Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Correct. They provide you with an SDK and it's up to you to do the actual work.

https://lonewolftechnology.com/

 

I still remember. Some idiot almost ruined EA with 3 installs of SimCity.

 

With Epic, you're tied to the EULA you got when you signed up for the engine, not the T.O.S. changes that are made on a whim.

So happy I've been collecting the free Unreal assets every month for years, doesn't sting as bad losing out on my thousands of dollars spent here on the asset store.



Good bye Unity, it was fun while it lasted.

 

This -100% I’ve been just holding out watching the dev team cranking on ECS/Dots and their approach to letting us have an engine that is basically writing SIMD code for us by just following a set of standards has been why I’ve been holding out on swapping…

 

I spent 3 years making a multiplayer game and now I gotta move to and learn Unreal because the CEO who was quoted as saying Battlefield players should pay real money for ammo thinks he knows how game engines work. I should've taken the hint when he called all of us "f---ing idiots"

 

Maybe, but its irrelevant as Unity are claiming they know how many installs any game made with any previous version of Unity and if you exceed the thresholds of your subscription plan come Jan 2024 you will be tax on each new install above those thresholds.

Reading between the lines Unity will not be using any built in tracking ( maybe in the future they will add that, somehow and not fall foul of GDPR ), they have this 'magic black box' that can 'reliably' estimate your install number. If you disagree you can dispute it, good luck.

Yes

Maybe, they claim they wont count re-installs, but have shown no way they can know or prove that.

 

I think we'll ship our next game on unreal. This is all just too much, not to mention 3+ studios from our creative circle are switching too, 60+ unity users gone in the blink of an eye.

So sad.

 

I have spent the last 6 months learning Unity and making my first game on it. Well, today is the day when I downloaded Unreal and started watching training videos. How can anyone plan or learn something when you do this S*** on a whim? Retroactively? How can any sane person try to build their business around this? How can any publisher, any company?

Goodbye Unity, our time was short, but it was fun.

 

So it’s okay for Unreal to charge a royalty to improve their software, but not for Unity? When Unity has gotten nothing but criticism for the past 5 years about “being behind”? Mostly because they had no majorly revenue outside of the Pro license that people easily bypassed by various means.

I seem to remember people criticizing Unreal for their 5% royalty compared to Unity’s no royalty. But now what Unity wants to expand their revenue stream with a plan that takes far less money from Unity games than Unreal’s 5% royalty, they’re the most evil company in the world

 

Don't say that. And the rest of you, stop liking posts like this. You don't meet crazy, abusive, probably illegal exploitation half-way. You don't do this in abusive relationships, and you don't do this with business negotiation. Just stop.

 

I think everyone here agrees that royality would be a much better option for Unity rather than this bullcrap system they thought out would click with ppl .

THe only problem is that 5% of UE royality is invested into engine...but in case of Unity its invested into stockholders.

 

That's very true

 

Thanks for your efforts Leonhard.

However I am now even more dismayed than ever as this feels as close to an official response as we have after two days and its still arguing semantics of the plan, instead acknowledging how flawed the plan is to begin with along with the unexpected risks it now carries for developers at every step!

I am seriously worried that this is it, without prompt reversal of the plan by now, Unity are going all-in on it, our way or the highway, somehow not realising they are literally about to destroy their own business due to the snowball effect it will have.

A couple of specifics

Fee on new Installs
This still doesn't answer the fact that we have two trains of thought on this thread as to whether the fee's tiers reset per month or not? That is assuming you are above thresholds, are the first 100k tier installs of the month always charged at the higher rate, or are the installs accumulative over time and you only ever pay the first 100k installs at the higher rate for each game, etc down the tiers? Common sense says the latter, but I don't think there was anything in FAQ that disproved the former!

Define Installs and Count installs
Nothing about refunded games.
Nothing about various frauds that have been seen in the past - e.g

What happens in the case that a store is hacked and game keys are stolen and then sold on? Developer gets no revenue from sale, but buyer has an official install, so no way to tell! Obviously if the store detects the fraud or discovers the hack the developer will at least know that keys have been stolen, and I guess at that point we are back to Unity 'Trust me Bro' will reimburse any fees they charged the developer for those fraudulent installs?​

 

I'm keeping my shares until the next annual meeting to vote for the CEO.

 

Funny because I remember the exact opposite.

 

And when is Unite? It is going to be an interesting show...and people who paid their money for tickets are gonna be super pissed sitting there

 

Seeing how Unity's stance on this pricing update has not changed, and how they are retroactively applying it to existing games, I can no longer trust Unity enough to justify any further development. How am I supposed to trust that you won't lower the threshold down to $25k or further increase the cost per install when you are changing the terms from when I initially started development? Trust you? After one day you tell us "When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS." and then the next you remove your TOS on github and pull this?

