I am using Personal but there is "Trial Version" water mark after build

- If there was a prior notice, maybe. In fact, it really caused some hindrance to my plan.
- I used to try to solve problems myself before asking for official help. I spent time to uninstall/reinstall Unity, search in the web, wait several days for official "fix" because I never thought it was an official change.
- I "fixed" the problem by manual activating license. So, could anyone tell me, is my game in App Store legal?
- I submit a request for help three days ago, and I'm still waiting for response.

I was a pro subscriber when needed. It is not unacceptable to me to pay for Personal Version. I was hoping that they would make a lot of money to make Unity better. It's just...so thoughtless, indie developers were completely ignored. I was a enthusiastic supporter of Unity, but now I'm only a user.

 

better_walk_away got response is 5 days later. In another group, some guys said, Unity request them to submit the apk file for reviewing before request to remove the watermark. How long is required is no information.

 

By the way, last time I submit a bugs report to get help, get response is 3 months later, and now is about 5 months. See the issue tracker, the bug will be fixed on 2019.1..... You see fixed a bug need about 1 year.

From this case you can see, request you submit a apk file to do review, you can imagine what will happen..

 

The watermark started to appear at the bottom right on 11/30/2018, that day, I was about to publish my game and I had postponed the release date several times, I wanted to publish my game right away, but the watermark suddenly appeared. I was trying to find solution to this, but I couldn't, so I chose to publish my game anyway and submitted a support ticket in the meantime. All my players got the watermark, it was embarrassing...
I had never received notification from Unity about the watermark before publishing my game, Unity really should tell us about this thing. I got my first reply from Unity support 4 days after submitting the support ticket, and received the reply about the watermark issue 1 day after, so I couldn't deny that it does take some time to get the responses from the support. I am currently waiting for their response about how to remove watermark officially. I don't think that asking them to remove the watermark is hard, in fact, I have been doing so proactively.
The main problem is why not every Personal user gets the watermark? Is it fair to put watermark on someone who did nothing illegal? And we haven't received the official response regarding why so many Chinese and Taiwanese users are having the watermark yet. It all happened suddenly, please do understand my problem...

 

I'm from hong kong and I also experience this Unity "trial version" gate.....

The worst thing is, it happened 10 days already and till now there is no offical explaination from Unity. Neither replying in this thread or in the Unity Answer.

If this is an official "Special Arrangment" for all China, Taiwan and Hong Kong Unity Personal License user, why didn't they announce it offically on Unity Blog?

Is this apply to all users or only a group of targeted user?
What is the procedure for submitting a request to remove the watermark?
What are the required prove / files for removing watermark?
How long it takes to approve a request and using what criteria?
Under what circumstances will Unity approve or deline a request to remove the watermark?
Is such arrangement done App by App or ID by ID?

TAG: [TRIAL VERSION GATE]

 

Hello everyone, I just received the reply from Unity support:

Thanks for the update.

After speaking with the relevant team regarding your request they have asked if you can kindly if you can email ''accountchina@unity3d.com'' directly once you are ready to publish your game & they will be able to remove the watermark for you.

Many thanks

Kind regards

I will email the given e-mail address to see how I can remove the watermark and what the process is.

 

Unity is very stupid it create new bribe way for their china staff. No any rule, approve or not dependence on their own interest.

 

Hello everyone, I have received the e-mail from accountachina@unity3d.com, I asked them what I should do next, but here is what they said...:

Thanks for reaching out to us, currently we using trial version watermark for PE to prevent crack version and protect our legal paid users rights.
For Indie users who didn't reach a raised capital, include operation fund, VC, revenue, earning etc. of 100k USD, contact us when you needs to public your game, we will help you to remove them case by case.

Best Regards
Unity

Anyway, I have decided to purchase Unity Plus, I don't want to address the watermark issue anymore. Especially I am going to use Unity to create my first ever commercial project, I rely heavily on this engine, buying Plus is a necessary step. We shouldn't use VPN to remove the watermark if Unity intends to use watermark to protect their rights. Personally, Unity has helped me a lot when it comes to game development, so I chose to buy Plus in the end.

 

as @AnneSchmidt said.
Rather than looking for other solution to this, we could've just raised this issue to Unity.
Simply by sending a mail to: support@unity3d.com
Just describe the problem and why we are looking for a better solution to this.

Using VPN to get another license or purchasing Unity plus is not a long-term solution, and surely they are not gonna solve the real problem.
What we need to focus at, is they have gone too far at this.
Punishing users depends on where they live is just unfair.
Also, asking those users behaved well to send a mail to remove the watermark is so silly.

