Caspien the Clown says he is evaluating ANOTHER engine switch

Slapshot1188

Yup.  He is using the Unity License fees as an excuse.  This guy, after ALL this time, still doesn't have ANY copies of a released game installed by his customers and is trying to use it as yet another excuse for having failed.  Again.  Hey @lotrlore In light of your recent coverage of his supposed deal for the silly Soulbound Engine, maybe you can do a followup on this one?

Caspian — Today at 5:52 PM

To @everyone,

As most of you already know, Kingdoms of Elyria was being developed with the Unity Game Engine. The decision to use Unity rather than the Unreal Engine for KoE was made for several reasons, not least of which was their business model. In short, Unity previously charged monthly fees per seat to use their engine, with a promise never to charge royalties or other per-sale related fees for using their engine. Additionally, you could stop developing with the Unity Engine at any time and pay no further fees beyond the end of the current year's plan. It also wasn't based on a per-title system. You could simultaneously have three games in development and pay only a single price per seat.

Last week, on September 12th, Unity made a significant announcement that, while they weren't technically charging royalties, they would begin charging studios on a "per-install" basis starting January 2024. In short, depending on how expensive the per-seat license you were paying them, you would begin being charged "per install" for every copy of the game installed after you met a pre-set threshold, such as 200k lifetime installs of the game and $200k in revenue over the previous twelve months.

That per-install "fee" was irrespective of the number of actual copies of the game that were sold. This means that if someone installed the game on two different machines, say their desktop and laptop, that counts as two installs.

Because the new fee is based on per install, not per sale, and is a flat amount based on your license tier, this system particularly punishes indie studios and free-to-play games.

Consider a $59.99 game developed using Unity Pro. It would owe no fees if it sold just 300k copies (1 install per sale). If it sold the minimum 1M copies, it would pay $0.15 for each install after that 1 million, decreasing to $0.02. Assuming it sells 100k copies (again, one install per sale) the next month, it would cost the studio just $15k. 

Now consider a $9.99 indie studio game using Unity Plus (a cheaper version of Unity for smaller, lower-revenue studios). If they sold 300k copies, they'd already have had to pay $20k for going above 200k copies sold. See the difference? $15k for going from 1 million to 1.1 million, vs. $20k for going from 200k to 300k - and with a price difference of $59.99 vs. $9.99. This is clearly more expensive for the indie studio as it's a higher percentage of their total revenue.

But let's say the indie studio with the Unity Plus license was a breakout hit and ALSO made it to 1.1 million. The extra 800k copies (single install) would cost that small studio $160k to sell the same units as the studio with the Unity Pro license.

But it gets worse. Because the license fee is based on "per install" and not "per sale," free-to-play games are punished further. Let's say you make a free-to-play game that has 1 million installs but only makes $200k in sales over the previous 12 months. That would require the studio to pay $200k in install fees for the additional 800k copies. That's a $0 margin, rendering the free-to-play game no longer worth developing. (edited)

[5:52 PM]

@everyone Now, Unity Technologies has every right to try and increase its revenue. Making games is expensive, and making game development tools is similarly costly. That said, this came as a big "F--- You" to the entire game development community because not only are they applying this fee to all future games developed, but they are applying it retroactively to all games already developed with the Unity Engine.

The new rules mean any studio that released a game before January 1st, 2024, and had over a pre-set number of installs and made over a pre-set revenue over the previous 12 months would be obligated to pay fees above the threshold. Many game studios, especially free-to-play games, are already looking at potentially owing more than they've made. Their only option is to pull their game from stores and sell no further copies.

This is unacceptable. To Unity Technologies' credit, they have begun to backtrack after significant blowback, boycotting, and "generous donations" made to their competitors. Still, no matter their revisions, the damage has been done. They've made it clear they're comfortable drastically modifying their agreements, even retroactively, with no recourse to their customers but pulling their games from the market. Furthermore, they've made it clear that while initially making it cheaper to use their engine for low-income, smaller indie studios, they're looking at a future where those same studios pay more than the larger studios. 

What does this all mean for Soulbound Studios and you guys? In the short term, only a little. Like many other indie studios, I've begun re-evaluating the available game engines to see whether or not there's a better alternative that is powerful, user-friendly, reliable, and affordable. And just as importantly, whether the company behind it (if any) is trustworthy.

In the long term, this may have no impact, or it may result in Kingdoms of Elyria changing from Unity to another engine for the game client. I am still determining which that'll be as it depends on my evaluations and what Unity Technologies does over the coming weeks to make amends for this radical, careless, and frankly insulting change to their license agreement.

Either way, I'll let you know when there's a clear direction for the KoE game client. (edited)

PS: I think the whole "radical, careless, and frankly insulting change to their license agreement" is hysterical coming from a guy who literally sold a project called Chronicles of Elyria what "was not just a concept" with so called in game footage, and is now talking about this Kingdoms of Elyria waste of time.

Dattelis

"And just as importantly, whether the company behind it (if any) is trustworthy."

Ngl, almost died laughing at this part.

Nilden

Should be super easy, barely an inconvenience to switch engines considering he doesn't even have a game yet.

Slapshot1188

Dattelis said:

"And just as importantly, whether the company behind it (if any) is trustworthy."

Ngl, almost died laughing at this part.

Yeah. As always he demonstrates a total lack of self-awareness.

Kyleran

Slapshot1188 said:

Dattelis said:

"And just as importantly, whether the company behind it (if any) is trustworthy."

Ngl, almost died laughing at this part.

Yeah. As always he demonstrates a total lack of self-awareness.

He doesn't see himself at all in the same light as most of the rest of the gaming world who know of him.

Or if he does, he sees himself as the victim who gave it a good try, failed and can still deliver one day to redeem himself.

Ask Mark Jacobs how well that's working out for him

Slapshot1188

Looks like his excuse just got yanked:

Unity’s new pitch doesn’t actually get rid of the per-install fees it plans to leverage on game developers. In a nutshell, it foregoes fees on Unity Personal, it doubles the revenue cap to $200,000, it reassures devs that games earning less than $1M per year will see no fees, it offers pro and enterprise users a choice of being billed on a 2.5% revenue shares or a installs, and it reiterates its earlier concession to make that data self-reported. It also goes even further making the policy non-retroactive (From MASSIVELYOP)

Kyleran

Still will delay his game by 2 more years.

What's infinity plus 2 equal?

Dattelis

Kyleran said:

Still will delay his game by 2 more years.

What's infinity plus 2 equal?

That or say he's working on a new project. Like a battle royale called Battle of Elyria

Slapshot1188

Dattelis said:

Kyleran said:

Still will delay his game by 2 more years.

What's infinity plus 2 equal?

That or say he's working on a new project. Like a battle royale called Battle of Elyria

To save time.  Of course.