Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

depends if you have upgraded to 2024LTS

 

2023

 

forgot to add to the math, what happens if you never upgrade to 2024 LTS

 

It's not 2024 LTS. It's "the LTS released in calendar year 2024" and presumed at the current schedule to be 2023.3 LTS.

And if you never do, then you don't get the new features. If you actually hit it big between now and then, you'll be able to afford a lawyer to tell you what you agreed to, rather than asking on a forum of end-users.

 

Either $0 or the annual cost of a Pro license, depending on how much you make.

 

If they make 200k through crowdfunding they need to pay for Pro licenses, so they need to pay around 12k a year before they’ve even released anything.

 

2023.4

.3 will be Tech

 

??? what new features

if i never upgrade i never agreed to anything new

i can still buy pro if I make 100k as normal

 

Tencent, the company pulling the strings behind Unreal, just wants to dominate the market by crushing the competition. Once they have enough market share, you can be sure they'll milk indie developers for every last penny.

 

Don't tell anyone, but he is still on the board of directors and basically he brought to us and fanboying Riccitiello all the way. David isn't the good guy you people are romanticizing him.

 

As opposed to Unity, that wants its competition (AppLovin?) to flourish beyond its wildest dreams.

 

My question since yesterday has been "how are we supposed to make sure the license will never change from under us again?"

From what I understand, they said basically the same thing in 2019, yet here we are today.

 

In the words of Marc Whitten, when asked why should people trust Unity again:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(I’m paraphrasing)

 

Listen - the drinking game. Watch the video and drink a shot every time the word "listen" comes up.

 

Ah, yes
Gotta love doing business with the company who wants to repair their trust by means of "idduno, just trust me bro"

 

Great joke. I'd much rather have Tencent than IronSource. Though that's irrelevant in the case of Unity as they're already involved with both. Of course if anyone actually cares about this the only solution is to use Godot or any one of the many available FOSS solutions.

https://unity.com/case-study/arena-valor

 

What? They stop having .4 since Unity 2020 unless there is something change in Unity 2023.

Unity 2020.3 LTS , 2021.3 LTS, 2022.3 LTS

 

I know this is hard to believe, this is Unity we’re talking about, but, they changed their mind

https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...updates-for-graphics-and-performance.1482069/

 

How can we trust what they're doing then?

 

Tim has majority shares in Epic, so Tencent does nothing behind the courtain u clown

 

yes, you and I know what they really mean, but this is what they are saying to the world.

As long as the management continues down the path they have been on this will be their official position excuse.

 

needed to add a legally binding to the tos, unfortunately the backlash has died out, we have run out of political capital to push for more

 

Clearly we can't.

 

All good information, thank you so much. I have been seriously looking at it today and will continue to evaluate it over the coming weeks until I hear something different on the Unity front.

That string of reddit posts is fascinating. It's as though a flood gate was opened and unity devs are seriously looking at Godot now as their new engine of choice. They are being referred to as "refugees"... to be honest, I can relate.

 

This is one thing that bothers me, actually. It usually take 2-3 years to release anything so we are talking about 24k-36k. Which is pretty costly. I guess if business does not do 200k every year then that can reduce this a bit? I am still confused.

It encourages business to earn less than 200k a year, or spread earnings if possible so it does not go over 200k a year basically.

 

The ToS used to have one... until they removed it a sometime ago
Which brings me to my previous statement, if they did it once, even when it was enshrined in the ToS, what stops them from doing it again?

 

Minimizing the number of people who need Unity helps. Unity's subscription is only necessary for everyone if your entire team is using the editor, and even then only if everyone is accessing the editor at the same time.

 

As long as they are providing a service (which apparently is what the editor is) and not a product, there is nothing really stopping them.

 

I agree. I've had past experience with Unreal blueprints and after years with C# in Unity, C++ in UE5 isn't very daunting since they took care of a bunch of lower level concerns already, feels close enough to C#

 

The first step to make things right is to admit that you were being malicious. But now Unity is saying that they took down the ToS repo because it "had too few views" and that it is irrelevant because it was taken down way before the announcement (almost as if implying that the announcement wasn't already being planned back then).

If Unity expects anyone to believe that then I don't think we're heading in a good direction (again). The only reason they put it back up is because the plan fell apart and now there's no need to keep it hidden anymore.

 

No, in fact the ToS itself, it looks like, says the opposite. It's also not actually tracked in the github repo. The Additional terms, which is what is tracked in the github repo, said "Conditioned upon your compliance with these Software Terms and the Terms, and payment of all applicable subscription fees," which means you have to check the main terms... which reads

As far as I can tell, the ToS always let them do this. Last time when they said they wouldn't, they were just lying and most didn't actually read the license. Of course, it doesn't help that this agreement was constructed as multiple documents to maximize the chance that you'll get confused and not read it.

EDIT: For reference, here's the same main ToS page from 2022, which includes largely similar language

 

I have more trust in tencent + epic games than in unity. I also had more positive interactions with epic games than with unity techologies.

 

https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1095515651832201217?s=20

I'm not saying that they have complete control, but you think 40% ownership and seats on the board comes with no influence?

The Tencent investment is what directly led to Epic changing to their "free-to-develop, 5% revenue share" pricing model. Also take note that several key members of Epic quit in protest after Tencent got involved because they didn't like the direction that they saw Tencent leading the company.

