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Comment by LapsangGuzzler | Hacker News Reader

I get why people are upset about the pricing changes because they are harmful. That said, I'd love to see more discourse around the macroeconomics of platformification of gaming (i.e. gamepass) because this Unity move feels analagous to what's happening in streaming and I think we're gonna see more of it.

With things like Gamepass, players have access to much more content for a lot less money. There's no way that this isn't having a massive impact on sales and revenue downstream for studios and other gaming vendors. If the revenue changes in indie gaming are anything like the shift from traditional album sales to iTunes and then Spotify, then things are going to get ugly.

Tech has identified that the most valuable position to hold is owning the market and we've seen it over and over again, and it never works out in favor of the suppliers or consumers in the long run.

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These don't seem the same at all frankly, the unity thing seems like a blatant attempt at rent extraction. Gamepass is at least offering a genuine service in its role as middleman.

> the unity thing seems like a blatant attempt at rent extraction

Gamepass is literally renting games on a flat monthly fee (which they've recently increased, btw). Unity chose a really stupid approach to handle their new pricing, but they're doing what everyone is doing, hiking prices in an uncertain market. I suspect this is at least partially because of services like Gamepass, but I'd love to know more.

Gamepass is offering a service; smorgasbord of games on one end, guaranteed paycheck and platform on the other.

Unity is trying to redefine their existing product as a service. This isn't exactly 'just' a price hike and I think its why people are so upset about it.

And I agree with your suspicion. It seems that finding a way to offer a service instead of a product is a license to print money, so I imagine many companies have people pushing for this regardless of how well it would be received or how much sense it makes.

Unity is not offering a genuine service? People are so upset because it is valuable product. Otherwise they'd just switch to something else.

Unity has been always offering a genuine service, and they just raised the price of the said service in an unprecedented manner.

What service are they providing me, that it makes sense to charge by the install? Pardon, I could have made this point more clearly.

They are providing a game engine to make the game. If that's not worth it, switch. They don't own your C# code or assets, so they can be moved. For a lot of devs, it provides a lot of value. I understand for F2P, low ARPU games this pricing scheme doesn't work and people should complain until Unity fixes it.

Unity has ~7,000 employees, and is losing money. They need to a way to monetize, and they are clumsily trying to target their most successful users to pay more. Price increase aren't rent seeking.

Gamepass is not the same in that people knew what they signed up for, whereas what Unity did was more of a bait-and-switch.

If Unity had said that the new policy would only apply to games released (as opposed to installed) after 2024, and also say that existing developer subscription pricing would be honored for some number of years, it would at least seem more fair. They will still lose developers, but maybe they will be less susceptible to lawsuits and death threats.

Not every middleware provider needs a continuous revenue stream from every single end customer use of a product. It's not scalable.

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