A fresh report into Unity’s hugely-controversial decision to start charging developers when their games are downloaded has thrown fresh light on the situation.
MobileGamer sources say Unity has already offered some studios a 100% fee waiver - if they switch over to Unity’s own LevelPlay ad platform.
The report quotes industry consultants that say this move is an “attempt to destroy” Unity’s main competitior in this field: AppLovin.
Apple engineer here, from what I understand most of Unity’s competitors in the we space are significantly better paying and performing. We keep hearing from developers that nobody wants to use Unity’s product because of that. AppLovin, the one named here, outperforms Unity Ads by as much as 800% in some titles, according to a contact of mine at a game studio. With a difference like that it’s hardly surprising nobody is choosing Unity Ads.
This reeks of desperation, but one wonders how effective it could be - because this demand to drop AppLovin is basically cutting off the revenue faucet for these same developers they’re now trying to extort. No Unity fees but no good income either…
There’s this one guy on youtube(https://www.youtube.com/@rossmanngroup), who said about business: [paraphrasing] “Sometimes things go well, and sometimes, you dry to get the change stuck between the couch cushions”. And you’re right, this pretty much does seem like a desperate move if you think about it.
Yeah, I love that analogy. When companies deviate from their core business model to try to increase revenue, it’s a symptom that the company is dying. If they’re having profit issues (which I doubt), a healthy company would innovate to attract customers, not to lock them in.