Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

Yes, even if its now completely harmless being essentially on a 2,5% cap, that name is now heavily stained.

 

I insist, and forgive me for not being in tune with others: this is a poisoned gift. I had Unity Plus with some associated support services. Moving now to Personal, we are completely at the mercy of forums and third-party help. And what happens when we migrate our programs to the new version? What if we are successful with that version? We now have the fee again. I'm sorry but I don't see it, I don't see all this clearly at all.

 

I guess that means they shouldn't change the policy and shouldn't make any attempt to repair the trust!

 

No. But Plus subscribers can upgrade to Pro for the price of Plus. This should take them until 2023 LTS. Everyone else will have to pay for pro now or wait.

 

I think it looks pretty decent, tbh I think they could have just gone for 2.5% to keep it simple and skip the whole install count nonsense but we can choose so it's fine.

Dropping made with unity sounds like a good idea, will reduce shovelware with unity logos.

Retroactive fee removed - great!

Shame there doesn't seem to be anything about guarantees for future

 

Yes I do not know why they didn't just start with this on top of that, instead of the big damage the original news caused.

 

Does this mean I can dodge the runtime fee forever if I keep developing with earlier versions?

 

this is what it should have been to start with...

 

WebGL is back on the menu, boys.

Looks like unmonetized WebGL demos will still incur some cost assuming you exceed the thresholds.

 

Can someone please explain if this is still happening:

• Unity Personal will include the Unity Asset Manager free tier (10GB storage total), a maximum of 3 Unity DevOps seats featuring 5GB of storage and 200 Windows build minutes, and Team Administration base roles.

What is "200 Windows build minute", can I build a game with personal edition locally, with out any extra stuff involved?

 

What does " No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee. " mean? If I make $999,999 every year I don't pay anything, at all? Or is it just about runtime fee. But it says you'll always be charged with the lesser one, so it should be zero?

 

If what is said in the blog post is enshrined, then I do NOT want it to go. Because we are charged the lowest amount, either 2.5% of revenue, or the calculated install fee. It is entirely possible that that could mean I have to pay 20 cents to Unity, or 2.5% of my revenue. And I absolutely would love to only pay 20 cents instead. Demanding it is removed now would only hurt us in the end - again assuming they enshrine what was said in legalese.

 

I noticed JR is not on any of the communication or part of the fireside chat.

 

That's not a bad comeback, actually. Thanks for listening!

 

While this is peachy for those who were stuck with Unity because they invested heavily, this still does Not work for folks that have yet to invest heavily.

Same leadership, same confusing words being used.

Trust is broken for me to think about investing further as long as things don't change from within.

 

Okay so here is my 2 cents..

First off, the whole premise of a Run-time fee is idiotic. You shoudl just call it a flat revenue share.. Asking for a Run-time fee insinuates some kind of ownership/entitlement over the content and work that goes into putting the "stuff" so the Run-time can be used for a game it's just bad on every level.

Final Thoughts:
- What Unity has come back with is very fair. This addresses all of the financial concerns I had around how we can plan for marketting etc. This is fine. Offering the removal of the splash screen.. Nice I know alot of folks were asking. I dont care.

- There was some obvious serious and dare I say extreme lack of judgement, planning and execution on this change. It has uncovered some very slimy and gross behaviours by certain members of the Unity BoD including the current CEO. The trust of the community has been decimated. I think Unity needs to take a very close look at the performance of this current BoD and what their strategies have done to the company as far as bleeding money and leaving their core user base out in the cold.

Lot's of lessons learned here Unity.

To the Devs of unity:
THANK YOU! Thank you for speaking up and continuing to build a great tool.

To the moderators here:
- Thanks for putting up with us as we needed a place to rant and discuss.

To my fellow Unity devs:
- This has been very divisive. I think it was a great opportunity and push for people on the fence to go and try other engines. I wish you all well regardless of whether you stay or leave. My team will continue to push towards UE but that will be a 2024 thing. Until Unity shows real change in leadership we simply can not be held hostage by JR's stunts. He almost train wrecked the company in 2019 and here we are again in 2023. Time for a change/retirement.

 

soooo, now we are like yaaaay, they ripped only one arm? i don't buy this. this is a initial move to sell the idea of rev-share and these "engagements" and start boiling the frog. i'm out.

 

Hi, I noticed that you have to be on 2023 LTS to remove the splash screen. When does this come out please sir?

 

This is referring to Unity's cloud infrastructure for building. You have never been charged for local building. And the Windows machines on the cloud are much cheaper for Unity. Mac builders, on the other hand, cost a lot more for both Unity and the person building with them (I used to work on that team).

 

How do we know that you won't pull a trick like this again in a year?

 

I still don't find this reassuring. Still a lot of 'if's and 'but's it feels like.

 

Please do not ask them to remove this option.

There are many good devs who will choose that option. It is an OPTION, and we need to be open to what every devs needs are.

 

So no plus version anymore? Honestly that sucks. At least for the older versions please?

 

“We will increase prices on Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise in line with our previous price change. We’ll have more information to share soon.”

Uh oh.

 

Why does that suck? It's features were folded into Personal, and now its splash screen removal is part of personal. The only difference is that you had to pay previously, and now all that is free.

 

I am still looking it over, but my first impressions are favorable. Thank you for listening to the community and coming up with a workable business plan.

 

Leaving the choice to the developer is better, for the game I am developing I still prefer the runtime fee. But I understand for other games 2.5% revenue share works best.

 

What steps are being taken for the prevent this kind of disaster from happening again?

Has anyone been held accountable for the previous announcement that almost (still might have) destroyed the company?

