New products and prices coming soon

This words are in the mouth of many users.

 

I think you missed something. People are talking about the paid tiers. The recent announcements don't (directly) affect the personal edition. It seems most people want to pay $35/month to remove the splash screen and most people don't care about the other perks (services). There are free and/or better alternatives to all the services they offer.

And again, the new pricing is more expensive for most mobile developers too because of the upgrade pricing perpetual license holders previously had. Hardly anyone was paying $225/mo.

 

Apologies for the late reply - no, you will not have to start paying for subscription. The migration roadmap indicates around when users will be able to migrate over to the new subscription plan (if they want.)

 

I think keeping one price tag for Pro subscriptions (all platforms together) is a nice idea, to keep things simple. But a good price tag according my opinion is 60$/per month. If Unity think this is not much ***please*** take out all the fancy services which some devs dont need yet (like cloud build, depth analytics, multiplayer...) and charge them extra. This way you can delete the new product "Plus" which is going to make things more complicated and drive Pro users like myself towards this direction.

But: Give some big and lasting discount to (30%-50%) perpetual license holders according to the money they have already gave you (discount per case) so that you can show that you value their support over the years.

MATH:
This way everybody will pay 720$ per year for all current and future platforms.
Its almost 1500$ per 2 years. Almost the same value like the old perpetual license that a major release was out every 2 years. This way you get 1500$ every 2 years for perpetual license holders where you used to get 750$ per platform update.
I am willing to pay this much (with a discount) for the new Unity subscriptions and I think its fair for the solo Desktop devs and a nice change for the mobile devs. (225$ per month -and now 125$- that you used to charge for all platforms per month is history, please forget it like I forgot the price tag for a casual game back in 2005. -it was around 15$ for a match 3 game--)

 

Noted.

 

Might be very off topic but what about modules? Unity has added module support since 4.5 and it's still not widely used besides Unity themselves. Why is that? Many editor only tools can be migrated to work outside of the project and on any project with the help of modules, especially those that only ship compiled releases. There's still the issue to deal with Unity assets and metadata outside of Unity but with a simple toggle on and off support it could be very beneficial.

 

It's weird to read how many people here actually want to buy pro even though the way they a reasoning doesn't ever seem to indicate that they actually need it.

 

I might as well add my whining to that of every one else.

I really want to like the Plus option, but I don't. It doesn't seem to provide any real value.
Give it a fully customizable splash screen, and you can drop the 1 month of courseware, plus analytics, performance reporting, etc (or offer as add-ons). and I would gladly be willing to pay $35/month. Go ahead and make it a 6 month or 12 month commitment.

You are throwing in a lot of services that people apparently don't want or need. Take them out and charge a smaller base price, while offering those services as an add-on. But you have to make them worth the additional cost...

 

On the bright side, the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription price has never looked so cheap

I'm one of those desktop only developers and I'm not sure I can add anything more to the chorus that is already being sung other than... "wow, cough, cough....".

 

Overpriced subscription Autodesk products = Autodesk lost $486 million over the last 4 quarters.
Cheap subscription Adobe Creative Cloud = Adobe doubles profits thanks to grow in creative cloud subscribers.
Overpriced subscription Unity = ? (You can guess)

 

I don't think it has to be "cheap". But it has to be reasonable, and this is not.

 

Maya does not let you use the student version for commercial work. We had that issue with my daughter, who made stuff with Maya's student edition and then we could not use it in our game. Something is embedded in the file to show it was made with the student version. Even moving to a now paid version of Maya did not remove the embedded warning.

So be careful. You might not get caught, but how embarrassing if you do.

Maya LT is only $30 a month and works great with Unity.

 

I don't want this to come across as me defending Unity because I don't like the new pricing or the bad vibes it has sent through at least a portion of the community.

But I still feel the need to point out that existing users will be offered better subscription pricing. We don't know what yet, so can't do the sums, and for those who don't get extra value via mobile platforms the numbers are still not going to look good. But for existing users they won't be quite as bad as the $125 * whatever sums indicate.

 

I own Maya, and can say for sure the files are locked. You can't even open the student files in a licensed Maya and export them without the watermarking. There's a way around it, but ya.. not gonna say how.

 

Is it a "perpetual" offer?... doubtful. once this initial hee-haw has passed, and everyone is on subs, the price will get hiked... it is a guarantee.

 

Draco would be proud.

 

Where did they say this? All I can gather from the migration plan is that current customers will be able to move onto the new pricing somehow, but ultimately we'll pay the same as anyone else.

 

I talked about my subscription experience long ago in this thread, but since very many pages have since passed I suppose I will repeat it in brief.

