MERGED - all splash screen discussion

You would change to a different engine because of a splash screen?!

 

In a marketplace as competitive as the game engine marketplace has become, a splash screen very well could be what causes people to switch. Remember, the initial price of three major engines is now free. There's not a lot of barrier preventing a switch. Is it worth the 5% that Epic wants for Unreal to get rid of a splash screen that you think might degrade your brand to customers? I dunno. That's up to each person to decide. But the times when engine developers could just ignore the free users have passed. Just like developers have to decide whether getting rid of the splash screen is worth $1500 or 5% to Unreal, or giving nothing to Valve and learning Source 2, Unity must decide whether putting "personal edition" on the splash screen is going to make them more money that it costs them. I have positively zero idea how it makes them any money at all. But clearly, they think otherwise.

 

At the beginning of a project , 3D art is portable, is gameplay is not very advanced and 3D levels are just testing ideas, then yes you can switch.
I'm not going for desktop game with Unity until the splash screen changes , for now i stick with UT for "Personnal" mobile games.

That splash Logo won't help Unity, while UE4 logo : Powered by Unreal, for all indies and all pros, you just empower and advertise "Pro" for all users, no racism

Unity should stop playing amateur with the free version, alll games made with "Personnal" splash Screen will just advertise Unity has having a personnal amateur version : So Unity is also some amateur "Personnal" engine.

I think Unity don't understand they must get rid of that "Amateur" splash screen from any game.
They need one good promoting logo for games made with the free version , otherwise they will keep that amateur reputation.

 

Apparently mods here don't take too kindly to saying the truth that anyone can check with a simple Google search (or few of them) and calls it "slander", so I'll restrict myself to just liking posts I'm agreeing with from now on.

 

The thing is that since both PE and Pro are the same thing, you don't want to label on the splash screen to be a deciding factor and tell people that you are using a difference version. It needs to be a generic label covering both systems. That way anyone who looks at the splash screen (given when smashing the keyboard to skip) wont know which one.
It would be the best. STOP WITH THE LABELING of systems! Stigma attached is beyond in this day and age! Can't we all just get along....

 

Not to mention that every game customers ever see the Unity splash on will be made with the personal edition. They are going to assume (as they already do) that anyone with the financial resources to graduate from the personal edition of Unity does so by moving on to another engine.

I did commit a no-no by mentioning price, didn't I? Funny how a few days ago I was arguing the other side.

 

Hello there,

that was what i was thinking today in the shower. this "personal edition" sounds just unprofessional and like a free anti-virus software.
In this industry, "Indi Edition", or something like that would just sound better.

This is one of the reasons to use still Unity 4.6 - the splashscreen of unity5 is really a no-go ^^

 

The truth? my post specifically warned you not to attack unity staff.

 

I am not a fan of the splash screen as it is right now either. However, I don't believe it has a huge impact on the gamers.

Edit: The splash screen can certainly be a factor when the decision for an engine is made. But the weight of this factor is or at least should be very small. Whoever believes this is the central factor to make an engine decision deserves the current splash screen.

 

I don't think it is a central factor at all. My current game is half finished in Unity and I've spent a bit of money on the Asset Store to make it. Switching now would make zero financial sense, the features of 5 are enough to move me away from 4, and I still don't want to give UE 5% of my income. But in the future, I dunno. I believe the engines are on even enough footing that there isn't a "central factor," only a bunch of small ones. And as small factors go, having your business labelled amateur is pretty big. There's a reason that individual business owners use the royal (or editorial) 'we'. To give the illusion of being something bigger than they are. Slapping 'personal' on something that might have been made by an actual honest to goodness non-royal 'we', is a step in the opposite direction that most business take when first building a brand.

 

actually if they have the same number of vertices etc, this is pretty easy to write yourself in script, I don't really think it needs to be a feature.

 

The problem is that this splash screen or more detailed these two words "personal edition" tells the player that the game developer used an edition of the engine which is "personal". As already said by many people, people allocate "personal" with everything else than the right to publish things (just watch out for the different tools or cloud services out there and take a look at their "pricing" tab). And a second problem is for me that as of Unity 5.0 there are not different engines editions with different features of the engine itself. There are different set of services, which are included in the "professional" edition or can be added later on by scubscribing.

