Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

Honestly I don't care what's cheaper. For me trust is more important and I don't see why it would help me to pay less for a Unity developed game. I have to make a decision for the next game which might take another 4 years of development and who know what kind of fees they have by then or if they are even still alive with that negative cash flow?

I wish they would split up the company with a sub entity just handling the core engine without all this ads nonsense.

 

so true. "Unity is cheaper than Unreal because 2.5 < 5" means that unity was totally free for everyone before this change. was it?

 

I made a comparison with Unreal's payment method (quarterly), so I used their term for calculation. To pay Unity fees, you must have over $1,000,000 in game income in the last 12 months (excluding the first $1,000,000). Average for 3 months is $250,000 and for Unreal it's $10,000. Of course, with Unity it's calculated every month, not quarterly, so on average per month with Unity you need to have on average 83,333 income to pay the fee, while with Unreal is $3333.

 

*The following is only about how the new prices affect me, and I am definitely not speaking for any other developers, whose experiences and markets are wildly different than mine*

For me, the new terms are acceptable. I build mostly tools with Unity that have a high profit margin. In my case, if I'm reading this right, I'll be paying for Plus membership through some time in 2023, where I'll basically move to Personal, which is free. So for the next few months, nothing at all changes for me.

But in 2023, I will no longer pay a monthly fee. No complaints here. I don't understand though, if you need money, why you'd get rid of Plus. I mean, the justification was to "simplify your products", but that sounds like a ridiculous excuse if it means losing money. So that's on you.

BUT...

There is still the problem that someone there in management thought "retroactive" was a cool word to use.

And as far as I can tell, whoever THAT was, is still lurking around in the office. I simply can't trust you to keep your word on this, since I had already agreed to a ToS that you said was superseded by the recently discarded ToS. And one big reason for that is that it took over a week to announce this. I assume losing everything resembling an uptick on the stock market aided in your decision.

So I can't pretend things are all better now. It's a *start*, but you guys gotta know you're on thin ice. And as a former stock owner, I'm not pleased with how management tried to sink the ship.

-Chilton

 

are you really not getting it, or are you intentionally trolling or are you getting paid for this?

MOST of unity's income (no ads) comes from plans, consulting, training etc. the rev share is cherry on top and long term milking machine. you can't make any calculations without including plans in them.

 

That's not how I understand it. So you've made $1M, new month rolls around and you made $83K that month. So $83K * 2.5% = $2,083 is how much you pay that month.

Edit: + whatever plans you have and # of seats / 12 to average out cost per month.

 

Exactly! The first $1 000 000 doesn't count, only the surplus.

 

yes. and if you make zero revenue, you still pay the plans. and you never finish the game, you still pay the plans.

 

are there any from unity working today?
i'm a bit confused about something



What do you mean with "business revenue" exactly?

 

I guess I misunderstood your post.

 

You are missing the whole conversation, please check my previous comments about these calculations. There are mentioned Unity seats too. By the way not all game developers in the companies use Unity, there are all kind of artists who doesn't work with Unity editor and doesn't need Unity plans.

 

check tooltip. everything.

 

But you just made $1M dollars in the previous 12 months. All of a sudden you make no money in a month? Is that realistic? Also if the game is making no money then why work on it, you could just stop working on it and not pay the plan. If you started a different game that generated 0 since it's being worked on, could you not use the free plan for that game?

 

not every game make 1mil. but you still pay the plans. if you stop working on your game, it will never make any revenue. but you still pay the plans.EDIT: as long as you work on it, of course.

and talking about plans. i may be wrong, but i'm quite sure some companies use some other plan than personal and pro...

 

For me... whatever JS is planning... whatever ToS might be in the future... doesn't apply to me because I never managed to build a game in the last 4 years with Unity.

UNet is gone, and I bet that NetCode will have the same roadmap as Unet.
There is no middleware on the asset store for the network part of my game.
Enlighten is a good old memory, lightmap baking proves this aspect daily.
Unity terrain is still a disaster for my mobile game, but now I understand mine craft world.
I still have to use that 3.4GB JPG as a texture atlas because Unity doesn't support WEBP,
HDRP will never look like what the competition offers,

I started hating Unity from the very moment they brought Bolt Vs from Ludiq.

 

You're right, not every game will make 1M. But if you're on a plan you've made at least $200K. Isn't that enough to justify purchasing a plan?

 

„We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new policy“

Here is our new policy that is now a fact again. Ahjeah, we asked a bunch of unity influencers before. They said ok, but let us hide that we use your engine.

 

Isn't that obvious? If your company (business) makes more than that.

 

you really really think the plans are purchased day before release? some devs need more features in their games than what free/pro offers. i know it doesn't concern you what other devs are doing or what plans they have, but please try to include some other devs in your calculations than just yourself.

 

What the heck is going on over there? Does nobody vet these? Did Donald Trump take over the company?

W.T.F?

 

Hey, Bolt 2 was decent, but Unity scrapped it together with nearly two years' worth of progress and a full rewrite in favor of the outdated Bolt 1, which was never supposed to live past Bolt 2's release for long and hadn't seen any meaningful updates since 2018. Unity mismanaged the entire acquisition and following integration as usual.

 

am i being too paranoid? i don't think so... if we learned something this week is that is all about the details

 

Sad to see this engine go.

 

Has my company made over 200k USD in revenue in the last 12 months?

 

In Unity also the first million is free and in Pro would not pay for the 200k or 100k game.

So Unity is 2.5K and Unreal 5K

 

I doubt that's going to make a big dent in their losses. They will need a lot of changes to right the ship, which is fine, because Unity needs to change. It's been years since they were moving in the right direction.

Devs should be paying for the engine, who else is going to pay for it?

