Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

Remove PLUS plan is very unfair, but well, the most PLUS users will be downgrade to PERSONAL or migrate to other engine.

 

Because they need a technical reason for why they deserve to make money when you sell a copy of the game you made with the engine you're already paying for with your subscription.

I have some Thoughts, but don't have time to get them all down at the moment. I'll be back later, but for now: this is arguably better than the S*** sandwich we were expected to swallow last week, but that's also not saying anything at all, really.

 

What you get with the Pro sub, is endless e-mail spam from Unity wanting to push more services to you "advise" you.

 

We can upgrade to pro for the price of plus for a year only. That price isn't maintained long term.

If I don't want the Unity splash screen, I either have to pay for Pro or upgrade to the next LTS, none of which are a match to the current Unity Plus plan.

 

No, you will not have to pay a fee, if you do, it will not exceed 2.5% of revenue so don't worry.

 

I understand that I can keep using Plus until March 2025
From FAQ:
"...you will be able to use Unity Plus until March 26, 2025..."

I understand Runtime fee does not apply to Plus
From FAQ:
"Will the Unity Runtime Fee apply to Unity Plus Customers?
No, the Runtime Fee will not apply."

Doesn't that mean a Plus subscriber can be excluded from Runtime Fee while using 2023 LTS?

What does a Plus sub get in terms of storage for DevOps, Asset Manager. I only see Personal being mentioned. Does that mean Plus=Personal when it comes to these services? Or is Plus=Pro with those services?

 

You would toggle once you are over 200k in revenue, which I would hope happen AFTER you release the game, unless you made 200k in revenue off of pre-sales in the trailing 12 months.

 

Indeed, is much much better than i though now

 

Free to play not mean a no monetized game.

 

Thank you Unity for listening us and making changes to your last S***y plan.
I was almost going to make my own engine
Happy to continue with Unity, hopefully that the current plan will keep like this and/or get improved in a better way.

 

Do you have a link? I missed that one.

 

It is revenue share OR install count fee -> whatever costs the developer less. That is not an attack on mobile games. This will make you far more money than if you made a mobile game with Unreal. If this model upsets you, then literally anything would upset you other than one where Unity makes no revenue. I don't think Unity needs to worry about the select few extremely unreasonable people.

The majority are loving this. Although some will not forgive based on principal, which is fine, but there's nothing to complain about here on final money owed to Unity. Nothing reasonable, at least.

 

Please watch my post

 

The changes mentioned here are good, but you will have to do a lot of good will to earn the trust back. Who's to say you won't pull the rug out again down the line.

 

It's in the new FAQ: https://unity.com/pricing-updates

 

I’m actually pretty happy with the removal of the splash screen for all versions.

I think it’s smart for Unity, because their logo won’t be showcased by the smallest and least experienced devs and teams, and the people making money above $200k will be paying Unity either way.

 

The TOS tracking page was silently removed prior to the announcement. This was originally put in place to ease developer tension due to developer backlash when Unity had a previous TOS crisis. Removing this destroyed whatever goodwill they gained with their original community-faced discussion in the first place.

Randomly coining buzzwords makes you sound less professional than you already do. Please do try to add to the conversation.

 

Dairy, thanks to you and the rest of the mods for trying so hard to answer all of the questions. Great job. Jsut want to say thanks.

 

Thanks to the improvements, that will help!
Still got some questions.

First:

Only for 2023 LTS and up, or also for 2022 and lower?
If I decide to stick with 2022, and my Plus Subscrition is gone, do I have to upgrade to Pro (which subscrition price will be increased, as far as I understand)?

And second, more important - from the FAQ:

How do you know? How exactly?

Because:

How do you know about revenues/or "initial engagements", when Unity does not phone home?
From Steam charts? My tax declaration?
What if you are the opinion that the data I tell you are different from "your own data"?

 

How does an older version of Unity work with porting to newly released platforms moving forward? Will a user be able to build to the next iPhone, Android phones? For how long? Is it dependent on their end changes? We won’t be able to build to the next consoles I imagine. The next windows OS?

