So, uh, what's this RPG Maker Unite thing?

[SpyroFan67]

@Iron_Brew The whole thing seems insane given how bad it is. They must be on something.

 

[Arctica]

Well, Unity has a former EA guy working for them. If you want to know why that is cause for worry, look no further than Sims 4.

In anycase, I'm not surprised. Unity wants their cut, it's simple as that.

 

[Iron_Brew]

Well, Unity has a former EA guy working for them. If you want to know why that is cause for worry, look no further than Sims 4.

In anycase, I'm not surprised. Unity wants their cut, it's simple as that.

You know that EA employs 12,900 people? You'd be hard pressed to find a studio or gamedev related firm on the planet that didn't have someone who once worked at EA.

 

[SpyroFan67]

You know that EA employs 12,900 people right? You'd be hard pressed to find a studio or gamedev related firm on the planet that didn't have someone who once worked at EA.

Is EA bigger than Activision and Sega and Nintendo, or is it about the same number of employees for EA and all of those?

 

[Iron_Brew]

Is EA bigger than Activision and Sega and Nintendo, or is it about the same number of employees for EA and all of those?

Activision Blizzard employs roughly 13,000 people. Sega is much smaller at 3,459 (although their parent company employs about 8,000 people in total, but the game sector is the smaller number). Nintendo has 6,574 employees.

 

[BreakerZero]

Yeah, not to mention the privacy and ethical issues with adding what is essentially malware to an otherwise legitimate product to enforce such a r*****ed (or should I say ridiculous) line of business, potentially even violating developer agreements with Apple, Nintendo etc. to degrees far worse than what happened to Epic over Fortnite.

 

[SpyroFan67]

Yeah, not to mention the privacy and ethical issues with adding what is essentially malware to an otherwise legitimate product to enforce such a r*****ed (or should I say ridiculous) line of business, potentially even violating developer agreements with Apple, Nintendo etc. to degrees far worse than what happened to Epic over Fortnite.

Wait, what? They're actually doing THAT, too? Oh my God........

 

[TheAM-Dol]

Yeah, not to mention the privacy and ethical issues with adding what is essentially malware to an otherwise legitimate product

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong about this, but from my understanding is that this is not being added with the update.
Unity Runtime was already an existing part of the Unity engine. They are just utilizing Runtime now as the means of tracking installs.

In other words, they aren't adding anything new, necessarily (as far as the software package itself is concerned)

 

[BreakerZero]

Wait, what? They're actually doing THAT, too? Oh my God........

Okay, so maybe that's more like conjecture. But I also don't see any other way that they would be able to enforce this kind of billing practice, unless of course the code is already in there for them to do so as @TheAM-Dol suggests may be the case.

 

[ATT_Turan]

Is EA bigger than Activision and Sega and Nintendo, or is it about the same number of employees for EA and all of those?

You know it's really easy to Google that without waiting for people to respond to a forum post, right?

EA has more than twice the number of employees that Nintendo does, and several times that of Sega (Sega has not been any kind of significant video game company since the Genesis in the '90s).

 

[sabao]

Hm...people pumping out "fremium" games that rely on whales splurging on their in-app purchases could take it up the butt?

Maybe I do support this policy

This really just got me to thinking about other free games. The uh, less predatory kind.

"Unity says developers don’t need to worry about fees related to trials, bundles, and giveaways"
- Digital Trends

Removing the case of demos, sales bundles and freebies then, what of totally free-to-play games like Idol Showdown or similar projects that will employ zero monetization, either because they can't legally make money from the project like with the aforementioned example, or simply because they don't want to?

Flappy Bird was some random dude's little coding exercise that had zero monetization outside what I recall was pop-in or banner ads. The guy who made it had zero genuine attempt to turn a profit for that thing when it exploded in popularity basically at random. The ad revenue would have certainly not have been able to cover the theoretical charged royalties per install in that case, right?