Even if you try to argue that its a "better value", if the communities initial reaction upon a glace is revolting, what does that say about your ability to continue to bring in new developers who keep your lights on? Will I still have a game engine to use in a few years when these decisions continue to drive away new customers? Will there be a pool of people to hire from? I would much rather work with a company that announces that it will "... cover the 5% engine royalty for sales on the Epic Games store", instead of charging me $0.20 per download even on existing games, which I have zero control over. Even if only a fraction of sales come from the Epic Game store, at least it feel they they are trying to help their customers who are just starting out. Its all about perceived value, and this change overshadows all other benefits.

I will start porting all of my work over to Unreal today. What a waste of time.

 

Well, first of all they are not charging a royalty, they are trying to charge for something that generates no income.

Second, and this is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART - they are changing the existing contracts. It's not some new feature that would require this, it's not the new engine going forward, it's EVERYTHING.

Thirdly, how can you trust any party that just alters your agreement?

 

Guys you can talk until you reach page 1000 or maybe you can visit unity Ads page.

 

This is all well and good that you did some work to figure out some numbers but for many of us it really just boils down to trust. I don't trust Epic at all. But Unity has sunk so far below the threshold and it started slipping right about the release of Unity 2017. That slope has only gotten steeper and steeper. This was the landing in the cold icy lake at the bottom of a snowy mountain for me and many others like me.

There is zero possibility that anyone can trust them when they are willing to change their TOS so drastically with what amounts to zero warning ahead of time. Make no mistake. They didn't make this change to benefit their customers. It wasn't done because it brings better value to their product or service. And when changes like that are made you have to be willing to walk away from the table.

 

Nope the whole point of this is to hit the free2play giants that are basically making free money with unity games. That is why they cant use sales even tho it d be a whole lot easier to everyone else.

 

6 years of development in the bucket.

Edit: lol didn't recognize you could read it from my "joined" date.

 

pay per install can become 109% royalty of the profits since they include pirated copies.

109% of the profits is more than 5%

(and unreal takes 5% after first million, per game btw)

 

I think the biggest thing is installs doesn't necessarily compare to revenue/income. Yeah, any price increase is going to get some grumbling, but there's so many edge cases and unknowns with this poorly thought out system that make it basically impossible to know how much you're going to end up paying Unity at the end of the month, especially since this install tracking is going to basically come down to "trust me bro, we have a proprietary data model".

The thing that's just been gnawing at me since this has come out is that this install-based pricing is just... So hard to plan for. There's a solid chance that Unity is expecting you to pay for install before the revenue from sales for those installs would even come in, essentially asking you to front them the money.

In addition, so many questions keep popping up in my mind.

What happens if a game gets a surge of nostalgia years down the line, long after the developer's focused on supporting it, and a bunch of people reinstall it? The money that those sales would have generated is probably long-since spent, so devs are forced to face that sword of Damocles as long as that game is available.

And importantly, as a consumer, what would buying a game made in Unity actually mean? Do I have to worry that the game will no longer be available for download if a developer can't pay the runtime fee?

EDIT: See this post, as my last questions are probably not as relevant, but I stand by my thoughts that this is a ridiculous, short-sighted, poorly-thought-through monetization scheme.

 

But it wouldn’t be a much better option.

Just basic math:

Say you’ve met the 1 million threshold (already a major blessing for any developer) for your $20 indie game. Then you sell another 500k copies (another dream success) that qualify for a royalty/fee.

On a Pro license, you’ll pay a $10,000 fee. Even if Unity goes full evil an arbitrarily doubles your install rate, that’s still only $20,000. On Enterprise license it’s even less.

On Unreal, you’ll pay a $500,000 royalty

That sounds better to you?

 

If Unity wanted to charge a royalty, that's fine, but its on them and they would likely still be losing developers, just at this point its more palatable then a dumb install tax!

The problem isn't simply what system Unity is imposing, its that they are imposing a new system at all and a system that applies to any game you made, at any time in the past, with any version of Unity! It retroactively affects previous games and shows they are willing and maybe able to change the terms in such a way as screw over their customers whenever they like and for whatever they like - that is not a business that can be trusted!

 

You forgot an adjective in that sentence.

 

BTW, as usual, they say they would like to do something, but they actually don't do the thing they are claiming they want to do. No ACK, no really hearing the problems, no really clarification.

