Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

I can't see that. With all the information we currently have there won't be any new Unity games at all.

 

Seeing all the same faces that said they were done with unity on the last price change, and the one before that, and the one before that.

 

When you guys revert this decision it will still not be enough, we need the people behind this "idea" to lose their jobs and any connection with unity before they have another good idea like this one.

It's not about the price, but how dumb this looks, how can I explain my player base that now they will be tracked and probably will need to be online to play my games? You guys will keep changing the terms of service every month?

But like we always say, never underestimate a boomer's ability to screw up things that are working perfectly fine.

 

Wow, that could be really nasty, since they already unilaterally implemented this and retro-actively for previously made games, there is nothing to stop them raising the rate over time, maybe claim its inflation or whatever.

This makes financial planning with this already convoluted and terrible plan even more difficult over time.

 

Then you need to immediately update that chart. The chart implies that the fee is monthly.

 

What are you serious?! Are you sure you didn’t misread the question? Because if it doesn’t factor in profitability, Unity will be dipping into developer’s pockets potentially way before developers have the money to pay for the installs. This is especially concerning for us indie devs of multiplayer games who have to make sure we can cover cloud costs.

And we have a free cross platform game where we actively encourage users to install on their PC, phone, and consoles. Are you saying we now have to pay extra money for each console our players install their game to?

 

How do they know your revenue per game anyway? Is that with more analytics data?

 

That was like when my girlfriend wanted to have a open relationship, I was mad, and we talked about it, and came to an agreement. I was hurt, surprised of her character and wondered if she is really the one.

Today, I found out, she took a life insurance on me, stole my life savings and sold my car behind me. Then she sent a representative who went looking for calculator to convince me that this is actually better.

See the difference?

 

I was suppose to spend the warm evening here in Spain developing but now I am checking things like this:

https://www.hitberrygames.com/post/godot-vs-unity-2023-which-game-engine-is-the-best-one#:~:text=For indie developers or those,might be a better fit.

 

The chart absolutely says “monthly”. It’s not implied. It’s just what is says. I have no idea how we are supposed to derive “1 time fee” from a chart that explicitly says “monthly”

 

@Mike-Geig

More questions: Will the ToS include guarantees in any form that those prices won't be raised within the next X years?

Question 2: Can someone please show me the section in the ToS where all these changes are already noted? I am concerned about projects that are already being sold or are set to release this year.

 

Yes, but that's just software as a service. That ship has long sailed and tbh it's the only model that makes sense in software. There are no free updates. Unity employees want to be paid too.

What I see as the real problem here is trust. Unity has lost a lot already and this is not helping (and I am sugarcoating it). If your customers don't trust you as a SAAS provider then you are in big trouble. Unity has completely dropped the ball on this imho.

 

If Unity is able to not track pirated copies as installs, Unity just invented a better antipiracy solution than Denuvo.

They didn't though, thus they are pushing a big liability to us as they can't track install accurately, meaning they can't track the fee correctly. This fee can even surpass our revenue and that's an unacceptable risk.

 

This makes taxes look good.

 

Per device, per download.

So yes. You WILL be charged for multiple installs for the same user, both over time, and across devices (e.g. new phone, second PC; Steam Library Sharing, etc).

 

how do you track installs?

 

Yikes has Unity managed to invent a whole new avenue for hackers to extort developers/publishers? On top of everything else, that really is an amazing achievement.

 

when were you when unity eugene dies?

 

I was loyal to unity since 2010 and I really love to work with unity, but if this download and install fee thing really come we cancel our projects with unity and move on to another engine!

 

Anyone who doesn't like you could come up with some sort of bot and destroy your business just like that. Who comes up with stuff like this in 2023???

 

Wait a minute, but if I build a project to test on different systems, or just to check different versions on my workstation, will it too count as installs? What about VPN connections and such? Because that can addup really fast.

AN OOF

 

This sounds absolutely terrible.

I never thought there would be a day where I would beg for Microsoft to bring back XNA.

Guess its either go to unreal, or create my own engine.

This is what happens when you get ceos with no passion for gaming and think only of the profit. I doubt unity is going to be around as we know it in 10 years.

Will proably just be spyware/advertising/datamining by that point, pretty much already is.

What a massive disappointment.

 

No the real issue here is not "trust". I don't use Unity because I trust Unity. I use Unity because it fits in my business model.

Now, Unity can bill me when they want what they want. Its like they literally own my work. And unlike tax, its not based on how much I made, its based on how many people downloaded my game and tried it on different machines.

Don't get confused, we didn't use Unity because we liked them. We used it because it made business sense. Now, with the new fee, it doesn't. It is as simple as that.

 

This is the single worst decision I've ever seen in my entire life.

 

I'm sure something like that can be easily tracked.

 

So you're giving a discount for people using Unity Services?
That's tied selling, ILLEGAL!

 

Jumping on the bandwagon to say this seems certifiably F***ing insane. It's a move that seems laser-targeted to force small and free-to-play developers out of business (i.e. the developers that form the foundation of Unity's business and give them those juicy statistics like "over 70% of mobile games are made with Unity").

