Unity Overhauls Controversial Price Hike After Game Developers Revolt
Unity Overhauls Controversial Price Hike After Game Developers Revolt
Maker of video-game development tools backtracks after customers threaten boycott
Under the tentative new plan, Unity will limit fees to 4% of a game’s revenue for customers making over $1 million and said that installations counted toward reaching the threshold won’t be retroactive, according to recording of the meeting reviewed by Bloomberg. Last week, Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello delayed an all-hands meeting on the pricing changes and closed two offices after the company received what it said was a credible death threat.
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One of the most controversial elements of the policy concerned how Unity would track installations of its software. Although the company first said it would use proprietary tools, Whitten said Monday management will rely on users to self-report the data.
I'm not a game developer but they seem to have left the worst part mostly intact. I can understand Unity getting a cut of sales but I don't understand them getting a payment everything a game is installed.
It's good that they're limiting their fees to a percentage of revenue, but it seems high.
These days corporations love to bargain this way. Door in the face, big uproar on socials, back down publicly (but to a deal they would have been happy with anyway).
Yup. Lots of people were saying that right at the start too. That unity was only doing this to make the real shit-sandwich slightly more palatable when they finally unveiled it.
Because if they had simply announced that they were going to be taking 4% of game companies’ revenue, the game companies would have rioted. But now Unity can claim that they’re doing it because “we listened to you and made adjustments accordingly. See how reasonable we’re being?”
Movie directors are known to do something similar when trying to avoid an Adults Only rating. An AO rating kills movie sales, because you can’t take your teenage kid with you to see it. So directors will shoot for R ratings instead. They’ll have a movie that should probably be rated AO, but then they’ll throw in one horribly shocking scene, right in the middle of the movie. Then when the raters come out of the movie, the director has a chance to go over the rating with them and negotiate. The raters all go “it’s definitely rated AO because of that one scene.” And so the director “reluctantly” agrees to pull that scene if they’ll agree to rate it R instead. The raters don’t remember any of the other stuff that should’ve pushed it towards an AO rating, because that one scene was so out of proportion. So they happily agree to rate it R without that scene. Now the director has the R rating they wanted, while still getting to keep lots of Adult Only content in the movie. The director never intended to keep that one scene in the movie. It was sacrificial, so the raters would have something to compromise on.
The "limit to 4% over 1 mil" is also clearly just barely undercutting Unreal's 5% over 1 mil.
The shit sandwich is still very much here. This is still a grotesque change. I hope people will still view this for what it is.
Walking back the "reporting" aspect and saying users will self-report their install counts is honestly just confusing. That felt like one of the most ridiculous pitches and walking it back just doesn't make any sense.
They're going after f2p mobile apps that get jillions of installs, but where they don't get a cut of money unless they use unity's ad service or a few other things. They look at those numbers and drool.
And install count is something they can actually get a rough idea on based on data provided by Apple and Google. I'm convinced this is mostly what their "proprietary algorithm" for counting installs is, at least for mobile. Assuming they really don't have something in the runtime dialing home.
But this is mostly about mobile apps, which is where most of the money is. It's most of the money in gaming. It's most of their revenue, and they dominate (something like 60% of mobile games use Unity). Other platforms are mostly afterthoughts though obviously they want whatever money they can get.
Negotiation 101. Start by asking more than is reasonable so that you can re-counter with what you actually planned in the first place.
I've seen this backfire horribly multiple times, so I don't think it's good advice. People aren't that simple.
In this case, many studios have already made plans to jump from Unity after the first announcement, so I'm sure there'll be some kind of "negotiated agreement" that's completely meaningless because people are already migrating away as fast as possible.
That's why it's 101. In 102 you learn to that while asking for more than you actually wants, to then negotiate back down to what you want, is a good strategy. You should never go completely balls to the wall on that first bid because then you will just be thrown out immediately.
They already did the damage. No one trusts them anymore.
The familiar tactic of making disastrously bad decisions, apologizing and sneaking some of it back into the product.
You know what they need to 'haul?
They need to haul that Riccitiello under a keel.