 

All they have to do is sign an agreement with these giants that they will be getting a royalty for revenue. There is absolutely NO reason to make this mandatory for everyone.

 

ANd if u earn 1 000 001 $ u pay 5% from 1 $ , so royality is everything above 1mln + if u are in 20-30-40mln royality range u can make a custom deal with them.

 

90% of posts starting with this word are strawmen...

..yeah, dude. People be mad because unity want money. Clearly you have read ZERO of the replies on this thread.

 

If the point is that, why charge 0.15 cent for medium size studio and only 0.02 cent for AAA studio, and 0.01 cent for AAA Chinese studios?

And they CAN use sales, in-app-purchase count as sales normally in rev-share.

 

Please stop rationalizing this evil.

Stop asking them to clarify *how* they're going to steal our money with bulls**t fees.

Demand that they just don't. Revenue =/= installs. Massive duh.

 

It sounds fair, because again the money is invested into the tool I use . Nobody says Unity cant make money but their current plan is UNPREDICTABLE! Noone will base their business on unpredictable spending.

 

In addition to what we're suffering as a result of all this, I'm pretty sure the majority of Unity employees right now are concerned about job security. I would be, anyway. They've apparently already suffered 3 waves of layoffs recently and number of offices being cut from 58 to 30. It's probably like 1984 around there - better watch their mouths kind of thing.

I hope everyone is backing up the assets they've bought - I'm on letter P so far working my way down 433 My Assets in Package Manager. Unfortunately, of the thousands of $ I've spent in the store, much was code that only works in Unity, so I've written that off. At least things like textures and models and animations are portable

Now if I could only avoid paying the next 10 months of my subscription term.. *sigh* but I will honor the terms I already agreed to, even though Unity isn't honoring theirs. It's been a [mostly] great 4 years around here. Sad to see it end this way. Heartfelt thanks to everyone that's helped me out along the way.

 

As if you had a good reputation to begin with. Get your head out of your ass.

 

Maybe they'll ask us if we don't have phones?

 

As a guy who hasn't actively participated in the forum discussions, I still feel the need to log in and bid farewell to Unity by saying: you guys are extremely greedy and stupid!

 

For the love of all things holy just drop this already and institute two simple things:

1. Fixed EULA / ToS
2. Flat 3~5% royalty after $1M like Unreal

Then all this ends.

 

Should I make bigger letters? There should be a way to force them to pay attention to the main issue.

 

If you think one line nonsense like that will make them pay attention I have a bridge to sell you.

 

500,000*0.05 = 25000, but one Pro license only provide one seat . Or your team just have one member?

 

But can I stay on this model? Cuz you know, I know how to do math and wanna pay less?

 

If you think it is nonsense then I will let you to keep that bridge.

 

One liners are nonsense. It's a golden bridge. You'll love it.

 

If a game doesn’t generate revenue, then they don’t incur any fees. So no, they are not charging for something that generates no income. Yes people have demonstrated some very improbable edge cases that 99% of users will n ever encounter and Unity has said they will support those users on a case by case basis. Just like how Unreal adjusts their royalty with companies on a case by case basis. Your third point is, you can’t. That’s business. TOS are not a binding contract. This was always possible and the same is true if Unreal. No matter what they say, nothing is “bound” in the agreement you make when using their software. If you want to use the software, you have to abide by the terms and conditions. That’s not the same thing as a contract. I think a lot of this outrage is amateurs finally realizing what conducting real business is actually like. Running a business is hard, I sympathize. If you don’t like it then you should honestly keep game dev as a hobby.

 

I don’t feed trolls.

 

This one-liner is an essence of a problem for dumb-asses who can't read and understand more than one line.

 

At this point I think a lot of us can agree, that even if unity backs down from this nonsensical policies, the whole trust in the company is broken beyond repair. Sadly, it was something that was coming... After what the CEO of unity did to EA a decade ago and they force him to resign from the job... It sure was coming sooner or later. Perhaps if we really dig deep into the math we can see unreal is even more expensive in the long run, but it doesnt matter, because at this point its a matter of trust in the engine and the company behind it. After Unity5 every version is more bugged than the previous one, and each year unity buys more and more companies that we dont really see making a difference in the engine for the great majority of people that makes GAMES with the engine (Ironsource? WETA digital? where? PIXYZ?) and lets not even begin to talk about the whole debacle that GIGAYA was, they couldnt even make a full game with their own engine and had to cancel it. So its not about how much money we can save by prefering unity or unreal, at the end, as in every business everything comes down to TRUST. And we as a small indie studio, no longer trust unity, at all.