! ATTENTION ! Pricing change for all Unity based BAP games moving forward
If you haven't heard the news, Unity Software has recently announced that they will be implementing a per-installation fee to either developers or distributors after January 1st, 2024. This change in licensing prices was also executed with a changed to their Terms of Service which aims to enforce their pricing changes on Unity games launched in the past, and those that are currently in-dev.
While I have no issue with Unity Software wanting to generate more revenue in their streams, I do have an issue with the manner in which they have aimed to achieve this.
With a per-installation fee of the Unity Runtime, this means that I, or possibly Steam, will be charged every time a Unity game is installed on a new machine. And there has been some discussion that it will be every re-installation as well.
Unity has not exactly walked this back, and any attempt to get them to elaborate on this has yielded more questions.
Additionally, in order for Unity Software to determine the number of installations on a per-user/per-device instance, they will have to make tracking software of some kind an embedded part of the Unity Engine. They have also stated that developers will have no visibility into exactly how many installs Unity is tracking on their end. Meaning no website where developers can login to monitor the number of installs that are currently live.
In order to offset the coming changes and to encourage users to genuinely consider if they went to spend the money on the game I have gone ahead and raised the prices on all Blind Alien Productions end products to around 60 USD.
While it was my hope for BAP to keep it's titles in the 10 - 20 USD range, the coming changes to Unity's pricing plans have forced me to anticipate 2 possible scenarios :
1 ) Users installing one of our games on multiple devices means we will charged for each install on each device.
2 ) Unity miscalculating the number of tracked installs and sending a bill that is too high and not refunding the studio till a month or two later.
While I and other developers have enjoyed years of working with Unity, this move specifically and the manner in which it was executed has burned up a lot of trust. And if Unity Software actually moves forward with this pricing model these changes will be required to ensure that enough revenue is generated to cover the cost of multiple installs per user and miscalculations of fees.
It should be noted that future BAP games will be launched on a different engine in order to return to lower priced titles for our players.
While I have no issue with Unity Software wanting to generate more revenue in their streams, I do have an issue with the manner in which they have aimed to achieve this.
With a per-installation fee of the Unity Runtime, this means that I, or possibly Steam, will be charged every time a Unity game is installed on a new machine. And there has been some discussion that it will be every re-installation as well.
Unity has not exactly walked this back, and any attempt to get them to elaborate on this has yielded more questions.
Additionally, in order for Unity Software to determine the number of installations on a per-user/per-device instance, they will have to make tracking software of some kind an embedded part of the Unity Engine. They have also stated that developers will have no visibility into exactly how many installs Unity is tracking on their end. Meaning no website where developers can login to monitor the number of installs that are currently live.
In order to offset the coming changes and to encourage users to genuinely consider if they went to spend the money on the game I have gone ahead and raised the prices on all Blind Alien Productions end products to around 60 USD.
While it was my hope for BAP to keep it's titles in the 10 - 20 USD range, the coming changes to Unity's pricing plans have forced me to anticipate 2 possible scenarios :
1 ) Users installing one of our games on multiple devices means we will charged for each install on each device.
2 ) Unity miscalculating the number of tracked installs and sending a bill that is too high and not refunding the studio till a month or two later.
While I and other developers have enjoyed years of working with Unity, this move specifically and the manner in which it was executed has burned up a lot of trust. And if Unity Software actually moves forward with this pricing model these changes will be required to ensure that enough revenue is generated to cover the cost of multiple installs per user and miscalculations of fees.
It should be noted that future BAP games will be launched on a different engine in order to return to lower priced titles for our players.