Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

It wasn't. The new fees won't even come close to offsetting the damage done. If the original install fee scheme was seen as necessary to right the ship financially, well, the ship is so much closer to capsizing now than it was before.

Watch Unity's financials closely over the next few quarters. If they can't get their spending under control or find a buyer, they will squeeze you for more and more.

 

Because they are not sure if that new model will make more money than the current one. Remember they want more money, not less, or the same. So, the subscription has to go up 400% and royalties.
They are not stupid...they know exactly what they are doing.

 

I'm kind of ok with the new changes, thanks Unity for making this work, it helps I think. Will take time for devs to think and forgive. Now back to making games!

 

why not just revenue share? much more clear!.. but i think it is the executive level politics within the board, which might mean that the company has already began to stink.

 

Per engagement was explained as a purchase, so it's just stupid naming to sort out now.

 

It’s free till $200K now, and you don’t have to pay anything to disable the splash screen. Thats free now, as well.

 

You can choose revenue share. But you can also choose per install - which is a much better deal for some devs, depending on their pricing scheme. Maybe even yourself one day. It’s good to have options besides strict revenue share like unreal.

 

if you are ok with the revenue share, why not go for a flat revenue share? what are you trying to create by this runtime fee idea? isn't revenue share more profitable for you? then, increase the rate, put some tiers to protect the small devs, and it is the same thing. why insisting on such an absurd idea of runtime fee?

 

For myself personally, my current single use of Unity is maintaining a game in post release which supports user generated content exported out of the Unity editor. Since it's post release there's a focus on maintaining stability and backwards compatibility, and settling on a fixed build of the engine is a big part of that (I've had UGC break from engine upgrades before). That, and there's a lot of trust that Unity needs to rebuild before I'd feel comfortable moving forwards towards 2023 LTS and beyond for any potential future projects.

If I look at my license in the Unity editor (Help -> About Unity) it reads out as a Pro license, so I assume a client-side license for Plus doesn't actually exist and Unity's servers are just sending a Pro license back as a workaround, which would have enabled Plus to work retroactively in the past. If Plus must go, surely this could also be done for Personal licenses?

Plus was a good option to disable the splashscreen and disable the editor's analytics. I respect that Unity is a business that needs to grow and make money, but I don't need all the extra things Pro comes with and I'm never going to use them. Taking it down and merging it with Personal for new customers makes sense to me with the revised policy, but to me as an existing customers it feels like an attempt to force me into either upgrading to Pro or moving forward to accept a new TOS that I currently don't want to agree too. I would be happy to continue paying for Plus to comfortably remain on terms that I am currently happy with, which is some money compared to no money that Unity would get from somebody of my scale (or lack of) with Personal.

 

Thought the reasons were fairly obvious. Developer in deep development may not want to take the risk to upgrade as it may break many things in the new version. It addition if they are using any assets that may not be compatible it updated yet for the new version. Plus accepting the new terms.

 

QUESTION: Are we able to use our personal license on consoles like XBOX if we are still under 200k? Because we still haven't earned 200k yet on that time. I don't want to buy the pro before I start to earn money. @karl_jones and @DairyFan28 Why don't you just answer?

 

Changes are for the better, thanks Unity.

 

Eh, speaking from some experience, even for massive projects held together with duct tape upgrading has never been too much of an issue, outside some specific carve-outs like all the networking changes.

 

Contractors who do work for a company making > 200k will have to pay for pro, even if they don't make that much money

 

This has done enough that I'll keep Unity around since these terms have placated some of my regular clients, but frankly I'm never going to use the engine for my own projects going forward. I don't like the very existence of the runtime fee. I think it's a supremely scummy way to look at this even with the lowest cost being the one that's used if both are reported. The runtime fee itself leaves Unity open to so many price changes over time, something that was even mentioned in the other thread because Unity plans on evaluating the terms annually.

 

I want to echo the sentiment that Unity really needs to bring back Unity Plus.

