Report: Unity considering revenue-based fee caps, self-reported install numbers

Engine maker may also eliminate "retroactive" install counts for minimum thresholds.

See full article...

 

[adespoton]

Enlarge / Unity CEO John Riccitiello

No thanks; he's done that enough by himself already.

 

[perholmes]

Today, we are the happy owners of Unreal Engine Enterprise licenses. This was the kick we needed.

 

[Dhalgren]

Screw them at this point. Any dev that doesn't have plans to eliminate dependency on Unity should get started on that right away.

 

[Legatum_of_Kain]

The massive damage is done, I would not trust them to keep said changes in the future. So I’d start a mass migration to other tools, f this guy and his board.

 

[rell]

Just burn

Edit: Not even walking it back, just tweaking it in hopes of appeasement. Go to Unreal or GoDot.

 

[eldonyo]

The damage has already been done.

 

[jbaisden]

"It is a massively transformational change to our business model... I think we could have done a lot of things a lot better."

I love how when company's are doing great it's "I've done really well.", but when there's a misstep that can be undoubtedly laid at their feet, it's "We could have done a lot of things a lot better."

 

[Mondrian]

How did they make money in the precision fee-free model?

 

[smacktoward]

Any competent crisis PR professional would tell them that the only right thing to say now would be "we hear you, and we've put our plans on pause to give us time to discuss the way forward with our community." Just drop the whole subject for now. Even if you still think the plan is sound, it's been poisoned. Poking at it more will just spread the poison further. Put it aside, spend some time figuring out a way to address your concerns that won't step on the live wires this one did, then bring it back if/when you can come up with that.

I don't know if they've hired a crisis PR professional, but if they have, that person is not very good at it.

 

[adespoton]

I love how when company's are doing great it's "I've done really well.", but when there's a misstep that can be undoubtedly laid at their feet, it's "We could have done a lot of things a lot better."

Oh, it's worse than that. He's not saying "we could have done things a lot better," he's saying "no matter what we chose to do, we would have had backlash like this; don't worry unduly about it." Something something narcissist's prayer?

 

[Pitabred]

The damage has already been done.

This. Anyone starting a new project on Unity at this point is a fool, no matter what they do. They need a full mea culpa and an expulsion of leadership that let this happen to begin to have people give them some consideration.

 

[lyme]

A new licensing plan would have been easy for them. 4% of sales after 1mil, but no, they have to milk that cow raw.

 

[Danathar]

"I think we could have done a lot of things a lot better."

Ya think?

Uh yea...

 

[malor]

Good lord, this half-backpedal isn't going to do a damn thing for them. They don't even understand why people are so pissed, or they don't care.

If I were a game dev, I wouldn't even consider using their engine anymore. Until the TOS is redrafted to be truly solid and Riccitiello is out on his arse, Unity is not safe to use.

Remember, they've spent billions on buying ad and spyware companies, so the underlying goal is to force ads and spyware into Unity games. And those ideas are all Riccitiello.

 

[DarthSlack]

“I don’t think there’s any version of this that would have gone down a whole lot differently than what happened,” Unity CEO John Riccitiello reportedly said during the meeting.

Damn. That's some spectacular gaslighting right there.

Dude, ya done fucked up. If you want a business, it might be a good idea to just admit ya done fucked up and not tell everyone that it was inevitable.

 

[Deleted member 46272]

“I don’t think there’s any version of this that would have gone down a whole lot differently than what happened,” Unity CEO John Riccitiello reportedly said during the meeting. "It is a massively transformational change to our business model... I think we could have done a lot of things a lot better."

So - It couldn't have been done differently, but at the same time, "we could have done things a lot better"!? Well, which is it? Anyone with half a brain could have told them that their initial approach and announcements were overly aggressive and completely tone-deaf.

from:
https://www1.salary.com/John-Riccitiello-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-Unity-Software-Inc.htmlexcerpt formatted for clarity:

As President and Chief Executive Officer at UNITY SOFTWARE INC, John Riccitiello made $11,805,430 in total compensation. Of this total:
$380,016 was received as a salary,
$0 was received as a bonus,
$3,043,609 was received in stock options,
$8,381,805 was awarded as stock
$0 came from other types of compensation.

