Category: Sansar (General)

Unity Drops a Bombshell: What Will Be the Impact on Social VR Platforms?

A collage of Twitter (sorry, X) statements from smaller game developers announcing they are dropping Unity after the company’s announcement earlier this week (source)

On Tuesday, Unity dropped a bombshell on software developers: a new fee structure that will charge devs using its popular game engine on a per-install basis, with less than four months advance notice. Ars Technica reported:

For years, the Unity Engine has earned goodwill from developers large and small for its royalty-free licensing structure, which meant developers incurred no extra costs based on how well a game sold. That goodwill has now been largely thrown out the window due to Unity’s Tuesday announcement of a new fee structure that will start charging developers on a “per-install” basis after certain minimum thresholds are met…

This is a major change from Unity’s previous structure, which allowed developers making less than $100,000 per month to avoid fees altogether on the Personal tier. Larger developers making $200,000 or more per month, meanwhile, paid only per-seat subscription fees for access to the latest, full-featured version of the Unity Editor under the Pro or Enterprise tiers.

“There’s no royalties, no fucking around,” Unity CEO John Riccitiello memorably told GamesIndustry.biz when rolling out the free Personal tier in 2015. “We’re not nickel-and-diming people, and we’re not charging them a royalty. When we say it’s free, it’s free.”

Now that Unity has announced plans to nickel-and-dime successful Unity developers (with a fee that is not technically a royalty), the reaction from those developers has been swift and universally angry, to put it mildly. “I can say, unequivocally, if you’re starting a new game project, do not use Unity,” Necrosoft Games’ Brandon Sheffield—a longtime Unity Engine supporter—said in a post entitled “The Death of Unity.” “Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted.”

Sheffield goes on to say:

…I can say, unequivocally, if you’re starting a new game project, do not use Unity. If you started a project 4 months ago, it’s worth switching to something else. Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted.

What has happened? Across the last few years, as John Riccitiello has taken over the company, the engine has made a steady decline into bizarre business models surrounding an engine with unmaintained features and erratic stability.

…

Ultimately, it screws over indies and smaller devs the most. If you can afford to pay for higher tiers, you don’t pay as much of this nickle and dime fee, but indies can’t afford to on the front end, or often it doesn’t make sense in terms of the volume of games you’ll sell, but then you wind up paying more in the long term. It’ll squash innovation and art-oriented games that aren’t designed around profit, especially. It’s a rotten deal that only makes sense if you’re looking at numbers, and assume everyone will keep using your product. Well, I don’t think people will keep using their product unless they’re stuck. I know one such developer who is stuck, who’s estimating this new scheme will cost them $100,000/month on a free to play game, where their revenue isn’t guaranteed.

Unity is desperately digging its own grave in a search for gold. This is all incredibly short-sighted and adds onto a string of rash decisions and poorly thought through schemes from Unity across the last few years.

And it’s not just games that are affected by this news; many metaverse platforms are using Unity too, and it remains to be seen how this news will impact them. Among the social VR platforms I have blogged about, which rely on the Unity game engine, are:

  • Anyland
  • Bigscreen
  • ChilloutVR
  • Engage
  • Lavender
  • NeosVR
  • Rec Room
  • Sinespace/Breakroom
  • Somnium Space
  • VRChat

(Ironically, the social VR platform Sansar deliberately made the decision not to use a third-party game engine, to avoid being blindsided by exactly what happened to Unity developers this week. Not that it helped with uptake of the platform.)

So, I posted the following question to the most knowledgable (and opinionated!) group of metaverse experts I know, the over 700 members of the RyanSchultz.com Discord server. Here’s a sample of some of their comments:

The devs at VRChat say, on Reddit, that nothing will change. We shall see…this guy is staff:

Other comments and responses to the news, from my Discord, are:

Lots of big-name devs are swearing off of Unity, dropping it even for projects already in progress.

For Neos itself I’m actually worried the least. For years they have planned to eventually move away from Unity, so the way the FrooxEngine actually interfaces with Unity is quite minimal. But like, most other VR Social games don’t have the “luxury” of running on two Engines frankensteined together. VRC will probably have to pay for it, the likes of Chillout are likely still far too small for that… But it still sucks that they have that lingering over their head now as the platform continues to grow.

Yeah, I mean, this is exactly why you shouldn’t rely too heavily on a third-party like this, because they can pull the rug out from underneath you…I am quite sure that VRChat is going to be okay. It’s the smaller, more niche metaverse platforms I’m a little worried about.

Sansar’s in-house engine looks pretty good right now, eh?

