make their own payment system?

 

Google prohibits this outside of special circumstances. See Section 2.

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9858738

 

There are no prohibitions if you dont use their stores.

 

Side-loading an app to circumvent their stores also violates the TOS of both Apple and Google.

Read up on the whole kerfuffle with Epic trying to do this.

 

Huh? Since when is that the case for Android? Entire alternative stores exist there since forever and some are even okayish popular. If you activate it in the settings, you can also install APKs directly.
Apple's golden cage is as usual another story.

Of course alt stores are not an option for games where you have to maximize the userbase to have a chance for profit. The popularity of the playstore is way more than 30% higher than all other stores, so it is worth it (even if you are between a rock and a hard place).

 

And yet Google still took Fornite off the play store when they implemented a method to circumvent the Play Store's purchasing system.

 

Ah of course.
I interpreted DavidZobrist's suggestion as to not use the main store at all but provide your game in an alternative or as an apk directly. That's exactly what Epic did for android:
https://www.fortnite.com/mobile/android

You cannot get the comfortable distribution service and visibility of the main store and not pay. Only courts will be able to change that. The fact that Apple doesn't even allow alt stores is Epic's main point however.

 

No, but that opens up another set of problems: attracting people to your store. Epic only has a store now thanks to Fortnite. Nintendo releases Mario and Zelda games because that's what makes people buy the first few waves of devices. Unity needs a killer app that no one else has and that's very expensive to do. Likely moreso than that 30%.

 

As @DragonCoder mentioned correctly there is no legal issue by NOT using any android store to distribute your app.
You can just do this via your own URL / Hosting.

Regarding payment providers like:

Xsolla -> 5 % fee
Strip -> fees

Their fees are siginificantly lower than fore example the 15-30% from a google play store.

But for us it is not the main reason.
The main reason is that we are distributing to clicnics.

We have to handle the whole account / billing / distribution in a totaly different way. Not focused at the big world wide market.

 

That just causes cost :/
While the 30% in stores may be rather unfair/critical, 5% is barely covering the cost. No way Unity could offer it cheaper I fear...
And doing it at a loss to push the rest of the product does not really work for BtoB stuff. It's something for manipulateable end customers (See Sony who sold consoles at a loss to cash in with games)

 

Sure, but that's not why they want it.

I researched something very similar for a client a long time ago. Because of how the health sector works they wanted billing to work a certain way, and it couldn't be done with then-current Apple or Google Play mechanisms. It wasn't about charging more or less or making savings with the royalty cut.