I think it might be too little too late. I do wonder if this was always the plan with classic door-in-the-face technique, but I can't imagine they would have anticipated the absolute magnitude of backlash. Their product certainly isn't as special as they clearly think it is, and the fact that they attempted to unilaterally change the contract in as egregious as way as they did is unacceptable and not behaviour I would want from a vendor I'm reliant on. Anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot of game devs being surprised at relative ease of migration in some instances, though I imagine there are megaprojects which will have a much worse time.
Crow had to be eaten but it looks like they're only tasting the feathers.
This is it, in a nutshell. People don't want the apology. They want to know that a decision like this doesn't have a chance of happening because the people in charge know it's a bad idea before it leaves the door. No one wants to be stuck in a cycle of getting fucked and then boycotting to get what they want, especially for something that their livelihood depends on. They want a product made by people they trust who are making decisions in the best interest of the users/creators and not only decisions that are in the best interest of the company.
Unity lost a lot of goodwill among developers, and it took over a week for them to admit fault. I seriously doubt they planned all along to present a temporary horrible plan, to make their “real” plan easier to swallow.
If this were a 48- or 72-hour turnaround, maybe. But Unity lost a lot of goodwill amongst developers and there are some they may never get back as a result.
I simply don't trust publicly traded companies these days. I genuinely can't think of an example where a private company in the tech space has become better since going public. I don't like to MBA bash, but it large tech companies genuinely seem filled with people who don't even like tech (let alone love it) and are just happy to squeeze everything and everyone at any opportunity. I'm genuinely concerned and waiting for the enshittification of the next round of companies - people like cloudflare - then I guess I'll just give up on anything mainstream and remain an indy Dev doing indy things for fun
Cat’s out of the bag. I gave godot a try and it’s absolutely amazing! It felt great working with open source tools - i could finally read the source when i needed to understand something. Indeed it lacks some features but it is an amazing engine. Unity and their ceo has proven to be untrustworthy. I am getting the sense that open source engines will eat their market share.
I think the bottom line damage is that no one is going to develop new games on Unity if they have any other choice. Even if Unity walks this back 100%, why would a dev trust them not to pull this again in the future? Maybe some large projects will stop looking at migration in the short-term, but any new work is going to start happening elsewhere for sure.
You don't build buildings on sinking sand regardless of whether for now it appears not to be sinking. Once the footing has proved unstable its best to build elsewhere.
My anecdoate is that many people in this industry don't even know the existance of Godot. Yeah, I mean Godot, not Love2D or LibGDX. People can work in video games but are completly unaware of Godot.
I think their product is technically special -- as with all of the commercial game engines -- but they were not in the market position they thought they were, which is what led to them to thinking this was a good idea.
"When you make a game with Unity, you own the content and you should have the right to put it wherever you want. Our TOS didn't reflect this principle - something that is not in line with who we are.
We charge a flat fee per-seat -- not a royalty on all of your revenue. Building Unity takes a lot of resources, and we believe that partnerships make better services for developers and augment our business model -- as opposed to charging developers to pay for Unity’s development through revenue share.
When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS."
Well, that all sounds pretty good to me! Perhaps its time for Joe to pull a Steve Jobs style comeback.
This is basically everything policy wise they needed to do to quell the storm. This is honestly what should have just been announced originally. So much reputational damage just to arrive at a reasonable model weeks later.
I'm happy for all the Unity developers out there that are breathing a sigh of relief. Hopefully they can ship their ongoing projects but I'd be hesitant about a continued long term relationship with Unity after this.
This isn't the first Unity backlash and I'd be surprised if it's the last.
How does this help anything when they have already demonstrated their willingness to alter terms and retrospectively add fees or alter licensing conditions. They already walked back changes once before saying “Okay you can keep the terms you agreed on your version” and went back on that promise for this clusterfuck.
They burned the trust bridge and nothing they _ever_ do or can say will bring that trust back.
Ever since the mobile ad-first approach that's been a result of their buyout/merger/whatever it was, I think most Unity developers are bouncing. No one in their right might would leave their potential income in the hands of these sycophants.
If they are willing to retroactively change the TOS once, why wouldn't they do it again once the smoke has settled?
I don't make games, I have nothing at stake in this fight, but this just feels like PR damage control and to be completely honest, I don't think most software engineers are so absolutely dependent on (proper noun) Unity to risk this company doing shady stuff again, and I suspect this entire ordeal will work as great marketing for engines like Unreal.
A part of me thinks that the CEO (and all the other executive morons who decided to make the installation fee) was sitting there thinking "what are they going to do? Move to Godot?", but if that was their line of thinking, and if they seriously did not think they were competing with Unreal, then I really do not see what business they have being multimillionaires in charge of any kind of decision-making process.
> A part of me thinks that the CEO (and all the other executive morons who decided to make the installation fee) was sitting there thinking "what are they going to do? Move to Godot?"
