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treasure-mimic · 2 years ago

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So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

#Unity #Unity3D #Video Games #Game Development #Game Developers #fuckshit #I don't know what to tag news like this

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honourablejester · 5 months ago

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I’m watching a (3hr) discussion on megadungeons as a concept for modern d20 games on a youtube channel called Knights of Last Call, and I’m enjoying it a lot, because it does explore a couple of points that I’ve been very much looking for. Namely, the idea that megadungeons should be there to enable and reward exploration. Which means, among other things, there can’t be a time-pressure meta plot (you have to get to the bottom of the dungeon to stop the lich before he destroys the world), and that the game/DM needs to explicitly reward (with xp, magic items, etc) the act of exploration, not the act of killing things while exploring.

Because the thing I always found enchanting about the idea of massive dungeons and complexes was the idea of going in to see what’s down there. Not being forced in for a plot, but just … because I’m curious, and I want to see what’s there. And he discusses how modern d20 games like Pathfinder and 5e can actually be better for that than OSR-type games because characters are more powerful and sturdy and can survive doing that. You can explore, and (most likely) have a decent shot of surviving said exploration. You can take risks because you’ll survive a broader range of risks.

The thing with a megadungeon is that it’s there to be explored, and so to encourage, enable and reward exploration for people who want to play that kind of game in the first place, you have to a) not penalise taking risks and going exploring by making it instantly lethal to try and go anywhere, and b) actively reward going exploring by making it the main way your character gets more cool things, such as magic items and/or new abilities from levelling up.

(And, he’s less explicit about this, but also making the rewards self-contained to the dungeon, things you find and gain in the dungeon, and not things you’d have to bring outside the dungeon to benefit from. So cool items you can keep and use, experience to level up, knowledge that would allow you to access new areas, etc, not things like gold where you’d have to go back outside to spend it, or quests that you have to go to external parties to be rewarded for).

The discussion goes into some detail about potential ways to do this, and potential problems with various methods, but overall I just really like the tone of the discussion. Because that very much is a thing I’ve been looking for for a long, long time. A game that rewards the simple desire to go somewhere and see what’s there. I don’t want to explore a massive underground complex because there’s a bad guy down there and I need to stop him, I want to explore it because there’s rumours that there’s a vast underground sea down there where creatures that haven’t been seen in aeons are rumoured to still live (blame reading Journey to the Centre of the Earth as a kid), or to discover why there’s a massive dungeon down there and learn who built it, or just because it’s a big strange space and I just want to see what it looks like.

He does talk about how you make dungeons interesting enough to justify that, things like thematically-distinct areas (like the underground lake, or the weird sunless forest, or the ghoul town, etc) so that it’s not one endless slog of ‘10ft wide corridors and stone rooms’, and to make it interconnected so that the players have full choice of where they go and what risks they want to take (enabling them to skip ahead difficulty levels, or retreat if need be, or escape areas that they’re not enjoying). And to possibly put in some distinct … not end goals, but capstone events, like a boss monster very deep down, that might feel like an ‘ending’ if the party wants to ‘finish’ the dungeon. Not something that will ‘burst out and destroy the world’, but something contained to the dungeon that a party could triumph over if they want a ‘final challenge’ sort of feeling. But one that’s optional, a challenge they can take up if they want to, not a prerequisite for getting out of the dungeon or completing a large goal, but just a challenge that exists if they want to take it on.

Because, and I do agree, a lot of the problem with exploring in D&D is not necessarily that there’s no mechanical support for it, in terms of things like skills, etc, but because there’s no reward for it, and in terms of structured adventures, there’s often either narrative or mechanical punishment for it (running out of time on the baddie, or running into something too lethal for your party to handle with no option to nope out). A megadungeon as a concept is a cool environment where exploration is the whole point, and the only point, and if you take care not to put an external pressure on it (‘kill the lich or else’), then then party has time to poke around and decide what they want to see and what risks they want to take (or nope out of). Especially in something so big that there’s no real chance of finishing it, so there’s no ‘100% completion’ pressure, just a big buffet of options for people to pick and choose from.

(There are so many things in 5e that would be excellent for an exploration game, especially in terms of spells and magic items, but because combat is so much the driving force of the standard mode of play, people are reluctant to ‘waste’ spells known/prepared and/or items attuned on things like Alarm or Water Walk or Purify Food & Drink or non-combat items like Candles of the Deep or Foldable Boats or Slippers of Spider Climbing when those slots could be used for combat spells/items instead. But if exploration gets you XP, and if you can nope out of combat as required because there’s no massive stakes/story riding on it, then you’ve got more room for these things).

There’s also an in-depth discussion on ‘game balance’ and CR, and why megadungeons might not necessarily require them, for the simple fact that everything in the dungeon is optional and not required to forward the story/plot, so you can try challenges way above your level if you’re feeling frisky that day, and just nope out and go a different way if it starts really not working for you. Which I feel is a fun point.

There is a point that this is a specific mode of play and not meant to be the point of the game in general. It’s specifically for people (like me) who want exploration as its own point and reward, without needing a quest or storyline attached, and for whom combat is an element/hazard/complication but not the point. But. If you are specifically doing a MEGADUNGEON, it’s an interesting look at things to consider and what people might want out of a massive self-contained dungeon that’s going to be the whole point of the campaign in and of itself.

Where he loses me is when the discussion moves to how to prevent the '15 Minute Adventuring Day', where people go in, do a room or two, and then go back out to rest and heal and resupply, instead of staying in the dungeon to keep exploring. And for some reason allowing healing is bad for this? If you want them to stay in the dungeon, how is it bad to let them heal in the dungeon? Set up factions to trade with and potential base camp locations in the dungeon to let them heal and resupply and set up safe areas so that they can stay in there potentially infinitely? Though it’s possible that I missed something about his point there.

But yeah. I love the idea of megadungeons, vast areas to explore just because they’re there, and I love the idea of game modes with all the cool abilities and spells and powers of D&D BUT where the thing that’s rewarded is exploration and interacting with the environment rather than combat.

(There’s also … I think this also reminds me of the story arc vs episodic discussion regarding TV, where I genuinely like episodic series equally to story-line driven ones, and I think that in games it also works, where there’s a BIG SETTING and the point is to go out and have episodic adventures in it. A loose sandbox like a megadungeon where there’s no plot, you’re just exploring and seeing what you encounter day to day (and possibly developing plots as you interact with individual areas/factions and then connect them to other ones) is also an excellent way to play a game).

Anyway. Forgive the sidebar ramble.

#ttrpgs #d&d #pf2e #megadungeons #dungeons #exploration #i just really want a game that lets me explore really cool magical environments #where my character develops and gains abilities and cool new things as a result #you know?

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