There is a certain topic that I’ve been asked about dozens of times over the past few days, so I figure that I should probably write out all of my thoughts in one place, so that I can simply link people to this post whenever they ask me about the subject.
Click “Continue Reading” for a very, very long blog post.
You can skip the first three sections if you already know the basics about the situation.
Summary
Yandere Simulator runs on the Unity game engine. Recently, Unity Technologies – the company that develops Unity – announced a change to their business model: starting on January 1st, they will instate a “runtime fee” – in short, Unity is going to start charging developers $0.20 every time a customer installs the developer’s game (if the developer sells enough copies of their game).
Immediately after this announcement was made, everyone who heard it immediately identified countless problems with the concept:
- How does Unity know when a game has been installed on a machine? From Jan 1st onward, will each Unity game contain “spyware” that is “phoning home” to Unity’s servers? Does this spyware already exist? If so, what other types of data has it been collecting?
- What if a user uninstalls and re-installs a game dozens of times? Is each re-installation a $0.20 charge? Can someone bankrupt a developer by perpetually running a script that re-installs a game repeatedly?
- What if a developer’s game is included in a charity bundle, where all of the profits are meant to go to charity? Will the developer lose money on each install, since they’re not keeping any of the profit from the charity sale?
These are only a few of the extremely obvious flaws that were immediately identified within seconds of the announcement going live; if I were to list out all of the other completely sensible and valid objections that people have made about this new business model, this blog post would double in size.
The announcement of this deeply flawed business model led to immediate and extremely widespread outrage from the entire game industry; everyone from players to developers to journalists instantly recognized the obvious and severe problems with this new pricing plan – and they voiced their disapproval loudly. With just one announcement, Unity immediately became the punching bag of the entire game industry.
Additional Controversy
The CEO of Unity sold 2,000 shares of the company’s stock before this controversial announcement was dropped. It’s almost as though he fully anticipated the negative reaction to the announcement, and wanted to dump his own company’s stock before it became worthless. Numerous people have expressed the opinion that this appears to be an instance of “insider trading.”
Unity’s previous Terms of Service stated that developers would only have to obey the ToS that they agreed to when their game was released, and that they wouldn’t be obligated to obey a newer ToS introduced after their game had already been shipped. Earlier this year, Unity removed that clause from their ToS, essentially preventing any Unity developer from being exempt to the latest ToS.
Developer Reactions
Over the past 2 days, a tremendous number of game developers have made public statements condemning Unity’s decision. Some developers merely implored Unity to reconsider, while other developers went as far as to cancel their game projects and announce that they will never utilize the Unity game engine again, because their ability to trust the company to make sound business decisions has been completely vaporized.
Some statements were quite verbose:
While others were much more succinct:
I was planning to include a list of my favorites here, but…well, there are just too many:
The reason why I haven’t made any kind of official public announcement about the situation is because I feel that there’s nothing I could possibly say that dozens of other developers haven’t already said. Everyone unanimously feels the same way about Unity’s plan: it’s stupid. It’s impossible to enforce, it’s susceptible to abuse, and it’s greedy as hell. If I were to tweet out my thoughts, I would just be yet another voice echoing the exact same sentiment as anyone else. There is no need for me to jump on the bandwagon or join the dog pile.
…with that said…
…gosh, it looks so fun to do the graphic design work for a public statement. I want to give it a try!!
Hehe! That was fun! Okay, break time’s over, back to work…
Will this affect the development of Yandere Simulator?
After the industry-wide backlash that Unity is facing for this decision, I strongly believe that Unity is going to reverse their decision. Within the next few days, they’re going to make a follow-up announcement: “Sorry guys, we didn’t think that one through. We’re canceling our plans to instate runtime fees. We’ll decide on a different business model that more feasible and less susceptible to abuse, and gather feedback from developers before announcing it.”
And that will be the end of it.
“Yeah, but what if they don’t do that, though?”
