Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: etc.

It takes years to build trust, it takes only a few seconds to break it, and it takes forever to repair it.

Not long ago, Unity, which caused a great deal of controversy in the game developer community because of the new charging rules, announced changes to the "Runtime Fee" model. According to the original plan, Unity plans to charge additional fees for developers whose game installations reach the specified threshold. Users of different "gears" also pay different fees: Unity personal edition users are charged $200000 and 200000 installations over the past 12 months, while professional and enterprise users are $1 million and 1 million installations. On this basis, all users will have to pay Unity for each additional installation of the game, and the amount will adopt different algorithms according to the type of user.

After the bombardment, Unity personal version users do not have to pay this fee, professional and enterprise version users can choose to share 2.5% of the revenue, or the monthly number of new users to participate in the game to share the income to Unity. Both data are reported by the developer's existing data and charged according to one of the smaller amounts.

At the same time, Unity has also made changes to the subscription plan of the personal version, no longer requiring developers to display the "Made with Unity" startup screen when running the game, and further lowering the threshold for developers to use Unity for free, relaxing the game's annual revenue ceiling from $100000 to $200000.

On the face of it, the new provisions seem to allay the concerns expressed by many developers over the past few weeks, but will Lewis, co-founder and director of Rose City Games, the publisher of Garden Story, points out that the updated rules provide only the short-term comfort. " Although indirectly allay the concerns of developers, they still think about some extremely important issues, including the long-term survival and sustainable development of game studios. " "Unity's original plan seemed out of touch with the gaming industry, and although it made concessions later, it didn't really admit its mistake," Mr. Lewis said. "so in a game industry that is inherently volatile, it's hard to say whether Unity can still be trusted."

The initial plan attracted a lot of discussion and criticism from the developer community, especially independent developers, who worried that the fee would hurt their profitability and creativity. As one of the many studios that have used social media to speak out against the new rules on Unity fees, Rose City said in a statement that they are considering using other engines. Lewis revealed that Rose City plans to continue to use Unity to complete two unannounced projects, but he feels that Unity's current plan is still too open and will create additional workload for developers, because developers may need to invest a lot of time and energy on how to report their own product revenue and the integration of tools and processes.

Programmer Zoe Hamilton said: "by giving developers the choice of revenue-sharing or running costs, Unity largely frees developers from worrying about damaging financial losses to the team and allows developers to fully consider the worst-case scenario in terms of cost when seeking funding for the project." But she added that operating fees were not the only issue in Unity's initial announcement and that the revised charging scheme was still too complex.

If they had announced a direct revenue-sharing model two weeks ago, some people might complain that the cost of using it has become higher, but most developers and studios can still accept it. In fact, peers who use the 'Unreal' engine to make games are already familiar with how this model works. However, the current charging plan is still too complex, and I wonder how many developers will report only game revenue rather than player participation, or both. "

Martin van der Mullen, co-founder and director of research and development of Snap Finger Click, described the incident as a classic case of "anchoring bias": the seller, or Unity, offered a completely impractical deal and then appeased angry customers with a new one that was also controversial but suddenly seemed acceptable.

Due to the change in Unity charging policy, the developers of the popular racing game Anti-Gravity Flying have cancelled the transplant plan for the Switch version. Whether such sales techniques are ethical is debatable, especially given that operating costs are still untenable. I don't think Unity has done enough. No one can guarantee that they won't change the rules again. In any case, the change in Unity charging policy will certainly prompt developers to explore other engines with a more open mind. after all, people's trust in it has been broken. "

Rob Hewson, chief executive and creative director of Huey Games, pointed out that most of the concerns of PC and console game developers seem to have been addressed, but it is not clear how Unity's new charging rules will affect mobile game developers. In addition, it will take a while for developers to observe the chain reaction that follows.

"if Microsoft still has to pay for Xbox Game Pass games, will it be included in Microsoft's agreement with developers or deducted from developers' earnings? My colleagues also talked to me about the idea that Unity's new rules could push the industry further towards domestic buying. The reason is simple: since developers can choose to pay Unity a lower share of revenue or operating costs, they have an incentive to find ways to extract the most value from each installation. "

"how would we feel if Unity announced the revised plan from the beginning? it's hard to say. After all, Unity's initial poor announcement hit rock bottom everyone's psychological expectations... there is no doubt that today's policy has been greatly improved than before, and has succeeded in calming the anger of many developers, but we are still digesting it."

Hewson believes that Unity should continue to invest in tools, services and projects, and shows that they have learned profound lessons from this incident to ensure that they will better communicate with developers in the future. before the dust settles, Unity is embroiled in another controversy: some developers have noticed that Unity has removed the engine terms of service from GitHub. Hamilton said it was reminiscent of an incident at the end of 2018. At the time, Unity changed the terms of service, implying that any developer using Improbable's SpatialOS technology had broken the rules.