I’m moving to Godot once I’m finished with what I’m working on. We can’t have an industry run by shareholders, we’ll just end up as enslaved as the film industry. We have to endure setbacks now to benefit later. That’s been the historical cycle for every industry, we’re just a new tech industry. Better to make these changes now instead of later when the pain becomes unbearable.

 

This doesn’t make sense to me I want to stay on 2022 LTS but I don’t want to pay 2k to remove the splash screen and now that plus is gone, I have to pay that to remove it or I am forced to upgrade to 2023 LTS.

Am I missing something? =(

 

Calculator doesn't have a section for Plus but has this tooltip.
So I guess I can keep my Plus subscription and use "any" LTS until March 2023 and be excluded from Runtime Fee.

 

The example for the old fee scenary is the same, a Free to play game that monetize and have millions of installations can be debt millions to unity, is a scam, you can lost with a successful free to play game.

 

i think our job here is done? going back to work i guess.

good job unity i hope you guys get holiday after all that stress.

Edit: If you want to push your AD business why not having the option to reduce the run time fee, when using your solution. (If that legal)

 

The only thing that bothers me now, the first $1,000,000 should be free like Unreal. If I understand it correctly and you earn $1,000,001 you suddenly have to pay $25,000 instead of $0? Or am I missing something?

I know from experience that suddenly with an app store feature you didn't count on you suddenly get a lot of installs and thus connected revenue increases. But the expenses are already there and you never counted on it and $25,000 is already a lot of money for smaller indie studios, still.

I'm still very happy with the new runtime feee policy, but if it applies to a studio, it can unfortunately also go badly. The larger studios will not be affected anyway, they are well over a million anyway.

 

By the way, it's a total scumbag move to say in the blog post:

And then only reveal in the FAQ that the splash screen removal is also tied to "shipping in 2024" LTS (eg. tied to accepting fee changes).

If it's an honest oversight, then you need to update the blog post to make it clear. Otherwise, you're hiding the ball. Again, you still haven't fixed the trust issue, and this sort of deception doesn't help.

 

Thanks Unity! I'm glad you listened to the community

 

Is in the same page or another place ?

 

What makes you think it's all versions? It will be the 2023LTS one.

 

I'm hoping that with this, the engine devs can now finally get some better concentration and peace of mind to fix and improve the actual product.

 

It's not free. You still need to pay to remove the splash screen on versions before 2023 except that plan doesn't exist anymore.

 

Question is: Would they if there wouldn't be such a S***storm?

 

Different page. If you don't read the FAQ, you get an entirely wrong impression.

 

They made the new pricing model stay only with new version of Unity, what do you want more?
You can use older version and don't pay anything. It's their business and they can do what they want.
The fuss started because the old business model affected both released games and games in advanced stage of development. People starting now have no right to complain about these new terms since they are free to chose whatever engine they want as it is right.

 

pretty sure they only listened to their lawyers, their shareholders and their largest customers.

 

He thinks that way because the blog post deceptively elides that part.

 

Unity addressed every single issue I had with it. Thank you for listening to the community.

 

Sir, this seems tho that if you stay on those versions past March 2024 and don't pay 2k for pro just to remove the splash screen, you will not be able to upgrade your game unless you want to show the splash screen.

 

Which means Unity will patch ALL old version? Doubt it.

 

That isn't much help. The problem is if you are unable to upgrade to Pro ( which I believe is also going to get a price increase ), you have to drop to Personal, but that will now mean that all legacy projects that are stuck on older versions of Unity and which may be non-viable to update will suddenly be forced to display the splash-screen.

I feel there needs to be something like anyone who was on Plus, gets to keep splash-screen removal on old versions of Unity. I'd even pay a fee to keep that feature if I was forced to drop to Personal.

 

Interesting !

 

We trusted Unity in the past but that trust was broken by legal nitpicking the TOS and retroactively changing it.
You will need to change those TOS to reflect your current good faith in a legally enforceable manner if you want the community to believe it.

 

Can you accept the Pro 1-year sub at the price of Plus that they've been offering, and then when 2023 LTS is released, downgrade to Personal?

 

True and added a perk like remove splash screen for Personal, which is great.

 

Looks good to me.