Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

Their announcement has rendered LTS meaningless. I am now willing to deliver on any 2022 version that I can download (and I intend to download them all before years end), and I plan to NOT download anything after this year.

I don't think I am the only one.

Unity did this to themselves.

 

There are very good examples where you only pay a royalty payment (Epic, I am looking at you) and EVERYONE wins.

The payment amount or methods are not the issue here.

 

I am not Unity though, but these I think are more of the simpler cases and they are explained in the ToS and in the announcement. So here is how I interpret the ToS and the announcement:

No, if you reach $200k revenue as the business, you will need to upgrade everyone who is using Unity to Pro. Nothing has changed here, only the limit, because they removed the Plus plan.

You always need to maintain a license based on the previous year revenue. If in year 1 you exceed 200k, in year 2 you use Pro if in year 2 you fall under $200k, in year 3 you can use Personal again. This isn't changed.

Yes, no matter if you're a business or a private person, revenue generated in connection of Unity will be counted towards the past year revenue.

I think you do not. They specifically are talking about the runtime. You do not distribute the runtime with your gaming assets.

No, it's about YOUR published games. No one else's.

 

It's a very specific design for sure and not to everyone's taste, but I wouldn't knock it until you've given it a fair shot. And the strongest aspect of such an open project is the fact you can make changes yourself or offer suggestions and people will actually hear you out and maybe even implement them!

 

I don't know what to do now. I want 3D and C#. So it feels like I'm stuck with older versus of Unity, maybe.

I certainly will not move forward with the online policy. That's just a terrible and stupid idea. I see all kinds of issues with it. Imagine a hurricane hits and takes out your home, business, and community. What if I go on a cruise? What if I'm a solo dev and I end up in life support? Do I get a medical alert bracelet that has my unity login stamped on it?

 

- Unigine
- Flax Engine
- Stride Engine
All of these are sufficiently similar to Unity and they are very capable (the top two are more than the third). And then if you are a masochist, there is Godot (for 3D with C#).

 

Actually, he was right.

Before our income taxes we had better roads, we had growing rail roads and cities. We had one income families. We could afford houses and vacations and good food on one income.

It has never been the amount of taxes, which was way lower back then. It has always been the people who decide how to spend that money.

and inflation

 

Yeah but, now there's more extra work involved if you use software like Reallusion or Marvelous Designer. Not to mention if you own stuff from the unity store.

I'm sorry, but this whole debacle is a complete mess. I fear unity may very well be done.

And it was such an easy fix. Instead they add a runtime fee and a login requirement and leave the loopholes to ruin it further.

 

I didn't mean the code that is on the user's hard drive, but the code that the rights holders would continue to have control over. It exists and costs nothing, so it would continue to be monetized because there is a market there. Even if the engine might not be developed further for a while. Until a new company emerges from the ruins that is capable of continuing to develop the engine.

 

Thank you for your feedback, appreciated.

 

Trying to "point things out" implies that you believe that the other party is unable to figure that out on their own, you know.

 

That is ridiculous. You know exactly what I meant. Just under $200,000.

 

Not even remotely...

To remind anyone reading this, you are slightly offended that I said a number of developers will likely return to Unity, that said they won't. With the inference that the damage to Unity's bottom line months and years from now won't be as bad as some might think based on the number of people saying they won't be back.

So you are taking offense to me making a reasonable point in a back and forth thread where everyone else has made points -> but I am uniquely not allowed to because "obviously everyone knows that point I just made" and it means that I think they are stupid because it is impossible that someone hasn't already considered my point.

Your logic here is majestic. ** golf clap**. I award you ALL of the points. And may God have mercy on your soul.

 

Check out Human Diaspora, it's free on Steam and has an FPS counter when you enable debug info in the settings. I get an average of 60 fps on my old hardware. But yeah, there's lots of room for improvements here I'm sure.

 

It is not about "being offended", it is reminding that "people aren't stupid". It is really important to keep in mind that humans aren't idiots, especially on a forum with a ton of people that are at least at the same level as you. Then again, maybe it is some sort of cultural thing, I don't know. Because this isn't the first time I see someone "reminding" of something obvious everybody already understands. Previous one was "sending death threats is wrong, okay? We're better than that as a community".