This information is according to proxy statements filed for the 2022 fiscal year.

Why are they paying this idiot almost $12M a year if he can't even generate a single coherent message, much less pivot to a different payment model without alienating their entire install base against them?

 

[grommit!]

How did they make money in the precision fee-free model?

I suggest you read this: https://www.pentadact.com/2023-09-16-unitys-trap/

But they have to do this, their game engine business isn’t profitable!​

Ah, I didn’t know that, perhaps because I don’t give a fuck? It’s not the customer’s job to make your business plan pay off. I didn’t ask them to offer terms that don’t work for them, I didn’t ask them to hire 7,000 people, I never even made a feature request. They asked me to pay them $10,000 in sub fees on the promise that it meant no fee per-sale, then once I was in too deep to switch, they changed the deal.

As noted, it's not their customers fault that they embarked on an acquisition spree and now need to find a way to pay for them all.

 

[Danathar]

Damn. That's some spectacular gaslighting right there.

Dude, ya done fucked up. If you want a business, it might be a good idea to just admit ya done fucked up and not tell everyone that it was inevitable.

About the only thing they could do to repair this would be for ALL of those responsible for creation and approval of the policy to quit or be fired.

 

[RuralNinja]

Whoever has a stake in this, I hope they don't back down, he's trying the oldest trick in the book. Put out a massively bad change, walk it back, and then put out a less bad change later to try and make people think they won by stopping the worse change.

 

[Kendokaa]

And what stops devs from misreporting installs?

 

[adespoton]

Any competent crisis PR professional would tell them that the only right thing to say now would be "we hear you, and we've put our plans on pause for now to give us time to discuss the way forward with our community." Just drop the whole subject for now. Even if you still think the plan is sound, it's been poisoned. Poking at it more will just spread the poison further. Put it aside, spend some time figuring out a way to address your concerns that won't step on the live wires this one did, then bring it back if/when you can come up with that.

I don't know if they've hired a crisis PR professional, but if they have, they're not very good at it.

The problem is, it's not that easy to stop the juggernaut. They've undoubtedly been planning this since at least the ironSource buyout at the executive level as a "business transformation" strategy, and have now sunk too many costs into it to turn back; the old company no longer exists, and there's nothing they can do to come out ahead that doesn't involve ignoring a sizeable number of the concerns voiced. Doing so would be to go against the wishes of their shareholders (in their view) and would likely result in punative damages to the executive and the company for not honoring agreements.

 

[numerobis]

So, basically, he's doubling down?

 

[TheBaconson]

There are a lot of Devs stuck with Unity for their current projects, but their next projects?
I think major brand damage has been done.

There’s still the legal battles all these changes are going to bring forward to go.

 

[adespoton]

And what stops devs from misreporting installs?

The fact that Unity is also tracking both the dev environment AND the installs. That's not going to change; they just won't automate the billing based on the telemetry if this blows up too much.

 

[malor]

And what stops devs from misreporting installs?

The forced spyware.

 

[marsilies]

 

[Uncivil Servant]

It gets worse, they're also saying that charity games are exempt...except that they have a rather narrow view of "charities".


https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity...hildrens-hospital-are-not-not-valid-charities

 

[marsilies]

And what stops devs from misreporting installs?

Hell, how is a dev supposed to know what the number of installs are?

Like, from the beginning, a major complaint has been nobody can realistically know how many times a game has been installed. A dev may know how many times a game has legitimately been purchased, but getting install numbers without likely GDPR-violating tracking seems impossible.

This is just passing the buck on the fact that the concept of tracking installs itself is just a nonsense way of deriving a fee.

 

[thelee]

the thing is, regardless of what they say and what promises they make, how on earth is anyone in their rational right mind going to believe them? because they already wrote down and said a lot of things that they completely undermind over the past week.

it's like the WOTC/Hasbro thing, where they tried to revoke an irrevocable license. Doesn't matter what you do after such a mishap, trust is earned through years of work and burned up at a moment's notice, and people aren't suddenly going to trust you again just because you say "whoopsie!"

