I can say, unequivocally, if you’re starting a new game project, do not use Unity. If you started a project 4 months ago, it’s worth switching to something else. Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted.

It’s on developers to sort through these two types of costs, meaning Unity has added a bunch of admin work for us, while making it extremely costly for games like Vampire Survivor to sell their game at the price they do. Vampire Survivor’s edge was their price, now doing something like that is completely unfeasible. Imagine releasing a game for 99 cents under the personal plan, where Steam takes 30% off the top for their platform fee, and then unity takes 20 cents per install, and now you’re making a maximum of 46 cents on the dollar. As a developer who starts a game under the personal plan, because you’re not sure how well it’ll do, you’re punished, astoundingly so, for being a breakout success. Not to mention that sales will now be more costly for developers since Unity is not asking for a percentage, but a flat fee. If I reduce the price of my game, the price unity asks for doesn’t decrease.

  • Benign
    2•10 months ago

    I don’t quite get how the changes are so bad for indies. You must have both $200k revenue and 200k installs before the fee starts ticking on the excess installs. Do indies really sell that kind of numbers?

    I can see how the flood of ad-based mobile F2P games are hit, but I don’t feel sorry for those that run that kind of model.

    • @Wirrvogel@feddit.deEnglish
      8•10 months ago

      Do indies really sell that kind of numbers?

      Some do and can you risk to be one of them if Unity takes that much after the first week?

      Terraria, a game that got fresh content for years, meaning people were each update reinstalling the game, installing it on multiple platforms etc.

      During its first week of release, the game sold over 200,000 copies. That number increased to 12 million by June 2015. As of the end of 2020, the game has sold over 35 million copies worldwide. Read more: https://www.tuko.co.ke/421556-top-20-selling-indie-games-time-out.html