Cognition Dissemination: Future Dis-Unity
The executives at Unity woke up one day last week and decided they wanted to tank the company’s reputation. It’s the only way to explain how they figured the idea of hiking licensing fees hardcore for developers using their engine would go over well.
The most controversial aspect was the Runtime Fee, for which most developers who use Unity Personal and Unity Plus to build their games would have to pay $.20 for every install after the developer made $200,000 of revenue for their game in a year, and 200,000 installs. This would have involved indie and mid-tier developers sacrificing their much-needed revenue as a sort of punishment for their game being popular. The matter was serious for them, as this can mean the difference between their continued existence or bankruptcy. Worse, the fees were being applied retroactively, meaning developers who released successful games using Unity in the past would have to pay big fees. This, to no surprise from anyone except apparently Unity’s executives, led to a developer uproar.
There were many ways in which this could have gone south, especially for free-to-play games where developers don’t make any revenue per install, but through in-game purchases. Not to mention that no one could possibly guess how Unity would calculate these installs, as the company wouldn’t share their methodology when asked by developers and the enthusiast press.
Worse yet (great trend here), language regarding how this could be applied through games sold at a massive discount through charities and services like Humble Bundle were unclear. They had no plans to be consistent with it, as Unity reportedly told one developer that Planned Parenthood and a children’s hospital didn’t count as charities because they were “political.” It’s possible for any charity or hospital to be viewed as “political” in our insipid culture war-filled environment, which shows how messed up the mere label was on Unity’s part.
After all the furor, Unity was inevitably going to have to walk these decisions back to try and win back the developers they upset. They indeed did so. Changes are still being made, but Unity is giving developers the option of paying the Runtime Fee or providing 2.5 percent of the revenue made on a game throughout a year. The fee will also no longer apply retroactively, meaning developers and some publishers with games that remain available through physical and especially digital services won’t be on the hook for an immediate massive cost. The changes will be implemented starting in 2024. Developers such as Rami Ismail and Dan Goodayle responded by saying the new changes work for them now and are reasonable.
But Goodayle makes a great point in his tweets. He continued by saying that Unity has “a lot of work to do to repair the trust. Nothing stopping them from U-turning in another week.” Several developers viewed Unity’s changes as a middle finger upon seeing them, along with how determined executives were to implement them.
Reports from current and former members of the gaming press mentioned that Unity’s executives, led by one notorious John Riccitiello, first ran these changes by their internal developers between July and August. They near-unanimously told executives that they were a bad idea. It’s clear how much the executives valued their input when they wanted to go through with them anyway, but it illustrates how avoidable this whole fiasco was. The developers still view the fact that Unity wanted to fleece them out of hard-earned revenue as a gigantic middle finger, and it will be difficult for them to repair that relationship. For several of them, the relationship is permanently severed.
This entire fiasco, in fact, is making developers question their relationships with middleware developers going forward. There’s nothing stopping, say, Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney from hopping out of bed one morning and deciding that licensing costs for Unreal Engine 5 should be hiked hardcore. This scenario is unlikely, but only slightly less so than Unity originally-offered Runtime Fees. This is not solely Unity’s problem, though they’re certainly the reason why these thoughts and others are swimming through heads at this moment.
It’s the reason why a bunch of them aren’t stopping their pursuit of alternative options. The most popular one is the Godot Engine, an open-source alternative that, by design, can’t be corporately owned. Larger developers, like those at Ubisoft, Rockstar, and Capcom, will stick to their own engines. Perhaps this could be a catalyst for companies inconsistent about their engine usage to further embrace their own engines, like EA and Square Enix. But if those companies in particular make that decision, they should give their development teams time to adjust to their internal engines. Bigger companies also have enough resources to work out lucrative deals with middleware developers, so they may not have to change anything here.
Unity and Embracer Group feel like they’re in active competition to see who can take their businesses down the fastest, grabbing as many mid-tier development studios as they can during their descent. But Unity themselves will probably be fine. The newer deals they’ve worked out might be good enough to keep a bunch of developers using the Unity engine. But “probably” and “might” stick out there, because it’s tough to gauge the sheer number of indie and mid-tier developers now seeking alternatives. Unity will never fully repair its relationship with developers they pissed off here, justifiably so. This should teach them to listen to the employees who clearly know better than the reality-divorced executives, but that never remains for long.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