Their CEO gives me the impression of a rich but unsophisticated mba type who can only deliver revenue growth by raising prices. I doubt he even thought about captive customers and lack of what he might have thought alternative engines, let along open source and free.
He’s the type that thinks open source is maybe a toy.
I knew he was a stink when i read that he ordered unity employees back to offices. He thought he can order customers a new fee. He confirmed my suspicion. A shame that we as a society and industry allow these zeroes to end up leading tech companies.
> If they are willing to retroactively change the TOS once, why wouldn't they do it again once the smoke has settled?
I haven't seen any evidence they did that, it's mostly been FUD from Godot supporters. The initial communication was messy, but where are actual TOS changes that are being touted so loudly?
"We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine."
It is hard to think of a diplomatic response to this specific framing. Of course the first substantive paragraph was this. It's inevitable, and I'm convinced it's encoded into some fundamental physical constant.
If a company actually, once, for-real avoided this specific sort of mealy-mouthed, boilerplate-indirect-corporatese semi-apology, I would seriously consider using their product solely on that merit alone. I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one who feels that way, and it's sort of amazing that nobody appears to have figured that out.
Surely someone in some sort of corporate PR position at some company is reading this. Think about it. Seriously think about it.
---
Edit: this isn't a personal criticism of the author either, I'm pretty darn sure that this the post was vetted and revised by at least one layer of PR and legal. The issue is an intractably systemic one that is not rectifiable by any individual. Outside of maybe the C-suite, I'm skeptical the that it makes any sort of sense to attribute blame to any individual for this type of corporate apology.
A definite improvement but the CEO needs to go. It's the only way to begin restoring long term trust. Developers & publishers are extremely wary of unstable business partners.
Yeah. An apology isn't enough in this case-- words clearly mean nothing to them.
We were always told C-level compensation is as absurd as it is because they're expected to fall on their sword for fucking up. Keeping your position after defrauding customers is not a sign of good faith, it's just another [social] contract broken.
If you as a gamer or developer are unhappy with this outcome or are unhappy that this happened at all.
Have a reminder that Godot (an open source MIT License) game engine could use your support, Godot offers a way to address this long term instead of relying on a contract with an untrustworthy company:
Use:
Homepage with download links for Latest and LTS versions for Android, Linux, macOS, Windows, and Web (you can build for iOS but cannot write on it).
IMO there is nothing Unity can realistically do to regain trust, when a corporation shows you what their goals are and how they plan to reach them; believe it.
Unity is not trustworthy. This was not the first time they've changed terms unilaterally, and will not be the last.
This letter should be seen as a rickety runway extension: finalize any Unity projects you already have in development, but make sure you move to another engine in the immediate future.
well, this at least saves Silksong. That's all I can ask for at this point.
But if they are considering a 3rd Hollow Knight it'd be the biggest W if they chose an open-source engine (and hopefully not take 7 years, but TBH I'd take my time too if I made hollow knight money).
Also, there are still hints of them trying to play this off as a misunderstanding rather than what it really was: a predatory pricing scheme and an attempt to retroactively change ToS.
"When we first introduced the Runtime Fee policy, we used the term “installs” which the community found to be unclear so we’re using the term "initial engagement" as the unit of measure."
The community did not find this unclear. The original pricing scheme was very straightforward about developers being charged multiple times for a user that reinstalls a game, or install it across multiple devices.
This is Unity trying to rewrite history so they don't seem like the bad guys.
Oh, it’s community now, not “prospective bagholders” and “pigs for slaughter”.
Next they are gonna push a narrative of greedy mid level managers over hiring and building fiefdoms like everyone else. The Metagame for the C level is zero risk and zero accountability
They can fuck right off and fire the CEO
Management knew this was going to be controversial including internally so they hid it from employees who could have told them just how bad the idea was and how many edge cases they had to consider.
So, if this had been what they launched with out the window, I don't think they would have had the same uproar. I don't think this is a door-in-face technique planned retreat (compared to the "leaked" proposal earlier this week which basically just started the install count at 0 and increased a revenue threshold, but still maintained it applied to existing games developed under the current deal).
I don't think this is enough that I would consider Unity for a new project (compared to my niggling doubts on my projects using Godot and Bevy in the past that maybe I should just bite the bullet and learn the "grown up" engine, until this announcement). That would require something a bit more iron clad renouncing their claim to be able to change the deal like this.
I don't know if Unity considers it a success that they've moved from their customers being in a "port everything now" rush to "Well I wouldn't take that deal, and a lot of customers will now not be upgrading Unity or developing their next titles in Unity".
But I guess as a consumer this moves my position to "someone should sue them for a declaratory judgement that making this retroactive is not legal" to "Well, guess I'm not investing in learning Unity".
