Unity is going to start charging money per game install on top of their subscription model

https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates

This decision is going to cost a lot of money to mobile developers and low-cost premium games (Among Us, Vampire Survivors, etc...). This also means that any time someone will pirate your game, it could actively cost you money.

I feel sorry for the hard-working devs at Unity who will have to bear with the S***storm this controversial decision is going to bring

 

Please dont kill the engine just yet

Anyone even thought about humble bundle, gamepass, demos and all that?

 

I don't think there is an issue. Most indie developers won't pass the revenue threshold. I think this is to make more revenue from successful mobile F2P. It seems unity is in bad shape but I hope this doesn't backfire.

 

So now we pay for a broken and consistently mismanaged engine, but we have to ALSO pay for game installs?

At this point they really need to just figure out a revenue model that actually works, this is a dumpster fire of hit and misses and its just getting tiring now.

 

This is ridiculous. We'll leave the ecosystem ASAP. Especially for us AR devs, this is a kick in the ass. Was thinking to go native for the Apple Vision Pro anyways, since Unity did not even bother responding to our Beta request. So I think it's about time now.

 

So, how do they track the installs? Are they going to do it through analytics? What about games that are completely offline? Or what about pirated games, copies that are identical to release version but has not been paid for? What about reinstalls, are they going to count as well? Why not just do revenue share?

 

- What if you offer your game for free on patreon and pass 200k in yearly revenue?

- What if you offer your game behind a paywall on patreon, pass 200k in revenue, but people decide to distribute your game (illegally) beyond your control?

Do you pay $0.20 for every unwanted install?

Imagine someone having access to a lot of clients (botnet?) phoning to Unity about running a successful game that already qualifies for these rules, you could target a company with an attack this way.

 

What about WebGL?

 

Ah, well. I was actually feeling sorry for the devs who are Unity employees, since they are often blamed for all the crap the management keeps pulling.

But yeah, I feel sorry for us as well, devs who use unity to make games/apps

 

Game installs is possibly the worst solution they could ve done. Just take a flat % royalty fee as soon as the developers pass like 500,000 or so. I dont understand, game installs will complicate it so much more… Not sure what to say

 

This is certainly my question. We don't do stores only side loads and mostly on desktop stuff. No analytics available ever. Are they planning to put some telemetry in the runtime system (which might cause all kinds of legal issues)? Or does this mean they force us to change from Pro to Industry license model for anyone that doesn't use the store?

 

Do they charge this if the game makes more then 1Mil and it passes 1Mil downloads or either? Like if my game makes very little money but its popular will I still get charged? This can bankrupt people if it is either.

I think it is disgusting either way and I am not sure how they can apply it to existing games that were released under a different license.

 

This has only a negative impact, no matter which angle I try to look at it...

Installations count being based on lifetime BUT sales being based on yearly can lead to a year costing MORE than it revenued. It'd be a very specific case, sure, but it's not impossible.

Removing Unity Plus also affects amateurs and indies strongly, giving an affordable option for advanced features.

$200.000 for 200.000 installs makes $40.000, 20% of sales.
Why not simply go with a percentage on sales ?

What about "phone is the controller" games ?
What about cheap games ?
What about game demos ? Don't they count as installations, too ?

I've been working on my $15 game for years, and I'm now terrified at the idea of releasing it. It simply sounds like there are possible cases where you owe more than you earn, since both metrics (sales and installations) are completely separate units.

 

FYI - there is an official Unity thread discussing the blog and price changes here - Official - Unity plan pricing and packaging updates - Unity Forum

I'm still reeling and freaking out from the changes and trying to work out what it actually means for me and my business model writings apps for clients ( mobile, museums, installations etc ) after lack of sleep and other real life stressful events, so it will take some time for this to sink in. Further more I may misunderstand some stuff that I've written below.

What I did notice is that the official thread was started Aug 22, but replies only happened today, and things like removing the Plus subscription take immediate effect ( though some grace period and things for existing subscriptions )

Overall my first impression is that this will destroy Unity, they are triple-dipping
1. You pay for Pro ( Plus for up to another year )
2. You pay per install over 200k and $200k revenue ( per title ? )
3. On mobile you might already use Unity ads and they get a cut of that, plus then a cut of installs of the game that you are offering their ads system in.

Worst thing is your apps are retro-actively eligible for this, unless its somehow tied to apps made or update in say Unity 2024.1f1 onwards.

Edit:
Just occurred to me I wonder how many indie and AA studios are suddenly going to announce a title being delay, as they decided the financials with Unity no longer makes sense when compared to the cost of moving development over to Unreal instead.

 

Literally was just talking in the office yesterday about "I wonder if unity are capable of messing up more than they have recently" and then this released as a blog post today.....

To everyone who in the past was saying unity is a better engine to use because at least you pay just for the engine while you use it and no rev share...well now they have found way to do rev share without calling it that, whilst still charging you to use the engine.

