Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Ohh I think I've just realised why the previous terms on Unity's website link to a version from 2022... - They can try and say that the fee applies to 2023.x instead of 2024.x

It's a good thing internet archive exists

 

The Unity employees need to start prepping CVs. Right now you're associated with a company that's just tried to ruin the games industry.

 

Just put a new rule that will not surpass the percentage of maximum 5% of total revenue, otherwise we'll be talking about it the whole year

 

The upside is they can F*** us very very deep

 

no seriously make a whole new blog post, even delete the old one if you have to

 

Please get a developer to explain to your customers that are also developers how they will achieve this.

 

Although I think this drama was overblown, I do sincerely wish that this would happen for the sake of the ecosystem. Seriously, that guy sucks.

 

Sorry @LeonhardP, but it is just nonsense. Even if unity does not charge us today, tomorrow Richitello or who-whatever-unity-ceo will decide do charge us for 1usd each install retroperspective. It is too risky to go with unity now, because unity has unstable and unreliable management. My current hobby project is the last on Unity and in my professional carrier I switch to Unreal ASAP.

 

Who would of imagined so many entitled crybabies whining about .01 to .2c. If you are making money from games is it to much to pay unity a few pennies? Very disappointed with developer community.

 

Unity does not seem to understand what happened these last years and especially these last days.

They are losing their most loyal and oldest supporters with all those TOS changes and vague fee metrics.
Trust is hard to gain and very easy to lose.

These supporters were the best advertising for unity and brought in many users.

They are now angry and jumping ship and it is very questionable if you are ever going to bring them back.

This is sad.

 

10+ years using unity... and this is a huge slap in the face. Now I have to learn a new engine, great...

 

Seems like 12%

say any one makes a hit game with pro your formula costs 5% plus the pro subscription, with personal or plus it cost 12% at your formula

 

Can I just ask, has Unity addressed what would happen if someone ends up in the negative because of this?

I’m guessing they’re going to pretend everything is alright and ignore that their forums are on fire.

But just answer me that.

Do they plan of putting developers into debt and have nothing to show for it if that’s how the numbers fall?

because it sure as hell sounds like it.

 

Please answer

WHY. DO. I. HAVE. TO. PAY. $2,000. TO. REMOVE. THE. UNITY. LOGO.

 

I was here one hundred, bye!

 

None of this assuages my concerns on how UT will modify the terms of our agreement on the whims of your executive team.

 

This just doesn't work. Recon the decision and let's move on.

 

And you had no issue when you were making 4M year and not paying unity a dime?

The NEED to get paid for freemiums games who make millions on exploiting idiots. That is literally their target. It says it right there.

 

Pro costs 5x what Plus does, I'm not even talking about the new installs monetisation on top of that.

 

thank you, i feel better now...
I suggest you to re-post this again on every 2 or 3 pages because everybody es really mad right now almost ignoring official posts, also, update the first one with a more clear message and examples

 

This post literally clarifies nothing -- this is all already known and is currently being discussed in this thread.

The problem is the resulting issues that stem from these points.

Such as the privacy and accuracy concerns regarding installs, and the complications of trying to charge a flat rate to people who may meet the requirements for the price increase but lack the net revenue to come anywhere close to affording those fees.

Not to mention the issues of trust that come from trying to implement a change like this out of the blue, let alone apply it retroactively.

Or why even use installs in the first place instead of just doing a revenue share.

 

Veljko Roadhog 2

 

Anything greater then 5% is too much.

 

The only reasonable explanation for such a suicidal move is that on the back of Apple deciding to turn their iPhones into consoles you decided to sell out to them.

 

Use know most the of the editor version were a big fight to even play with

 

After 100 pages of this S*** you still do not understand that you need to remove this "install fee" idea? Are you stupid?
Also this illegal TOS retroactive S***:

is still on the first page.
You need to remove this.
If anybody shipped the game with a previous version of Unity your new TOS cannot apply.

 

You can, but you shouldn't, specially when having no idea how these installations are being tracked. At the moment, Unity can claim any number it wants, and you're forced to pay for it. Let's not assume foul play, let's assume possible exploits used by people wanting to screw your company.
"But there's a threshold!" Yeah, this threshold won't cover the thousands you'll be losing.
This 'threshold' just means we'll wait a little longer for the inevitable to hit us hard.

As many people have said before, sales != installs. If Unity can't provide a reasonable explanation of why the developer should be charged for the end user actions, then it's not unreasonable for the community to consider legal intervention.

