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Report: Unity's Runtime Fee quietly gave exemptions in launch rush
(www.gamedeveloper.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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i don’t think unreal is under the same pressure for three reasons:
they already have a reasonable revenue sharing model. they make a lot more per licensee than unity does because they take a cut of your sales rather than charging a per-engineer license for the dev kit.
epic’s headcount is not nearly as horrendously bloated, even before the recent layoffs.
the company is still privately held with Tim Sweeney the majority owner.
points 1 and 2 mean epic is actually profitable, and has been for decades at this point. meanwhile, the publicly traded unity has struggled to break even for most of its existence
If you think point 3 is a real point, then I have a bridge to sell you. Point 1 is literally the new model for unity.
It's the same pressures.
Yes, point 1 is the model they should have adopted in the first place. The whole problem with their original announcement was that it was a) retroactive, b) structured in a way that would significantly hurt f2p and indie games, and c) based on installs rather than sales, meaning you could get charged multiple times for the same sale. If Unity had come out and said “starting with Unity 2024, we will be switching to a revenue sharing model", a lot of people might have still been upset, but it would not have caused nearly the same shitstorm and they would have had a better path towards sustainability.
Point 3 is absolutely real, because when you own your company, you do not have legal obligations to throngs of faceless public stockholders. Companies turn to shit all the time when they go public, because the pressure for immediate quarterly returns outweighs the pressure to maintain long-term sustainability. I think it's exactly why platforms like Steam have avoided enshittifying, because their owners know they can make more money long term by building a sustainable platform that people like rather than burning their users to make a quick buck and juice their next quarterly report.
If you dont think point 3 is a real point, Im curious if you even know what a bridge is.
Legal obligations to shareholders drastically change the company meaning of profitable.
point 3 was suggesting that because tim sweeney holds 51% of the company, he has no obligations to those who invested.
Its stating that because he owns a majority share, he has the ability to suppress publicly traded short term value inflation in favor of showing other private investors that long term growth is both sustainable and profitable.
Which, as shown by how completely anti-short term the epic games store is run, is clearly a sales pitch that his other private investors are buying into.
Which is probably the exact reason they are remaining off the public market
This assumes a lot, it assumes a lot about the investment agreements, especially about veto rights
No it doesnt.
It points at the long term focused business decisions, and then points at the private nature of its investors, and says "hey thats a pattern we see a lot with privately owned and invested companies."