this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Not downloads. Installs. They also count re installs. So if you. Install a game, play it, remove it, then install again later that is an additional charge to the dev.
You’ve entered into a brand new era of trolling game developers by directing costing them for the fun of it.
I can even automate it for pennies.
Spin up 100 digital ocean droplets with Terra form. Install steam, the game, open the game, let it crash. Kill the droplet and do it again.
For every $0.70 I spend, I could get ~2000 installs. Per hour. Costing some dev up to $400/h
They don't count reinstalls.
You can tell because they totally promise and definitely won't let you see how their system works because it's "proprietary".
That’s the cool part, it doesn’t.
So.. if your game becomes the most pirated game in history, you're on the hook for millions off zero income.
Way to go Unity..
They carved out an exception for pirated copies
And they can tell.. how exactly?
If I've read this right, they don't count re-installs on the same hardware, so just "I don't want to play this anymore" uninstall -later- "I want to play this again" reinstall won't count as two installs. But reinstalls of the same license on different hardware does, so "I just bought a game! Let's play it on my aging gaming PC" installs I just bought a new gaming PC, let's see what that game looks like on high graphics settings installs again does count as two installs and the studio will...bewilderingly...be charged twice for that one sale.
Now I'm intrigued about multiple installs on multiple virtual machines.
You're not the first to consider that possibility. It seems possible to grief a studio by repeatedly installing games in virtual machines and running up their Unity bill.
The question of "what about pirated games" has also come up. Are developers going to be charged per install of pirated games? Unity's answer to this has been an LTT brand "Trust me, bro."