According to Unity, the company deleted the content on GitHub because the number of views was too low, but developers were skeptical. "I don't think developers will trust them for a long time to come." Hamilton pointed out, "although we have encountered similar situations before, to be honest, I am not sure that Unity can restore the trust of developers. Even if you can, you can only take your time."

Lewis added that Unity's removal of terms of service is unacceptable and that developers' trust in Unity is gone forever. " Now everyone knows that no matter how much they like Unity,Unity, they are not of the same mind. You will feel that policy makers are trying to deceive us, rather than trying to reach a consensus. In a sense, Unity is' negotiating'in the most destructive way: first claiming to overturn the roof and then reducing the requirements to opening windows in the room, which is by no means the right way to treat customers. "

Van der Mullen also expressed his view: "thousands of developers and publishers once trusted Unity as a core part of the development pipeline." Now that this chain of trust has been broken, Unity has not announced any plans to regain the trust of developers. They have updated their pricing model and taken the first step in the right direction, but if they stop there, business growth is bound to suffer. As a listed company, Unity's share price does not seem to be much affected by the farce, so it seems unlikely to implement serious plans such as a leadership change. " John Riccidino, the former chief executive of Unity, stepped down on October 10th. )

For the future, many developers are worried not only that Unity may change the engine's terms of use again, but also about the impact on team financing. "in the long run, will publishers, crowdfunding platforms and other sources of funding think that games made by developers using Unity are too risky?" Hamilton said, "given the controversy they have created recently, are players still willing to buy Unity games?"

Van der Mullen believes that Unity's pricing announcement has not only damaged the gaming industry's view of them, but also affected their internal talent. Several developers interviewed stressed that Unity's management was frustrating, but they expressed sympathy for Unity's employees. "employees should not be subjected to any harassment." "I hope that all those affected by the recent announcement will work together to promote the healthy development of the industry, so that both veterans and novices can fully enjoy the fun of making games," Lewis said. "

Van der Mullen revealed that Snap Finger Click is close to Unity UK studio in Brighton and that six Unity employees have tried to move to his company in the past. " I can imagine that in some other studios in Brighton, the number may be even higher. Unity has always played an important role in allowing more teams to create games, but this incident may have had painful consequences for them, and it will take a long time to recover. I hope the facts prove me wrong, but I am not optimistic about their future. "

Mr Hewson points out that Unity executives are strangely silent in public. "I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but if a company tries to reassure customers and rebuild trust, it's clearly not ideal and people want to see the management team stand up and take responsibility."

Lewis added: "Unity needs to reconnect with the developer community, revamp management aggressively, promise to inform existing users of any changes in advance, provide them with stability, and make significant improvements to the tool-but who knows if this' patch 'will happen?"

"Unreal engines have always been competitive and Godot is gaining momentum, and everyone will benefit from exploring these alternatives." So, with Unity announcing revised, relatively modest new rules on fees, do developers plan to change engines?

"Unity bought himself some time." Hamilton said, "replacing the engine is not easy, and developers often need to spend a lot of time relearning and adjusting the development pipeline under the new engine." Personally, I think the new rules announced by Unity are enough to prevent people from immediately switching to new engines, especially those developers who are using Unity to make games. But in the long run, many people may no longer trust them as a safe and reliable partner. We are all thinking about similar questions: what is Unity going to do next? Will they suddenly change the terms of cooperation again? Or will they refocus on becoming a stable game engine provider? "

Van der Mullen feels the same way. "to some extent, the updated plan can be tolerated, at least preventing many developers from changing engines in the middle of game development. In the next two or three years, as new projects are launched and the pros and cons of different engines are compared, we will be able to see more clearly the impact of this incident."

Hewson believes that it is hard to say whether developers will switch to other engines. However, Unity will continue to face challenges in terms of profitability. " They have nearly 8000 employees, twice as many as Epic, the developer of the "illusory" engine, for which Fortnite has been generating huge profits. Unity needs to find ways to make a profit and move towards a sustainable future. They may be able to achieve this goal by giving up some of the market share they have already gained, but it is conceivable that they cannot afford to make more such mistakes. "

"in the long run, we can and should have a healthy discussion around the monopoly and competition of the game engine market. But at least at this stage, game developers and Unity still need each other."

This article is compiled from: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/has-unity-repaired-the-damage-done-by-its-runtime-fee-plans

The original title: "Has Unity repaired the damage done by its Runtime Fee plans?"

Original author: James Batchelor

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