Okay, so it’s clear to me that this IS gonna have a large impact on any company that uses Unity. Question: how hard is it to move from Unity to, say, Unreal, or Godot? Is it an impossible task?

For an existing game? You’re usually basically re-writing it from scratch at that point.

For an existing project, it’s like remaking it from the ground up. An open engine similar to Unity would be a much better choice probably, for example Stride 3D.

The skinny seems to be that Unity will undo this, but trust will have been broken.

The last commenter makes an excellent point: even if Unity responds to the backlash by retreating from this decision, the damage has already been done, and the trust between Unity and developers has been broken.

The comments over on Reddit have also been uniformly negative. Again, here’s just a couple of examples:

Whatever Unity does, they already lost the trust of devs. Even if they retract, it will be “for now”. Fuck them.

and:

Cost per license sold? Sure. That’s fine, you can just bake it into the cost of the game.

Cost per install? Charged to the developer/distributor???? Fuck no. You have no idea how much money each customer will cost you.

Initially, Unity stated the fee would apply every time the game was installed, or reinstalled. Then they backtracked that, but installs on multiple devices will have the fee charged multiple times. Install it on your PC? That’s a fee. Now also on your Steam Deck? That’s another fee. Your laptop? Fee again. Replaced your PC? Have another fee! And god forbid someone remembers that PC cafes are a thing. There’s zero information about how a “device” will be kept track of, so potentially just changing the hardware in a device will cause the fee to reset.

Piracy is a huge unknown. Unity says developers will simply have to trust that Unity’s anti-piracy solution works.

You just don’t do business like that, ESPECIALLY when you make this change retroactively. Companies are going to have to retool their entire profit estimation for something they cannot even account for.

Anyway, it will be interesting to watch as developments unfold over the next few weeks. Unity is a part of so much software development work (it’s even said to be a part of the upcoming Apple Vision Pro VR/AR headset!), so there will definitely be ripple effects. And, of course, the only people guaranteed to make money off this are the lawyers, so expect to see the lawsuits fly! Stock up on popcorn…

Terje Jansen, 1963-2023: Grieving a Loss in the Sansar Community

Today is a sad day.

Terje Jansen was a vital part of the small but dedicated Sansar community, known for his welcoming friendliness, his story-telling, and his Norwegian accent. He loved Sansar so much that he became a member of the new Sansar team, and his presence will be sorely missed by many.

Terje passed away on Feb. 13th, 2023, but it was not until yesterday afternoon that word of his death reached the Sansar Discord server, where it was met with shock and sadness.

There will be a number of events taking place in Sansar this week, an open mic chat on Monday, March 13th for those who knew Terje, plus a couple of memorials taking place on Saturday, March 18th. Please check the Sansar events listing for details on the times and locations of these and many other events.

If you wish to pay your respects, the Ebbe and Terje virtual in-world memorial is located here. Terje’s virtual tombstone sits on a small hill under an oak tree, right next to that of Ebbe Altberg, who was the CEO of Linden Lab, the company who originally created Sansar (he passed away in 2021).

Throughout the afternoon (my time), avatars would come and pay their respects, using text chat to share reminiscences and offer each other support.

There’s also a memorial webpage (it’s in Norwegian; please use your in-browser translator to read the tributes in English).

UPDATED: Sansar Launches a New Homepage (and an Age 18+ Rating)

If you visit the Sansar homepage (and you’re not already signed in with your Sansar account), you will see a brand new, revamped homepage for the five-year-old social VR project:

One noticeable change is the “18+” logo prominently displayed, something which I do not remember seeing before. Wasn’t the age limit formerly 13+? I can’t recall, but I was pretty sure that teenagers were allowed onto Sansar, back in the days when naked base humanoid avatars were forbidden (you had to have baked-on underwear, or your avatar would be removed from the Sansar store).

So, it would appear that the new owners of Sansar are going to allow adult content. This would probably give them an advantage, in that few other social VR platforms currently allow adult content. Let me disgress by explaining how Second Life (Sansar’s predecessor in many ways) handles adult content.

BACKGROUNDER: In Second Life, they have a system where a sim (the basic parcel of virtual land) has one of three ratings:

  • General: “A region designated General is not allowed to advertise or make available content or activity that is sexually explicit, violent, or depicts nudity. Sexually-oriented objects such as “sex beds” or poseballs may not be located or sold in General regions.”
  • Moderate: “Second Life’s Moderate designation accommodates most of the non-adult activities common in Second Life. Dance clubs, bars, stores and malls, galleries, music venues, beaches, parks, and other spaces for socializing, creating, and learning all support a Moderate designation so long as they do not host publicly promoted adult activities or content and do not use adult search tags.”
  • Adult: “The Adult designation applies to Second Life regions that host, conduct, or display content that is sexually explicit, intensely violent, or depicts illicit drug use.”

