You've fallen into my trap card!
The thing with the whole 'Unity attempts to destroy their own company in a desperate plea to up their revenue' plot is that the longer it plays out the more we all become increasingly aware of how manufactured it all was. The whole plan to charge developers for the amount of times their games are installed by users, punishing success and threatening invasive back-end DRM in one fell 'piss off everyone' swoop- that was all a wash. Because you would have to be an actual certifiable maniac not to realise there would be backlash to announcing such an idea, and everything that would happen in the weeks to come would be so obvious, steps were taken to obfuscate the lead. What I'm saying is that everything that has happened up until now regarding the charge fees has been exactly what the Unity leadership had planned for, and before you label me as a conspiracy theorist just take a look at the situation from my neck of the woods and see if I'm in a wild headspace or perhaps, am actually onto something!
First we have the actual announcement itself. Most people don't actually remember the public post which revealed the predatory payment model, and that's because such an announcement was never actually penned. This proposition was actually revealed to insiders within the Unity partnership circle that let these details out to the world, thus providing an aura of 'unintentionally leaked plans' which so many companies have hidden behind in the past in order to get away with a 'soft announcement' without committing to it. Unity might have slightly underestimated people's attention spans, however, because the difference is minute to all but those who looked into the situation. Still, the scapegoat was there just in case Unity ever needed to take it.
Secondly, the terms of the deal were utterly ludicrous. For one, they actively punished those who resorted to cheaper plans with slightly higher fees that directly punched down on their consumer base, knowing well that it's them who will be most upset about these policy alterations and will kick up the biggest fuss. But why invoke the biggest reaction? Why make sure that this is headline news that everyone hears about? Well envision for a second that perhaps what was going on was the establishment of a common sore point which stretched as far and wide as possible. A transgression so far out of the line of acceptable business that by it's very exsistence the standards of outrage shift. And what do you create in such a scenario? An opportunity.
You see, modern public relations can very much feel like a battle between the 'common folk' and the 'cooperate folk', as one tries to influence the other with tactics or loud overpowering voices. There are battle lines too, which we can equate to those 'lines of acceptability' that I mentioned earlier. The best way to win ground in any war is to convince the enemy that they've actually gained ground whilst you move on them, and you can achieve that by making them believe you are supremely interested in territory you never seriously considered to begin with. Do you see the analogy? Set a trap in the bushes, place obvious bait in the clearing, the prey avoids the bait and wanders into bushes into the other trap. Textbook. Literally. And you merely need to look at Unity today to see the next trap from the silly buggers gang.
Now we have ourselves a whole 'apology tour' in wake of the massive movement against the Unity brand which has occurred resulting in widespread condemnation and even a commitment to start pulling Unity games from storefronts for fear of being hit by future incurred fees, which they would have absolutely been open to under the originally proposed system. Now, however, is the time of retractions and reinventions in the hopes that the message can be turned around about how generous and listening the Unity team is, as though we don't both exist within the game's industry and don't see the blatant reality that this was their business plan all along that they just wanted to make seem better in comparison to the crap they could have done.
Now 'Personal' tier users of Unity are free from the fee crap, also the cap of revenue at which Personal customers are forced to upgrade has been changed from 100,000 annual to 200,000. Also, that ugly 'made in Unity' splashscreen is no longer mandatory for such releases, which is a small victory in of itself. Of course, the fee itself is still very much in exsistence, but there have been safeguards placed around it. For example, now the developer fee can only be 2.5% of revenue at the absolute most, with potential for it to be lower than that based on other factors. Additionally, player installs will be developer reported rather than relying on shady 'proprietary tech' which sounded a lot like spy stuff. And best of all, the whole policy is being limited only to the upcoming 2024 runtime and games made with previous Unity versions will not be subjected to the fee. So everyone should be happy, right?
Well, Unity are still asking for some kind of fee for basically doing nothing, supporting a game engine which isn't even currently one of the best publicly available. Even limiting it to just 'those that can afford it' is still asking for a cut to someone's profits for the benefit of an easier to work with game engine, and add that atop all the other budgetary concerns that go into the development of just about anything and Unity still places itself very much within the dog house. Plus, there's the little fact that Unity very much just changed the terms of their arrangement on a whim and simply promised that they wouldn't do it again. They themselves claimed to have updated their EULA to be better fortified against elements of change, but they're literally describing themselves as the mitigating factor! Asking an organisation to police against themselves is like expecting law enforcement to visit equal punishment on the wealthy, it isn't to be relied upon.
Unity has succeeded in abolishing all semblance of respect that they held within the industry and cemented themselves as the 'last resort' choice of developers. The only developers in the know that are keeping with Unity are those who already have active projects that are too far along to even consider an engine change, everyone else can clearly see the potential damage across the industry that Unity is trying to inflict with this policy. Even the updated terms actively attempt to cross the line of charging per sale to some degree, which is an unacceptable threat that needs to be stamped out at the core. Honestly, this isn't going to be made better until Unity undergoes a clear ousting of the elements that proposed such a dishonour in the first place, and until that is under consideration- Unity as a serious engine proposition shouldn't be. Still, after the years of almost solely Unreal-based publicity, Unity has finally managed to steal the headlines for a few weeks. We'll just have to see from here on whether all publicity is, in fact, good publicity.
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