Unity Free and the Splash Screen

Apologies if this isn't the right place for this topic, but I couldn't think of a better sub forum to ask this question.

I realize that custom splash screens are available only in Unity Pro (and the PRO plugins). However, I only want to make very simple and silly 2D games for smartphones, and the only feature I'm interested in Unity Pro is the ability to replace Unity's splash screen with my own. All the other features seem interesting in their own right, but I cannot see myself using them, much less needing them.

So I was wondering if it is possible to negotiate a "special" license with the Unity team, or if the team is thinking about offering "customizable licenses" (where you pay for the features you want, rather than whole packages) in the not-so-distant future. Despite all the debate going around about Unity pricing vs UE4, I'd gladly pay $75/mo if I could use my own splash screen in my games. $225/mo or $4500 upfront, however, are dealbreakers.

Does anyone here know if they sell custom licenses? And if they don't, where can I leave suggestions to the team?

 

There aren't any special licenses available; what you see on the store is what there is.

--Eric

 

I don't get why people bother with unity splash. Simple put your logo after that. I think worse the intel or nvidia

 

Users will likely not know what unity even is. Those who do will not care that it says unity.

 

Did you care if a game will show or not a Intel logo?

For me splashes are time to keeping pressing ESC.

 

i wish they would make the unity splash screen and logo look better, imo it looks hideous.

 

Its very ugly and doesn't even follow their own guidelines of how to use the logo. IMO it should just be the solid white powered by Unity logo on a black background.

 

I have never heard of any custom price plan that only removes the splash screen. You would need the Pro version of Unity. For smartphones, that means either $4500 up front or $225 per month for a year (so $2700 per year). That is admittedly a steep price to pay just to get rid of the splash screen, especially if you are not going to use any other Pro features.

I see you mentioned UE4. Remember, UE4 includes a splash screen in their $19/month price. So if getting rid of the splash screen is your main goal, then you would need to rule out UE4.

Why does the splash screen matter to you if you are making a "very simple and silly 2D games for smartphones"? I am just curious.

 

If anyone's ever seen a movie released by two studios - Columbia Tri-Star for example they split the screen down the middle.

And I agree the Unity splash screen does look bad and it's no longer the case where someone sees the Unity logo and thinks, oh, that's why it's a poor game. I think it would be better of the Unity logo if it were a watermark on the free splash screen rather than a separate splash screen just to make that much less work for us lazy folk.

 

It is not a deal breaker.


You could develop as you go along. Once the money starts coming in, you can buy a subscription where increasing revenue from your game slowly by slowly, pays for your copy of Unity.

 

I completely agree with that. If it follows their guidelines it would look really nice.

 

how about a forced splash as is, but with this addition:
1) developer can use one out of 3 unity splash versions to be shown (e.g. white logo, on black, black logo on white, 3d'ish gradient logo, on black
2) developer can choose when it's been shown, as first splash (1st slot), second splash (2nd slot), or third (3rd slot).
if no slot is selected, it will be first. Note: whichever slot it is selected, It cannot be bypassed, and it stays there for like 3 seconds before it continues.

 

Those are great ideas.

 

You can probably minimise the amount of time the splash is up by having an empty scene with your game logo on it load first. This is pretty quick, and AFAIK there's no artificial delay. It will still show though

There's a custom license you can buy to remove the splash screen - it costs $1500 though. How about this: if your game is a hit, simply buy Unity then the splash is gone

 

This....
this is why people don't like it. If Unity can adding better splash screen for Unity Logo, people complain could be reduce

 

I deleted a number of Unity apps because of the splash screen. I was at a developer event and was trying to demonstrate my game to a publisher. It appeared to crash because it was taking far longer than usual to load. Turned out I had caught the icon of a Unity game I had downloaded that wasn't very optimised. I made sure that didn't happen again that night with mass deletion, and now anyone else's Unity games are on distant pages. Sorry to anyone whose games I don't play as much as I would otherwise do.

The choice of Unity splash screen is a great idea, although I would prefer it if the Unity logo was a massive watermark taking up the bottom half of the screen, leaving the other half for a developer image. That way you can be certain you are loading the correct app.

 

I wonder why you want to use Unity for simple 2d games anyway?

 

Why not? the 2d toolset is quite good, and if you are more used to unity over another engine like gamemaker, I would totally go for unity, and I actually already did it

 

It was an iPhone, a trailing finger must have brushed the wrong icon by mistake.

