Unity 2.6 is out (and free!)

@jtadeo

Nice post and very on point. I agree with everything you're saying here, and speaking for myself I can say that I have published several Unity games and learned an absolute TON in the process.

After spending a very brief time with Torque (and spending money on Torque that I will never get back, for a product that I'll never use), with Unity I can say that I have gotten every penny out of my Indie license and then some.

I love that my nephew, who has watched my game making over my shoulder, can now have Unity on his home computer, and learn it himself. I love what a free Unity will do for embedded web players.

As I mentioned before, my only gripe with this whole process was that David promised a "big discount" as an incentive to paid-Indie users to upgrade to Pro. Nicholas clarified this to be $400 off a Pro upgrade. That's a great deal, and moves like this are some of the reasons I think the Unity guys are so great. It shows they actually care for the user base.

Instead, the actual offer was half that (a 15% off coupon, in fact), that expires 5 days after Christmas. Wow.

Please tell me how I shouldn't be a little bit disappointed. It's a classic case of "over promise, under deliver."

The assumption that Indie users want something for free isn't even the argument here. They made an awesome promise that they did not deliver on, and yeah - that's frustrating.

 

I agree and I think that was said in error*. Up to UT as to how they want to handle that one. You are right that it is a different issue altogether.

As for Torque, I paid for the T3D Pro and I'm digging Unity a lot. Making Unity 2.6 free just made things so much sweeter.


@jashan

100% agree. We all have "free will".

There was a 30 day free version so everyone could make an informed decision on whether Unity Indie was worth it or met their expectations.

No one was forced to click that buy button. At that time, whoever purchased Unity, they (at that time) resolved that it was worth it and they were willing to part with their $199. Now that it's free, it appears that some have changed their minds.

I am wondering if anyone can honestly say that they did not derive a valuable benefit, monetary or otherwise, since making a purchase for Indie.


*See http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=222065#222065 for an updated explanation of the discount offer.

 

What would you whiners have Unity do? Refund everyone who bought Unity over the last year? What about when the people from the year before that complain? Should THEY get refunded, too? And then the year before that?

Don't be silly. Unity are doing the right thing by refunding 60 days because they are great people - you guys know nothing of the real world if you think they are being mean to you. If this was Adobe or Microsoft do you really think that they would bother to refund ANYONE?

Oh, the last guy ^ said it right ...

"I am wondering if anyone can honestly say that they did not derive a valuable benefit, monetary or otherwise, since making a purchase for Indie."

Totally. It was worth it. For the cost of a good night out in Montreal, you got a headstart on the knowledge bus.

To the whiners, I say ... quit whining! We're enjoying the freedom party, if you don't like it go tell your story to GarageGames and see if they will give you a free license to make a multiplayer first person shooter with a big ugly ass splash screen on the front of it, instead. Good luck.

 

So, would all of those upset be happy if it just went back to a paid indie version? If not, why? If yes, why?

I was going to do this...

Look at this:

I guess that fixes everything! Whew.:roll:

...but thought better of it. lol.

 

I kinda think you should have gone with it!

Seriously though, it's an interesting question. I prefer it as a free option, for sure. After a year 1/2 with Unity Indie, I got my money's worth and then some.

If you're looking for a real answer to your question, my take is that yeah, it would stop people from being upset if they went back to paid only. But I'm basing that solely on the fact that yesterday, none of those people were mad, and today, they are.

Of course, if we're going back in time to yesterday, I wouldn't have such a beef with how they handled the customer care aspect of the transition, which is a mess. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

 

If the download links would actually work it would be really good. They all just point back to the same download page :x

 

This hit the nailed on the head as far as I'm concerned. All the people posting here about being ripped off, cheated, molested, used etc. have no reason to do so. They willingly paid $200 for a product they found worthy of $200, if they didn't think it was worth the money they would have bitched and moaned a long time ago.

The product is now free, but I don't see any features dropped, do you? So how has the product becoming free actually affected you? Not at all, yes that's right, not at all. If you thought it was worth $200 back then it's f**king worth $200 to you now as well.

You bitch because now other people, people who maybe thought $200 was a little too much, people who didn't care about Unity because it wasn't free or people who just couldn't afford Unity, can now get it. You bitch because other people are getting, from your point of view, better deals than you. This happens every f**king day in the real world, get used to it.

You are petty and your way of thinking has no place anywhere.

I actually think some people on this very forum are selling plugins with a business model where you pay what you think the product is worth to you. So if you think the product is worth nothing you can take it for free, but if you actually think that this is a great product and you want to reward the developer for spending so many hours making it you can pay 10, 50 or 100 bucks for it.

