Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

While that would still be a convoluted mess of a system. But coming from a company run by a guy that made it his business to introduce that sort of convoluted stuff into gaming so that people wouldn't fully grasp the prices they were paying unfront... not really surprising.

 

@tkVel

If you are using a platform like Google play, according to their own info, you should be OK, at least from paying a unity bill, as Unity will charge the distributer, as in google.

https://unity.com/pricing-updates

Who is charged the Unity Runtime Fee?
The Unity Runtime Fee will be charged to the entity that distributes the runtime.

​

Still have no idea how that will work. The distributer wont take that lying down and they will try to find a way to pass that onto you. Or drop your game. Or just refuse to pay it since they have no legal obligation to Unity.

Also doesn't help that they talk about "Creators only pay once per download" in another part, not entities. They just make no sense, like a lawyer didnt write it.

But, it's all a bit vague now. And as usual the lawyers needed to sort this mess will make all the money.

 

This will kill mobile development in Unity. And it's true, even if they roll this back completely, does anyone here still trust them to invest their development / future revenue with this demonstration of the risks they can create out of nowhere at this point?

Moving to GoDot.

 

I feel like the lawyer that typed out that original statement had indeed open in another tab.

 

'Thoroughly read the contract' that they could change at any moment retroactively?

 

I doubt it some maybe hiding under their desks clutching their lucky red stapler. But the show must go on.

 

This is a pretty hilariously bad analysis of capitalism.

 

After reading this I feel like I already have the answer I was looking for. I'm ******!

 

To be fair I didn't read it. I just grabbed the first search result that sounded interesting.

 

It was a tongue-in-cheek statement. Not made by Riccitiello. It's just us having a bit of fun imagining what his likely response will be in the next day or so.

 

I wouldn't buy into that if I were you. I can't imagine any distributor would be happy with it especially on platforms that are full of freemium games. Chances are if it is legit these companies would stop distributing games made with Unity.

 

Two employees and a moderator is not that much of a difference. Unless my count is wrong.

 

If you know any theory at all related to capitalism and other socioeconomic systems at all I recommend it because it immediately becomes extremely funny. Hell, even if you don't because you can smell the "I am changing the definition of things to fit my needs" all over it.

 

I am sure the distributer will be you or your publisher.

 

In fairness there have been 3 Unity employees in this thread and the latest 'official' reply was about8 hours ago here Official - Unity plan pricing and packaging updates | Page 99 - Unity Forum

In addition I myself have suggested to some of them that they stop replying beyond acknowledging specific raised points, as they were making conflicting statements between themselves, the blog and the FAQ, which confused matters further. Indeed in such a situation as this they really need to be very careful what and how they reply to ensure accuracy of information presented.

So overall don't take the lack of replies as any indication of anything.

That said there does appear to be some internal issues due to comments from a few sources, the most recent of which was that twitter post I made about a Unity employee who apparently resigned over this. https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...ckaging-updates.1482750/page-114#post-9310601

Oh and the official twitter account for Unity is simply spamming the same reply over and over now which is quite funny.

@<insert name here>
We have heard the confusion from the indie community loud and clear and are working to clear this up. Here is a link to our latest statement: https://on.unity.com/3ZfyHFg​

Less funny is this is probably the first time in over a year I've opened Twitter

 

I'm not counting the moderator. There are three employees in this thread. One of them didn't have the badge applied as it was the first time they communicated on the forums.

 

We are doomed..

 

Yes, you need high revenue for it to matter, so because most people who use Unity are hobbyists it won't affect them. However, as the CEO has so eloquently said, developers who don't think about the monetization of their games are idiots. If you're selling the game as a business, 1 million in revenue is something that you should absolutely expect. A single $1 million/year game is about a 4 to 5 person studio meaning someone to run the business, a developer, an artist, qa, and someone else. It's not a big team, and quite a few business models for games right now cannot deal with per install fees like this.

 

You know it's spelled "Godot", right?

 

Putting the math in another way:

• You develop the next mobile sensation - it's Angry Birds all over again - 10+ million downloads, HOORAY!!!!
• Out of those 10+ million downloads, you convert to $1,000,000 of in game purchases or ad revenue, AMAZING!!!! LET'S BUY A NEW HOUSE!!!!
  
• Unity now takes every single penny you earned (or nearly every, depending on time scale or license) and you may even owe them money.
• If you were on Unity Plus you owe them $2,000,000 and are now $1,000,000 in debt.

You could hit the jackpot and end up bankrupt for it.

Who can possibly take this chance? Going worse than broke for massive success? Literally declaring bankruptcy because of Unity fees?

This reminds me of what the music industry was once like where artists would sell tens of millions of albums but still end up broke because the record labels would take every penny.

