Chibishortdeath - What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse…

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

happy birthday to a Special Girl

So I was playing Simon’s Quest (again) earlier and you guys might know by now that I’m incredibly normal (extremely deranged) about that game, but it’s got me thinking about something: what exactly are the hearts and why are they the money in this game?

Hearts in the first game and almost every game after Simon’s Quest are the thing that you need to collect to be able to use subweapons and they primarily come from candles, but enemies can drop them too. But in Simon’s Quest, while they do still power a couple subweapons, it’s only the ones we’ve never seen before like the Sacred Flame and Golden Knife while not being used for the Holy Water, something that does in every other game. And they only come from enemies because there’s no candles. And there’s different sizes of them. And collecting enough of them levels Simon up. And their primary function is completely shifted to currency!!! Odd, isn’t it?

And the whole way that you buy anything in this game is really framed like some black market sketchy deal. These sellers (or crooked traders with bum deals lol) are primarily holed away in their houses under one or two layers of walls and floors only breakable by magical infinite Holy Water, something only the local badass vampire hunter guy would have after having bought some with said hearts in the first town, or they’re way tucked away in the thick of these Dracula’s army overtaken mansions, some of them even standing directly where skeletons walk past them or in between relatively large pits of spikes. Whatever the reason, these guys obviously want this fairly secret. (Aside from the first town white crystal guy, he’s fine being out in the open lol.)

So what gives??? What is Simon grinding monsters for and trading with the locals for weapons and herbs???

Now this is where things get really ✨speculative✨. I’m gonna put the cut here for suspense and intrigue I guess lol XD. This is gonna be a lot of me thinking out loud and throwing down ideas, not really like a confirmed answer to anything, just havin fun thinkin about a part of a game d(•w• )

I think there’s a few possibilities. They could be the same thing that they are other games or they could be something different just used similarly as a power source.

But first we gotta break down what hearts could be in Cv1. In a lot of the games they seem to be some kind of a general mana, a magic energy possibly not unlike how metaphysical/magical things are depicted in other media. Perhaps the subweapons themselves are magic objects and not really a physical thing that require “hearts” to be conjured. Maybe they could be physical objects that need to be enchanted with “hearts” to be anywhere comparable to Vampire Killer level usefulness. Just a few possibilities.

If the hearts in Simon’s Quest are the same thing, then this kinda makes some sense. Simon trading monster soul energy or whatever with presumably magic users for things he needs on his Quest, especially since things like Laurels (also can be called bay laurels or bay leaves) are commonly used in spells and who better to be selling a spell component than someone who does spells! Also, it makes sense that these people would be fairly out of sight as magic use was still a touchy subject at the time.

Now I don’t know how accurate this is, and if I do find a source somewhere in my way too many bookmarks I will reblog this and link it to it, but I remember reading somewhere in an interview about either SotN or one of the games made close before it that the candles are like the souls of Dracula and his army’s victims that you free when you hit them and they leave you a little parting gift for it. Yes, these games were made way after, so it’s not certain if that was the original intent of these, but I figured it adds something to this.

But what if the hearts in Simon’s Quest are not the same thing? After all, the Holy Water doesn’t use them and we can’t say if they would or not work for other subweapons that appear in CV1 since they aren’t in this one. Well there’s something else that could be dropping from killing monsters that could also fit into the above probability that these traders are magic users and it’s a little darker!

Hearts! Bones! General viscera! And this also kinda makes sense! I mean the whole plot of the game revolves around Simon already carrying pieces of Dracula’s corpse around to burn all together on an altar to cure his and the surrounding area’s curse, it’s not that far of a stretch to say that he’d be fine with carrying around pieces of other monsters and that magic users might be willing to trade things for them so they can use them in their own spells, potions, and so on. And that might also explain why Holy Water isn’t powered by hearts and is incredibly weak in comparison in this game. And why these weird, new subweapons seem to be Simon exclusive! They could be powered by things like monster blood instead of the usual magic energy-ish stuff we’re used to hearts symbolizing.

Regardless of if I’m right or not with either of these, Simon is probably taking advantage of some underground monster essence/organs trade the whole game and this is just such an interesting batshit detail for him as a character.

Anyway, I love this game so much, I’m gonna be spreading propaganda for it like this a lot hopefully lol. Okie that’s it hope that was fun, do with this information what you will :)

I think a lot about how Christopher went and fought Dracula all alone and things went wrong, but the whole Soleil situation was swept under the rug so when Simon was looking up to Christopher a lot he only saw him as “cool hero man who did everything by himself, you should be like him” and went off into Castlevania all alone and what do you know things went wrong, but somehow the whole quest to break the curse story got told wrong somehow, so Maxim thought the Dracula revival was on purpose and only saw Simon as “cool hero man who did everything by himself, you should be like him” and went off into Castlevania all alone and things went wrong, but somehow the whole ghost castle situation must not have been told about, so when Richter looked up to Maxim and Juste and everyone before them he only saw them as “cool hero man who did everything by himself, you should be like him” and went in Castlevania alone and even though he had Maria to help him he already had this idea of what high expectations he had on him to be like everyone before him and things went wrong—

I beg of you, 🌿 <(o.o < ) please take these laurels!

simons quest i love you simons quest.