It is said that at the end of the Qing Dynasty, a landowner suddenly slapped his forehead, summoned the farmers in the village, and said three sentences: 1. Starting from next year, everyone will have to pay an extra land fee, and the land rent will be the same as before; 2. The land fee will be paid once a month; 3. The land fee means that for each seed you plant, you will have to pay a sum of money to the landlord. He would send people into the fields to see how many seeds the farmers had planted.
He probably felt that at least half of the land in the village belonged to him. The old man said these words with great confidence. Every time he thought about the future picture of money rolling in, he couldn't help but admire his genius idea.
But what they didn't expect was that the farmers did not accept the landlord's extra charges as "docilely" as before. Instead, they began to curse the landlord as a fool. Originally, that one-third of an acre of land didn't make much money in a year, but the boss here thought that they were all making money every day like the Mi family brothers. It was unbearable to come up with such a stupid idea to make money for themselves.
Originally, he was not the only landowner in the village. If it weren't for the fact that the soil he owns is easy to plant, and there are many people who can plant it, and he can ask for help when he is busy, people would have gone to the master's house next door. The land rent of the house next door is much more lenient, and no one will charge you if the output is less than one million gold.
As a result, all the farmers under this master quickly ran away, leaving the big landowner with nothing but the reputation of a fool.
Of course I made up the old story above. Although similar things may not have happened in the past, no one would have thought that someone could do something similar in the Internet age.
On September 12, 2023, the software creation engine Unity announced that starting from January 1, 2024, it will charge a "game installation fee" to all users.
For small customers, after their game's annual revenue reaches 200,000 US dollars and the number of installations reaches 200,000, the "installation fee" is US$0.2 each time, which means that every time your players install the game, you have to pay Unity about one dollar and fifty cents.
Large customers can get volume discounts, and billing will only start after the annual revenue reaches 1 million US dollars and the number of installations exceeds 1 million, and the "installation fee" is a gradient billing like electricity bill, ranging from 0.01 to 0.15 US dollars.
Emerging markets refer to areas outside the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
Prior to this, Unity's charging method was completely subscription-based. They would provide different subscription plans. The more advanced subscription plans can obtain more engine usage rights and service items. This is a common charging model for tool software, and many game developers have long been accustomed to Unity’s payment plan.
Now, Unity is ready to tell everyone that this habit needs to change - in the future, everyone who uses their engine to develop games must be prepared to pay for "user installation behavior" in advance. As one of the two major oligarchs in the game engine market (the other is Unreal), Unity's sudden "snatching" move unsurprisingly caused an earthquake in the industry.
Damn it, Hara! Damn it, farmer!
Countless developers and game companies have criticized Unity for its irrational behavior. Originally, Unity already had a charging plan that was not cheap, but in the end, it came up with a new charging item without anyone knowing. It is indeed not much different from the "exorbitant taxes" of ancient landlords. As a result, Li Jiaqi's emoji pack, which has been covered in pulp in the past two days, received a new coating.
No one can afford the additional and unlimited game development costs. What's more, the "legality" of this fee simply makes developers confused. A game engine only works during the development and improvement stage of the game. After the game is launched normally, the user's installation behavior has nothing to do with the game engine.
Especially for some free games, player installations will not bring any revenue in the first place. Now they still need to pour money into them, which makes these developers laugh. For example, the studio "OvertheMoon" directly mocked Unity on X Special and said, "I have never made more money in my life than I owe you."
Furthermore, some traditional games whose main profit model is based on "buy volume" may be "uprooted" due to Unity's new regulations. The cost of adding new users in this era has been extremely high, and now it is even worse. In the future, it is estimated that many bosses of small and medium-sized game companies will have to look at the download volume of their own games with a quick-acting Jiuxin Pill.
There is a very famous example of the economic crisis in middle school history textbooks. It is said that dairy farmers would rather dump the milk than sell it, because the more they sell, the more they lose. Now, this example can be very cleverly grafted onto many Unity users in the future. In the past, game companies with a small number of downloads gathered together to warm up in the corners of the market. In the future, large companies with a large number of downloads will gather together and cry.
Such a terrifying picture of the future has caused many developers to speak out of their minds. In "Ready Player One," a movie about not many players, there is a much-used line that describes an ideal state for game developers-"Thank you for playing my game."
But this is not the case now. The most simple wish of a considerable number of developers who use Unity at the moment is - "Thank you for buying my game, but I beg you not to play it." There is a developer named "Huenry Hueffman" on X special, who has made an interesting folding image puzzle game and is preparing to release it next year. As a result, he encountered Unity's new rules and could only ask players not to install it. Such a spectacle is quite explosive in the game development world.
