Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

None of us know the exact proportionment of responsibility. If there are heads on spikes over this, it certainly helps the messaging if there is a board member or two on those spikes. You certainly don't need to liquidate the entire board.

That said, "the craven backstabbing liars are too powerful to be expected to have to take any sort of responsibility for their actions," is the worst way to win back trust. That's a reason why trust can never be rebuilt.

 

I personally don't have this problem at all. But what I'm seeing on this thread, those are the vocal posts that are complaining about this new policy.

EDIT:
I could see sticking on an older version though. What if 2023LTS is "worse than 2022 LTS", because, you know, everyone complains.

I personally am patiently waiting to upgrade to 2023 LTS in... a year.

 

This is great, but it still doesn't answer why the feeding frenzy of share sales from JR and others took place. Will they even buy back their shares now?

 

Since Unity is a service then TOS is applicable. Since TOS is a living document we've seen that it can change and (I'm not a lawyer) I'm not sure that there is ANYTHING that you can put in TOS that would legally be enough protection. Even Unity lawyer said that we have no choice and must agree to it. I would suggest that Unity moves older version of Unity releases to EULA legal binding like Unreal does. If you want to run as service then pick two latest Unity releases (or whatever the going back version you decide) and run those under TOS binding. But also release them with a EULA that is untouchable by TOS and that comes into effect the moment those releases are no longer the latest two (or again however far back you want to go).

 

The problem I see is:
How can we trust you now?

 

The new Unity Personal TOS is pretty good, no more splash screen and 200k instead of 100k... log in every 30 days is ok I guess, not ideal but not really bad... I don't really see why you need to force drm for a software that on the personal license is free anyway.

The new runtime fee on the top of the subscription for pro/enterprise capped at 2.5% and only after 1 million download and self reported is ok... not amazing but passable.

It is good that the TOS does not apply retroactively, but I don't see why a stable version 2023.1 is excluded from both the new TOS and the old TOS since it is not "production ready".... it is just not LTS version, but it is a stable version so it should be included into the new TOS or the old TOS (I'd set a 2023.1.X to stay on the old TOS and the X+1 to stay on the new TOS).

The real problem is how can I trust you again?
I had the time to try Godot and it was really fun to use and easy too... I had the time to understand that I can port my current project without any real issue... and the license of a FOSS Open source project is of course even better and with more retroactive protections...
I don't think I'll go back to Unity if the port will succed, and even if it will fail I will just finish my current project in Unity, I will not stay to see if anything goes wrong again. It is the second time that you retroactively change the TOS, Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me, I don't need to stick around to see the third.

 

1 reason: you don't want to update to a version of Unity that could potentially break your game with a ton of issues. You would rather stay on a version that works.

This is espeicaly important for large games. Update to 2023 could be a nightmare

 

If Unity did that, then the exodus would actually accelerate.

 

I haven't found info on always online requirements. I've firewalled the Hub just in case, do they still plan on making it online only?

 

They dont have answer for this, nobody has. You have 2 risky options, go with Unity and wait for another briliant idea from them, or change engine and invest months of time and money.

Unity made game dev more stresful lol.

 

But again, how would you accomplish that? How can any public company "fire" a board member. Should Unity contact the FTC and ask them... or maybe the Supreme Court of the US, to compel shareholders to vote out a board member? Because Unity has no power over board members. They are elected by shareholders, and vested powers by the government of the United States. Unity is beholden to them as elected representatives of the shareholders. Not vice versa.

This is not to be confused with a board of a non-public company, which is an optional form of governance, and where the board members are chose by executives of a company, and beholden to the executive leadership. Basically, the exact opposite of what Unity's board represents.

 

Can this be added to the FAQ.

 

Then why did you guys merged with Ironsource?

 

Provided it doesn't change for the worse later, this seems fair enough to me, and addresses all our concerns.

 

Honestly better response than I expected. Still a bunch of cynics who will never be happy, but I applaud Unity for taking the feedback and making these changes.

 

I like that they are using the term "engagements" now since they horribly tainted the word "installs"

 

Amazing change, however people who enforced previous change should be removed instead of getting paid thousands of dollars. On top of that if you really want to gain some trust, then there must be transparent license with written guarantee points that there will be no more dirty pranks in future

What a surprise. CEO said that whatever they did we would be unhappy, but from what I can see many or most of people are quite happy with the change.

 

A nice walk-back, and I hope it makes some people happy, but the reality for me is Unity has become a very different company from when I first started using it. It went from a simple indie dev private company to a complicated mobile advertising public company.

This runtime rodeo is just the latest of management decisions that separate our paths. And that's fine. Unity is dominant in the mobile space and I'm just aspiring to learn and make some cool things on PC. If they need to become one of these data-hungry ad companies that try to influence stocks with buzzwords and inflated appearances, then do what you gotta do. But I have no reason to suspect that Unity's path will get better for me. Not saying I'm abandoning ship, just saying I actually expect it to get worse in the long term. These types of companies can sometimes be so frustrating as a user that just wants simplicity.

 

This is not about what they are now going to do, but about what they previously said they would do.

It's also not just about the developers, but the players. I may know what Wireshark is, but I don't think most do.

 

You can use Unity 2022 LTS until you've finished migrating to another engine.

 

Mark my words the board will get a hefty bonus for that "amazing" change u prise so much ...noone in 2 weeks will remember what they did initially .

 

Thanks thats good news
( however keep you still need to get on pro when over 200.000 )

 

You will.

 

What they previously said they would do is use an algorithm to get a general guess of the installs. Poor process, for sure, but they never said the executables would "phone home".

