Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

They're the 20 cent army.

 

nah tweets still up, I think it's just Twitter being S*** because elon fired basically all of his staff

 

this will make devs go nuclear.

chances they nuke this thread: 50%

 

I feel for you. My dad and I are currently working 2 jobs. Our day jobs, and our game dev jobs (which is currently subsidized by our day jobs lol). I cannot imagine how deflating it would be to be knocked back to 2 jobs after breaking free.

We were just about to release our sequel to our game Blocky Ball on Steam. We also cannot afford this pricing model. So we are beginning our migration to a new engine. We are currently evaluating Godot right now and very much like what we’ve seen.

I’m thinking about documenting and making learning videos for others as we migrate our game. If you would like, feel free to message me and I’ll ping u when I start posting.

 

A petition signed by a few hundred angry developers isn’t going to do jack sh*t. The hundred+ pages of angry forum rants, developer tweets, news articles plus a tanking stock should speak volumes.

 

There's 2 elephants in the room

1) Their made up install numbers which can't really be billed (I don't think this has ever happened in history let alone tech)

2) Possible higher rates in 3-6-12 months etc if they just feel like it

 

Unreal engine had me up and running with a multi player game in no time does Unity really have that great of demo templates to be on top

 

Could be, all I see is "this tweet is not available" from Unity, and luckily they didn't block me

 

On a yacht party sad his yacht isn't bigger so he has to try to make more money to get a bigger one with this asinine move.

 

Nobody thinks we shouldn't pay a dime, we think we shouldn't be subject to unlimited, unpredictable costs and should instead have a transparent revenue share like Unreal has. The fact that there is NO other option is the problem. Developers don't choose game engines out of a hat, we research the tools we use and choose what meets our development needs. If it was feasible to switch to another game engine we would have done so many times in the past few years.

 

You are right. It's all so confusing XD

 

Read any posts of mine here. What is happening is that Unity is planning to bill random people randomly with random numbers they come up with. Nothing else. There is no tracking of installs, there is no evidence of revenue. Unity is notorious about harassing people about their revenue, there is zero reason to expect otherwise, they will run a half-baked AI algorithm, whomever gets S*** out on the other end will get the bill. Again, it's a maffia move without any legitimate basis.

 

The millions wasted by Unity when buy other companies like Weta Digital that few contribute with the game dev tools now will be try recover with Installations Fee and force Plus clients migrate to Pro subscription.

 

so you're 100% ok with unity just arbitarily changing their TOS, and not disclosing how they actually intend to track installs, and now more so how they intend to differentiate the different types of installs, charity, pirate, gamepass, etc.

they have basically said through out this thread that so long as they give 3 months heads up they can do whatever they want.... and you're just cool with that?

I don't care about the install fee all that much, it will never affect me, it will affect other devs and cut into their profits causing them to potentially lose staff to keep the lights on.

 

I’m glad they are now backpedaling on charging for reinstalls but don’t bullshit us with the “that was always our plan” when it clearly wasn’t.

 

the closest alternative to unity is unigine, it is really almost a copy + better features (i do not think flax has a better render, or better decal system or better water system... etc...

Code (CSharp):

1. using Unigine;
2. using UnigineApp;
3.  
4. class MyScript : Component
5. {
6.     void Init()
7.     {
8.         Log.Message("It is Unigine!");
9.     }
10. }
11.  

 

That is thinking past the sale. The one and only elephant in the room is it's asinine to charge based on a metric that is in no way related to revenue generated.

People should not be seeking assurance about how they plan to do this responsibly. Just moving on and using a product by a company or a group of people who aren't in the business of trying to shake money out of past customers by revising a contract long after it was agreed upon.

 

I can only assume these people are naive young kids who are open to trying new things and have not yet learned the risks of getting bullshitted and destroyed by powerful forces. Unity can make the same amount of money in a transparent way with a simple royalty scheme like the rest of the industry has been doing from time immemorial.

