Unity Faces Mass Outrage & Revolt From Devs After Charging Fees For Game Installs

Im done with Unity at this point...

What about multiple accounts on those devices

What a fucking pickpocket

I'd like to know if a game gets refunded do the developers get a refund on their runtime fee as well?

“We’re not gouging”
If you weren’t gouging you wouldn’t have had to specify that

Hoyoverse and apple Microsoft and Samsung and Sony Android and Amazon boutta shred unity

FTC is going to be all over this. How any board hires John R. is unbelievable.

Id just wouldnt pay em. Id fight it and say its a scam etc...

Bruuuuuuuuh THIS IS EA LEVEL OF BULLSHIT

Unity is dead. If you aren't already working on a game that is well on its way to being finished, you should just forget that Unity even exists at this point. There is no saving it.

Just sickening that he actually had the nerve to charge for a clip reload. Wow. Im so glad this dude resigned. If he didnt the gaming community and devs would rise up and bankrupt Unity. Im shore it was probably a bad work environment with this dude as CEO.

Almost rivals the fine Bros with the genius idea to copyright the whole GENRE of reacting

Heres a metaphore for this situation, and it looks like an old James Bond movie with Scaramanga : Evil villan giving free coke then once the victimes are hooked, charge money to get more coke.

frack ea

Yeah, ain't no one gonna play a game where we gotta pay to reload.

I don't think even Unity realizes just how bad this is. Consider the fact that, according to THEM, 61% of developers use THEIR game engine. Now consider that the sane ones are most likely going to back away from unity as soon as this fee goes into effect. Hundred to thousands of critical titles being pulled off the digital shelves at Steam, Ubisoft, Blizzard(just heartstones as far as i researched), Nintendo, heck even EA, all in response to this. Games being suddenly removed from the shelves means lost revenue from that game, which considering this is 61% of them, this will hurt these companies and every developer, indie company and big boy company that relies on unity to make these games.
Unity is basically trying to NUKE THE ENTIRE VIDEOGAME INDUSTRY by pulling this sort of stunt. And there's not a SINGLE chance that EVERYONE isn't gonna try to stop them from detonating themselves.

granted, this is all assuming Unity is right about their 61% dev users. But nonetheless it will force the hands of everyone, from small indie devs to big corperates, to either stop the mad man from doing this, or accept Unity's destruction.

on the other hand i could be wrong about this. the big corperates probably could afford to tank the fees, but idk
update: i just learned they backed down already, so this whole comment was a waste of time :/

Hi, I've been learning godot for 2 weeks now. I still have to do some work, but it turned out that switching to a different engine once the project has started is not as difficult as it seemed. At least when you make it yourself.

yea my gf was literally gonna use unity to make her final year uni project but not after this bs. Now she gonna do it in unreal. As a very rich guy once said "reputation is an odd thing it takes your whole life to build it up and 5 minutes to destroy it" and yes I am paraphrasing. However I think its very much the right mindset to have now, its clear very clear corporate greed has infested Unity just like basically anything thats super successful(just premier pro and the other super successful highly monetized and corporatized software systems etc know not to bite the hand that feeds em and yea making the stockholders happy is good but even with all their money they "invest" they still aint the customers).

i think this is almost if not as bad of an idea as whenx box made drm for one of there gaming consoles where its always on line and camera has to be connected .
even if thay sayd the camera wont record wnen in sleep mode i still have a problem with that and i dont think im alone in that .
i think there stock if they have any will fall fast with people that will never return .
i know if i was making a game i woulnt use them because if thay decide to pull back on this what is stopping them from adding it latter with no public announcement ?
its best to use others that are less likely to do this

lol Jim Ryan got fired. Good

Unity is dead. As a software developer myself I can confidently say that. Software has and always will be open source. Unity was built using other lower level programming languages. Would it make sense for those programming languages to charge Unity for each Unity download? No? Yeah thought so. Everyone will just migrate to Unreal or other engines instead

shouldn't this immediately be picked up by the SEC, because if the bosses AND the CEO have sold stock right before implementing what is easily seen as a damaging move, this would be considered stockmanipulation

Is it his fault or the board of directors?

Tomer Bar Zeev

Roelof Botha

Egon Durban.

dont forget taxes, and steam/xbox/ps4/nintendo 20 to 30% they take. so they will make nothing

Start a crowd funding campaign which includes every company that is going to need to migrate their games. I will give a percentage of every paycheck just so these companies can get out from under Unities boot. I cannot stand this EA former CEO that heads Unity. He is so damn greedy. he is the guy that wanted to charge real money per bullet in COD. These corporate Boards are full of complete morons. Why the hell would anybody want to appoint a person like this as their CEO. His resume must not have mentioned that he lead EA to the title of Worst Game Company of the year 2 years straight.

There must be some kind of joke in "unity" vs "separation" or "dividing" that I can't quite think of.

him and bobby kotic(?) kotic(?) are probably [censored] each other off hard every day.

both can teach courses about how to destroy the gaming industry....

Somebody should take Riccitiello to a theatre, tell him his movie is free, then pause it every 10 minutes and ask if he wants to continue by getting up and walking into the hallway to a kiosk to pay more and more money to keep watching. That's basically how his idea of monetization works.

What constitutes a "demo" percentage of completion wise under these rules?

