https://garry.net/posts/unity-can-get-fucked
Unity can get fucked
Yesterday Unity announced that starting next year, all games that use their engine will pay a tax per user install. The tax has a high-profit threshold before it kicks in, which I think they assumed would make it okay.
Over the last 24 hours there have been many reasons pointed out why this is a bad idea. Tracking installs is messy. Piracy, reinstalls, new computers, giveaways, bad actors. There are a lot of reasons why it isn't feasible.
It makes you wonder how they could think it's a good idea. And maybe it is a good idea if you think of Unity as a mobile game engine. If you view it through that lens maybe it makes sense to them.
Maybe they forgot about PC gaming. Again.
The Cost
Let me be clear.. the cost isn't a big issue to us. If everything worked out, the tracking was flawless and it was 10p per sale, no biggy really. If that's what it costs, then that's what it costs.
But that's
not why we're furious. It hurts because we didn't agree to this. We used the engine because you pay up front and then ship your product. We weren't told this was going to happen. We weren't warned. We weren't consulted.
We have spent 10 years making Rust on Unity's engine. We've paid them every year. And now they changed the rules.
Broken Trust
Unity has shown its power. We can see what they can and are willing to do. You can't un-ring that bell.
If you'd have asked me last week whether it was in Unity's power to start charging us PER SALE of our games, I'd have said that was crazy and no.
Surely that's not possible.
That would be like Adobe charging all users of Photoshop per image view.. and trying to invent a system in which they can track and invoice you every month. And not only the new images, but all the images that you created over the last 20 years. Then automatically invoicing you every month.
But that's what happened. And now we know they can do that, and that they're willing to do that. Unity is the worst company to be in charge of the Unity Engine.
The trust is gone.
Retrospect
It's our fault. All of our faults. We sleepwalked into it. We had a ton of warnings. We should have been pressing the eject button when Unity IPO'd in 2020. Every single thing they've done since then has been the exact opposite of what was good for the engine.
We had 10 years to make our own engine and never did. I'm sure a lot of game companies are feeling the same today.
Let's not make the same mistake again, Rust 2 definitely won't be a Unity game.