 

Oh no! We loosing Unity!
I will never develop a game using Unity, 20 cent for install with all that DRM nonsense, this is step and really big step backwards to void.

If my company develop a game, it would be not Unity definitely, so stupid management of Unity, man need to refresh C++, which now become again in demand lol.

 

Didn't Unity state that DISTRIBUTORS pay? So wouldn't Valve have to pay?

 

Remember friends, it's not the raw cost of $0.01 an install that is the problem. It's the principle of sudden retroactive costs and pricing changes to all projects and published Unity games in existence. We can no longer trust this company to not apply random fees and costs after we ship ever again. Who is to say a year from now they don't decide we owe them 15% revenue suddenly?

We can no longer trust a company like this even if they "back track".and we certainly cannot if they don't too. Unity and their lawyers have proven themselves to be willing and confident they can, at any time, start feeing, charging or taxing us in any way they want retroactively even after we've shipped our game. This is not ethical nor is it a stable and solid foundation to plan and build on.

Don't use Unity3D for your next game. Use Unreal.

 

I am starting to see reactions like this from players, which was obviously inevitable the second this plan went live. You are directly tampering with the relationship between developers and players.

The thing is, it doesn't matter if this statement is true or not. It only matters if people think it's true. And you expect us to tell our users "well no it's actually a proprietary data model, we don't know anything about how it works but it should be fine..."

 

These are some decent changes and I hope a lot more people read this than sharpening their pitchforks.

Also, Unity can communicate better than this, ffs. Can you like make a detailed blogpost or something, and explain why you are doing what you are doing and why you picked this model compared to others (subscription or royalty model)? All this silent plotting behind closed doors makes it all look a little iffy.

 

rip itch.io too then.

 

.01c and .02c can add up pretty quickly as well. Especially for low margin, high volume, mobile games

 

The problem is they have no way to accurately track what is a install, reinstall, pirated install, gifted install, charity bundle install. It's an unacceptable and insane way to charge for this product. No amount of backtracking can change that.

Installs is a non-starter as metric for calculating fees. End of story. Any system that uses installs will not work for this community and many of us will walk.

 

I keep reading about this only impacting 10% of Unity customers, but not really backing up why this should be the case. Well, as far as I could tell from various sources, Unity have around 2 million registered developers. So this would impact 200.000 developers - that is still a lot of developers. I'm also guessing that if we focus on customers with an existing subscription (so pro, plus, etc.) that is getting affected is much higher than 10%

But then again, as others have mentioned: It's really not about how many is getting impacted right now. Relying on a "trust me, bro" install counter that pretty much all developers agree on cannot be precise, let alone safely implemented, is just too much of a risk for any studio to take on.

Just having the audacity to announce these changes without even knowing how it will get implemented, less than 3 months before it is supposed to be working is beyond me.

 

Unigine supports far fewer platforms and the worst part is it's a "Contact Us" if you make more than $100K/yr. Flax supports almost all of the same platforms as Unity and is just a 4% royalty if you make more than $250K/qtr.

https://docs.flaxengine.com/manual/platforms/index.html

 

We have been a developer for over 10 years using your platform. We demand the following:
1. Fire your CEO who has now been exposed as completely incompetent.
2. Fire any board member who signed off on this.
3. Then, maybe we talk.

Actually this isn't so much a demand, it's a f*cking guarantee.

 

To kill off devs in the mobile F2P market? The ones who rely on mass installs with thin margins?

 

I'm not being hyperbolic, but Unity really needs to provide specific implementation details on how they are going to identify reinstalls on iOS, because the method used could cause Apple to remove the app from the Appstore. We also need specific implementation details on how this will work in Europe, because we could be opening ourselves up to legal liability under GDPR. Nothing short of open-sourcing the tracking algorithm will be sufficient.

 

Brilliant, now I've got devs infuriated and demanding we immediately switch our F2P project to Godot. Which we obviously cannot do. And by stating that it's not practical, in their eyes, I've become a shill for Unity. Congrats, nobody wins!

