Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

I found a mistake in my analysis and corrected it in an edit. The math was fine, but I missed a requirement. I did come up with another losing F2P scenario though. If you're making less than $0.05 per install, odds are very high that you're not meeting that $1mil in 12 months requirement so you won't pay anything other than the enterprise fee.... unless you happen to have a truly massive number of monthly installs. If you're making $0.05 per monthly install you would need 1.66 million installs per month before you would need to pay a fee. But if you did fall under that unlikely scenario... it would really suck! You would owe $250,000 every month! lol!

But yeah, I understand the sentiment of knowing that Unity didn't take F2P into account. Also there's always going to be the nagging worry that the contract could change at any time even after the game has been released.

 

Now Unity claims they have no problem with the new fee system.
But I can't predict usage fees based on game sales, and I don't know if the install numbers are correct.
Unity has no idea how much anxiety it stirs up.

 

Way before that I think, even if your user's LTV is twice or even three time the fee that's still 50% or 33% of your revenue before taxes that just vanish, on top of what Unity is already taking, who would pay for that?!

 

Completely true. And I'm against this bad worded and formatted things from Unity. But you'll agree it's not excuse for more misinformation and blind rage against pure facts and numbers. They can only can be be beaten with another facts and another numbers (correct one, not false one, which is where my discussion with guy above started). Blame Unity, for sure, but do it productive that's my point. Blind range will do nothing but produce even more rage and misunderstanding.

 

And what do they take into account when calculating the 10%? Also every copy of Unity Personal that is downloaded by kids who just wanna try out what the pro's are using to create their favorite games?
The more interesting question is: What percentage of developers is affected by the download fee, who actually already subscribed for a PLUS or PRO licence and already create steadily revenues for Unity?

 

Instead of paying $30,000 in fees, you just upgrade to a paid Unity plan for ~$2,000 per dev and pay no fees until you sell 1,000,000 copies.

 

There's one more point to that calculation, Unreal only charges for the ones going over the 1M revenue, so in this case you would still pay 0 for unreal, when your revenue reaches 2M you'd have paid the 50k to unreal, 53k for Unity, but at that point you should have upgraded for pro already to avoid that cost. But now you're tied to a pro subscription, what happens if you stop subscibing for pro if you for example decide to leave the industry or switch engines... There's so many unknowables still.

 

In my opinion, it is fun to expect an online petition to do anything - BUT - this time it just makes sense at least to try.

 

that is not a good idea

 

Well, they should close the company. Or better yet, sell it to a big player like Microsoft.

It's ridiculous that this has to be our problem and that we have to face bankruptcy because we have to let ourselves be robbed to exhaustion.

If Unity is not profitable, they should close the company and do something else. The updates will stop, but at least we keep the versions we have. And if they sell the company, they won't lack buyers.

If they are really desperate, they should announce the shutdown, and since Unity is publicly traded, the big players will fight to take control of Unity.

 

I took the time to do just that on Tuesday, and couldn’t find any mention in the Standard Asset Store EULA that assets purchased could only be used with Unity.

if you have an asset that uses a non-standard license agreement or is licensed per-seat (as most code-based packages are these days), I would certainly be more wary of taking it with you, but portable stuff like models, textures, audio, etc. should be fine to take with you as far as I’m able to ascertain from the standard license.

(Necessary reminder that I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, obviously do your

 

Not even that. They said something along the lines of 'we will leverage that knowledge to accomplish this over time' meaning that they plan in the next four months to somehow solve a problem that has been industry-wide for four decades now.

 

I'm not so sure if Joachim is around anymore. If you look at his profile page in the forums you'll see that the last post he ever made was in March 2022 - that's 1.5 years ago.

 

i've been saying this, that calculator is not working, is incorrect, but that guy is just angry for nothing

 

These are some complicated rules indeed. A combo of Unreal Engine + Apparatus ECS seems more likable now.

 

It's not just that, it's that with this they are telling you that you should be AFRAID of success and that you can DIE from success.

It's not realistic.

 

Everyone here who have released games on Steam should make a post on their community section stating they game may come to an end due to Unity's greed.
We need to stand together or these corporate greeders will take every cent from you, plus your wife and kids too.

