Why Unity felt the need to “rush out” its controversial install-fee program

A push for more IronSource customers may have been a major motivation behind Unity's controversial install-fee proposals
Enlarge / A push for more IronSource customers may have been a major motivation behind Unity’s controversial install-fee proposals


It’s been over a month now since Unity partially backtracked on its controversial proposed “pay per install” fee structure, a trust-destroying saga that seems to have contributed to the retirement of Unity CEO John Riccitiello. Now, a new report highlights some of the internal divisions over the “rushed-out” policy introduction and provides new insight into what may have been motivating the company to even attempt such a plan.

Business-focused site MobileGamer.biz cites multiple “sources from inside Unity and across the mobile games business” in reporting that Unity received some significant pushback from senior-level managers before rolling out its initial fee-restructuring plans. “Half of the people in that meeting said that this model is too complicated, it’s not going to be well-received, and we should talk to people before we do this,” one anonymous source told the site. “It felt very rushed. We had this meeting and were told it was happening, but we were not told a date. And then before we knew it, it was out there.”

After the negative reaction to that initial plan, Unity reportedly considered a modification that would take up to 4 percent of revenue from the largest Unity publishers—slightly under the 5 percent charged by the Unreal Engine. The final policy knocked that cap down to 2.5 percent only after the extent of the backlash became clear.

It’s all about those ads

While much of the industry furor was focused on the business impact Unity would have on mid-sized indie game publishers, MobileGamer’s reporting suggests Unity’s moves were actually more focused on extracting a larger share of the lucrative mobile ad mediation market. Unity made a massive investment in that market about a year ago when it acquired IronSource, one of many major tools that mobile game devs use to maximize revenue by managing inventory from multiple ad networks at once.

Since then, Unity has reportedly been focused on taking down AppLovin, a competing mobile mediation platform that brings in billions of dollars in earnings each year. According to MobileGamer, the new fee structure was seen as a sort of bargaining chip that Unity could agree to waive for mobile developers who agreed to switch from AppLovin to IronSource. Instead, many major mobile game developers threatened to boycott Unity’s ad products after the proposed fees were announced.

“AppLovin is dominating, and Unity tried to use this policy as a forcing agent to try and get back some market share,” one source told the site. “It was IronSource and Unity’s play to increase their mediation business, effectively, and developers have been caught in the crossfire of this mediation war that’s been going on for a couple of years.”

Inside Unity, that kind of hardball push for more ad mediation customers may have been seen as necessary to make up for a huge hole in the company’s balance sheet. Despite bringing in over $1.8 billion in revenue in the 12 months ending in June 2023, Unity was nearly a billion dollars away from profitability during that same period, thanks in large part to a wave of expensive acquisitions. The perilous financial situation was reflected in Unity’s tumultuous stock price, which grew from a 2020 IPO price of $68 a share to a peak of nearly $200 a share in late 2021, only to tumble to $37 a share by the beginning of September.

“Ultimately, Unity has lost a lot of money over the last 18 years—billions of dollars—and they need to do something to make more money,” one Unity staffer who spoke to MobileGamer said. “Sadly, it wasn’t delivered well, but the need to make more money is still there.”

Even under Unity’s modified revenue structure, the largest developers will likely be able to negotiate terms that are better than Unity’s headline numbers, according to MobileGamer’s sources. And the smallest developers can continue using the Unity Engine under the free, personal tier. In between, it’s the mid-sized developers that may continue to feel the tightest squeeze in Unity’s continuing attempts to stabilize its balance sheet.

Listing image by Aurich Lawson | Star Wars

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1978958




Rovio says paid Angry Birds had “negative impact” on free-to-play versions

Angry bird is angry.
Enlarge / Angry bird is angry.

Back in the days before practically every mobile game was a free-to-play, ad- and microtransaction-laden sinkhole, Rovio found years of viral success selling paid downloads of Angry Birds to tens of millions of smartphone users. Today, though, the company is delisting the last “pay upfront” version of the game from mobile app stores because of what it says is a “negative impact” on the more lucrative free-to-play titles in the franchise.

Years after its 2009 launch, the original Angry Birds was first pulled from mobile app stores in 2019, a move Rovio later blamed on “outdated game engines and design.” The remastered “Rovio Classics” version of the original game launched last year, asking 99 cents for over 390 ad-free levels, complete with updated graphics and a new, future-proofed engine “built from the ground up in Unity.”

