Unity offers subscription

Price is too high. At 50$ per month would probably be a bit more attractive (knowing that in the end, you don't own any of those licenses).

 

You can get a credit card with no APR for 12 month, then re-pay the $4500 at $375/mo (or pay less with little surcharge later) and keep the license, maybe upgrade to the next version with 50% discount in 3 years.
The problem with personal loans for under $5000 is interest rate running up to 20%, which is higher then average credit card APR. Besides, having a credit card and paying it on time may significantly improve your credit score!

 

Subscription could work for me if the price for a combo eg ios pro + unity pro was lower. Or a 6 months option was available.
I have purchased a pro license assuming that the major releases time is around 2 yrs and I ll get a discount on next version.
I hope those assumptions will prove correct.

 

Well, this is a gossip thread and the topic does relate to financing.

As the government can and does garnish the wages of it's citizens the smarter plan and faster plan for recovery would have been to extend credit to households that had credit debt, even those meeting their obligations, and let them pay back in the appropriate pay-off amount to the incompetants that extended the credit to begin with. There you have it: incompetant business and incompetant and competant borrowers bailed out with the same money. Two birds with one stone. Instead of this proxied shell game of greed and blame.

Unfair to those that have been competant and paid off the debts or that never owed debt but then these people are the majority and can then vote to send the policy makers home that printed all this money to hand out to their big business cronies. The way it was handled this time hasn't done anything to change the system that led to those abuses.

When did the world start mistaking a representative democracy with capitalism?

And if the government winds up looking at a loan it is garnishing the wages of a citizen for and finds out they were high pressure sold into a $250,000 mortage at 8% interest while working at McDonald's on minimum wage it can forgive the loan and title the home to the victim as a more competant form of HUD housing. With such a method the government would have a direct and interested party in the accountability of how they arrived at government doors needing assistance rather than big corporations interesting only in cooking books and hiding and destroying paperwork while they stash money overseas.

If governments are going to privatize defense, education, and other government services and they have much of them mostly out of greed; then they need to make public loans to citizens at government rates so citizens can decide which of those privatized government services to patronize; rather then finance big business ponsai schemes. Then you'll see a shrinking of the massive goverment waste and the associated fraudulent ponsai schemes, whether that be defense or the newly 'hot' education and health 'vouchers'.

Credit was offered ony because the companies that offered them had access to billions and trillions of government money and for no other reason. One shouldn't kid themselves otherwise; it's the mistaken believe that these companies risked their own money rather than mis-manage the loan of taxpayer money that that caused many people to mistakenly support the bail-out of those companies.

With that corrected: all I've said is that Unity should not involve banks and loans and interest rates in this plan. That is very relevant to subscription plans as that is usually the first excuse before involving banks with the extension of credit. If they want to make the subscription plan such that one has to pay $1750 at the conclusion of the contract that is up to them but do it without involving banks, most of which, poor people don't have access to anyway.

They'll be plenty of contracts that don't complete there terms but almost all of them will be from honest folk trying to make an honest living. And they'll still be pirating but it's more likely to be teenagers in the west thinking 'pirating' is brave and cool rather than professionals in developing countries.

 

If Unity offered a 24 month subscription at $50 a month I would probably get it. It just depends if I can get a better deal with interest rates on a loan or credit card, and if Unity is near a new major release. When near a new major release, before the grace period and pre-order period, the subscription would be a better deal in the short term since you get updates for new major releases at no extra charge.

 

Dear Unity --

Could you please advise what your intended release schedule is for the next two years (i.e. when you'll be releasing Unity 5 and 6). Knowing this will help me make an informed decision as to whether to buy outright or subscribe.
TYVM

 

I'd like to start seeing discounts per seat rather than a subscription...

 

+1

Also, they should drop the requirement to have Unity Pro in order to be able to purchase the other Pro (mobile) platforms.

 

That would be very cool but probably not gonna happen . They should at least be cheaper in my opinion than the base product (an add-on generally is).

 

I've asked Unity about this many times before and they refuse to answer.... which is disappointing.

 

First of all, I really hope that doesn't mean that UT will change from "new major release every more or less two years" to "new major release every year". That would be very unpleasant - but IMHO, it's the only way to make the current subscription prices look "fair".

As things are right now, to me the subscription offering really doesn't look like democratizing game development. It looks a lot more like what some greedy, evil VC-type of person would come up with to rip off those who already are having an issue with money or can't do the math. I really like the UT folks a lot but $75 per month for only a single Pro license with no add ons and one year contract binding just doesn't make sense to me at all.