Why making all (in game and therefor really relevant for the game and it's players )features available for both editions, when at the same time people are forced to display there edition? Players might thing that there must be another (more powerful) edition that would give them an even better game as a result. It's clear that Unity is moving more forward to a (cloud based) sevice provider instead of the classical game engine developer. Companies use all different psychologic tricks to achieve there goals and that's ok. But as of these days Unity has a big competition. People will move away if they get more respect and similar (if not superior) features. Just saying then buy pro or move away is only reasonable if you are a "professional edition" user and feel bad about those changing made in these days. But as soon as Unity's own people will say something like that people will indeed go away. The world wide community made Unity what it is today. I remember myself countless times proposing Unity as a game engine for other in so many discussion forums. (Even though I didn't have a lot of time using Unity myself).

I honestly start to believe that this move was not planned long tim ago....let's face it they got new pro subscribers until some days ago. All seems like they changed these things only in the last days. A employee of Unity said it in an sarcastic tone that they changed it all on one day to not let people believe it was just made because of the pressure from competitors. But seriously I'm convinced more and more about that this could be the truth. Otherwise those little deails would be different. I mean they say we have one engine with the same features and then they force non professional edition services subscriber to show this ridicules splash screen....Players don't need to know if someone uses the cloud build, analytics etc. services. The game was still made with the same engine and same features.....
They could even drastically lower the revenue limit, I wouldn't have any problem, I didn't even expect that we get all those great features (I only hoped for fullscreen fx or at least render-to-texture for free users). I'm really grateful for what we got. But letting player know that we used the personal edition, is jus a slap in our face. I do this thing as a hobby and enjoy the workflow of Unity I planned to get back more actively in development when 5.0 was released and surely this detail will not change my opinion about this amazing game engine and even more amazing company.

Don't ge me wrong here, but I highly doubt people will now publish so many games like they did until some days ago with the free edition. There are various reasons for people to not buy or subscribe to the professional edition (in my case I admit it financial one, hard time for me and the lack of an official Linux Editor). The free edition was for a lot of people a great thing to prototype games, to prepare the more professional lunch and then move to pro edition or just simply a tool to land a job. I can easily move to other engines, in fact while my prefered one is Unity as a whole, I always keep myself updated with the workflow of competitors and managed to work on my own game engine on Linux. But people don't get one thing here: Unity made it's Indie version for free in 2009 because they didn't have the big market share they have today and sincerely a lot of game developers not even knew Unity existed (I knew it but I thought it was someting like DX Studio back then). What made Unity this big company today is of course the amazing product and people that work at Unity Technologies for which I have massive respect for. But another big part of this success story are all those new "free" users that later on turned into "pro" users. It happened in the past that when company loses the connection with its community a product destructed itself. (A lot of game engines developer didn't listen to its community and now are more or less dead on the web). When in these days a game engine legend like Tim Sweeney open it's game engine for everyone and even the sourc code, maybe it's time to love your users more instead punish them for not using the higher edition (which ridicolously is not even a higher edtion anymore in terms of engine features). I feel like we are reliving 2009 here, bu this time with different positions for Unity and its competitors.

Just to add an aditional detail from Unreal's faq page:
"Can I study and learn from the Unreal Engine code, and then utilize that knowledge in writing my own game or competing engine?
Yes, as long as you don’t copy any of the code. Code is copyrighted, but knowledge is free!"

The potential that Unity get's even more competitors wih similar or superior features are now more then just a fantasy. People will do the same what people did when Id Software made their source code available. A whole industry learned from it. People don't need to copy code, to copy features.....sorry for being harsh, this is my last post on this topic here and get back in my typical silence mode on the forum. I really love Unity, but sometimes a little detail can make people say or decide bad things. Sorry for that. I hope you reconsider your position on the splash screen debate (and by the way also a Linux editor it's really time for it...)

 

Why not "Built on Unity Sandwich". People are used to Android versions called silly things like Android Jelly Bean. Unity 5 Personal could be called Unity Sandwich. Unity 5 Professional could be called Unity Croissant; a more upmarket bakery product.

 

A Personal Edition is usually a Demo version. A Trial. That's why there is so much resistance against this wording.

 

Or they could, you know, help their users get over the $100k mark

 

If it wasn't for paid users Unity wouldn't even be able to afford to give their engine away for free. This is why pro users deserve better value for money.

