Unity reveals plans to charge per game install, drawing criticism from development community

[rusty_shackleford]

Mod a UE game that provides a version of Unreal with blueprint modding support:
start by downloading a 300gb sdk

"nooooo that's not troo!!!!"


UE4/5 is an unholy abomination.

What year is this..?

The Conan DevKit is below 80 gigs.. it might be around 60 or 70? I don't even remember.
Fallout 4 is about 100 Gigs.. That game came out in 2014..
How big were BG3 and Starfield again? If you installed both those games that's close to 300 gigs right there with compression.


As Todd would say "Go buy a new computer you poor ******"

The devkit is not the game, it's a completely separate install.

[Shillitron]

"nooooo that's not troo!!!!"


UE4/5 is an unholy abomination.

What year is this..?

The Conan DevKit is below 80 gigs.. it might be around 60 or 70? I don't even remember.
Fallout 4 is about 100 Gigs.. That game came out in 2014..
How big were BG3 and Starfield again? If you installed both those games that's close to 300 gigs right there with compression.


As Todd would say "Go buy a new computer you poor ******"

The devkit is not the game, it's a completely separate install.

Devkit lets you compile the game with your changes, it depends how many assets they include in it.
Conan publishes a small sandbox cut out of their game with the non-DLC assets which cuts the size in half.. some devs just publish the entire game with a devkit control enabled.

It's up to the game dev what they do. But a good devkit will let you compile the game with your modded changes for testing, so it's going to have the bulk of resources needed to do that.

[rusty_shackleford]

What year is this..?

The Conan DevKit is below 80 gigs.. it might be around 60 or 70? I don't even remember.
Fallout 4 is about 100 Gigs.. That game came out in 2014..
How big were BG3 and Starfield again? If you installed both those games that's close to 300 gigs right there with compression.


As Todd would say "Go buy a new computer you poor ******"

The devkit is not the game, it's a completely separate install.

Devkit lets you compile the game with your changes, it depends how many assets they include in it.
Conan publishes a small sandbox cut out of their game with the non-DLC assets which cuts the size in half.. some devs just publish the entire game with a devkit control enabled.

It's up to the game dev what they do. But a good devkit will let you compile the game with your modded changes for testing, so it's going to have the bulk of resources needed to do that.

The one example that you can actually point to of having a devkit takes normal people more time to download than to mod a unity game.

[Pretty Princess]

lol

[rusty_shackleford]

we're gonna kill obsidian for good, boys

[Pretty Princess]

top kek!

[Shillitron]

This is gonna take all of 12 minutes to figure out.. Unity has no direct access to Steam metrics or sales, they aren't allowed to collect identifiable information from users without permission.. (Which they can't retroactively ask for on already installed runtimes), so they are really gonna be doing some ******** **** to make this even work.

Some 4channer is going to Wireshark this Jan 1st - when it goes live, publish the payload and it's gonna be over. (My money is on a fingerprint hash in your registry, I think Unity is already generating them - either that or they generate literally nothing and every reinstall just counts lmfaoooo)

Unity has already confirmed that this phone-home call will not block a game from starting.. so either people will
A) Mass produce a policy / tool that blocks registering an install to protest Unity
B) Mass Install / Uninstall games to punish developers who use Unity - Actually **** that.. just spoof the install packet and spam that instead, over a distributed network, with rotating payloads / keys / whatever.. I can picture botnets literally tanking a game rofl.

Or both.

[Shillitron]

I just had another thought...

RPGMaker's latest engine is built on Unity.. (RPGMaker Unite)

They sell the engine for 60 dollars or whatever.. When you make a game with their Unity based engine.. are you making a unity game.. or a RPGMaker game.. (I guess it depends on if there's unity runtime bundled in your game which there very likely is..)

RPGMaker will have to pay per installation of their engine.. cause they sell you it with a unity runtime..
But that means every person who buys their engine.. then makes a game.. has to now ALSO pay per installation of their game too..

Oy Vey!

[The_Mask]

Oy Vey!

Cool it with the antisemitic remarks.

[Shillitron]

I was told this:

We leverage our own proprietary data model, leveraging both our own data and also third party data where available and appropriate. In the case where our data and a customer's data do not align, we will do our best to reoslve the issue, and we will have a process for the sales ops and finance teams to help resolve.

I honestly expect the way we count installs change over the coming months/years. Today the Unity runtime does not do tracking so we are not getting actual server pings for every install.
As for answering your actual question, game updates generally don't wipe game save state. So you know it's not a new install even without knowing who the user is.

