This year looks to be the year of corporate seppuku, and up next on the chopping block is Unity, one of the game engines used to make games right here on newgrounds.com.
So, what'd they do?
Starting January 1st 2024, they plan to charge relatively successful devs (200,000 installs/life to date and 200,000$ or more in income for the last 12 months) who get their games installed 0.20$ on the regular rate.
And their clarifications on this matter just makes it WORSE somehow.
Hope you're good with just handing out charity copies, and just asking for donations if Unity is your go-to engine.
So if your game gets over 200,000 installs (yes, not unique installs), I hope you got a wallet chonkier than a big time gacha game dev's because this is gonna start costin' ya somethin' REEEEEEEEAL UGLY. That isn't a shot in the foot, that is straight up blowing your legs off. What the hell were they thinking?
Of course, devs who've been using Unity are NOT taking this lightly.
Multiple developers have pointed out the obvious issues with this new fee, that would essentially be a meatgate to F2P games, mobile developers, and the small of indie developers suddenly finding they have a hit on their hands.
It would be a system where developing a successful game on Unity could bankrupt the developer behind that hit.
Shit's on fire lol.
This is just going to push devs to other platforms. Godot is totally free. Unreal is only 5% of revenue over $1M (50,000/million bucks).
No company is going to agree to a contract that opens them up to unlimited liability based on an interaction between third parties (Unity and customers installing their game) that they can't even audit. What then? Big game studios moving away from it, leaving small-time devs to get "taxed"?
What exactly the end-goal here?
This is a stupid business idea. Of course, it still looks like stupid business. Another thought I've had is that it might just be corporate sabotage. You almost never actually hear of it, but it definitely exists. This is suicidal enough to make me suspicious.
It would seem that the ancient pasta has come to pass.
What a future, huh?
Me, I'm using Flash MX2004 as the Old Gods intended. Complete with a serial number provided by Adobe lolololololol
OviManic
Despite my frustrations on that engine, I’m so glad I used Clickteam Fusion for my games! Unity started to stink anyways once they require you to have an account to use the free version!
Yomuchan
When I get home, imma check out your game.