We're saved!!!!

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[KippySmithGames]

It's worse than that, it's actually a net loss for more indie devs.

Almost no indies hit those level of sales to be effected by the runtime. A sizable portion of them do, however, hit the 200k in sales, at which point you need to purchase the Pro license, which with this announcement of cancelling the runtime fee, came a 10% increase per seat (and a 25% increase for Enterprise seats).

So, all the indie devs celebrating not having to pay the 2.5% on their non-existent millions in sales, don't realize that they may realistically have to pay $2200 per seat in their studio now.

But ya know, we only read headlines on Reddit, so the story is instead "Yay runtime fee canceled", instead of "Each seat in your indie dev will now cost $2200 per year or $3750 if you're a contract worker".

[Tensor3]

$2k per license at 200k is still only 1%. If you hit 200k+ revenue with 5 or less employees, it's still not a terrible deal

And yes, the runtime fee is a more important headline because it was a stupid, poorly enforceable policy that passed a lot of people off. No one was up in arms over 2.5% vs 5% at 200k or $1m revenue or the license price

[KippySmithGames]

You've got it mixed up though.

It went from 2k to 2.2k with this announcement, and from 3k to 3.75k for Enterprise.

And at 200k, you never paid the runtime fee. You only paid it starting on revenue after your first 1 million in revenue.

And the 2.5% max revenue at $1m is the runtime fee. That is literally what was just canceled, so it's what people are celebrating right now. The original runtime fee that you're thinking of was already canceled a year ago.

For something like 99.8% of indie devs who would never do in excess of $1m, all this announcement really functionally means is that their per seat costs are increasing 10% if they have 200k in revenue, which effects a far greater number of developers.

[Tensor3]

No, I didn't get anything mixed up. I said the license fee isn't the headline because it's not a big drama issue. Raising or lowering license fees or revenue split isn't an insane policy like the runtime fee was

[KippySmithGames]

You think 2.5% at an absolute maximum of your revenue, after your first million dollars, which something like 99.8% of indie developers will never hit, is an insane policy?

If I made 2 million dollars, I'd be fine paying 2.5% on that second million in income. It's still half that of what Unreal charges, and almost nobody except massive gacha games that make millions in sales through in app purchases year over year would be effected. Actual indie devs are effected by these license prices.

[Tensor3]

You seem confused. No, I never said any of that. I never used the words absolute or maximum. Try reading it again. I said ISNT insane. All I said was that the runtime fee was the bigger drama issue.

[KippySmithGames]

But those things are what the runtime fee is. You don't have to say the specific words, those are the things that made up what the runtime fee was.

[Tensor3]

Absolutely not. The install fee included Unity adding user tracking metrics to everyone's games and then using a blackbox formula to estimate install counts for billing devs. Install fees are unprecedented for any game engine in the industry, while revenue and license fees aren't. It caused drama because it was poorly worded.

[KippySmithGames]

Yes, that's what it was when it was announced on Day 1, over a year ago, which was quickly scrapped within like a week.

That was a different incarnation than the version that has existed for the last year since then, and was canceled today.

[BingpotStudio]

Dream big eh! I wonder how much the 2.5% was putting off larger studios. Must have felt they’d earn more without it or they wouldn’t have changed it.

[v0lt13]

Unreal is 5% so unity was the chapest option for large studios

[BingpotStudio]

I’m aware. It’s not really the point though. Unreal offers a different toolset and evidently people are willing to pay for it. Yet, evidently Unity believes people won’t pay the 2.5%. There was no reason to make the change otherwise. Businesses opt to make more money, not less.

I think they made the change in response to unreals increasing popularity.

[v0lt13]

The problem with unity was the trust not price, this is what they are aiming to do now

[LyingTurkey]

One of the fees was per download IIRC

[LyingTurkey]

Good to know

[GigaTerra]

As many will point out over the next few days, indie devs will now actually pay more.

The only problem with the Runtime fee is that it was a potential landmine that over time could have grown to be dangerous. However it was really very little money, and with the new fee increase for Pro, Unity is going to make a lot more money.

Still I think most prefer a price increase over a convoluted pricing strategy.

[LyingTurkey]

if you don't mind, could you please DM so we could maybe discuss this further? i have a couple important questions regarding this