Both from a Unity Employee.
Further confirms what I said earlier.

Getting mixed messages on Reinstalls.. First they said it counts.. then they said it doesn't. Their forum / twitter is undergoing nuclear fallout right now. It's hilarious to watch.

[rusty_shackleford]

In the case where our data and a customer's data do not align, we will do our best to reoslve the issue,

Good news is they won't have to worry about it, because the number will be 0.

[agentorange]

John Riccotelo, the current ceo of unity, is the same guy who said devs are ******* idiots for not focusing on microtransactions. I guess this is a way of building microtransactions in at the engine level.

https://www.ign.com/articles/former-ea- ... t-f-idiots

"I’ve seen great games fail because they tuned their compulsion loop to two minutes when it should have been an hour. Sometimes, you wouldn’t even notice the product difference between a massive success and tremendous fail, but for this tuning and what it does to the attrition rate. There isn’t a developer on the planet that wouldn’t want that knowledge."

Better work on those compulsion loops and hope your own games microtransactions recoup the per install micropayments!

[Tweed]

I can't wait to bankrupt dozens of companies just by installing their games!

[rusty_shackleford]

https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-bosses- ... g-eyebrows

Unity executives sold thousands of shares in the weeks leading up to last night's hugely controversial announcement it will soon charge developers when one of their games is downloaded.

[Segata]

we're gonna kill obsidian for good, boys

[agentorange]

https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-bosses- ... g-eyebrows

Unity executives sold thousands of shares in the weeks leading up to last night's hugely controversial announcement it will soon charge developers when one of their games is downloaded.

"Shlomo Dovrat, meanwhile, sold 68k shares on 30th August for around $2.5m."

Can't make this **** up.

[Jason Bright]

we're gonna kill obsidian for good, boys

Men talking like women in their teens/20s has to be one of the worst consequences of the 2010s cultural shift and the ubiquity of social media.
If his profile picture wasn't there I would just assume it was a woman speaking.

[rusty_shackleford]

There's no definitive evidence that Sawyer is not a woman.

[Segata]

Men talking like women in their teens/20s has to be one of the worst consequences of the 2010s cultural shift and the ubiquity of social media.
If his profile picture wasn't there I would just assume it was a woman speaking.

They all imagine themselves like they're in a Joss Whedon film

[Shillitron]

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[Shillitron]

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[Acrux]

Unironically they should bring back Flash games.

[Vergil]

we're gonna kill obsidian for good, boys

TOD (Total Obsidian Death)

[maidenhaver]

we're gonna kill obsidian for good, boys

TOD (Total Obsidian Death)

This is because I went to church. Jesus gave me a sign.

[NotAI]

Yeah, I'm happier now that we went with Unreal.

BTW, you can somewhat guess what the logic of this type of change of terms might have been, it's not completely stupid. Only half stupid.

Presumably all devs would be nudged to include microtransactions in their unity games by such new license terms?

Any other theories?

[Shillitron]

Seeing all these gay *** indie companies publish their "ILL NEVER USE UNITY AGAIN!!!" bulletin boards on twitter & plebbit, usually with some non-primary color scheme (usually like magenta-tang orange and liquiblue or whatever the ****) and all their names are like "Lumberjack Heros" or "Blue Cat Sword Inc" with these gay pixel logos and quirky san francisco style "cute but ironic" aesthetics..

I really can't take a side on this.. It brings me joy that both sides are losing.

[Lich]

Their games will look like **** regardless of what they use because they have **** taste.

[KnightoftheWind]

Hopefully this will lead to a lot less shovelware being produced, and the talented developers that do want to make games can use Godot or other Free Software engines.

[NotAI]

Hopefully this will lead to a lot less shovelware being produced, and the talented developers that do want to make games can use Godot or other Free Software engines.

Second, re: Godot.

[1998]

Men talking like women in their teens/20s has to be one of the worst consequences of the 2010s cultural shift and the ubiquity of social media.
If his profile picture wasn't there I would just assume it was a woman speaking.

They all imagine themselves like they're in a Joss Whedon film

Besides that there is no way he is reviewing THOUSANDS of Unity pitches a year, why would Unity going down being THE worst thing for that person? Its not that it would kill gaming, he would just need to review other engines games. It would rather make his life easier by eliminating all kinds of cheap asset flips.

I don't know who that ******* is, but likely just a random Twi....XXXXXX ***.