 

Now we know any employees who know anything are leaving, making the engine worthless. Nothing is going to get fixed ever again.

 

Spelling is over-rated

 

I'm okay with regulated capitalism, but when companies go public, it's only ever about increasing profits year to year. A good example is Netflix — you can't grow forever, and their board is now worried because they're only stagnating with the largest streaming user base on the planet. So Netflix is trying to find new ways to charge the customer just to keep profits rising. It's never enough.

When Unity went public, I think many people saw this coming. The suits really don't understand game development at all. /salute to the dream that was.

 

Well, I will put my unity plus month money in godot.
No respect the clients? The clients go to other shop.

 

And please tell me where you got your crystal ball that tells you exactly how many in game purchases you are going to get from users per download, especially if you are a first time developer or building a game in a new genre or with a new style.

He is forcing us to hold a gun to our heads and hope that when we pull the trigger the chamber will be empty. One cannot predict the future or know how many users will convert to payments until one has already launched.

You could be making millions of dollars with amazing success, yet still end up in debt from it if the downloads-to-revenue ratio doesn't work out.

 

Not quite. There’s just that little runtime fee you forgot.

 

It is insane that Unity would hire a notorious figure like Jon Riccitiello to be their CEO, it is like a country hiring late Robert Mugabe as their economic consultant.

 

Did you wrote that? It was a good laugh

 

Anyway it is clear that moderators and low level employees that don't know how the story works (because neither the CEO knows exactly what they want to fee and how), can't solve this problem. If the CEO insists of not moving at all Unity won't stand a chance. I hope someone can convince him of resigning or at least remove all this mess and go back to the starting point.

 

You're really doubling down?

"90% of you won't make that much money anyways" may be true, but

People THRIVED to succeed with Unity.

Now, people FEAR to succeed with Unity.

Let that sink in, your users FEAR to SUCCEED with your product.

 

But should have enough brains to understand that making game development a jail risk and make developers go to debt will remove all users and Unity will close down.

 

This doesn't help anything anymore, in a year or two install prices will just go up,
more fees & limitations to editor will be added, anything can change anytime.

Just kick the CEO out.

 

I'm one of them, in fact. I repeatedly said how Unity going public would lead to them chasing shareholder profits in extremely aggressive ways that would lead to business decisions affecting both the quality of the engine itself and how the company functioned. I was, and am, very annoying about it.

 

What's your Mac?

 

I was going to check it out yesterday, but it was a 54GB install from the Epic launcher, so I went out and bought another SSD to be on the safe side. Will know eventually

 

That should be fine. You might have to dial settings back but that's kinda normal as it defaults to really high ones.

 

We all knew about that and have moved on.

 

Installed Unreal on Mac yesterday, running perfectly. XCode must be present too because to compile shaders.

 

I've been calling him John 'F***ing Idiot' Riccitiello like it was his real name for nearly a year now. Even put it as a special thanks in a couple of my jam titles.

This thread is kinda long but if you stroll though you'll find plenty of those references.

 

I think we can all thank Unity for being an example of how not to run a business for everyone to see as a warning.
You can count the developers that didn't yet switch to other engines or haven´t removed their games for sale in January 1st and think was this worth it.

 

I feel like this speaks for itself.

 

I guess you’re a „F***ing idiot“ then?

 

Came back because I notice one thing.

Their lazer targeting is right on the range of users which can turn easily to Godot:

- starting indie making their first game
- hobby/casual business dev, like dani, that occasionally make game, and which can virally spread
- youtuber with (relatively) large following dipping in game dev as performance
- non technically ambitious but artsy dev giving a go to game dev with a small game
- f2p mobile dev farming simple game with low margin

Godot is less good for bigger technically / visually ambitious game, for console, those are likely to be unaffected, and those can go to straight to unreal, anyway

 

I'd have loved to see the look on management's faces when the staff started resigning.

 

My one concern for moving is that my bought assets won't be compatible

 

Only if Riccitiello goes. And not months later after the financial reality hits home.

 

Type it into an AI image generator and see what it pops out. It's probably be more expressive and human-like than the real people hahahaha.

 

Basically…

“hey genshin is making too much money with our engine. Let them pay for us more!
Oh wait, I have a better idea ”

 

correct me if i'm wrong.. i've been making some maths with a friend and for what i can see, this new model is actually BETTER THAN BEFORE, at least for new developers, i do not understand how they are going to charge old games that are elegible but we know they are going to start counting after 31 dec 2023 i'm not taking into consideration that they can lie about the number of downloads, which i can not see the point on that because every store like steam, app store and etc can show you how many download your game has, so...