Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

F*** man, why is this so accurate…

 

Well, comparing to Unity right now, they are actually better. That doesn't make them good.

 

Don't panic mate. With all the backslashes from the community, I believe they'll address these issues soon, otherwise no one will ever want to use their engine anymore. Just be patient.

 

Exactly. The ONLY reason unity walked that back is because we complained. Hence, never stop complaining! We complainers get S*** done!

 

I and a few others are in a similar situation. We decided not to pay for Unity and use a lower version, which for me is Unity 2021.
If I succeed, maybe I'll have the money to switch to another engine before Unity drains me, or there will be a lawsuit.

 

Definitely. Lots of what IF scenarios in this install fee thing.

Even worse, hypothetically, someone could just hack the reporting API for installs, and report made up installs to unity servers with sending random machine data for install.

Then Unity goes "oh hey, you have 1000000 new installs, gib money".

It's essentially client side authority thing, and u know how that goes

 

With recent changes, I see that Unity is getting what they are really after.
It was not about what install is or revenue etc. they can all be changed or agreed upon per studio basis.
What they're trying to do is to charge twice for the same thing. But in the second time, they want to control who to charge and the amount to charge.

Unity is nothing for game dev without its runtime component. So if you have a pro license (2K a year) and can't make a runtime build, then what is Unity Editor? So Unity Editor and Runtime are the same thing.

Why don't they make the editor free for all (they've been telling this is not their main income), charge per service you use? Make tiers for revenue share with a cap? Let user' chose a different revenue share for each platform? Because a license is nearly nothing for them. they'll use it as a bargaining chip anyways. They want to be in control (runtime tax) of who and amount.

Why do they want to bill CEO' stock price increase adventures to their users? Unity people are not stupid, they knew Unity would need lots of money after those acquisitions. But they've increased Pro license price previous year and couldn't do it twice in a row. So they invented another way to charge for the same thing. This time which more control.

Why not make a better product so your user' make better games in less time? Cause it is hard and they're not equipped with such vision. If there is an easier way, they'd chose to do that.

Personally I'm only affected by the forced "Pro" upgrade plan and probably not by the runtime tax but I'm fundamentally against Unity charging for the same thing twice (with a twist).

So it is not about what is an install, what about X or what about Y. They can and will be be adjusted. So that's why there were no calculator with the announcement. They didn't need one. Idea was to charging twice for the same thing.
Who can say that next time they'll need cover up for their bad acquisition, they won't come up and say: "License price is same but we're increasing runtime tax to X and decreasing the limit to 500K installs?"
They'll give a carrot to users but the carrot is nearly costs a thing for them.

 

You can reject any changes to unreal's liscencing so long as you don't update your version of unreal, so they literally can't pull this.
They actually support their devs - their incentives are alligned as they profit when developers profit. Their fees are fair, transparent, and, if you sell via the unreal store, much much less than a unity game selling on steam.

 

They don't understand that the only way to save the company at this point at this point is to revert (Unity can still try some other change to monetization later, but nothing retroactive), put safeguards in place that are even more stringent than the previous ones that have been broken, and most importantly, fire John Riccitiello and his confederates (this takes down the sword of Damocles that Riccitiello has transformed into. He can never be trusted again, and only a fool would do business with such a man who has revealed himself to be a greedy buffoon who will stab you in the back at the first opportunity).

Anything less than that means that no one will be around to patronize Unity. Revenue will trend to 0. It might take a year, or two, but Unity is a dead engine walking.

It's ironic and counter-intuitive, but Unity meeting us half way won't save Unity. It will only ensure its eventual destruction. Everybody will still run to the exits just as fast as they can manage and Unity will die.

If we want to save Unity, and we're talking about low single digits that's even possible at this point, then the board must be convinced to give Riccitiello the boot. That means the best way to save Unity is to make this event as painful as possible so that the magnitude of Riccitiello's incompetence becomes undeniable.

 

So you are absolutely affected by what Unity - wants - and wants to achieve!
People who are so deeply "caught" in their project that they have no choice but to pay the robbery.
That is what they are counting on.
just as to ask already sold, legal software of the past years to pay again, and rip off again!
that's what this license is about.
It is not even calculated on the future, but on it: to create as much profit as possible from the success of the past! That is what it is all about.

 

Unreal offers a lot of features comparable to Unity. (Godot, by comparison, doesn't even have a terrain system)

The 5% cap is a stable, predictable number. That's what people want. We want stability.

The "number of installs" system is a metric outside of our control and cannot be accounted for. Unity have also been completely opaque as to how they're going to get these numbers with answers ranging from "trust me" to "dunno".

Nobody who plans to make any money from their product can feel secure from this.

 

thats incorrect in april new fees will be introduced $0.5 for install flat and all calculations go down drain

 

Oh, nope I'm more than happy to discuss things constructively.

I've pointed to this based slight look at constants in source and stopped check the rest, if it's incorrect in source there is not point check in which it's also incorrect. Valid point I havent's checked it furture to solidify my proofs, I agree on that with you.

Well here I'm disagree with you, as you telling you've read all pages with my answers which in fact isn't, because check this my math from one of the messages above and please tell me where these calculations are wrong and understanding fees wrong, I'll appreciate that (calculations exclude emerging markets):

With ignoring installs for last 12 months words as there should be lifetime

Fully agree

 

How many times did you post this already?

 

only option is going open source. more of everyone going into open source better it is. Blender is the top 3D application right there at the moment and cost nothing. But because couple of years back 3D guys had enough of fees up to 6k/year from companies like autodesk now we have this amazing Blender app. It even has an opensource game engine inside.