People are going to continue to complain, but I honestly think this is a pretty good walk back. It addresses all of the more legitimate things people were upset about:
- $1,000,000 income floor for a trailing 12 months
- Doesn't apply to old versions
- Billed a lesser amount of 2.5% revenue if available, so low-cost indie games don't get destroyed
Not to mention, removing the requirement to have "Made with Unity" on the free version? Surprised they would change this - it wasn't really a problem for most people, and afaik getting rid of the "Made with Unity" was one of the main reasons people would buy the non-free versions of Unity.
I think this is probably the best they could have done for indie devs. As it turns out, pushback works. They did destroy a lot of trust with developers with this move though. Going to be hard to get any of that back.
>People are going to continue to complain, but I honestly think this is a pretty good walk back.
If you come up to someone, point a gun at their head, and scream you're going to murder them it's very likely there is no walking back even if you put the gun away and then state more reasonable demands. Everyone knows you have a gun in your back pocket and you're insane enough to use it.
I'm in a lot of gamedev communities and I'm not seeing any complaints. Everyone agrees this is fine. I believe if they announced this initially people probably would have complained but nothing close to the backlash there was. Most people just don't trust Unity after this. This is after all the second time we're getting a promise not to change the terms on an existing engine version as a result of backlash. How long until the third?
A lot of the game developers I know are either dropping Unity projects right in the middle of development to switch engines, or they're working on their last Unity project and abandon the engine forever.
You're only going to see major(-ly incompetent) studios from now on using it (ie, big enough to pressure Unity into complying to their licensing requirements, ie, Microsoft or Nintnedo kind of big).
It may be reasonable and this is nothing but an attempt to stop the bleeding. There is no reason to trust them or their leadership again. The fact the CEO wasn't booted immediately shows they still want that style of leadership. The fact the CEO is not the one making this statement shows the fact Unity not interested to hold him accountable. They did this last year making dumb statements about monetization and then pulled this out this year. They deserve no trust and anyone that continues business with them gets what they deserve.
If they had opened with this it would have been amazing, but this being 3-4 revisions in with nothing locking them to this going forward, it's not that good a look.
I didn’t follow this very much but did they basically tried to enforce this on people out of the blue? If so, that must sting like crazy to have to walk it back with the addition of losing trust and goodwill of your users, not to mention those that went on to different engines.
How high up does this rank in “the dumbest decisions you can make” chart?
Their executives make millions. They make millions because they are supposed to have unique insights and skills that the rest of us don't have. These insights are supposed to exactly avoid this situation where they probably killed the company with an absolutely irresponsible plan (from a business perspective). I think this is a historical blunder in the the industry and will be studied in business schools in the future.
There is no amount of walkback that will work here. The only possible way out, if any is even possible, would be a summary dismissal of their entire leadership team due to gross incompetence. These people don't deserve even minimum wage, much less the millions they make. A junior business manager out of school wouldn't have made such irresponsible, company-killing move. These are some of the worst executives in gaming history, to be honest.
Trust is a fickle thing. Why would a new game creator use Unity with the fear of suddenly having the rug pulled from under your with another ToS change? Doesn't he realize this?
Some meta-commentary about executive leadership: the skills required to gain such a position are orthogonal to the skills required to exceed at such a position.
Clarifying Questions:
1) What type of person gets hired as CEO?
2) What type of person excels as CEO?
3) What type of person seems most suited to being a CEO while actually being least suited?
Possible Answers:
1) the salesmen, the connected, the take-crediting, the attractive, the eloquent, the politically savvy, the ambitious, the tactical
2) the decisive, the persevering, the give-crediting, the communicative, the empathetic, the trustworthy, the humble, the strategic
3) When confidence is unwarranted
Both types of people have high confidence, but only one type has a good reason to be confident. Both types are effective in making plans and executing upon them, but where the first type’s plan’s focus on personal success, the second type’s plans focus on mutual success.
Is there a good way to distinguish between the two? Yes, but subtly — have their former direct reports gone on to success outside of the candidate’s current sphere of influence? The first type will drag along the people they can trust to support their personal ambitions, elevating them in the process. The second type will elevate their direct reports without grasping on to them as life preservers in choppy political seas.
Being a good CEO is a very difficult job, and should be rewarded. It is the most important job anyone can have at a company. It is also the hardest to fill with the right person, given the hordes of ill-suited confidence men seeking their own stardom.
Too little too late, at least for me. I have been slowly working on some game ideas I want to make, in this process I have been checking out different game engines to see which one meets my needs best. With these changes I have removed Unity from my list of engines I am considering using. Granted I am just one dev and definitely don't represent the community as a whole so who knows maybe I am in the minority here.
It’s interesting how some complain companies don’t listen to them, and others say that it doesn’t matter if changes are made after (rightful) complaints.
I have absolutely no stake in this and I’m sure these aren’t the same people, but it is interesting.
