Mastodawn

So here's what Unity says the new pricing policy is, today (assuming it doesn't change again next week, like it did last week, and the week before).

https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee

Critical thoughts:

1. The fact that the new fees *only apply to future versions* is the critical change here, and probably(?) avoids a lawsuit. This *will* have interesting ecosystem effects since many people will now want to stick on 2022.3 LTS indefinitely. Possibly, libraries will latch to 2022.3 and never update.

An open letter to our community | Unity Blog

An open letter from Marc Whitten to the Unity community in September 2023.

Unity Blog

mcc Sep 22, 2023

2. The new policy is a bit confusing, though easier to understand than last week's. They now claim [over $1m revenue] they will charge *the lower of* 2.5% revshare, OR a charge per "number of new people engaging with your game" that they "calculate" based on your "self-reported data".

This "new installs" number is still untrustworthy gibberish. But now you can ignore it. The new "price" is 2.5% of revenue, possibly reduced arbitrarily.

Now the question is: Is this better or worse than Unreal?

mcc Sep 22, 2023

(2, continued) Unity's new 2.5% revshare is lower than Unreal's 5%. But *Unreal doesn't charge a per-seat fee*.

A per-seat fee *plus* a revshare is sour tasting. Per-seat fees are really inconvenient for small operations where some or all of your devs may only use Unity part time. And those per-seat fees are (by my math) 5x higher than they were in 2021.

Overall, New Unity *probably* costs less than Unreal, *usually*. But awkwardly, any cases Unity costs more will be at the lower revenue end.

mcc Sep 22, 2023

3. My gut is that if *this open letter's policies" were what Unity had announced to begin with, people would have been *annoyed*, as they were with the 2021 changes, but you wouldn't have seen a community collapse or mass exodus. However, I do not think this open letter will halt the mass exodus. The core problem is that *Unity can no longer be trusted*. You can consider the new 2024 prices acceptable. But now what you really have to worry about is how they will change in 2026.

mcc Sep 22, 2023

(This thread has been edited to correct confusion about Unity's version numbering scheme, as corrected by Jonbro; 2023 LTS will be released in 2024 and therefore the new fees will apply.

Possibly, I will post a version of this thread on Cohost later, just so that I can actually sit down and make a two-dimensional graph of at what combinations of developer count and revenue Unity now costs more than Unreal. I bet it's going to be a *fascinatingly* baffling graph.)

mcc Sep 22, 2023

Okay, here's the Cohost version of the above thread, featuring the below diagram. https://cohost.org/mcc/post/2935303-unity-corporate-self

My takeaway from the diagram:
- Geepers, this is complicated! It's kinda hard to predict now if Unity is a good deal or not!
- If you are a small dev making between $200k and $2.5M, Unity is basically a bad deal compared to Unreal now. You have to be making either more or less than that for Unity to make sense finance-wise.

vv 💫 [follow my new artist profile!]Sep 22, 2023

@mcc My takeaway: godot's graph is looking nice and simple!

mcc Sep 22, 2023

@vv I don't mention Godot for a simple reason: For mobile/PC, Godot costs zero. But for *consoles*, Unity/Unreal can actually cost *less* than they do on PC… and on consoles, the price of Godot is *unknown*. There are several entities you can license a console-compatible version of Godot from, and the price, and quality level, of those console Godot forks is unknown to me.

Brian Swetland Sep 22, 2023

@mcc @vv I'm interested in seeing what the W4 folks are going to be offering and what the pricing is like.

They've said they'll be announcing the details within the next couple months and have also said that they'd be competitive with (cheaper than) Unity's offerings, and source would be included (the requirement being you need to have devkit/NDA access from the appropriate console manufacturer).

It sounds like they plan on bringing in further revenue from support contracts / consulting.

