New products and prices coming soon

might shed some light on this (around 47:00-48:50)

 

So they're actually aware it's a problem. Good. Let's hope they integrate it PDQ, because it's scared away a few people I know

 

Funny that you mention money as most people here are like: "I'm going to Unreal. It's cheaper!"

 

It is.

Using both Unity and Unreal is definitely the most expensive. I was answering why people don't use both.

 

So, if I am following correctly, I received a student Unity license through my university, but decided to pay for the full Pro version license when Unity 5 released. Not long after purchasing, my Pro license was converted into an elaborate rebranding of cloud services and level 11 with beta access. Cloud building supported projects under 2GB for a year, which is something highly unlikely for a legitimate professional release. The few remaining features of Unity Pro hardly justified the price, as a splash screen really isn't that obnoxious when most games have 10 already.

Beta access provides virtually no support (as per a lengthy conversation with customer support after inquiring about a bug on the forum). It also implemented a "made with Unity" animation during my last test, which invalidates one of the few remaining features of Pro I actually purchased. I have seen no purpose in using the betas, as it is just a glance at what may or may not even be included in release versions (as support also mentioned).

Now, after being downgraded, stripped of the features I purchased, forced to be a lab rat, and coerced into a new business model with a bunch of extraneous features that only look good in PR documentation, I am once again facing a situation where my nearly unnecessary perpetual license purchase will now become obsolete unless I invest more?

When exactly does the investment I made pay for itself before signing another check? I apologize if this offends anyone, but at some point it is my right as an investor to say "show me a receipt" and expect more than just a "thank you" note.

 

Removal of a splash screen which may drive away potential customers or it may not depending entirely on your audience, a dark UI skin, removal of the $100,000 revenue limit that is attached to Unity Personal, some services have a tier that is available for free to Unity Pro users (you'll have to visit the individual pages of those to learn more), etc.

There was a period they were offering refunds but we're beyond that point now.

You weren't forced to be a lab rat. No one forced you to buy a Unity 5 Pro license before you actually needed it. Likewise no one is forcing you to subscribe to Unity Pro once the announced changes take effect. The licenses you own will still be valid and you will still have access to Unity 5 Pro and earlier. There are still people using 4.x, 3.x, and even older.

What I'm reading from your post and some of the others in this thread is that people are buying Unity Pro without actually needing it. Unless you need to remove the splash screen and/or your revenue is at the $100,000 limit of Unity Personal you don't actually need Pro.

 

@LoungeKatt has a point with the project sizes. I've used about a gigabyte just messing around with a menu system, so it's not much to work with.

 

I am well aware of the current features, but you appear to have missed a few that were part of the license I purchased. As stated, the issue is how few of the remaining features are relevant compared to how many relevant features no longer required a purchase.

I was never notified of such a period. I also considered it an investment, which I had every hope would pay off in the future. The purpose of my post was to explain why I have regrets about the decision and hope to avoid accumulating more.

Betas do not provide support and are only intended to provide Unity with feedback that may or may not be directly acknowledged. I am obviously not being forced to use the builds, but that isn't to say I like paying for unused features. It is only fair to compare something that serves no other purpose than to provide feedback and statistics on possible features to being a test subject. Hopefully changing the wording will help prevent getting caught up on the actual meaning, which is how little benefit this provides as a developer when purchasing software for more than testing possible upcoming features.

I am well aware that I made a preemptive purchase, or investment. An investment is something with a future return that I am now "petitioning" to maintain.

This is an improvement, but also highlights how unrealistic the limit was and how little value this held as a substitution for Pro features that became free.



Unity has gone a long time supporting Unity 4 alongside Unity 5. The entire premise of this new model is to avoid major versions, but that is no reason for existing perpetual license Unity 5 users to no longer receive "bug fix" updates without having to convert to a new license. When subscribing to Microsoft Office, you get major version updates alongside security and bug fix updates. When maintaining an older version, you still receive the fixes. This follows the logic that while you will not get new features, it is only right to fix the ones you already purchased. It would be a different story if every new intermediate Unity version didn't come with a list of "known issues" already included. I want to keep my current purchase without having to downgrade again when something is fixed. Is that really so much?