 

We will be getting more value for money as time goes on. Bear in mind Unity has been working flat out non stop even at weekends to get this done. The feature split probably won't change.

So your value comes from splash, dark skin, income immunity and all the services. If the services aren't valuable enough for you then you need to move to personal edition.

 

Im hopeful that Unity will at least change the andoid/ios splash screens for pro users, Hippo. Right now its technically a lie, and there are over 2,000 votes to change it. I think they will listen eventually.

 

Wow, that's interesting. Are the sandwiches usually tiny?

This makes way too much sense. They should at least consider this for android lol

@hippocoder those services are more of what I would expect from a 'pro' edition. Lots of useful stuff there for teams and successful indies. Free having full engine access without those features makes the most sense. Unity is in a good place now... except for edition names, apparently.

 

And dark skin of course, since apparently grey is a dazzling brilliant glare.

 

I'm sorry to hear that - but fortunately you can even have awesome pancakes that are gluten-free (I would have never thought that ;-) ). And you can certainly have gluten-free sandwiches, too.

That said: I think you're all talking nonsense! Personal, Indie, Standard? Where's the fun in that? Sandwich? EVIL!

They should rebrand Unity Personal Edition to Unity Gluten Free Edition.​

The only problem would be that I'd have to move away from Unity Pro then.

 

Agreed

 

the services and products offered for pro should be the reason to upgrade, not a shaming.

I'm a firm believer that if the quality and value is there, folks will do what they need to do. Namely upgrade when they can. An upgrade or purchase of pro shouldn't be about some contrived mechanism such as the negative wording on a splash screen.

It helps no one imo.

Edit: I'd also like to add that this is a slippery slope imo, because in the future, what other contrived mechanisms might be introduced to shame folks into something else?

 

Sure do that. Find a quality engine with the same free features (No UE4 does not count as 5% royalties is worse than the cost of pro).

 

I think UT has heard your concerns. I know that it seems to be very urgent for you all, but no need to post the same thing a hundred times a day in different topics. Leave them some time to react (or not..).
I can't believe how negative everyone is. Unity didn't take you anything away. That's right, they didn't! Giving to others, doesn't mean taking away from you.
And I'm not saying you're wrong, but cut them some slack. The forums have become really unpleasant since the new announcments. By the way, I'm a pro customer and I love Unity for all the changes in their licensing model.

Something completely different:

I upgraded my Unity 4 Project to Unity 5, but I still get the old splash screen. I didn't find any settings to change that. Am I overlooking something?

 

I made this gif, it's not compressed though. The text really looks that ugly pixelated. Have a .png screenshot for comparison:

 

Looked at it..meh.. oDesk has nearly no clients looking to use it. The ones that have are KickStarter dreamers and young..very young..and put up 10K/50K USD as the price they pay..then you speak to them and they start with the KickStarter BS and how much money you will make.. However there are several dozen clients seeking Unity dev daily. Bottom line.. Learning Unreal is a huge time waster and bank account drainer for me as a freelance contractor.

 

I'm pretty certain that their intention is not to "shame" anyone. Personally, I think "Personal Edition" is really what it is and it's really nothing to be ashamed of. But it does state that there was no budget for a Unity Pro license which is kind of fair to say, isn't it? I guess it all depends on what people do with Unity Personal Edition.

If a lot of people produce low-quality output, this will harm everyone using Unity - including all Pro users (who, of course, might also create low-quality stuff). With a statement about which edition it was created in (e.g. "Personal Edition") there's at least a little hint that someone did not invest money into the engine.

On the other hand, if a lot of people create really awesome games with the "Personal Edition", this will be a rather strong statement about democratization of game development.

So if people stop worrying about a splash screen and create awesome games instead, things could look very differently in a comparatively short period of time. Remember: Lots of top games in the app stores are "made with Unity" ... this can change the perception not only of Unity but also of "Personal Edition".

EDIT: Oh, and about the argument that the splash screen is the first thing people see. Seriously? That means you have no trailer, no screenshots, no game description, no nothing. So if that's really the case, it means you not only didn't have a budget for the engine but also you had no budget/time to properly promote your game. And if your game means anything to you, that would really be a shame.

 

It seems to be doing it's job - making you not want it there. That's the same reason the editor skin is grey. You don't want the splash screen, you don't want the grey editor skin, so upgrade.

