Proposal for new Unity Licensing Structure

Hey everyone,

I just thought I would post this topic regarding Unity 5 and new possible licensing structure for Unity.
Here is what I am thinking -

1. If you earn more than 100k per annual Cycle (not per quarter) on a basic license you need to upgrade to a pro license per seat.
2. Keep the current PRO and BASIC Licenses; However -
3. Get rid of the paywall between Basic and Pro in terms of features.

What would change and how would this benefit us?
1. Basic Users get to use Unity3D's awesome tools.
2. More people are drawn to unity to make games. Thus more potential licensees.

How would this benefit Unity Technologies?
1. More people making more games with Unity = potential Licensees.
2. A more Unified Codebase - No need to maintain a Free and Pro Code base.
3. More resources to put into development due to freed up dev teams. - (See #2)

I am going to put this up on the Unity Issue Tracker but only if I get a greenlight from you guys.

What do you think? Do you think that it is worthy of going on the feedback tracker?

Yes? No? Maybe?

Thank you for your time,

HeadClot

 

Oh hell, no!

Seriously, what you're basically proposing here is to get everything for free, unless you're a large studio with a lot of revenue.

1.) You want to get all Unity Pro features for free in the basic version.
2.) You want to increase the amount of money you can make with the free version by factor 4.

Sorry, that's just ridiculous and doesn't benefit UT at all in my eyes. In fact, I think this would benefit us users either, because at some point they'll run out of money giving everything away for free. ;-)

PS: I doubt there's two codebases for Pro and Free.

 

Who wouldn't want Pro features for free?

As much of an amazing thing that would be for all of us, it really wouldn't work for Unity - at least not currently.

Sorry, but there is really no point trying to figure out a licensing model. You do not have the necessary data and statistics. They have people working at Unity who do have all of these as well as professional experience on this matter. If there is a licensing model that is better than the current, they are the ones who will figure it out.

 

Unity Pro is designed in mind for serious game developers and studios, also it's one of the things that keep Unity afloat.

If Unity were to give away everything for free, then why would anyone buy pro? Bar just being nice .

$100K per quarter? How many indies here are earning that sort of money??

So I'm with Cynic, OH HELL NO!.

 

Hey Cynic - for the first bit yes - Everything basically should be for free however what difference would it make? The license is basicly the same as it was before - $1500 USD per seat. If you go over the 100K limit you need Unity Pro.

1.) The basic version is more or less a way for unity to pull more customers in. Why not go all out?
2.) I am not seeing what you are saying here. Unity needs to make money to stay in business.

To answer your last bit - Why is Epic Games or Crytek not broke yet? They are very tech heavy companies and have invested allot of money into their respective engines. Not broke yet and they have a free full featured versions of their development tools.

 

Well that's obvious isn't it, CryTek and Epic release multi-million dollar AAA games to fund them, Unity don't!!. Also they earn millions from engine licensing and other products like CineBox. The full unity is $1500.00 the full version of CryEngine is around 20X that (If you're lucky)..

 

You want to take the existing US$100,000/annum limit and raise it to US$100,000/qtr... and give Unity3d away for free to everybody who earns less than that?

Awesome, that'll save me hugely because everybody on my team is a contractor and nobody as of yet has breached the 400k/year bracket!

 

DERP - Updated!

 

Well, let's leave the other two engines out of this for a moment, because they have totally different and very complex licensing terms that just can't compare with Unity. They also serve a different audience mostly, since Unity does probably live off indies of various sizes to quite a significant amount.

Don't get me wrong but the thing is, your suggestion almost reads like trolling. If it was a serious suggestion, why throw in raising the 100k limit to 400k? Even without increasing this I'd be against it personally, but I believe you know what I'm saying. This reads a lot like: "Hey guys, you got this awesome tech, which is really cheap an all, but I'd like to use all the bells and whistles for free so that my games appear super uber AND I'd like to earn a really decent living from that without giving you guys a penny. Got get it from the big ones."

Edit: I also still fail to see the benefit for UT. Sure, it is great when a lot of games are made with Unity, especially in the light of upcoming Unity Cloud. But that's really what the free version is for and a lot of people are using that already. It's not that UT needs to get word out there so badly, they're very well known in the industry, I'm sure.

You're certainly right that those changes would translate into more free users. That's certain. I highly doubt though, that would also translate into more licensees. In fact I believe this would lose them quite a few.

 

Because it is 4:05 AM where I am at ATM, I am multitasking on 3 different chat programs (Unity forums, Skype and IRC.) and I am 3d modeling when I get some spare time. Forgive me for the math mistake it has been updated.

