Open letter to Unity...

What will Unity get out of a 5% royalty? Simple. Unity would have the ability to sell a $19/month subscription plan to hobbyists without worrying about losing sales of $1500 perpetual licenses. The 5% royalty looks great to indies and hobbyists, but looks bad to professional users. The 5% royalty is simply to make sure professional users do not try to use the $19/month subscription. The 5% is not a primary money making scheme.

 

Do I reckon you read the next sentence?

 

Sure I did, but you don't think that the point of forums do you? The point of forums are statements like

 

So question goat - How does your reponse come out of what I said? Honest Question as I was aiming my response at ShilohGames

Also could you link me to the section in the EULA where it says this?

Because If I made something with Unreal and It was a success Hell yes I would want that extra support and help!
Same would go with Unity3D... What ever engine I choose It will wear its colors with pride.

Whether it be cryengine, Unity, or Unreal

 

I certainly agree with the pain points ArenMook stated.

Chief of it being Shuriken not being much use from a scripting point-of-view. Same with Mecanim. I'd settle for the legacy system if not for the convenience of it letting you share animations with other 3d models. You can't even re-order animation layers (important since additive layers are evaluated from top to bottom). This goes against the rapid prototyping ethos that Unity is all about.

The controls for setting up cloth weights in a 3d model character is clunky, so I never bothered with it again.

 

I oppose doing away with Unity Free as well.

If you dislike Unity Free users that much, then here's an idea.

Keep the existing Unity Free as it is. Don't add any more features to it - period(ie keep its stuck in time). All future developments in the engine can be for pro/paid users only.

Lots of us including myself latched on to Unity Free with the hope that we begin to learn making games with it, then once we are comfortable with game development and ready to use it for commercial purposes, we can repay Unity by going pro with the money we earned from it. (I still use Unity 3.5.7 btw don't even know much of Unity 4)

Now Unity being a private company is free to do as it chooses and there is nothing legally binding it to do anything for free users but consider this. Lots of people took up Unity because of Unity Free and with a plan in mind where they were expecting that they would only need to pay Unity back once they make money from it (Even Unity said You only needed to buy Pro if you required Pro Features or if Your annual revenue was over 100k..or something like that). It would be unfair to people like that(myself included) if suddenly the whole thing is nullified.

EDIT:
Also if people are convinced that its the existence of Unity Free that is what is robbing Unity of Pro Customers, then perhaps they can even stop adding any MORE free users.

IE allow existing Unity Free users to keep their free licenses and stop ading any more Unity Free users

 

I found that interesting and searched the EULA. I couldn't find it, but there was a nice section:
Section 8 says that Epic gets rights for everything I send them as a feedback. If they have an automatic crash system like unity ("send your bug...") with my project, they will get all rights..

I'm pretty sure they won't sell my game (or parts of it), but they could if they wanted to..

 

Probably a technicality and unintentional, I'm sure they will fix it if it's brought to their attention.

 

You might have misunderstood. That's a pretty typical clause preventing Epic from owing you royalties to every yahoo that sends in a fix, idea, or solution. Ex. your feedback says, "I've fixed line 98 of render.cpp by adding if (camera != null)". Or "Modifying render.cpp to pre-check camera occlusion could improve performance by 58%". They don't have to pay you for that fix or idea.

The rest of the contract addresses your products vs their work, using legalize like, 'Licensee', 'Product', and 'Derivative'.

Gigi

 

That's correct yes.

 

I know the intention of that clause, but it is still worded.. wrong since it covers basically everything

 

I think in this particular case AAA has been used strictly for fancy graphics, and how ue4 supposedly offers it out the box.. as justification to demand a cheaper license.

 

I view AAA as any game with a strong art / Visual style (2D or 3D), awesome lighting / Rendering solution (Executed Well ofc) as well as the performance to match. A triple A Title does not have to be from a big team with a big budget just a team that knows what they are doing and are lead in the right way.



Currently I am concerned with how unity handles the free/Indie version. Limited features just slows us down in terms of development as we have to develop or buy our own solutions (Asset Store or Unity Pro) around these problems.

For example -

Lets say I want Oculus Rift Support in my game. I need render textures for that I need pro, an item off the asset store, or make it myself.

Lets say I have a large level that needs occlusion culling and profiler support for finding some badly optimized Shaders. Once again - Pro, Asset store or make it your self.

Basically I am tired of dealing with a limited feature set that is aimed at product promotion for the higher end product. That is how I view unity free...

/Rant

 

Done.