All my dealings with them suggest they value retaining subscribers and getting people to commit to at least 12 months subscription whenever they can.

For me so far in practice this has meant:

Upgrading from 4 perpetual to 5 pro subscription when 5 first entered 'public beta for owners/subscribers' was at a substantial discount.

After 12 months, if I went to flexible monthly payment the price doubled.

But if I committed to another 12 months, I still got the cheap price.


I obviously cannot say what they will do in future, but their latest pricing announcements seem broadly to me like a continuation of this model, and that means discounts for existing customers, annoying disincentives against going to flexible after initial 12 months commitment ends, and a general willingness to keep offering discounts to users as long as they stay subscribed. This sometimes even includes 'have 3 months free if you resubscribe' type offers if you cancel. Still really not the relationship I want with my engine providers, but definitely leaning towards attempting to retain customers via offers as opposed to just straightforward whacking up of price.

 

Don't know. I was extremely confident and clear about this when the new stuff was first announced. So either its mentioned in the keynote video which there is no way I am going to watch all over again. Or it was mentioned in writing on their site but I can't find it now/the wording has been changed. Or I made a terrible mistake and got it wrong in the first place.

 

When the capitalism generate more poverty all days is simply a error use a rent model, and in this case that not only is a rent model but also is a big increment of the actual prices. I use Unity many years ago and have not doubt that this is the bigger error in the history of UT, reallly they are offending their pro customers.

 

Exactly! And this is why I support Modo and TheFoundry or secondarily Maxon and Cinema4D instead of Autodesk.
Way overpriced and I feel Autodesk are too certain of their position.

Still to everyone saying otherwise: Unity is NOT overpriced. If Someone wants to make Money off of Unity Free they are allowed to. And not for a cheap reduced version. The full Unity with only minor restrictions. Free. Commercially. FREE. COMMERCIALLY! How is everybody still saying that Unity is too overpriced and comparing them to the devil and other things? Please reason logically if you don't like something. Not with doomsday stories about how this is the downfall and everything else is better. That's rubbish. Total rubbish!

 

Corrections: "Unity Personal is NOT overpriced" and "Unity Pro with new model is overpriced"

 

I was initially excited by the prospect of the new Unity Plus package. It seemed like an attractive price point that I could afford to subscribe to as a means of showing unity my support.

What a disappointment that ended up being! I find it rather sad that on one hand they added Unity Plus at a price point that was perfect for my circumstance while on the other hand offering literally nothing I need.

It seems to me like Unity wants to have its cake and eat it. It wants to cater to enterprise, indies, and garage programmers alike. It wants to offer a one-size fits all solution that apppeals to as broad a range of developers as possible. But then it bundles basic conveniences with the enterprise features and tries to charge us for enterprise features while trying to pass it off as doing us a favor.

With the price of pro increasing substantially it makes Unity look increasingly unappealing as a long term solution. Is this really the platform I really want to hitch my wagon to? One that seems doggidly determined to abandon the demographic that made it a success in the first place?

On top of that, I refuse to support any company that thinks mandatory splash screens for paying customers is an acceptable business practice.

 

I think they should just remove the splash screen from Plus, allow the dark skin on all plans, and make a PC/OSX only plan too, for those who don't want to work on other platforms.

Although personally, I think diversifying is the best. Most mobile games need a shorter development time too. I don't see why PC only people feel so averted to the idea. Anyone who's told you making games for mobile is always unprofitable should be looking at their game design, not at the platform or genre. If you don't offer anything which feels new, fresh or original, what did you expect? although, I guess that applies to all games... and of course, marketing will always come into play, so you should be ready to learn all you can about it, and do all you can about it... but no marketing plan will ever take a blandly designed game to number one, or if it miraculously does, it'll do so just enough for the players to notice that the game gets boring after playing it a while...

 

Unity do appear to have quite a big sales force, so may it is quite common to be able to get a discount, and maybe a lot will not pay £125 a month.

It is very common in markets such as mobile phones and TV packages to phone up and get a better deal if you threaten to leave and various low negotiation techniques. That leaves the polite customers subsidising the aggressive ones.

Hopefully that is not the case for Unity, but your example says otherwise. I want to spend my time making games, not negotiating deals for my software.

 

Some people simply like making desktop/console games better, with better controls than a touch screen can provide. No, asking people to get a gamepad doesn't fly there. You aren't even allowed to make gamepad-only games on iOS.

There are types of games that just don't fit on mobile, and there are developers who only make those.

 

I know you're not directly making that at me

However, I do say that I have been an Autodesk customer for a while now.. and have been in "perpetual" license mode with them. With their new changes.. everything is also a subscription now "EXCEPT" for previous perpetual license holders... as long as they maintain their contracts for support. They get every bit of the right to keep what they got AND use all previous versions even after they stop their maintenance contract.