I have a hard time imagining that those people would receive any money at all from the likes of you. You would be too obsessed with other people paying less than you for the same product.

 

Yes, that bugs me to no end.

Up until now, I was a paying costumer. Not the high-end Pro customer, but a paying customer.

Now I'm a freeloader and I will get whatever support they feel like giving out for free. Don't get me wrong, I trust the Unity guys to not just drop us Indies. But it doesn't feel right. It changes from "we have a business relationship" to "I should be glad I get this stuff for free".

I don't want to get it for free. I'm willing to pay for it. And I want something in return.

 

No, but I see a lot of features added to Pro that are not included in the free version.

And I wonder, how many of these features would have been added to the Indie version if it hadn't been discontinued?

I don't mind a free version for everyone. I do think that taking the Indie version away from those of us who were willing to pay for it was a mistake.

Add a free version, while keeping Indie and Pro - I would have applauded that. Even if the difference between Indie and free would have been small (say, add the Profiler and VCS support, or as I asked for, shadows and VCS support for Indie, but not free).

Free version - yes. But the way they did it was not adding to the portfolio, but devaluing a part of it.

 

which one aside of the graphical features and the VCS that are pro only?
VCS was clear upfront that it won't happen for indie (at least if the slightest bit of logic was part of the thoughts not only hope) as it originally required the Asset Server to have such functionality at all, which is a $500 / seat Pro addon and that the visual features won't come to Indie is clear too as they are render texture based as all higher end graphical features, so impossible for Indie or now just Unity
The profiler is a feature that hobbiests don't need as they hardly create games that are that graphically / cpu demanding that they kill the performance and need such precise analyse (similar to how hobbiests will likely never use perfhud to analyze their rendering)

You really didn't lose any feature due to the freely available offer
You potentially even got things that otherwise might not have happend like async loading

 

Profiler is pro only Dreamora.

 

Found that out too thus corrected it after I went to the feature comparision page.

 

Thats it exactly.

 

Having slept on it, I get the feeling that this whole thing might hurt the Unity community. I can imagine that some people who paid for Unity Indie and feel aggrieved wondering why they should help other new users in these forums who get the product for free.

I hope these forums don't become more desolate and patronising to new users as I have a lot to learn and hopefully some experience to share as well...

It'll also be interesting over time to see what benefit comes to the Unity platform from it, personally I don't think it will cause the platform to grow any, as Unity Indie was already too cheap in my opinion. I reckon 99% of people will download it, play with it for an hour/day/week and then forget about it. I think the new people that will use it in earnest would have paid for it - so the UT (and their paid users) may suffer from less investment/support.

I would be very interested in seeing the numbers behind this decision, but I can't imagine that happening somehow

In the grander scheme of things, Unity now just became a more segragated place - the gap between (Unity) "rich" and "poor" just got wider. I'm not sure I like that.

Now, back to the game making - my new game is gonna really rock - thanks to Unity!

 

Why not do something like give Indie users a sweet upgrade deal on Pro when 3.0 comes out, instead of the weak, time limited upgrade discount they are currently offering?

This would give cash-strapped indie users time to save for it, and not anger current Pro users as that upgrade would be a ways off so they would still be getting value from their Pro purchases.

I would think that a a lot of indie users would go for this and that it would be of real value to them. It would also bring in a lot more case and it generate a lot less ill will.

 

My 2c worth (and I'm one of the freeloaders, I downloaded Unity 2.6 last night). I'm a long time Torque user and downloaded the Unity demo a while back, but the time limit wasn't enough to evaluate it properly (with the other things that I had to do in between) so I just gave up.

Now that I have a version that isn't time limited I can give it a proper run. If the free version meets my needs then fine, and if I find I need the pro version (and I prefer it to Torque) then I'll buy it - which I presume is the response that Unity is looking for.

I understand the frustration of paying for something that is now free. I'm not going to repeat what other people have already said, but I'd like to add that all the paying customers will also get the next "indie" version (3.0?) for free, where previously it would have probably been a paid upgrade.

 

Thanks! I really was upset with that uniknowledge contest because I want to continue developing my tutorial and I needed a license.

Now I will make a new one, but in portuguese, because my english is too bad.

Now, with Unity indie being free, I can create a bigger tutorial that introduces Unity to all people that likes development but doesn't know where to start, now they can start with Unity, because it is easy to learn and the basic version that has everything they need to learn is free. In my country, Brasil, and South America, several people wants to learn to later start to work on some business, but most of them doesn't has money.