In a tweeted statement earlier this week, though, Rovio announced that it is delisting Rovio Classics: Angry Birds from the Google Play Store and renaming the game Red’s First Flight on the iOS App Store (presumably to make it less findable in an “Angry Birds” search). That’s because of the game’s “impact on our wider games portfolio,” Rovio said, including “live” titles such as Angry Birds 2, Angry Birds Friends, and Angry Birds Journey.

All of those other Angry Birds games are free-to-play titles in which players can earn extra lives or helpful items by purchasing in-game currency or watching short video ads. Those changes were roundly criticized when they were introduced into the Angry Birds universe, but that didn’t stop the free-to-play games from becoming highly lucrative for Rovio.

Pure economics

In a statement on the game’s Discord server (as captured by Video Games Chronicle), Angry Birds Community Manager Shawn Buckelew reiterated that sales of the 99-cent “classic” version of Angry Birds were “negatively impacting our other games, which is what we as a company have to focus on. If those other games do not improve and grow, then the outlook of the entire company changes. It’s harder to create new games or work on new projects. I’m sure that’s not something you would want.”

That’s a striking admission considering that Rovio Classics: Angry Birds is currently the No. 2 best-selling paid download among all games on the iOS App Store, well over a decade after its initial release (and nearly a year after its rerelease). But that chart-topping position translates to just $30,000 in estimated monthly revenue, according to Sensor Tower estimates.

The free-to-play Angry Birds 2, meanwhile, attracted 900,000 new free-to-play downloads last month and raked in over $9 million in revenue, according to those same Sensor Tower estimates. But that strong revenue number is only enough to make Angry Birds 2 the 74th highest-grossing iOS game on the current iOS charts.

The difference shows how few mobile users are willing to pay upfront for their games these days and highlights the vast gulf in potential revenues between top-performing free-to-play and pay-to-own mobile titles.

If you don’t want your Angry Birds experience marred by ads or pushy microtransaction offers, there’s still hope. Apple Arcade subscribers can download Angry Birds Reloaded, which adds some new features over the original as well as Mac and Apple TV compatibility. Try doing that on Xbox Game Pass, we dare ya. https://arstechnica.com/?p=1919848




3 years after launch, Apple Arcade loses 15 games

<img src="https://rassegna.lbit-solution.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/3-years-after-launch-apple-arcade-loses-15-games.png" alt="Art from Various Daylife, one of the games that left Apple Arcade in August 2022.”>
Enlarge / Art from Various Daylife, one of the games that left Apple Arcade in August 2022.

Several games that were previously available as part of the Apple Arcade subscription service have been removed.

Fifteen titles have been dropped, and all of them are games that were introduced in the early days of the service. Since mid-July, these games had appeared in a “Leaving Arcade Soon” section of the Apple Arcade tab in the App Store. That section is now gone, suggesting that these are the only games that will be removed in the immediate future.

Apple revealed that these games would be leaving Arcade within that section, so subscribers had a little over two weeks’ notice. But there’s a little more time for those currently playing the games.

A support document released by Apple clarifies that the games will remain playable for an additional two weeks for users who previously downloaded the games. Once the games are no longer playable, users will be presented with a pop-up explaining they’re unavailable.

The games are leaving the service because the agreements between the developers and Apple have concluded, but those agreements don’t prevent developers from making those games available as direct purchases or downloads through the App Store outside of the Arcade subscription now.

In some cases, the games on the open App Store could be almost identical to their Arcade counterparts, but in others, there could be differences. And sometimes, the developers may opt not to re-introduce their games in the App Store.

Apple provides the infrastructure for players to import their saved progress from the Arcade versions to the App Store versions, but developers must choose to support that, so that may not always be a possibility.

As with TV subscription services like Netflix, the deals developers signed with subscription services are not typically permanent, so expect the Arcade library to shuffle over time, just as we’ve seen with Xbox Game Pass.

There’s no clear path to long-term preservation for games removed from the service, but Apple and app developers may extend expiring agreements in some cases.

Here’s a full list of games that have not been renewed:

  • Atone: Heart of the Elder Tree
  • BattleSky Brigade: Harpooner
  • Cardpocalypse
  • Dead End Job
  • Don’t Bug Me!
  • Dread Nautical
  • EarthNight
  • Explottens
  • Lifeslide
  • Over the Alps
  • Projection: First Light
  • Spelldrifter
  • Spidersaurs
  • Towaga: Among Shadows
  • Various Daylife

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1870961




Thanks to subscriptions, iPhone apps finally made more money than games

Screenshot of App Store icon.
Enlarge / Apple’s App Store.