This is what Unity needs to do for existing perpetual Pro owners... give them a reasonable offer for extended "maintenance" for a lower cost than what a new Pro subscriber pays. My maintenance contract moving forward may increase, but Autodesk has actually lowered that cost for its' customers. "That" is how you retain people.

 

Now you know how perpetual license holders felt with the release of 5.x, it offered nothing over the free Personal version.. other than a splash screen.

 

I appreciate them wanting to extended all platforms to all customers; this has bugged me for a while. iOS and Android add-ons should just be included regardless of what level of service plan you are subscribed too. But as a Pro license holder (without those addons), and having them forced on me AND increasing my cost with no other option is a kick in my balls.

Its' like saying to me.. "Hey, look over there at our 33% discount".. .[WHACK, right in the jewels]

 

Obviously, they thought that splash screen was worth the price. Not sure why perpetual users would be upset. They had a choice.

 

and I am tired of paying for freeloaders. Quit charging me for them, charge me for what I want/need!!! Or go away!

 

You're not really paying for "freeloaders". About the only costs incurred by those with Unity Personal are bandwidth related costs and those are negligible. Asset Store sales to those users are more than paying for the bandwidth at this point.

Every other cost that may be associated with them can likewise be associated with Unity Pro users too.

 

Well in a weird way I'd dare venture the 'freeloaders' eventually subsidise the pro owners. I mean it's not clear cut how Unity eventually gets it's cash, only that it spends it on development and outrageous naked parties*

Basically, pro is also underpriced.


* Just rumour of course.

 

Yep, and we don't call Unity to complain. Nor they have to pay billing charges to us or try to collect money. Our accounts never mess up so we have to contact customer support. We may drive Hippo crazy, but he costs nothing.

I am sure we pay for our bandwidth in other ways...word of mouth advertising, blogs, forums, answering questions and saving the community folks time, purchasing from the asset store and helping other developers earn money to spend on their game....yeah!

 

Yes I also think Pro is under priced (if Unity has debts then that is the symptom)
I do not know the numbers but if you are making more than 30K probably you wish to finance a stable engine given more money (250 month). There must be more expensive and cheaper options. Those options that actually nobody buys but let you understand how the market is like. For example royalties, we do not like that but are there as optional.

 

Given that, it seems somewhat disappointing that what is basically happening is that Pro users are being asked to subsidise them more, as it would appear that, per-annum pricing has pretty much effectively risen for all of them.

What seems more disappointing still is that there's already the notion that the new 'middle ground' tier, Plus, actually needs to be subsidised. One would have thought that it could have been tailored to appeal to the 'aspirational', serious hobbyist and budget-indie developers, many of whom who might be happy to pay something, but couldnt stretch to the cost of Pro, and it might have seen it as a step up, a better option than just staying with Personal.
But I dont see anything on the bullet point list that particularly puts it in that territory; I cant see what the draw for them is supposed to be for Plus. I dont think its additional list of service-based features are those that would particularly attract that group; its not an attractive 'upsell,' its basically being given the option to pay for Personal plus some stuff that group of folk will barely use.

Maybe Plus will appeal to some existing Pro users who want to pay less than the new price increases dictate, although that assumes something which addresses the splashscreen stigma, but even so that's a net loss of money for UT, and overall, it makes it even more of a bit of a punch in the nads to those who remain Pro users who are, as you put it, doing the subsidising.

I would have thought that the middle tier was a good place to to raise revenue, but UT seem to have taken a rather bizarre approach to it; instead of being a healthy step up from Personal, it looks like a poor step down from Plus, not of much appeal to anyone, and, as you say, Pro users stuck supporting it all.

 

I think what you mean by this is that Pro would be more expensive if there wasn't a free version bringing in more money through the asset store? Fair enough.

Is Unity underpriced, as in, they could charge more and not lose many customers? That doesn't seem to be the consensus in this thread.

 

One thing Im still not clear on after 25 pages, plus blog posts etc.

The way it reads to me is this:

There is no Unity 6 coming. Current Unity 5 Pro 'buyers' will not get versions that come out after March 2017 unless they buy into a subscription. <btw Im somewhat concerned about features being 'sold' as being 'forthcoming' in Unity 5 which may not make it in before then, or may even be held back until after then, but that's a whole different post, so I'll leave it at that>

Updates will have an unspecified?? frequency, but there will be no more major versions.

A subscription can be leveraged into a perpetual license, after 24 months (but current Pro buyers can do so immediately), but the latest version anyone gets perpetually is the last version available when they were still paying a subscription.

