Unity already charges high per-seat monthly rates to professional developers. This move has sent shockwaves through the developer community, as one of Unity’s differentiating factors was that they only charged an up-front cost for their platform.ĭevelopers are understandably upset by this move. Now, less than a year later, Unity has announced that they will be retroactively (!!) changing their license terms in order to charge game developers a substantial per-unit fee, despite explicitly disavowing “royalty-like” structures in the past. This was the first indication that things might (unfortunately) be going the way I had anticipated. In my opinion, none of their fundamentals boded well for Unity’s future as a game engine on which to base a game company - hence my tweets (“X’es”?) on the subject.Ī few months after I posted that Unity seemed likely to be absorbed, Unity merged with IronSource, a controversial company that has been accused of developing malware. ![]() There are many things like this you learn when you dig into their investor materials. Their bottom line is more affected by the advertising market than it is by how many developers buy their engine. They’re not! Less than half their revenue comes from game engines. As a small example, most developers think Unity is primarily in the business of selling game engines. In Unity’s case, paying attention to their quarterly investor materials tells you many things that aren’t as common knowledge as they should be. If you read these regularly, you get a very good sense for what a company’s priorities are in two ways: one, because you hear how they are pitching their future to investors and two, because you can see how far in the hole they are financially, so you know whether they are likely to make major business model changes. ![]() ![]() It was based solely on the financials they report, and the kinds of statements they make to investors in their earnings calls. This was not based on any inside knowledge. It’s not a decision I’ve ever had to make, and I don’t keep up with the latest developments across the myriad of engine options.īut I do follow game business trends to a certain extent, and for well over a year now, I’ve been warning that Unity’s relationship with game developers would inexorably change for the worse. As a result, I do not have any first-hand experience choosing an off-the-shelf game engine. My tenure in the game industry was working on game engine code, not with game engine code.
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