The game studio "Agregat Studio" from Poland came up with an idea that is almost as stupid as Unity. They announced that they will continue to use Unity to develop games, but they will limit the number of downloads of the game to 199,999 times, which is exactly within Unity's charging standards. All players who have purchased their games will enter a mysterious chicken battle, and only the truly lucky ones can download and install their games - in the face of sudden economic pressure, it seems that a group of people will always go crazy.
In addition to "legality", there are a lot of problems when charging based on the number of game installations: how does Unity calculate the number of installations, how to avoid stubborn problems like piracy in the process of calculating the number of installations, how to distinguish game DEMOs, charity sales, XGP and other installation behaviors that do not generate revenue at all, etc. Even if users are willing to pay the "installation fee", the loopholes in the "installation fee" billing process still make people have to ask how many times Unity has slapped its forehead.
When this new rule was first released, many people thought that the long-standing joke that "repeated installation and deletion of pirated games can bankrupt game companies" would be completely realized under Unity.
After all, pirated games, as the industry’s most popular products, can be said to be a problem that this new regulation will definitely encounter. Unity responded to this issue confidently in the Q&A article, saying that they have patented technology to detect whether users are installing pirated versions, so that users do not have to worry about this at all.
But instead of dispelling everyone's doubts, everyone began to feel surprised. Because pirated software is still difficult to completely identify today, and Unity’s standard for calculating installation volume is to detect the runtime code on each device that does not even have DRM. It is really curious what kind of black technology exists in this to allow Unity to have such confidence.
Not only that, even the installation of genuine Unity has many unclear troubles. In the earliest version of the Q&A article, Unity clearly stated that repeated installation of the game will be charged, installation on different devices will be charged, and DEMOs that contain the official content of the game will be charged. Even games on subscription platforms such as XGP will also be charged.
This unreasonable charging method has directly attracted the condemnation of countless developers. A "crab studio" called "AggroCrab" is very happy to announce that its game "ANOTHERCRAB'STREASURE" will be logged on XGP next year to face 25 million players. As long as a small part of these players download their game, it will bring them unpredictable losses. At the end of the announcement, they also added a very thoughtful curse word for Unity.
"MassiveMonster", the developer of "Baa Baa Apocalypse", was more direct. After explaining that their new work was likely to be delayed due to Unity's new rules, they directly began to call on everyone to stay away from "disgusting Unity" and placed an in-game character next to it, asking him to poop a piece of shit named "Unity".
Many people seem to have seen a new "business opportunity" after seeing Unity's explanation of its terms. In the future, the business war model of the game industry will usher in a new form of change - you only need to download your opponent's games like crazy to bankrupt them.
Starting from this model, netizens have also used their clever little minds to come up with countless new applications.
There are creations that have contributed to the great cause of world domination by original friends.
There is also a new understanding of the famous Internet meme "Taiwan Sentence".
Others found that this method allowed them to carry out "holy revenge" against those game companies that people had already complained about, so they called on players to join the holy war.
Perhaps realizing that his eating appearance was a bit too ugly, Unity quickly clarified these details. First, Unity executive Marc Whitten stated that repeated installations will not be billed repeatedly, but multi-device installations will be billed multiple times. In addition, DEMOs that do not contain part of the complete content of the game will not be included in the billing scope, and charity sales will not be charged. The most important thing is that for subscription-based platforms like XGP, the charging object is the platform itself rather than the developers.
Immediately afterwards, Untiy's official X post also published a long article, giving a further clear response to Marc Whitten's previous clarification, and the Q&A article on their official website was adjusted accordingly.
But it is obvious that Untiy’s amendments to the details of its “installation fee” still cannot dispel the doubts of the majority of developers. There are many "taken for granted" and "whimsical" in this. For example, the piracy issue mentioned before was downplayed in their Q&A. It is also difficult to reassure people how they distinguish between game software for multiple different purposes. The so-called installation volume calculation results will always be the answer given by Unity unilaterally through black box operations.
The previously mentioned "Crab Bro" AggroCrab studio still insists on calling Unity a "totalass" after further docking with Unity.
In addition, whether Unity can have complete charging capabilities is still questioned. After seeing Unity’s further explanation, game reporter JeffGrubb sent a special note suggesting that Microsoft might not even bother with Unity.
John Riccitiello is the CEO of Unity. I will talk about this person later.
Some netizens believe that Unity’s charging policy is likely to trigger the largest “litigation attack” in history – because there are so many companies using their engine.
The reason why Unity resorted to such a stupid trick, everyone can probably know with their unintelligent toes that the word "income generation" cannot be separated. Looking through Unity's financial reports in recent years, you don't need to have advanced financial knowledge. You only need to be able to read, and you can constantly see "loss", "loss" and "loss".