Ok, US$199 is a few bucks on european countries, but this is *almost* all the money for 60% of the families by month. Does Unity will sold here? You can see that some business here is using Unity now:

http://www.aquiris.com.br/
http://www.edgy.com.br/
http://www.cubo.cc
http://www.quantixgames.com

They know Unity, but other business of the game industry here doesn't, and with a free Unity license I think several training schools will adopt Unity and, as adverse effect, the game industry here will do the same, because they will have skilled people speciliazed in Unity.

Recently I was called by a big game company to work with a new version of their game that would be made with Unity, just because I know a little about it. This is a MMORPG, my dream is work on a team creating a MMORPG, but I couldn't work because I have to get my graduate degree and they are several miles from where I am.

There are other local business here, but they don't know Unity, so I can't get a job on game industry while I am a undergraduate student. I think things will start to change now.

 

Profiler is something that Indies too might want to use. Certainly not to the extend of fine-tuning that Pros do, but if you have a performance hog in your game, anything that helps you find out what the bottleneck is, helps.

VCS support! The main thing about that is that it doesn't require the asset server anymore, and everyone who's doing serious coding uses some kind of VCS.

Finally, the splash screen thing. Frankly, I was more happy with no splash screen but no windos export than I am now. According to this forum, I'm not the only one. The 2.6 release was an opportunity to bring peace back, because frankly a couple of us are still miffed over that change.

 

I think they should make a free version of Pro that has everything in it that pro does but either can't publish to web or has massive size restriction, or some other limiting factor that stops in being used commercially. Continue with the indie and pro as is.

That way people can work on something in Pro and when they are pretty sure they will finish and publish it then they can actually part with cash for the license.
If they can't afford pro then they can stick with indie.
Just my 2 cents.

 

Reading the forum I see reference to free will, e.g. No one forcing people to purchase Unity Indie, “you saw the price and pressed the button”. This is true, however people also saw the price and did not press the buy button WHY? Could this be because they did not think it was worth the money or simply because they did not have the money to spare? Either way the pressing or not pressing of the purchase button was based in some way on the money.

Question) does this mean all the new “UNITY” owners think the software is worthless as they did not want it before?

Anyway welcome all you new Unity owners, but WARNING start saving, because after using the free version for over 60 days Unity will change their stance overnight and demand their money off you.

Tables reversed – how would that feel?

 

I think Unity should give everything away for free and give everyone a thousand million dollars

 

Finally someone with some sense!!

 

Hey there,

here is a thought for everyone to consider. Last week to build a team of FIVE Unity coders, properly licensed and ready to go to work on your project tomorrow would have been somewhat costly, now you can have ten, twenty, thirty members on your team at absolutely no cost at all - surely this is a
magnificent offer from the Unity guys'n' gals!

This decision also makes it far easier for education to encourage indie developers from within their ranks, something which I will put to great practise next week in Warrington - UK.

Some of those students will now undoubtedly become part of the Unity family and massively extend their learning in the process.

Thanks for making such a bold and brave stance Unity!

 

@Robz Luckily Unity can't retroactively ask for payment (since there is nothing in the EULA to that effect), although there's nothing stopping them from charging for the next update (just like there's not commitment to an update at all). At that time everyone can decide if they want to pay or continue with the free version.

 

Agreed, recruiting people for a unity indie based project just got a whole lot easier, just tell them to go download it for free and start coding. Before it was diffcult to use unity in an open source/community based project, because people don't want to have to put down money in order to participate usually. Being able to use free downloadable tools is the norm. Now the floodgates are open for creating community based unity projects around indie. I expect to see them across the internet soon on sourceforge and similar sites, now that participation would not be limited to paying Unity customers only.

I'm really excited about the potential this offers to the open source community. (I know the engine itself isn't open source, but the code, scripts, and games we build with it can be now, modifications may be made by all)

It also seems to have good possibilities for letting end users use the unity indie product as a level editor. All the core game code could be compiled into DLL's, and they could move assets around and the like in the scene files to make their own mods of commercial Unity games if the developer so allowed and provided the necessary source files to the user. So Unity created games can now be "moddable" by the community.

 

Sure, I agree with some posters it devalues our investment a bit; but, let's be honest, Unity at $200 was a steal to begin with.

What's really positive about this for me is that I teach at a university where they've been dragging their feet about getting Unity loaded in the classrooms. Budgets are tight.

Well, now my university and others can install Unity for free, meaning more students all over the world will be learning it, which strengthens the Unity brand, which protects the intellectual investment we've all made in learning Unity in the first place.

