This change sounds like it’s going to cause problems for some developers. As you guys know some developers have good stances, and their good stances lead to rage amongst ‘Gamers’; the way Unity’s change works is that per install developers pay $0.20, not per sold product, per install; even a re-install will incur that cost. What’s to stop the same kinds of chuds who review bomb movies with tons of fake accounts from simply re-installing a game from such a developer a mass amount of times?
As one video put it, a game that costs almost a dollar (99 cents) loses 30% to steam, now $0.20 to Unity, and if they have a publisher then possibly a further 30% to them too. Couple that with chuds intentionally trying to hurt indie developers and it sounds like developers could end up paying for their games rather than receiving anything from it.
There’s a lot of misunderstanding about the pricing structure. If I’m understanding this right, you get charged every month (which is bad) for a year long window of time. You only get charged for installations that are above the threshold, and after a year those installations no longer count towards the threshold. I’m super unsure about this next part: if you upgrade to Pro/Enterprise after release it will then reduce your monthly fees.
It will be a big revenue hit for mihoyo and mobile devs that don’t make much per install. But for the typical itch.io dev who gets maybe 4 installs it won’t be a problem. If you can charge like $5 or more for your game you will probably be ok. But that’s a minority of devs. And unless they figure out a way to reliably detect pirates it means that the solvency of your business is at the mercy of random people who can just install your game and make Unity charge you more.
Basically, there are a lot of issues that need to be worked out. But if you’re developing visual novels for example, this is not an issue for you. Although I would personally advocate for you to switch to Godot.