 

[Sword_of_Dusk]

This really just got me to thinking about other free games. The uh, less predatory kind.

"Unity says developers don’t need to worry about fees related to trials, bundles, and giveaways"
- Digital Trends

Removing the case of demos, sales bundles and freebies then, what of totally free-to-play games like Idol Showdown or similar projects that will employ zero monetization, either because they can't legally make money from the project like with the aforementioned example, or simply because they don't want to?

I hadn't even thought of this. And I dunno if Unity made anything clear regarding entirely F2P games.

 

[SpyroFan67]

You know it's really easy to Google that without waiting for people to respond to a forum post, right?

Smartass.....

As far as why I didn't Google it it's because I'm too lazy LOL.

 

[BCj]

Eh, actually stumbled upon this post earlier by someone who works in the industry:

About Unity these past few days

A lot of people have asked me about Unity and their strange new per-install charges policy that they rolled out on September 12th, 2023. I wanted to give them at least 24 hours before I posted my tak…

www.tumblr.com

Apparently their pricing change is because they're on the verge of going bankrupt :/

 

[Sword_of_Dusk]

Well, damn. I feel bad for them to a point, but this is ultimately their fault. They may not be the only ones who made the same mistake, but somebody should've been thinking ahead and trying to keep the company from driving themselves straight into a ditch.

 

[Andar]

that makes a lot more sense as the reason for the policy changes - but as said there I highly doubt that they will succeed. They should have changed company policy and stopped hiring two years ago.
because everyone is short on money and empty promises for a future have always resulted in a crash.

 

[BreakerZero]

And all I can say on that is this:

 

[AquaEcho]

that makes a lot more sense as the reason for the policy changes - but as said there I highly doubt that they will succeed. They should have changed company policy and stopped hiring two years ago.
because everyone is short on money and empty promises for a future have always resulted in a crash.

A lot of tech companies were on a hiring spree during the pandemic, that article even mentions as much, so Unity was just following the rest of the (tech) industry.

Now the US Federal Reserve keeps raising interest rates to try to control high inflation so borrowing money isn't cheap anymore and industry is contracting and laying off employees. There are still plenty of investors thinking the Fed is going to "pivot" any day now, i.e. reverse policy and lower rates again and the boom times will be back. It's why every time Jerome Powell opens his mouth the stock market swings wildly one way or the other.

 

[BreakerZero]

A lot of tech companies were on a hiring spree during the pandemic, that article even mentions as much, so Unity was just following the rest of the (tech) industry.

Now the US Federal Reserve keeps raising interest rates to try to control high inflation so borrowing money isn't cheap anymore and industry is contracting and laying off employees. There are still plenty of investors thinking the Fed is going to "pivot" any day now, i.e. reverse policy and lower rates again and the boom times will be back. It's why every time Jerome Powell opens his mouth the stock market swings wildly one way or the other.

Which in a situation like this basically means they have to do something themselves, which in this case was to royally f*** over their own user base with tactics more commonly associated with scam artists. I told my family that being risk-averse meant that I couldn't work with Unity under these rules, and that's the exact comparison that I got out of the conversation. Which in turn makes me think that there's a very high possibility that Unity may have also broken criminal laws intended for people like Madoff who do this kind of thing to bilk people out of millions for their own ill gains (with a money pyramid being the most common example of this).

Anyway, given the shift in conversation away from the original intent of discussing RPG Maker Unite and into a more formal diss on Unity (which I do admit that it may have been unavoidable given the severity of what has happened this past week) I'm going to file a report to consider ending discussion on Unite given the number of directions that this could go in as a result of the situation before things really get out of hand.

 

[ATT_Turan]

I'm going to file a report to consider ending discussion on Unite given the number of directions that this could go in as a result of the situation before things really get out of hand.

You've done this kind of thing before - why? If a forum rule has been broken by someone, you report that person for that rule. But why try to take it upon yourself to say an entire topic should be closed?

Just don't read the freaking thread.