596
Unity backtracks, no runtime fee for sub $1mil or for games on current/old versions
(blog.unity.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
This is what they wanted to do from the beginning. They just boundary tested to see how far people would let them take this.
This is still a step backward, its just a step backward fewer people are going to push back on. But the issue is that if it is allowed, theyll slowly introduce more download tracking over time.
I do think that's just standard practice these days with "bad press" moves, but I don't think this is what Unity wanted. They never expected to have to move it as far back as they have, nor did they expect the loss in trust, which was really stupid of them, frankly. They really thought their dominance in the industry was enough that clients essentially wouldn't have a choice other than the shit options dictated by Unity and only Unity.
But not only was that dominance proven extremely fragile (and now heavily fractured), they just put themselves in the very precarious position of having to entice back clients after essentially hitting them in the face and daring them to go somewhere else. Any smart person/company isn't going to willingly leave themselves reliant on Unity ever again.
This also could be their original goal, but they tried to pull the "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" and then dialed it back to try and make it not seem as bad.
Like when the justice system adds on a bunch of superfluous charges in order to make their primary ones stick.
I guarantee their original goal didn't include "and now only stupid clients will work with us", which is my point.
Yeah, those corporate types usually can't see past their next quarterly earnings report.
The fact remains that this playbook failed rather drastically, earlier this year even, with the D&D Franchise making similar headlines, and it wasn't even enough to give them pause.