Regarding previous talk about Lumen/Nanite, like I said, I feel like this is not "Killer Feature" level. It's been a long time since we had a major breakthrough in gamedev. The last thing was probably quiet switch to PBR.

Would be nice to see an engine offering more. I don't know, for example... a feature set, where a single dev can make soalr system scale game, with life-sized planets, life sized cities, with 8 billion active NPCs, from scratch, without using external resource libraries. In a day.

That would be on killer feature level.

 

It's extremely idiosyncratic and arbitrary. Exactly like something made by optimistic and opinionated hobbyists that realised their game design skills weren't good enough to profit from that, so found a way to leverage antipathy towards other engines for their own benefits.

It's not the Blender of game engines, and wish the optimism around it would be tempered to some degree of accuracy so that tens of thousands of people don't waste their time hoping it is, only to later begin stumbling in its MANY pain points in its core "design".

 

I'm beginning to think the killer feature of Unreal is Blueprints, but that it's caught us all out because we only think of it as visual scripting when it's totally integrated into just about everything, and just works. It wasn't until I'd spent a couple of weeks with Blender's Geometry Nodes that I grokked how to think in terms of visual scripting - it's backwards, most of the time. You build back from temporary results, and then it just sort of works, and you can have a bunch of smaller results along the way, and stages can be seen and sorted for what they are, and kind of recognised as sub-functions. I am only just starting to "ahah... this isn't as bad as I thought" and it already feels exciting because a LOT more experimentation and iteration can be much more easily done AND shared with others than with code.

 

Are freelancer contractors used by the company also required to be using Unity Pro ?

 

Unity now has negative value, it's just gonna take a while for the stock market to realise that, at which point most of the staff will be sacked.

 

What is all this Godot hate?
I’ve been seeing it for the past weeks especially here on the forums but nothing concrete just that it’s “like not good, man”.
Is it opinionated? Unreal is opinionated, even Unity is opinionated you just got used to it.
Is it unsuitable for your project? Dude it’s a free open source engine, no sh*it, it won’t make the next Crysis, dont use it then.
I’ve heard comments about godot being a cult but to me it looks like Godot haters have some sort of a cult instead.
Don’t get me wrong, i don’t have anything for or against Godot, I’ve tried it, made some stuff, I think it’s cool, not ready yet but not actually that bad.
I’m team Unreal.
Just can’t get over why all the strong words, it’s a tool not some third world religion.
You don’t “have” to use it!

 

Yes. If you are freelance contractor working for a pro, you have to subscribe to pro. And I believe if you work for enterprise, you'll need enterprise tier license. This is a well known problem with unity license that hasn't ever been addressed.

Godot has people that feel very strongly about the engine and occasionally invade forums of other engines to "spread the word!!!". It used to be common here. "Godot prophets", basically.

Those people are extremely annoying and probably the ones that did the most damage to Godot, as several such encounters are enough to develop a dislike of the engine without ever using it.

If anyone is switching to Godot, the right idea would probably be to ignore community completely.

Do keep in mind that in general humans get attached to their tools sometimes.

 

Wow’ I’m way out of the loop on this, thanks.
Haven’t been here in a long time.

 

OMG - LOL - You joke, but it wouldn't surprise if we are heading to a cyberpunk world where companies not governments are actually in control, and they will be maintaining our roads. What's worse is that there will still be politics, just it will come only from companies vying for your service or subservience.

So sad as I was pinning my hopes on the 'post-money society' of Star Trek.

 

It is already happening in the US... HOAs are so prevalent, they are almost unavoidable.
But this is off-topic here so I link the video behind spoiler and I stop talking about it.

Spoiler: Great Video Essay about Gated Communities

 

Wow, settle down there. Nobody is forcing anyone to use Godot. It's just one of many options out there. It is also loved by many and has been used to ship highly successful and critically acclaimed games. So it's design obviously has merit regardless of your own opinionated antipathy towards it.

 

True, but once I've created my game, assuming I'm done patching it and don't use ads, I am not required to use unity engine at all. My game is now a finished product that I sell.

