Game Dev

Huge Unity news! Runtime fee is dead!

Unity has just announced some extremely important news, the runtime fee is dead!

This was the fee that Unity announced 1 year ago that destroyed their reputation in the eyes of many people. Initially it was a $0.20 fee per install without any exceptions which meant there were scenarios where a developer could go bankrupt due to the fee. Then they made a bunch of changes and updates to it until it landed on a fee that was per-sale, developer reported and capped at 2.5%

Those were the terms that were set to go live later this year with Unity 6 but now that has been cancelled. Unity 6 will have a per-seat license like it has always been.

Over this past year Unity has also been doing a company reset. They closed some locations, had some layoffs, sold some non-game dev parts of the company (Weta Digital), most of the executives (including the CEO) were fired or resigned, a new CEO was appointed and this is his first big move.

I made a video on this topic and the response to this news has been quite interesting. For some people this complete rollback along with the removal of the executive team seems to have made them try Unity again, but some other people feel the original plan was such a breach of trust that nothing they do matters.

The stats from the latest GMTK Game Jam show Unity going down with Godot skyrocketing, I'm very curious to see what the stats will be like next year.

Unite is happening this week and it should be fun to hear about all kinds of awesome stuff coming to Unity 6 without the cloud of the runtime fee hanging over it.

Game Dev

Indie-survival takeaways from Gamescom

Gamescom was last month and here is a great post with lots of interesting takeaways. It's written by Tomas Sala who is a very successful and experienced indie dev, made The Falconeer.

The state of indie game dev right now is quite tricky so this post shares lots of great takeaways from talking to many indie devs. I like his focus on making a solid foundation as opposed to trying to gamble it all in one hit.

He talks about how you should not depend on a viral hit or platform deals, how you should focus on efficiency and develop cheaper, how you should have a multi-game strategy and make sure you have an interesting hook or some unique selling point. Making a extremely well made but generic game will not work nowadays.

Tackling complex or deep genres is a better bet than making yet another platformer, and consoles do not equal guaranteed sales.

Read the full post for all the very interesting takeaways. If you apply everything mentioned then you will greatly increase your odds of finding success in the long term.

A lot of this is advice echoed by myself and Chris Zukowski as well. Watch the videos I did with him to learn more about Steam game marketing

Gaming

The PS5 Pro is finally unveiled

After months of rumors the PS5 Pro has finally been announced. There is a video showcasing all the tech behind it, the GPU is 45% faster, advanced ray tracing, and AI upscaled resolution PSSR. The main goal behind this console is to achieve BOTH Fidelity and Performance modes so you can play games that look great at high framerates.

Although while all this tech sounds really nice, everyone was greatly disappointed on the very final shot of the video showing the pricing, $700/€800, with vertical stand and disc drive sold separately. Is this a case of Sony becoming out of touch with who buys their consoles? Or trying to get the highest amount from the most dedicated fans?

This is also a tough sell because as graphics become better and better it becomes very hard to see the benefits of all these improvements. You need to freeze frame and look at it side by side to see any difference. Although personally I'm a huge fan of framerate so if it looks the same but runs at double the framerate I see that as a really nice benefit.

The announcement was also interesting in how it showcased plenty of games but they were all games that are already out and not really anything new or in the future, another hard sell.

With such a high price and hard to see benefits it is going to be interesting to see how well this sells. One positive might be how the hardcore gamers will buy it and sell their standard PS5s, so if you're looking for one you might get a great deal on the used market.

Gaming

Flappy Bird is BACK!

It's hard to believe it's been over 10 years since a tiny bird and some pipes took the world by storm. Flappy Bird came out in 2013 and quickly blew up the charts. The super simple but addictive gameplay with instant restarts got people seriously hooked. Then the game was so addicting and so successful that it scared the developer who took the game offline.

Now it's coming back, expanded with a world map, different characters, multiple modes, progression, and a bunch more additions, coming soon.

However the story behind the game is a bit strange, the developer behind it is not the original solo developer. Apparently the original developer let the trademark expire which was then taken over by a company and apparently this new version might have some connections with crypto, possibly for some kind of in-game reward system.