New Unity fee policies, and how it affects 4 Dimension Games

[DavidBVal]

As you are probably aware, there has been a lot of noise about the recently announced Unity Technologies install fees. In case you don't know, Unity Engine has decided to apply some per-install flat fees billed monthly, retroactively (in part), and using some rather shady techniques to modify older Terms of Service. Thousands of small and mid developers will find themselves in a dire situation in january 2024, being forced to pay $0.20 per install of their game, including reinstalls, install on multiple PCs by the same users, updates and even pirated copies. This last point is still a hot topic and Unity has contradicted itself about it, but there's reasonable doubts about how can Unity figure out if an install is legitimate, or if it's a first time install, without a consent to gather data from the user. So far they haven't provided any answers.

Exiled Kingdoms *is NOT* made with Unity, thanks to the heavens, so it's not tainted by any of this. Otherwise I'd be out of business (or refusing to pay their bills, more likely). Mobile games have a high number of installs and a low revenue per install, so those that made the mistake of trusting Unity TOS in the past and released a game, may find themselves in debt with Unity, for more money than they make off their games.

Archaelund *IS* made with Unity, and after 4 and a half years I can't migrate to a new engine, realistically. Being a PC game, I suppose we will be able to deal with the new situation. In the worst case, I'll just migrate slowly and sue them for damages, since there's nothing of this nonsense in the last terms I agreed upon (Unity 2020.3 LTS). There should be no impact on Archaelund's Early Access release date, but it might have an effect on the planned price.

I'd like to voice my support for more vulnerable developers of low-cost or even free apps that might be threatened by these new policies, and call on unity to reverse the whole thing on old Unity versions, until they can be fully transparent on their model. I am sure they are realizing already they can't pull this off. There's technological issues, there's legal issues. And worst of all, there's the broken trust of the developers. And let's not forget investors: uUity stock fell by 5.5% only yesterday, and today another debacle is expected. Let's hope they react and find a way to stay profitable that is more healthy for the developers' community.

 

[p4ran0id]

Wow thanks a lot about the info. What the hell do they smoke to decide payment per install. Every Script kiddie can ruin any game dev using unity with that. Just write a small script that install and uninstall the game 24/7 and the dev is done.

 

[VDX_360]

For reference, here's one of the many new stories on the matter.

 

[DavidBVal]

For reference, here's one of the many new stories on the matter.

Isn't that the one I linked?

Anyways, in my case with Archaelund, very likely this will just involve forcing me into Unity Pro (2,4K per development post, per year) since Plus has disappeared. If Archaelund is even moderately successful, that's reasonable. However, I may wake up any morning knowing that they claim 7 million installs I need to disprove, or changed their terms again.

 

[p4ran0id]

Isn't that the one I linked?

Anyways, in my case with Archaelund, very likely this will just involve forcing me into Unity Pro (2,4K per development post, per year) since Plus has disappeared. If Archaelund is even moderately successful, that's reasonable. However, I may wake up any morning knowing that they claim 7 million installs I need to disprove, or changed their terms again.

I'm not a lawyer but I can't imagine that they can add such terms and use it afterwards. When you started/the version you used never had such ToS and you can't change the rules later. At least not so the one who used it with old ToS will be affected.

If they won't react to complains unity is just done, the community won't forgive such behaviour for sure

 

[Alan_SP]

I'm not a lawyer but I can't imagine that they can add such terms and use it afterwards. When you started/the version you used never had such ToS and you can't change the rules later. At least not so the one who used it with old ToS will be affected.

Sadly, I have already met similar things, not with games development, but with hosting companies.

For example, company I use had clause that they won't raise price after you get server from them. And, it was like that for years, you paid same price with which you started, no matter how much would cost same server with time. Recently, they just posted that they will raise all prices, and if we don't like it, we can go elsewhere.

I guess that this means they can do that from legal point of view, but I'm not lawyer.

 

[p4ran0id]

@Alan_SP thats normal, it's just a higher price to pay. But it's not like all hoster had to pay for last x years they used it.

When David started with the project, he agreed to the ToS, they can't change it afterwards and add a payment. Such changes allows to deny the contract, a bit hard here of course. But since he used a unity Version without that contract I don't think a judge would go for unity.

Just imagine Microsoft would do it, I'm writing a book with Microsoft Words (constructed example) and when nearly done they tell me I have to pay for every word I typed before. That's no way legit because I started and agreed to different ToS

 

[VDX_360]

@DavidBVal , Ha! Sorry about that. Didn't read your link as a link. I blame the Friguld Rum.