How will unturned be impacted by the new monetization changes that Unity has recently released? Will we be getting new methods of monetization?
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These changes will only apply to the games that meet two certain thresholds, which are having made $200,000 in the last 12 months, and having been installed at least 200,000 times. Unturned is a free game, and I do not think DLCs and cosmetics that can be bought once you have the game, but aren’t part of the game itself count, or are enough.
Not saying this is not extremely scummy of unity, though. Really one hell of a way to shoot yourself in the foot.
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It’s hard to say how it will affect Unturned because I’m hoping - as are all Unity developers - that they will reverse course considering the backlash. Regardless of what happens, I intend to continue supporting Unturned to the best of my ability. I don’t plan to try increasing Unturned’s monetization. If anything, it will be safer to stay under the revenue thresholds haha.
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So does this mean Unturned is affected? I’m genuinely curious because I thought free to play games were generally exempt from the whole fiasco. If they’re not, then oh god that’s even more terrible than I thought
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I believe microtransactions count toward the revenue requirement, I forget where exactly that is mentioned though.
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W games who make decent chunks of money should pay equivalent fees. If the game makes even a single dollar per sale, this fee doesn’t mean much. For f2p games, they can be bombed ig but I think it’s good as long as those games have microtransactions to balance it out. Honestly, meh, most f2p games juice their fans for money through predatory tactics such as gambling or digital stock markets so yeah.
so you’re saying that is a good idea and that every f2p game should introduce predatory microtransactions so that Unity Technologies, the corporation is fed more money from impressionable players’ pockets…?
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Nelson posted a response directly on this forum topic already, but for anyone interested there’s a few X/Twitter posts as well from yesterday, made after the initial announcement. E.g.;
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kind of wondering if this means there is a chance unturned 2 (or U4.0 or whatever were calling it) might be on the table again?
Nelson should remake it in scratch like ultrakill
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For those confused, the fees are charged every time someone installs, not buys the game. And that is regardless of whether or not the player installing the game ever paid anything to the developer in any form. Meaning that if there are players who play the game for free, then the developers are automatically losing money.
The developers will have to pay if their revenue exceeds 200k USD and 200k installs. Note that it says revenue, not profit. Meaning that if the costs for the game production were 199.9k USD, and the revenue 200k, then despite having earned only 10 cents from the game, the developers would still need to pay the fees in the future (the fees start being charged only after those conditions are fulfilled). Even worse if the production costs exceed the profits.
It also doesn’t say in which way the money was earned. It only says “revenue”. Which means microtransactions, one-time purchases, ad-revenue, etc. all count towards it.
Unity says that the developers will be charged only the first time a game is installed on each machine, however… Personally I was notified about “logging in from a new machine” quite a few times from services such as Steam or Gmail despite having logged in on there before.
I highly doubt Unity will track that properly. Players won’t know that the developer is being charged, and the developer won’t know they are being charged for the same player, same machine.
Personally I believe that small free-to-play mobile games that rely on quantity of players and ad-revenue instead of whales, as well as games that become a part of weekly giveaways and the like would be impacted the most.
Also, this change will most likely end up in an increase of whale-targeting predatory marketing models. In other words monthly subscriptions, new player packages, paid boosters, gacha, overpriced skins, expensive DLCs without which it feels like you are playing a demo, etc.
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I wonder if this is related to the purchase of IronSource last year
I’m not entirely sure, but I believe those are based on things like IP, not necessarily something unique to the computer.
Doesn’t change anything with however Unity will count installs. They haven’t publicly stated how installs are tracked so things like upgrading to a new phone will probably count despite being for the same user. I don’t know why they can’t just do a 20 cent charge on buying a game rather than installing it.
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Yes, according to the Unity’s FAQ if the same user downloads the game from a new device, then the developer will be charged.
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Definitively do not fake install Unity games multiple times a minute
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Good news. Unity made some changes to their fees and as long as Unturned doesn’t change the Unity version it uses to 2023 LTS, then it will not be affected.
The current version of Unity which Unturned uses is 2020.3.38f1 LTS, so it would remain unaffected for the time being.
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