While generally, Second Life is meant for people age 18 and up, in special cases, those age 13-17 can get in. Those 16 and 17 years old are restricted to sims rated General, while those age 13-15 “can access Second Life through an affiliated organization and will be restricted to the private estate of that organization.” Also, for those 13-15, older SL users won’t be able to access these private estates, except for pre-approved adults affiliated with the organization (e.g. teachers). This is intended to create a safe space for young teens, separate from adult areas.

So, it will be interesting to see whether Sansar will hold to a firm 18+ age rating, as I suspect, or if (like Second Life) they will set up some sort of system to gate-keep adult content, thereby allowing those users under the age of 18 some limited access.

Back in 2019, I wrote an entire editorial about adult content and social VR, which you can read here. Much of what I wrote then still applies today, particularly that adult content can be a double-edged sword! However, if managed properly, it can add life ( and longevity) to a metaverse platform. Whether you like it or not, sex sells!

What do you think? Please sound off in the comments, or join us in the RyanSchultz.com Discord, where over 700 people representing various social VR platforms (and flatscreen virtual worlds, too!) meet to discuss, debate, and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse and the companies building it. More information here.

UPDATE Oct. 5th, 2022: I have been informed by a Sansar staff member:

Just a small clarification, we are adult only but without NSFW content, so it’s still safe for [a] professional or academic setting.

So it would appear that I was wrong in assuming that Sansar will permit adult content. I stand corrected! The staff member, EvoAv, goes on to tell me:

A lot of other things fall under [the] 18+ category, and mixing adult users with teenagers/kids has potential issues of its own. Our users have been predominantly adults throughout Sansar’s history, so we do not see this as a limitation, but more of a safeguard that will allow us to introduce content geared towards adults, just not NSFW, or at least give us the option to change our minds later if we want to allow NSFW content with some moderation in the future.

screen capture from the new Sansar homepage

Editorial: The Measures of Metaverse Success—And the Value of Community

I struggle with serious insomnia, which seems to be getting worse the longer the pandemic drags on (and no, the pandemic is NOT over). After another sleepless night, I gave up this morning, called in sick, and I am now sitting in from of The Beast, doing what I often do when I am chasing the Sandman in vain: hanging out in Second Life. (Hey, some people play solitaire. Others read or crochet. You do you, boo, and I’ll do me.)

I often like to visit popular clubs to listen to the music stream (sometimes I just park my avatar, turn up the sound, and use it as a radio while I work on something else). I often use a handy free HUD called What Is She Wearing? to inspect what an impeccably-dressed nearby avatar is wearing; in fact, many of my impulse purchases for both my male and female avatars were often something which I first spotted on somebody else on the other side of the virtual room!

Club 511, a very popular adult jazz club in Second Life

Some people are chatting (either in local chat or privately among themselves), others are dancing, still others are just doing a stand-and-model, showing off their avatar style. (Club 511 has a strict no-non-human avatars rule, so no furries, sadly! The Second Life furry community tends to hang out in their own clubs and bars.)

Which brings me in an meandering, roundabout way to the topic of this editorial: community. Clubs in Second Life come and go, and popular hotspots like Club 511 rise and fall in popularity with alarming regularity, but the thing that they all have in common is community. None of these places work without the avatars!

Metaverse platforms bring together people who meet, share common interests (such as jazz), chat, and form friendships, even romantic relationships. Countless couples in real life first met in a virtual world like Second Life (check out Draxtor Despres’ video series Love Made in Second Life if you want a few examples; also please watch Joe Hunting’s excellent feature-length VRChat documentary, We Met in Virtual Reality, currently streaming on HBO Max, or on Crave TV here in Canada).

One of the reasons for VRChat’s success to date is that you can pretty much guarantee that, when you log in, you will find places where you can meet and talk with other avatars. Over time and through word of mouth, you hear about virtual clubs and regularly-scheduled events, you start to schedule them into your calendar, et voilà—you’ve become part of a community, and made new friends or acquaintances. (I vividly remember how much fun the Endgame talk shows were, while they lasted! Again, such popular events tend to come and go over time.)

Yesterday evening, I finally downloaded and set up the Sansar client software on my new personal computer, and signed in, wearing my Valve Index VR headset. My default landing point was, as it happens, the science-fiction-themed Social Hub, newly reset-up that very evening by stalwart community member (now Sansar employee) Medhue.