Oblomov Sep 23, 2023

@mcc @vv are there legal or technical reasons for Godot not having native support for consoles? (Technical include “no contributors with the necessary know-how”.)

vv 💫 [follow my new artist profile!]Sep 23, 2023

@oblomov @mcc I believe it's mostly legal. Most if not all of the console agreements are proprietary/confidential and so it's not really possible to just hit "deploy".

vv 💫 [follow my new artist profile!]Sep 23, 2023

@oblomov @mcc there's a full discussion in the docs: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/consoles.html

mcc Sep 23, 2023

@vv @oblomov It is very difficult to produce open source software for consoles since the APIs are covered by NDA , so it is assumed any software targeting those APIs must only be distributed to people who already signed the NDA. Most collaboration and distribution systems for OSS support this poorly.

Oblomov Sep 23, 2023

@mcc @vv thank you both for the details (and the link)

gkrnours Sep 23, 2023

@mcc @vv @oblomov I wonder if they could ship a godot middleware doing the interfacing between godot and the proprietary SDK, so it's your responsability to acquire a devkit but once it's done, all you have to do is drop it in the project and hit compile

Alex Sep 23, 2023

@oblomov @mcc @vv
Mostly legal, apparently in case of godot also 50% technical. TL;DR is - major console companies still give out devkits only under NDA and individual basis. So Godot cannot legally publish any console exporters since it would violate TOS if it's available in the open.

Also, based upon one assesment that came up frequently, Godot's architecture will at the very least be challenging to port to PlayStation and with a few caveats to XBox. Switch works and has been proven.

Alex Sep 23, 2023

@oblomov @mcc @vv
The assesment in question:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WXkgYs_-WtEJ:https://blog.odorchaidhe.games/posts/godot/&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=fi&client=firefox-b-d

The original site has been taken down because some people from the community apparently dished out threats due to the critical nature of some of the points. But with the mentioned circumstances in the intro and after a few days I think this is all very fair.
Just disregard the quoted post at the end. That's way more emotional than necessary.

Alex Sep 23, 2023

@oblomov @mcc @vv
I still think/hope/am cutiously optimistic that Godot will now start to take off and over the coming year or two address some of these things. Especially performance and stability.

Personally, I think the desire for high end 3D from an engine like Godot is unnecessary. If you really want AAA then it's just gonna be Unreal for most indie devs who don't have (aspirations for) their own engine. "Pretty nice" is really good enough for Godot's scope. Performance is more important.

mcc Sep 23, 2023

@SpookyDoom unfortunately the failure mode it seems like Godot is heading toward (from someone I know that's been trying to switch) is that high end 3D is available but highly customized or highly stylized 3D is harder or unavailable. I hope I am wrong about this.

Alex Sep 23, 2023

@mcc I am not sure I follow here ... Godot has a visual shader editor and its own shader language support. How can a renderer be highend 3D only if you can create your own shaders?
How long have they tried to switch? What were the concrete things missing and problems?

I'm more concerned Godot is pushing for highend 3D without being able to reach it. It's not the place I'd actually see Godot in. Good quality - absolutely. Yet performance, Stability and Usability should always come first.

mcc Sep 23, 2023

@SpookyDoom Please understand I am speaking from a place of ignorance about Godot. But

Shaders are "baby level" customization. They customize specific boxed off things in the render pipeline. Once you unlock compute shaders, which I believe Godot has now, it provides a greater level of flexibility. But compute shaders have their own limitations.

If you're working at my, or [my friend]'s level, what you want are what Unity calls "Command Buffers" or what Unreal 4 called "RHI".

mcc Sep 23, 2023

@SpookyDoom In other words you want to move beyond customizing specific steps in the render pipeline and creating your own render pipeline— issuing your own draw commands. At the entry end this is necessary for complex trees of render-to-texture/multipass rendering, at the advanced level it is necessary for writing "custom renderers" in general. If you have the *ability* to work at this advanced level it feels constraining to go "how do I break my problem into the engine's primitives?".

Alex Sep 23, 2023

@mcc ah well, okay. I also never went deep enough into Godot in that regard and I also have doubts that I ever will (but hey - never say never).

But this really sounds like Godot simply isn't the right choice for them. Then again - I am very ignorant to most high level problems in game making.