 

Who would imagine there are so many *expletives* that don't realize the majority of games made with Unity are mobile f2p, relying on ad revenue and IAP to generate revenue, and that most of these games have an ARPU of $~0.05, so if they were to ever be in the unfortunate position to be over thresholds set by the whims of Unity's leadership, they would be absolutely F***ed and have to pull their game down or face bankruptcy. Username checks out.

 

The official response still assumes that they need to address the myriad of technical concerns with implementation and billing. That's not the core issue!

The Runtime Fee punishes any business model that is based on high install market saturation with low per-install profits, but aspires to make more than one million dollars per year. That's it. The core concept of the model is broken. Unity is triaging the symptoms.

 

In my 45 years on this Earth never have I seen such a nonsensical, so bad its almost comical, attempt at formulating and communicating a plan like this.

It is so full of issues it's not even anywhere in the realm of feasibility for you to pull off all the moving parts that would be required for a plan like this to work nor for anyone here to EVER trust you could do it accurately.

Who in their right mind thinks installs is a valid metric to use for determining how much I should pay you? Installs is so far removed from revenue generating actions (sales) it's absolutely almost the worst metric you could come up with.

You think I will accept blindly a bill from you based on your calculated (lol) installs that you can't even track the source of.

1) How will you know a redeemed Steam key is from a bundle? The fact you think we believe it's even possible is almost as bad as the plan itself.

2) Putting the onus on me, a solo developer, to have to prove to you that I think fraud is occurring regarding installs whether from piracy, bots, malicious actors, or whatever, when you send me your made up invoice is completely unacceptable. How would I have any data to prove it one way or the other? You don't either. So then what?

3) Isn't the uNiTy rUnTiME *OMG* the same in every game its distributed with? So what if my customer already bought another game with the LOL UNITY RUNTIME in it and already has it all within another .exe on their PC? Why am I paying again?

I am six years into a massive solo-dev PC game and am absolutely considering switching engines.

Unacceptable.

 

they ccan not charge you if you are not making any money

 

20 cents today, just wait until they up it to 1$ or 20$ per install. What's stopping them?

 

Because it's targeted at F2P mobile games where each install is not automatically a sale. Even the mobile games that generate billions of dollars only get their revenue from like 10% or less of their users, A.K.A whales

This is always the case, always has been, always will be, with every company and every UT/ToS. These are not legally binding contracts. Unreal can do the same exact thing and you can't trust them any more than you can trust Unity. If anything this new plan will probably encourage them to try something similar. It's certainly not going to compel them to make LESS money lol

I'm not defending any action of Unity but you younger people and amateurs need to understand this is how the world of business works. If you think Unity is the only bad guy you're going to be in for a rude awakening

 

Some of this is fearmongering regarding "what could happen", but not all of it is.

Good for you, all you have to care about are your exact financials. I'm also glad you're comfortable with the math you done, you clearly have margins where even if you undercount what Unity is going to estimate about your installs, you're going to be fine. I say that with zero sarcasm.

Now lets look at my problem. I'm between projects right now, and I've been doing pitches for weeks. Now all of a sudden, I have to include this new fee schedule into my budget on my pitch. I have no idea how to make it look like its not fudged....because basically, it is and always will be. But you know, the people I pitch to are kind of wary of that kind of thing. Unreasonable, I know.

Furthermore, I now have to qualify Unity's move. I have already had a call from someone I was going to see in 2 weeks, to get my "quick thoughts" on this fiasco. The result of that call was something along the lines of "I suppose you should include a buffer for future possible fees", but also "maybe you should just use Unreal, clean 5% sounds better". These people aren't stupid. Their job is to sniff out stinkers and snake-oil. This is exactly what they don't like. They (and frankly I) would pay more to have less uncertainty.

It doesn't matter if it's affordable now. It's not predictable, it's not tied to value, and it's possibly not the last. Is that fear-mongering, that I have to consider and criticize the what-ifs here? Those what-ifs matter to some of us. Even if I didn't have to pitch, then I'm planning budget. I'm planning my business. How do you operate when your platform can just change things on you and slap arbitrary fees on arbitrary metrics.

Now lucky you, you don't operate on a scale or are independent enough that you don't have to worry about such things. That does not mean it's not a valid concern for many of us, and materially affects our business.

 

Sorry guys, there will be no more memes. Unity says that I should help, I can help with installing Godot, please contact me.