 

After spending 12 years with Unity, purchasing numerous assets, serving as a CTO and Co-founder of a company releasing two games with two more in progress, our company has made the difficult decision to part ways with this engine. I have always recommended Unity to my students, appreciating its engine and workflow. However, the current situation has raised serious concerns on multiple levels. While the immediate impact on my company and myself may not be significant, the trust has been deeply compromised, making it impossible for me to continue endorsing Unity and its parent company. Thankfully, I have also acquired proficiency in Godot and Unreal alongside Unity, providing me with a backup plan. As a passionate developer, switching engines is not a major hurdle. In conclusion, farewell Unity. You provided me with the opportunity to embark on my journey as a developer, but as all tales must end, our story together concludes now =(

 

not good with you not

Not good for you but good for the rest of us, so please shut up.

 

The fact that there's so many highly intelligent people in here having trouble determining if Unity's plan is going to be fine or bankrupt them, goes to show this is way too confusing and is going to cause studios to walk away from Unity. Too convoluted, too confusing, too much "trust me bro" on the accuracy of Unity's data, and too much risk Unity will just change the rules retroactively again later when they figure out how to extract more money, and it is just going to feel way too risky to use Unity anymore. It is very sad.

 

So If I understand it right, The best case scenario for a small indie dev is not having a successful release, so you don't hit the target of revenue threshold.

 

Maybe this was planned long ago? Certainly afer what I invested in Unity, I can relate.

 

I created this petition. I'm not a fan of petitions, just because they normaly don't changing anything. But maybe it set a sign...or for fun

 

That's the point. Currently you can make 2 cents per user from ads, say, and reaching a massive audience means you can make money. This move puts a massive minimum income per user requirement on games. Why are Unity doing this? Well Riccitiello said we should all be focussed on monetisation first and foremost, not fun or just making a living but chasing the almighty dollar. He's forcing the issue here, chasing his dream where gamers pay relentlessly to reload their gun. He wants every step a MT, and he wants that from us developers as well.

 

Or you use a paid Unity tier and pay nothing until you sell 1,000,000 copies (or have 1,000,000 installs) and earn over $1,000,000...then you will in most cases end up paying less than you would with Unreal once your sales are enough to factor out the Unity Pro licence costs.

Anyone earning over $200,000 with over 200,000 installs is better off upgrading to a paid licence, and then their fees are effectively negligible until the reach the $1,000,000 / 1,000,000 thresholds.

 

I've overlooked a lot of things from the company due to just how long I've been developing my skills and career on Unity, but this is too much of a breach of trust to ignore. This is the time! Moving shortly to Unreal or Godot.

Why not price it like Unreal? This tracking you speak of is completely nuts. Looking forward to wait for 6 months to have a response from Unity about the 100000 pirated installs of the games from my studio, followed by a year of proving they are pirated (and like, how would you know? Yeah, you can't) plus the 50000 that were a demo, plus 10000 sent to beta testers over the course of development...

 

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq#:~:text=Under the terms of the,what company collects the revenue.

It's pretty clear to me from those words that you pay 5% of your total gross revenue, once it goes over 1M. Not 5% of the excess revenue over 1M. And this is a lifetime threshold, not a yearly threshold. So once you go over 1M in revenue since your game launched, you pay 5% of it to them which is quite a lot of money.

Also, note the difference between revenue and profit. Revenue is the money you get from the game before deducting expenses, taxes, etc. Your revenue is typically a lot higher than your profit.

 

>>> https://unity.com/runtime-fee <<< This page explains many questions that people have, but also creates EVEN MORE confusion.

The subscribers will pay the fee. What if I cancel the subscription, but I keep the game on Google Play Store or Steam?

The revenue is calculated per game, not per company. (I think it's good thing)

So if I make multiple puzzle games and each has 50k downloads, they will/might add these downloads together because the games have "substantialy similar content"? This is madness.

You create game, find publisher that takes 20%, publisher puts it on the Steam that takes 30%. But you, as subscriber, will have to pay as if you received all the money.

They track the country where the installation occurred.

All countries that are not included above are considered emerging-markets. The installs from these other countries are much cheaper.