If you have $75 spare each month, you can simply put those $75 on your bank account for 20 months, wait for the next major release and buy the perpetual license. Meanwhile, you can use the free versions which is an awesomely generous offer. Then, you can use which ever version you bought for the money you've saved until the end of time (actually, you do get probably around 2 years worth of minor upgrades which usually rock). After 4 years, you'll actually have spent less on using Unity when you've gotten yourself the perpetual license - plus, you own the license, indefinitely. If you don't need the latest and greatest version, you'll actually save a LOT of money that you can then use for promoting your game, of buying stuff on the asset store ... or whatever you like ;-)

Unless there's an easy way to convert the subscription to perpetual after a given amount of time (e.g. 24 months - so you'd pay a little premium for not having to pay the whole amount up front), this is really a rip off that will hurt people that are already struggling with financial issues, making them even more dependent than they already are.

Of course, if someone doesn't really plan to use Unity for a longer period of time (like, "exactly one year straight"), then it's a nice option. For all others: Do the math and keep in mind: With the perpetual license, you own the software! With the subscription, as soon as you can't pay the monthly fees, you lose the right to use the software. But you do keep the obligation to pay - read the fine print:

(Source: https://store.unity3d.com/products/subscription-faq)

In other words: Once you "buy" that subscription, this actually means you're immediately owing UT $900 and you can only use Unity Pro as long as you can pay the $75 each month. If you can't, you lose your right to use Unity but you still owe UT the money you haven't paid (until the end of those 12 months).

But kudos for making the basic mobile add-ons free. That was an awesome move in the spirit of democratizing game development (I already have everything in "Pro", so it's not something that helps me personally - but I still think it's a great move ;-) ).

 

Yeah, and that loss of income needs to be compensated....

 

I actually really dislike the subscription here , say Billy Bob starts a game company up , makes the company into an LLC and subscribes using a company card . He can at anytime declare the company bankrupt cancel the card and Unity doesn't really have anyone to go after .

Anyway it's another option . I would of preferred to pay a higher price with a by month commitment ( or shorter terms , say 600 gets you all 3 licenses for 3 months )

 

And if you're willing to take the long term approach then that's exactly what you should do. I don't understand why Unity providing other options makes them suddenly look like "evil, greedy VC-type".

Everyone's complaints are based on long term perspectives, saying how it's cheaper over 20 month or longer spans. What about projects that are less than 20 months?

Personally, if I had a project I was looking to commercialise (if I weren't looking to do that I wouldn't be looking at spending thousands on licenses any which way) I wouldn't want to wait 20 months to do it. And while I can see that this isn't a particularly attractive offer to an individual who wants to "buy Unity", from a purely business sense where what's being bought is "tools for a project" then it makes perfect sense in some circumstances. If it's a 12 month (or less) project then why spend the extra $600 per license? If it's a short term solution (say, designers use it for prototyping while custom tech is developed) then why pay extra to keep it around afterwards? If your team is temporarily expanding (as happens quite often in the games industry) why buy perpetual licenses when there are savings to be had on temporary ones?

It's like going into a supermarket to get a slice of cheese and coming out with a kilo because it's "better value". It's only actually a saving if you're going to use the other 975 grams, and if you don't end up using it you've wasted the money and the cheese, all for the sake of faux value.

I do agree that this stuff is a tad on the pricey side for me to buy a sub personally for anything I'm doing right now, and of course as a business person I'd prefer everything were cheaper (though there are circumstances where this would be attractive anyway), but I certainly wouldn't call it "evil".

 

I just think it's mildly overpriced as subscription plans are generally a long-term, even lifelong thing as opposed to a fleeting fancy. Therefore with that in mind would I be remiss in thinking the subscription should be $50 a month, plus $25 per month per extra platform (including the base platform again), encouraging multiple license adoption and so on. I guess this is a trial run though and if it fails they might wrongly assume it was due to lack of interest as opposed to the price chosen.

Alternatively, I can see convert to perpetual as being popular.

 

Really? That sucks. Over here (Australia) the directors of a company can still be held accountable for this kind of thing.

 

I think at the very least Unity could add a longer subscription such as 24 months at $50 a month. But they could easily switch to $50 a month for 12 months too and just compensate current subscribers with a $25 discount on the 2nd month's payment.

