this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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The Unity Games That Could be Impacted Most by Controversial Fees, From Silksong to Cult of the Lamb - IGN (www.ign.com)
submitted 1 year ago by shish_mish to c/technology
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

So there’s a little nuance here. They aren’t going to charge you for the downloads that already happened, it’s on all downloads moving forward, even if the game has already been released. I still think it’s ridiculous, but it is not the same as suddenly hitting you with a bill for all the downloads the game already had. That would not hold up in any court. But the latter case…we’ll see. Depends on the specifics of the initial agreement I suppose. Totally possible they are within their rights even if it’s scummy.

Correct me if I’m wrong, that’s my understanding. I don’t think if you had a million downloads last year, for instance, you’ll be charged for those.

[–] Subverb 32 points 1 year ago

No, you won't be charged retroactively for previous downloads. But the change does retroactively affect games previously released on Unity.

So last year you made decisions on your game's price and revenue model that are no longer true. if you made your small game free to play with microtransactions and its had more than 200,000 installs you're probably shitting yourself. Unity will be charging $0.20 per install even if it's to the same device multiple times. A million installs of your game is you having to write a check to Unity for $160,000 for installations alone.

So your microtransactions game now must average a spend of at least $0.20 per install, plus per seat licensing of Unity, plus your overhead for it to even begin to make a profit.

And Unity has said that multiple installations on the same device will all be charged. So it's inevitable that script kiddies with bad attitudes are going to install a game thousands of times. Unity has said you can appeal this type of behavior, but that puts the onus of detecting and reporting this stuff on the devs, further increasing their workload and risk.