 

Good news! It looks like you've changed an awful lot of things, so I'm looking forward to see the full list when you've had your internal discussions

 

Unfortunately one of the things I noticed during and after the period the refunds were offered is that they don't seem to notify anyone but rather expect you to keep up to date on your own. If I'm not mistaken they mentioned it on their blogs but I know for certain it was discussed on the forums.

 

It was discussed on the forums? You mean when I purchased a product from a legitimate company that did not normally accept returns and was unaware of the extent of their model changes, I could have went digging into the equivalent of user-based community support to find there was a post somewhere that said I could get my money back?

The "expect you to keep up to date on your own" design is commonly open-source and last time I checked, that didn't cost a dime.

 

This certainly doesn't lend a lot of faith in them contacting perpetual license holders like they're saying. I keep up with the blogs and forums and didn't hear a thing about this refund thing, whatever it was.

 

Yes. My memory is a bit hazy on the exact qualifications you needed for the refund but I know anyone who pre-ordered Unity 5 Perpetual and made under $100,000 was able to receive the refund. I remember that part from the FAQ entry of the time.

After Unity 5's launch announcement the topic was discussed extensively so it wasn't difficult to find the appropriate information, but now the topics are old enough that it would take a while to locate them.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150422233411/http://unity3d.com/unity/faq

 

I clearly remember the refund offer as it was discussed quite a bit at the time... I don't remember being notified about that from Unity specifically, but I have been notified w/ special upgrade offers in the past. It all comes down to whether they are courting a sale from you or not... you can't blame Unity for this discrepancy, it's a pretty natural way to do business. At some point people do have to take it on themselves to keep up with developments and be proactive.

 

If you bought an HP at Best Buy and HP did a recall for lemon motherboards, is it also your responsibility to keep checking HP's site to see if any recalls were available? What happens when you discover it after the warranty expires? Do you pay Best Buy the $90 diagnostic fee or contact HP? When the motherboard dies and the customer no longer wants to purchase HP products, do you inform them they should have been checking the FAQs?

Finding old blog or forum posts doesn't change the fact that some of us blatantly did not know to look there for that information or didn't even purchase the application from this site. It doesn't make our money any less good, though.

It's easy to say "it is your own responsibility" or "it was posted somewhere" when it is neither your money or loss, but what makes you think that is also a convincing argument to invest more money to continue using it?

Ironically, I had an educational membership to UE4 when that converted. I received an email detailing the changes to the service and offering the option of a pro-rated refund. They also offer an FAQ post for those that feel the new changes to Unity are no longer favorable at https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/FromUnity/index.html

 

@LoungeKatt Don't know what to tell ya other than information flow is a two-way street. I also purchased Unity 5 about a month before all the changes happened, so I was in a similar situation as you. I had mixed feelings about it all and came to the forums for more info and I found out all about my options. I qualified for the refund but in the end decided not to take it, and kept the 5 pro license. I have no problems living with that decision. But at this point all this is water under the bridge... what's important now is that you're here on the forums and will be able to make a more informed decision next time.

 

I sympathize with you and your reasoning is sound but from my own experience with recalls and other similar problems that's just not how the world works. There are occasionally some companies that will go the extra mile to maintain a certain reputation but those are very much the exception now.

Thinking over past interactions with companies the only time I have ever been informed of a product recall was when Harris Teeter called up earlier this week to inform our family that one of the goods we purchased had a recall issued for it.

Likewise the only refund I can remember was when as you mentioned Epic Games offered that refund. They even went above and beyond with a $30 credit towards their Marketplace.