 

I am with Hippo, when a new major version (5) is released i am willing to pay 50 a month and 25 extra for a add on. Maybe you can rent the software per project, in the world of autodesk designing with revit this is more and more happening.

 

Why would you wait til right after a new release before being willing to pay $50 a month? With perpetual you get more updates for the money, but with subscription you get updates of new major releases at no extra cost. So you actually get more updates for the money by doing the opposite and waiting til near the end of a major release as compared to perpetual.

And I think renting per project would be very unpopular. I would hate it. I would be doing multiple projects at a time, and probably creating lots of smaller games.

 

yeah but you do not have too.

Because if you dev on all those device you need :

- a PC
- a Mac
- an i-device
- an Android
- a google thing
- and a dev account for each support (Google, apple, etc...)

Then if you have the cash to buy all that S***, I am sure you're pretty ready to buy license for Unity.

 

I wonder how many people who don't like the subscription model (and pricing) have yet to turn development into a successful, reliable income.

For individuals who aren't getting a return on their time, any monthly subscription where you don't own anything after 12 months will appear to be a bad investment. Of course the same can be said for perpetual licensing, but that's only an issue when new versions are announced along with their pricing (I.e. the pricing debacle for Unity 4).

For small teams and businesses however, the subscription model makes perfect sense. Do I want to buy five seats of Pro + Add-ons up front, or hire them? There's a reason company cars are leased. It's good for the books as it fits into an annual plan, and actually it may also be better from a license management perspective, assuming they've done a better job of the back-end than Adobe have (CC's license management is a joke).

Just saying, subscriptions aren't for everyone, just as paying up front for perpetual licenses (that may not be used for more than 12 months themselves) isn't practical for everyone sometimes either.

 

Sort of like having a gaming PC but not buying games for it and instead pirating because it's "too expensive" or the companies are "money hungry".

 

I cant understand the math behind the Subscription model....

The cost of my unity licenses:
UNITY PRO 1,140 €
+ iOS PRO 1,140 €
-----------------------------
Total 2,280 €

You can say I need to spend this amount at least every 2 years, so 2,280 divided by 24 months = 95€/month

An equivalent Subscription would cost me 150€/month (and I dont even own the license, it expires as soon as I stop paying the Subscription)

A fair price (for the Subscription model) in my opinion is 75€ for both Unity PRO and iOS, otherwise its not convenient

 

I thought it was a flat $75 internationally? Which I assume is in US, do a currency conversion and it's:
115€

 

You are wrong. A subscription of Pro and iOS Pro would cost 114,- EUR (2* 57,- EUR as listed on the store). This price is fine but it starts getting terrible when you rent Unity for more than 24 months:

Cost of a perpetual Pro iOS Pro license per month including price of updating:
24 months: 95,- EUR
48 months: 71,25 EUR
72 months: 63,33 EUR
96 months: 59,37 EUR

 

Dabeh, VIC20 you're right I made a mistake computing prices.
Monthly Subscription costs 57€/Month for each module.

Monthly Subscription costs for both Unity PRO and iOS PRO are: 57€ * 2 = 114€ / Month
It's still not an option. As I previously state, a fair price should be 75€/month

 

Prices like this would work for me for Pro + iOS Pro… the regular price +20% (as they are currently doing for the first 12 months):
1-24 months: 114,- EUR
24-48 months: 85,5 EUR
48-72 months: 75,99 EUR
72-96 months: 71,24 EUR

 

my cents,
The main point on the subscription model is having "free" updates between major versions. But, being a Game engine, more often than not you don't want to change versions, definitely not in the middle of a project.
We all know how development can dragg.. and there you are stucked with a monthly bill that you cannot "afford" to miss at the cost of your project! even do you´r using an older version because you don't want/ need to upgrade.
Don´t see the benefit for solo/ small teams, the others can purchase the perpetual licence anyway.

Maybe if you could have the option to purchase the version your using at the end of each 12 month period at a fraction of the total cost
EX; after 12 mth you already have payed 900$, pay an additional 900$ and you get the licence for the current version X (total 1800$ instead of 1500$)

 

You wouldn't have to spend the same amount every 2 years if you buy the licences because of upgrade pricing. That makes the subscriptions seem even more expensive.

 

Correct. To be honest, I really like the Subscription pricing model, but it's simply too expensive in my opinion

 

My biggest fear is still that they could change their minds after some years and terminate all subscription contracts from one day to another.
The support does not really answer to this topic. The fact that this is a limited-time offer and the sentence

does raise my faith in that this will never happen.