From reading the original proposal and this new one, they should’ve gone first with this one. I’m sure unity developers will hesitatingly continue their work.
"Unity decides to change the deal in a way that costs us money for our already developed game" was not something on anyone's threat model. Until last year, Unity's TOS even included provisions that would have unambiguously prevented such a move. Maybe some considered "Unity changes the deal in the future and we need to learn a new engine for project n+1 and get stuck on an old version of Unity on our current project" as a threat. But now that Unity has put the first one in people's minds, Unity has to put people at ease about that to get to square one, not just cancel the current attempt.
> It’s interesting how some complain companies don’t listen to them, and others say that it doesn’t matter if changes are made after (rightful) complaints
In this case I think those can (rightfully and reasonably) be the same people. If a company rolls out a pricing/licensing change that is so detrimental to the developers that it seems like no reasonable developer would have thought it was a good idea, then it looks like the company rolled it out either without talking to their developers or without taking their feedback into account, both of which are equally bad.
In cases like this where the business acted so egregiously, the damage is done and trust might not be restorable long-term without C-level heads rolling.
If they had gone with this one to begin with they would have lost some customers but no where near as many. What they did makes them clearly an unstable business partner that is willing to break the law to rip you off. Walking it back changes the deal but it doesn't change the type of business they are.
> It’s interesting how some complain companies don’t listen to them, and others say that it doesn’t matter if changes are made after (rightful) complaints.
That's because many folks recognize that the fundamental problem is not the proposal, it is the mechanism by which that proposal was crafted, refined, and finally approved that is rotten.
Walking back the proposal is fine in the near term, but without drastic change to the fundamentals of the company and its leadership, you'll just end up in the same situation in the future, it is just a matter of when.
Just because they listened once when their profits were seriously on the line, doesn't mean they listen generally.
If you file for divorce, and in reaction they buy you flowers and other gifts, it doesn't mean they're suddenly fixed and have always been a good partner.
It's also very likely they got some legal letters from Pokémon Go or other similarly large Unity based games, and they still don't care about what the online community has to say.
But Unity is DOWNLOADABLE software, not a platform/app-store/SaaS. So, why revenue share? Surely most devs just make free-standing/downloadable games that don't tie into any platform-y features?
AFAIK, even Unity Enterprise [0] is just source code, support, 3-year LTS bug fixes, and the only real thing that's platform-y is the build server, which seems to cost extra anyway.
From a viewpoint of "will it be compatible with a DRM-free release that doesn't phone home" (i.e., playing by GOG rules), this doesn't seem to solve the problem at all. What is in it for them? Why per install and not per sale?
It says that they're trusting developer provided numbers, and they've basically moved from literal installs to basically a user count metric provided by the developer, so it seems there is no need for it to be DRMed or phone home.
I may be misremembering but this is what happened with recent the Open Gaming License fiasco.
As I recall, they inevitably changed the current one with a clause saying “we explicitly can’t pull the rug out from folks anymore with this license”. Simply ensuring that while they can create new licenses for new content, that can’t mess with creators who adopted the previous one.
I have linked to his interactive exploration of their fee calculator, which should set many "what if" scenarios to rest.
Nobody can really say anything educated about the long-term impact on trust, but I suspect that if they can Riccitello things will return to something of a baseline and nobody will be talking about it in a year.
I trully cannot fathom Riccitello's tenure remaining viable on the other side of this. He is a dead man walking, corporately speaking.
I'm reminded of a favorite allegory which seems perfect for today:
New CEO walks into her office just as the old CEO is leaving. Old CEO says congrats and good luck; I left you three sealed envelopes which you should open in times of crisis.
Things go well until they don't. First letter says "blame your predecessor".
This fixes things until the next crisis. Second letter says "blame the technology".
Nothing could go wrong, until it does. Third letter says "write three letters".
Does anyone have the text of this? For me the page appears momentarily, then is replaced with a blank white screen reading "An unexpected error has occurred." The archive.org copy is also broken. (Most likely some kind of analytics or ad erroring because of a browser privacy setting.)
I’m Marc Whitten, and I lead Unity Create which includes the Unity engine and editor teams.
I want to start with simply this: I am sorry.
We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine.
You are what makes Unity great, and we know we need to listen, and work hard to earn your trust. We have heard your concerns, and we are making changes in the policy we announced to address them.
Our Unity Personal plan will remain free and there will be no Runtime Fee for games built on Unity Personal. We will be increasing the cap from $100,000 to $200,000 and we will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.
No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee.
For those creators on Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise, we are also making changes based on your feedback.
The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity.
We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version.
For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month. Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.
We want to continue to build the best engine for creators. We truly love this industry and you are the reason why.
I’d like to invite you to join me for a live fireside chat hosted by Jason Weimann today at 4:00 pm ET/1:00 pm PT, where I will do my best to answer your questions. In the meantime, here are some more details.*
Thank you for caring as deeply as you do, and thank you for giving us hard feedback.