 

This isn't a friendship or even a collaboration. I am a paying customer. Saying information flow is a two-way street applies to a partnership. Unity has yet to sign any checks for my beta testing and feedback efforts. I have a feeling you are missing the point entirely. Please see below.

I keep seeing these posts saying it was my responsibility to speak up when I felt a refund would have been fair. I felt it would have been nice to receive a pro-rated refund, but not at the cost of losing what few Pro features I still had. I felt Pro would eventually pay off, assuming Unity 6 (before any press releases were made about not having one) would be far off and Level11 would offer content I actually desired. It is a slow process.

By implementing this new design, not offering a Unity 6 allows effectively deprecating my license without the need for a major release. I can't change the past, but I can try to prevent losing more ground by speaking up before the situation worsens.

Users rarely posted 1-star reviews when an application crashed. They would contact the developer and request support. Over time, it has become common practice to simply rate the application poorly and post some illiterate rant about how the developer sucks. I assume that is just "how the world works" or would be unless someone steps up to say it shouldn't be that way. Here I am.

Regardless, I have made my recommendation and justified my logic. Now it is up to Unity to take it into consideration or discard it. Only that will determine how I decide to proceed. Thanks.

 

The really should have ended the 5.x cycle before making such drastic change, and rename the next cycle "unity unlimited". A lot of confusion is because it's happening "mid cycle" and seem like an abrupt change and break of thrust.

End the 5.x as normal then start back with the new business plan.

 

well @orb, I normally copy my projec the times I need for each plataform I deploy, and all of them are synqued with git on the same repo, so I only need to reimport almost one time... so if I have X which I want to deploy to ios, Android and WP, I have X_ios, X_Android, X_WP... this way also let me know when was the last time I did work on a specific platform because it is not up to date with the git central repo.

 

I should also point that unity doesnt have a usage of the logo like https://www.unrealengine.com/branding-guidelines-and-trademark-usage

I want to use logos on presentation cards... so.


Oh... just found it doing a better search on the web (using branding instead of unity logo)... http://unity3d.com/es/public-relations/brand

 

For those who can't read spanish look at the bottom of the page, on Downloads, click Press Material (I think), there is a link there. This way, the site will follow your language.

You gave me an idea: what if the splash could be replaced by your own custom made, as long as you follow those guidelines, and you get their approval? Could it be that what they mean by "semi-custom"? Maybe they force a watermark of their logo on the beginning, and you can choose where to put it?

I think a curated version would be expensive for them, but so much better than any automatic system.

 

Anyone else feel like it's a cheap ripoff of the HTML5 logo?

 

Agreed. What I read was "we don't want to make major version releases and probably don't have enough prepared, but we do want more money. The plan is to take the updates you already paid for, since we already sold you a license for the entire 5.X lifespan and rebrand it into something that will require you use the subscription method to maintain. We'll call it new, but many of you have already seen it in the past when it was only $75 / month. After two years, when you've paid approximately the educational cost of a major version, you can stop subscribing again and keep that build. Just remember, you will have to start paying again if you need any updates. Since they are smaller updates, we have the chance to offer you just enough to convince you to subscribe a little longer. The significant update here is pricing, but the product will remain the same. After all, many of these updates will be stability or we would have just made Unity 6."

(Note: I would consider a subscription, but not to pay twice for the same updates I was promised)

 

Ship it!

 

Sound like it makes more work for the developer (making a background and logo that fits this particular specification), more work for Unity (making this work and maintaining it), not good for the developer (still linked to the market's negative association with Unity branding), and not for Unity (still linked to games without control over quality, even John Riccitiello has commented on this).

 

I'm tempted to say "Ship it!", but I think that you should get all good solutions to the problem and present them to the community. I think it's good enough, moonjump doesn't, some will, some not. But if you guys ship something that makes most people annoyed, then you lost again. Don't let that happen!

 

if they think just adding a customisable splash screen in the plus version is going to get me to part with my money they are deluding themselves.