Unity has to be successful or five years from now we'll all be having to learn how the next game engine works. It's kind of like how Autodesk took over the low end CAD market decades ago, there were so many pirate versions of Autocad going around that everyone knew it and the companies started buying it. I think in the end we (the Unity license owners) will benefit from this in greater ways than a few hundred dollars can measure.

 

Wow!!!

Those who may are upset and angry:
Hey guys, try to be thankful for this wonderfull and easy tool to get your ideas alive(if free or not, the software remains the same/is even better now), enjoy the new Unity 2.6 and move on!
What really matters in the end is the product you created.

 

I had only 7 days left from the trial, but now... 8)
Thx guys!

 

This is true, but if you have more than one of them working collaboratively and using Indie. You will have nightmares keeping any kind of version control.

 

And if the developing company is using even a single Pro license, they all have to buy the Pro version. No mixing of license types in a company setting.

 

I just wanted to say thanks to the Unity team. I have been eying Unity 3D and trying to decide between it and Torque. After researching, lurking in the forums and trying the demos I was still a little scared to commit to one product or the other. Now that Unity 3D is free it is a no brainer. Thanks for such a high quality product!

 

I also agree with this sentiment exactly.
A 3-tier approach (free,cheap,expensive) would've been better.

 

I think you can put the code under version control and some other stuff, but can't do it with levels and prefabs.

 

Is true, is a great step.

but, Unity Team must give a prizes for all user who bought the engine and lost the money.

A real prize not a fake smile tell us "We are very generous with you, accept without conditions".


I think that give all of us an iphone basic license is a great gift and every user will be happy.

 

So um, what are the feature upgrades in the free version that are noteworthy?

PS: I am really happy that it is free now, but I wish the time constraint for the upgrade would be dissolved. I don't think we can muster up $1000+ in less than 2 months, especially when other expenses are around the corner because of holidays...

PPS: I also hope since it is free now, there will be quicker responses to the threads that people need help in. The forum seems far too dead when it comes to helping people...

 

I'm glad to hear Unity has gone free for "indie" devs I purchased my copy when version 2.0.1 came out and loved it instantly. My friends were also amazed by it but a little hesitant to purchase a license, now that won't be an issue.

I do have a question though. I purchased Unity as part of a mac software bundle. Will I still qualify for the discounted Pro version or iPhone basic?

 

I wonder why they are silent Unity team officials?

They do not care?

They will not find a better solution?

 

You must be reading a different forum than I am; this is one of the most helpful (if not the most helpful) forums I've seen.

--Eric

 

Angel38 - seriously you need to chill out, you sound like an 8 year old. We understand it was a lot of money but you bought it with the hopes of getting it back in games sales I assume - so go do that. Nothing has changed.

Unity is a business and they do what's is best for them to succeed - they are trying to accommodate us (I bought the license in March), but you simply cannot keep everyone happy. You want something for free? Who should get it? What is the cut of time of purchase for you free gift? What if I am 1 day off - will I be as mad as you are now?

 

I was a little disappointed at first too. And I also hat the thoughts about being treated 2nd class because I own the free thing now. Then I thought: Wait a minute...

They won't start treating Indie users 2nd class because it's their image as a whole. They give away Unity basic for free to market it. If they market something without the support they've provided so far they are getting the same negative image because people will notice that.
So Unity won't do that. Besides: From everything they've done so far I wouldn't consider them as a Company to do do that anyways.

Then I thought (and yes - that's selfish): Damn! I PAID for that and now all the others won't have to. Wild curses ... oh. Hey. Unity 3.0 Will also be free for me. Uhm. Okay - I wasn't looking forward to paying (even a smaller amount of) money for the upgrade. Hey cool!

Other people are pushing their products. Google being one of them. Google has quite a lot of money to push whatever they want ... so Unity better be estabished by the time Google has their 3D Browser plugin/development tools out. I wouldn't want to see Unity go down as I love their work and mentality. So yeah - go market your tools like this.

I do find the 2 month time period to upgrade a little short, though.
And I hope Unity makes sure that now that it's free it' not the wrong toolsets that are going to be "Pro" that might otherwise have been "Indie".

Oh yeah - and nobody likes crybabies on the forums. So there's one more negative aspect of the whole Unity for free thing, too.

Still as a whole I support the whole unity for the masses move. Nice one - hope others follow the example

 

> I wonder why they are silent Unity team officials?
> They do not care?

Reason 1: Many of them are at the Unity conference.

