Even worse, https://unity.com/pricing-updates is posted on their site:

"We leverage our own proprietary data model and will provide estimates of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project – this estimate will cover an invoice for all platforms."

Estimating how many copies you sold based on your own 'data models' which is impossible to track? Isn't that like a giant red flag for laundering money?

In my opinion, it's bad either way for different reasons

If they do tell the difference, then there is some tracking built into the machine that runs the engine, which is bad for the application user

If they don't tell the difference, then there will be exploits for intentionally reinstall multiple times, which is bad for the application developers

Don’t try to find a meaning in this, just switch to something FOSS. Look at how the 3D modeling world is since Blender became a real competitor.

This whole thing is absurd and overcomplicated - they could have just copied Unreal and slightly undercut them.

It isn't too complicated, but for example, a game which made $2 million in gross revenue would owe Epic Games $50,000, because it would pay 5 percent of $1 million, keeping the first million entirely—minus whatever other fees are owed, such as Steam's cut.

There should also absolutely have been a grandfather clause for games already released.

I get Unity needs to make money. They've never been profitable. But they've seriously overcomplicated the whole thing and gotten people angry at them.

Do installs of the same game by the same user across multiple devices count as different installs?

We treat different devices as different installs. We don’t want to track identity across different devices.

Jesus Christ. A single user can freely install the game repeatedly and bankrupt a creator.

I guarantee they put zero thought into how this would actually work, and have just been making stuff up as they go.

They’re straight up gaslighting!

Before:

Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data.

After:

We are not going to charge a fee for reinstalls. The spirit of this program is and has always been to charge for the first install and we have no desire to charge for the same person doing ongoing installs.

I may get downvoted to hell for this, but besides the shady business practices, Unity sucks as a game engine. You can just feel the engine eating resources for no good reason and the gfx don't come close to UE5.

Wow, a proprietary quasi monopoly changes their business model into something extremely exploitative and hostile. I am totally surprised! Shocked even! Blimey!

Seriously, why spend years of your life learning to work with some technology that can at anytime be made instantly obsolete or impractical to use when some random asshole you don't know decides something dumb. If there's a FOSS alternative, always prefer that.

Wait why charging for an install? What is going on?

They could promise to pay the developer a fee per install and it wouldn't matter. You can't trust them anymore.