Comment on Unity backtracks, no runtime fee for <$1mil or for games on current/old versions
Rognaut@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I had a feeling this would be the case. It’s the new scummy thing to do. Set your prices ridiculously high, sparking outrage. Then, backpedal a little to quelch the unruly and everything just goes back to normal.
Unity is now scum.
GoodEye8@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The weird part is that the 2.5% royalty fee isn’t even outrageous. it’s literally half of what Unreal takes. Sure Unity also has the licensing fee for pro and enterprise packages, but for any company making +1mil in revenue the licensing fee is a non-issue. This is all speculation but I imagine if they had originally come out with the 2.5% deal (I’m excluding the “initial engagements” part because that is still fucking stupid IMO) you’d hear developers be grumpy about it but there wouldn’t have been any widespread outrage. The reasoning is what I already alluded to, Unreal takes 5% under the same conditions. In that sense I very much doubt they were trying to do the “door-in-the-face” technique, the second offer is too reasonable and the first offer was too insane. They knew how insane the initial offer was, their engineers explicitly told them it’s a horrible idea. Those same engineers gave their resignations when the management decided to go forward with it anyway.
I also doubt it’s going back to normal either. It’ll seem normal for a while because there are plenty of games in development (or being supported) right now that use Unity, but I imagine the gaming industry will slowly turn away from Unity, unless Unity does something to regain the trust of their customers.