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Unity May Never Win Back the Developers It Lost in Its Fee Debacle (www.wired.com)
submitted 2 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Unity May Never Win Back the Developers It Lost in Its Fee Debacle::Even though the company behind the wildly popular game engine walked back its controversial new fee policy, the damage is done.

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[–] 36 points 2 years ago (5 children)

We’re here on lemmy and mastodon, but Reddit and twitter still have waaaay more users. Unities move has boosted the popularity of other (open source) alternatives, sure, and if I was a game dev I would transition, but most of the devs and studios are going to need a lot more incentive to abandon the tool they spend decades getting to know

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  • [+] 36 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Good point. All unity users are basically (small) businesses, which does make a difference in how they might react. But I still think the entire platform going under because of this decision is more wishful thinking (wishing that corporate greed is punished) then an inevitability at this point in time

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    The cynic in me says nothing significant enough changed.

    Not all Unity devs are small. Especially the ones Unity is prominently targeting this for. A good example is Niantic. They made 650 million in revenue last year.

    Unity has a market share of 75% in mobile. Many major mobile titles with hundreds of millions in revenue are Unity. Plus a vast number of big publisher funded "indies", however the revenue to gain there is chump change in comparison. Ranging anywhere from 0-200k depending on annual sales and number of installs.

    Unreal's business model is taking 5% of your revenue, which is more than Unity's new cap of 4%. Which only activates at 1 million in annual revenue.

    One might argue even that small indies are not small if they reach 1 million in annual revenue. While not neglible, it's still just 40 000 if you managed to get like 200 000 installs.

    Obviously it's understandable why devs would rally to the barricades. It's their money to lose. Unity's value proposition is in how much development time they save. Which is often than not worth a lot more than 40 000 dollars given the amount of time it takes to develop an engine.

    I think Unity also offers a wide array of added value services compared to Unreal in the form of easy-to-implement IAP and ads. Both are the cancer of mobile games, but also the de facto business model on the platform.

    Their initial plan was poorly communicated and shit, but the adjustment is fair.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago

    I could still use Reddit for free. At any point, I can easily decide to install the app and use it in parallel. I can go back-and-forth with 0 consequences. My income is not dependent on my ability to access Reddit.

    Developers have made the business decision to use Unity or not, and this debacle pretty seriously impacts that decision.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Unfortunately, this is likely true. If people can keep using Twitter after all that has happened, people will certainly continue to use Unity and for more legitimate reasons.

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  • [+] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Unity also doesn't have the network effects that Twitter has. People use Twitter because the people they follow use Twitter, and those people use Twitter because enough other people use Twitter that it's the easiest place to build an audience. Network effects do exist for game engines (it's a lot easier to use a tool when enough other people use it that the solution to any given problem is likely just a web-search away) but the critical mass that needs to be overcome to become competitive is a lot lower.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    They’ll see longtime customers start to divest, I’m sure. I’d imagine most of the damage done was to their future new customer numbers. Anyone starting a project today would be pretty foolish to even consider Unity, and they’ll feel that more and more going forward. The death rattle’s begun.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I’d personally seek out any good open source alternatives before trying anything else nowadays. I’m pretty happy with blender and krita now I’m starting to get back into animation and drawing. But I’m old, I don’t know if joung people would not simply choose the one that is free-ish and more popular and better supported

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah but with the macroeconomics nowadays, this is not a good time to be losing users.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Business and the economy is doing pretty good atm tho. I feel like the whole reason for all these blatant cash grabs so many companies are doing rn, is because they made so much money last year they want to keep getting that much richer every year, which is plain stupid from a long term perspective if you ask me

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Business and the economy is doing pretty good atm tho.

    Interest is high which is why you are seeing pushes from all these companies to monetize and generate revenue. Borrowing money isn't cheap or near-free anymore, and investors are on their backs.

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