The problems have already been iterated to death, but to restate:

• Tracking installs implies that you will be phoning home on every install, turning every app created with Unity (not just game) into a form of spyware. Can't imagine players will be happy with that, let alone industrial clients.
• Installs are a bonkers thing to charge for, as has been said. Developers can't control them. A script kiddy could easily generate a million fake installs overnight.
• Even if you were charging per user rather than per install (again, a dodgy prospect considering how many platforms or devices an individual user might be playing the same game on), the numbers quoted are enough to put many developers with lower margins out of business. $.20 per user $200,000 for 200,000 users is 20% of total revenue. That's madness.
• The justification here is that prices have to go up in order to provide features like in-Unity version control, which most developers will not use. Unity's focusing their tech investments on services that they can bring in-house and then force everyone to pay for (pulling monopolistic bullshit tactics like waiving a fee high enough to kill our company if we adopt your first party ad platform) rather than actually keeping the core engine competitive.

So cool. At a time when Unity is facing unprecedented competition from Unreal at the high end of the market and Godot at the entry level, you decide to make pricing changes that could put a large percentage of your developer base out of business. Seems like a greeeat plan, guys.

This idea needs to taken back to the board room and set on fire. Y'all seem to forget that developers are your customers, not your executives and not your investors. If we walk, you have no revenue model left. You can't squeeze blood from a stone if you don't even have a damn stone left to squeeze.

 

This should just be replaced with a revenue share. Cost per install is far too unpredictable.

 

Maybe you should have worked out the communication before dropping the bomb? Not very professional tbh.

 

It doesn't matter who "should" be affected by this. Nobody should be affected by this in this manner.

Not only that, but stupid ass changes like this which is basically an unpredictable forever leash on your product, potentially, makes people very uneasy to use your product as a platform for their business.

 

I could be wrong but from what I understand the install fee is a one time fee that you pay on new installs from the prior month. So this image is almost certainly wrong. I think this might be more correct (although someone correct me If I am wrong):



Quite the difference between Pro and Free if this is correct!

Edit:

Actually, based on the Pricing FAQ, it seems the pricing tiers reset each month, so it might actually look like this for Pro Users:

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but here are few scenarios that I see 100% possible when this goes live.

So assuming somehow Unity manages to exclude pirated installs (doubt), mobile game developers might stop publishing their games to countries that are bringing enough income to cover installation costs.

If big company notices a small upcoming competition it might be cheaper for them to buy ads for their competitor, to drive them hundreds of thousands of low retention, low revenue installations to get them bankrupt. Or pay click farm if they are shady enough.

If player doesn't like the game, or 4chan does it for the lolz they can reinstall the game few times and rack up massive fees for developer.

If developer manages to release widely popular game with low monetization and let's say after 30% of store, income tax, wages they keep 0.2$ per user, they now get to give Unity back 100% of their money. If any of the user reinstalls the game, they are in red.

I'm running on plus license, I had 35$ monthly, 420usd per year according to current rates. According to current pricing I would have to switch to pro license that is at 1877 EUR. So roughly 5x increase.

 

Where can we get clarification on the definition of "Revenue"?

Anyone investing 5 years into a game only to make "$200k" on a "successful" game could still be operating at a loss, and now suddenly owe Unity money for the Luxury of failing despite having 200k installs.

 

How are you going to track this? What if I want my users to be able to play the game completely offline? Or if I want them to play it without being tracked - will you be tracking them without my or their consent?

 

How will you track installs?

 

So maybe this is a desperate attempt to get developers to use UGS...

 

This is pants-on-head stupid. Malicious individuals effectively have a way to DDoS people's bank accounts.

 

Honestly - Garry Newman brought up a valid point about Unity's new pricing structure.

To me it seems like they are going after big companies such as Valve, VRChat, etc. that use Unity in some form. That said - It really seems like Unity is double dipping here with literally everyone especially with it being retroactive.

That said - Valve is the kind of company that would literally block any unity game on their platform because of these changes.

 

Another paying costumer lost.

I've been using Unity since 2006, and steadily paying the Plus license (or similar legacy license) since 2013. I've done so primarily to remove the splash screen, but also to support the development of a production tool I use on a daily basis. Looking at the cost of a Pro license, I can live with the splash screen, and like many others in this thread I'm also not interested in supporting shareholders, so I will be switching to Personal.

 

As an indie, I still have thousands of dollars invested in the Unity space and this will completely upend it.

This is a pure greed-driven and entirely inappropriate tax on developers irrespective of size for something beyond their control.

It will force me to entirely abandon all my investment in Unity and cancel my seats/planned seats and shift to another engine.

This is extremely disappointing both for me personally, and I believe reflects a complete abandonment of any business / ethical standing of Unity as an organization and its leadership.

 

To clarify,
If I am using Unity Free, and I cross over that $200k threshold, instead of being forced onto Pro for my whole team, at $2000 per member of my team per year, I'm just paying 20 cents for every sale after that same threshold?
If so, that's actually awesome...

 

Genuine question: Can developers/publishers pull a game from all stores when reaching 1 mil downloads and have a guarantee that no bills from Unity are coming in? These costs are i-n-s-a-n-e @LeonhardP

 

last year in interview with PocketGamer.biz

 

There is also a threshold for Unity. This may now have been exceeded.
Even Muse probably would have made a more sensible decision. It's too bad that Unity doesn't use its own tools.

 

There are as many (about 600 now) answers as there are views on this post. This is impressive. I see many people who have been in this forum for over a decade, and they are all angry. I have never seen people that much upset of Unity. If all this ends up happening at the state it is announced, it could be even more detrimental to unity in the long term than the cancellation of Gigaya.
And nobody out of the 600 liked the announcement post.

 

All these unity generic responses seem like they aint backing down and just hope to resist the storm and have the users kneel sooner or later. If Unity doesnt revert this, then all the reputation is down the drain.

 

Yep, review bombers now also just reinstall your game 10x (or have a botnet download the free client if you self-distribute or are on itch.io) and boom.