PS - This is a serious topic that I want to discuss.

 

If this is serious, maybe make the post at a time where you can put a little more thought and attention towards it?

 

This is the only time of day that I have to myself sorry for making a mistake...

 

Seriously.

 

Both versions are the exact same code base though. Which features are enabled is then figured out by parsing the license file.

 

The only way for this to work would be to seriously reduce the min rev. If you changed it to 10K a year or something but even then loads of people buy unity and never reach that level for a range of reasons.

I actually think the current model is pretty good. They have a lot of balance, enough incentive to get pro (clearly you want it) while enough features in free you want to use it (clearly you use it). I think that is pretty perfect from a unity perspective. That is a great place to sit with a product.

 

I would not mind seeing the current threshold for unity brought down to 10k or so. Unity needs more of my money. I personally love unity. I really want to see mass adoption of unity. Much like Unreal and Cryengine. So much is possible with unity3D.

Personally I would marry unity5 legally if i could.

Addendum - I really want to see some truly remarkable games made with unity moreso than normal (Think Star Citizen level games with unity. I have friends that think that unity is "Poo poo compared to <Insert engine here>." I disagree as I know that it is awesome and it can be so much more especially with the basic license.

 

I think an equally likely outcome would be:
1. Most people earning less than $100,000 annually = almost nobody needs Pro anymore
2. Less income for Unity Technologies - less money available to pay developers
3. Fewer resources put into development due to "freed up dev teams" (if you catch my meaning )

I also think that the current model of having no limit on how much you're allowed to earn draws more people away from CryTek and UDK, both of which have this limit.

 

What if the earnings limit was lowered to 10k or so? Would that work or no?

 

Actually what if the limit was $1500.00? Then you have earnt enough to buy pro anyway..

Issue is, how does Unity keep track of all these sales? It becomes tedious pointless and booooring.

 

People would just lie.

 

unity is already more popular than either of the ones you name especially in the mobile arena. There are like 3 million registered unity developers!

The issue is that because unity is so assessable there is a lot of crap made with it as well as the good stuff!

 

Unity is already much more wide spread than either of the two you mentioned. There are also some really high production value Unity titles. On top of that you got big names such as Richard Garriott or Peter Molyneux using Unity on big projects within their own indie studios.

However, engines are marketed very differently than you might think. Throwing Pro features at everyone who cannot or doesn't want to afford a regular Pro licence will certainly lead to more amateur adoption and more crap games released every day (but with cool lighting :twisted. This has nothing to do with how big studios choose their engine and will certainly not drive Unity adoption in that segment at all.

Now, when some big title goes into development based on Cry, Unreal, idTech or whatever it is certainly not due to people not having heard about Unity.

 

Well I've missed the memo on that one, I've seen a few impressive mobile titles. But I've never found anything that could stack up to CE or Unreal, well I recon Unity 5 is going to change all that..

 

Unity should stick to it's current system.

They know their finances better than anyone else on this forum. So they've the scope that is needed to make these sort of decisions.

To be honest I think free users have enough already.. it's enough for you to make games and know if it's the right engine for you. If you decide that it is and you want the pro features then you should make the changes in your life so you can afford to buy pro.

Unity doesn't need to change it's pricing system to get more users... there's more coming by the day

here's a few tips if you want to buy pro.

1: if you smoke, then quit
2: if you go to pub with pals and drink lots of beer, then stay at home and play with Unity. you'll save money and get more mad skills.
3: get a part time job.
4: make some assets and sell them on the asset store.
5: make some useful videos on youtube and make some money from them.

 

I think it is a terrible idea. Lets correct it:
1. If you earn more than 10k(yes 10k, not 100k. You have 10k and you can not afford a 1500 dollar engine ) per annual Cycle on a basic license you need to upgrade to a pro license.
2. Keep the current PRO and BASIC Licenses, features wise too.
3. Get rid of AAA stuffs from basic license, such as GI.
4. Lower the upgrade price a bit.

There should be a non commercial license where everything is free. This will give everyone to examine all features. Because, 30 day trial is not enough in my view.

The key idea is: Everyone will examine the engine as long as they want. In case of business, free and pro difference will reduce market scam and crap apps.

I do not have a pro, yet I do not want it for "free", for commercial usage. I know unity pro(with even console licenses), can be found on some warez sites; which can be downloaded by anyone. I don't give a minute on it. Why? Because I respect the hard effort of developers. Will only touch pro, when I can afford.

 

You do know that 10k is below poverty lines in many western nations? You'd effectively be removing the ability for the vast majority of developers to publish commercially for free (remembering commercial != remotely successful).