Compute shaders really are a thing now, though:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/shaders/compute_shaders.html

I really like these discussions, though. I feel like on this server I stumbled into a tech convention.

mcc Sep 23, 2023

@SpookyDoom The problem is that if Godot is to replace Unity it has to become a viable "Forever Engine". That is, if you enter it at the entry level you have to believe it can grow with you to the master level. You don't want something that you invest time and resources into only for it to turn out nope, you need to start over with something else when your needs shift.

mcc Sep 23, 2023

@SpookyDoom Because Godot is open source, it has the potential to become that even if it is not that now. But someone will have to think about how to make it so.

Alex Sep 23, 2023

@mcc "replace Unity" is also a very broad term. Like in it's current state? I doubt that's desirable. Unity has become a bloated behemoth. Far from the focused game engine for indies it started out as.
Replace Unity for the majority of small dev(teams) who create game in the scale of "Enter the Gungeon", "Dusk" or "Phasmophobia"? I think that's much more realistic (at least at this point).

Alex Sep 23, 2023

@mcc I could imagine with the revenue system in place, now teams might now start to flock towards more specialized solutions at the scale of their projects. Like high fidelity and graphics heavy stuff will give Unreal a closer look. Small teams who value cost predictablility and don't necessarily need more might rather go to Godot or one of the more specialized OpenSource projects.

Alex Sep 23, 2023

@mcc @vv
Godot will now have to prove if it is ready to improve with the new influx of people, developers and funding from the fallout of the last 10 days. I hope they do. Oh, I really hope they do. While there are so many engines out there most are mailny code based and that's a major turnoff for non programmers.
Fingerscrossed. Also that the rumors about Juan making major, jet sometimes too chaotic decisions for the direction of Godot are too exagerated or not true any more. 🤞

Mike Kasprzak 🦖Sep 22, 2023

@mcc Good work. 👍

Andrew Sep 22, 2023

@mcc it's going to be wild hearing people saying unity announced the original policy to make this wallback version seem palatable while, you're right, this way around was so much worse than just announcing this in the first place

I am Jack's Lost 404 Sep 22, 2023

I tried to write a program to figure which health insurance plan to choose once... it was way worse than this

...and ultimately abandoned

mcc Sep 22, 2023

@float13 "Unity: It's easier to buy than health insurance"

synlogic Sep 22, 2023

@mcc I like how "small" is 200k to 2.5M!

the way my Slartboz game is doing so far it must be "microcopic" game dev. lol

mcc Sep 22, 2023

@synlogic In Cohost, I describe the 200k-to-2.5M range as "mid-range". On Mastodon, I have a character limit and cannot be so precise. By "small" in the above post I merely mean "not many people". Under 20 people is small.

synlogic Sep 22, 2023

@mcc totally get it. yeah everything is relative haha. I come from a world where a good game could/can be made by 1 person. for a 1 person team to bring in $2.5M year/total in game revenue they'd be livin la vida loca

I also come from a world where there were no "game engines" or gatekeepers. everyone (by default, in general) wrote their own "engines" in-house

everything is relative obvs

JP Sep 22, 2023

@mcc before i parsed any of the text i thought this image was about N64 platformer physics

mcc Sep 22, 2023

@jplebreton "But before you can know how much Unity is going to cost you next year, you need to understand parallel universes"

JP Sep 22, 2023

@mcc there's definitely some sweet fixed point precision glitches to be had in that teal slope that could shave several seconds off the 100 coin run

Weasel Sep 23, 2023

@jplebreton @mcc it leaves me wondering where the hundred coins go once you've collected the star and left the course. John R's pockets probably. The bum.

Richard Barrell Sep 22, 2023

@mcc at this point I have to wonder if you plan to make a rotatable 3d version of this chart and if so will you be using unity webgl to make it viewable in browsers? ;)

mcc Sep 22, 2023

@0x2ba22e11 I've been thinking about this. You could embed a post counter, so alongside the 3D visualization you could show how much Unity would have charged me to make the web page under their "new installs" criteria. Except the new version of the "new installs" criteria, they *don't even say what it is!* It's just "a formula". They make up a number of new users and then they multiply it by a second, totally secret number they will disclose at some point, presumably next year

Richard Barrell Sep 23, 2023

@mcc yeah the "we will just tell you how much you owe us, relax and don't question it" bit seems totally incredible to me.

