Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

No amount of clarification can fix this. They are totally missing the point, it's no longer about fees and pricing, this is about trust. They killed the last bit of trust in most of us. Many developers were on the verge of considering another engine already, and this is just the nail in the coffin. Years of users complaining about broken features culminating in this. Absolutely incredible.

 

I'm willing to pay a subscription if only there were no installation fees.

 

So here's a fun one.

Do emerging market installs count towards the total installs, or are they calculate separately? Emerging markets are every country except the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Let's do a simple thought experiment and not one that's particularly out of the question.

You release a game internationally and price it lower in emerging markets because that's just how pricing tends to work. It blows up there, leading to a glut of sales but not a particularly huge amount of revenue. Instead, your revenue primarily comes from English speaking countries, maybe some FIGS, but notably ones not counted as emerging markets. You end up making 50,000 sales in emerging markets but 50,000 in established ones.

Does this count as 100,000 installs? Probably.

But let's say something changes. Maybe you ran the numbers and realized that continued support for emerging markets wasn't worth it because even though sales were higher there, you were being bitten on the ass by localization costs. Maybe it was too expensive to deal with additional dev and testing on updates. Maybe, as time went on, updates pushed you out of the available hardware in those markets and so sales started to drop. Maybe you found out that the costs of running separate version levels of the game were just too high.

There's a lot of potential reasons you may have to drop support for emerging markets, these are all real examples I've encountered.

However, this means that you've crossed the install threshold while making far less on your game than expected. Now you're dealing with install fees that are coming from predominantly established markets even though most of your installs came from emerging markets. Seems a bit messed up, yeah? Because I guarantee you this is not an unreasonable possibility.

 

Goodbye Unity, it's been nice. Hope you find your paradise:

 

New business model idea: threat email to small devs. "We have cracked Unity API and can notify their servers 100K installs of your game, or more, monthly. As a small demo of our capabilities, we just faked 50K installs. Pay us X bitcoins or else..."

 

Not necessarily. Unreal may see the backlash and capitalize on the moment. That's competition & capitalism baby.

 

I don't believe I have posted on the forums before but wanted to add my voice.

I am concerned about the manner in which you have imposed changes on the community, unilaterally altering our relationship (I also wonder if this is lawful in many countries) and the secretive fashion in which you will now determine how much money we owe you. For many of us this is a livelihood and we need to have reliable trustworthy partners.

Despite being a Plus subscriber, buying assets on the store and having projects built in Unity, I do not feel tied to Unity. You are forcing myself and others to look elsewhere.

I doubt your ability to determine individual installs, how can you possible know if an existing user reinstalls on an upgraded device? How can this possibly be compatible with privacy legislation? How can you possibly detect pirated installs? As developers ourselves we would have huge problems solving such questions but you expect us to trust you.

I also note you have carved out an exemption for gambling partners. Of all the parties concerned they must have the largest profits to raid!

The only way you could begin restoring my trust is to reverse this change, apologise and more transparency going forward.

 

Plus, every dev will take this into account when making the decision about the engine for their next project. I don't think only 10% of people will start a project with the sentiment of "I only want to make less than $200k anyway." and "Well, this could bankrupt me or eliminate most of my profit, but I trust this company that changed the pricing out of nowhere"

People will pick the option that is predictable.

 

That's still a no.

Per-install charge is unacceptable on any payment tier on any license for a game engine. Because installs do not generate revenue. So that's a huge random factor that can rack up massive bills. It is a nuclear bomb under every unity developer's seat. "oh, there's only 10% chance that it is gonna blow, and it is only a hundred kilotons" is not good enough. There should be no bomb in the first place.

People also have no reason to trust your install counting system. The default assumption is that the system is untrustworthy and not secure, It will be hacked, exploited and abused or can produce false data.

Unity support is famous for responding slowly, so it is immediately obvious, that if someone receives a $10k on "fraudlent charges", this can take months to "investigate". Nobody will want to deal with this.

I still recommend to fire whoever came up with this, preferably with the whole department. If you make it into celebratory ceremony and livestream it, people will certainly love it.

Also stealthily trying to delete unity license github is not helping either.

 

Where's John Riccitiello? He should be the person engaging us, Unity's customers, not Unity employees who really shouldn't be subjugated to the undesirable task of answering for JR's decisions. Riccitiello should demonstrate some accountability here and engage us.

 

You are not going to like the answers.

 

for what i can see, is just different, i'm not thinking on fp2 games, i'm just thinking on my own cases, but i really want to know how other studios are going straight to bankruptcy... with accurate maths and cases

 

Even if you revert this back. You have already ruined your reputation and trust with developers

 

Well good luck, let us know when you find software as powerful and mature as Unity and Unreal that doesn't cost you a dime to use commercially.