They’re definitely going to do that. Every gamer, developer, and news outlet is raking Untiy over the coals right now. They are absolutely going to backpedal and reverse their decision.
“Yeah, but what if they don’t do that, though?”
…you serious? People who have worked for Unity for 7 years have already resigned because of this blunder. Unity is hemorrhaging employees and rapidly losing the trust of the entire gaming industry. There is no way they’re not going to walk this one back. They are going to cancel their plans, make a public apology, and they are going to do it soon.
“Yeah, but what if they don’t do that, though?”
If Unity actually goes through with this plan…dude, they’re going to get sued. You can’t just alter your terms of service to say “Now you owe us millions of dollars!” long after someone has agreed to a previous version of the terms of service. That’s ridiculously illegal.
Do you know who has used Unity to develop games? Nintendo and Disney. Yeah. Two of the richest and most litigious entities in existence. Nintendo and Disney have way more than enough money to hire the most elite lawyers in the world to skullfuck Unity to death sue Unity into oblivion if they try this shit.
“Yeah, but what if Unity gets away with it, though?”
…ugh.
We are going deep into hypothetical territory here, since I strong doubt it will ever come to this, but, sure, okay, let’s try out this thought experiment.
In order to owe Unity any money, I have to meet two criteria: I have to make $200,000 in revenue over a period of 12 months, and my game has to be installed over 200,000 times over a period of 12 months.
So, how does Unity define “Revenue?” They were kind enough to spell it out on their website:
A game or app’s “total revenue” includes all revenue generated (without limitation) from retail sales, in-app purchases, subscription fees, web payments, offline payments, ads-based revenue, etc. Total revenue is calculated without deduction, including any relevant digital store fees.
Well, here’s the thing: Yandere Simulator is freeware. Over the course of 9 years, I have made $0 in revenue from the game.
Yandere Simulator is not retailed through any store, it does not contain in-app purchases, it doesn’t provide any type of subscription, it doesn’t contain any ads, etc.
I survive thanks to the generosity of people donating to me through Patreon – and even then, I am making less than minimum wage every month. I don’t come anywhere close to meeting Unity’s criteria. So, no, this doesn’t affect me, and because Yandere Simulator will remain freeware for at least another 6 months, it probably won’t begin to affect me for a long time.
“Wait, what? Yandere Simulator won’t be free forever?”
Yeah! Didn’t you know that? I feel like I’ve already talked about this a million times. Okay, let me spell it out for you…
Yandere Simulator has been free for the past 9 years. However, after Amai is implemented, the game will have so much content that I will no longer feel comfortable giving it away for free. After Amai is complete, I will put the game on Steam and start charging $5 for it. After all 10 rivals are in the game, the price will change to $20. Anyone who bought it when it was $5 won’t have to re-buy it when the price changes later. (This is the current plan, but these exact numbers might change in the future.)
“So, what happens if you put the game on Steam, sell 200,000 copies, and earn $200,000?“
Oh, geez. Fine, let’s crunch the numbers.
Let’s imagine that I sell Yandere Simulator on Steam for $5 and sell 200,000 copies, earning $1,000,000 in revenue and passing the $200,000 threshold for Unity’s runtime fee to kick in.
A year later, Unity will send me a bill for 200,000 times $0.20, which is $40,000. Owch, that stings…but, it’s okay – when you’re a millionaire, you can afford to take a $40,000 hit.
Mmmmm. Money. Giant piles of money.
“But what if someone uninstalls and reinstalls the game a million times?”
Oh, for the love of…okay, fine. As long as we’re here, we may as well go ahead and consider the worst-case scenario.
Let’s imagine that a single person writes a script that creates a virtual machine, installs Yandere Simulator, closes the virtual machine, and repeats the sequence in an endless loop. They do this 20,000,000 times.
A year later, Unity will send me a bill for $1,000,000 and say, “Your game was installed 20 million times! Pay up!”
I will simply respond by showing them my Steam analytics page and saying, “Nope. I am not paying that bill. I only sold 200,000 copies, not 20 million. Here is the proof.”
