Unity is coming out with a new pricing model for 2024, where game developers will have to fork over money every time someone installs their game. this includes redownloads of already bought games, and downloads of games from places like game pass. it also applies to game demos and free games. it even applies if someone transfers a game from one device to another.
the policy applies if your company makes over $200,000 in yearly revenue and the game has been downloaded over a certain number of times in its entire lifetime.
there are rumors that gambling games and gotcha games are exempt.
https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates
What? Why would gambling and gatcha games, the ones best positioned to pay these fees, be exempt? So, basically, Unity just told indie developers to get fuck themselves.
The CCP called them and told them don't touch Genshit Simpact and HONK HONKai
the story is still developing, and every indie Dev and their mother is crying out in pain. there will likely be changes before the model gets implemented.
As for gambling and gacha games, it's likely because those games have ridiculous fuck you money behind them and they don't want to get sued into the ground.
Also because gacha games specifically have stupid grind incentives that have hardcore players reinstalling the game 100+ times to get their favorite 0.2% pull from the free initial chests.
Oh god, "rerolling" is the stupidest thing anyone could have imagined. The level of sadism/masochism involved to create a game with the concept of "rerolling" and then having the players think it's fine is next level. Just let people select their starting 3 heroes instead of rolling for them. There, done. That was easy.
Deterministic choices? In my gacha game? ahahahaha... oh wait you're serious?
F2P games make their money on volume. 1,000 download a game, 1 person pays. Different types of games have different relationships with volume.
A hypercasual game with very low monetization might take $.02 for each person marketing gets to install it in India. Meanwhile a high barrier to entry game might cost $5 for each person it gets to install in the USA. And for AAA games, the cost/value of marketing is pretty close to expected return ( >$10 per).
In theory, a $0.20 Unity install price would increase the cost of a AAA game by .003%, but it would increase the cost to roll out a gatcha game in India by 1,000%. This would completely kill Unity for mobile instantly, so they're going with something else for these cases.
Charging per user doesn't really make sense. The customer arent the customers, the developers are.