Heads has to roll in the c-level space for them to Ever get the trust back. This walk-back is reasonable but they will still lose a majority of their customers. I am glad that people late in their projects can still ship and see a profit and hopefully move on to another engine.
Dropping this on a Friday with a fireside chat happening in the afternoon on the same day leaves a bad impression. A blog post announcement is ok, but my reading of this is that there is no guarantee that they will not attempt a retroactive change again (ex: their TOS change and removal). This is a step in the right direction, but feels there’s still a long gap to bridge if they want to earn back trust.
Unity attempt at cash grab is nothing new but since it backfired they are using their sweetest words to walk it back. This is happening all the time in ecosystems where businesses are built completely relying on a single vendor or platform. The difference is hardly anybody hears or cares about it.
You are not doing good job if your company or business model can be killed by anyone else than you or your customers.
"I’d like to invite you to join me for a live fireside chat hosted by Jason Weimann today at 4:00 pm ET/1:00 pm PT, where I will do my best to answer your questions."
Awaiting countless variants of "who the hell thought this price change sounded like a good idea, and are they fired yet".
While a good portion of developers will still be switching engines and staying there, as an AR developer, there isn't really anywhere else for me to go aside from developing with WebXR. Because of this, I am glad to see these changes.
Trust is like a nice glass vase... It takes a long time to make one. It takes seconds to break one. And you can put it back together, but you'll always see the cracks from The Last Time This Happened.
The tone of this post is exactly the same as a company would use after a very public incident of harassment or discrimination. So, they probably realized it was not the smartest thing to do.
Why can't we just come out and say that the agent / capital model is consumer antagonistic and work on fixing it? This is just a symptom, the cause needs to be addressed by the legislature.
We can't say it not because it's not-quite taboo, but the agents that benefit from the model employ a psyops where everyone who points out the problem is a weakling loser and shouldn't be listened to. If you're losing at Capitalism it's clearly your fault, and not entrenched parties with millions of times the resources as you thwarting you however they can.
Why is this not being given by the dude that made the initial pronouncement? I'm not affected by unity, but if I was I'd think long and hard about being fooled twice.
Original pricing scheme was the brainchild of John R and Tomar B. As far as I am concerned, this announcement changes nothing with those two still present.
got to love the Meta-esque “I am sorry” opener. At least they made changes to the program though.
I feel Unity violated trust of community. No going back. Today it’s a claw back. Tomorrow (future) it’s back to f’ing over the community once the heat wears off. Or a new CEO is appointed.
I'm out of the loop but used to use Unity as a hobbyist. What's been going on? The letter and comments hint at an out-of-the-blue policy change? Who was affected?
Basically policy changes that were absolutely abysmal and pretty much killed the entire Unity engine for most people. Now walk-back but trust is broken forever.
cmcaleer|2 years ago
Crow had to be eaten but it looks like they're only tasting the feathers.
dpkonofa|2 years ago
cowsup|2 years ago
If this were a 48- or 72-hour turnaround, maybe. But Unity lost a lot of goodwill amongst developers and there are some they may never get back as a result.
morrbo|2 years ago
gumballindie|2 years ago
EA-3167|2 years ago
PaulKeeble|2 years ago
raincole|2 years ago
My anecdoate is that many people in this industry don't even know the existance of Godot. Yeah, I mean Godot, not Love2D or LibGDX. People can work in video games but are completly unaware of Godot.
Now they ALL know it.
vsareto|2 years ago
Very much an unforced error on their part.
octacat|2 years ago
HellDunkel|2 years ago
peteforde|2 years ago
Oh wait, apparently he is no longer CTO as of May 2023.
Well, what was his last official statement?
https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-an...
"When you make a game with Unity, you own the content and you should have the right to put it wherever you want. Our TOS didn't reflect this principle - something that is not in line with who we are.
We charge a flat fee per-seat -- not a royalty on all of your revenue. Building Unity takes a lot of resources, and we believe that partnerships make better services for developers and augment our business model -- as opposed to charging developers to pay for Unity’s development through revenue share.
When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS."
Well, that all sounds pretty good to me! Perhaps its time for Joe to pull a Steve Jobs style comeback.
AndrewKemendo|2 years ago
gmjosack|2 years ago
I'm happy for all the Unity developers out there that are breathing a sigh of relief. Hopefully they can ship their ongoing projects but I'd be hesitant about a continued long term relationship with Unity after this.
This isn't the first Unity backlash and I'd be surprised if it's the last.
misnome|2 years ago
They burned the trust bridge and nothing they _ever_ do or can say will bring that trust back.
dpkonofa|2 years ago
drpossum|2 years ago
_v7gu|2 years ago
hnarn|2 years ago
That’s not really how trust works. If I was a Unity developer, I’d still be migrating, just not in total panic mode.
tombert|2 years ago
I don't make games, I have nothing at stake in this fight, but this just feels like PR damage control and to be completely honest, I don't think most software engineers are so absolutely dependent on (proper noun) Unity to risk this company doing shady stuff again, and I suspect this entire ordeal will work as great marketing for engines like Unreal.
