Godot

I feel like I have been waiting for that guy forever.

Yeah, in light of the existence and steady improvement of the Godot engine, feels like not a great time to be pissing off a lot of your customers.

Definitely going Godot for the future. Just the knowledge that I don't have to worry about licensing is priceless.

They'd have to get steam to tell them each time a game was downloaded to a different device so they could invoice. And apple.. and google... and random websites..

Or they make the client phone home each time it's run, which is going to cause its own mess of issues (firewalls, that kind of thing.. some of the corporate firewalls we run our app behind would raise lots of alarm bells at something like that).

Lol get this, I don't know if I heard right, but the install count was based on their own telemetry added to the game. SO if someone pirated your game, it could still count as an install.

Yeah this feels like Wizard of the Coast's first response to the OGL drama. Make some changes that are technically better than the first terrible system, but is ultimately still completely unacceptable. WotC eventually had to walk back everything, we'll see if Unity does the same.

I'm sure the CEO put plenty of thought in how much they could cash out before destroying the company and moving on to the next company to destroy

its a toss up that theyll even do that these days though.

companies are so bold now knowing theres a strong chance theyll get away with whatever bullshit while losing minimal consumers.

Yeah, it's not a great tactic because even if you walk it back and always intended to. People who take what you say at face value are left thinking that's what you wanted to do and might still want to do it if you can manage the PR better in the future. And the people who figure out what you were really doing see that you will lie to manipulate the reaction to what you really want to do.

Targeting installs (which based on another article with their wording they still intend to do, just with an asterisk now) was a bad approach. They should set up different payment options for the new subscription service model rather than try to fit one solution to two wildly different customer models.

It doesn't matter, they've shown their hand.

If not now, then when?

This is what libertarians call innovation.

The back tracking isn't even a reversal. They just said they were going to keep the charges but try to reduce the impact of "install bombing".

Some companies are already announcing the elimination of their games starting in January. Cult of the lamb, for example.

It even applies to new installs of existing games.

The original announcement stated it was retroactive

That's not always the case. GOG games have no serial, the installer is the same for everybody. Charging "by install" is quite impossible of they really mean that a single user would not create two charges.

Also, games will need to ping unity servers? Are they already doing that...? This all gets weirder the more you think about it