Disunity

Good Morning. The gaming world is often divided: PC versus Console, PlayStation versus Xbox, and the complex choice between Bulbasaur, Squirtle, or Charmander. It's rare then, to witness the entire gaming community unite their pitchforks. Their current target? Unity.

More on this in our Main Quest section below.

— Jason Liu, Derek Neville

MAIN QUEST: United against Unity

Unity currently produces one of the most used game engines and holds a dominant position in mobile, where it has about 70% market share (closest rival being Unreal). On Tuesday, Unity announced a new payment scheme to generate additional revenues that caused an uproar in the developer community.

• The first version of the story: Free tier developers would be hit with $0.20 per install when 200K downloads or $200K revenue is exceeded. Paid tiers would have lower per install fee and higher trigger thresholds.

• What devs are saying: Some games will lose money with this scheme. Devs are considering refactoring games in development to Unreal.

• What Unity clarified: Have no fear on install bombing (fee on first install only) and fees will be charged to distributors (e.g. Microsoft) if game is included in a bundle or pass.

Step back: Classic case of offering a ‘free’ tool to rack up enormous switching costs. Was this the plan all along? Unity provided 2023 guidance that suggested >$2B in revenues and >11% margin. So far, they’ve been making good on this forecast. Will this plan to capture additional upside end up sinking their FY2023?

HUD

• 🪙 Xbox Live Gold replacement Game Pass Core launches today with online console multiplayer and a catalog of 36 games including Fallout 4. Current Gold subscribers will be automatically moved over to Game Pass Core.

• 🌌 Bethesda posted details of upcoming Starfield updates, including Nvidia DLSS support, fixes for bugs on a handful of missions, and an “Eat Food” button.

• 👋 Star Wars game director Stig Asmussen is leaving Respawn after overseeing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

MAJOR W

• 🎧 Bungie uploaded a 41-minute Lo-Fi beats video to the Destiny 2 YouTube channel so you can “Vibe while you tithe”.

• 🆓 Free access for Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer starts today, giving players who don’t own the game a week to try out a moshpit of playlists. F in the Chat that it is limited to 2.5 hours of gameplay.

• 🚫 Respawn tweeted that they have banned over 2,000 Apex accounts for using cheats.

THIS DAY IN GAMING HISTORY

On this day in 2001, Nintendo released the Gamecube in Japan (with the console coming to NA in November of the same year). The successor of the popular Nintendo 64, the Gamecube went on to sell over 21 million units worldwide and was home to classic games such as Super Smash Bros. Melee, Luigi’s Mansion, and Animal Crossing. If you close your eyes you can definitely still hear the loading screen.

CAREER CORNER

• Marketing Manager, External Games — Netflix (Los Angeles)

• Audio Producer, EA Sports FC — Electronic Arts (Vancouver)

• Senior Business Manager, Xbox — Microsoft (Redmond)

HIVE MIND

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