Imagine working on a project close to its end and boom no Pro anymore just because UT does not like the subscription model anymore… But hey I could buy Pro iOS Pro for just $3000,- then…

This thought makes the perpetual license look extremely attractive, I should google for "loan shark"

 

Where have the Unity reps gone?
Gigi

 

If there would be a license which would allow to pay the Pro versions of Unity on a monthly basis, I would really consider this option.
This would be really helpful for people who don't have the cash right away, and want to pay each month a small amount (like say between 50 and 100) untill the full price is payed.

 

I have stockpiled all I need over a few years. All I need is a BB and a Windows 8 device. I can get those easy in my next family contract renewal (its due in a month or so.)

The fact that I would have every possible device to test all those deployments does not mean I should be expected to fork $450 a month easily. That's 2x my car's monthly payment!

Worse bit is, Unity lets me do it all with the free licenses anyways (reason I don't complain too hard.)

 

I think I may take this option..

 

This is great for me personally. I can't justify forking over $3k but $150/month for Pro+iOS is justifiable. Now to hope my project makes money.

 

Well you fork 2250$ (150$ * 12) but not in one time. Sure if your project fail you just earn 750$ but if it succeed you loose 2250$.
Am I right ?

I still wish you good luck for your project.

 

I'm not sure I follow your earn $750 comment. Either way, subscriptions work for me better personally rather than outright capital investment. Maybe later if games start making me money I will change my methods. When it comes down to it, if I can't make ~$3k at some point, I'm better off not spending it up front.

 

I think the idea of subs are pretty good for those of us that can't just drop the $1500 on a Pro license. Not everyone can get a loan(already have one out and paying that back) or a credit card (not wanting one).

The £60 odd a month it ends up being after VAT and S*** is a little much for me just now. I'd prefer something closer £45-50 or as it would translate in dollars.

I don't get peoples complaints about the subs either. How many of you lock yourselves into a 24 month contract with a phone? It might not cost the same a month but you get the idea. As long as there's still the option for a perpetual license why should it bother you what other people do with their money. You're still getting it cheaper in the long run and have that persistent license.

 

I think you didn't realise that you need to spend not 3K but at least 1800K (75$ * 2 * 12 ).
The contract is a 12 months, you can't cancel it in the middle. And after the end of the contract, you have nothing.
If you have enough to spend 1800k, I think 1200K is a small step to have perpetual licence.

People don't really complain about the subscription, they complain about the price of the sub. It's not a bargain or an honest price. It's just expensif after you do the math, and compare to other software.

I already have the pro + ios pro, so it doesn't really concern me...

 

On the Unity Subs page, it says
"For a flexible subscription:
If a monthly payment is not paid on time, then the Unity Pro license will be deactivated 3 days after the payment due date. You cannot reactivate the license. To use Unity Pro again, you will have to start a new 12 month subscription."

So, does this mean you can sign up, use it for 3 months, then just not pay it anymore and be free of the subscription?

 

No, you can switch to the flexible subscription after 12 months. Flexible subscription is more expensive but you can quit it any time. But once you quit/pause it you have to start with a 12 months license again.

 

I agree that this is pretty expensive actually.
The only case where it would make sense is when you need Pro licenses to pay for Pro licenses or a scenario where Unity pro gets more expensive, yearly updates and especially no upgrade price cuts anymore (the later is a thing that would very well make sense in this scenario as the subscription makes no sense)

I'm somewhat sad to see this land as a scenario after the survey before where many, not just me, likely favored a lease alike solution where you pay your unity license in pieces, a bit more than it would cost but not in a single go.

The non-perpetual license only makes sense if the price is reasonable but at prices higher than the Adobe Creative cloud while offering less for the bang (not even a single platform at $75), it simply doesn't make any financial sense and if they are going to enforce it, then they will soon compete with UE4 and Cry AAA licensees as noone else will touch Pro any longer and in consequence probably not even Unity itself

But who knows, we will see how UT decides in August after gaining some experience with this. its a first experiment and if all feel as we do (or if not all suck absolutely at maths or grow money trees), then it will surely be reflected later this year with either a change of terms to an autodesk / maxon like model where you pay a support contract for updates but have an otherwise perpetual license or to a creative cloud alike model where they sell the whole thing for a reasonable monthly sub. I think everyone agrees though that requesting $1800 over 24months for a Unity Pro upgrade that is not even perpetual is an absolute no go, thats more expensive than if you would loan the cash from bank and pay it that way, at a pure subscription with no perpetual base, I see its limits at best at $400 a year per platform as it can not remotely be compared to a normal pro upgrade.

