The article is an open letter from Adam Foroughi, CEO of AppLovin, addressing Unity's recent pricing changes. Over the past days, game developers have expressed outrage, with a group called 'United Game Devs' revolting by turning off Unity and IronSource ad relationships. Foroughi notes that while developers love Unity's tools, they feel attacked and see no choice but to protest.
He emphasizes that the changes appear targeted at AppLovin's MAX product, creating conflict. Foroughi recommends Unity retract the changes and implement transparent price increases for Pro and Enterprise seat licenses, avoiding ad-related fees that harm indie developers. He stresses that better communication and collaboration with the community are essential to maintain trust.
The backlash threatens to tear the industry apart unless Unity reverts its decision and adopts a simpler, sustainable pricing model.
Marketing attribution identifies which channels drive conversions, helping allocate budgets effectively. It uses models like single-touch (first/last click) or multi-touch (linear, time-decay) to assign credit across customer journeys. Challenges include privacy changes and tracking difficulties, but solutions like MMPs and AI can help optimize campaigns.
One person built, shipped, and marketed a mobile game in 14 days using AI tools, achieving 5,563 installs at $0.39 eCPI on $2,200 spend. MCPs (Model Context Protocol) were critical for agentic workflows. The AI agent CLAW managed ad campaigns via AppsFlyer MCP and BigQuery. Data Locker streamed raw data for analysis. Key takeaway: vendors must offer MCPs for fast, agentic data access; measurement stack (Data Locker, ROI 360, Creative Optimization) is essential for solo teams; human+AI beats AI alone.
Subscription apps like Netflix and Spotify charge recurring fees for premium features. They offer predictable revenue, higher user loyalty, and better App Store rankings. Key models include flat-rate, tiered, and per-user pricing. Success requires value-driven pricing, free trials, and transparent practices.
Unity developers are exploring migration tools to other engines. LLMs can automate script translation but require manual tweaks. Static asset migration is feasible via existing formats like FBX. Community collaboration is key to improving prompts, asset tools, and plugin support, reducing repetitive work for studios.
Marketing attribution is critical for connecting spend to revenue, but platform self-reporting and last-click bias distort budget decisions. Single-touch models (first/last-click) are simple but miss the full journey; multi-touch models (position-based, data-driven) are more accurate but require robust data. Mobile attribution is particularly challenging due to ATT, SKAdNetwork, and cross-platform gaps, necessitating a mobile measurement partner (MMP) for independent, deduplicated measurement. Clean attribution data is essential for AI-driven optimization—bad signals lead to bad decisions. Starting with position-based attribution and incrementality testing provides a practical foundation.
Cross-platform measurement resolves the common problem of fragmented, device-level reporting that inflates ROAS and misallocates budgets. By unifying customer identity across web, mobile, CTV, and other surfaces, marketers gain a single view of LTV and attribution. AppsFlyer provides this via CUID stitching and Product Line grouping, enabling real-time, deduplicated insights without manual BI work. Key benefits include accurate cross-platform ROAS, elimination of duplicate attribution, and reliable data for AI-driven optimization.
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