Throughout the short history of smartphone apps, games have consistently driven more revenue than non-gaming app categories. But that has finally changed in the United States, according to new data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

The shift began in May 2022. By June, 50.3 percent of US consumer spending on apps was on non-game apps like TikTok, Netflix, and Tinder. Spending on non-game apps has recently grown at twice the rate as spending on games. Game spending was exploding at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 and early 2020, but by late 2020, non-gaming apps caught up, and they surpassed games in 2021.

This has been driven in part by the shift so many apps have made to a subscription-based model of late. For years, games generated more revenue not necessarily because they got more downloads (though they often did) but because their long-term monetization was clearer, more consistent, and more robust thanks to in-app transactions. Other types of apps didn’t have that going for them, and many were sold for one-time purchase prices or offered a limited number of premium upgrades.

In an effort to boost its revenue from the App Store, Apple reportedly met with developers to evangelize the recurring subscription model to them. Subscriptions have become more common in many types of apps.

Though the subscription model has at times been controversial with some users, it has become a boon for overall revenue on app marketplaces. Sensor Tower notes that 400 different apps managed at least $1 million in consumer spending in the second quarter of 2022 on Apple’s App Store. In the same quarter, 61 App Store apps reached at least $10 million, which is greater than the number that had $1 million in 2016.

It’s important to note, though, that this shift applies only to Apple’s iPhone and iPad App Store. Games are still generating more revenue on Google Play, the app store for the competing Android platform. In fact, it’s not even close: US consumers spent $2.3 billion on Google Play games in Q2 2022, but around $1 billion on non-games.

And even on Apple’s App Store, games still dominate consumer spending in most places outside the United States.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1867141




Apple Arcade isn’t the only subscription: GameClub revives old iOS games

Yesterday saw the launch of GameClub, a long-in-development subscription-based service that revised older, deprecated iPhone games for modern software and devices. Curated by former TouchArcade Editor-in-Chief Eli Hodapp—a prominent voice in the world of mobile games who has long opined on the need for quality premium games on the platform—the service offers a 30-day trial and will charge $4.99 per month thereafter.

The service offers a downloadable app for managing games, but games are downloaded separately from the App Store. The GameClub app can link out to those App Store entries as you browse, however. You can subscribe directly on the device, meaning Apple will get a cut of the subscription as it does for other app subscriptions in the App Store.

Titles offered include premium iPhone and iPad classics like Sword of Fargoal, Orc: Vengeance, and Super Crate Box. $4.99 per month is the same price as Apple Arcade, Apple’s recently launched game-subscription service that offers around a hundred carefully curated, premium games—many from prominent creators—across all of Apple’s device categories. However, work on this service had been underway long before Apple Arcade was announced.

As is the case with Apple Arcade, though, none of the games on GameClub contains ads or in-app purchases (IAP). Many are early premium hits from the App Store before timer- and IAP-based games came to dominate the charts. Some of those early classics were quite good but got left behind as the App Store transformed. Some even became unplayable on more recent devices thanks to changes to Apple’s operating system and hardware. Those games have not only been updated to work on new devices but have seen upgrades like an increase in resolution.

GameClub has promised to update the service weekly with new games, though it’s unclear how many will be revived classics and how many will be new titles.

Services like this and Apple Arcade might end up being more consequential for iOS than they first appear. As I noted in my review of iOS 13, Apple has long seemed displeased with the dominance of free-to-play (F2P), retention-mechanic-based games in the App Store. Its initial volley to solve this problem was an overhaul of the App Store in iOS 11, which removed the focus from automatically generated charts and put it instead on editorial curation. Apple’s editors sometimes highlighted F2P games, but they typically focused on those made with quality in mind. They also often pointed out premium games that would easily be lost in the charts otherwise.

With Arcade, Apple has introduced a new way for it to directly elevate games that are focused on positive player experiences instead of addiction mechanics and aggressive IAP revenue. Initial reactions from critics and players to the Arcade lineup have generally seemed very positive, thanks in part to Apple’s focus on curating games from established, previously acclaimed or successful creators or on games that had already accumulated a great deal of interest at game festivals like IndieCade.

However, while people have praised the game selection, the service itself is barebones in terms of features. Aside from a different focus in curation, GameClub aims to offer some features that Apple Arcade does not. For example, Arcade doesn’t give players or developers much insight about which games are most popular, but GameClub claims it will be “transparent” with developers about revenue, as TechCrunch noted in an interview with a GameClub executive.

In an effort to boost services revenue to counterbalance slowing iPhone sales, Apple had already been pushing developers to move toward a subscription model when it made sense. But services like Arcade and GameClub challenge long-existing assumptions about what a mobile app ecosystem looks like. If Apple and other parties were to bring similar services to non-game apps, as Google has done, the App Store could look very different in just a few short years.