The Sansar Social Hub is back!

I stood in the slanted rays of virtual sunlight leaving long shadows on the red floor of the central plaza, among the park benches, and chatted with friends I had made several years before, and even met a few new people. It was as if I never left! I have been admittedly rather absent from Sansar these past couple of years, as the platform changed corporate hands and struggled at times, but it is showing renewed life under the leadership of its new CEO, Chance Richie.

The point that I am trying to make is this: even in a social VR platform that might only still have a low number of concurrent users, like Sansar, there remains a hard-core, committed user base who have established friendships and working relationships. They might not be strong in numbers, but they are strong in a sense of community, and community is the reason that people keep coming back. I have seen this happen time and time again, in any variety of flatscreen virtual worlds and social VR platforms over the years. As long as the metaverse platform hangs around long enough (and Sansar just celebrated the 5th anniversary of its open public beta), a community will form—and if they’re lucky, in popular worlds like Second Life and VRChat, many varied and vibrant subcommunities, too!

And I have noticed that the relationships we make in virtual worlds and social virtual reality tend to carry over, not only in real life, but onto other metaverse platforms, too. For example, I have made a point of buying avatar fashion or virtual home and garden decor in Second Life from content creators whom I first got to know personally during the Sansar alpha test period. And many of the people who decided to leave less-successful or failed worlds have also tended to bring their friends and business partners to build and enrich many other metaverse platforms over the years! The seeds first planted in Active Worlds (now 27 years old!) and Second Life (which just turned 19) have borne fruit in many newer metaverse platforms!

So how about, instead of using the standard corporate yardstick of success, and focusing on the purely mercantile aspects of the metaverse, we talk about the communities that they foster, and the valuable relationships that we make because of these worlds?

Let me give you a recent example. The tech industry newsletter called The Information recently published an article titled The Metaverse Real Estate Boom Turns into a Bust. Now, you and I cannot read the full text of that article unless you shell out US$399 a year to subscribe to The Information†, but what they did freely share with us poors the first few sentences of their report, plus a couple of rather interesting graphs:

The metaverse is in the midst of a real estate meltdown. Sales volumes and average prices for virtual land have plunged this year, part of a broader slide in crypto and non-fungible token prices.

Soaring interest in virtual property spawned an industry that mirrors traditional commercial real estate—buyers develop land by adding virtual storefronts, and then sell or rent it to companies looking to set up shop as a marketing strategy or to sell things like clothing for online avatars. Investors who bought at the peak are now sitting on land that has tumbled in value. Meanwhile the real-world economic downturn could weigh on brands’ appetite for spending on building out their metaverse presence.

I notice that, in a note underneath the charts, it says, in fine print: “Includes data from The Sandbox, Decentraland, Voxels (formerly known as Cryptovoxels), NFT Worlds, Somnium Space, and Superworld“. I was actually quite bemused at the inclusion of Superworld, as it is among those buy-a-virtual-piece-of-Earth NFT schemes which provoked a rather cranky editorial from this metaverse blogger! (At least Decentraland, Voxels, and Somnium Space have already launched an actual product, while The Sandbox, the scene of some frantic bidding for NFT-based real estate during the bull market, has the bad timing to be stuck in alpha testing during this ongoing crypto winter. And NFT Worlds just had the rug pulled out from under them by Microsoft and Minecraft.)

I have already written yet another of my infamously cranky editorial blogposts about how myopic it is to only look at the 27-year history of the metaverse from a purely blockchain perspective, but I have another pet peeve: the assumption that the success of a metaverse platform can only be measured by metrics like commodity prices and trading volume, and by how much they attract “brands”. It makes me want to tear my hair out!

Yes, obviously, these platforms need to have some level of economic success in order to stick around and for community to have a chance to take hold; that’s a given. But to ignore and/or mock a platform like Second Life or VRChat for not attracting or keeping big-name corporations or “brands” is missing the point. Metaverse success can also be measured by the strength and endurance of the communities and relationships they foster, things which you cannot assign a dollar value to.

So get out there, explore the various metaverse platforms out there, and see what appeals to you. Don’t let the current gloom and doom surrounding the blockchain-based metaverse platforms put you off the entire metaverse marketplace; there’s a lot more out there than the recent crop of NFT-based platforms. There’s so much going on out there!

So go and find your bliss, and find your community. You might just surprise yourself, and make a few friends along the way. Or just hear some good jazz 😉

OK, now that I have vented, this blogger is going to try and get some much-needed sleep…

†By the way, if you do happen to have a subscription to The Information, I’d dearly love to read that article! 😉