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
Shitty troonware game "engine," I would be glad if it dies.
It has done massive damage to the gaming industry since DA/Twitter-tier "artists" and "writers" thought they could start developing games with this easy-to-use engine.
What bewilders me is that actual game companies started using it too so now we have an absurd number of poorly optimized games that all look the same - like shit.
Unity has always been an ancient and poorly botched together engine but it's definitely going to be worse now. For years it didn't even really have proper multiplayer networking support.
Couple that with them buying out third party plugin developers and then doing the equivalent of ducktaping these features to the engine you can see even in tutorials how many error messages keep coming up whenever a person builds a project. I have absolutely no sympathy, they've been making one bad decision after another and often shitting all over their userbase while they're doing it.
Throwing telemetry and spying into the mix is going to only add to the hilarity of how bad Unity is getting.