Google also offered a subscription service called Google Play Pass, but games-industry voices criticized it for directly tying engagement within the apps to revenue rather than an up-front payment to developers for inclusion. This may incentivize the wrong kinds of games, some argue. And while its lineup has some classics, it did not gather as much positive attention for curating quality new titles.

Listing image by GameClub

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1591211




Journey creator’s Sky debuts on iPhone and iPad

This week marks the launch of Sky: Children of Light, a game from famed designer Jenova Chen and beloved studio thatgamecompany, on iOS devices. Intended as an entry point to gaming that upends conventions and seeks new ranges of emotional expression, Sky was revealed during Apple’s iPhone keynote in 2017 as a mobile-first game and an iOS exclusive at launch.

The game is expected to arrive on Android, Mac, Apple TV, Windows PC, and consoles sometime in the future, though. Its initial wide launch this week follows a long soft-launch period and a launch-date delay as the game went through some big changes in testing to get its social aspects—a key part of the experience—just right.

In Sky, you play as a nondescript, child-like being who walks and flies through varied 3D environments collecting light, helping beings, solving puzzles, and working with friends to bring light back to your world.

The game is laid out like a theme park—thatgamecompany President Jenova Chen told the Los Angeles Times that he explored Disneyland for inspiration—with a central hub connected to numerous other areas, some essential to the story and others not. As in Journey, you will come across other players in your travels, but the social and communication systems in the game are much deeper now. You can make friends by sharing light, using emotes, hugging, and performing other joint activities to establish a bond of friendship. Ultimately, you can even chat with them—something you couldn’t do in Journey.

[embedded content]
Welcome To Sky: A Traveler’s Guide by thatgamecompany

The goal is to explore emotions that are not often part of games but are common in other media. “In terms of the emotional range of interactivity, games are very biased toward younger men,” Chen told the Los Angeles Times. “So when I started the company, our mission was to create more emotions that a game can communicate.”

It took several phases of testing to reach this point. In an interview with The Verge, Chen said the game had to be designed to combat players’ worst natures:

In childhood psychology, any gamer that goes to a virtual world immediately reverts to baby mode. The morality, the moral value, does not carry into a virtual space. In any virtual space, people are seeking maximum feedback. If I can get you frustrated and you display that emotion, that’s way more exciting than just me helping you out.

The team that made Sky went through a series of iterations to not only make a game where collaborative play is more central than competitive play or trolling, but where it comes from a place of sincerity rather than necessity.

Chen and his team believe that games like this could bring more people into the hobby. “I want gamers to be able to show their skeptical friends that games are more than what they think,” he said to Variety. “If there are 200 million consoles in the world, there are 2 billion smartphones. Well, if you’re trying to reach the most people possible, then it’s an easy decision to make.”

Sky is free to play, but it comes with a few in-app purchase options. In some cases, you can buy currencies—these currencies could also be acquired through normal play without too much friction, based on our experience so far—and in others, the game’s scheme resembles the seasonal model found in popular free-to-play titles like Fortnite and Apex Legends. Buying a season pass gives you access to more content and more options for progression.

In the Los Angeles Times interview, Chen described most mobile games as “predatory” with gambling-like mechanics. “I felt really, really sad,” he said. “All the work we’ve been doing trying to make games appeal to more people and make games look like a respectable industry, suddenly went backwards… Now new people, their impression of games is this completely different picture. We want to use our game to change more people’s opinion of what games can be.”

Sky will be updated over time. We played it for a couple of hours over the past day and found it to be gorgeous and engaging, if a little overwhelming with its numerous systems. It feels in some ways like Journey meets Destiny, and it is substantially more ambitious than its predecessors, even though it has a similar aesthetic of pastel-colored, minimalist 3D art and sweeping orchestral music.

thatgamecompany hasn’t revealed when Sky will be released on other platforms. It was initially pitched as part of Apple’s Apple TV 4K game lineup, but that version has been delayed for now.

Listing image by Samuel Axon

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1538631




Apple unveils Apple Arcade subscription service for iOS, Mac, Apple TV games

Apple unveils Apple Arcade subscription service for iOS, Mac, Apple TV games

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple today announced a new subscription service called Apple Arcade for games on its platforms, including iPad, iPhone, Mac, and Apple TV. The service will debut “this fall.” Its exact price has not yet been confirmed.

