Google doesn’t force you to pay shit. You can sell your game APK by any means you wish. Valve doesn’t demand any money from you either, go to a competitor or host your own game. Apple’s “app store or bust” 15% fee is the only forced fee to access any users. The rest is just luxury.
“But users don’t want my shitty launcher mechanism” yeah that’s why Google and Valve charge money. Setting up a store ecosystem that follows tax rules around the globe and handles distributing huge files is a pain. Feel free to try to do it yourself if you think you can save money.
Unity is being dicks towards studios by retroactively changing the contract. Unreal did that too a few years ago, although they didn’t add an install fee, just a 5% revenue surcharge, that’s why you didn’t hear about it. But let’s be real here, the value for money you get from Unity is massive.
It wasn’t that long ago that you would pay 100k upfront for an engine like Unity. That engine wouldn’t get any updates and you still had to pay per-seat developer costs. Developing engines is incredibly costly, that’s why the rates are so damn high.
Unity is making hundreds of millions of losses every quarter, of course they’d raise prices eventually. They’ve been a loss leader ever since they went public, and before that they weren’t very profitable either. If you base your business on the Uber of game engines, of course you’re going to get fucked over down the line.
Luckily, engines like Godot exist. You don’t need to pay a dime to get an engine. I expect any developer angry about this to start porting their game to the new engine soon. We still have a few months until the payment fee date starts coming up.
Google doesn’t force you to pay shit. You can sell your game APK by any means you wish. Valve doesn’t demand any money from you either, go to a competitor or host your own game. Apple’s “app store or bust” 15% fee is the only forced fee to access any users. The rest is just luxury.
“But users don’t want my shitty launcher mechanism” yeah that’s why Google and Valve charge money. Setting up a store ecosystem that follows tax rules around the globe and handles distributing huge files is a pain. Feel free to try to do it yourself if you think you can save money.
Unity is being dicks towards studios by retroactively changing the contract. Unreal did that too a few years ago, although they didn’t add an install fee, just a 5% revenue surcharge, that’s why you didn’t hear about it. But let’s be real here, the value for money you get from Unity is massive.
It wasn’t that long ago that you would pay 100k upfront for an engine like Unity. That engine wouldn’t get any updates and you still had to pay per-seat developer costs. Developing engines is incredibly costly, that’s why the rates are so damn high.
Unity is making hundreds of millions of losses every quarter, of course they’d raise prices eventually. They’ve been a loss leader ever since they went public, and before that they weren’t very profitable either. If you base your business on the Uber of game engines, of course you’re going to get fucked over down the line.
Luckily, engines like Godot exist. You don’t need to pay a dime to get an engine. I expect any developer angry about this to start porting their game to the new engine soon. We still have a few months until the payment fee date starts coming up.