"it mostly affects people I don't like" doesn't make it good (or legal) policy.
Take for example genshin impact: it's made in unity, has a high production value, is f2p with a in-game currency that can be purchased, and meets the threshold for the change requirements. The same company has several other similarly modeled games released across multiple platforms (PC and PlayStation).
Without any sort of heads up this company now will face massive charges because of high install volume, especially if the average user installs on multiple devices, but low individual income.
Should Hoyoverse have to remake all of their games in a new engine or deal with this new price structure with no way to plan for how much the new structure will cost them?
The game is also often review bombed by rival games. What would stop a rival company from setting up a bot that just mass installs on VMs to try and charge up their bill?
If that company sticks with the pricing structure there is a high chance production value will go down simply because costs have skyrocketed.
Unity has basically entrapped developers. Whether the devs are worth saving doesn't come into play - whether you can trap someone into using your product then retroactively charge them for their success is the question, and I think most game devs would say "no".
"Take for example genshin impact: it's made in unity, has a high production value, is f2p with a in-game currency that can be purchased, and meets the threshold for the change requirements. The same company has several other similarly modeled games released across multiple platforms (PC and PlayStation)."
From what I can tell, if you were to sell a $5 game made with Unity and made $200,000 per year, the total charge would be $8,000. But that charge would be $40k if your game was only $1 and $800 if your game sold for $50. For Unity Pro if you made $10 million selling 1 million copies you would be charged $60,000. That same studio making $10 million on a game written with Unreal Engine would be charged $500,000 in royalties. That is far more than $60k for Unity. It still appears that Unity is the budget option, it just isn't quite as cheap as it used to be.
Considering Unity has a negative operating margin of around 50%, it seems clear they need to start making more money. Customer acquisition and R&D costs have been growing much faster than revenue so they need to start making more money somewhere. R&D costs have risen by 275% over the past 3 years, and sales/marketing costs have increased 175%. Revenue has only increased 150% over the same period.
The problem isn't that Unity is changing their pricing model, it's that without warning they have changed their terms to a highly volatile pricing model that is holding game developers hostage.
Also that they hired thousands of people based on the assumption that they’d be selling tons of ads. That 50% unprofitability was a choice made by their management.
> The game is also often review bombed by rival games. What would stop a rival company from setting up a bot that just mass installs on VMs to try and charge up their bill?
This is FUD, but its covered by Unity FAQ. Either way, I would like to see "rivals", aka game studios, developing such amazing technology.. it would show even more that such "indie studios", developing high addictive, full of ads and "in game currency" are just bad for the whole game ecosystem and society.
there is no amazing technology to develop. I a random guy on the internet, could set up a bot with existing technology right now to just keep making VMs and installing the game. It would take an evening. Hell it doesn't even have to be a rival game company, it could literally be someone on 4chan who thought it would be funny.
Take for example genshin impact: it's made in unity, has a high production value, is f2p with a in-game currency that can be purchased, and meets the threshold for the change requirements. The same company has several other similarly modeled games released across multiple platforms (PC and PlayStation).
Without any sort of heads up this company now will face massive charges because of high install volume, especially if the average user installs on multiple devices, but low individual income.
Should Hoyoverse have to remake all of their games in a new engine or deal with this new price structure with no way to plan for how much the new structure will cost them?
The game is also often review bombed by rival games. What would stop a rival company from setting up a bot that just mass installs on VMs to try and charge up their bill?
If that company sticks with the pricing structure there is a high chance production value will go down simply because costs have skyrocketed.
Unity has basically entrapped developers. Whether the devs are worth saving doesn't come into play - whether you can trap someone into using your product then retroactively charge them for their success is the question, and I think most game devs would say "no".