Unity's supplemental statement is here!
I believe that everyone has been brushed by the news that Unity collected "head fees" yesterday. It seems a bit biased to say "head fee", because in the official announcement and FAQ at the beginning, the billing method is calculated on a per-download basis, and multiple downloads from the same user will be charged repeatedly.
However, Unity officials soon released a new billing instructions, clarifying that repeated installation of the game will not incur new fees.
Developers can reduce the price of "head fee" by subscribing to the Pro version and the enterprise version for a fee
In today's latest version of the supplementary statement, Unity replied to various public opinions on the user community and the Internet one by one during the day, and also expressed the official response to public opinion.
The latest official supplementary statement
First of all, only if the installation volume and income threshold reach the standard of 200,000 (US dollars, person-times) at the same time, it will be included in the charging threshold, which is not very clear in the first version of the instructions, yesterday's announcement used "AND", and today's Chinese instructions, it is clearly stated that both conditions must be met. Among them, $200,000 is the turnover of the past 12 months, and 200,000 is the total number of career installs of the Unity account, which in theory will always be reached as long as the developer has been engaged in the game industry.
The second category is that there is no charge for more critical repeat installations, and the new rules will only apply to net new installs after January 1, 2024, and will not apply to previous installations and subsequent uninstall reinstallations.
Third, fraudulent installations are not charged, which stems from online public opinion questioning the calculation of installs, hacker teams can develop scripts to frantically uninstall installations to achieve a tougher threat than DDoS attacks. To be honest, the attack and defense of network security has always been an arms race, and Unity is difficult to identify 100% malicious installation behavior, and the official said in today's note that it will directly cooperate with victims to fight possible hackers.
The fourth category, web games and streaming games do not charge, to put it in the vernacular, our common WeChat mini program games, HTML5-based software, cloud games and subscription games, these types of downloads and installations are not counted in this "head fee". However, Unity charges for subscription cloud games often contract directly with the platform, and after the cost is passed, it still has to fall on the entire consumption chain.
The fifth category, demo games, demos and automated installations (DevOps fees) are not charged, and for game samples that do not yet have product attributes, they are not counted as installs, but EA Early Access games are not included. DevOps is a duplicate installation during DevOps and is not counted.
A set of combined punches basically responded to the bug that the community considered "against the sky". But it is not perfect, for example, about the installation of pirated games, there is no supplementary explanation, and in yesterday's FAQ, the official said that it will provide a program for developers to submit those pirated software, that is, the burden of proof is on the developer's side, and about the global confrontation between game developers and piracy hacker teams, the former has never won, and Unity obviously does not know what a particularly powerful solution is when it comes to identifying piracy.
Q: What about piracy?
A: We have a solution to similar problems, and we will introduce a procedure for you to report (??? ）
Combined with today's full description, let's take a fresh look at the impact of Unity's new rules.
The relatively small impact is the buyout game with a higher unit price, with the highest charging standard, 0.2 US dollars per game, converted into RMB is about a piece of five, developers can add this cost to the price of the game, the price of one yuan more has a very limited impact on sales.
The second is for domestic game developers, which belong to the Emerging market, similar to the fees of developing countries, and only generate $0.02 per install. There is a ambiguity in this regulation, where the IP location of the installed device is calculated, not the location of the game developer.
The more serious impact will be some developers who have been released for a long time, have completely stopped changing, and switched to new works, this part of the game has not had much new sales revenue, but must also invest energy and cost in maintaining the Unity fee system for a long time. Authors of classic Unity indie games such as "Bleating Apocalypse", "Killing Spire", and "Mankind Failed" have half-jokingly said on social platforms that the game will be removed from shelves as soon as the new rules are implemented next year to avoid endless troubles thereafter.
"Bleating Apocalypse": "If you want to buy quickly, you won't sell it next year (dog head)
Finally, there is a game with a low ARPU but a superior number of downloads, and in China, we have a familiar name - buy volume game. As a buy volume game where every user enters the game with a negative value, Unity's new rules will be the straw that kills the camel. But fortunately, this type of game does not have too much research and development costs, and the final answer is naturally to change the engine, in fact, the current foreign use of Cocos engine development of casual games has occupied the mainstream.
Cocos and Godot will be the workhorses of the next small-cost game
For the majority of game developers, the most heart-wrenching thing is to spend a lot of energy on the learning of the Unity engine, if it is only a personal developer who plays the nature of tickets, it can continue to be accessible, and even Unity's personal version does not need identity screening after the new regulations, but if it is a developer who plans to work and apply for a job, you must consider the gold content of this skill, and there will be a considerable number of commercial companies in the future to choose other development engines.
In any case, the first to suffer in the game industry will be IAA games that are still using Unity engines but using ads to monetize, and it seems to be the worst "junk game" in the eyes of players. For quite some time, the industry has been calling for game refinement and more attention to the creation of game content, but viral buying games have always been the majority of the iceberg. Although Unity's new rules can give it a heavy blow, it is likely that it will not fundamentally solve the problem, and in the end, it will only make capital change the stage.
In this charging storm, in fact, the biggest loss is the user's trust in Unity, the previous channel asking price can be understood as making a lot of money and getting a piece of the pie, the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility, and the "head fee" is somewhat "whether you earn money or not, I have to earn your money" meaning. In the foreseeable future, this 0.2 knife/person fee will not disappear, and it will become higher and higher, and this possibility of starting the price at any time is the biggest concern affecting game developers choosing Unity engine.