 

The new terms are much better, but I see a potential issue: What if Unity does not believe the self-reported figures? Can they audit developers? What is the process for that? Auditing can get very expensive and time consuming. Some people will cheat, some will be exactly right, but I guess many will try but not perfect. An expensive audit could ruin someone without them engaging in deceit.

 

Yup, I am the exception that proves the rule .

 

Perform publicly, the following:

1. Hire a 3rd party consultancy firm to perform a root cause analysis of when, where, how, and why Unity failed enough financially to justify the dramatic changes to pricing.
2. To alleviate Unity's 'financial troubles', reduce the total compensation of the entire C-Suite as well as the board of directors to no more than $150,000 USD per year until Unity is financially stable game engine company again.
3. File legal contracts with each national jurisdiction asserting and protecting the rights of the Unity engine users from being extorted for financial gain in the future.
4. Establish immutable rules ensuring resources aren't syphoned away from the game engine in favor of the advertising & data analytics engines.
5. Implement processes and policies for the management of fundamentally disruptive changes to the collective Unity suite of products in accordance with AS9115 quality standards.
6. Have each of the C-Suite and board of directors write their own 300-500 word apology letter to the community explaining where they went wrong, and what they are going to do to address their shortcomings in the future.
7. Formally publish the letters mentioned in item 6 above for all users and investors to see.
8. Legally hold the C-Suite and directors accountable for breaches in trust and/or deviations from the strategies indicated in item 6 to address their shortcomings.

In the end, this entire ordeal was due to multiple failures of leadership, and multiple failures of stewardship more than anything else. Address those core issues, and unity will thrive.

 

A substantial improvement over the initial convoluted mess and the removal of a mandatory splash screen in personal is welcome.

Still a bummer that studios will ultimately need to pay more, seeing that the license prices will also increase (as stated in the FAQ). A much more agreeable one, but a bummer nonetheless. Bonus service additions to licenses don't cut it for us.

 

New statements sounds way better
but without solid TOS support it's all just zero cost vapor

 

Assuming one cannot be convinced or induced to leave voluntarily, that depends on corporate bylaws.

 

There needs to be some protection over the 2.5%. Either tied to the LTS version or the subscription year.

It is simply impossible to plan projects with no idea what the future % charge might be 3 months from now.

Without some reassurance, some will just stick with 2022 to avoid the risk.

 

As a sole developer who would be very happy to even be able to reach 200k a year from my games, I am happy with the updated announcement.

 

But we were talking about "how can Unity make you trust them again". Not, "what needs to happen for you to trust them". So we were talking about what actions can Unity take that help assuage concerns, and you said removing the people responsible for this (aka the board). And I am saying, Unity can't do that. Unless you think Unity should be publicly campaigning for their shareholders to vote out the current board members responsible for this policy change. And seeing that would be... well that would be something to see alright.

 

So that they always have the capability to strongarm you if needed.

 

Awwwww yiiissss

 

Just wanted to say that personally I am pretty much satisfied with the promised changes.
Now to eagerly wait for the amended ToS version to make my judgment.
I'm expecting it to have a better protection for the users compared to the 2019 version, otherwise that probably won't be very convincing seeing how easily it got removed this time.
Still, huge step in the right direction, only sadge that it didn't start with this version of the fee and took a mega S***storm to get there.

 

Would've been fine if this had been the initial announcement.
Relieved to know a big chunk of my resume hasn't suddenly lost a ton of relevancy.

However, these ugly few days have made me reconsider a lot of things and for the first time in a while, seriously consider other engines.

This strays off-topic but - I've practically lost all trust in Unity. The fact that such a massive blunder really saw the light of day brought up a lot of questions and doubts which may take years to clear.

The thing I care the most about - the engine itself - hasn't progressed much the past few years. Shiny, usually half-baked features that practically get abandoned soon after leaving "experimental" only help erode the trust of those that pay attention. Don't think it helps the morale of the devs that implemented said engine features either.

Headline-making acquisitions that never went anywhere, with no real benefit to the actual developers that load up Unity Editor every day.

Even if something crazy like a militaristic refocus on perfecting the engine happened, it would still take months/years for solid results to be felt. But it won't happen. Those months/years will pass anyway, and I'll be using the time to keep moving my proverbial eggs out of this proverbial basket.

 

No one is saying the whole board needs to go

I'm saying, you don't know that.

 

This is some bs.

I've already got projects in pipeline with 2023.1 which will eventually upgrade towards 2023LTS. Shouldn't 2023LTS be not part of it?

Why are you guys trying so hard to make our lives so difficult...
Please reconsider 2023LTS. This is not right. All the time I spent working with Alpha, Beta, reporting bugs etc.
Now I have to downgrade to 2022LTS...

Thanks a bunch.
Another final dick move.

On top of 400% increase in price.

 

Thank you! This sounds better!

 

Can we stop this shares discourse? It's not relevant to anything. All C-suite have been dumping stock since the IPO for years now. It's typical for this to happen in corporations like Unity and is scheduled at least months in advance with relevant authorities. There is no insider trading happening.

 

This is better, seems like heading in a better direction. Hoping for a better future.

 

They’ve capped the runtime fee to 2.5% of the games revenue, more than fair.

 

It doesn't help, it confirms what I was afraid of.

 

I never said you said the whole board needs to go...

And I am saying I do know that... because it's enshrined in law... This isn't a "we don't know if Unity can fire board members or not". This is how the law works in the United States of America. And I am explaining it. This feels like we're getting nowhere. So feel free to believe what you want I guess.

 

Versions 2023 LTS and above.

 

None of these options are acceptable.

People who started a project on Plus should keep the current TOS.

 

Don't worry, the spam is also included in Plus.

 

That’s just for build minutes for Unity Cloud Build, not your local builds.