Review bombing, meet revenue bombing.

Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off::Unity has announced that starting on January 1st, 2024, it will implement a new pricing model that will charge developers based on how many times a game was installed.

  • orizuru@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    62·
    1 year ago

    According to the article, it’s not retroactively charged, but still bad if your game is about to come out and you haven’t accounted for this.

    • Humanius@lemmy.worldEnglish
      32·
      1 year ago

      https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-reveals-plans-to-charge-per-game-install-drawing-criticism-from-development-community

      Other articles I have been reading on the topic do mention it:

      Unity has also clarified the changes are “not retroactive or perpetual”, noting it will only “charge once for a new install” made after 1st January 2024. However, while it won’t be charging for previously made installs, fees do indeed apply to all games currently on the market, meaning should any existing player of an older game that exceeds Unity’s various thresholds decide to re-install it after 1st January, a charge will still be made.

      When I say that it applies retroactively, I mean that it applies to games released in the past.
      It’s true that they are not retroactively charging devs for past downloads. That would have been even worse.

          • harrim4n@feddit.deEnglish
            16·
            1 year ago

            I’d be interested to know how they’re going to track this? They’d need to create some sort of fingerprint for each device, and store it together will all already installed games / software in some sort of database in perpetuity.

            • CaptainAniki@lemmy.flight-crew.orgEnglish
              15·
              1 year ago

              This seems like it would be comically easy to side-step and a billing nightmare for Unity to staff and support. One of those things that retarded C-suit and BCG assholes think up not realizing that deeply unpopular moves become logistical nightmares for the company trying to enact them.

              • MotoAsh@lemmy.worldEnglish
                9·
                1 year ago

                Nahh, they are absolutely fine charging the dev 100 times for the 100 times a GPU reviewer installed the game on a fresh system. That’s 100 billings! All they see is money.

            • Veloxization@yiffit.netEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              Saw this screenshot on Mastodon. They won’t tell how they’re going to track it exactly but it sounds like some weird estimation work.

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