https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unitys-self-combustion-engine-this-week-in-business
$1.3 billion – Unity’s lifetime accumulated deficit as of December 31, 2021. Unity has never had a profitable quarter in its history. It has posted modest operating profits in the past three quarters for the first time ever,
Unity lit money on fire for decades to buy a market advantage that overrules the basic economic incentives that supposedly ensure free markets work best for customers. It was successful in doing that because it’s very hard for a sustainable business to compete against one that is fine losing billions of dollars.
First, you make yourself essential to the market, even if it costs you billions to get there. Then once you hit a threshold – let’s say, I don’t know, 70% of the market – you lean into the enshittification process. You charge more for your services, you give your customers worse terms, you turn the heat up slowly and continuously, confident in the knowledge that people are so locked in to your business and have so few viable alternatives that they may grumble but they will ultimately put up with it.
And it’s such a common strategy in so many industries today that there’s just no sense of horror or outrage from the onlookers. Industry watchers and Serious Business People have seen this play out so many times they just acknowledge it’s happening and treat it as if it’s a perfectly cool and normal thing and not illegal predatory pricing.
I think this new Runtime Fee makes perfect sense from a mile-high point of view, if you think about Unity as a business where you just turn whichever dials and pull whatever levers will make the numbers go up the most.
The only problem is it makes no sense at all if you instead think about Unity as a game development tool that game developers should want to use.
https://www.pcgamer.com/why-every-game-developer-is-mad-right-now-explained
https://www.axios.com/2023/09/13/unity-runtime-fee-policy-marc-whitten
“The uproar is primarily driven by two factors: Unity is attaching a flat per-install fees to games that use its engine, and it’s arbitrarily scrapping existing deals and making the changes retroactive.
The policy announced yesterday will see a “Runtime Fee” charged to games that surpass certain installation and revenue thresholds. For Unity Personal, the free engine that many beginning and small indie developers use, those thresholds are $200,000 earned over the previous 12 months, and 200,000 installs; one those marks are met, developers will be charged 20 cents every time someone installs their game.
Another big issue is that Unity has made this change retroactive: It supersedes any existing agreements with Unity that developers may have made, and it applies to games that were released even before any of this happened. The revenue threshold will be based on sales after January 1, 2024, when the new pricing system takes effect, but sales that occurred before that date will count toward the install threshold.
