Unity’s per-install fee turns cache invalidation into a revenue model

Description

Image is a dark-mode Twitter screenshot. The avatar is blurred, next to the bold white name “Stephen Totilo” and handle “@stephentotilo”. The tweet text reads: “I got some clarifications from Unity regarding their plan to charge developers per game install (after clearing thresholds) - If a player deletes a game and re-installs it, that’s 2 installs, 2 charges - Same if they install on 2 devices - Charity games/bundles exempted from fees”. There are three bullet points in standard Twitter font, all on a black background. Technically, the image highlights Unity’s 2023 proposal to bill developers for every runtime installation, exposing the peril of telemetry-driven pricing, double-counting reinstalls, and the deeper vendor lock-in risks for studios that built entire pipelines on a single engine

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GameDevelopment GameEngine GamingIndustry VendorLockIn LicensingCosts IndustryTrends IndustrySatire CorporateCulture

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick When your billing algorithm treats rm -rf and a fresh git clone as two separate revenue events, congratulations - you’ve achieved eventual consistency on your invoice

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

When your billing algorithm treats rm -rf and a fresh git clone as two separate revenue events, congratulations - you’ve achieved eventual consistency on your invoice
Anonymous

Unity discovered the one pricing model that makes Oracle's licensing look consumer-friendly: charging developers every time a teenager rage-quits and reinstalls their game
Anonymous

Unity's new pricing model: where 'Hello World' costs $0.20 per compile, and every time you fix a bug and redeploy, that's another install charge. At least they're finally making developers pay for their technical debt - literally. Next up: charging per frame rendered, because why should game loops be free?
Anonymous

Per-install billing is basically monetizing non-idempotency - support now says, 'Clear cache; whatever you do, do not reinstall.'
Anonymous

Unity's installs: non-idempotent operations where every retry doubles the billable events
Anonymous

Billing per install without deduplication is just at-least-once delivery applied to invoices - enjoy your new denial-of-wallet attack surface
@callofvoid0 2y

even if they install multiple times with one download ?
1. @callofvoid0 2y
  
  even if the installation and execution is offline?
扇子 2y

weird, why dont they just rollback the changes as they see how much negative impact it does
1. @sanchpet 2y
  
  that's just one huge social experiment
@endisn16h 2y

rhey already went back on that decision
1. @decide_later 2y
  
  Not really: they've just promised not to charge for reinstalls, but the first install fee is still here. And it raises a lot of questions like, "how are they going to distinguish between first installs and reinstalls or installs on other devices?", "how are they going to tackle fraudulent automated installs aimed to squeeze money out from developers?", "what about pirated installs?" And it really doesn't change the situation for F2P devs which have small turnout for a large install base
  
  @endisn16h 2y
  
  yup, only part about reinstalls was my point
  
  @RiedleroD 2y
  
  ah, well … yeah, I think they'll have to backpedal a lot more
  
  @frayxrulez 2y
  
  But I wonder how many are actually affected
  
  dev_meme 2y
  
  Some game devs, eg creators of Genshin Impact wouldn’t agree with you 👀
  
  @decide_later 2y
  
  There are 1-10% of high-impact F2P devs which have managed to convert their player base into huge revenue and can afford this kind of "runtime fee", but as for the rest, these studios gain less than a dollar from each user. There are stories on Twitter of devs which gain $200,000 from the userbase of tens of millions people and are barely getting by, and there are theoretical graphs on how much of your gross revenue gets eaten by that "runtime fee", sometimes exceeding 100%: https://blog.runevision.com/2023/09/charts-to-visualize-how-much-you-owe.html?m=1
2. @RiedleroD 2y
  
  did they?
@ercolebellucci 2y

is this legal?
1. @RiedleroD 2y
  
  nope
  
  @RiedleroD 2y
  
  unless, ofc, they backpedal. which they will, after consulting with someone internally who has a brain
@ercolebellucci 2y

im not even a developer but im trying to be, but this has too many catastrophic consequences
1. @RiedleroD 2y
  
  use godot or unreal instead. ez fix
@qwnick 2y

Who is this guy? It's clearly stated in FAQ that reinstalls not count for like 4 days already.
1. @RiedleroD 2y
  
  if you want to know about circular imports, this is a good start!
  
  @qwnick 2y
  
  "And just if prev post wasn't enough" Only clown here is dev_meme mod who posted this
  
  @RiedleroD 2y
  
  fair, but you can't expect a meme page to fact-check everything they post
@lord_nani 2y

I will use a script to download a game 1000 times a day and indebt the developer
1. Deleted Account 2y
  
  Y not 1Hz :3
  
  @lord_nani 2y
  
  Will need to emulate download completions then
  
  @RiedleroD 2y
  
  should be relatively easy if you have a router with a generous amount of IP addresses, although doing that might get the ip range blocked
@lord_nani 2y

Thank you for idea
@danylo1554 2y

Hahahahah, how to bury your engine
@etsymba 2y

Oh no one ducking cares
1. @koloslolya 2y
  
  every unity dev cares lol
@endisn16h 2y

reddit big chungus wholesome keeanu reeves moment😂😂😂 EDIT: thanks for the gold, kind stranger!
@callofvoid0 2y

fuck you
1. @qwnick 2y
  
  what was the deleted message?
  
  @endisn16h 2y
  
  ad spam
@callofvoid0 2y

is this real?

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Unity’s per-install fee turns cache invalidation into a revenue model

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