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
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.