Kabam will you inflate Game prices for spending because this?

https://unity.com/runtime-fee

Unity (the engine that MCoC use to build their own game), have announced they will make creators (Kabam in this case) pay for unity for each game installation.

this means Kabam will probably inflate the prices because this will make them go broke mode?

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Jax please this is important and critical for the community too.

Comments

Eb0ny-O-M4w

They won't go broke, dont worry. No reason to increase prices

ahmynuts

Kabam dont set the prices for in app purchases so it's not up to them

unknown

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unknown

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Demonzfyre

have another

JustWantTheRewards

disagreeing on the post doesn't solve any issues in the matter.

Neither does making the post, honestly. I feel like the pretty easy answer is just, no. Why would they be planning on increasing prices? Because Unity said, just yesterday, that they would be charging developers for downloads starting 3 months from now? I don't think Unity even knows what their intentions are at this point, it'd be pretty irrational to start making decisions surrounding it this early.

unknown

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JustWantTheRewards

they would do it, this is really painful for them.

They wouldn't, it's not.

BringPopcorn

Yes, and trolls will install and uninstall the game to make them financially responsible and have to shut down the game (lol)

Usagicassidy

they would do it, this is really painful for them.

It's wild to complain this much about something that hasn't even happened.

Retroactively complaining when there's been no indication that this will happen is hilarious.

Paceman

Kabam dont set the prices for in app purchases so it's not up to them

Kabam do set the prices, please don’t perpetuate the myth that don’t control the prices for in app purchases. They chose a price tier and have very good visibility of what that will be in each country once the relevant store google or Apple applies their currency conversion.

AverageDesi

Kabam dont set the prices for in app purchases so it's not up to them

They can increase the tier of the offers

ahmynuts

Kabam dont set the prices for in app purchases so it's not up to them
Kabam do set the prices, please don’t perpetuate the myth that don’t control the prices for in app purchases. They chose a price tier and have very good visibility of what that will be in each country once the relevant store google or Apple applies their currency conversion.

Kabam dont set the prices for in app purchases so it's not up to them
They can increase the tier of the offers

Changing tiers and increasing prices are two totally different things. If apple and google play dont have a higher tier Kabam cant increase their prices

Doctorwho13

Kabam dont set the prices for in app purchases so it's not up to them

If I’m reading things right it’s not a direct connect the dots from a to b thing.

If unity is now going to charge by the download, then kabam has a new cost.

Yeah I get it. Everything is up in the air. Shouldn’t really worry now. No one knows all the variables or factors.

But I can’t say it’s not an interesting idea or even a bad question.

100,000 people download in December. Unity say charges $25 thousand. Maybe kabam absorbs it. Maybe not.

If they don’t absorb it though, one sure fire way to mitigate that new cost is to increase purchases. It’s not like it’s some left field or oddball idea

Noob_Master69

A lot is pretty up in the air and unclear with this right now but these are the prices Unity has set:

I do not know how often the game gets downloaded every month, I also don't know what plan Kabam has, but as a successful studio I assume they are going with Enterprise. As for downloads, I doubt they get more than 100K new ones every month so we'll use that one!

That puts it at $0.125 per download, that amounts to $12500 per month in the most expensive scenario. That's a big wad of cash

Netmarble(Kabam's parent company) reported $465.98 million in revenue(keep in mind, that does not include operating costs) in the second quarter of 2023, with MCOC making up 12% of that from what I gather. That's about $50m for that quarter, divided by 3, which is in turn about $16.7m per month(again, without operating costs)

I think it's safe to say that $12.5K will only be a small dent in that, but only time will tell what will happen

This is ofcourse assuming I calculated everything correctly, I'm no financial expert
Here is my source: https://mobidictum.com/game-industry/netmarble-financial-earnings-q2-h1-2023/

Demonzfyre

they would do it, this is really painful for them.

They've had 9 years to sell any offer more than $99. Unit offers haven't changed in 9 years either.