I think this is the biggest red flag. Unity won't ask you for the invoices, tax info, proofs of revenue. They will estimate the revenue by themselves. And of course, they won't tell you how they did it.

 

Maybe if they were not taking 30% of the total sale you make on assetstore and put you to pay absurd taxes after that for the money you make them then perhaps they would not be in this situation.

 

It's absolutely horrible ! When I learned it yesterday, it made me so angry and it knocked me down. Tahnkfully, I haven't achieve yet my game, so I can consider switching on an other engine. RIP Unity !

 

The problem stems not from the exact numbers we do know and can account for but the ones that we don't and can't. We have no idea how many times someone will install a game or how Unity will tally that. Furthermore this is all assuming precise and accurate accounting numbers which even by Unity's admission will not be the case. They said it will all be estimates. And who knows how they will arrive at them how they will be verified, who will be verifying them (if anyone) and what you could possibly do to contest anything you see as erroneous.

 

Unity's greed does not stop at this fee, it also lies in changing the TOS in the past, things that we have come to trust. They forced every game released in the past to pay this same fee, even past game developers had to pay for this greed.

 

I agree in principle, but human beings don't tend to work that way. I'm glad you're debating this rationally though. I've been pointed to a couple of points I've missed. That said, if I'd been more mellow I'd probably rage less, and I feel massive rage is better here to try and get Unity to change, rather than people managing to accept this new change. If everyone disagreed with it but there was no emotional energy to resist, it'd just happen.

 

Reading some comments it looks like ~5% of users have the Stockholm Syndrome.
Listen guys, I know it's hard - it's hard for everyone - but we simply won't comply with robbers and thiefs.
I know it's not easy to realize all the implications these scam model introduces while being paralyzed and traumatized from the latest events so let me help you with some mental tip:

go outside for a walk, try to ground yourself and relax for a moment.

so you did that? perfect. now join a nice discord channel from a competing game engine where you can share your feelings and thoughts with others being in the same boat as you. look at this as a kind of self-helping group. this will calm you down and pull you out of your paralyzed state. maybe not by 100% because you are still anxious and afraid of the upcoming challenges you will have to overcome but it will be a first step in the right direction.

look. we must uncouple from Unity - staying with a company that tries to surpress and scam its clients won't be good for you. nor me. for noone. not now. not tomorrow. and not in 1000 years. so do your best and show the most courage you possibly can. behind every loss there is an opportunity for something new - something better. we are all in the same boat. and we are more.

Hope this helps.

 

I have some huge questions! And I saw that this design is unreasonable!
This is definitely an incredible bug!

Unity tells us:
“Unity Personal and Unity Plus: The Unity Runtime Fee will apply to games made with Unity Personal and Unity Plus that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime installs.”

Assuming a situation：
================================================================
(Scenario A: The Game 'A')
in the last 12 months of 2024：
① January $180,000
② February to December $10,000
③Total revenue =$190,000
The game 'A' had a revenue of $180,000 in January 2024.
Revenue from February to December 2024 is $10,000.
The total revenue in the 12 months of 2024 is $190,000.
This will not trigger the 'Unity Runtime Fee'.

in the last 12 months of 2024-2025 ：
① (2024)February to December $10,000
② (2025)January $10,000
③Total revenue =$20,000
Revenue from February to December 2024 is $10,000.
In January 2025, its revenue was $10,000.
The total revenue in the 12 months of 2024-2025 is $20,000.

In the following years, the revenue of game "A" will be even lower or even zero.
This means that it is never possible to trigger the 'Unity Runtime Fee'. good idea XD.
================================================================
(Scenario B: The Game 'B')
in the last 12 months of 2024：
① January $200,000
② February to December $10,000
③Total revenue =$210,000
//Tip:The number of game installations exceeds 200,000
The game 'B' had a revenue of $200,000 in January 2024.
Revenue from February to December 2024 is $10,000.
The total revenue in the 12 months of 2024 is $210,000.
This will trigger the 'Unity Runtime Fee'.

in the last 12 months of 2025：
① January $1,000
② February to December $-10,000
③Total revenue =$-9,000
//Tip:Added new installations, but revenue did not increase.
In 2025, its revenue was -$9,000.

