The GPU company that provided the GPU to render the assets also deserves a cut, don’t you think?

  • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    I’m pretty sure gaming studios would be mostly fine with paying a percentage of the sales revenue to unity too, the problem is that Unity wants a flat fee even when studios aren’t making any money.

    • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’m pretty sure gaming studios would be mostly fine with paying a percentage of the sales revenue to unity too,

      I think the real problem is changing the terms of the agreement and making it retroactive.

      • lud@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Yes, the question is what will happen next year and the year after that.

        Pandora’s box has been opened.

        • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Exactly. If they are willing to fuck over the creatives like this the best thing to do is to cut their losses and move to a different engine.

    • El Barto@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No, fuck that. Paying a game engine for based on the success of my product is asinine. Absurd.

      That’s like car companies asking Uber drivers for a cut of their revenues.

      Or knife companies asking restaurants for a cut (heh) of their revenues too.

      It’s sheer, sheer greed and nothing more.

      Edit: I didn’t convey well what I meant. Yes, of course you should pay for a commercial game engine. That’s not asinine. I meant to say that it should be a flat fee, or maybe a tiered fee. But not something proportional to the amount of downloads.

      • Gimly@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Well, unity’s business model was always to make it free and then ask for a fee on revenue because it’s easier for small studios. The alternative business model would be to sell a direct license of the 3D engine, which will likely cost in the 10s of thousands.

        It’s expensive building a 3D/game engine, they sell one to you.

        I’m not saying their latest move is not a real dick move, but it’s normal that they want to be paid for the product they sell. Uber drivers have paid for their cars, right?

      • AdmiralShat@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        I mean, people already pay Unity, people already pay Unreal, people have been paying to use proprietary software since software existed

      • DarkenLM@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        You can always build your own engine, if you think you can do better. Creating a game engine like Unreal or Unity is anything but an easy task, and they should get renumerated for that work. However, a more sensible pricing model than the shitshow Unity did is Unreal’s: The first $1m in revenue is yours, after that, a constant 5% fee. Sounds reasonable to me.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that the engine should be free. More like it shouldn’t be tied to the number of downloads.

    • If it weren’t for their shitty retroactive relicensing, I wouldn’t see the problem. It’s not Unity’s fault that the game you made is a flop.

      If they only charged studios that made money, every studio would use creative bookkeeping to license IP from overseas holding companies to come up with a loss year by year. Actually, they already do that, that’s how you don’t pay taxes. You’d be letting the megacorporations have the engine for free while indies would need to pick up the bill.