You might have noticed in the last week that Unity Technologies is in hot water thanks toannouncing plans to change how it charges developersthat use the Unity Engine. To nobody’s surprise, the big-brain idea to charge developers a runtime fee on a per-install basis for games that can easily be installed by millions, where the fee could easily add up and harm a small publisher that goes viral, hasn’t gone over so well. The internet proceeded todrag Unity through the mud, withgame devs popping upleft and right to announce plans to move away from the engine. The whole thing is a mess, with Unity currentlyworking on changesto the policy as it tries to walk back the anger it brought on itself, havingwalked things back even further in the last 24 hours. Ultimately, Unity has outed itself as a risky partner for developing video games, which may very well be a good thing when it comes to mobile gaming.
Something else you may not have noticed is that the Google Play Store is absolutely filled to the brim with lazy asset flips. You know, all those games that contain colorful stickmen, usually taking place in a hallway or corridor of some sort. Thejunk publishers like Voodoo pump out. Yep, all those games that look exactly the same are what’s known as an asset flip. Andguess what engine offers those assetsand is used to build them? That’s right, Unity. The Play Store has been flooded with this junk since the day Unity started offering such simple ways to build mobile games and utilize free assets. A boon for burgeoning developers, a curse for game stores that will take any game a developer craps out.
So if it’s currently trendy to hate on Unity, if famous developers areencouraging people to moveto competitors like Godot, if there’s a complete breaking of trust where nobody knows how Unity will change its payment structure, there’s less incentive for up and coming devs to use the engine. If fewer people are using the engine, the trend of lazy stickman game asset flips may finally be over. While the scales of garbage will eventually even out to fill the void, perhaps we’ll have a year or two of reprieve before the asset flip churn begins anew with some other engine. I know I would enjoy the break.
And we can’t rely on Google to help us. Sadly, the company is perfectly happy serving up any old garbage on the Play Store as long as the app/game isn’t malicious. In some ways, this is good; without overhanded regulation, some fun andinteresting things make it to the storethat Apple will never see. On the other hand, anyone is free to flood the store with as many Unity asset flips as they like, endlessly, seemingly. And once you plumb the depths of the Play Store as I have in my sale hunting days, it’s quite apparent how filled with junk the Play Store is. Why do you think Google removed the new apps section from the website and app? That most likely wasn’t an accident; what was showcasedis embarrassing.
A fine example of the Play Store’s low quality churn
So, thanks to Unity enraging its user base, the incentive to use the engine to create asset flips could very well wane, a win for consumers. Still, you have to wonder why Unity did what it did. Some hypothesize a really awful thing was announced so that it could be walked back to something less egregious as a ploy to slip in what would have been rejected had something worse not been suggested first. It’s a solid theory, though it’s a little tin hat for me. Other people are straight up blaming the CEO, John Riccitiello, which is worth considering when the man is on recordwanting to charge per bulletin the heat of battle. Bad ideas seem to flow from Riccitiello as he continues to score CEO gigs despite his track record. So it’s possible this debacle stems from an out-of-touch CEO pushing unrealistic ideas in the search for higher quarter profits.
Or maybeUnity’s stock has been tanking, and the new pricing model is a last-ditch effort to pull in some much-needed cash? Anything’s possible, which is why this situation is so puzzling.
What we know for sure is that Unity has angered quite a few notable developers, and that’s not even touching on bigger players that use Unity, like Nintendo and Apple, who haven’t weighed in but could easily cause some serious legal damage if pushed. Hence, Unity is in the middle of reworking its pricing model while publicly apologizing, yet it would appearit still hasn’t given up on the anger-inducing runtime fee, whichdoes not look to be going over very wellwith gamers.
So now that the years of trust Unity built with developers is completely shattered, the company has quite the uphill battle to convince devs to come back while still figuring out how to solve its financial woes. During this time, we may actually see a drop in asset flips on the Play Store as well as many other storefronts as Unity falls out of favor, which, to me, feels like a slight win. Of course, we reached out to Unity Technologies for comment, so hopefully, the company can shed more light on the situation in the coming days.
