I can’t find the exact tweet but their official response is essentially that they have fraud detection systems already for their advertising business so they think they’re well equipped to handle this too.

Yes and no. No the installs that have occurred before 01/01/2024 will not be charged or counted.

Yes the old games will have the per install charges levied for installs that happen on or after 01/01/2024

It might cause them to migrate to another game engine, but it won't kill them. As long as there's good profit to be made, there will be people creating them.

It'll phone home and likely disable itself.

It just makes no sense though? like if you install the game on your laptop and your desktop, suddenly it costs the developer 40c even though you still only payed $25. Maybe you mess up the configuration while modding their game, and had to reinstall. Another 20c. It hangs over the developer's head like a sword of damocles long after you paid your money. It has literally infinate potential costs, and will keep ticking away costing them money long after they stopped bringing in much from the game.

Surely in all respects a percentage fee from all sales does the same job but with much less BS random edge cases, and can never be a net negative for the developer

A bit ranting : Working with unity for some years, I think the problem is not specifically the fee in itself, it's the context.

It need polishing, there are edge case and abuse potential to work but if I were to consider the new Unity offer without prior background "why not".

The real main problem with this announce it that it confirm that Unity management have a hard time on monetizing their product (you can see it in their services) and don't care about backstabbing you and will use it's leverage. The problem is not about if 20 cents per install after the 200k one is fair. The problem is that Unity say 'hey you know about the game you made some years ago with our engine ? Now you must either kill it or pay us a new tax AND that tax will be based on an arbitrary known by us only secret proprietary data but trust us we know what is good.

And, and that's finally the main problem, they are bad with stability and keeping up promises. I, and probably a lot of other dev would give up for any new features for like 2-4 years if they just MAKE WORKING THE ONES EXISTING.

And I'm not even talking about engine features. I'm just talking about service like VCS ou Cloud Build or Remote configuration or multiplayer hosting or adressable assets (ok this one is probably more an engine problem).

Is paying 20 cents per install for indy studio a huge bankrupting event ? Probably not, but what is the next step now we know their strategy for making more money from engine is firing developpers, upping prices and making fusion with shady ad networks known for spyware controversies ?

The problem is that the "installs" that unity is counting is totally decoupled from you paying for the game.

A pretty common scenario is purchasing a game once and installing it on many different machines. If I install a game on my steam deck, laptop, and desktop, that counts as three "installs" and unity charges the developer more money.

If I play a game for a while, uninstall it, but come back some time later to play again, guess what, that's a new install and unity charges the developer more money.

You paid the developer $25 for your copy of the game, but there is seemingly no limit for how much Unity is going to charge the developer for your copy of the game. They charge you every time you install it, on every device, every time.

There's already developers out there complaining that unity would take more than 100% of their revenue with this scheme

You acknowledge that they said millions of free demo downloads were the problem, state that you were not part of this, and then ask if you were really part of the problem.

No. You were not.