> So it's a one-time pain versus a monthly pain.

I disagree, these requirements refresh regularly and are applied per-game (note, I'm not saying that Unity is charging per-month, I'm pointing out that if you make $200,000 one year and $180,000 the next year, you dip back under the threshold and don't have to pay.)

This is still going to be a continual fight. Sure, I buy that you save some effort for studios that are clearly over the threshold, but it sounds like you're primarily talking about smaller companies anyway, and (correct me if I'm wrong) I don't see how it would be harder for a company to say "last year our 5 games each only made $190,000, it was a slow year for us".

> They're going to miss x% of the installs and have y% of spurious extras, and whether or not this approach advantages one side or the other is going to depend on a lot of factors down in the noise. If there's a large enough error it's going to end up as one more factor in the conversation with the account rep I'm sure they'll be having anyway.

> Then the fight's just about install numbers, which are published and which I'd guess they have the ability to check on via instrumentation.

I don't think these statements agree with each other. In any situation where it's simple to check install numbers (ie, Steam) -- Steam will also be tracking revenue. Where sales numbers are hard to track would be across multiple storefronts where... I mean, installs are also going to be hard to track. Unless they're planning to require an Internet connection for installing GoG games and Itch games because those installs aren't otherwise tracked. But I feel like that's going to be an issue for users if they do. Tracking revenue on a platform like GoG should be significantly easier than tracking installs, GoG has very little infrastructure I'm aware of to track installs of DRM free games.

I'm not an accountant, I don't want to make a serious claim, I could be wrong about the complexity, but it sounds like there is still going to be fighting over what installs failed, what was and wasn't pirated, etc... is that fight easier to have than "how much revenue did you take in?" :shrug:

Also bear in mind that this is not "you cross the threshold and then pay us for all installs", it's "you cross the threshold and pay us for installs after that point." So it's not just enough to ask if a company is making $200,000. When did they hit $200,000 in the current calendar year? How many installs happened specifically after that point? You still have to have that conversation with the company's accountants and you still have to try and confirm dates. And you have to do that yearly, and if you're already going to companies yearly and working with their accountants per-game to figure out when exactly installs start costing money... I don't know, again I'm not an accountant. I see that as a similarly complicated problem. Maybe I'm wrong.

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My take is that Unity isn't saying that this makes their accounting easier, they're saying that it's going to encourage more "deep collaboration" with developers who purchase additional services, and that it supports the "continued investment" of the runtime. I'm inclined to believe the motivations that they're saying publicly. I'm sure that if they're pressed they won't reject a framing of accounting/ease of use, but it strikes me that it's not the motivation they're leading with. But I can't read their mind.