A part of me thinks that the CEO (and all the other executive morons who decided to make the installation fee) was sitting there thinking "what are they going to do? Move to Godot?", but if that was their line of thinking, and if they seriously did not think they were competing with Unreal, then I really do not see what business they have being multimillionaires in charge of any kind of decision-making process.
gumballindie|2 years ago
Their CEO gives me the impression of a rich but unsophisticated mba type who can only deliver revenue growth by raising prices. I doubt he even thought about captive customers and lack of what he might have thought alternative engines, let along open source and free.
He’s the type that thinks open source is maybe a toy.
I knew he was a stink when i read that he ordered unity employees back to offices. He thought he can order customers a new fee. He confirmed my suspicion. A shame that we as a society and industry allow these zeroes to end up leading tech companies.
jimbob45|2 years ago
I'm a casual observer in this space. Is Unreal not a viable alternative?
rhtgrg|2 years ago
I haven't seen any evidence they did that, it's mostly been FUD from Godot supporters. The initial communication was messy, but where are actual TOS changes that are being touted so loudly?
https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service
https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service-legacy
MikeBVaughn|2 years ago
It is hard to think of a diplomatic response to this specific framing. Of course the first substantive paragraph was this. It's inevitable, and I'm convinced it's encoded into some fundamental physical constant.
If a company actually, once, for-real avoided this specific sort of mealy-mouthed, boilerplate-indirect-corporatese semi-apology, I would seriously consider using their product solely on that merit alone. I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one who feels that way, and it's sort of amazing that nobody appears to have figured that out.
Surely someone in some sort of corporate PR position at some company is reading this. Think about it. Seriously think about it.
---
Edit: this isn't a personal criticism of the author either, I'm pretty darn sure that this the post was vetted and revised by at least one layer of PR and legal. The issue is an intractably systemic one that is not rectifiable by any individual. Outside of maybe the C-suite, I'm skeptical the that it makes any sort of sense to attribute blame to any individual for this type of corporate apology.
avalys|2 years ago
risingsubmarine|2 years ago
jstarfish|2 years ago
We were always told C-level compensation is as absurd as it is because they're expected to fall on their sword for fucking up. Keeping your position after defrauding customers is not a sign of good faith, it's just another [social] contract broken.
aeyes|2 years ago
peteforde|2 years ago
Scalene2|2 years ago
Have a reminder that Godot (an open source MIT License) game engine could use your support, Godot offers a way to address this long term instead of relying on a contract with an untrustworthy company:
Use:
Homepage with download links for Latest and LTS versions for Android, Linux, macOS, Windows, and Web (you can build for iOS but cannot write on it).
https://godotengine.org/
Code/document/contribute:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/contributing/ways_to_...
Donate/fund: https://fund.godotengine.org/
IMO there is nothing Unity can realistically do to regain trust, when a corporation shows you what their goals are and how they plan to reach them; believe it.
bangonkeyboard|2 years ago
This letter should be seen as a rickety runway extension: finalize any Unity projects you already have in development, but make sure you move to another engine in the immediate future.
johnnyanmac|2 years ago
But if they are considering a 3rd Hollow Knight it'd be the biggest W if they chose an open-source engine (and hopefully not take 7 years, but TBH I'd take my time too if I made hollow knight money).
rybosworld|2 years ago
I have no doubt that as long John R. and Tomar B. continue to run the show, that the company will behave unethically again in the future.
rybosworld|2 years ago
"When we first introduced the Runtime Fee policy, we used the term “installs” which the community found to be unclear so we’re using the term "initial engagement" as the unit of measure."
The community did not find this unclear. The original pricing scheme was very straightforward about developers being charged multiple times for a user that reinstalls a game, or install it across multiple devices.
This is Unity trying to rewrite history so they don't seem like the bad guys.
gmerc|2 years ago
Next they are gonna push a narrative of greedy mid level managers over hiring and building fiefdoms like everyone else. The Metagame for the C level is zero risk and zero accountability
They can fuck right off and fire the CEO
Management knew this was going to be controversial including internally so they hid it from employees who could have told them just how bad the idea was and how many edge cases they had to consider.
Management needs to be fired.
Macha|2 years ago
I don't think this is enough that I would consider Unity for a new project (compared to my niggling doubts on my projects using Godot and Bevy in the past that maybe I should just bite the bullet and learn the "grown up" engine, until this announcement). That would require something a bit more iron clad renouncing their claim to be able to change the deal like this.
I don't know if Unity considers it a success that they've moved from their customers being in a "port everything now" rush to "Well I wouldn't take that deal, and a lot of customers will now not be upgrading Unity or developing their next titles in Unity".
