Real short version: Unity is a game engine that was (up to a few days ago) used extensively by independent gaming companies because it was effectively royalty free at their level. That has now changed: starting in July, once games using Unity hit a certain threshold of revenue and installation, those companies will start getting charged a twenty cent per-installation fee*. The company’s also planning to look at lifetime revenue/installations, which means that if your game dates from, say, 2019 you’ve just been told that you’re eligible for fees going forward**.
This being the Internet, everybody’s now screaming at Unity (the company). I can’t say that I blame them, but that’s almost entirely because of Unity’s plans to use pre-2024 numbers to calculate fee eligibility. I am perfectly in agreement with the idea that people can start charging for their product, but it is exceedingly poor corporate practice to piss off your potential customers by trying to squeeze extra money out of them. I would recommend that Unity — well, I would recommend a time machine. Absent that, they should drop consideration of pre-2024 use and raise the minimum requirements for fee applicability.
They will not, of course, do this.
Moe Lane
*To give you a benchmark: Unreal Engine‘s fee is five percent of gross revenue over a million dollars American.
**They won’t try to make those companies pay fees on retroactive downloads, probably because the very idea excites specialists in corporate law.
I think there’s something sketchy about the idea of telling people that your product is free to use, getting them to invest heavily in building things that use your product as a platform, and then telling them you’re going to charge them for the results. Like, “the old version was free, the new one is not” is one thing, but suddenly declaring that you want a 20% cut of the gross *after* they put it through development?
“We’re going to retroactively make you unprofitable in a way that we led you to not expect” is kind of BS. Videogame dev times aren’t short.
I see two things coming out of this. First one is that the value of having “skilled Unity programmer” on your resume is going to drop precipitously. They may be able to extract some short-term cash out of this one, but the value of the platform is going to crater. Second is that startup shops in general are going to be getting a lot more careful about the details of the licenses they use.
This is what happens when you hire an EA zek* as your CEO.
WotC breathes a sigh of relief as they hand over the dunce cap.
*Obligatory note that Activision and Zenimax were equally enthusiastic about slaughtering golden geese.