Are any other developers making less than $100,000 unhappy with what they have been offered today?

Technically I spent a huge time in my life with giving 'FREE' things to people in different fields; I moreover see that the problem is the switch to 'Plan B' when the pricing had to be changed for Unity after Epic's move.
Free users got a lot, Pro users (morely 'customers' not really).

 

This kind of infrastructure change did defiantly not happen over night, it's been at the forefront of our plans for quite some time, some would argue it's 12 years in the making, since the very first release.

The aim to democratise game development

 

Nah, actually this has been in consideration for many years on and off. Last year, Unity were considering it. It just so happens GDC is an ideal time for this.

You will notice that epic did it before GDC. I'm not saying information gets leaked, but information gets leaked. Also the forum, and even the public announcement by John that a special announcement was coming long before epic dropped it's sub price indicates.... that this isn't a reaction.

It's proof it's not a reaction. But silly people will be silly, because they're silly.

 

I neglected to thank you for checking up on this. So thank you!

 

In general I think this is a great move. I also think going forward different services will be what give extra value to Pro (and do right now too).

I do agree with people though regarding the splash screen wording and iOS/Android Pro being reduced to 'splash screen removal' licenses (under 100k).

 

Awesome; thanks! Also, I'd like to change my answer to the title's question to a solid "No!"

Now off to buy some sunglasses...

 

The "Personal Edition" text is completely fair in the splash screen of games actually made with "Personal Edition", but the "Personal Edition" splash screen is completely out of line for Pro users publishing to mobile. Unity definitely needs to give Pro users ($1500 base license) a Pro splash screen or an option to remove the splash screen when publishing to mobile. Stop trying to grab another $3000 out of users that already paid $1500. Pro 5 users who paid $1500 are being treated exactly the same as users who paid nothing when publishing to mobile. That is unfair.

 

Fair yes, still a bad choice though in my opinion, for reasons outlined here: http://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/rebrand-personal-to-indie

 

Dear Josh,

I definitely do not want to start a debate on this, because there are so much point of views.
But being objective on it; if CryTek and Epic don't make their moves, we would probably have still 2 versions of Unity with different features and pricing as it was in the past.

I'm with Unity from the almost the start; I got people to buy it, I trained them how to use it.
I find it wonderful that the Personal Edition and the Pro Edition are almost identical, so I'm happy for the free users, too.

I have some questions although;

- Do you plan to offer monthly subscription on Unity Pro?
- Why 'mixed' usage is denied (Pro and Personal in a small studio for example)? Technically it would be very logical (and democratic to use it this way for them and as you have the technology for registering indies as 'a studio', they shouldn't be forced to use Pro versions for Personal Edition tasks (just when they reached the 100k limit). Even it would be great to offer them a team license.

And it would be great to get some clarification on working with other dev/freelancers. For example If I would like to make an archviz project and I ask a Personal Edition license holder to make me a script for that, then is it legal or not? I't would be still my project, he/she can make it for me for free or I can pay for him/her.
What is your opinion?

 

huh? if you purchase iOS/Android pro, you dont have to have the splash screen, you can put whatever you want when targeting those devices.

 

Another question:

I'm not completely sure how the Personal and Pro versions are differ, related to installations.
With the actual Pro license I'm allowed to run it on 2 computers (desktop + notebook).
With Personal license I would be fine to have the right to install on 2 computers, but being able to run only on one at the same time (some of my other apps work this way and I'm very happy with it).

 

I buy Unity 5 Pro for 1500 (or 600 upgrade), I get nothing different in the base engine but I do get all these other service related goodies.

If I then publish to mobile, I get a splash screen saying "Personal Edition".

So now I have to pay another $3000 (or 1200 upgrade) to ONLY get rid of those 2 words. There are 0 other benefits to the mobile license.

 

Does the Pro Version Splash Screen show "Made with Personal Edition" as well, when activated?

 

I am talking about having a base Pro license but not having the Pro mobile add-ons. When publishing to mobile, a person who bought Unity Pro, but not the mobile add-ons, is being treated the same as a person who paid nothing at all. So the real option for mobile devs is either pay absolutely nothing or pay $4500. I guess I am a bit shocked that Unity did not choose to simply include the Pro mobile add-ons in the base $1500 license at this point.

 

But that is a different matter. That is simply a request that $1500 purchases all platforms in one go. Currently, with Unity Personal Edition giving so much away, it would be financial suicide.

This is no different to Unity 4. What is happening here is that everyone else who could never dream of using pro now gets to use it with a splash screen. I think overall it is democratisation and a good thing. Consider the company had to do this to survive. We all want a Unity 6 someday.

One can consider the $1500 fee is not really for the splash screen, it's to purchase the right to present Unity as you see fit, without their branding. That's a lot. Branding is worth a lot.

I do get where you are coming from of course, so I hope your games make millions so it doesn't become an issue

 

Afraid I beg to differ. Why did Unreal go from ~$750k to license to where they are now and focus on hobbyists/indies?