As a by the by, I'm thinking of making a tool to inject new graphics into the unity executable to allow customising the skin. does anyone know if this would be legal or not. I wouldn't be distributing the unity executable but more a tool that patches it.

 

EULA doesn't allow it.

 

There's no mention of it in the Eula.

 

And what do you think would have happened if they waited for Unity 5.x to end the cycle before announcing the new prices? People would have complained about how they didn't have time to adapt or know long enough beforehand.

Part of me wants to say they should have run perpetual a little longer after the announcement to give people time to adjust. Then again: since it's ending in roughly 9 months this really is no time to go "perpetual" any more. it still would have been the right thing to do. The more I think about it the more it's not the model itself that's annoying me (it is still flawed as discussed here but not as much as some make it out to be) - it's the "It was like this since the beginning. NOW it's different! Take it or leave it" approach that annoys me.
If it happens once who says it's not going to happen again. Subscriptions have to be reliable to make sense - that is one of their main selling points from the company's point of view - so you can't just make unpredictable moves with no transition period whatsoever.

Still looking forward to the faster feature rollout in the future. And to not paying for the full version any more

On a sidenote: The current Pro subscription says "You pay no royalties and fully own the content you develop with a Unity Pro subscription."
That is worded weiry weirdly. Don't you own the content created with the free version? @karl.jones or @aliceingameland shouldn't that be maybe worded a little differently?

 

............


The amazing community is the reason we are all still here!

 

So even with the new proposal, Plus is going to be a monthly paid subscription with a (modified) Unity logo splash screen?
Free: Unity splash screen
Plus: Semi Unity splash screen
Pro: No Unity splash screen

So instead of creating true value between the tiers you take out the splash feature, put some engineering effort into it and make different splash versions? Wow, really bad idea.

 

I know this compromise will be satisfactory for some (most, even) but it isn't for me. I don't put splash screens in my game, and I don't want to pay UT for the pleasure of being stuck with a logo, or feel like I'm being extorted for removing the splash. It is insulting that UT does this horrible reorganization and then patronizingly gives us a customizable splash, and expect us to be happy about it.

 

The splash (and dark theme to a lesser extent) are a symptom of the much larger issues that UT isn't providing services of actual value for small and hobbyist developers. I love that one of the core tenets of the company is to give the engine away for free and encourage people to make games with it, but if they want those people to begin paying UT and be happy about it (and I want to support them too!) then instead of dangling silly things over our beads then actually useful and reasonably priced products need to be offered. $35/mo is a reasonable amount of money (I do live in the US though so other countries and currencies or your financial situation may disagree) for a medium tier of premium software, and I would be fine paying it. But not if the only really valuable thing on it is a half step of removing an ad from the front of my games.

 

Hmmm, they give a fully featured engine to us for free and all they ask is that we show their logo on our games.

Lack of logo and gray screen are cosmetic and do not in any way devalue the product for free users, hobbyists, or those making less than 100k...which more likely than not includes many single or small team developers.

It amazes me when people say Unity gives us nothing. They give us a lot. And while I understand and sympathize with the shock of all this, the reality is that we all have a choice that fits into our budgets.

Sorry..but I don't get leather seats if I am not willing to pay for them. So if you want the "special" cosmetic add-ons, then you need to pay.

 

Nobody is complaining about what Unity is giving users for free with the Personal version. People are complaining about the new Plus version, which is not free but basically offers no more value than the free version. And people are complaining about the new subscription for the Pro version, which effectively quadruples the upgrade cost compared to the previous perpetual license upgrades.

 

I've said before in this thread I think it's great that Unity gives so much for free, and that it makes business sense to do so. But that good business sense is relying on people getting hooked by the great engine (done and done) to then buy services or products from Unity that they think are valuable and worth the money. When you say the the lack of logo and gray theme are cosmetic, that's exactly why I think it's silly or insulting to have to pay for them. The splash screen of course devalues the product, as that's why half of the posts in this thread are about it. Either stop giving away the engine for free (not what anyone wants) or find things that people want to pay for.