 

I think that you delete the games because its quality, not unity3d logo. Until you turn into a pro game developer you can't afford unity3d pro, because your games simple don't pay itself. Now thinking myself, this pattern could be causing Unity3d logo be a "amataur warning".

 

Or they can allow the user to make their own splash screen and add the powered by at the bottom of any build.

 

can we get better Unity splash screen please........

#after some reconsidering

why don't Unity do some competition for new Unity Splash Screen???

 

They want it gone on mobile. That costs then $4500, not $1500.

 

The logo is ugly. When I release to Android, I use Unity Free, which reminds me how atrocious it looks. With 2 Million users, seems they'd be willing to give an artist a few hours so they could highlight their product better than that fuzzy gray rendering from 5 years ago.

Gigi

 

Wow, I did not expect this many replies over the weekend! Thanks for all the input fellas!

Regarding UE4's splash screen, are you sure? I've heard the opposite: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/235141-Unreal-Engine-4/page9?p=1561349&viewfull=1#post1561349

Regarding the games - "Simple and silly" is an artistic choice. It's how I like to make them. As to why the splash screen would matter... well, it just does. I don't like it. I would like to pay to have it removed. But I can't afford the asking price right now. That's why I was attempting to negotiate.

Well guys, if the game is a hit, I'll end up buying the full license anyway (which is $4500 with both mobile plugins) - it's part of the EULA. I just think it's silly to pay for 30+ features when you're only interested in one. Even more so when you're starting out and have a very low budget.

As others have said before, why not?
If I have a change of heart down the road and decide to do a 3D (or even 2.5D) game, I'll already have an engine which I'll be familiar with.

 

That could actually be a great idea, I've seen so many splash screens saying "Powered by Unity" that were way better than the official

Or the opposite https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/7363, black on white looks cool, but I've also seen logos like you described

 

No. Nothing to do with quality. I deleted the apps because I had caught the wrong app once at an event. The fastest way to avoid a repeat at the event was delete any other Unity apps.

There have been some great apps start on Unity free, earned good money and then been upgraded with Pro. And there are other very good apps that fall far short of earning the $100K that forces Pro.

 

They don't and I tend to doubt that they will.

I think part of the reason Unity has become the juggernaut that it is is because of the free version and all the free marketing they've gained because of that splash screen. I think it might just be in their best interest to leave things as is.

 

... you're willing to spend a steep $75/month JUST to get rid of the splash screen? Are you nuts? There is no customizable licenses at this time and even if there were, I would advise you to not spend your hard earned money on such at thing unless you have an extremely profitable game.

1) The splash screen, personally I don't mind it and I don't have a problem displaying it in my game for Unity being such a wonderful framework for free use.
2) Unless you are planning on making serious money off your game (and good luck with that), you shouldn't bother with getting a full license to Unity. It's not worth it unless you are going to become a professional developer with some serious annual revenue of game development.
3) You would be taking a gamble investing in it if you don't make a return.
4) Like everyone else says, the logo isn't that bad. It's on the screen for two seconds and most people have NO idea what Unity is or will care as long as they can get to the game quickly.

Good luck.

 

Unity really sell the splash screen for 1500$ excl. VAT? I have a similar problem with Unity Free and Pro. The asset store has the real features and there Unity get 30% for each asset purchase, where i spent more then 1000€. And now, i have to buy the Pro version for what? There is no feature i really need...

For smartphone 2-5€ games the splash screens are not so annoying, but for desktop games it is a killer (ugly, cheap looking, should be never on the first page). Desktop games have a high income in the first days, weeks and after the price is dropping rapidly, unlike the smartphone games. If we blame us at the beginning with desktop games, we never get a good income.

It is hard to explain to the Unity guys, why their pricing strategy is worse, because they need money as a company and it is not their plan to provide 0$-income customers. But we as customers don't want to pay 1500 excl. VAT (19% in Germany) for nothing. I would recommend a Base Unity License for 500$, where Unity could provide a minimum set of features and then they can provide additional features separately or in the Pro package. We can compare the Unity engine with UE4 (19€ MO + 5% of the full price, at 50€ 2.5€ for Epic, 15€ (30%) for Steam publisher), which has built in serious mudules unlike the most Unity modules (e.g. useless terrain editor (but good tree editor)), but also with Blender game engine (free), where we have an integrated powerfull 3D mesh tool, physic, shader, much more better free terrain editor and more, but no company behind (nobody is responsible for that tool).