Reason 2: They've already answered all your points. You clearly aren't happy with the answers, but what good would it do for them to repeat themselves?They gave some recent purchasers refunds, and offered discounts to others. Not everyone is going to be happy with these offers but the only way to avoid this controversy is for them to never lower the price of any of their products, ever. (And even that doesn't work- there used to be complaints about the price of Unity Indie and the need for a longer demo period or a free option.)

There's something a bit sad about all this, though it's just human nature. People who were happy to pay for an awesome tool are now furious because someone else got it cheaper or free later on. I felt the same way when I upgraded to Pro just before a sale, but I moved on. It's the same tool that you thought was worth spending money on, and you've (hopefully) gotten months of use out of it in the meantime.

Ask yourself also if you'd kick up the same fuss if the TV you just bought went on sale, or your new computer or iPod were replaced with a better model. Sure you'd be mad, but you already know: this is how the world works. Sometimes the timing works for you, sometimes you get unlucky.

 

All I can say is the incredible development suite we've come to love (Unity Pro) and the amazing support and updates the Unity Team continue to offer for FREE are worth their weight in gold. Well done! Brilliant, incredible. oooh! Refreshing!

Let's change the world of game development once and for all - Together! CHARGE!........

 

False, I'm Happy for all people, is a gift for a lot of people, Im not a bad person.

I'm disappointed as the team unity stole their users without giving them something of real value.

Yeah.. thank you, this is my problem not yours. Is easy talk about the pocket of others people.

 

Thank you Unity team for a great update! I am working on a character pack at this moment, and to me this update is a godsend. The animation editor is great and opens up a whole new range of possibilities for us. I allready did a lot of animation work, and now I can start finetuning all this without leaving the editor, and other people can easily add more animation without having to buy extra software... love it. The other feature I really love is the CombineMeshes addition. I had a script up and running that worked exactly the way this function does, but now it's native and faster and I'll happily rewrite my routines . And of course most of the enhancements are very welcome. I know this was not a feature update, but to me it turned out to be one

I do understand how a lot of people must feel after spending their money on the Indie version, but try to see the future benefits of this, it's a smart move.

 

That's awesome... and i'm totaly ANGRY about myself that i don't have the 750,- EUR at hand to upgrade to pro till the end of 2009

 

Here's a pro tip (and this goes out to all of the "they stole from me" crowd: Screaming and whining in a public forum is FAR from the proper course of action. The only thing you're accomplishing here is giving everyone here the impression that you don't know how to behave like an adult. Good luck getting help / collaboration when you've finished burning bridges.

 

Unity wrote
To show our appreciation to our Unity Indie customers we've decided to offer you an upgrade of your Unity Indie license to Unity Pro for just €749. This offer is valid through the end of the year


Thank you but no way. I have just paid you for what is in effect a 3 month license of unity indie plus on top of that i will not even get a discount on iphone basic as i purchased it at the same time. Seems i lose out in all directions. I dont understand the 60 day rule, i purchased a license for all version 2 so i should get a refund within that version its you that changed the value of the license but me that is at a loss.

I would understand version 2 license holders not getting a refund when 3 is out but now! it makes no sense.

I think you treated your customers better when Unity was MAC only, do I see the Microsoft business model here ?

Finally beware all unity customers

Unity's MORE OPEN APPROACH roadmap does not seem so open; purchasing a license for a version could possibly only last a few months e.g. version 3 next 3.5 and then before you know it version 4. Companies like Autodesk have the decency to state the duration of the license.

PS I know unity versions have had a long life in the past but.......... well you make your own mind up on that

 

Man, you should really take a little time to think about what "real value" means to you. Basically, what you're doing here is stealing your own life from you. And that's something I find truly sad. What would it be like if you wouldn't tie "real value" to the money you spend for the product but instead the possibilities the product offers to you if you use it?

Seems you lost when you decided to put all your attention on what your not getting. What do you think it would be like if you took a look at the product (Unity) and instead of complaining about all the things you're not getting, you'd praise the things you are getting?

 

As motionblur mentioned above: See it different, you've paid for the license, now it's free just 3 months after - that's a bummer ok. But you don't have to pay for unity indie 3.0 when it comes out, so actually you will save money in the future. And for the next 2 months you can upgrade to pro for a lower price , the rebate is about the same what you have paid for indie. This way they give you a chance to get the money back even if you bought the license more than 60 days ago. That's more than fair, you don't lose anything, you canupgrade for a cheaper price andyou won't have to pay the price for the future indie upgrades - it's a win win situation.

 

People, some of you are really-really crazy!

Every one of my friends and collegues are extremely happy about this release - and you complain .