 

Responded exactly to what he said. Unity gives GREAT value to hobbyists and small developers. He said they did not.

The fact that he wants the cosmetic features does not at all validate his claim that Unity does not give great value. They give a free version.

If you don't like the Plus, you still have the free. It is FREE! And it is a full featured engine.

It is not silly or insulting to pay for something that a large number of people who use Unity have been willing to pay from $650 to $1500 a year for a number of years now. Unity is using the market to determine their pay scale. They are a business.

The more you guys demand something for free, the more valuable it becomes.

The splash screen devalues a free engine? How do you devalue something that doesn't cost anything?

I think there have been enough posts on these forums to show that it does not. The excuses have mounted and mounted but no concrete proof that anyone suffers from using the splash screen, just a lot anecdotal evidence, a few sensationalist YouTubers, and a forum thread from somewhere that actually proves that most people don't even care about the splash screen. lol

I thought developers used logic but it seems emotion rules.

 

I suppose we have different ideals on having a logo stuck to the front of your game. I see it as a forced advertisement, others don't, or have their opinions. Which is fine! We value different things, and Unity can react to that or not.

 

Only thing that's annoying about the splash screen to me is how long it takes to start builds while developing. Not being able to turn that off if I have to switch to Free is going to drive me a bit nuts.

 

Teila: Obviously Unity needs to make more money, since they are are increasing the cost for Unity Pro. The Plus version could make Unity a lot of money, but only if it appeals to current Free/Personal users. Simply telling Free/Personal users to be happy with the splash screen does not help Unity. If a bunch of existing Free/Personal users are willing to pay a monthly free for Plus (with no splash screen), then Unity needs to consider letting Plus users remove the splash screen.

 

nicktringali: Would you buy the Plus version if it had an option to disable the splash screen?

 

Well, according to some, Unity is not doing this to make more money. So who knows. I have not looked at their books. But that may be true.

They make a lot more money if the people who want no splash buy Pro.

They make much less money if people who want no splash switch from Pro to Plus.

And they make a wee bit more money if people from free switch to Plus. But...not sure that is many. I think a lot of people here have said they don't care about the splash and they are going to use that money to buy..a new mac, new tools, etc.

The money the make by taking away the splash in Plus and attracting a handful of free users who actually want to publish without the splash are more than likely add up to much much less money than giving the Pro users who want to publish without the splash a reason to downgrade to Plus.

So..the money thing really works out as a negative for Unity if it only money they care about. Also...remember, most people in this thread are not free users. We are actually getting more than we had before so are pretty happy with the new plan.

 

Other question...are you currently a free user or a pro users?

 

Here's what i think about it. Will just copy/paste what i already wrote on the blogpost. Saves me the time to write it again.

Well, what can i say…i’m dissapointed, again! It’s not the first time i left Unity behind to give UE4 or cryengine a try, and it seems i’ll be leaving again for good this time!

You guys are seriously joking, right?? I have a perpetual license, payed $1500 first time and then $750 when Unity 5 came out. So, now i would have to pay double the amount for same engine features?? Are you kidding me??
Not to mention all the assets i bought to solve missing engine features!!! You guys are getting richer by the day and then you’d want some more from us??

There are other engines out there that cost a whole lot less, but have ALL the features one would need to make ANY type of game, yet you guys want more money from us for an engine that has incomplete, missing or malfunctioning features??

You guys are making a huge mistake, that’s for sure!

Time to download another engine, it seems!

There you have it. It's a shame for the hundreds of dollars i spent on the asset store to replace what already should be a standard engine feature, but i prefer to look elsewhere for an engine that gives me a whole lot more for less money. I'll have to redo/rewrite my game all over again, but hey...who cares...

 

Yep. And I'm a Pro user, and I've shipped a commercial game, if we're going to start checking credentials.

 

This is a good summary of what would happen in just about any situation similar to this one.