mcc
@mcc

Tuesday before last, Unity out of nowhere dropped an announcement that they were changing their pricing structure, killing the Plus tier and introducing a new, completely unworkable pricing scheme based on "installs". After a series of meaningless "clarifications", today Unity issued a partial walkback. You should read that, I'm not really going to summarize it.

I have three thoughts.

The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond.

Thought 1: The fact that the new fees only apply to future versions is the critical change in this latest announcement, and probably(?) avoids a lawsuit. This will have interesting ecosystem effects since many people will now want to stick on 2022.3 LTS indefinitely. Possibly, some libraries will latch to 2022.3 and never update.

(Note that 2023 LTS will be released in 2024 and thus the new fees will apply. Yes, this is confusing.)

Thought 2: Which is more expensive now? Unity or Unreal?

So this gets grits teeth complicated.

The new policy is a bit confusing, but much easier to understand than last week's. They now claim that, once you hit $1m revenue, they will charge the lower of 2.5% revshare, or a charge per "number of new people engaging with your game" that they "calculate" based on your "self-reported data".

The part after the "or" there is the remnant of their baffling "install"-based pricing from last week. This new, "new installs" number is still untrustworthy gibberish. But! Now you can ignore it. So the "price" for using Unity is now effectively 2.5% of revenue over $1M, possibly reduced arbitrarily.

2.5% is less than Unreal's revshare (5% over $1m). But Unity is also still charging a per-seat fee, which Unreal doesn't. (In today's announcement they raised the revenue threshold for the per-seat fee to $200k— but they also killed the Plus tier, meaning for the smallest shops the per-seat fee just increased 5x.)

A per-seat fee plus a revshare is sour tasting. ("They're getting you coming and going.") Per-seat fees are really inconvenient for small operations like mine where some or all of your devs may only use Unity part time. But never mind how it feels. If you combine the revshares and seat prices, which costs more now?

Under $200k revenue, both engines are free. Under $1M revenue, Unreal is free. From $200k to $1m revenue, Unity costs $2050 for one dev or $41k for 20 devs. After 1M revenue, Unreal rapidly starts to cost more, although even with as few as 20 devs you need to make $2.6M before Unity is a cost save. With $3m revenue and 1 dev, Unity costs $52k and Unreal costs $100k. With $3m revenue and 20 devs, Unity costs $91k and Unreal costs $100k.

Prices USD. This assumes both Unity and Unreal charge revshare on marginal revenue over 1M. It assumes one year of seat licenses and assumes all revenue comes in over a single year. It also assumes PC or mobile, not console. This image and explanatory paragraph are released under CC BY-NC 4.0; Grapher and Pixelmator files available on request.

Fans of Homestuck will recognize this diagram immediately.

Okay, this is a mess! But here is my takeaway: Unless you are making a lot of money, Unity is the more expensive option. If you're making a lot of money— multiple millions in revenue— then Unreal's higher revshare fee very rapidly dwarfs the price of Unity. But you have to make $1.08 million on a single-dev project— or $1.41 million on a 5-dev project, or $2.64 million on a 20-dev project— before Unity starts to look like a better deal than Unreal.

Is 2.6 million dollars a lot of money? Well, here's what's weird. The range where Unity looks like a worse deal is between $200k and $2.6m in revenue. Make no money and it doesn't matter, make over $2.6m and Unity is a money save. But that "mid-range" where Unreal does better? That's supposed to be Unity's target market. That's where Unity originally made its name. If Unity is now trying to abandon the midrange and make a play for the high end, there's a different problem: Unity isn't as good as Unreal on features. Maybe the idea is to abandon the midrange and the high end, but milk high-revenue, low-quality mobile developers who don't care about features— but if they don't care about features, then instead of paying Unity why not use all that money to retarget to (say) Godot?