Pick a side unity. Either give us the engine for free and take rev share over X earnings, or charge for the engine and take nothing. You cant double charge us whilst the competition absolutely obliterates the engine in every way including pricing now.

EDIT: Also they announced they are axing plus. So you have to subscribe to pro going forwards.... Absolute joke.

 

Alright everyone, I can see now that its clearly a move to push their ****y ads and other ironsource style rubbish into games. This quote really boils my blood:

"Developers of free-to-play games (which have a much higher install rate than premium titles) will have the option to offset this fee by adopting other Unity services, such as its LevelPlay advertising mediation service."

From https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/unity-to-start-charging-fee-pegged-to-game-installs

So you want to offset some of the cost? Add more service rubbish into your game. So they created services nobody wants or needs, then force them down our throats when the plan doesnt work out for them.

 

and yet they have the shear cheek to promote the dropping of Unity Plus as 'simplifying' the number of plans

'Finally, Unity Plus is being retired for new subscribers effective today, September 12, 2023, to simplify the number of plans we offer. Existing subscribers do not need to take immediate action and will receive an email mid-October with an offer to upgrade to Unity Pro, for one year, at the current Unity Plus price.' ( taken from todays Blog )​

but introduce levels of complexity in the runtime fee/rate that is mind-boggling judging by the number of confused posts and situations people are having to ask for clarification about. Plus here is a new one - what happens to my fee/rates if I switch from Personal/Plus to Pro whilst a title is released? Its important to know as Pro comes with diminishing costs per install, but the others are a constant flat fee.

 

I hope they aren't just adding extra networking calls to the player executable for telemetry or other purposes. I'm in the middle of trying to do some very low level socket programming to (further) optimize hundreds of devices to all run on a single network. Any extra packets being routed through the network could contribute to congestive collapse. This would not be appreciated.

 

Honestly sincere advice UT, just redact this announcement, announce a normal revenue % share model that benefits you when your users are successful only and call it a day. Whoever comes up with these stupid strategies should move industry.
If you still go through with this revenue model, you re going to lose trust of all your users. Pick your side

 

create a problem and offer the solutions for it. Classic

 

MonoBehaviour.rigidbody

: deprecated for years to allow backwards compatibility.
Unity Pricing model: completely overturned overnight, with no communication, no transparency, no discussion or mediation whatsoever.

The fact that this affects games that have been created years prior is the sickest joke of them all. You're actively bugging developers who may, for whatever reason, have left Unity behind them in the past 10 years, now having to take time out of their schedules to decide what the hell they are going to do about their free-to-play they released.

 

Imagine if Unreal had C#. Their influx of Unity users today would crash their servers. I understand its not easy to add a new scripting language. But, if they did; it is difficult to not see a massive outflux of millions of Unity users. I would think it would be wise for Unreal to prepare for the next hike in prices that Unity taxes us on.

 

There's this tho:
https://github.com/nxrighthere/UnrealCLR

 

I have been watching in amazement at the number of people who post on this forum about how the Unity Advertising teams claw back money they deem as from "fraudulent" impressions, don't respond to paying customers about changes or requests for evidence of this so-called fraud, and so on.

Just what Unity needs is another "we will track the numbers for you, and we will charge you money based on the numbers we make up tabulate on our servers" fee.

There are four stages to a company. We're in the third stage.

* we have no idea if this little idea will be successful
* lots of people depending on us, sorry, we need to charge money now
* we need to chase revenue as slaves to the metrics which feed into share price <----- NOW
* we will be saddled with unrelated debt and imploded by our private equity lords

 

It does have C# via a plugin or something. The thing is, C# is not the greatest language for gamedev in the first place.

 

Fight me, I'll be out by the parking lot.

 

It might not be. But, I suspect many of our programming journey's started with Unity3D and that's all we know.

 

"Local News: A person fights a cat on a parking lot, insists it was a result of programming debate. The cat refused to comment."

Spoiler

I started with Pascal, switched to C++, and every time I work in C# I miss a ton of C++ features. C# does have some nice stuff though, like extension methods. However, lack of RAII and deterministic lifetimes and GC nature of the language hurts.

Honestly, though. The whole situation brings two my own sayings to mind:
"All journeys end". "Tools come and go".

 

There are a few different ways a company can grow revenue:


1. Market your existing products and services to new customers;
2. Make new products and services and sell them to new and existing customers;
3. Convince your existing customers to buy more of your existing products because they like them and want more;
4. Come up with creative pricing structures to bleed more money out of the existing customer base without adding value by finding ways to charge more for the products they're already buying

#4 is often a red flag in my opinion. Companies that do this are usually well on their way to failure or acquisition.

 

For the time being, let's keep the discussion of this topic one place. Clearly there are a lot of questions and very little information at this point, so watch for additional clarification in that thread, and keep discussion of the topic there.
https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/