The new Unity fee is all about ads and destroying lives of indie devs is just a side effect
You might or might not know that My Dystopian Robot Girlfriend was made in Unity. This is why the current events with Unity are very important to me. Let me run you through my theory as to why Unity did all this.
If you are not in the loop Unity announced that they are adding a runtime fee to their license. What that means is that developers will now have to pay a small amount of money for every install of their game. Why did they do this though? Simplest explanation is of course that they need money, but that's not the full story. If that's the case they could've gone for a simple revenue share system(Like unreal engine), why didn't they though? I think I've got the answer. First let's look at this graph that shows what % of revenue developers will have to pay to Unity. It's based on the brackets from Unity's blogpost.
First of all, this fee strongly punishes games with low revenue per download(Free to play games). In some cases the fee could even exceed 100% of the revenue. Why would they do that? It's simple, a big chunk of their revenue comes from ads. In data I found from 2022 they earned about half of their revenue from ads. They clearly want to expand on that and that's the reason for the merger with IronSource. A company specializing in app monetization.
Now for the really nasty part. There are reports Unity reps are telling people they won't have to pay the fee as long as they transition to IronSource as their ad provider. This is effectively blackmail. Paying a fee of 100% of your revenue is simply not an option.
It's is not a random dumb decision as it seemed before. It's a planned, malicious and targeted attack in order to gain more ad revenue by forcing games to not use their competitors' ad services. This is why they said "90% of you won't be affected" and this is also why they didn't go for a simple revenue share. Us, indie devs provide almost no revenue for Unity. Fricking us over is just a side effect of their plan and that's why they don't care. It's honestly even worse then I initially thought.
But hey, that's just a theory, game theory. Thanks for reading and frick Unity.
Also for fans of My Dystopian Robot Girlfriend. The game currently is below the thresholds, so we will survive. I got a bit scared at first though. If we ever reach the 1m$ yearly revenue threshold though we will be forced to switch to a paid model. Otherwise we'd have to pay thousands of dollars to unity and we'd go bankrupt.
Sources:
Source of the graph:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16jeox6/i_made_a_comprehensive_visual_chart_showing_how/
Data about revenue from ads from:
https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/NYSE-U/financials-revenue/
https://businessquant.com/unity-software-revenue-by-segment
Post about the fee removal:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16j6cip/ironsource_is_the_reason/
Comments
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Damn Unity, I can't believe this >:(
Funny thing is the Head of Unity is a former EA employee that got kicked out because he was too money focused and greedy as Fuck XDDDDD
Getting kicked out of EA for that is really saying something.
iirc, he attempted to force players to pay to reload their guns lol
yeah he said "players would be more likely to shell out cash for that one last bullet to kill an enemy" or something along those lines
This is ridiculously unfair :(
Wizards of the coast and Hazbro tried this. Burned their asses with it, rolled back. Hopefully Unity gets burned by this enough to chicken out of that shit
I think I misunderstand something, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Nobody actually pays "for the game", so you don't have revenue, you have donations, right? Unless either I'm wrong and you do have paid versions of the game, or if Unity is mincing the definition of "revenue", they shouldn't be capable of charging developers for making games like this.
Paying is not required, but people support Incontinent Cell on Subscribestar in exchange for exclusive content and update progress.
does that shit say more than 100% of your revenue? so these mfs actually robbing yall then, i might be wrong but thats fucked up
hey, um, i'm no expert here. far from it but couldnt ya'll use something like BepInEx to .... "modify" the engine a bit to.... "avoid" these complications??
a quick recap on BepInEx:
"BepInEx is a universal Unity plugin loader that allows code execution and in-memory patching for games that do not have native support for it. It is a plugin/modding framework for Unity Mono, IL2CPP, and.NET framework games, including XNA, FNA, MonoGame, and more. BepInEx is set apart from other plugin loaders as it has support for editing.DLL assemblies without requiring changes on disk, making it extremely powerful to make changes with."
*edit* posting this outside of my reply just in case ya dont see the other one
well shit, found the problem, the current CEO was CEO of EA according to Wikipedia
"John Riccitiello (/rɪkɪˈtɛloʊ/) is an American business executive who is chief executive officer (CEO) of Unity Technologies. Previously, he served as CEO, chief operating officer and president of Electronic Arts, and co-founded private equity firm Elevation Partners in 2004. Riccitiello has served on several company boards, including those of the Entertainment Software Association, the Entertainment Software Rating Board, the Haas School of Business and the USC School of Cinematic Arts."
damn dude. Fuck EA and their stupid cash
I've only heard rumors but there was talk of unity not going through due to backlash, one can only hope however.
Unity love money, not the creators
Unity became greedy due to their new CEO. And their new CEO is the former CEO of EA who is known for being fricking Greedy.
GREEDY FOR EA? THE COMPANY WITH MICRO-TRANSACTIONS EVERYWHERE?! Damn, just, Damn.
Yeah hahaha, like wtf. John Riccitiello's first move as CEO is to destroy the company. Like, remember that time where in Counter Strike, he pitched a micro transaction where if a player reaches 6 hours in to the game, they need to pay a small amount of money to have magazines. That's right, you pay real money for a video game magazine.
Agreed with the comment bellow gotta switch to Godot before its too late
You should switch to Godot asap before losing more money. Godot is free and doesn't charge you.
Switching an engine isn't easy. It could take months and produce inferior product.
hey, um, i'm no expert here. far from it but couldnt ya'll use something like BepInEx to .... "modify" the engine a bit to.... "avoid" these complications??
a quick recap on BepInEx:
"BepInEx is a universal Unity plugin loader that allows code execution and in-memory patching for games that do not have native support for it. It is a plugin/modding framework for Unity Mono, IL2CPP, and.NET framework games, including XNA, FNA, MonoGame, and more. BepInEx is set apart from other plugin loaders as it has support for editing.DLL assemblies without requiring changes on disk, making it extremely powerful to make changes with."
I suggest not to change the Unity game engine. You don’t want to see inferior products. There is no need to pay for the Godot game engine, but creators still insist on using the Unity game engine. Unity is a very easy-to-use game engine. In order to make Quality gaming product! , the creator will not give up! , you must protect your income and game production expenses! , to fight against Unity’s hateful and greedy income regulations!
Why the fuck are they doing this they going broke are something ugh hope you stay able to work on this game its honestly really fun ❤️❤️❤️
I know nothing about game making or coding, but would it be possible to port the game completely to a new engine? One that doesn't want to leech off of game creators?
Not without a loooot of work.
looks like Incontinent Cell will need to learn diferent engine. from what i hear load off devs droped unit, even some off unity devs said f it and quit
Well, I hope MDRGF will not be forced to be a paid game in the long future. Not that I don't want to paid for it, but I have very limited funds for games.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this and for the hardwork you guys did on the game!
(Also, I hope Unity got tripped so hard of their greediness.)
you say right but I think I saw you on Futakin Vally right?
Well, I also hangout there sometimes, yes.
Oh :/
Now that you mention it. What the hell. The game vanished from itch.io. I didn't know about it until just now.
yea itch.io it so weird and why itch.io admin ban Mofu?
I am another who has limited funds for games. For me it's ~$0.
wait so as long as you dont exceed the threshold we should be good right? this might sound like a dumb idea but if exceeding the threshold puts is in such a bad situation what about, suspending the revenue for the rest of the year before reaching the threshold? I know this is not a great idea but its better than just giving every single penny to unity IMO
Bruh What... unity is not getting better🗣️🗣️🔥🔥💯💯