If they're not charging for demos you could theoretically release a game at full price absolutely 'complete' gameplay wise but with a single item locked (some bs leaderboard stat or a bonus level or something) as a 'demo' since it's technically not the full game and then release a second version with this content unlocked at a 20 cent higher fee to cover the install cost 🤔

Last EA tittle i have is one that was originally Bioware
never buying EA and feeding their way of thinking according to my way of thinking
EA fudge the players get more money

Capitalists are so greedy nowadays that they start sabotaging theur own businesses. Hollywood, gaming industry... Who's next on the chopping block?

Capital is the reason these companies can do this. The less regulated capitalism is, the more corporations will behave this way. So it either needs to be regulated more or replaced with a better system. Corporations and CEOs have too much protection as it is.

now what should i do ? my laptop cant run unreal engine at all.

Not even install "bombing", what bad people can do is make an infinite number of fake computers that mask mac address and IP and everything, and now they can screw over the developers

people shouldn't even be debating or wondering what will happen. The company have shown their shady, money hungry selves and everyone should just switch to unreal or something else.

Now people are considering Unreal Engine and Godot.

Sounds like Unity wants to try and profit off pirating, game sharing and subscriptions.

The (trust me bro) lingo lends to this. I seriously doubt that Unity can actually track installs.
Unless they plan to install spyware into their software.

Ah, the EA/Microshaft school of business; recklessly and shamelessly pursuing short-term gain at the expense of reputation and long-term sustainability.

This HAS to be grounds for a lawsuit. Straight up.

Insider trading. ILLEGAL!! as hell

Looks like some people need to be doing some Martha Stewart jail time.

I don't think this is even legal.
While the U.S. is a bit behind when it comes to internet law.
If you give tools and engines out, you may be able to charge for the tools upfront - and perhaps even sign a business contract where earnings are split or there is a recurring payment in exchange for services rendered... but supplying tools to a business, then charging that business for every time a CUSTOMER uses their product? That doesn't seem legal.

Imagine a repair man fixes a ride in an amusement park, then says: "I will now sit here and count how many people go on the ride. For each person that enters the ride, I will charge you $1."
> Charge? How? You're going to bill me for whenever someone engages with my business? That's none of your concern, you do not own me.
If it goes to court, how will it be argued?
"The repair man has a right to charge for his service"? That doesn't work.
"The repair man drafted a contract that the business willingly submitted to"? That doesn't void the entity's right to sovereignty.

This reminds me of that age old "Right to repair" stance where businesses often have (and still do) try to force people to pay for the enjoyment and engagement of the product that they already purchased.
I do not think for a moment that in front of a court, Unity would walk away with the right to bill businesses for each customer that they have, and I certainly don't think they'd be allowed to bill unwitting third parties for distributing it.

Imagine a man sells a donut machine to a business - charges a monthly fee, sort of like a lease.
A different person does the same, a woman sells a donut machine and charges monthly as well.
A man and a woman separately do this.
The woman charges the business based on its revenue as a business partnership: "I supply the machine that makes your business run, give me a cut of the money - maybe 10% of your gross."
This works because the business has agency over its earnings and can enter a partnership - its money is in its own control and cannot feasibly be overcharged.
The man, on the other hand, charges based on how many customers eat donuts: "I'm the reason your donuts exist. I will bill you $1 every time someone eats one of your donuts, regardless of where they are - additionally, I will charge anyone distributes your donuts for each one consumed."
This doesn't work because the business has no control over who eats their donuts or how, and the man has no true way of determining exactly which donuts are eaten by whom or where; the man is charging a business for HOW the individual customers choose to enjoy the product.

"I am an engineer, I will build this engine and place it in the car that you want to sell. But I will charge YOU for every 10,000 miles driven by whoever you sold it to."

Analogies, I know.
But it doesn't sound like there's an actual legal mechanism that would allow a Unity to do this, especially to a third party.
I imagine that they honestly think that they're too big to be challenged and are supremely powerful over their customers - but brought before a court, I don't think their plan would hold up beneath the weight of legal scrutiny.

Aside from raising the price on Unity software for developers. John and Unity wants to charge develpers for every game install that occurs. Thats is just psycotic and downright even. Being the previous CEO of EA tells me everything i need to about this scumbag. This is pure evil corporate greed to the more severe degree i ever seen in my whole and a serious overstep in gaming history. I hope developers fight back and sue Unity. The fact that shareholders sold their shares days or even weeks prior to this announcement says there may be insider trading going on. I hope the SEC investigates this matter. I wonder what's going to be the response of the Titans in the tech space like Microsoft, Apple, Nintendo, and Sony among other for example.

It does not matter... all you've said doesn't matter... this model can not work.. If there is a software which tracks installs on a system IT WILL BE MANIPULATED, even if you have to run a server to fake responses... this shit will not work... it's laughable. Do they think customers are this stupid? They will get their Buttocks handed to them by hacking activists in no time... Charging for installs is just plain stupid... As long as people are able to cut off their internet, as they should be, it's IMPOSSIBLE TO HANDLE!

And this guy is in the wrong market he’s trying to literally nickel and dime gaming treating the gamers like cattle and possibly the developers like slaves this guy probably watches Konami religiously for every move they make and then some he probably has a lot of TENCENT friends

Honestly, some of you need to quit whining anytime a company asks you for a few more cents to use their proprietary systems.

What a weirdly and suddenly greedy move. Jarvis pull up the demographics of the board of directors of unity. Ah. It’s (((them))) again.

just corporate tightening the noose around the little guys necks, tell me that they are not hell bent on owning everything.