 

It was happening couple of years ago. Back then those guys ticked me off big time and as a result I wasn't planning to ever touch the godot engine. Took at least a year and a LOT of small things to make me change my mind. Like I said, those people probably did the most damage to the engine, because people generally aren't fans of door-to-door preachers.

I believe we're there already. See when companies try to manipulate public opinion or push specific agenda. That's cyberpunk. Stuff with Twitter/Facebook is basically cyberpunk - corporations vying for information control.

But this is politics and beyond the scope of this forum.

 

I've got two questions about 2023 LTS for you if you can answer either or both.

First has to do with upgrading and the new terms for the runtime. What counts as upgrading? To give a hypothetical that absolutely would have come up at my previous job: Lets say my project is on 2022 LTS, and we create an upgrade branch to determine if there are new features we want to upgrade to. In order to do this, this project in that branch needs to be updated to 2023, and some members of the project have accepted those terms. Then in the event that we decide to not upgrade, and revert to editor version 2022, are the 2023 terms in effect? Similarly, what about if we do upgrade, but later downgrade to 2022? Or if the game is released on 2023, but a later version is released on 2022?

Second, how will the runtime fee be handled in the future? Will there be a different runtime fee for 2023 versus 2024 or will all versions share the same fee?

 

Edit
You know what would be easier? Just stick to bloody subscriptions and cut all this crap!

Original Post
So for fun I thought I'd take a stab at outlining what I felt the TOS had to be and whilst I think I have some good ideas to ensure the protection of us, the customers, I realised that overall its likely an impossible task.

The problem is everything changes, what we are even discussing didn't exist a few decades back and technology changes quickly, therefore Unity have to be in a position to make changes to the TOS to protect themselves. Further more Unity may even become legally obliged to make changes based on changes to laws, so i don't think a fixed TOS is even possible.

The only way around that is perhaps splitting up the TOS to allow for some parts to be updated but not others, but then you've immediately lost that guarantee that changes will not adversely affect us. Indeed part of the whole issue with the previous plan was the retroactive nature, that apparently was permitted due to a clause in a supplementary service agreement.

I guess maybe you could go the route Unreal have with a EULA for the fees/fee structure and then just hope Unity's TOS don't or never change to conflict with that.

Anyway for prosperity and because it took a bit of time, here are some thoughts regarding TOS and the way I think legal protections need to be done. What I realised is its quite hard to do all tis, and yet I have a feeling this might be better written than any TOS we eventually get

TOS Editor & Runtime

• The TOS will always be fixed to a specific version and its lifetime, from initial release to LTS.
• The TOS will outline the fees and fee structure applicable to a specific version and its lifetime, from initial release to LTS
• The TOS may not be changed to retroactively include previous versions of Unity - ever!

Fees & Fee/Payment Structure

• The fees and fee structure are locked to a specific version of Unity, starting with the first major release after beta e.g. 2025.1.0
• These remain in effect until the next full Unity version release e.g. 2026.1.0 and so include the 2025 LTS.
• The fee or payment structure themselves may NOT be changed during the lifetime of a Unity version. That is they cannot change to say 'install' based system or 'pay for every minute your app is using the runtime'.
• The fees, tiers and royalty may change during the lifetime of a Unity version, but by no more than an agreed max percentage ( e.g. inflation, but limited to 10% ) from the initial value, once per a year ( say April), and the total aggregate of changes may never exceed the total max percentage. This is contingent on Unity releasing at minimum 3 major releases of Unity and LTS.

Below are examples to show the maximum increase during the lifetime of Unity version, where lifetime is at least 4 years ( 2 years development, 2 years LTS ) at 10%

• Royalty starts at 2.5% - so 10% of 2.5% is 0.25% = 2.75% by end of life.
• Fee starts at $0.15 - so 10% of $0.15 = 0.015 = $0.165 by end of life.
• Tier starts at 100,000 - so 10% of 100,000 = 10,000 = 90,000 by end of life.

Sure its yet another complication to the whole payment calculation, but we already got that.

Actually it might be easier to just allow a single change when the Unity version hits LTS but again with the upfront agreement as to the maximum. Alternatively with a lower maximum we could allow Unity to update the fees every April.