Crcrcrc

A lot is pretty up in the air and unclear with this right now but these are the prices Unity has set:

I do not know how often the game gets downloaded every month, I also don't know what plan Kabam has, but as a successful studio I assume they are going with Enterprise. As for downloads, I doubt they get more than 100K new ones every month so we'll use that one!

That puts it at $0.125 per download, that amounts to $12500 per month in the most expensive scenario. That's a big wad of cash

Netmarble(Kabam's parent company) reported $465.98 million in revenue(keep in mind, that does not include operating costs) in the second quarter of 2023, with MCOC making up 12% of that from what I gather. That's about $50m for that quarter, divided by 3, which is in turn about $16.7m per month(again, without operating costs)

I think it's safe to say that $12.5K will only be a small dent in that, but only time will tell what will happen

This is ofcourse assuming I calculated everything correctly, I'm no financial expert
Here is my source: https://mobidictum.com/game-industry/netmarble-financial-earnings-q2-h1-2023/

https://app.sensortower.com/overview/896112560?country=US
I think they’ll be okay. According to this website (which is an absolutely legit analytics source), Kabam is gonna be paying about $18,000 extra a month or so, and that’ll be getting subtracted from their $8 million in confirmed revenue so far this month

Prices are not going up over something like this

pika

Nice, worst case we can use it for our advantage when we don't agree on something, instead of putting 1-star reviews, can just redownload the game a couple of times.

Darkness275

The only thing Kabam would probably even consider increasing, is limits on offers, and that's something that's already started to happen. Deals went from 1 to 3 to 4/5 and now you can buy all the Paragon offers and once you do, you have access to the Thronebreaker offers, etc...

It's really one of the best ways to amortize this cost onto the players. If that's what they choose to do.

EricZachary1977

They won't go broke, dont worry. No reason to increase prices

please say sike

AverageDesi

Kabam dont set the prices for in app purchases so it's not up to them
Kabam do set the prices, please don’t perpetuate the myth that don’t control the prices for in app purchases. They chose a price tier and have very good visibility of what that will be in each country once the relevant store google or Apple applies their currency conversion.

Kabam dont set the prices for in app purchases so it's not up to them
They can increase the tier of the offers
Changing tiers and increasing prices are two totally different things. If apple and google play dont have a higher tier Kabam cant increase their prices

Changing tiers directly increase the price. If they want to supposedly increase the price they can increase the tier of all offers

LordSmasher

I'll pay the half cent for my download.

1199345

Operating costs are a tax write-off...

Colinwhitworth69

Is the game dying again?

Excuse me while I go set my hair on fire.

DNA3000

The only thing Kabam would probably even consider increasing, is limits on offers, and that's something that's already started to happen. Deals went from 1 to 3 to 4/5 and now you can buy all the Paragon offers and once you do, you have access to the Thronebreaker offers, etc...

It's really one of the best ways to amortize this cost onto the players. If that's what they choose to do.

The numbers are sufficiently low (my best estimate is less than one million dollars USD per year) that I hope they simply absorb the cost as just cost of doing business. Because if a bean counter at Netmarble actually cares about this cost (and they might be thinking about the cost across all their Unity games, not just MCOC) then they might consider taking Unity up on their LevelPlay related offer (to defer license fees by adopting other services, for example their ad mediator service).

I suspect the MCOC devs would rather chew off their own arms than implement ads, but they don't own the game.

unknown

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DNA3000

Nice, worst case we can use it for our advantage when we don't agree on something, instead of putting 1-star reviews, can just redownload the game a couple of times.

This is an interesting one: initially Unity stated that this sort of thing would count as multiple installs, but later backtracked for precisely this reason: to prevent review bombers from repeatedly installing and uninstalling a game to cost the company licensing fees.

But keep in mind I'm one person, and I've loaded MCOC on six phones and four iPads over that time. I would count for ten installs in eight years. You break your phone and get it replaced, you will count for another install (because that's a different device). You play on iOS and Android, that's another install.

