[jconley]

Unity's just outgrowing the early adopters. The starving indies will move on to the next up and coming engine. Professionals will continue using Unity (and UE, which also charges royalties) because of the breadth and depth of the toolsets.

I first used Unity when their WebGL system was in private beta. IIRC they tried charging royalties early on but then reverted that for marketshare, but I don't have time to look it up. In any case the royalties aren't burdensome at that scale. I don't think it'll affect much. Vocal minority, yada yada. Maybe it'll even get them to profitability next year!

[golergka]

I've worked in game development for a long time, including a couple of games with over 100 million installs. Professional game studios making mobile free2play games, which is Unity's main moat, are VERY uneasy right now. For many games, the install tax would push them into unprofitability. Especially in hypercasual, where an average user may have LTV of a few cents total. These are billion dollar companies, and they have the resources to build their own engines, they just didn't have a real reason until now.

[jconley]

A 2.5% royalty will make them unprofitable? [0]

[0] https://unity.com/pricing-updates

[junon]

This is way, way beyond charging royalties. Nobody has been upset about existing royalty models.