However my belief is without some means of Unity being able to adjust the fees during the lifetime of a Unity version they will either not enshrine a fixed fee in the TOS, mess around with the number/lifetime of a version release or worse case arbitrarily change the fee/royalty when a version hits LTS that we have zero control over, but have trapped developers into using! ​

• The fees, tiers, royalty may change for new Unity versions at Unity's discretion.

Yes it would be nice to fix that too, maybe inflation + 5%, but I could never see them going for that and as long as its never retroactive we at least have the option of not upgrading. I have projects in 2018/2019 that can still be built for Google/Apple stores.​

Subscriptions
In terms of price rises I think this can be left alone, although again it would be nice to have Unity commit to something like inflation + % max.

However I dislike the double dipping, perhaps the subscriptions or a percentage of can be deducted from fees or something. Though again this just keeps getting more and more complex.

Payments & Invoices
Allow account reporting and payment to be done quarterly or monthly. Quarterly accounts will still be evaluated on a month by month basis, but that means I only play 'accountant' 4 times a year instead of 12. It also offsets the payments as another concern I have is if a developer isn't being paid monthly from distributors they can easily fall into a cash-flow problem not having the money to pay Unity monthly!

 

Calm your own straw manning, please.

 

The biggest problem with this, depending on how far reaching it is would be the massive explosion in memory requirements. For example does this apply to mesh data, even if not uploaded to gpu ( pretty sure default is 32bit for that ) then at least for mesh on cpu and storage device it will have huge implications.

Even for just transforms and other usage 64 bit scalars are going to have an impact, and potentially a huge one depending on what you are doing.

 

100% agree! So you should probably stop that.

 

I think bickering is pointless.
The whole point of this thread is to explain to unity that we are still not happy and want some changes in management that will then trickle down to easyer pricing models and supression of "per install fee" bullshit.
That fee is just the unborn child of a sick mind and should never have been made public in the first time.

 

it cant be killer feature cos unity has 5 + assets of visual scripting

 

Did you miss the point about total integration?

 

Yes, and your example is exactly the reason why a lot of small companies have closed in Belgium in the beginning of the year. Electricity bills went through the roof, sometimes exceeding the actual income of bakeries, fast foods, plumbers, ... even people like you and me saw their energy bills go up from 80€ to 500-600-700€ per month.

 

It's not pointless to point out that Godot is NOWHERE near a rival/alternative for most of the games that require Unity level features and performance for development and design.

It's a frank point, that needs to be known, such that those affected by the install fee bullshit know that they should make some noise because there aren't any easy other choices.

 

Stride is good. Its fully C# engine with open source code. Can't beat that in the same space.
Porting assets is always time intensive. But not impossible.

 

My roads are still under construction I think this is like second (or maybe even first) bug I reported, I had to do it twice, then they described it half wrong and to this day still not fixed.

However, I am actually glad they didn't fix this - thanks to that they had chance to fix other, more important bugs, except they didn't.

 

The whole debacle of "pay Unity more it will get better" is a bit offset by reality.

Consider what Unity was doing with your money in the past 10 years.
You'll understand that best outcome is Ironsource. Or something else purchased in a haste and left to rot & decay.

Money doesn't go to tech. Money goes to purchase more trash. That's the main problem.
So no matter how much you pump into it - it will always be sunk-cost fallacy.

 

Imagine the investors... they've pumped in tens of billions and gotten... well... I dunno what they've got, but I think it's going downwards, whatever it is.

 

Hey @Aazadan2, I'm also wondering the same thing as your first question and have a similar question on the previous page: https://forum.unity.com/threads/imp...ntime-fee-policy.1494761/page-32#post-9363728

ie. do they apply on install, or when a title is published using the 2023 LTS runtime?

 

honestly i looked at godot for porting my 2d game

first i went to reddit and discord, tried to ask how to port feature X
-they told me X is wrong, you should do Y
-then i told them, okay, but I have X working perfectly in unity, a very cost intensive operation that is working very well with the performance provided by unity optimizations. Can I achive X in godot?
- they replied, if you like unity so much go back to unity

while this might me a "me" problem, it was still offputting

then I read the article of 2 dudes who tested godot physics performance, and another one who said godot was doing things in a way that was not effective for performance. One of the dudes said he got so much hate for that post he will never do another analysis on godot again.