Game 'B' has triggered the 'Unity runtime fee'.
Although its revenue is unstable (if revenue gradually decreases or even shows negative growth), it still needs to pay the "Unity runtime fee" on a monthly basis.

Because users who have already purchased game 'B' may upgrade their gaming devices or have multiple devices for new installations.

This has not taken into account the installation volume of pirated and cracked versions.

This will expose developers to the risk of unlimited losses. So much so that game 'B' must be taken off the shelf to escape.

 

Ah, that is a very good point. That actually changes a lot in my math calculations in the hypothetical scenario that was brought up. Accounting for the margins makes the situation much, much worse for anyone in the mobile F2P industry that makes more than $1 mil in gross revenue. Thanks for the info.

 

This is almost impossible for established companies, but just a tip from a friend of mine, the switch to fluency in Godot from Unity is like 2 months (and just the evenings, so more like, a week full time)

 

Honestly, I have just spent 3.5 years building a game based on a version of Unity with terms and conditions that clearly state IF they are to change, I can go by these older ones. I have these terms saved.

So if I launch my game before 2024 and just ignore Unity trying to bill me, citing them with the old terms and that I wouldn't have spent 3.5 years building the game based on the new terms... Are they going to take me to court? What else can they do? Disable my game? Get the app stores to pull it?

UNITY PLEASE ANSWER ME?!

 

I don't understand example.

For example, let’s look at a hypothetical game made by a team using Unity Pro with the following revenue and install numbers:
Revenue from last 12 months - $2M USD
Lifetime installs - 5M

and next
Prior month installs (Standard fee countries) - 200K
Prior month installs (Emerging market fee countries) - 100K

so, my brain calc 5 300 000 installs,
200K x $0.02 + 100K x $0.01 = 5k$

but they

The fee for install activity is $23.5K USD, calculated as follows:​

(100K x $0.15 (first tier for standard fee countries)) + (100K x $0.075 (second tier for standard fee countries)) + (100K x $0.01 (fee for emerging market countries)) = $23.5K USD​

so, its i wrong, or something dont understand why first tier and second tier ?

 

If you work in the mobile gaming industry then you must understand that the rare cases you talk about are very normal, and we will always owe Unity a huge amount of money.

 

Well, that's his right as CEO, and if that's the model the shareholders are after, what can we say? it's their money. Maybe they want Unity to be a specialized engine for high-revenue games from now on. It's their choice.

However, stealth-changing the TOS retroactively for older Unity versions is not ok. It is a scam. Charging us based on illegally collected information from users, or by a "model" that "guesses" installs and we can't appeal against, is probably highly illegal, and certainly something I don't want to depend on.

 

Ok...

 

Oh god, I just waded through a whole bunch of stuff this morning, but this really takes the cake.

What you're saying, and what has already been said, are not related. The person you're replying to (with this half-thought brain vomit) is pointing out the issue of "how does Unity determine what is the first install of a system on a device?"

Does it fingerprint the device and detect a change in hardware and flag it as a new install? Maybe the user changed the operating system recently; that could be another install. Maybe I just changed to a new hard disk so that I can store more games or run them with faster load times; does that get flagged up as a new install? Actually, say I have a laptop or a Steam Deck or similar device; is that also a new install? Or does the system just not work and it triggers with every install and re-install?

For instance, there are games on Steam that sometimes need to be uninstalled and reinstalled to solve an issue the player is having. Usually, it's a last-resort issue because depending on connections, it can take minutes to hours or even days to download a game. A system such as this can cause the player grief because they have to reinstall a game, and the developer grief because they might have to suck up the charge for a game that probably didn't install properly.

 

I don't disagree with you, I don't think their move is legal. But they are trying to claim the one thing is separate from the other.

 

This is lacking a lot of information/context.

