SoylentNews

Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/eu-game-devs-ask-regulators-to-look-at-unitys-anti-competitive-bundling/ [arstechnica.com]

In the wake of Unity's sudden fee structure change announcement last week [arstechnica.com], a European trade group representing thousands of game developers is calling on governments to "update their regulatory framework" to curb what they see as a "looming market failure" caused by "potentially anti-competitive market behavior."

In an open letter published last week [www.egdf.eu], the European Games Developer Federation [www.egdf.eu] goes through a lot of the now-familiar arguments for why Unity's decision to charge up to $0.20 per game install will be bad for the industry. The federation of 23 national game developer trade associations argues that the new fee structure will make it "much harder for [small and midsize developers] to build reliable business plans" by "significantly increas[ing] the game development costs for most game developers relying on [Unity's] services."
[...]
Beyond simply being bad for the industry, though, the EGDF argues that "Unity's move might be anti-competitive" in a way that demands government action. The group takes a special exception to Unity's history of bundling its game engine with services like analytics, in-game chat, ad networks and mediation tools, user acquisition tools, and more. That kind of bundling creates "a significant vendor lock risk for game developers using Unity services," which "also makes it difficult for many game middleware developers to compete against Unity."

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