If you're making $1000 a game, why are you buying Pro and then complaining about the bad decision you made? The small indies complaining about subs have realistic scenarios they can complain about like the transition period and the splash screen, they don't need to pretend everyone needs Pro.

 

Take it easy. I never said it doesn't concern me what other devs are doing. I was just asking hypothetical question.

 

There is a valid concern there. I've looked at different plans and if you want use Havok Physics, Unity AR/MR or deploy to consoles you need the Pro plan. So you'd have to purchase that before you made any money so you can develop and test on the console. In my opinion those capabilities should be included in the free plan as well.

 

Well, if i make 1 million in a single month of a year, will be more than happy to pay $160 per month for Unity stay alive and well, that helped me make that million.

It is like zero comparing to the million.

 

1000$ was an average a game will make in it's lifetime. so, game development isn't very good business for most of us. and it's about to get worse. of course you don't need any plan for your runner game, if you plan to make a few hundred, that wasn't the point.

 

yes, i think your million is just around the corner.

 

Don't worry, people love arguing about anything. And repeating same thing over, just to look like having a voice, instead adding something more constructive. Plus disrespecting eachothers, by not reading others responses. Developers are not any different unfortunatelly.

But no worry, as with anything, people have short memory, of clown fish, and after few weeks all become quiet. Specially when no more drama will be here, I.e. Being disappointed that stocks didn't fall below 30, etc.

I am glad this is not discord...

 

Yeah, and making music also isn't profitable for most people. That's because most people making games and music don't do it as a day job, they do it as a hobby, and so many of them are even willing to release their creations for free, just because there is so much competition and so little money to be made, which drives prices down further.
If your job is something people do on the weekends for fun, it's going to be difficult to turn a profit.

 

Great news! Thanks Unity! My level of commercial game development is skyrocketing thanks to your amazing engine and huge community. We should all cherish this!

 

So if not make a million, why pay any plans ?

Even if make 200K, 2k is still nothing.

If make below 200k not need any plan or pay anything anyway and not have the Unity screen now.

 

Runtime fees aka "monthly initial engagements" requires too much mental gymnastics, and are generally unsuitable for free games. The initial fees were a non-starter, while you still maintain the same core metric.

With the extra revenue, there should be a lot more focus on the Unity engine itself - as a platform as a product instead of as a service. Focusing on adverts in games seems to be almost exclusively applicable to mobile games, while Unreal engine is making massive advances in the PC gaming sector, leaving Unity far behind.

Also initially forcing everyone via 'fee waivers' to use your own services to kill another business seems extremely anti-competitive, although I'm not sure if this type of action will continue or not.

While the fee changes are a step in the right direction, they should have been announced more than a week earlier to minimize trust and reputational damage. However, I still get the impression that the fees can be changed 'whenever Unity feels like it' as they seemed to do with the initial announcement, which does not give me hope.

How can we be sure that this won't happen again, after the TOS was mysteriously changed behind everyone's backs?

Despite this, it does not solve another core problem that Unity has as a company:

Where is the innovation?

How can we be sure that Unity engine will compete with Unreal, Godot, and others, in the next 5-10 years?
What will make new developers choose Unity over other engines?

 

It's a million per year not month. And then again, yes I'd be happy to pay Unity a bit but after they tried to rip of (not the first time btw) I'm a bit shy to do so.

 

Typical euphemism from companies to cheat their users.

 

Sry, but as long as Marc stays, I dont trust Unity anymore. But hey, at least Marc Whitten is the best thing ever happend to Godot.

 

I wouldn't be so sure that people have accepted it in the sense that they intend to pay it.

In my opinion, the single most important part of this rollback is that it means existing developments are safe.

I've been hesitant to say this on the official forums, for reasons that are about to become obvious, but I don't know how many creators are likely to stay with unity after that stunt. I really don't think a lot of developers intend to upgrade to the next version of unity (which is required for the fees to kick in).

Unity has shown they are an untrustworthy partner. IEven the people who are using it for free can see that.

The question now is how much will that mater? Once people finish their current projects, how many are going to choose to learn a new engine rather than take the risk with Unity? How many devs are still looking to port rather than take the risk?

People may be satisfied with this deal not because they intend to take it, but because this time they have an option to leave it.

 

Is this real?

"The views were so low" is a laughable pretext to hide changes to something that is legally binding.

 

with whatever game engine?

I saw the FAQ, is only applied to unity games

 

Any

 

If you want to deploy to a console you need pro.

 

Exactly the point, Unity make the creation of cool games possible even by one person, with Unreal is so hard that need vast teams to do anything properly and proper equipment to run the engine.

 

If this strategy doesn't work, they could double down again and again, and perhaps lose large numbers of devs to other engines. (I am now thinking of looking at Godot for the first time just to see what it has to offer a dev like myself. Amazing what motivates a person, ya?)

But at some point, if you are right, if they can't get into the black, layoffs will be necessary. In the end, Unity has a great engine for several segments and that isn't going away.

And if you are right, then it's just a matter of time.

 

Thanks Unity! It's much better this way!

 

As a non-asset store developer I disagree. It might be worth looking at porting or making assets for other engines at this point. But as a team of 2 we have been able to achieve a higher scope delivery, faster with unreal than we ever could have with unity . All without paying the seat cost.

I think making statements like X is harder with unity or Y is easier with unreal is really dependent on the team, experience and skillsets on offer than the engines and pricing models themselves.

P.S I am a unity fanboy since longer than most people knew the engine existed. I worked in this space when the idea of game engines being used for anything other than games was laughed at by my peers. I registered on the forums LONG after being a user of this engine. It doesnt change the fact of where we are today, assess all engines without sentiment, its the best approach to a technical decision.