 

Pushing you guys to paid. I do believe this is exactly what Unity wanted for this "Trial Version Gate".

No matter you are working on commercial project or not, since Unity must know having a "Trial Version" watermark on iOS app is 100% stopper for publishing on AppStore. Which means if you, China/Taiwan/HK user, want to publish game on AppStore using Unity, you must purchase Unity Plus. This is equivalent to cancelling Unity Personal in China/Taiwan/HK.

Yes, Unity have the right to do so. But at least not doing it all in a sudden and secretly. And till now, Unity still didn't announce or notify affected user officially. They almost like don't want to explain to the community at all. This is totally irresponsible to those who use Unity Personal legally and trusted in Unity.

 

This is not the right solution to stop crack version for Unity.

The crack version user can simply use VPN or get another license or run Unity offline to remove the watermark. Just like how they find a way to crack Unity.

This is more likely to hurt the indie users' experience. And will turn more indie users into crack version users (for removing watermark). It'll hurt Unity themselves in the end.

 

Up to now, still no unity person leave message on this thread. They haven't hear our voice!

 

Since Unity didn't hear our voice, I have report this "Trial Version Gate" to internet news media

 

Your new post has been removed. This thread may be removed later too... This mean they have received you sound, but not listen it.

 

I do not think that this thread will be removed. The other ones were removed probably because it's against the forum rules to create multiple threads in the same subject.

Oh, and FYI: the moderators on the forum usually aren't Unity employee. As you can see the third similar thread here. It won't help your cause if you spam the forum with heated posts like that, just saying. That solves nothing. Communicating with the company (not on the forum but on the support) may.

 

I believe people in Unity have already notices. They just don't want to explain to the community.

 

Only targeting Chinese developer, do Unity decide join the trade war between China and USA?

 

Hey, so... can we get an actual Unity response in here? That email about things being handled on a case by case basis for Unity Personal users is actually really a bad look. Before somebody says "well that's just in China!" maybe consider how that's a bad look too. For you.

 

Guess what? That works.

After I posted here saying I have reported this "trial version gate" to news media. The Unity Support reply me in a few hours, much quicker than usual. And I reached out to accountchina@unity3d.com and get reply in less then 10mins.

Unity will require you to provide app name, developer name and your phone number. They will generate a serial number for you to activate a temporary license which last for about a month.

With that temporary license your app will be able to build like other "Personal License" in the rest of the world, which is without a "trial version" watermark. And this email request has to be done every time after your temporary license expired.

Unity Support confirm this is for China/Taiwan/HK only. They didn't answer why. And they didn't confirm if this is a permanent arrangement or not.

 

Have you success to get the tmp license?

 

Yes. Email accountchina@unity3d.com and provide them those info.
Tips, use Chinese in the email.....

 

This is like being stuck in the movie Brazil.

 

Typical Asia. Seriously, this region really doesn't have a clue how to operate a business sometimes.

Unity decided to go to the fully featured personal model precisely because it realized that DRM simply wasn't working. Gating the features behind a paywall created an incentive for piracy. And as a result of the incentive piracy happened. Once there was no incentive for piracy, everyone moved over to the legitimate version and piracy dried up.

Now it looks like some idiot local executive in Asia has decided to reverse this. They have removed features from Unity Personal. Which has put the incentive to pirate the software back in place. Sure you can get around it, but this temporary license BS is a significant pain. Ultimately this change will drive people back towards piracy.

Its been pointed out multiple times, but I'm going to say it again. Piracy isn't a cost issue, its a service issue. The way to reduce piracy is to increase service. Reducing service, as Unity has done is Asia, will increase piracy.

 

Erh... not to talking about the current issue, because it's not that clear cut, I agree, but you're saying if someone does not want their application pirated they have to give it away for free? And this is helping the business how exactly?

 

If they would like to make "temporary license", what is the "Personal License" used for?
We get "Personal License" and use as unity requirements, but we don't get the real service like unity said, Is this legal? Isn't this suspected fraud?
Unity allow me to use this good software, I really appreciate it. If I can make more than $100K , I'd like to pay for it. I only make hundreds dollars, I use them to buy assets in assets store, I don't have more....
If unity don't want have beginners, you should tell us, please don't cheat us or unequal treatment.
I like google too, I really don't hope unity will be another "google.cn".........
Thank you.

 

I just ask for the tmp license, the China Unity reply and said if you are not urgent please wait. The Trial version watermark policy will remove next week.

 

Unity already made the decision to give the product away for free. They seem to be doing fine.

 

You didn't talk about decision, you talked about necessity. Apparently they don't have a choice.

 

So finally Unity know they have done something wrong. Let see if everything will back to normal next week.