If Unreal capitalizes on this, it won't be to make LESS money than they already do now.

 

The only way this situation will change is if they DON'T scale the cost to the developer against installs it's an unreliable figure and it absolutely explodes some business models.

This is the problem with publicly-traded firms. In the beginning they can focus on growing the company to secure market share, but once that's achieved, they MUST continue to increase the share value even if they've already reached every possible customer (end of growth potential). Then they have to find ways to increase revenue even if they're at odds with the company's mission. It doesn't matter that the company is profitable -- the problem is that the CEO must do everything in his power to ensure that the share value must continue to grow.

It's why so many companies rise to prominence and then crumble in the endgame. Public trading is basically like steroids for startups. The early gains are great and then your balls shrink and your heart explodes.

It's why Roblox will eventually become a dating app.

Because he's only accountable to the shareholders and not the customers. He has a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that the share price grows as much as possible even if it means somehow using Unity to burn down orphanages with legal loopholes. His actions have nothing whatsoever to do with the company mission statement. That's just marketing for F***ing idiots (us).

 

Clarification in short:
We'll charge you as much as we want with our "trust me bro" multiplier, but this time we'll do it with a smile!

From now on, for those who remain with Unity, each new announcement will be equal to an adrenaline shot

 

Many of the smaller engines out there are intentionally very similar to Unity. I've been skimming through the sites for each of them and I do think the person who mentioned it earlier was correct. Flax is the closest alternative.

Here's a quick example of a Unity script versus a Flax script pulled from the second link below:

Code (csharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2.  
3. public class MyScript : MonoBehaviour
4. {
5.   void Start()
6.   {
7.      Debug.Log("It is Unity!");
8.   }
9. }

Code (csharp):

1. using FlaxEngine;
2.  
3. public class MyScript : Script
4. {
5.   public override void OnStart()
6.   {
7.      Debug.Log("It is Flax!");
8.   }
9. }

https://flaxengine.com/
https://docs.flaxengine.com/manual/get-started/flax-for-unity-devs/index.html

 

We need an official/popular poll regarding what our plans are. A journalist needs a reliable poll with thousands of responses to write a headline such as "70% of Larger Studios Plan to Discontinue Using Unity For All Games With 6 Months". - If that doesn't crash the Unity Stock I don't know what will.

I've created a simple poll. I don't care if we use this one or not, but can we have one centralised poll that we all share around?

Poll Link - https://qgxd9xk1m.supersurvey.com

 

That is not even remotely what people are upset about. Please read a few replies to this thread. This is not about a few cents. This is about unlimited charges.

 

Right. How many more times is Unity going to contradict their own statements?

 

Damn!!! Learning unity for so long and now I have to move to another tool!!!
I
'm so upset with this!!!! I have 3 small games with ads and now I will need to move. Not enough money made from ads to pay the fee. So mad!!!!!

 

This issue cannot be "clarified". It can only be thrown out entirely. This scheme is unfixable.

 

Guys let try to sign this petition

https://www.change.org/p/return-united-remove-runtime-and-installation-fees-from-unity-engine

 

I have never heard of any example or company altering their terms of service in such a way that it potentially puts people out of business. People made business decisions based on th TOS and built companies based on that. It's really unbelievable that this is seriously being proposed.

Hi, we're Adobe InDesign. InDesign is in fact two products - the InDesign Editor and the InDesign Export To. Whether it's printed on paper, exported to PDF, it's now a separate product and we will charge you for each page that you export. At least this is not retro-active, but it's still a completely new way to think about the software and greatly impacts people's livelihoods and business plans.

I am sure they will ammend this to cap the amount to 5% of revenues, but clearly the damage has been done. Ever heard of a 'focus group'? Or, 'floating a trial balloon'? That would have been a great idea, since its quite obvious this will not stand. But, even with revised terms, people will lose trust, other engines make a lot more sense at this point!

 

how do you plan on getting accurate number of installs? unity has that information locked away in their proprietary data module and refuse to tell us how they actually get number of installs, so if you have a way of tracking installs, across every platform, and every means be it pirated, steam, epic, xboxgamepass, etc, please share it with the rest of the class, we're going to need those numbers should we ever encounter this issue.

 

This could become a movie: I know what you developed last summer.

 

Hate to break it to you but they are charging devs who are not making any money (yet) as we speak.

 

I am baffled that there are people here siding with Unity and who keep deflecting the conversation to imply that developers want Unity for free or don't want Unity to turn a profit.