SORT THIS OUT ASAP.

 

"Decent" changes in 1 day

Who guarantees they won't have a 1 day change on their per install from $0.20 to $5

 

Pay your fee!

 

Stop, your numbers are fake and unfathomable. Only completely free games or $70 AAA titles exist, and they are only made with Unity.

 

No, but it could be to make the same amount they're making now, but off of many more users.

 

still doesn't answer the how, the HOW they track installs, that's what we want to know, i don't want to put out a game full of bullshit tracking malware.

it's all in unitys proprietary data module, which means they have no intent on releasing how they track installs just that they can and you have to trust them

 

Oh no, I agree it’s still a terrible system.

 

You are destroying the industry potential that motivates developers with install-fees.

In addition, you are about to destroy a huge business-era that supports your platform by providing 3rd party products to developers.

Your executives don't realize that they are doing something that is morally, legally and technically unfeasible.

It is unrealistic to expect a precise measurement of installations - that would only happen in Hollywood movies - the technology and standards aren't there yet, someone should seriously tell your decision makers that.

Instead of all this nonsense you can say you want a fixed percentage of revenue, fire some of your executives and maybe these steps offer a viable solution to the current predicament.

It appears you have no alternative.

 

You don't even need to calculate, it's the beginning of a rat tail of arbitrariness and abuse. It can change every month, so do you want to check every time whether it's still worth it? I'll only stay if I can trust.

 

I'm guessing the percentage is also waaaay higher than 10% if you don't count people who checked out unity like once for a little bit but never even started a serious project.

 

It's a miracle it hasn't been already. It's alright, most people are finding out from social media anyways.

 

Just wanted to post again in response to today's still inadequate clarifications.

I am a university professor, Indiecade winner, and Games for Change and IGF honoree, all for my first game built with Unity. It is impossible for me to continue using Unity or to instruct my students to, until any proposed fees are tied to an objective, transparent, and completely foreseeable number (rev share, per sale, etc).

Until I can know the exact dollar amount my students and I will pay for every possible number of sales, we will not use Unity.

 

I swear, this all happened because some clueless bean counter over at Unity just learned what a runtime is, and their eyes turned into dollar signs.

So maybe Nvidia should be charging you guys a brand new fee per editor install? Don't worry, it'll only apply to a minority of game engines that use PhysX. And yes, the fact that Unity devs always have multiple editor installs (I've got 11!) does mean each install will count separately.

Now, are you SURE you want to open this Pandora's Box?

 

I will simply sell $999,999 dollars worth of my game "Super Awesome Game" in 12 calendar months then immediately remove it from sale and release "Super Awesome Game 2" which is fully identical for a small Steam fee. I will do this under one of my family member's name or start a new company to release it as. New players can purchase game 2 until that reaches the same payment threshold then do it over again. If Unity can come up with asinine payment schemes then I will come up with equally stupid workarounds. Lets see them try to stop me. I'm just some guy in a basement, man.

 

Man, this, yes.

 

Yeah, the CEO is the same guy that proposed to make players pay for a reload in battlefield. All of this just sounds like people that have no clue about the technologies they are in charge of.

 

That's exactly what many people get wrong and think that $1000 000 gross revenue is some large profit, achievable only by big AAA studios.

It's really nothing, a small salary for two devs. That's because gross is an extremely vague term that has zero connection to the amount of money you will actually earn.
The actual amount that the marketplace will send you is up to 10 times lower than your gross revenue. And with that you have to cover your costs.
So you'll never be able to afford the thousands of $ per day that you'll owe unity.


A gross rate of 5% that sounds like nothing, means an actual rate of 30-50%, depending on where you live and the kind of taxes that google/apple etc will have to apply.

 

TOS already mentions that sufficiently similar games will be considered the same game. That's practically the only thing they've thought about.

 

And Microsoft should maybe charge them for using c# as well.