Worst games industry decision of 2023
Unity's reasons and repercussions in pursuit of revenue
Joost arrives refreshed from a weekend of being the world’s best dad and Laine sounds like they’re calling in from a tin can telephone. (Amateur podcast real talk: we switched from Riverside to Squadcast due to Descript’s acquisition of the latter, but have had numerous audio and recording issues. Waiting around for vertical integration to bring those consumer efficiencies.)
In this week’s episode, Laine and Joost dive deep into the heart of the controversy and dissect the motivations, potential outcomes, and broader impact on the gaming ecosystem.
“It's very hard to maintain this illusion that we're all just buyers and sellers in the market. I'm not buying pajamas at a store. [With Unity] I'm buying a relationship.”
Long-time listeners know it’s our format to cover multiple news items in each episode, but this past week, the news of the Unity price change proved too tempting to resist. Unity’s rollout of a per-install fee (the “Unity Runtime Fee”) has game devs up in arms. After all, Unity is radically changing developer business models overnight.
So Laine and Joost get into it.
Is venture capital wrecking sustainable game dev? Are Unity execs woefully out of touch with the reality of game-making? Is Unity’s move an abuse of power? Would a revenue share even have worked? We dive into all of it! And hang on as Joost closes us out with one compelling prediction about where Unity is going next…
Listen in!