The info provided now is the bare minimum when it comes to communication. Whoever approved the previous announcement is grossly incompetent.

Where is John Riccitiello hiding? A hugely important moment for every Unity developer and he's nowhere to be seen? No apology?

 

Yes, that's the statement... You can use up to current LTS which is 2022 without the runtime fee. If you update to upcoming 2023LTS, fee will kick in.

You might need pro if over 200k but otherwise, no. check the estimator https://unity.com/runtime-fee-estimator

 

There are many situations where you will pay far less using runtime fees than using revenue percentage. Once again, many situations where you, the developer, will spend less of your money by using that option. Could save a lot.

Please leave that option for people who will need to use it. This is very important for some.

 

When we must pray for things we had and now are lost with new versions in a way that we can't know for sure and full of "ifs" I think we have a problem. People feel safe because current versions are not affected. But time goes very fast, and we can have a real problem in a near future.

 

So removing the splash screen for 2023 LTS and onwards will be free.

BUT removing the splash screen for 2022 LTS and previous will be significantly more expensive (due to lack of Plus tier)

 

I like it!

 

Have you read the post? Personal is like Plus but for free.

 

So initial reading is very positive, in so much that it appears to address most if not all the issues. I will caveat that heavily with the meaning of

'We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity you are using as long as you keep using that version.'
​

If that is written into a EULA, in way that Unity needs to stick to it ( or face legal ramifications - i.e. break of contract ), then I'll be happy to continue with Unity going forward. I'm not one who was calling for heads to roll as I never saw the point of it, not least as there is no guarantee you get someone better and most likely someone far worse.

With that addressed, the rest of the details appear in line or better than I'd hoped. While there is still reference to runtime/engagements ( is that installs by another name? ), having the option of revenue royalty instead is good, especially the automatically use whichever is lower. As far as I can see that is the best of both worlds, and possibly way beyond what was expected. As ever the devil is in the details (engagements?) but surely a 2.5% revenue cap is good more most devs.

Obviously any developer deciding to stick with Unity has to understand that the payment terms will change in the future, they are unlikely to remain the same forever, but as long as any changes are seen to be fair and not suddenly jumping to say 5% or more within a year, then that seems fine. Though this does all depend on Unity honouring the terms being tied to Unity version.

I had no problem with 2023 LTS being used as the starting point, that seems fair. It still captures some dev's who are staying updated to latest versions of Unity, but I don't see who Unity could postpone it any further than that, and if you needed 2023 LTS surely you'd be needing 2024 in the future anyway.

Ultimately I would think most dev's agreed that Unity needed to change payment scheme ( even if it was due to mis-management ) and whilst some might see this as a walk-back to what they wanted all along, I don't. I think after any initial shock of Unity saying the need to move to something like royalties most of us would have been fine with this as a solution in the first place.

I especially like the additions to Personal thresholds and the option splashscreen - though I don't remember seeing anything to address the 'always online' aspect. While I've always considered the editor as 'always online' as you can't get package/asset updates without being logged on, there are clear instances where you may lose internet access for more than 3 days, so would like to see that increased to a min of a month.

As I said this is an initial appraisal of the main bullet points. I need to read through all the current additional information to be sure and ultimately will want to see the actual T&C, TOS whatever before passing final judgement, but overall this is greatly improved and a great start for the future.

 

It sucks because I don't want to pay twice for pro AND for the revenue share. But yeah, maybe that's just me.

 

Starting with 2023 LTS?

 

Maybe Unity survive today but the absurd installation fee will be kill Unity slowly.

 

If you somehow make more than a million dollars on your unmonetized WebGL demo, then yes, it appears so.
But the keyword there seems to be "unmonetized".

 

Well, at least you tried. I will make a point to avoid unity games in the future and remove the ones I got, not installing your spyware, sorry. I want to thank all participants of the discussion and maybe we will see again when it is time for electric boogaloo: operation punity II, once that shady stuff is up and running. You allowed a highly valuable learning experience by giving insight into your community and I wish you all(except your C-suite) the best, no matter if you stay or not. A very special thank you to Eric, who had to moderate all these shenanigans. I've seen a dozen paid moderators doing a worse job together and I learnt a trick or two from you as well.

Thank you all(except your board) for having me and may you be well(not the board).

 

So my first impression, is that this is enough for me to stay with Unity for my next game. I’m thankful for that, because moving systems is a lot of work.

I want to see the open source community continue, but I’m glad to see these changes initially.

 

I bet someone in the board really likes the term "Run-time fee". Why on earth would you keep this weird conception?

 

How have you 'locked down your ToS' please?

From what I can see, your ToS are still exactly the same as when you released the initial Runtime Fee attempt, where your lawyers clearly believed the ToS were NOT sufficient to prevent future changes.

You'll have to do better than that.

 

What do the levels of $200k and $1 million mean? I feel a bit confused? @karl_jones

 

Interesting, with the move to subscriptions everything is more complex these days. Technically once everyone has switch to personal or Pro subscriptions these terms should apply and apply to any version of Unity. Though i'm not sure how they could achieve that. Maybe if under-the-hood everyone on Personal is now flagged as say being on the old Plus subscription, I guess it would 'just work' with all the existing editors back to at least 2017?

 

I can live with that.

Well I guess if you made a truck of cash load of cash via in app purchases and 2.5% was more than the runtime fee that would help you get ahead I guess.

 

But... you aren't paying twice. It's free now. Unless you sell over the 200k threshold, then it makes no financial sense to not upgrade for 2k dollars. But then you are saving tons on revenue share at that point. So paying two different bills to save many thousands of dollars is... okay by me.