From what I've been told by people affected, the most pernicious element at the moment of the Unity licensing change is that Unity has stated that they themselves appear to be the final arbiter over counting licenses, and they are not sharing their process for counting. Consider that unless Unity has illegal or undisclosed telemetry, Unity can't directly count downloads or installs. So they are inferring how many installs a developer has, based on guesswork. And then charging them for that guess, monthly.

Unity's language here is also inconsistent. They sometimes refer to installs and sometimes downloads. They might be inferring installs (defined to be one copy on one device) from downloads. In which case you have to wonder if counting downloads counts downloads of updates that also change the engine type, say, as a separate install. Who knows, because Unity isn't sharing.

And not because they forgot either. They consider their process for counting to be proprietary, to avoid people gaming or defrauding the process. Which means they are just going to guess installs, send devs a bill, and not explain the number. Which seems to have some developers considering legal action. Either Unity is guessing wildly and charging based on their guess which seems borderline unfair practice (and possibly unenforceable) or they are using proprietary information taken from their customers without permission to perform this calculation, which is arguably illegal.

And for those that think Kabam is the dirtiest company around, apparently Unity publicly stated back in 2019 that to provide stability to developers they would allow them to use the version of the TOS of the engine associated with the version of the engine they were using, until they changed engines. However, Unity's legal team has apparently stated, in regards to these changes, that the TOS itself allowed for changes to fees at any time, so in effect their position is that although they promised developers they would not change the terms of service retroactively, the terms of service allow for retroactive changes so they are still following the original terms of service.

That's rules-lawyering on a whole 'nother level.

Noob_Master69

The only thing Kabam would probably even consider increasing, is limits on offers, and that's something that's already started to happen. Deals went from 1 to 3 to 4/5 and now you can buy all the Paragon offers and once you do, you have access to the Thronebreaker offers, etc...

It's really one of the best ways to amortize this cost onto the players. If that's what they choose to do.
The numbers are sufficiently low (my best estimate is less than one million dollars USD per year) that I hope they simply absorb the cost as just cost of doing business. Because if a bean counter at Netmarble actually cares about this cost (and they might be thinking about the cost across all their Unity games, not just MCOC) then they might consider taking Unity up on their LevelPlay related offer (to defer license fees by adopting other services, for example their ad mediator service).

I suspect the MCOC devs would rather chew off their own arms than implement ads, but they don't own the game.
Someone got my point, that's rare lol...

No more people got your point, they just didn't agree with how big of a deal it'd be to Kabam. It came off as overly confident that your opinion/theory is a fact. Aside from the conversation getting derailed I see some pretty good points made here

And complaining about getting disagrees, is a surefire way of getting more disagrees

GroundedWisdom

The only thing Kabam would probably even consider increasing, is limits on offers, and that's something that's already started to happen. Deals went from 1 to 3 to 4/5 and now you can buy all the Paragon offers and once you do, you have access to the Thronebreaker offers, etc...

It's really one of the best ways to amortize this cost onto the players. If that's what they choose to do.
The numbers are sufficiently low (my best estimate is less than one million dollars USD per year) that I hope they simply absorb the cost as just cost of doing business. Because if a bean counter at Netmarble actually cares about this cost (and they might be thinking about the cost across all their Unity games, not just MCOC) then they might consider taking Unity up on their LevelPlay related offer (to defer license fees by adopting other services, for example their ad mediator service).

I suspect the MCOC devs would rather chew off their own arms than implement ads, but they don't own the game.
Someone got my point, that's rare lol...
No more people got your point, they just didn't agree with how big of a deal it'd be to Kabam. It came off as overly confident that your opinion/theory is a fact. Aside from the conversation getting derailed I see some pretty good points made here

And complaining about getting disagrees, is a surefire way of getting more disagrees

It read more like a conspiracy to me.

Buttehrs

Is the game dying again?

Excuse me while I go set my hair on fire.

Isn't it always?