There is a difference between partnering with your customers (devs) in a transparent way that is fair for both sides and whatever the F*** this is that they are doing now, where they come up with a pie-in-the-sky metric that no one would ever consider using and then decide unilaterally how much you owe with no recourse.

Disappointed in those of you who are holding out this narrative as it is counter productive to this discussion. And I see you.

 

have fun with all the lawsuits challenging the accuracy of your install invoices.

 

We'll be fine, I've worked on game engines for most of my career.

 

How will you distinguish between legitimate installs and piracy installs?

How will you distinguish between first-time installs and reinstalls without violating the end-user's privacy (in which the developer may be held co-liable for having deployed the software)?

The FAQ literally previously stated that you would not have access to enough data to make these determinations, and that we would therefore be charged every time someone re-installs the game.

You are not clarifying, you are backtracking; you are not reassuring, you are making promises you don't even know you can keep.

 

This is the primary question for me.

While the cost can be justified for some people's apps and games right now, what's to stop Unity from increasing the rates a year down the road? And then adding other fees on top of the Unity Runtime fee? Retroactively, like this time?

 

@LeonhardP Come on, these are not the answers we are looking for. For me, and I believe lots of the others, main questions are:

1. How do we know you won't change the fees or come up with another brilliant strategy in February 1st 2024?
2. How can we, developers, clarify the data integrity of your installs tracker? "Trust me bro" won't work.
3. How come the fee is not tied to the revenue? This obliterates freemium games, which seems to be the large (or the largest) chunk of games, made with Unity. Moreover, it could put you in debt to Unity, which is ridiculous.

As far as I see it - the clamp of "no more than 5% of the revenue" would suffice. If this won't be the case - I strongly believe this is some 4D chess, will get rolled back for something still worse than today's conditions, but actually reasonable and accountable for. Otherwise, it's utter nonsense, this strategy won't work, and half a year from now Unity will be essentially dead.

P. S. With the rollback and F***ello resign I would like to see an apology. Complete splash screen removal for personal licences would do, 4% clamp fo Pro and Enterprise is an option too.

 

They say "We will talk to GamePass, etc

Has Unity, with less than 3 months to go, actually talked to any distributer? Because I'm pretty sure they haven't with how flimsy this was all worded.

And I can tell you right now what will happen when Unity talks to them. They will tell them to f*** off. Why would Microsoft pay Unity for anything? Microsoft doesn't really need Unity games on GamePass. They probably rather ban Unity games all together from their platform.

 

More like the issue cannot be fixed, only the entire board of directors and top level management can be thrown out entirely.

The entire company needs a scouring from the top.

 

Their proprietary model AKA trust and pay what they bill you otherwise it's on you to prove it's wrong and maybe they will get back to you in 3-6 months after you bring it to their attention, if you even can.

 

unity gets hate everytime... for what i can see here is just blinded hate based on the first hours... even after we get some more info about this, people still say they are straight to bankruptcy and showing numbers like 1m download 100k revenue... that does not have any sense, for me right now is blinded hate, again, if you know any info or have a better idea of what is happening (better than the official one) i'm open to see it, in fact i really need it

 

They're paid 0.20 per post

 

Nah that's extortion. However if on the other hand there's a dev you don't like you can do that out of hatred and theres no law against reinstalling software. Or imagine if people are so pissed off that they do this to a game on Game Pass and then Unity tried to collect from microsoft as theyve stated lol. Good luck with that. This is just going to be an absolute clown show.

 

Just saw the new Tweet today indicating that Unity is standing behind this decision. There are no words for how insane that is given the backlash. It is completely divorced from reality.

The community will never accept install-tracking as a method of monetizing Unity. It's never going to happen. Just take for 5% of revenue and be done with it.

 

Do we need one for firing riccitiello as well?

 

fixed that for you

 

A reminder: You pay money the guy who called you idiots, and you deserve it!

 

Unity just deleted the tweet about this announcement, wondering if this thread will also be nuked?

 

The writing has been on the wall since the IPO. This is it, folks. I don't see how they can recover from this even if they fully backtrack, which they are not doing. Slay the Spire devs are ready to axe two years of work on their new game if this is not reversed and switch engines.

 

They are definitely unity shills. 80 plus pages of nothing but hate comments from developers, and then suddenly all these people defending appear followed by a official unity staff member making an announcement.

 

I'm personally more concerned about mystical user/device data collection, stock shorting by main shareholders, sudden changes in agreement even for released projects, forcing of unneeded services, still lacking features like adequate multiplayer (10 years in development), etc.
Would be more honest to cut bullshit and just double subscription prices.

 

Yup. I'm sure I've scrolled and signed some ridiculous software license agreements, but I've never had a company actually try to enforce a change to TOS like this that could impact my ability to remain a viable business.