 

Sorry dude, that's not it.

 

Well, after seeing an official Unity response on page 99 I can safely say any hope I had left hanging on is gone.
I was hoping for a walk back or retraction to at least tide things over until I can get my current game out, but it's clear to me now that it's time to see which of my assets can be salvaged.

Learning Unreal is going to be a long road I'd rather not have done, but I can't use Unity in confidence any more.
Too bad Godot isn't feature rich for 3D development, maybe I'll come back to it in a year or two to see if it's advanced since the Unity migration.

I'm not holding out for a retraction any more. There isn't going to be one.
It's simply not a viable or safe business model to use a service that charges based on factors that are out of my control.

Good bye Unity. I don't say that with any sense of satisfaction. I just feel betrayed, and it's my own fault for ignoring the signs over the last 5 years.

 

Stop answering questions no one is asking. No one here is confused about the tresholds. Everyone is rightfuly angry about every other insane decision you are enforcing. The entire half of this text is completly irrelevant.

But on previously made content. That's the important part. No one cares about new installs under this policy, because no one will ever make a game with this policy again. Stop diverting the issue and adress it head on. YOU CANT ENFORCE THIS ON CONTENT ALREADY MADE OR CURRENTLY BEING MADE UNDER DIFFERENT TERMS.

Ongoing perpetual license royalty is applied to the revenue exactly once. So you are right, it's not like the other model. It's substantially worse.

You haven't defined what a "re-install" is to you. You will charge for that, because change in hardware is technically a different device. So the user reinstalls the game they already had installed before their hw upgrade and you charge again.

So it's up to all the developers to track, maintain, log and collect all piracy content they can find, to report it to you and to hope that maybe you will consider to subtract that from the bill? It takes you 3 months to refund a fradulent asset on Asset store. How exactly do you plan to achieve responsivnes in this?

Are you going to manually test and judge every Unity released game, with it's demo to decide that?

Either way, that doesn't even matter. Because you dont work with actual numbers. There is literally no possible way to achieve accuracy with these numbers. You want to charge guesstimate numbers. How can any project ever be funded if no one can reliably calculate what will the fee and cost be, when you guesstimate your bills?

 

You'll forgive my skepticism that Unity has the technical ability to disambiguate a first time install from a reinstall with perfect accuracy. Even if such a feat were possible it would still mean a charge each time a customer upgrades their hardware.

Perhaps Unity feels as though they should receive payment for creating a runtime so sufficiently slow that our players need new hardware to keep up with a reasonable FPS?

 

Leonard, just push for getting these changes rolled back. Even if people spent less money on this change, no one wants it, no one asked for it, no one needs it. A flat % that costs more would have less negative press than this mess. Your bosses are wasting you and your team's valuable time on damage control now, and will be for the next six months or more. Not to mention you've already lost and will continue to lose loads of developers to other engines.

 

The average refund on Steam is 10-15%

So if my game get installed 10000 times and then refunded, I’ll have to pay Unity 2k out of thin air

 

How could this possibly comply with GDPR and other similar regulations?

 

Boomer

 

You did not! We will soon be bankrupt, I would never dare to answer something like that where people will soon lose their dream job. I usually only know such answers from politics.
Until now I had still hoped that soon a backdown comes, but with the answer I have now lost all hope and can not imagine to trust Unity ever again. It's a shame that I decided to go with Unity about 10 years ago - it was probably my biggest mistake in my developer career and will probably remain so.

 

don´t even care if they stick to their ridiculous new pricing policy or not. If the wanna play games with stupid and complicated tables you got to navigate than they can play them alone. Steam/Valve got it at some point and unreal also got it regarding their engine licensing model. So bye Unity XD

 

Unity have time to delete a few memes from upset customers, but not the time to try and explain and fix this S***show properly

 

so disappointed about the new pricing plan. after this news was released. hundreds of developers will switch their engines from Unity to Godot and Unreal.

 

Coming back to the forum after the triple-down to yell DROP IT like Unity is a dog with a chocolate bar in its mouth. Drop it. DROP IT.

 

The biggest criticism remains unaddressed as far as I can tell. What guarantee do developers have that the pricing method Unity uses will remain the same a few months down the line?

Clearly Unity is okay with changing pricing methods for already released games. How can any developer make financial estimates if their entire business plan could become (mostly or entirely) obsolete due to a random retroactive pricing change like this? Why would any developer take that enormous risk?