Unity Becomes Marketing Punching Bag For Other Game Engine

Unity has had a tough time of it recently. After the company decided to put in place a major pricing scheme shift for users of its game engine back in September, the company has since experienced all kinds of fallout over the changes, ousted its CEO, and has generally been vilified for not bothering to listen to its customers. Through it all, some developers previously using Unity have pledged to leave the platform in the present or future, leaving an opening for other game engines to ply their wares to these gamemakers.

Now, to be clear, a 2D game engine like GameMaker is probably not a full competitor to Unity, though 2D games are made using Unity as well. To that end, it's notable that GameMaker is marketing its own pricing scheme to developers with some thinly veiled shade tossed at Unity. First, the pricing methodology, which stands in stark contrast to Unity's.

If you're making a game with GameMaker for release on consoles, you have to pay for an ongoing $80-per-month Enterprise package. If you're trying to sell a game on other platforms (PC, mobile, browser), there's a one-time $100 fee. If you're just messing about or making something that's not for sale, it's free. And GameMaker'sasset bundlesare free now, too. And some existing subscribers might now geta free commercial license. There is, notably, no mention of run-time" or per-install fees.

That all reads as fairly reasonable from my perch. The big difference is the one at the end: the lack of per-user or per-install ongoing fees. The challenge with those in Unity's plan was that it essentially punished publishers for having a successful game, particularly for games that had either very small dollar purchase prices or, worse, those that were provided for free with in-game purchases. Those could actually make a game being successful a money-losing proposition.

And the way GameMaker is marketing all of this vaguely calls this all out.

YoYo Games, creator of GameMaker, describes the moves as a way to Say Thank you,'" as well as a response to other platforms making awkward moves with their pricing and terms." Game Developer notes that this is the second pricing switch since Opera acquired the studio, after an initial move tomake tinkering with the engine free, up until you publish.

For a long time, Unity was a darling in the games industry due to its previous pricing structure and the power of the engine itself. But I guess that if a hero lives long enough, they end up becoming a villain one way or the other.