 

[Tennyson]

The problem is, if the fee is still at Unity's sole discretion, there's nothing stopping them from changing the percentage next year without notice and retroactively.

The current contract gives them too much power (legally or not) and developers who allow them to keep the matches are the ones who are going to get burned.

 

[lewax00]

Why are they paying this idiot almost $12M a year if he can't even generate a single coherent message, much less pivot to a different payment model without alienating their entire install base against them?

Because he belongs to the privileged upper class. For further double standards, consider: if a rank-and-file employee does something to piss off a few customers and lose their business, they'd usually be fired. If the CEO pisses off a significant portion of your customer base, and loses a large number of customers, they still get millions of dollars.

 

[Voo42]

“I don’t think there’s any version of this that would have gone down a whole lot differently than what happened,”

It's amazing how clueless the guy still is.

It absolutely would've gone much, much better if they had gone with a simple x% of revenue and not done it retroactively.

Is the guy really that stupid or just can't stop himself from lying?

 

[RuralNinja]

Hell, how is a dev supposed to know what the number of installs are?

Like, from the beginning, a major complaint has been nobody can realistically know how many times a game has been installed. A dev may know how many times a game has legitimately been purchased, but getting install numbers without likely GDPR-violating tracking seems impossible.

This is just passing the buck on the fact that the concept of tracking installs itself is just a nonsense way of deriving a fee.

They're hoping to force a big serving of spyware into the core of the engine that phones home every time the game is ran. That's the only way this kind of scheme can work, is if each install generates a unique code, and the game phones home with that code every time its ran, so that Unity knows if its a unique instance or not.

 

[chanman819]

Any competent crisis PR professional would tell them that the only right thing to say now would be "we hear you, and we've put our plans on pause to give us time to discuss the way forward with our community." Just drop the whole subject for now. Even if you still think the plan is sound, it's been poisoned. Poking at it more will just spread the poison further. Put it aside, spend some time figuring out a way to address your concerns that won't step on the live wires this one did, then bring it back if/when you can come up with that.

I don't know if they've hired a crisis PR professional, but if they have, that person is not very good at it.

Unity leadership would have needed the self-awareness to recognize that they'd provoked a crisis and therefore need crisis management/communications expertise.

I mean, this isn't even a public-facing announcement. It's a leak of an internal all-hands where they seem to still be throwing stuff at the wall in the hope that something sticks.

 

[nash076]

"Okay, you have concerns and we hear them. We've decided that in order to address your issues, we're going to change the color of the mandatory rusty spiked dildo from orange to magenta."

 

[numerobis]

Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier cites a recording

It's pretty obvious he managed to get in on the zoom feed. His story went up way too fast.

 

[marsilies]

They're hoping to force a big serving of spyware into the core of the engine that phones home every time the game is ran. That's the only way this kind of scheme can work, is if each install generates a unique code, and the game phones home with that code every time its ran, so that Unity knows if its a unique instance or not.

If that's the case, then what is the developer "self reporting"? Just the numbers Unity already knows and is telling the developer?

If this is a small concession to games using other ad networks, then it's essentially compelling the developer and other ad network to do the same intrusive install tracking that somehow can distinguish between legit new installs and re-installs, pirated copies, charity bundle copies, etc.

 

[BlackInk]

It's amazing how clueless the guy still is.

It absolutely would've gone much, much better if they had gone with a simple x% of revenue and not done it retroactively.

Is the guy really that stupid or just can't stop himself from lying?

Dude isn't stupid. He knows exactly what he is doing.

 

[adespoton]

Unity leadership would have needed the self-awareness to recognize that they'd provoked a crisis and therefore need crisis management/communications expertise.

I mean, this isn't even a public-facing announcement. It's a leak of an internal all-hands where they seem to still be throwing stuff at the wall in the hope that something sticks.

And yes, it's worth pointing out: they haven't just alienated developers and gamers here; they've also alienated their own staff, many of whom are now seriously looking for new work.