Submitted 1 year ago by stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://mobilegamer.biz/fuck-you-were-not-paying-inside-unitys-runtime-fee-fiasco/
A major partner told John Riccitiello personally that it will not pay the Runtime Fee – and in the strongest possible terms.
Thought they were dealing a death blow to applovin, hit themselves instead.
Though with what they were trying to do, I wonder if regulators will come in for the kill now.
I've yet to understand how that was even legal. "Hey you know those colors we sold you? Now that you used them to do a painting, we'll take a % on how much you sold it for"
of all the games released on Steam in 2022, only 70 have hit the million dollars threshold. I think it is misleading to bundle all “indies” in one big basket. Those 70 games can afford to pay or negociate. Don’t get me wrong, total dick and amateurish move from Unity, but the amount of people around social media who believe game devs can just hit the threshold by accident and become unprofitable is ridiculous. Current gamedev here and ex Unity employee. It is worth denouncing Unity and fighting for our indies, but understand that this affect the 0.01%, literally. 70 games out of 6000 released games on Steam in 2022. Sure most games are shit and w/e, but you get the point.
The “1 million dollar threshold” came out as a backpedal after the runtime fee backlash. It was initially pitched as retroactive, per device, and per reinstall.
The fact that they have backpedaled to “come on guys, this barely affects any of you” is purely because people dud react to a very ugly, very tone deaf, and very damaging fee scheme that did affect everyone.
70 out of 6000 is more than 1%< not 0.01%
I couldn’t get past the article’s use of the word “mediation” as a business type/label for these companies.
I hope this makes more people use Godot.
habanhero@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
So most of the indie devs will not need to pay if they are sub 1MM revenue, and the large players can just throw the weight around and negotiate the fees down? Then who is this fee meant to fleece, the “middle class” devs?
Johanno@feddit.de 1 year ago
It is still unattractive for indie devs. You risk a huge hit in your revenue when you accidentally hit the the limit. You can’t stop selling games to not hit it.
deleted@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s a cycle.
Rinse and repeat.
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
The huge hit of a maximum of 2.5% of your future revenue. Unreal takes 5% in the same situation, for comparison.
The fee itself is perfectly reasonable, Unity just completely fucked up implementing it trying to force it on games already released or in development by altering the agreements solo and stirring up a well deserved shitshow for it.
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The golden rule, as usual. The guy with the gold makes the rules.