But I guess as a consumer this moves my position to "someone should sue them for a declaratory judgement that making this retroactive is not legal" to "Well, guess I'm not investing in learning Unity".
alexb_|2 years ago
- $1,000,000 income floor for a trailing 12 months
- Doesn't apply to old versions
- Billed a lesser amount of 2.5% revenue if available, so low-cost indie games don't get destroyed
Not to mention, removing the requirement to have "Made with Unity" on the free version? Surprised they would change this - it wasn't really a problem for most people, and afaik getting rid of the "Made with Unity" was one of the main reasons people would buy the non-free versions of Unity.
I think this is probably the best they could have done for indie devs. As it turns out, pushback works. They did destroy a lot of trust with developers with this move though. Going to be hard to get any of that back.
pixl97|2 years ago
If you come up to someone, point a gun at their head, and scream you're going to murder them it's very likely there is no walking back even if you put the gun away and then state more reasonable demands. Everyone knows you have a gun in your back pocket and you're insane enough to use it.
gmjosack|2 years ago
JohnMakin|2 years ago
It's not beyond the realm of reasonable belief to assume they can or will roll out some breaking change eventually that forces upgrades.
drpossum|2 years ago
peteforde|2 years ago
DiabloD3|2 years ago
You're only going to see major(-ly incompetent) studios from now on using it (ie, big enough to pressure Unity into complying to their licensing requirements, ie, Microsoft or Nintnedo kind of big).
markhaslam|2 years ago
Being able to choose 2.5% revenue share (half of Unreal) does not sound bad to me. And very glad they removed the retroactivity of the new fees.
drpossum|2 years ago
gs17|2 years ago
skilled|2 years ago
How high up does this rank in “the dumbest decisions you can make” chart?
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
glimshe|2 years ago
There is no amount of walkback that will work here. The only possible way out, if any is even possible, would be a summary dismissal of their entire leadership team due to gross incompetence. These people don't deserve even minimum wage, much less the millions they make. A junior business manager out of school wouldn't have made such irresponsible, company-killing move. These are some of the worst executives in gaming history, to be honest.
INTPenis|2 years ago
spl757|2 years ago
wildermuthn|2 years ago
1) What type of person gets hired as CEO?
2) What type of person excels as CEO?
3) What type of person seems most suited to being a CEO while actually being least suited?
Possible Answers:
1) the salesmen, the connected, the take-crediting, the attractive, the eloquent, the politically savvy, the ambitious, the tactical
2) the decisive, the persevering, the give-crediting, the communicative, the empathetic, the trustworthy, the humble, the strategic
3) When confidence is unwarranted
Both types of people have high confidence, but only one type has a good reason to be confident. Both types are effective in making plans and executing upon them, but where the first type’s plan’s focus on personal success, the second type’s plans focus on mutual success.
Is there a good way to distinguish between the two? Yes, but subtly — have their former direct reports gone on to success outside of the candidate’s current sphere of influence? The first type will drag along the people they can trust to support their personal ambitions, elevating them in the process. The second type will elevate their direct reports without grasping on to them as life preservers in choppy political seas.
Being a good CEO is a very difficult job, and should be rewarded. It is the most important job anyone can have at a company. It is also the hardest to fill with the right person, given the hordes of ill-suited confidence men seeking their own stardom.
VohuMana|2 years ago
endisneigh|2 years ago
I have absolutely no stake in this and I’m sure these aren’t the same people, but it is interesting.
From reading the original proposal and this new one, they should’ve gone first with this one. I’m sure unity developers will hesitatingly continue their work.
Macha|2 years ago
njovin|2 years ago
In this case I think those can (rightfully and reasonably) be the same people. If a company rolls out a pricing/licensing change that is so detrimental to the developers that it seems like no reasonable developer would have thought it was a good idea, then it looks like the company rolled it out either without talking to their developers or without taking their feedback into account, both of which are equally bad.
In cases like this where the business acted so egregiously, the damage is done and trust might not be restorable long-term without C-level heads rolling.
PaulKeeble|2 years ago
cco|2 years ago
That's because many folks recognize that the fundamental problem is not the proposal, it is the mechanism by which that proposal was crafted, refined, and finally approved that is rotten.
Walking back the proposal is fine in the near term, but without drastic change to the fundamentals of the company and its leadership, you'll just end up in the same situation in the future, it is just a matter of when.
squeaky-clean|2 years ago
If you file for divorce, and in reaction they buy you flowers and other gifts, it doesn't mean they're suddenly fixed and have always been a good partner.
