A week after Unity announced dramatic changes to its Unity Engine business model - drawing immediate and widespread condemnation from the development community - the company has reportedly told staff it’ll be making adjustments to the controversial new pricing plan.
As reported by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Unity leadership addressed employees in an all-hands meeting held earlier today (a meeting originally planned for late last week was cancelled following a “potential threat” from an employee), saying the company was “considering” introducing a cap on its hugely unpopular new per-install fees.
Unity initially caused an outcry last Tuesday, when it told developers that, on top of their existing Unity Engine licence subscription, they’d be expected to pay an additional monthly Unity Runtime Fee each time a user installed their game, starting on 1st January 2024. This would apply to all games, including those already on the market, that had made $200k USD or more in the last 12 months and had at least 200k lifetime game installs.
Yeah, that ain’t gonna cut it.
“Okay, I know you weren’t too happy about my plan to retroactively charge you for every mile you drive in the car I already sold you… What if I told you, I’ll only charge you for a maximum of… uh… 30,000 miles per year?”
Is the cap $0?
How about you don’t change the terms people agreed to retroactively. How about if you said “no royalties”, you stick with no royalties and don’t come up with some bullshit fee that works exactly like a royalty.
I had a feeling something like this was gonna come. It’s an age old trick.
Do something that makes people mad and gets attention.
Let it stew for a few days while you’re “considering” things.
Come out and say you made a mistake and the initial plan was misguided, present the thing you were actually planning to do instead.
Brag about how much you “care about feedback” while still doing what you want
It doesn’t work the same here as with B2C products. Excluding hobby developers who wouldn’t been hit either way. most people paying for Unity are trying to make a living and a company eradically throwing the pricing model around is not a good look when there are altrnatives around.
People can and will go to alternatives for new projects. Unreal, if you want a marketplace and impressive 3D and Godot if you want FOSS. Not to mention the otber game engines.
It’s about money here, in some cades not little amount of money.
What’s to stop them from changing the cap at a later date?