 

Ops my bad, thought totally wrong way while calculating "10k" measure. Anyway, but is 100K not a bit more? I mean, here I can live happily with 15K yearly. It would turn into luxury, if it goes above 23K. So If I get 50K yearly, I can happily get the whole industry tools without a hesitation

Anyway, probably I do not understand quite well about lines. What about other points? Mainly the "non commercial license".

 

I want a pony. And the moon on a stick. All because I might pretend my income is less than 100k. I earned 1,500 as a small child doing odd jobs. OK maybe it's more difficult for someone in russia or india but there's nothing stopping those folks from shipping just fine with Unity free.

 

I think the current licensing structure is just fine. No need to change it. Seriously.

One thing that I think could be changed is to have a discount for people with lots of licenses and lots of addons for updates (and maybe also on the initial purchase but I really think updates are where the current approach can generate a problem). When you have quite a few licenses with all the addons, updates are a real pain and it would be nice to soften that a little (and it would still be nice income - probably in many case, companies would update earlier because currently, they might have to wait simply because it's too much money at once ... they might even skip the update for a long time).

 

Each additional addon should get you an additional discount IMO.

 

Funny how some hours ago everything was fine...now Unity NEEDS a new licensing structure, I guess.

 

This. Keep everything as it is now, as far as licensing is concerned, but have a PLE version of Unity that puts a "NOT FOR COMMERCIAL RELEASE" watermark in the bottom right where "Trial version" appears now.

People have been asking for a new license structure for a while now, and now there's some direct competition providing a license structure that a lot of people were asking for. This isn't a new thing, it's just the first time you've noticed it.

 

I know that's nothing new, I'm happy with Unity Free but I wished for years for a different licensing model.
I just thought it's funny how people defend Unity and it's pricing model and as for now the very same people are heading towards UE4
As for now I certainly will have a look at UE4, too, but I don't see me anytime soon switching. It took me and my artist a while to create a decent workflow with Unity and some Plugins and now we're doing just fine. Changing the Engine and porting the project would break everything we started.

UE4 would be just a "hobby" for now, but damn, their licensing model makes it a very affordable hobby!

 

Agreed. Thanks to Unreal 4, it's possible some changes will have to potentially happen.

 

Here in Vancouver, if you make 23k you will definitely still live at home with your parents...

 

Like I was saying in a different thread, they are different engines and both got pro's and con's. Epic is most probably even making this license change because of the changing climate among developers, the growth of the indie community and because many professional AAA developers started to look at Unity3D.

I still think Unity3D got a lower entry barrier. Also, I definitely have an easier time looking for ideas, discussions and solutions to my problems then I ever had with Unreal in the past. The licenses are different, Unity got their free version that is damn nice on its own but sure... I would not be surprised to see a cheaper pro version or even better license from Unity within a year or two thanks to Epic's move

More power to use developers and that is all that matters. The competition is good for us and I have always, and will always choose my engine based on the target audience and nature of the project that I am working on

 

lol, so youre saying you want Unity to go out of business, and there release cycle to diminish to SFA.

k.

 

When saying that Unity has a lower barrier to entry, you are comparing it to Unreal Engine 3, right? That's not really fair, is it?

 

here is a good one

basically similar to udk 4 which is $19/m + 5% full source code access and free to cancel at anytime... if unreal can do it and get rich doing it i don't see why unity can't do the same and get rich too. and with c# and the asset store it should be far easier to get indie developers

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/23...er-Kit-19-MO-5-Why-can-t-Unity-Offer-the-same!

 

How would that happen? Won't their employees just work for free for the love of doing it? There's got to be a public library they can work out of (and live in the bus stop next to) ! I'm sure taking away their salary won't impact the production schedule even a little bit! Then all of us can have the dark skin for free!

/sarcasm

 

*chuckle*

 

Why not? Unreal Engine 4 is an even more recent engine atm compared to what Unreal Engine 3 was when I started working on it and they have made a lot of changes (for the better from what I can see) but it will not change the complex nature of that comes with the Unreal Engine because of its many features and the documentation + the collected knowledge in forums will be in an even worse state for a while.

I am not picking a favorite engine, I can bet that I will have a reason to change engine for some project in the future but that doesn't bother me because that is common in the games industry. You pick up the new tools, learn them and start working.

But to get back to the discussion of license and cost, fixed numbers like Unity offers have its benefits compared to percentage based fees like the ones Unreal offers and the opposite way around. It all comes down to how many units you sell, you pricing model etc. Unity got a good license at the moment and I think the biggest change that they will consider for the next few months is the monthly fee for Unity Pro.