Awesome

aye aye. same as before $75/month

Probably to avoid teams making a full game in personal and buying one pro license to remove the splash screen, I don't make the rules on that front. (I don't make any rules )

You are allowed to use 3rd party products/services mixed. For example if you are using personal and a freelancer is using pro. Or if you use an asset made in pro and you are using personal.

 

well yes and no. we get more features sure, then are denigrated for it.

 

we will buy one more pro license this year. but no more android ios plugins... I hope its leagal and yes we work on ios and android...

 

Thanks.

'aye aye. same as before $75/month'

But that is a yearly subscription plan, marketed as 'monthly', because it payed monthly, but it cannot be cancelled after like 3-4 months or when the project has been finished). Am I wrong?
I mean do you plan a real monthly subscription in the future? It is really hard to decide between Pro and Personal...

'Probably to avoid teams making a full game in personal and buying one pro license to remove the splash screen, I don't make the rules on that front. (I don't make any rules )

You are allowed to use 3rd party products/services mixed. For example if you are using personal and a freelancer is using pro. Or if you use an asset made in pro and you are using personal.'

Technically these 2 answers could be seen as different replies for the same thing (just different approaches).
Anyway, if a team goes over 100k, they have to upgrade to Pro, it is completely fine (or should be for everyone).

 

Sure it is; you'll just get the splash screen on your mobile builds.

 

NO we have plugins just no point to buy for everyone when only one person exports our builds

 

If one person in your team has Pro, then everyone has to have Pro. Its been like that since forever

 

we do have pro just not plugins... you dont read all conversation....

 

Ummm, first you say you have plugins, then you say you don't. Which is it?

 

Pro licenses for everyone, but only one plugin for ios and one plugin for android.

 

This is p***ing me off big time. The traffic sim I was doing for a freelance client in 4.x Pro on the iOS free version had the PhysX pulling the vehicle (simple box collider) hard right for no reason. I loaded it last night in 5 and the PhysX BS is gone.. I am 4x base Pro and free iOS and Android. I was 3.x and 2.x iPhone pro but until recently had no reason to get iOS or Android pro. I have a game from the 2.x cycle that broke 3 months of fine tuning physics at the 3.x cycle. I tried for a month to get it working as before and gave up..six months down the tubes. Now I got a 4.x Pro desktop game that has 9+ months development in it but stopped because the light and shadows quality did not do my artwork justice to await the 5.x cycle. Now I cannot work on that because some assclown from the jobs forum beat me out of 1800 bucks time in December and am still catching up an need to pay rent and keep phone, internet and lights on before shelling out for 5.x Pro base.. The EULA needs a size ten cowboy boot up it's a hind end. I gotta start anything I work on now from scratch?? Whoa donkey!

 

This was clarified in the meantime. You can use 5 Personal for a 4 Pro project, as long as you do not switch back and forth between 4 Pro and 5. So you can update it to 5 Personal as long as you don't go back to 4 later.

Edit: Not sure I understood your post, but I implied that that was your question.

 

You should double check with Unity, but I was always under the impression that you can't mix Personal (Free) and Pro licenses on a team.

 

Yeah.. Saw that after I posted.. alot of posts in the time it took to write that rant. Guess I am not p***ed off now and can take my cowboy boots off

 

Yeah it's misinformation. You're legally OK to run 4 pro alongside 5 Personal, and upgrade 4 pro to 5 personal.

 

Great suggestion! For those interested, there are already 900 votes on this one: http://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/rebrand-personal-to-indie. I like the splash, would prefer words with "Powered by Unity 5" or something.

Gigi

 

Could it be a language thing? In the US, "Personal Edition" implies "crappy", "stolen", or "cheap bugger". I actually LOVE the new animated logo, and would likely use it even with my pro licenses. Please drop/replace the words, "Personal Edition".

PS - if you agree, please vote here.
Gigi

 

I meant it for both the pre-order customers and Unity itself. Unity haven't precisely done a bad thing, I suppose I'm griping because very little is of any utility to me personally, and everyone believed we were pre-ordering the pro version which was drastically different from the free. At the time we were but things change I suppose. No point asking for a refund though it's paid for now and no doubt will be of some benefit.

 

For mobile developers, this is not true. Its the only thing added to Pro now.

Ergo, Unity places the value of the splash screen removal at $1500 for new users, $600 for upgrades.

 

I'd contend that Unity have just forced a significant number of customers who have typically been pro customers but deploy to mobile using standard to obtain a refund for their pro licence. If they do not make use of any of the value added services with pro they get no benefit of maintaining their desktop pro licence. I'm not sure how many cases this applies to but must be a reasonable amount of revenue?

 

Used all 10 of my votes up

 

there are other benefits to pro besides some stupid words on a splash screen... but NOT many now, and builds for mobile are no different between pro and free. that seems a little weird to me....

 

Nope just some services most of us don't want.