This scared me away from godot, im just a layman, I cant get accurate knowledge unless it comes from someone else, if the community of godot pushes me away, and those who are outside godot raise concerns and get pushed away without getting debunked properly it puts me in an odd spot

Should I really go through the trouble of porting out, facing this? In between a rock and a hard place

Overall I have no way to check if my project would work in godot unless I really put in the effort to start porting, but should i waste 6-months - 1 year doing that? Or continue in unity and hope nothing goes wrong?

Overall I have nothing against godot and it would be great if my game magically got ported over, but in reality it will take a lot of work and time

its not so easy to make these judgements

 

Really Interesting part about that is - the personal limit is Overall revenue
And I'd guess they won't like you splitting it between revenue attached to 2023LTS Games Vs revenue attached to 2022 and below games.

So would most likely mean anyone with a single title published in pre 2023LTS would be effectively on the 100k revenue limit for Personal with the 200k only applying to studio's 100% on 2023LTS and above

 

Without knowing the details of the feature or discussion its unhelpful to comment on this, however its not out of the realms of possibility that the same thing would happen to someone coming to Unity.

As for the physics performance issues, the problem with the two articles was they went beyond critique of the issues and into Godot itself and the development leads. The one that wasn't removed had a much fairer and balanced approach to Godot and even strike-through the paragraph that most Godot community disliked as it suggested dropping GDScript.

That article has now spawned a number of good replies from the Godot community and its lead dev's, even just this weekend where they are showing efforts to address or put in place a plan to address the problem in the future. The other article from what I remember was far more scathing to Godot and unsurprisingly its message got lost and thus got more hate from the community, not that getting hate for that is ever justified! I wish they had left the article up though, it had some useful information.

Again I think something comparable said about Unity from an outsider would get similar push back and even hate, though I feel that in general the Unity community has matured ( or just got bored ) over time and keep disagreements mostly on the forum.

In summary, if you think Godot is not suitable for your project then don't use it, invest time in any of the other engines that will capitalise on your existing work/feature. Though honestly it shouldn't take 6 months to evaluate if Godot is suitable or not. Ideally your 'feature' should be able to be tested in a simple project and determine what if any performance problems it might face within a few weeks work.

 

I don't understand how can they delete the Plus license, but at the same time say that we must not earn more than 100.000 without switching to Pro.

How can they delete one tier (change to ToS) and say that the limit is still 100k (stating impossibility to change the ToS).

Can we have an official answer?

 

I have now let the whole issue sink in a bit. Here are my thoughts on the whole story:

I still have concerns about the reliability of Unity (I deliberately don't use the word "trust" here, because that doesn't exist when you work with for-profit public companies).

Nevertheless, I will continue to develop my current project in Unity. Why? The current pricing model is OK for me. I think Unreal's pricing model is better because it's simpler and therefore less conflicting. But at least Unity has removed the no-goes. So you can live with it. I'll probably upgrade to 2023LTS too, because the removal of splash-screen and the increase to $200,000 are more important to me than the 2.5%).

So I will continue with Unity for the next few months. What comes after that, I don't know yet.

What will change for me? If time permits, I will continue to learn Unreal. I will also stop buying assets that are Unity related.

Other engines than Unity or Unreal are currently out of the question for me. In my view, Godot is still missing too much. With Flax, Stride or others, the community is simply missing.

 

Best attitude to have. Cold reality smacked us in the face, it stung, but at some point we have to accept the situation for what it is, no point crying over spilled milk.

Unity has failed at their efforts to diversify and as a result they are in decline. No amount of shrieking and stomping of feat is going to change that reality. We are no longer working in a living engine with a vibrant future, but it's not the end of the world.

Their current terms are more than agreeable, the future is a bit more uncertain than yesterday, but there is still potential for bright days ahead even. Somewhere out there a few great coders will work with a few great designers to bring online the handful of features necessary for the next great engine. Maybe that even happens in Unity.

It's painful, because we were promised so much with ECS and DOTS. The dream was there, and we had to collectively watch it die together while being kept in the dark. It's regrettable we had our hands tied, watching the engine wither away. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been from the inside. Particularly regrettable for the employees within Unity that gave and still give a f*ck.