 

I am using Unity Personal v2022.3.x, does this means any LTS version including v2022.x released in 2024 also comes with removal of splash screen in this case ?

Please advise.

 

No, it is not. It is just a tool placed there for an unknown purpose that will be initiated at a later time. Ask yourself, why are they insisting on this idea so hard? There should be a reason behind this, and after all of that angst, they might be just trying to hide those intensions with the word "option".

 

Hey Unity: I think Microsoft should charge you per C# command you use in your engine, then, and only then, you will understand how silly is this runtime fee idea.

 

I really don't understand that! There shouldn't be any difference in the conditions between PCs and Consoles. All policies should be the same between the PC and the console. Unity is making a mistake again. You're pretending to have won 200k on PC before the game even comes out on XBOX, isn't that wrong?

 

correct, i'm thinking the same, i'll finish my main game here and move because this "runtime" thing is pretty suspicious, also, all that PR bs on Jason Weimann made it worse at least for me... (the devil is in the details) i don't understand why so much interest on that runtime thing, my only dumb guess is that they need this to be very public so maybe they want some of their files being on a white list of antispyware... IDK i'm confused with that

 

Wow, that's crazy cheap

 

Jason Waimann's live was 1 hour of absolutely nothing

 

Especially if they are mentally invested in their hasty engine jump and want to drag everybody along for personal self justification. People staying with Unity are just a veritable kick in the teeth to their vehemence. Many will sheepishly return IMO.

 

listen to this guy. voice of reason. and i would even buy a used car from him!

 

It was always like that i suppose, i cant imagine it be any other way

 

Because plus is no longer available? Pro costs 4.5x as much, which is a huge increase just to remove a splash screen.

 

Contractors have zero sales, so pay nothing everytime i suppose

 

A good article about forced arbitration HERE.

 

They pay for subscriptions, which are about to get more expensive.

 

Except for the $185 monthly that it costs for a Pro subscription if you want to remove the splash screen. It would've only been $35 with Plus.

 

What a surprise.... this is all just giant smokescreen, to hide that you still try to push ppl into new version with srewed ToS and hidden IronSource stuff. Why else aquite a company for 4.4b, not to let it get to waste for nothing, the money has to come back somehow.

 

Last time I checked, its a *may* require pro situation, depending on your publisher and stuff.

Outside of that though, ideally console and PC would all be the same, yeah, but PC is open while console makers require complicated hoops to jump through, like various license agreements, fees, keys, subsidations, and etc. Pro on your end represents the cost of doing business on Unity's end. Typically when console makers loosen these things, so does Unity, like the Xbox creator program was free for Unity devs when I was checking it out.

 

subs is the growing part of the business, 400% seems fair maybe everything else is just to disguise this, or at least make it less relevant. but that is THE change of all this - and removing plus of course. not the rev-share, not the installation fee. which will be used a bit later, when the dust settles.

 

They will, they set the fee structure up to update annually. If you make a game in 2024 and it comes out in say 2027, you're not paying those 2024 rates at release time, you're paying the 2027 release rates.

They'll probably not make pricing retroactive to 2022 though. Each year that goes by it falls behind in features so it will phase out on it's own eventually. If they're not doing it now, they're unlikely to ever do it for those versions.

 

That is not quite an accurate assessment. Everyone signs EULAs and such every day without reading every sentence in legal understanding. There is an implicit level of trust that the company didn't put something vastly different than their main bullet points into the text. For example, I bought a plane ticket yesterday. Probably the terms I signed say that in case of emergencies, they might land somewhere other than my destination (with a broad definition of emergency). But if they landed somewhere other than my destination because "the pilot wanted to visit a friend," and the airline pointed to a term that technically allowed them to do that, I would not fly on that airline again.

In this case, the breach of trust is that a month ago, any reasonable Unity dev would have known that Unity might change price structures in the future. No reasonable Unity dev believed that a product they already shipped could incur more fees from our provider in the future.

