It would be super cool… For Unity, whilst I agree shifting focus on to our success is a good thing what dev in their right mind would want royalties? Instead of paying max $125 a month for a couple of years (at most) you could end up paying $50k / $100K +++.
It’s not like Unity is in such a state that you can’t develop a decent (or even ambitious) game how it is.! Their user base would shrink rapidly but their business model / revenue would improve dramatically (dependant on them of course) or it could end in disaster. That ain’t a decision to take lightly, rather them than me :)…
It doesn’t really matter in the end its about making Unity the best it can be. And if it is, most devs in their right mind wouldn’t think twice about it being worth it no matter the model.
If Unity deviate from providing and expanding on providing top-notch tools and consistent workflows etc etc that you can invest in custom solutions etc for many years and projects to come.
Reliably being that hub that you can stake your flag in and hire talent geared with that in mind etc… If you’re a game developer you’re basically shaping your whole company around that stuff.
… Reliably being that hub versus unreliably being competent is the difference between close to priceless and worse than worthless - A waste of time, that is.
I feel like you’re not really tuned in to what I’m suggesting if you think this was my issue.
The reason I’m positive to the royalty revenue model isn’t because I have a personal issue with the pricing. It’s because I feel like it more clearly puts the developers of Unity’s financial incentives in line with my own.
They make money when they help me make money. So we’re developing in the same direction… Otherwise maybe from a business point of view it makes more sense to spend a lot of resources on (this is hypothetical and doesn’t refer to any actual thing) a cloud building system that they can monetize at different levels and use spaces like blogs to essentially advertise this service. It also does, from a strictly business point of view, make a lot of sense since Unity of course fundamentally controls Unity, lock off the ability for other cloud build services to provide integration with unity. Effectively now being able to just kill any competition to their service.
These actions are from a certain kind of business perspective a complete no-brainer home run.
However if you start operating in these kinds of ways when providing these kinds of services I’m convinced you’re just going to play yourself out of your own market and it’s going to come back and bite you bad.
Oh yeah - that is quite predatory I agree… Or at least manipulative… I think it becomes a different discussion though if the product is one meant for entertainment versus one that’s meant to provide cold utility meant to help completing tasks.
I think it’s a slippery approach for games too though but the fact that it’s never claiming to provide anything but entertainment makes them a different discussion.
I do see what you mean when you say that. I just don’t really agree that’s necessarily how it would go.
I would suggest it’s equally valid to conclude that you would then start to increasingly spend time working on developing your game engine to generate more money, rather than working on actually developing the utility of the game engine. Users would start slipping, loosing your revenue, prompting you to respond by focusing even harder on revenue generation until it’s just completely lost it’s actual core value.
I’m of the belief that if you make something that a lot of people want a lot, you’ll be able to turn that into profit one way or another because that’s indisputable value. If you have something that nobody wants at all then you spend all of the time in the universe trying to get it to generate revenue but it’s not going to work.
Of course things aren’t that generally that black or white. If I had to pick one extreme though I know which one I would choose.
Here is a thing. You can make already tons of games and applications with Unity tools / utilities that they provide. No issue here. That not even looking for external resources (i.e. Asset Store).
Lets say you want your dreamed AI utility and is available. Now you get it and you can implement of hand, with minimal time. Ok no issue. Then you want something else, since you got more time to implement new features. And you need be more competitive, as many others use that tools too. So you are in endless circle of demand.
As the result, it doesn’t matter how many utilities / tools is available. Anyone else is on same boat. It is matter of how you utilize them. + external sources.
Just sarcastically, 1 click MMO game making button, wont put anyone ahead of competition.
it would be awesome if Unity would move to the royality-scheme, but I don’t see this happening, because as opposed to Epic, UE has roots in smaller teams, which means both they would have to be more expensive than Epic, and it would be very bad for the small indie teams, because instead of a quite predictable monthly charge, they would need to pay a sum depending on their income (also raising the volume of paper-work, which sinks money), maybe when Unity finally grow their roots in either the AAA world and/or in other industries, they can afford to do so
I think having many legs for a business brings more stability and not less, so UE is doing other industries beside gaming is a good thing in my opinion
It is okay to feel bad because the once more “indie-like” Unity Technologies became a corporation. I don’t feel bad about it, but it is okay to feel that way. Although I don’t see how you would be able to help that. IE: you will need to get over it, because you are not in decision-making position there. None of us customers are.
I don’t see having more tools would be a bad thing, even if you or me don’t use them, it’s not like they don’t work on awesome things connected to gaming because they are working on TV and movie-related things.
There is no place on the board these kind of generic rants. The place for those is a blog. This board is for using unity and game development in general. While I’m sure your insights into how to run a successful business are valuable, this isn’t the place. Closing.