Unity: We have to charge for every install because we only see totals. Also Unity: We can tell which install is which, so you won’t be overcharged.
The whole thing seems rushed because the CEO of Unity, John Riccitiello, was the leading advocate of microtransactions when he was at EA, and now he is instilling the same culture at Unity.
How will they differentiate between pirated copies and legitimate copies? How will they distinguish first-time installs from repeat installs? Can we trust their algorithm? It just doesn’t seem possible.
Unity: Everyone really seems to hate EA
Also Unity: Let’s hire the CEO of EA
🤦
It may have been more like:
Unity: “We love money and hate our customers, who can we hire to realize that vision?”
EA CEO: “Finally, a job that understands me”
Unity:
Everyone really seems to hate EAEA sure is making a lot of moneyAlso Unity: Let’s hire the CEO of EA
🤦
Ftfy
If there was a foolproof way of checking for a pirated copy they wouldn’t be making a game engine they’d be making DRM
Key bit feels like “can we trust their algorithm”
It’s hard to enforce a “just trust me, this is what you owe”
You can usually tell a unique machine apart from another via MAC address, but even that has issues, and that’s giving Unity the benefit of the doubt when they haven’t earned it.
MAC addresses are per network Interface, my computer has three technically and uses two of them on a regular basis.
A terrible tracking method.
And nowadays you have randomized MAC addresses on IPV6.
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If I buy a new computer, they shouldn’t be charged again because I installed on the new machine.
his is ignoring the “we don’t collect personal data” but “we will definitely know if you install it once or multiple times “we have ways””
MAC addresses are absolutely trivial to spoof, to the point that it’s just a drop-down option on linux lmao, so yeah good luck with that one
Are MAC address even shared ocer IP? as I understand MAC is for routers and other equipment to connect themselves, what MAC address are they going to receive? The one of the PC or the one of my router?
The game could read the Mac address and send it. It would probably violate GDPR because it’s not required for the game to perform its function, but it’s technically trivial.
Except iOS will randomize its mac adress at each boot / after a while to prevent users being tracked by rogue WiFi networks, which is actually a thing being used to track consumers in commercial spaces etc. So that wouldn’t work.
I don’t think it randomizes its actual mac address, it just gives a different one to different wifis
So did Windows at one point at least.
Guy just sank the ship
Seems like every tech company lately
I’m not sure why they hired him.
“Hey we’re looking for a new captain, why don’t we go for the guy who repeatedly sails into rocks? He’ll be good.”
Unfortunately a story as old as Wall Street. CEOs designed and hired to kill companies are a thing.
Meaning that this is on purpose? If so, who would profit from this? (besides the incompetent CEO themselves)
Short sellers, and the corporation that absorbs them at bargain prices.
Lying about collecting that data, because they do (and I block it). Not lying, but backtracking on everything else.
You’re right, they’re absolutely collecting data, but saying they can’t differentiate between activations and then saying “oh yeah, actually, we can when it comes to (piracy/bundles/charity/etc.)” less than 24 hours later tells me that not only do they not care about game devs, but they think we’re stupid too.
It also tells me that this is the first time their internal devs have heard about these plans. This is the C-level‘s wet dream, not something they have actually implemented yet.
But hey, it can’t be that hard, can it? The code monkeys should be able to get it to work in three months, right?
Can you share, how are you blocking it? On the firewall?
There’s a couple of ways to block it.
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Via an application Firewall, which will run on your PC. Safing’s Portmaster works on both Linux and Windows. Objective-See’s LuLu is a good Mac option. Both of these tools are free and open source.
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If you know Unity’s IPs, you could block it in your firewall. I’m guessing you do not. Though, with a little work, it can be done.
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If you can’t do either, you could at the very least block it at the DNS level. This will stop the software getting those IPs. It doesn’t really work if the IPs are already baked into the software, but that is incredibly unlikely in games. A great configurable DNS provider is NextDNS. If you have the know how to self-host a Pi-Hole or Adguard Home are great options.
There’s also ways to analyse that traffic, which I won’t go into here.
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Ok so if they are now only charging for the first install, why aren’t they just charging an extra fee per sale? Wouldn’t that accomplish effectively the same thing? (And actually work out in unity favour since not everyone who buys a game downloads it)
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That’s probably pretty negligible numbers. In fact I’d suspect that the number of people who buy a single copy that they then install on multiple devices is lower than the number of people who buy a game and never play it.
It’s also much simpler to implement and the numbers are verifiable. Unless… that’s exactly what Unity wants; just “trust me bro this is the correct number” kind of deal.
People eventually upgrade their computers. Swapping out mainboards and/or reinstalling Windows probably counts as a new device.
Also Steam Deck - every install and uninstall is considered a new computer. That’s true for Linux gaming using Proton in general, but the rest of Linux gaming is not as relevant.
Right, but how many people keep games for that long? How often do they reinstall? It’s tiny numbers. Even if it’s 1 in 100 installs that’s a tiny extra cost compared to the rest. In reality it will probably be much lower, and - again - most games have at least about 30% unplayed ratio.
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I don’t think so. Even casual players reinstall their favorite games on everything they can manage. Think of Stardew Valley.
Favorite, long lasting games will definitely suffer more from this. But it should still be a tiny issue.
Because they realize that a huge number of their customers are small indies, and they want to be able to squeeze them - the majority of their customer base - not just the minority of big companies (who are also the most likely to fight back legally).
Just look at how their scheme squeezes smaller, poorer developers way more than big ones. If Unity went by points like, say Epic does with Unreal, they could shake down the big developers… but wouldn’t get much out of the indies.
Which is the opposite of what smart companies like Adobe do. You facilitate the small players in hope that they grow big and keep using your products at a larger scale.
It work for paid games, youd have to apply it to microtransaction level if by f2p game, which is the real target for the change.
They’re offering to reduce/wave the fee if you’re using other Unity services. Given this change has the biggest impact on freemium games that rely on free downloads to get a large install bases and which rely on the kind of services that Unity will give you a discount for using, well, it’s not hard to connect the dots. Especially when you remember Unity merged with a ad company recently.
Other than that it might be a way to take a bite out of services like Game Pass or Geforce Now. The deals devlopers get for theses are potentially very low revenue per “install” so it’s possible this would make them more money than taking a percentage of the revenue.
The fact that they went forward with this decision means they’re not so wise at lying. It sounds more like last-minute damage control, but I doubt this will stop their greed. What I’m wondering now is how will the Chinese game companies react? Everybody get your popcorns ready.
So does this mean every single unity game will have unity online drm now? Or how else will they be able to tell? Seem so much more convenient to take a cut from sales instead
This is wizards of the cost all over again. Unity learned nothing from them.
It’s just capitalism.
Relevant username is relevant
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Was Unity lying yesterday or are they lying today?
Yes and yes. It’s not an either-or situation.
Good point, they can’t both be true…but they CAN both be false. I’m hiring you as my lawyer.
Sounds trustworthy to me! /s
So what is a better game engine to use now?
Unreal for “commercial, highly documented, also an industry standard”
Godot for “this is actually libre software and you can trust it to not enshittify itself in a couple years”
This is the perfect answer.
Godot is FOSS.
Unreal is decent too i guess but… not free. (Though iirc its free if you publish your game on epic)