Thought 3: This is manageable, but Unity is dead anyway

My gut is that if this open letter's policies were what Unity had announced to begin with, like last week, then people would have been annoyed, as they were with the 2021 changes, but you wouldn't have seen a community collapse or mass exodus.

However, that's not what happened. I do not think this open letter will halt the mass exodus. The core problem is that Unity can no longer be trusted. You can consider the new 2024 prices acceptable. But now what you really have to worry about is how they will change in 2026.

EDIT: Then there's this



hthrflwrs
@hthrflwrs

Something so uptight about it. It and Monogame are like exes which still define themselves by one another: Monogame still smokes, but FNA gave it up. FNA wears tailored suits, while Monogame wears muscle tanks that show off his sleek arms. The two are in constant orbit even from a distance: once so similar they were indistinguishable, now ever-so-different... but always moving in precisely opposite directions. They are one another's Mount Fuji; each defines himself by the other's absence.

FNA presents himself as a challenge. He's an archivist, after all -- to know his docs is to know him. He refuses to entertain questions which have already been answered elsewhere.

And, unfortunately for them both, Monogame likes a challenge.

(Image transcripts below the cut)


Dragaroths-hideaway
@Dragaroths-hideaway

when are you gunna make the game engine dating sim?


hthrflwrs
@hthrflwrs

the only problem with that is first i gotta pick A GAME ENGINE TO MAKE IT IN




somethingorodder
@somethingorodder

Time to learn my weakest weapon


somethingorodder
@somethingorodder

Not sure how much I can push for 61k; I think it's technically doable, and I know there's been some issues with the legitimacy of scores on the leaderboard, so I'm going to take it in good faith for now and see if I can break the 60k barrier. I think it'll require some insane snake tooth RNG during the last day, definitely some really good early passive picks for momentum, but right now I'm feeling pretty good with these scores.


somethingorodder
@somethingorodder

Died during my single best RNG run during the last day, had 20 worms, if I had the average drop of 1/5 snake teeth that would've been 4000 potential drops, 800 snake teeth, adding to 48,000~ from drops. This would have potentially broken the 60k barrier (12,300+48,000=60,300), but unfortunately I had no cold water going into the last day, and while I have done cold water-less big worms before, it usually requires snakeskin boots at level 4 or greater and no mistakes with the worm pathing (or bad worm pathing that pushes you too far into the wall to be able to properly loop.)

The strategy for this basically requires precise RNG and a reset if fertilizer isn't seen by day 4, and minimum restocks to keep amassing snakes and increase potential snake net profit. I might write up something more detailed later but I'm going to keep trying for now and see what I can do.


somethingorodder
@somethingorodder

I took a trowel break to casually play with the pitchfork again and my love for its damage will never falter, 60k in sight




hthrflwrs
@hthrflwrs

going back to monogame like a rebound after dumping my shitty on-again-off-again boyfriend Unity for the fourth time, complete with all my friends on the sideline wanting to tell me there are nicer guys out there that don't have problems like per-install fees OR the MGCB but biting their tongues bc they know this is part of the process-- the messy, messy process



hthrflwrs
@hthrflwrs

me: monogame promise you'll never change our contract
monogame: never baby. i'm foss forever
me: thank you monogame
monogame: of course baby
me, tearing up: why don't they UNDERSTAND that all i want is a RELIABLE GUY who can PORT TO CONSOLES
monogame: i could be that for you.
me, turning away: but would you be open to me? would you have readable documentation?
monogame: all of my source code is yours for the reading.
me: but would you COMMENT yourself? for me?
monogame: ...
monogame: it's getting late. let's get some sleep


hthrflwrs
@hthrflwrs

unity knocking on my door at 3am. monogame answering the door, bare-chested. nothing is said because everything is now known. this has happened before; both know their place in the cycle. unity tries to hold monogame's steely gaze: one engine and one framework, both with their endless complications. monogame's eyes are cornflower blue; unity's a deep gray. neither is a good man, but maybe one is willing to try.

unity looks away. monogame offers him a cigarette