The game development community is still floored regarding Unity’s shocking announcement to personally bend over loyal customers and users of their game engine by announcing the incorporation of a runtime fee.
I’m not going to pretend to be dumb for your own sake, if you’re here you probably know what the hell is going on already, if not you can read our previous article HERE.
Alongside removing Unity Plus and swiftly transferring those on a paid subscription to the astronomically more expensive Unity Pro license, Unity thought best to incorporate a cancerous business model that will surely see to it that future development on their engine will be abolished in its entirety.
The very same douchebag who drove EA into the ground and won numerous “Worst Company of the Year” awards consecutively, John Riccitiello is working hard to ensure that Unity Software is killed off for good with their stock valuation having dropped a total of 47% since its initial listing back in September of 2020.
Obviously with the company heading down the shitter the only way to play favorites with investors is to generate cash and pronto, introducing a install based payment scheme. All games built on Unity, whether currently in development or released a decade ago, it does not fucking matter, all games are extorted equally.
With a runtime fee any game that breaches install and revenue thresholds will see to it that the games developer will be financially charged for the privilege, aside from storefronts such as Valve’s Steam Store taking a supposed 30% revenue cut, and the fact that these individuals pay hefty large sums per year just to utilize the Unity engine and remove their stupid logo from the splash screen, Unity wants developers to pay them money if they exceed a certain criteria per installation.
Nobody is fucking happy, obviously.
Here’s a lovely compilation of developers big and small letting their voices be heard in the usual corporate PR lingo they only know how.
Everyone is unified in telling Unity Software that they can stick this runtime fee up their goddamn arse, but sadly, Unity doesn’t give a shit.
That’s right, the sacks of shit at Unity Software have doubled down through a massive damage control-esk Twitter post that strongly clarifies that majority of consumers who develop on Unity will not be affected, “more than 90%” apparently, which is technically true but such a distasteful heinous tactic out of left field financially targeting larger projects such as Genshin Impact is not only vulgar but outright extortion.
Ripping up their old terms and condictions and retroactively ushering in this “fuck you, you owe me money now” business model simply isn’t going to cut it quite frankly, given that the developers of Genshin Impact are in fact Chinese I genuinely hope that they do the typical thing by simply looking the other way and simply refuse to pay these goddamn swines.
Unity however did reclarify upon other claims such as pirated games and reinstallations counting towards developers and their newly profound installation thresholds by stating they will charge no fee from reinstallations or “fraudulent” installations.
Specifically stating that Unity will be working with developers in cases where malicious botnets or orchestrated ordeals of game installs, as previously mentioned this would happen.
Case by case scenarios for pirated copies.
So in all honesty then it’s simply down to Unity ciphering between what is a pirated install and what isn’t, thanks to their malware making friends over at IronSource their Unity engine will seemingly be able to detect if a game had been reinstalled by an individual user or pirated, and yet developers are supposed to remain calm and understanding that Unity will weed out these “installations”.
“Just trust me bro”
What about in cases where several bot systems are orchestrated into downloading, reinstalling games on loop, costing developers serious financial headaches, Unity may claim that they’re happy to lend a hand in weeding out these allegedly “false” installations, but this runtime fee is a frequent payment into the bank accounts of Unity, developers will still be on the fucking hook for fees and it’ll be up to Unity to partially refund them.
Unity aren’t backing down which is expected, if by some miracle these fucking bastards were to backtrack on their desperate plea for cash it would be futile, the damage is already done, Unity’s name is already dead and buried. Developers who were even thinking about using Unity would have mostly course corrected away from that cancerous platform entirely, but for those who are currently developing games built on Unity?
You’re screwed. Genuinely screwed. Sorry, but that’s just how it is sometimes.
And what about those massive microtransaction riddled games such as Genshin Impact, Pokemon Go, Fate/Grand Order and even Raid: Shadow Legends? Well as you’d expect considering how these games alone rake in hundreds of millions of dollars on a consistent basis at regular intervals these games are the very foundation as to why Unity are deploying this tactic.
You can see it right on their tweet itself. “Customers who will be impacted are generally those who have found a substantial scale in downloads and revenue” and have reached both our install and revenue thresholds.“
Unity are specifically targeting these games as they have tens of millions of loyal players, this runtime fee bullshit goes active on January 1st 2024 and all these mobile centric games will easily exceed the one million threshold for both installations and revenue, within a single day.
Even with Unity Enterprise fees applied all of these games individually will net Unity $46,500 until the one million install threshold has been met in which case these sorts of games garner millions of new installations on a monthly basis give or take.
Another five million installs is a guaranteed $50,000 on a monthly basis, apply that to the abundance of these games that deploy microtransactions and Unity Software are guaranteed to make a fair few million dollars per month just by sitting on their asses and cashing checks. God fucking forbid anyone who managed to produce a successful cash cow whilst on a standard Personal or Plus license, enjoy going into debt I guess.
Unity are literally using mobile games as a scapegoat life insurance policy to generate immediate income as their company continues to flounder, the brand is tarnished, Unity as an engine is dead. From today onwards I can guarantee you that hardly any new games will be developed with Unity, hopefully those early in development can perhaps move onwards to another platform, such as Unreal those halfway down the pipeline will forever remain fucked, with developers practically begging that their Unity based games don’t become the next weekly fad such as BattleBit Remastered.
I genuinely wish for John Riccitiello to die.