I think that's how it stands. What I cant seem to see is what happens if someone has leveraged that perpetual license, but then stops paying a subscription, then some time later they decide to resubscribe. Do they then need to subscribe fully, from scratch for another 24 months to earn that perpetual license? What if they want to change tier, say from a version of Pro they own in perpetuity, to Plus, what happens then? Start paying again from scratch?

 

No 6.0 in the foreseeable future. They're no longer targeting a cycle for 5.x to be switched out with 6.x, thereby having to hurry and make an impressive enough number of new features that it looks like something new. Now they can call it 6.0 once it actually changes so much it bears little resemblance to 5.x.

Updates happen all the time already. Now they won't nurse new features like a precious egg until they think they can charge an upgrade fee.

 

So basically you post both side of the coin, just to contradict people?

 

I personally hate the idea that some people will get a discount based on Unity "Reaching out to them" When Unity did this to me on the 4.x->5.x time, they knocked $100 of the cost but I didn't take it because it left the idea in my head of how do I know I'm getting a fair offer, what are others being offered? is it better than the deal I'm getting etc. Hiding the offer prices behind secret email or phone conversations is very unappealing. I don't even like the idea that existing subscribers will possibly get an offer to make the jump to the new subs pricing more palatable. This just proves how unappealing the new prices are. Every one should have the same prices, clear and open.

Unity already has the revenue cap as the big big reason to use Pro so all tiers should have the exact same features and only the revenue cap should be the thing that forces upgrades to higher levels.

 

This how I'd like to see the pricing:

Free = All features of engine. Splash. Choice of Light/Dark skin. Only main platforms - Win/OSX/Linux, iOS/Android/WinMobile, Web. No Services (but can be added for a cost). <50k year income.

Plus ($35) = All features of engine. No Splash. Choice of Light/Dark skin. Only main platforms - Win/OSX/Linux, iOS/Android/WinMobile, Web. No Services (but can be added for a cost). <100k year income.

Pro ($125) = All features of engine. No Splash. Choice of Light/Dark skin. All platforms. All services. Basically all that UT offers. No income cap.

With those features I'd happily give up my Pro Prep for Plus Sub!

Last I have to say on all of this. Back to work and waiting for the reach out from UT....

 

I know right? Who does that. What kind of aspiring business owner strives to keep costs down? Those Monsters!

As an aside, it's not pro they "don't need", the issue is that many people feel they don't need many of the features that come with pro, but that those features are being used to justify price increases.

 

Only thing I'd change there is the "no services" part: they want us to taste their services, to entice us to upgrade. So I'd say "restricted services" instead (low tier cloud build, few multiplayer users, etc).
Other than that, agree to every point.

 

I would speculate that it's whales are large studios buying many licenses, negotiates source licenses, and/or support contracts. I would also speculate that plenty of those clients might not be in the mainstream video games industry - for example, there must have been a reason behind the changes in licensing for gambling use.



Going back a bit, I wouldn't say that any one user group is necessarily subsidising any other. That certainly might be true, I don't know, but the free licenses could be a part of a long term market penetration plan. Engines that have had a strong foothold in the past have got it by making sure that it's got an experienced user base in the industry proliferating its use.

From memory Unity said they weren't making much money off the old Indie license (for those new here - Unity used to charge for what is now called the "Personal Edition", which at the time also had a smaller feature set than "Pro"). The barrier of entry formed by charging for that license was probably costing them users, especially when strong competitors started entering the same space. Fewer users now means less people experienced with your engine in the future, and when those people go to get jobs they won't be telling their employers "well, I've been using Unity for a while and I'm pretty familiar with it already...".

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20150217045559/http://unity3d.com/unity/faq/2497

"Does buying Unity 5.0 Pro entitle me to all 5.x releases?
Yes, you will receive for free the updates in the Unity 5.x release cycle."

I bought Unity prior to when you changed this FAQ in March 2015. Are you going to honour that, renege, or rename your March 2017 release to Unity 6?

 

Using free.

35$ with fully customizable splash = instant buy.

If it's semi - customizable, then weight benefit vs cost probably resulting in sticking with free.

 

Unity is throwing all of us Unity 5 Pro perpetual license owners under a bus.

 

If they stuck with their past release patterns March 2017 wouldn't be too far off for the next major release of Unity. Chances are they were planning for that date to be the end of the Unity 5.x release cycle before these billing changes were invented.

 

One aspect I am wondering about: If they don't need to hold back on features anymore that would have otherwise justified a version 6... and I assume they still did so far and now have a big bunch of surprises up their sleeve that they can release... will we see these now or is what we are seeing currently released actually the speed of development and version 6 was never planned all along?