A CC alike combined subscription also seems to be required out of my view due to the terms for adding / removing addons which is as customer unfriendly as possible (I really couldn't imagine an even worse policy.- It not only enforces a yearly subscription, it additionally prevents cancellation or addon addition on flexible subscription, kinda killing it flat out - that ain't how they are gonna make friends or sell this new opportunity)

 

This is very interesting. From the perspective of users/studios that can afford the perpetual licenses this is useless. It's much more practical and effective to just get those licenses. From the perspective of users/studios that can't afford the perpetual licenses the proposition is too expensive. The moment you sign into the contract you're U$900 in debt per each license. Might as well save up for the perpetual licenses.

The comparison with Adobe is misguided. While Adobe's Creative Cloud prices are much cheaper (U$29 a month on a month-per-month basis and $19 on a per-year contract) that model wouldn't work for Unity because of two simple reasons:

1. Market position: Adobe's products are the industry standard when it comes to media design. Nothing compares market-size wise. With millions hooked on its products for the foreseeable future they can afford to use somewhat low prices and still earn plenty. Unity is in no such position. It's still the underdog. They can't afford such low prices mostly because of:

2. Unity's free version: if you need an Adobe product in a project that lasts six months, you need to get that license for six months. With Unity, you could do most of the work (not always but in a lot of cases) on the free version and then just get the pro license in the last month to add bells and whistles, perhaps use the profiler to tweak performance and of course do the exporting. This is quite risky for Unity, hence why there's not month-per-month subscription option.

It's good to experiment with different business models but right now the subscription option proposed here is sure to fail.

 

Unity can just crank up the price of buying the next version of unity to say $3k and then subs will look more attractive.

 

or the technology as whole will not look remotely as attractive anymore with UDK, Leadwerks 3, Shiva and Marmalade in the mix if you pay $15000 per seat per 18 months to develop for iOS, Android, WP8 and BlackBerry. Thats prices at which even Adobe + Autodesk would pale and would definitely push Unitys cost beyond the 'pain border' of UDKs royality share license.

 

If they do that I will definitely jump ship. I'm getting really more pissed off with Unity each time they make a change like this, EULA, Extortionate Subs attempt, Extortionate upgrade price attempt, GUI etc. ALL I really want is an ability to get rid of the Unity screen on game start and have my own screen. All these pro costs are way too high for just that benefit.

 

"customer unfriendly as possible" - this should be the advertising slogan for the subscription.

For me this all looks like they introduced the subscription model although they basically don't like subscription models. Maybe they just want it to fail? The whole limited time offer thing looks suspicious and non-serious. They exert leverage on potential customers this way. Personally the result for me is that I don't know what to do now , I guess I'll wait till August and hope they'll rework the subscription plan till then.

 

If unity change to if somebody subscribe full 2 years, they can get the perpetual license.
1800 vs 1500 more reasonable.
300 maybe for the loan interest .

$75 at beginning is ok for me

I think it will more flexible.
I can try pro 900 a year,if fail just lose 900.

I think under current subscription model will not boost the sale.

And Unity is not expensive for somebody they can build the good game.
if sell $1 sell 3000 copies in 2 years

 

As it stands, the current Subscription prices are not really attractive to 4.0 users. They are marginally interesting for 3.0 users but unfortunately are too expensive for Unity to have any real chance of converting a large quantity of the free users into paying customers.

In order to make the Subscription model successful, Unity needs to lower the subscription price to a point where 4.0 users will feel compelled to subscribe as opposed to wait until the next upgrade cycle. This price reduction needs to make it even more compelling for the 3.0 and previous version owners to act on it but most importantly, the revised subscription prices need to make it ultra compelling for all of those free Unity users who are serious and committed to game development to become subscribers.

Unity should mirror Adobe and offer a Tiered pricing model where 4.0 users (current users) pay the least, 3.0 users pay a bit more and new users the normal subscription price. After the first 12 month contract, users get to renew at the lowest subscription price. Anyone who lets their subscription expire loses those subscription discounts and pays the new user price.

How low can Unity drop the subscription price? It all depends on how many active and committed users they have in that pool of 1.5 Million + free users. If Unity can get to over 100,000 subscribers between 4.0 3.0 users combined with those free users turned into subscribers, they should be able to offer a very attractive price.