After this, Unity will recognize that 99% of those 20,000,000 installs were fraudulent, and will lower the bill to a much more reasonable number.
“But what if they don’t listen and try to bill you for 20,000,000 nonexistent installs?”
Uh, no. they won’t do that.
“But what if they do?”
They won’t.
“But what if they do?”
Dude, seriously, they won’t. They said that they’re not going to charge a fee for fraudulent installs:
If I get a bill for 20,000,000 installs, I’m just going to dispute the bill and work together with Unity to make sure they bill me the proper amount.
“But what if they don’t listen to you?”
That’s not going to happen. If you’re a waiter in a restaurant, and you’re bringing a bill to a table, and you realize that the bill says $1,000,000, you’re not going to tell the customer to pay that bill; you’re going to go tell your boss that somebody fucked up at the cash register, and the customer’s bill needs to be re-calculated. Seriously, it’s not going to happen.
“Yeah, but what if it DOES happen?”
You’re asking me what’s going to happen if Unity demands that I pay them $1,000,000 when I should only owe them $40,000, and they refuse to acknowledge any of the evidence that disproves their claims?
“Yeah.”
I guess I just wouldn’t pay the bill.
“Wouldn’t they, like, sue you or something?”
Unity has not explained what they plan to do about developers who refuse to pay. That information wasn’t in their announcement. But, seriously, dude, this scenario isn’t going to happen.
“But what if it does?”
Then I’ll grow wings and fly to Unity HQ and use the Geass in my left eye to mind-control the CEO of Unity and make him stop this madness.
“Uh…”
Since you’re asking me about a hypothetical scenario that will never happen, I’m answering with a hypothetical scenario that will never happen. There. I hope we’re done discussing it.
None of this matters, since Unity is absolutely going to backpedal and cancel their runtime fee plans within the next few days. I’m just going to continue working on the game like nothing ever happened.
“You still want to use the Unity engine, even after Unity has proven themselves to make business decisions that are horribly unethical?”
Honestly? No, I don’t. Making a game in Unity feels lame and uncool and cringe right now. But, I’ve been developing Yandere Simulator using the Unity engine for 9 years. I’m too invested in this project to stop because of one company’s stupid blunder.
“Why don’t you just port Yandere Simulator to another engine?”
You have absolutely no idea how difficult and time-consuming that would be. It would double the game’s development time. I want to release the final version of the game within the next 2 years, so no, I will not make a decision that will prolong development for another decade.
“Why has Yandere Simulator been in development for so long?”
Oh, Christ, we’re still on that shit? For the millionth time…
Some games are made available while in an incomplete state, and then regularly updated with new content for a long time. That is the type of game that Yandere Simulator became. It is now the kind of project that periodically receives new features, new activities, new characters, new weapons, quality-of-life improvements, etc. Some games are supported long-term with updates and new content. To be honest, I don’t see anything wrong with that. I feel that a continuously-expanding game is far more meaningful than a game where you just stab 10 girls and then you’re done.
By the way – there is a mode within Yandere Simulator where you can eliminate 10 rivals and see the credits roll. A complete story mode with a proper beginning/middle/end. If that’s your criteria for a “finished” game, then Yandere Simulator is already “finished” in that sense.
Actually, I’ve written 7,000 words about this exact subject: https://yanderedev.wordpress.com/2023/03/31/the-9th-anniversary-of-yandere-simulators-development/
With all of that said, I’m ready to wrap it up and bring the project to a conclusion. Updating a game with new content for 9 years was fun, but I’d like to put a bow on it, call it “finished,” and move on. I’m almost ready to move to the phase of the game where I implement Ayano’s rivals. There are just a few things I have to do first.
“Specifically what remains until you begin working on Ayano’s rivals?”
I wrote an entire blog post about it, dude. Please just go read it.
Man, how did we get so off-track? Time to wrap things up…
I’ll be releasing a new build soon, sometime within the next 27 hours. I hope that you’ll look forward to it!