Interpret it how you want. I could be wrong about their level of influence. Tencent isn't really even relevant to my point. Epic is trying to win market share. They're doing the same, in a much more aggressive manner, with the Epic Games Store - operating as a loss leader to claw away market share from Valve. Do you think they'll keep giving away free games and offering much lower fees once they have enough market share?

Maybe I'm just cynical. I'd like to be wrong. We'll see.

 

The terms, as of 16 July, 2022 stated:

Which means, that Section 8 of the Additional Terms apply, which read at the time:

Which makes them look even more like liars since both their agreements were, in fact, protecting the developers from modifications taking them by surprise

 

That same document says "Unity may modify Plan Benefits from time to time in its sole discretion."

See, that's the slight-of-hand, while colloquially, we're saying they modified the terms, in reality they technically didn't. They just changed the fees and benefits, which the ToS allowed. To be clear, I'm not really defending them... but every lawyer I've seen talk about this seems to indicate that, on it's face, the contract permits it (of course, that wasn't legal advice, as I wasn't paying them).

You should know who you're dealing with before you get (back?) into bed with them.

 

What about the removal of Section 8 they did? I'm pretty sure that counts as "modifying the terms."

Yeah, in any case, though, I am still extremely wary of continuing to use Unity, since I'm afraid they might try pulling another stunt like this again

 

After a bit of reading, I'm relatively confident that this clause would likely be illegal in France, as it doesn't define any frame for the fee changes. If it's illegal in France, there's a good chance it's illegal in the EU as well.

 

All contracts are subject to the law, but are you willing to risk the contract may be enforceable, just to do business with the kind of company that would write and (more importantly) try to use these types of clauses?

You have to do what's best for you, and if you're comfortable with those protections... your call. Maybe you have to be, I certainly don't know your situation. A lot of people are far enough along in projects that changing engines is a complete non-starter. Those people are likely going to go ahead and finish, after that I would expect many of them to reevaluate if they want to use unity going forward.

 

Unity's managers are in this business like they could be selling ice cream or making socks. They are not knowledgeable about the world of video games, nor do they care. Today they exploit this business to the best of their ability, and tomorrow they will start selling colored chocolates. They do not care. The important thing is to get the maximum benefit. That's the difference with Epic. At Epic they still understand the sector in which they work, and they know what developers are looking for. Let's hope that a new management arrives that really knows the video game sector and is truly involved in looking for real solutions.

 

I don't see the problem is either 2.5% OR number of installs which of those is lower.
Sure the self reporting will be a little pain but the pricing is ok.
I mean is better than just 2.5% royalties.

Sure the trust/communication + backlash issues remain and will remain for a long period of time, but the new pricind is ok (as ok as a a price going up can be)

 

That's probably a way to force toy to go to a newer version.
The other method I hope will be many new features

 

Both unity and unreal do the same thing... the only difference is that epic is a little careful with the PR.

 

Agreed and well put. This is what is so stupid... Everyone is more than willing to pay a fair price for unity, including via rev share like the board want. But they are going to burn it all to the ground because they want to surreptitiously keep the fee adjustable. So you have a good product, good customers that are willing to pay it's value and yet they just can't stop themselves from ****ing it up. They might be slipping this by the vast majority for now, but it is going to catch up with them when their greed inevitably tells them to adjust the fee % on already published games in a few years and everyone realises they have been deceived.

STAFF, AGAIN, FEEL FREE TO ADDRESS THIS. EVERYONE ELSE, ASK YOURSELF WHY THEY KEEP IGNORING IT WHILE SO KEEN TO ADDRESS ANYTHING ELSE

 

Checking back in on the "update", all I can say at this point is if Darth Maul is Unity, his brother Savage the ToS/runtime changes, and Palpatine were all of us learning Unreal/other engines, then this is pretty spot on:

 

I apologize if this got addressed and I assume I know the answer.

For Plus subscribers (and free users), is the only way to remove the splash screen going forward to update or go Pro? Will splash screen removal be patched into LTS versions still getting updates?

I'd appreciate any links to this being answered if it has. Thanks!

 

Splash screen removal is available only for Plus/Pro members until 2023.4LTS, when splash screen removal will also become available to Personal users and won't require a paid subscription. Splash screen removal for Personal users won't get backported to current versions of Unity.

 

Unity - So this is better. But please just remove the friggin splash screen, no BS, no COMPLICATED version requirement just remove it for everybody in the next LTS release - FRIGGIN SIMPLE. Stop making everything so complicated, nobody trusts this S***. BIG NOTE: I dont need a splash screen for Unreal or Godot, NO MATTER WHAT FRIGGIN VERSION I USE. Make it simple remove the bloody splash screen for all versions tomorrow, NOBODY WANTS IT. GET IT???

Show good faith and just do it, the continued punishing of your users really makes me want to continue my move over to Unreal. C'mon guys, do the right thing.

BTW - Most Users will always move to the latest LTS because they want the new features, so surely that is not the issue??

 

Thanks for the information. So when Plus subscriptions run out, the only option will be Pro or updating Unity?

 

Yes. But they're also giving another year of Pro at Plus price to existing Plus subscribers so you can technically tide over another year until the Personal upgrade if you didn't run out of Plus just before the announcement like I did.

 

Thanks for the clarification. Now I can rest easy knowing my mediocrity will shield me from worrying about the fee restructuring. Also, 'no splash screen' is a bonus... unless Unity whips up an undeniably sleek splash screen.