For new game developer UE4 is at the time the clear winner for desktop games and i wouldn't choose Unity at the moment, not just because the high price and the non professional way with Asset-Store Assests (destroying terrains irreversible, deleting files without asking, need 30 days to understand an asset and so on...) to fill the gap in UNITY. Where i compared Unity and UE4, UE demanded 25% of the selling price, that was inacceptable, but now 5% is okay. EPIC now get the most of the new game developers, which is bad for us Unity users, because the Unity-Asset-Producers could be shrink or stop growing. (we need them, because Unity alone is not enough)

The another thing is, that desktop game producers need the features like changing LOD stages, mirror and reflection and more to make the game good looking, handy game developers don't even think about that features, because it would slow down more the game. Perfect for smartphone games and again a handycap for desktop games. Unity provide smathphone game developer, and smaller (bigger have its own engine) game companies with an investor in background and there comes EPIC with UE4 and get all the new desktop game developer.

Free, Base, Pro edition, where the Base Edition can be used until 100.000 as your Free Edition and limit the legal entity to 1 or 2-3 persons. I guess, this would be acceptable for Unity and for lot of customers. Let us begin with earning money with games, before Unity do it form us. It is a simple logical way.

Give the same chance for the desktop games as for the smartphone games.

I hope it helps you to understand the problem.

 

I find a workflow how to get ride of the embarassing ugly, pain in eye splash screen.

From Hypocoder:

> You can probably minimise the amount of time the splash is up by having an empty scene with your game logo on it > > load first. This is pretty quick, and AFAIK there's no artificial delay. It will still show though

- Show that splash screen a short time.
- Create an executable outside of unity, use this to start the unity game instance. In this executable you can put your first splash screen or company intro (movie).

Probably the EULA have somewhat against that external executable, but i don't belive that. And when yes, it is questionable, hard to define.

Im agree with sedativechunk it has to do somewhat with dignity, if I would use 70-100% of Unity Pro assets and i wouldn't need more assets to build my game, then the price is okay, but if i could just use about 20% and, that would make in the whole game developing about 5% and 95% comes from Unity Assets, 3D-sites, Blender, Music/SFX-sites, and so on, then Unity Pro is extremly overpriced. Unity could be also happy about the Asset Store gold mine and should distribute the license more cheaper to boost the asset store. Im a bit worry about, that Unity's marketing react too slow, this can cause that a lot of developer run over to UE4. Im a developer, coding a game is just a small part, the most convenient for me, but creating, animating, texturing 3D objects need the most of the time, which is done in my case with Blender alone.
I guess everyone should try UE4 for one month, i will, to decide what game engine is better for the purpose. I would lose all the very Unity specific Assets, if i would chose the UE4 engine, but i wouldn't losing more money in Unity Assets and in Unity Pro.

 

Splashscreen is meh.

 

The splashscreen wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so ugly.

 

I don't think giving the nice folks at UT a shout-out for giving me their awesome stuff for free is too bad. But I agree, the current splash looks shoddy. Creating a better one would profit both the game developers and UT.

 

I'm shocked there isn't a Unity Feedback item requesting them to update their splash screen or to choose from multiple options... at best there is this: http://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/ability-to-show-progress-on-app-

 

Well I agree to this. I don't need the pro features atm but would love to pay a reasonable fee to just remove that splash.

 

There's an item now: http://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/improve-the-unity-free-splash-screen

Feel free to upvote it.

 

Done

 

I personally think the splash screen is not that bad. It goes away pretty quickly and I don't think it's that ugly either. But that might just be me. Considering Unity offers such an advanced framework for free, I wouldn't consider the splash screen a big deal.

 

I'll be proud to display the Unity flash screen when it doesn't look like it's still living in the 90's.

How hard can it be to get a decent intro logo?

 

Unity declined the request here: http://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/improve-the-unity-free-splash-screen
The reason is: "I'm just closing this because what a good splash screen is it's very subjective, but we hear you! We have some alternative options we are playing with right now!".

Does anyone have any news regarding the bold part?

 

There's a nice new one that's animated in 5.

 

Oh cool! Thanks for the hint hippocoder.
Is there anywhere a sample (video on youtube showing it)?

 

If you pay for it you have a right to complain. If its free, you take what you are given. Unity doesn't have to have a free version of the engine at all.

 

Yes, there will be an updated much more sexy version of the splashscreen in Unity 5. And one that actually hopefully fits in with our own branding guidelines, unlike Unity 4's splashscreen.

 

I think it would be nice if there were a few to choose from

 

Ideas - http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-logo-animation.296648/