It's also very likely they got some legal letters from Pokémon Go or other similarly large Unity based games, and they still don't care about what the online community has to say.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
opyate|2 years ago
I'm aware of these not-downloadable-but-is-digital services/stores/platforms that do:
- app stores (Apple takes 30%, Google takes 30%)
- content (YouTube keeps 45%, Twitch takes a cut)
- e-commerce (Etsy 5% transaction fee; eBay takes a %)
- music/podcast (Spotify; SoundCloud)
- e-learning (Udemy; Teachable)
- gaming (Steam takes 30%; Epic takes %12)
- rental (AirBNB service fees; Turo commission on each car rental)
- freelancing (Upwork's sliding fee; Fiverr takes 20%)
But Unity is DOWNLOADABLE software, not a platform/app-store/SaaS. So, why revenue share? Surely most devs just make free-standing/downloadable games that don't tie into any platform-y features?
AFAIK, even Unity Enterprise [0] is just source code, support, 3-year LTS bug fixes, and the only real thing that's platform-y is the build server, which seems to cost extra anyway.
0. https://unity.com/products/unity-enterprise
aschearer|2 years ago
FateOfNations|2 years ago
generationP|2 years ago
From a viewpoint of "will it be compatible with a DRM-free release that doesn't phone home" (i.e., playing by GOG rules), this doesn't seem to solve the problem at all. What is in it for them? Why per install and not per sale?
Macha|2 years ago
rybosworld|2 years ago
For all intents and purposes, this is meaningless until they update the old ToS to prevent this from happening again.
bangonkeyboard|2 years ago
Unity did just that the last time this happened, in 2019: https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-an...
They silently deleted the then-added clause allowing you to use the ToS you agreed to before this most recent attempt.
whartung|2 years ago
As I recall, they inevitably changed the current one with a clause saying “we explicitly can’t pull the rug out from folks anymore with this license”. Simply ensuring that while they can create new licenses for new content, that can’t mess with creators who adopted the previous one.
peteforde|2 years ago
https://youtu.be/m4OzqgTa_hk?si=xiuNmYNVEgNoZ-Dj&t=455
I have linked to his interactive exploration of their fee calculator, which should set many "what if" scenarios to rest.
Nobody can really say anything educated about the long-term impact on trust, but I suspect that if they can Riccitello things will return to something of a baseline and nobody will be talking about it in a year.
I trully cannot fathom Riccitello's tenure remaining viable on the other side of this. He is a dead man walking, corporately speaking.
I'm reminded of a favorite allegory which seems perfect for today:
New CEO walks into her office just as the old CEO is leaving. Old CEO says congrats and good luck; I left you three sealed envelopes which you should open in times of crisis.
Things go well until they don't. First letter says "blame your predecessor".
This fixes things until the next crisis. Second letter says "blame the technology".
Nothing could go wrong, until it does. Third letter says "write three letters".
Rapzid|2 years ago
aschearer|2 years ago
pushcx|2 years ago
cmcaleer|2 years ago
I’m Marc Whitten, and I lead Unity Create which includes the Unity engine and editor teams.
I want to start with simply this: I am sorry.
We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine.
You are what makes Unity great, and we know we need to listen, and work hard to earn your trust. We have heard your concerns, and we are making changes in the policy we announced to address them.
Our Unity Personal plan will remain free and there will be no Runtime Fee for games built on Unity Personal. We will be increasing the cap from $100,000 to $200,000 and we will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.
No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee.
For those creators on Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise, we are also making changes based on your feedback.
The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity.
We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version.
For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month. Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.
We want to continue to build the best engine for creators. We truly love this industry and you are the reason why.
I’d like to invite you to join me for a live fireside chat hosted by Jason Weimann today at 4:00 pm ET/1:00 pm PT, where I will do my best to answer your questions. In the meantime, here are some more details.*
Thank you for caring as deeply as you do, and thank you for giving us hard feedback.
Marc Whitten
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
omgmajk|2 years ago
purplecats|2 years ago
29athrowaway|2 years ago
That got people thinking that it's an unacceptable risk and they are working on mitigations.
hysan|2 years ago
drra|2 years ago
You are not doing good job if your company or business model can be killed by anyone else than you or your customers.
egypturnash|2 years ago
Awaiting countless variants of "who the hell thought this price change sounded like a good idea, and are they fired yet".
jhaehl|2 years ago
roblabla|2 years ago
CatWChainsaw|2 years ago
olgeni|2 years ago
jenkstom|2 years ago
CatWChainsaw|2 years ago
throw7|2 years ago
rybosworld|2 years ago
yellow_lead|2 years ago
xyst|2 years ago
I feel Unity violated trust of community. No going back. Today it’s a claw back. Tomorrow (future) it’s back to f’ing over the community once the heat wears off. Or a new CEO is appointed.
sdfghswe|2 years ago
momojo|2 years ago
omgmajk|2 years ago
Basically policy changes that were absolutely abysmal and pretty much killed the entire Unity engine for most people. Now walk-back but trust is broken forever.
pikseladam|2 years ago
lijok|2 years ago
an5|2 years ago