Whether you want to call it trust is up to you.

Personally, I'm going to put my game design time into engines that can't change the deal after my project is done.

 

This.
To summarize, the ship (Unity) might start to sink horribly and there is no guarantee that Unity 2024.X will keep the same fee as 2023.X, and if we take previous unity moves we can predict that 2024 and onward will be surely more expansive.

My question is when will be the pricing for 2024.X announced? 3 months before change like this time?

 

was being sarcastic^^

but yeah it is what it is. they had 2019 - 2,715 full-time employees. now its 7700. nearly 3x as many in 4 years.

at the same time 50% of all mobile games are made with it. if they cant become profitable idk who can.

most if not all devs want unity to succeed, since it takes very long to get good in this engine. and its a good engine. and most are also fine to pay a reasonable amount of their revenue. unity should have had revenue share models in place way earlier, since they had no major competition in the mobile sector.

but who knows what the plan was. The backslash was not because they needed more money but because of how insane the fee per install was, how ludicrously it was communicated. Together with the TOS changes and all the weird business decisions before and their CEOs statements in the past and everything it really was a 9.8+ out of 10 bad.

So yeah they will lose developers and it will strengthen Godot, which will be something quite a few of us will take a look at as soon as our dev circle is over. And if unity cant solidify a profitable buisness model till then, while improving their Engine & improving their AD business, then maybe its better for everyone to work elsewhere. Its basically get your S*** together executives at unity

 

The Xbox Creator program is a different tier from the ID XBOX program. If you want to create a normal game using 2GB of RAM or more, you should join the ID XBOX program and acquire the development kit. However, we are also required to pay for the Pro licenses upfront. On the other hand, consoles like PS and Switch have agreements with Unity, allowing them to share Unity Pro for free. Unfortunately, Xbox does not have such an agreement, which forces us to purchase the Pro version from day one. I believe this is not fair. Unity should encourage developers to publish their games on consoles more effectively. @DairyFan28

 

There is no tool. It's a self reported metric that the FAQ has already provided reasonable guidelines on calculating and will provide more at a later date. And they've explained several times why they chose this fee, because it gives them the revenue they need to expand Unity while also being cheaper than their competition. Basic 3rd grade math confirms this.

 

I have to say that it is extremely difficult to do the right thing when you run a company. So many moving parts and opposing priorities to juggle. I'm glad this happened through: it was good to see the community together instead of bickering about trivialities, and even got some players support.

**If** the TOS echoes the blog post, I think it's very reasonable:

• 2.5% is half of Unreal which is far more production ready out of the box. Fair.
• start this new TOS in 2024. Fairer.
  • That'll force us, small devs, to lock on a version instead of toying with betas.
  • That'll force them to make REAL progress on those new releases to compel us.
• lock TOS to version. Fairest of them all.
• It funds Unity on the back of our success. which is excellent as it will (hopefully) motivate more focused development that actually serves us. Hey listen, we're all servant to someone or something, either it's God, god money, the boss, the wife, our compulsions, might as well benefit the greater number.

Unity probably will try to frog boil us, but reality is not immutable anyway. Now at least have alternative that would never have grown this fast without the F***up.

This will create a counterbalance to their quasi monopoly on some platforms (and in our hearts, amiright?).

One engine I recommend is Flax.
It has less buzz than godot but I think it is about to change. Its architecture makes sense to me (does godot even have an architecture? lol). It has less features than Unity, obv, but they're all super focused and very relevant. Finally, look at this release cadence! How do they do it?

 

The core difference here is that Unity has shown they have intent to do such a thing.

 

Yes and no. He's not really Unity's main problem. In fact, Unity's founder is a fan of this guy and persuaded him to become CEO. And JR's first years (circa 2015-18) were pretty good. He's a capable leader, and a less talented one might drive Unity into the ground.

 

But what if I want to remove splash screen before the 2023 LTS comes out and I am not currently a Plus subscriber? Pro plan is really expensive just for splash screen.