Richard Barrell Sep 23, 2023

@mcc (not sure if this quote toot was visible to you, but I made a second bad joke https://unstable.systems/@0x2ba22e11/111111533206285413 btw)

Richard Barrell (@[email protected])

What I've learned recently is that you need a lot of linear algebra in order to use modern game engines. Not for the physics or graphics or anything though. The thing you actually need it for is to apply the simplex algorithm so you can pick optimal points on the pricing polytopes for your projected sales, ARPU and team size.

unstable.systems Mastodon (Glitch Edition)

demize Sep 23, 2023

@0x2ba22e11 (ftr, +th quotes federate but don't trigger notifications, one of the downsides of the total lack of support in mainline mastodon :/)

Richard Barrell Sep 23, 2023

@demize aha, thank you

Alexander The 1st Sep 23, 2023

@0x2ba22e11 @mcc #FirstThought: The "U.S. Hospital Bill" strategy, I see.

Does Unity not realize other countries did away with that strategy because it's generally considered a bad idea?

AntonMakesGames Sep 23, 2023

@mcc with a couple of unity altering the deal every few month, this graph could turn into a loop

none gender with left politics Sep 23, 2023

@antonmakesgames @mcc Unity has altered the deal...pray they do not alter it any further.

Paul Lalonde Sep 23, 2023

@mcc given your chances of crossing the $2.5M as a small dev are minuscule this means that you should switch to Unreal. Making it through that ceiling is a significant enough payout to swamp the difference, and if you're below, you want the more competitive price.

Paul Lalonde Sep 23, 2023

@mcc alternately, use the partner who is most incentivized to help you succeed.

[ Jer moved instances ]Sep 22, 2023

@mcc I'd love it if you could link to it here. I believe I follow you there, but I haven't logged in there in months and months, but am very interested in seeing this graph

Raven Onthill Sep 22, 2023

@mcc crossed @garius "trust Thermocline"

Raven Onthill Sep 22, 2023

@mcc If you're willing to read a Twitter thread, it's here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1588115310124539904.html

Thread by @garius on Thread Reader App

@garius: One of the things I occasionally get paid to do by companies/execs is to tell them why everything seemed to SUDDENLY go wrong, and subs/readers dropped like a stone. So, with everything going on at Twitter...…

Curioso 🍉 🇺🇦 (jgg)Sep 22, 2023

Good to have.

But long term the damage is:
Unity can pull the rug under you anytime. Raising prices, changing revenue schemes, revoking licenses, imposing tracking, even spyware or malware on your users... Nothing is out of the table. It really never is when you rely on close source engines, but until recently there was a confidence they would not be assholes.

The only way to be sure you are not going to be fucked off ever is using open source engines with big community support (such as Godot and many JS libraries) or open standards (most prominent here is HTML5).

Jason Petersen (he)Sep 22, 2023

@mcc (yeah the untrustworthiness/unpredictability seems the strongest effect. When I learned who the new CEO was I was thoroughly unsurprised with this mess)

ChrisAshtear Sep 22, 2023

@jason @mcc its why i struggle with how these idiot ceos make so much money when they are constantly making incredibly stupid decisions like this.

Jason Petersen (he)Sep 22, 2023

@chrisashtear i suppose moving from EA to Unity is a downgrade but otoh he seems to make such ignorant and alienating initiatives anywhere he is that idk why he continues to be in leadership at all.

As far as compensation, yeah, but I also feel that way even about C levels firing on all cylinders. But you’re right that there’s this “made man” mentality where a C level really can’t fail hard enough to end their career. 🙃

Morten Hilker-Skaaning Sep 23, 2023

@chrisashtear @jason @mcc the ipo made the investors a lot of money. "The stock is the product".