19$ + 5% per month versus 75$ per month

Unreal's 19$ fee makes it more accessible package when you want the full package but I can definitely live without their 5% income fee...

It would be enough if Unity decreased the monthly fee to something similar to Unreal's level to get back into the competition. They could skip the 5% as a compensation because they cannot offer all the features and advanced tools that comes out of the box with Unreal.

 

F'real though, I don't think we're going to see any major licensing changes until Unity makes some major footholds into AAA space. I imagine if they do that, which Unity 5 looks poised to do, we might see a license change a couple years down the line. Until then, though, I think the license should stay the same, but allow for a PLE copy of Unity Pro that slaps "not for commercial release" watermarks on all builds instead of a 30 day trial.

 

why I feel very sorry now?

 

unreal $19/m+5% or crytek $10/m is not self entitlement they crunched the match and are competing. something everyone has to learn to do or die... hey competition sucks for businesses who dont like competition and haveing to compete vs competition is great for consumer since it gives them more choices, lower priced, more features, ect. im consumer...

 

If Pixologic can survive by selling a one time license with free upgrades for life, so can Unity.

So they should either do that, or match Epics price and conditions.

 

+1 as a happy ZBrush user. But that method means no Free version and I believe a paid for academic version.

I do get the reason UT offer a Free Basic version and it definitely worked in their favour and ours by increasing the focus of Unity in the industry and gaining a much larger user base. Would I prefer for Basic to be $200 and offset Pro cost to be $800, of course, but I know this would be a short sighted view and would not encourage more people into the Unity community and keep UT moving forward. Nothing really comes free, the cost is just shifted to someone else.

 

As someone considering starting out and considering Unity vs UE4, I thought I'd throw in my 2c on this topic. Unity needs to balance getting revenue with encouraging adoption of Unity. It's a short-term vs long-term tradeoff. So some random observations;

The Asset Store is awesome. Take a % from all asset sales. It's low-effort for Unity (just run the store), attracts asset makers (who see easy $ for selling assets while building a portfolio), and attracts developers (who see a cheap/easy way to get assets). I see no downsides.

Don't plan on getting any money from hobbyists/beginners. Trying to will not make money, it will just scare them off. Some of these will eventually become indy/pro developers who you can collect from later. In the process of learning Unity they will also become fans promoting and encouraging its use wherever they end up. UE4's $19/m is an example of a too-big barrier for kids starting out, and Unity's free version is much more appealing.

However, I'm not sure about the "free basic" vs "expensive pro" model. The "free" option is appealing for beginners but the jump to "pro" seems too big, so it's scaring away potential starters who can see a more incremental cost/development path elsewhere. Many assets require the pro version, so it's undermining your asset store, both in terms of sales and in terms being an attractive resource. UE4's $19/m will start to draw the beginners you attracted with Unity Free away when they start to face the transition to Pro. This is also probably before they've built up much investment/commitment to Unity. The 30d free trial is a good idea, but people facing this transition are probably not full time on this yet, so they can't really commit to doing much in that 30d time limit.

The 12m subscription vs purchase is a bit of a non-option; it's just a small discount for paying 2 years in advance. The 12m subscription lock-in scares away the beginners... it makes it a commitment they are not yet ready to make. If you are going to have a subscription model it should probably not be for advanced features, but for something like support guarantees.

UE4's 5% on income is brilliant from a beginner/indy point of view; don't pay unless you suddenly find that you can. Note % of income is much wiser than % of profits. It's much too easy for accountants to shift profits around; "Sorry CoolGame Pty Ltd didn't make any profits, but boy did CoolHosting Inc make a killing!". The only people this kind of pricing model is likely to scare are the very large studio's that are expecting to sell $millions to cover their high expenses. It also seems to worry people that see "royalties are forever". The easy way to solve this is to make it tiered or capped; "5% of the first $1M, 4% of next $1M, 3% of next $1M... 0% of everything past $5M", or "5% of income for the first year only".

Finally, UE4's github source repository might end up being a game changer. It means big studios with the resources can fix the engine themselves if they need to, rather than rely on a third party with their own priorities/schedule. There are also probably lots of hobbyists who would want to work on the engine, not just use it. This gives their engine a boost in developers, and it will probably evolve very fast as a result (arguably together with more stability problems).

 

No. Bad idea.

Unity should move completely to a subscription model that has one editor for all platforms.
You can only open the editor if you have an active subscription.

Keep the sub low, and they will be making a lot of money.

 

How low?