Even though it occupies half of the game engine industry, Untiy has never been able to solve the problem of revenue from the engine. On the surface, "installation fee" seems to be an effective way to solve this problem. According to Diandian Data's "Global Mobile Game Data Report for the First Half of 2023", global mobile game downloads exceeded 25.9 billion in the first half of 2023. More than half of these games were developed using Unity. No matter how you look at it, this "installation fee" will become an astronomical figure.
However, the implication of taking advantage of the situation revealed in this charging policy has always made many netizens doubt the mental state of Unity's senior decision-makers. It is difficult for everyone not to think that there is a "second or fifth generation" within Unity.
This picture is a pun joke. Unreal and Godot are both well-known third-party engines in the industry. What the netizen in the picture probably means is that Unity’s charging policy is undoubtedly a blow to competitors.
After many rounds of screening, John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, was quickly identified by netizens as the perfect candidate for the "Two and Five Boys".
There is no other reason. This man's past resume is too glorious. During his time at EA, EA not only won the "Worst Company Award in America" for several consecutive years, but EA's stock also fell by 60% because of his outstanding operations.
There are some famous remarks about him that people have to take a closer look at. For example, in an interview last year, he publicly said that "game developers who do not value krypton gold are super idiots." At that time, he apologized after being criticized by the developers.
Source: IT Home
For another example, in 2011, he said at EA's shareholder meeting that he proposed the idea of charging "Battlefield" players $1 for the act of "reloading" in the game - does this idea look familiar to you?
Subsequently, John Riccitiello's behavior of selling Unity stock a week ago was quickly exposed. Now "human and physical evidence are available", and the logic of the behavior is closed. John Riccitiello was completely nailed to the pillar of shame of "25" by netizens.
To some extent, Unity needs to thank itself for its "foresight". The emergence of John Riccitiello, a negative character, really helped them attract a lot of firepower.
Some netizens modified the entry on "Greed" in Wikipedia, added a photo of John Riccitiello to the article, and attached a note describing him as "the greediest person in the world."
Some netizens pay attention to "turning the original soup into the original food" and immediately used Unity to make a small game called "Plane Fighting John Riccitiello". After posting the link to the game in the comment area, they received vicious comments like "I want to download it 10,000 times."
It's a pity that Unity's wave of hatred is too huge. Even with such a powerful "second and fifth boy", there is no way to stop everyone's bad comments.
"Unfortunately, this game is made by Unity" has become the most suitable startup interface for Unity in everyone's mind - the customizable startup interface is a paid item of Unity software.
According to "Devolver", an expert in the independent game industry, indicating the engine used in the game in future promotions will become an important indicator of whether players will buy it.
Since the introduction of Unity's new charging rules, many independent game developers have announced "escape from Unity" and would rather convert engines from scratch than continue to use Unity - so the increased labor costs are a cheaper option for them.
Picture source: Bilibili@mysteryvoice
"MegaCrit", the developer of "Slay the Spire", very bluntly stated that it would abandon Unity directly, even though their new game has been developed in Unity for some time. They used bold font in the last paragraph of the announcement to express their displeasure with Unity - "We have never made a public statement, which speaks volumes about how much of a jerk you guys really are."
There are also manufacturers such as "Videocult", the developer of "Rain World", and Cairo Games, which directly announced that their games developed using Unity will be removed from the shelves after a discount promotion.
Netizens have used various memes to mock Unity for shooting themselves in the foot.
At the same time, the majority of Unity’s friends and businesses are happy.
Both Unreal Engine and Cocos Engine officially released articles, thanking their wise bosses and wise opponents.
Unreal Engine staff member "Ari Arnbjörnsson" also posted a special message immediately after Unity released the new charging rules, mockingly saying, "When you make a million and one dollars, you only owe us 5 cents." Unity's excellent decision made the smile on his social media profile picture even brighter.
To a certain extent, it is difficult to take the decision made by Unity seriously. For non-Unity users, it is so exaggerated that it seems like a piece of fun. Almost no one really thinks that Unity's decision can be implemented, unless Unity really doesn't care about the trust that developers have in them in the future, and just wants to make a profit and run away.
But if Untiy is really dedicated to implementing this new charging project in the coming days, it will undoubtedly be an unparalleled nightmare for many developers, especially small and medium-sized game development groups. Whether they continue to accept Unity's "exploitation" or choose to replace the engine, it will mean an unexpected increase in costs, making the already poor families even worse.
If you think about it carefully, "Silk Song" was also developed by Unity.
It's over.
"JackVine", the developer of "TeamCherry", liked an X feature saying that ""Song of Silk" will be delayed for five years due to engine changes. It's so scary.