• there is no plausible way in which selling a game for $10 a unit will result in you losing money from Unity's new payment structure.
• 20c per install is the absolute maximum and in most cases nobody will ever actually be charged that much
• If your game is $10, then you will not pay a cent to Unity until you have earned a revenue (in a single year) of $10,000,000 (though that could vary if you put the game on sale or otherwise change the price)
• That kind of revenue puts you in the Unity paid tiers, where the thresholds are higher and the costs per install are lower (and get lower and lower the more installs you get).
• You only ever pay fees for the years your game crosses the revenue threshold. If your game is making over $1,000,000 per year from over 1,000,000 installs for 30 years you should be very happy and have no issue paying a small fraction of that in fees.
• Having no idea how Unity tracks installs is a very valid concern

Complaining that Unity could change their monetization next year is a pointless concern. This change doesn't make that any more or less likely, and it's always a possibility with any company whose products and services you rely on.

 

As I'm sure most other devs here also understand, the numbers themselves aren't the scary part. Sure, they WILL affect some people without giving them the chance to opt-out, but that's not what's really bad.

What is really, REALLY bad is that Unity has basically stepped over our trust towards them by adding this fee, not allowing for developers to opt-out in reasonable time, and using a metric (installs) over which they (or the developer, for this matter) have basically no control over. How are installs calculated? How does Unity know if an install is a reinstall, a charity bundle install, or a game pass install?

A few hours ago they had just aggregate information compliant with GDPR and CCPA, and as such they couldn't differentiate between those. Fast forward to now, and they magically obtained the ability to differentiate them.

The matter now is not a simple "20 cents is a cent too much for me to pay!", it's a matter of trust and reliability in building a business with them. How can any business owner still trust Unity after this and just go on with it? Especially since they are the ones making up the numbers "at their sole discretion", and are the part that has a financial interest in them being overestimated?

 

Depending on the type of game, it can even get a tad smoother. We have a strategy game we were doing in Unity that is getting ported over like a dream atm

 

Actually Unity is signifiable more expensive then Unreal for some people.

Lets say you make $1.1 million in revenue and 1.1 million installs per year and have 5 develops using Unity. After the first year you will be paying.

-$10,000 in pro fees
-and 91,666 installs per month at 0.15 x 12 = $165,000


$175,000 Vs Unreal at $55,000

 

Looks like Unity Industry is just for CAD, 3D modeling companies. Ie. Not game dev. If they would give us a flat fee extortion fee to escape their $0.20 /install insanity that would be sleazy but I would bite the bullet to save my time.

They are not providing any way out.

 

This cost-per install plan is a stupid idea, even for Unity itself, the amount of revenue Unity is able to reap from this plan is very little.

Let's use Genshin Impact as an example.

According to the statistics from Sensor Tower, Genshin Impact currently got around 3million installs per month on Apple and Android, and nets around $35 million IAP revenue per month.

According to Unity's current plan (assuming all downloads are from developed countries), publisher for Genshin Impact , ie.miHoYo, will need to pay Unity $0.125 * 100k + $0.06 * 400k + $0.02 * 500k + $0.01 * 1,800,000 = $64,500 per month, which is only 0.19% of miHoYo's revenue.

For a leisure game like Geometry Dash (assuming that it works on Unity).

According to the statistics from Sensor Tower, it currently got around 4 million installs per month on Apple and Android, and nets around $200,000 IAP revenue per month.

According to Unity's current plan (assuming all downloads are from developed countries), publisher for Geometry Dash, ie.Robtop Games, will need to pay Unity $0.125 * 100k + $0.06 * 400k + $0.02 * 500k + $0.01 * 2,800,000 = $74,500 per month, which is 37.25% of its revenue! This pricing scheme can easily bankrupt companies.

Not only is this plan unfair (targeting smaller developers + companies earning less may need to pay more), the revenue Unity got from this pricing scheme is small (US$139,000)

If Unity just switch pricing scheme to 1% of developers' revenue, it can charge US$350,000 from miHoYo and US$2,000 from Robtop games, totalling US$352,000. Not only is this much fairer, Unity can receive 2.5x revenue from this new scheme.

Just because John Riccitiello got an aggressive-assertive personality with standard "Silicon Valley CEO" CV doesn't make him a qualified CEO of any sort. EA's stock price fell by 60% while he was the CEO and Unity's stock price hasn't been going well since it was listed. It shows how incompetent he is. If Unity's board has any sort of common sense, John Riccitiollo shall be sacked the next morning.