If it means anything to you it seems like Android exports just say "Unity".

I would happily publish a game with the current Unity 5 splash screen. And I'm a 4.x Pro owner.

 

This. They cannot give you everything for free. They need a way to make money besides the asset store.

 

Its job should be to promote and attract new developers to Unity. Not merely act as a nag screen.

 

Just out of curiousity, if both versions are functionally identical, then what do you mean by "didn't invest in the engine"? Even indies invest in ways that they can. Time invested learning, potentially mentoring other users, buying assets, creating workarounds and fixes for issues, etc etc. So yeah, except for the actual monies exchanged, there is still an investment.

The fact that you chose that wording is quite telling..

Edit: as is the multiple references to budgets.. I can name several projects that have gone on to make *huge* monies on a shoe string budget.

 

Yeah because they did.

Doesn't seem like it.

You want them to give you everything for $0?

It will attract more. They'll go "ooh, there's a personal edition? That probably doesn't cost much, so maybe I'll go download it".

Anyway, I think within a week Unity will bow to the pressure on this one somewhat and change the wording slightly. I feel embarrassed with how this communtiy is acting if I'm honest.

 

@jashan i havent problem with labellig i understand needeing split paying and nonpaying developers and have problem literally only with 'personal' word meaning. This word is used for non-commercial product and this fact may leads to unconvenient situation were are you considered as pirate in the most worst case. Yeah i think less than 1% gamers will care about this but unity engine is used for something else too, did you considered commercial presentation (kickstarter showcase, archviz presentation etc.)? Dont get me wrong i will be very happy with stigma even 'free edition' is better (i most like 'standard edition' since this is most neutral) considering what i get for free. I simply want stigma which will not produce ANY chance to consider me as pirate

 

If you own Pro then you have made a financial investment too. Its not true to say the game was made with personal edition.

 

Yes, how dare we offer suggestions for major aspects of Unity's advertising that could be damaging to their reputation!

 

People seem more worried about their own reputation. They don't want to be seen to be using a free version even though they've paid $0.

 

What's negative with giving feedback and talk about concerns?

 

You're incorrectly assuming everyone with this opinion is automatically using the free edition.

 

@Stardog let me quote myself from another thread, my answer is identical for your concerns

 

Well, nothing. And I'm sure you'll understand, that this is not what I'm trying to say, if you read my post again. I'm reading a lot on this forum and right now it seems more close to a so called "S***storm", than to feedback. I'm not even talking about you ("everyone" was probably bad wording). You seem calm and try to bring your point across. Right now, many are acting like Unity destroyed their lifes.
Tell me, why does the splash screen have to be discussed in at least 5 different topics? Why with an aggressive attitude? (again, I'm not really referring to everyone. But I've seen more than just a few very aggressive comments.)

 

Reading that guys message I wouldn't call that slander. The new CEO has a track record of making decisions he doesn't agree with and so now he's the CEO of Unity he has some concerns. He didn't call names, lie or insult anyone.

 

I've merged this with the other discussion about splash screen to keep things in the same place.

 

1) Fix the performance of the new UI (4.6x). Bugs logged, devs know, actively pursued - and not fixed.
2) Same.
3) Same.
4) Same.
5) Enable Unity Ads in web deploys. Dream come true!

Gigi

 

Feeling more UNIfied already.

 

It's not happening and it won't be negotiated. You're free to talk about the company, the products and the services but never individual people working at Unity. This is because people make stuff up and mix personal opinion with fact, and it does nobody any good.

Lets keep the discussion to about splash / wording etc

 

You're wrong and I reported you for it.

Edit: I agree we should stay on topic but that wasn't slander. I thought the whole idea was to "democratise game development"? If we can't speak up then what kind of democracy is that?

 

Why does it matter who had the idea to put that on the splash screen? The point is that whoever came up with it, it was a bad idea.

 

May we take this thread sideways? I surely hope Unity does not have a culture of crunch. How disastrous that will be for it's long-term success. The research on that is extremely compelling.

Gigi

PS - We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

 

This will be the second time you're reporting me to me though. You don't seem to understand what democratization of game development is. It's giving everyone the tools to make games. It has nothing to do with dragging Unity staff reputation through a rumour mill.

Also, these forums are property of Unity, not public forums. A democracy still has rules you have to abide by.