I think the saddest part about Unity's godawful news is that a lot of games are going to just. disappear.
it's like Unity is trying to go the way of streaming where the hidden gems and cult classics don't make enough money, so, they're taken offline. except this time it's with games (mostly indie).
to put it in perspective, hollow knight, cuphead, and ori are made in unity. so are night in the woods, tunic, and countless more indie gems. hell, AMONG US is made in unity. if the devs of any of these games can't shell out the outrageous cost, then maybe the devs will take them offline. and we'll just. never be able to play them anymore
it's a sad possibility that I don't think any of us ever had to consider. but now we do.
Here's a cool thing: GameMaker is now free for non-commercial, non-console use, and all its asset bundles are free! They've also introduced a one-time free aimed at replacing their current subscription model.
Also, while they're being vague about it right now they've hinted that they might be working toward some open source progress as well, which is very cool!
So if you've ever wanted to give GameMaker a shot and try out a new engine, now you can!
As someone whose degree was borderline digital marketing, it baffles me every single time companies like Unity pull this kind of shit.
First of all, it doesn't make sense. I don't know who conceived this moronic fee plan, but it's absolutely absurd. There's a lot of ways to get more money - not that I find any of them particularly favorable, but at least a price increase, sub tiers, etc are somewhat sensible in a functional way.
Beyond that, they don't have any common sense to see how this shit ALWAYS fails. One of two things are going to happen. Either everyone is going to jump ship from Unity (already seeing game devs reporting they'll be pulling their games) and their competitors will overtake them, or they'll have to backpedal.
Obviously, losing most of their business is bad and understandably unwanted for them, but I'm baffled by how few recognize the power of the second consequence.
Even if they reverse the decision, this is a HUGE smear to their reputation. Unity will lose business regardless, but even worse will be the loss of confidence in the company.
Consumers and devs alike are not going to forget this. They will not let it go. Other companies will use this as a talking point for their engines and their assets being superior because they at least respect game devs and gamers. They never tried to charge bullshit fees. They never got shamed back into being user friendly.
Reputation matters. Especially in today's market. Consumers largely do not fuck around anymore with companies who do this, especially when they've been dependable in the past.
It's foolish. It's embarrassing. It's greedy and out of touch. I don't envy their PR team right now.
Okay hold on with the Unity thing. Hopefully this change will be stopped, but if not we need to start archiving everything NOW.
Cult of the Lamb won’t be the only one. Hundreds if not thousands of games might be deleted. Years of gaming history, lost forever because people can’t afford this change. This is almost as bad as the Adobe Flash shutdown.
I’m going to be honest, I have absolutely no clue how to go about this. But if anyone does, please organize something. We only have 3 and a half months to do this.
EDIT: The above tweet screenshot ended up being a joke (three cheers for autism), but the fact still remains that a bunch of games will still be pulled of steam, especially the smaller ones that only barely hit the revenue mark for being charged.
On Friday I challenged myself to make a game in 7 days, I'm introducing my work so far. Vessel!
The derelict ship known as the Slave of God was lost for 15 years, only to mysteriously reappear with no sign of the crew. Instead, mysterious beings called The Shattered have taken their place. You are sent to survey the ship, only to find ruin.
PSA: if you've ever wanted to play an indie game made with unity, download it before january 1st 2024 or risk losing your chance! (for a list of unity games, i found this. can't say if it's completely comprehensive but it's a start)
if you're a game dev or aspiring game dev, i would check out unreal engine. it's widely documented, pretty easy to jump into, and free until you make over $1 million and then they take 5% above that- so if you made $1,000,001, epic games takes 5 cents. epic is a big corporation so they could pull some bullshit but it's less likely. and they have protection from future bullshittery if you stay with the current or older versions. beyond that, there are a ton of other free game engines out there or engines that are on the cheaper side (game maker for ex, only requires payment on export and is the game engine used for undertale/deltarune). so if you can help it, don't waste your time on unity!
and above all: fuck unity. indie games are so important and don't deserve to be fucked over by corporate greed
good news! unity has walked back a lot of the runtime fee!
they made a blog post outlining their new terms, the link is here. but if you want a sparknotes version, here's the highlights:
1. the runtime fee is not retroactive. previously released games are safe.
2. the fee only applies to the next major version of unity. developers can choose not to upgrade if they don't want do deal with it.
3. the fee is opt-in and number of installs is self-reported. if they'd prefer, developers can instead pay a 2.5% revenue share. (for reference, unreal is 4%.)
4. interestingly, the splash screen is being completely removed. this is probably a way to improve their reputation.
overall, this is a HUGE improvement! but, if I remember right, there was not any revenue share before, so, we are not at the same point we started. unity will still be taking a larger cut of developers' revenue if they choose to use newer features. but, it is nowhere near as drastic as we thought it would be.
overall, I think we're in a stable spot now, but I also think unity has lost most if not all of the trust it had. especially with indies. there has already been a mass exodus, and I kinda hope that will keep going.