What really bugs me is it is $4,500 to remove a splash screen, got 5 devs? Well that will be over $22,500 before you make a dime. Yet someone in their basement using their mom's computer has everything you have for free.

Buying pro feels more like a hold up than a value or good decision.

 

I'm having some real issues with the refund process. I requested one yesterday, received an approval e-mail this morning with a link to the store. I filled out the info for that link, and then got a generic "there's been a problem, Unity's tech team has been notified and will look at this issue" but haven't received any information on what the problem is or how I can resolve it.

Just wanting to get this processed finished as fast as possible, so anyone have any ideas? I contacted sales support via the contact form, but other than that and posting here, is there anything else I can do to get this resolved?

 

I wanted to chime in and say we are also a studio who has paid for pro for 2 versions but am very turned off by the new model and am also asking for a refund on my Pre-Order of 5 Pro. There really is no reason to pay for Unity anymore, the services they added are trivial - if your a small studio that has been developing for years without the three new bonus services, then you don't see the value in cloud, cache or team license. Speaking to the Splash screen issue, its a NON ISSUE - once someone buys your game it doesn't matter what the splash screen says - you got your money. If the game is good they will stay. And level 11 is wonky, its smoke and mirrors to make people think they are getting something for nothing. If Unity really wanted to offer pro users something of value that they CAN ACTUALLY USE, then they would be offering a set of credits every month to the asset store that can be spent on whatever the developer needs, not what Unity decides they want to sell them, lol. This all smacks of desperation and I'm looking forward to the backpedal like they did with the last version where they had to offer credits in the Unity Store to spend on their plugins to all the people who supported them. If 100 people who pre-ordered for the full price ask for a refund, they lose $150k today. Hell if they just did that for the next couple weeks they would lose a TON of money - I don't see how offering refunds is better than offering credits to spend on their technology, lol.

 

Cancel anytime subscription would just mean that most people would work 9-10 months a on a personal edition and then activate it 1-3 times a year just to release a version without splash screen and in future maybe with other stuff. There are a lot of tools there that don't do free-to-cancel montly subs cause of this. It's terrible for business and almost as bad as the license mixing.

 

Speaking of Asset 11, I am really curious what happens with the asset dev. Do they just get blown smoke up their ass that they will get a bunch of "publicity" by offering it free or is Unity compensating them?

The race to the bottom is getting out of hand.

I'm looking forward to next GDC where companies pay me to use their game engine.

 

Small studios usually go over the 100k limit easily. Even with 2 members I think it's hard to go under unless it's not fulltime?

 

Well said! This is how I felt yesterday morning as well. What about all the folks that have bought into Unity for years and helped with the infrastructure in that way? Do they really think the Unity Asset store is going to be like Steam for them - just give away the engine because people MIGHT spend money on assets?

 

We are semi full time with 2 resident developers, and many contractors from all over the planet, so what they use for development has no bearing on us. We are a small studio that has operated at a loss, on our software development side, for two years. We develop other products throughout the year, not on Unity, under our parent studio name, in order to pay the bills and give us a little bit of investment money on our personal projects (games). I don't think this is so rare, we learned it from two other successful software development studios in our local area. There are plenty of Steam and mobile game devs that make under $100k on their projects a year, that use Unity, IMO. Our mobile game that we made 2 years ago with Unity pro and plugins never broke even - fun enough and good enough reviews but it never made any real money. I think this is typical - Rovio didn't make it big until after 40+ games (Angry Birds). And the rub is, we WANT to give Unity some money for their great software, but not if everyone else is benefiting from the same tech for free - at least give us some incentive, as they did in the past, to remain paying customers. Trivial/niche services that studios already were not using ends up being a valueless bonus, IMO. :/

 

Not day one, and in most cases not ever.
Most studios fail and don't make anywhere near 100k.
Even if you are successful, it could take a year or two. Even a five man team can easily be under 100k for a year.

 

I can't see any problem with it, besides that it should be called yearly subscription as it is.
Monthly subscription is monthly, you pay as you use it.

 

Ok I see the difference now. My vision of the term small studio is a full-time team focused on development on a dedicated workplace but what you are describing sounds more like a group of friends working a game next to their daytime job

 

You can't see a problem in the cancel anytime or something else?

The term monthly subscription is widely used and means you are billed every month. Other options are quarterly and annually subscriptions. They either fixed time contracts (like 6-12 months) or tied to your billing schedule. Usually you are locked for longer if the app type is such that you you could evade payments. Like with art/sound/video tools for example if you could work with personal/trial versions that leave watermarks and do nearly the whole project and then sub it to do final touches and remove the watermarking.

 

Sorry, maybe it is my English.
But I neither can't see the problem in cancelling anytime (there are examples for that, that is the 'real' monthly subscription), nor that this 'yearly subscription' method if it is called to yearly subscription (as it is).

'The term monthly subscription is widely used and means you are billed every month.'
Yes, you are billed every month until you cancel it. If you cannot cancel it, then it is an annually subscription where you pay monthly.