So it is what it is. We still have the great engine of Unity to finish up our current projects, and who knows what happens in the coming years. One thing we can't complain is that the gamedev scene isn't interesting.

Been spending too much energy watching this thread hoping for a glimmer of good news. It's time to move on. Time to finish up the projects we have in this engine and worry about the future as it unfolds.

 

I wanted to quickly share my thoughts on the recent changes in Unity pricing. The past two weeks have been challenging for the community, studios of all sizes, and Unity as a whole. I appreciate Unity's openness to feedback and their commitment to active communication. My hope is to see Unity thrive in 2024.

I'd like to provide feedback on the customisation of the splash screen. As someone who started an app project, rather than a game, in 2021, I was originally planning to use the Personal version until launch and then upgrade to Plus. However, with the discontinuation of the Plus plan effective immediately my plans are heavily impacted.

It seems that

1. The new plans will be available on Unity 2023LTS, which will come out at the end of 2024. I don’t understand the statement that these plans will be effective from January 1st 2024 when in reality there will be no new product until the end of next year.
2. I did not anticipate such drastic changes to the current offers, and as a result, I did not sign up for the Plus plan earlier. This means that I have no way to cover the gap period. I hope that Unity will consider a solution for customers like me who are impacted by these changes.
3. Paying the €170/month subscription fee ensures that I can continue using the software without any interruptions. However, I was surprised to find out that it is a total commitment price of €2,040 excluding VAT, which is supposed to cover a whole year rather than month to month until 2023LTS comes out.
4. I realise that most of the additional features, of the Pro plan, are geared towards larger teams and unlock extra services that are paid in addition to the plan. The main feature that I was interested in - the ability to customise the splash screen - is not available until EOY 2024.

Splash screen feedback related to UX in apps rather than games

1. In my case having the Unity splash screen will lead to uncertainty rather than pride because it rises questions from mobile users like - Did I download the correct app? Is this app made by Unity? What is Unity? Is this a trial version of the app? Is this an ad for another company in an app that I’m paying for? How do I pay to remove this screen? Can I buy something from Unity? Why do I see two splash screens (assuming the app has its own, or a loading screen). Is this a game and am I missing features?
2. The screen speaks volumes to the gaming community but very little to people who are not familiar with the technology
3. Creates friction when the app launches
4. Shows up every time the app launches (it won’t be better if it shows up once a day or at first launch, though)

Regarding the new plans

1. The thresholds seem fair, and paying Unity 1-2.5% on revenue above $1 million sounds appropriate and I’ll be more than happy to pay a share at such scale in addition to the Pro plan. I acknowledge the community's worries about potential future price hikes, but I believe this plan is a good starting point
2. Let’s hope these changes bring more innovation in 2024.
3. As mobile support is crucial for my project, I will be upgrading Unity annually to ensure that my app is supported on the latest versions of iOS and Android.
4. Self-reporting sounds okay. I anticipate that in the future, the App Store and Play Store will provide some kind of integration to simplify such reporting processes.

The decision to cut off the Plus plan without providing any opportunity for users to sort out licensing beforehand has left many of us feeling stranded.

Furthermore, the fact that there is no new product available from January 1st with the new plans means that many of us will be facing significant increases in cost for our projects. While I understand that financial sustainability is crucial for Unity's long-term success, I believe that it would have been more appropriate to provide users with a transition period.

Despite these challenges, I am committed to supporting my project regardless of whether it generates enough revenue to cover the new licensing. However, I do hope that Unity will consider addressing these topics since it was mentioned multiple times that you are still collecting feedback.

 

From our perspective this offer is good enough as in it gives us enough time to migrate to a competitor, likely Unreal.

The pricing of 2.5% on top of the pro seats for every team member + additionals for buildserver/test runners means Unity will be likely more expensive than Unreal for us while providing arguably less value.

The ToS have not received safeguards and I don't see a shift in management, just appeasement.

It is pretty clear that at least some portion of the community will leave Unity for good, which means without a drastic headcount cut at Unity, prices will have to be jacked up even more to compensate for that.

This is a race to the bottom without a drastic directionshift in strategy.