 

They add watermark don't have wrong, but only targeting Chinese is absolutely wrong. Unity want them be come pioneer of Donald Trump?

 

I can't imagine how adding a watermark to only non-pirated copies of Unity could possibly discourage piracy. I suspect that Unity thinks there may be a fair number of users that are earning over 100k and not upgrading from the free version.

 

Your suspicion is correct.
Last week, I did some digging about this. Turned out, some China companies made profit over 100k but instead using Personal Edition.
This is the more precise reason why they tried the watermark, a bad way to execute though.

It's fine to make a mistake, as long as you realized it is a mistake.
Obviously, it took some while for the Asia department to see it.
But now since they have decided to cancel it, we'll just be fine temporarily.
Still, irresponsible as there were none announcement for that.
They have built a poor communication with users, which would harm badly on the trust they had between users.

 

You are wrong, the company will buy plus or pro version, but only one seat not all. The seat is used for publishing, add watermark cannot affect them. But you need to know, Unity is required all computers in them company require to buy plus/pro not only one computer.

 

I don't know what to say.
Go check this : http://forum.china.unity3d.com/thread-33107-1-1.html
The reply in #10 is a solid proof.

As you said, there would only be one seat needed for the company to publish,
so what's the purpose of adding watermark?
None, they added the watermark simply due to not a single plus/pro version those company had purchased.

 

Do you believe they remove the watermark policy, because of our complain? No, I think these 2 weeks do not have any increase of plus/pro sales. The fact is adding watermark is useless, and receive many complains. So remove this policy is the best choose.

 

I wanted to add my personal experience with the watermark, which came as a result of my travel from US to Asia, in case it is helpful...

I live in the U.S.A., but recently traveled to Hong Kong for 4 weeks. When I was working on my game there the "trial version" watermark suddenly showed up. I use Unity "Personal" for projects < $100,000 (with the intent of reaching that "goal post"). I emailed support and they told me to email accountchina [at] unity3d.com to get the issue resolved. It did, and the watermark went away.

THEN... I returned to the US and the watermark reappeared! I emailed support again who told me I needed to completely un and reinstall Unity (which has been a huge pain) but it didn't resolve the issue. Thanks to some help from a someone at the accountchina [at] unity3d.com address above, I was instructed to delete the license files in (on Mac) /Library/Application Support/Unity and now the watermark is gone. So, thanks.

 

"Also, according to a previous thread on the topic Unity China has reversed this policy already."
https://forum.unity.com/threads/rec...ke-games-in-unity.610447/page-21#post-4111408

I haven't been able to find this other tread on the topic. But I went to Help > Manage License and clicked Activate New License and was able to make a trial version free build. So it looks like for now things have returned to normal. Hopefully, Unity and Unity China have learned from this experience and this sort of situation does not occur again.

 

Seems it's still happening with Unity 2021.3 LTS.

I was in Taiwan last year, where my license expired every 3 days.
Now I am in Europe, but I still have the "Trial Version" nag screen.

Seems a bit silly

 

Same issue, travelling SEA and have this occurring multiple times for me.

Managed to fix it once, now it happened again and delaying an update of my game.. again..

 

Kinda messed up that it's been over 4 years and we still don't have an actual response on this, something that really hasn't been a problem that's gone away.

 

The same thing happened to me. I have never been to China or even close. I activated the Personal license just a few months ago. Some dances with manual activation seemed to work, but I am not sure for how long. I am from Russia BTW (totally against stupid war) and currently live in a different country. Just my guess that this is a kind of political thing in Unity, a kind of protest...

 

Protesting goes both ways.
Unity can restrict our access for political and corporate reasons.
We can choose free open source software next time.

 

Is there a reliable fix for this? I am currently using a VPN and using a personal license activated in Canada, but living in an asian country (not China). The manual activation step is no longer available for personal licenses.

 

After be confused by this bug long time ago, the method I recently use is:
When activing licenses in unityHub, keep vpn in global mode.
I found that if it works, the license would not show the deadline info in the menu( but it may appears in future)

 

I've also seen posts about this watermark even seeping into PS5 builds:




Players complained they bought a legit copy ending up with a 'trial version'. Then they figured out it's actually a UNITY problem.

Who would have thought, Unity even graced the console consumers with such wholesome feature. Truly heart warming.

 

And I do believe, PS5 developers have mastered the black art of pushing their new fixed build into the physical discs sitting in players' houses.

What a priviledge we digital shippers cannot possibly fathom.


Edit: More sarcasim

 

I've seen similar posts on Twitter when searching for this problem, and it's a really interesting example.