The paid-subscription service will include games “unavailable on any other mobile service,” Apple confirmed, and it will launch with “over 100 new and exclusive games.” A sizzle reel of flashy games appeared at today’s Apple event, and it largely focused on indie games that haven’t yet launched on either traditional or mobile platforms yet. One notable exception: there was a brief shot of an apparently unannounced Sonic the Hedgehog game.

By paying the subscription fee, players will have access to all games for as long as they want with no limits or microtransactions attached. Shared family accounts will have access to the titles and parental controls for no additional charge. And the service’s multi-device support extends to letting iOS gamers suspend an Apple Arcade game on their phone, then resume playing it on another device, or vice versa.

As previously reported by Cheddar, Apple will publish games itself, but today’s event didn’t include news about specific first-party titles or efforts.

Confirmed developers and publishers coming to Apple Arcade.
Enlarge / Confirmed developers and publishers coming to Apple Arcade.

Apple’s approach here differs significantly from some of the new games services we’ve seen announced lately, particularly Google’s Stadia service, which was unveiled at the 2019 Game Developers Conference last week. Stadia is aimed at streaming core games like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Doom Eternal to mobile devices with streaming technology. Apple will simply offer free downloads of games that users would otherwise have to buy individually. Apple pointed this fact out, saying its games will work “regardless of your Internet connection.”

For mobile game developers, securing a position in this service could prove very attractive. That’s because mobile games often live and die by if, how, and when they are featured in the App Store—a call made by Apple. Mobile developers commonly implement features that Apple wants to prioritize, like augmented reality modes or Shortcuts, in order to entice the company to feature them. By joining the subscription service, these games could essentially secure a featured spot—at least, as long as there aren’t too many games in the service crowding them out.

This story is breaking, and we will update it as more information becomes available. Apple’s event is still in progress, and you can follow everything in real time through our liveblog.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1479241




Mobile gaming cements its dominance, takes majority of worldwide sales

Just over two years ago, we looked back at analyst reports for the 2015 gaming market and highlighted the surprising finding that the PC was actually the world’s most important gaming platform from a raw revenue perspective. But we warned that continued double-digit growth in the mobile market meant the PC’s market dominance wouldn’t last forever.

Fast-forward to the forecast for the 2018 global game market, and things could scarcely look more different. Newzoo’s 2018 Global Games Market Forecast now predicts that mobile games will make up a slim majority (51 percent) of all worldwide gaming revenue this year (including smartphones and tablets, but not dedicated gaming handhelds). That’s up from 34 percent in 2015 and just 18 percent in 2012. Console and PC games will split the remainder of the pie relatively evenly in 2018, at 25 percent and 24 percent of worldwide spending, respectively.

The growth of the mobile market doesn’t show any signs of stopping, either: by 2021, Newzoo estimates that 59 percent of all gaming spending will go to mobile platforms, with console and PC games dividing up the scraps.

If you had to sum up that change in one word, it could easily be “Asia,” which now represents 52 percent of the global games market (when paired with Oceania). China alone is now responsible for 28 percent of all gaming spending in the world, up from 24 percent in 2015. Mobile gaming is overrepresented in the world’s biggest gaming market, responsible for 61 percent of all Chinese gaming revenue and poised to grow to 70 percent by 2021.

In Japan, meanwhile, overall spending on mobile games is nearly the same as in the United States, despite the country having one-third as many gamers overall. On a per-player basis, Japanese gamers spend about 50 percent more than their North American counterparts and 150 percent more than players in Europe, and Newzoo says that difference is particularly stark for mobile games.

While mobile game spending continues to grow around the world, Newzoo sees the market for PC games as somewhat saturated. “Some of the most popular [PC] titles are already operating at close to their full monetization potential and, at the same time, are unlikely to be displaced by new games soon,” the analysts write. Race-to-the-bottom pricing on pay-to-play PC titles will also limit the growth of the PC market to a tepid 1.8 percent annually through 2021, Newzoo predicts, compared to 10.3 percent annual growth for mobile games in the same period.

With numbers like these, it’s no wonder that popular big-screen games like Fortnite and PUBG have been making the move to full-featured mobile versions. Newzoo sees the same trend cutting the still-lucrative browser-based MMO market (which is huge in Asia) to half its current size by 2021, as players shift to playing on their phones instead.

Console and PC players shouldn’t worry that their chosen platforms will be withering away in the next few years or anything. On the contrary, both segments will continue to grow in absolute revenue terms for the forseeable future, Newzoo predicts. But the continued, explosive growth of mobile spending probably means the biggest international entertainment conglomerates will be focusing an increasing amount of resources on games that can be played by the two-billion-plus people with a smartphone in their pocket, and not just by the relatively smaller number with access to a gaming PC or console.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1302283