 

Absolutely Right!

 

you right in one Case.
Like Blender Foundation.

but show us an Engine, what can stand the Players "WANT WANT WANT"
and hold the Possibility, to develop a flexible Game, in 3D in an time now Quality Standard

for free.
if you know such a Thing, tell us.
And please: do not name Godot, this Engine is a nice Project, but this is Stoneage, in complain to Unreal or Untiy.
Lumberjack is also no Option
- only Amazon Sales allowed
- Amazon own the Rights
this is end of the Line

Crisis you cant licence, you will go poor.

What is your idea to this ?

 

No Bro it is not even logical. If I was a subsidiary Unity would pay my salary.

 

Fair enough, looking forward to see it again

 

I AM OUT!
OUT OUT OUT!
Single indie developer. Using Playmaker asset.

Unreal or Godot Ai assisted programming, here I come. I will manage.
Assets be damed!

I am not going to be pushed around like this.

Even with a rollback, unless this company is taken back out of the stockmarket this "squeeze" is only going to happen sometime later. So forget about it.

 

Where you get 0.5 I don't know.


Edit: Ah it was sarcasm, about Unity will change fees, can't disagree with you, Unity can do that, that's what we can only guess and it's matter of trust breach they did.

 

Yeah I didn’t even check Asian forums until now but they’re obviously ablaze too. What the white knights also don’t understand is that most mobile games developed in Japan are gacha games, so Unity basically told them to go F*** themselves. Thankfully, most studios in Japan would never use Unity for the job anyways.

 

What would happen if everyone right now, stop their monthly licenses and leave Unity? How long can Unity survive the stock plummeting and panic?

 

You can repeat my post so everyone can see the truth.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...ckaging-updates.1482750/page-131#post-9313712

 

So Free to play games are not concerned by this new pricing ? i never see a so confusing pricing plan

 

According to a Unity statement this morning
- full of lies
- full of false facts
- which still justifies their model
- and in addition does not even know an "excuse"
are you so optimistic to give this company so much hope that:
- they roll back the model they defend
- and apologize
and you can trust them in the future ?
Where can you buy so much optimism, please tell me.
I also want something from.

 

You seem to be calculating monthly fees based on cumulative installs, are you not? Cumulative installs (partially) define whether you've passed the threshold for install-based charging, but from the annotations on Unity's table, and their FAQ, the fee actually seems to be based on monthly installs.

 

If this is your update after the tens of thousands of comments and posts about this, I don't think another 10 thousands words are going to help much. So, I'll keep this short:

You are unilaterally changing terms of service for licenses that YOU HAVE ALREADY SOLD UNDER DIFFERENT TERMS. The Unity Runtime instances running today in the entire world are running under completely different license terms. License terms that cannot be changed, that you cannot change, that you cannot force developers to agree to for those existing installations, and for all future installations using versions of the runtime sold under current and previous license terms. But who cares about that, right? We're small, you're big, we depend on you, tough luck, right?

I'm tired of this. These days, I help small studios port their Unity games to consoles, I make tools for them, because I believe in the mission of empowering all creators. But in a past life, I used to port engines and scripting languages. I started the F# port, I worked on Silverlight/Linux, on C#, on the Mono build system. All of that dull open source cross-platform infrastructure underpinning everything else. So congrats for the push, my new mission in life is now to help studios move away from Unity. I will happily add C# support to every engine, target every platform, ensure that existing Unity dev skills are as transferable as possible to other tools and other engines, so people can leave this capitalistic nightmare of a company you decided you now are. This technology and skills lock you think you have in the games industry, I'm done with that.

 

Ok, well I can do that for you, but already I'm told to ignore an inaccuracy because you just spotted it.

First I'll point out the repeated "now remember you have X installs" which has no relevance to anything because this is post install threshold.

Jan = Special threshold month
Feb = 100k installs @ $0.15 = $15,000. Month Total: $15,000
March = 300k installs. 100k @ $0.15 = $15,000 + 200k @ $0.075 = $15,000. Month Total: $30,000
April = 200k installs. 100k @ $0.15 = $15,000 + 100k @ $0.075 = $7,500. Month Total: $22,500
May = 100k installs @ $0.15 = $15,000. Month Total: $15,000

So by posting this example and asking for where it's wrong I can assume you still don't actually know how it works. I can explain it to you again, or you can look at my answer and re-read the tables and understand the per-month install counter and I think you'll get it.

 

So, Aggro Crab (the folks behind 'Going Under') had a phone call that, whilst not comforting, might provide answers to people in the days to come. Here's the tweet.

 

Not I don't I accumulate installs only for having lifetime installs and tracking which price grade should be used for calculating 1 new install price.

 

Maybe someone has asked this question, 131 pages, it's hard to find the answer.

Let me share an example:
Both thresholds are met (the game had 1 million dollars in revenue in January, 1 million installs).
- In February, the game has 100k installs in the tier-1 only. Let's say we have Unity Pro. 100k + $0.15 = $15k in favor of Unity. Good.
- Next month, March, the game again has 100k installs in tier-1 only. In this case, we'll have to pay $15k again, or the previous month's installs will be included, so we'll have to pay 100k * 0.075$ = 7.5k$ (since March 100k + February 100k = 200k).

If that's the case, it's not so bad, but if next month we have to pay 0.15$ again for the first 100k installs - it will bankrupt the mobile gamedev market.

 

The fees are graduated see @MattCarr's example.

 

Interesting how this will affect Apple. They've spent billions on a new VR headset which was going to heavily rely on Unity devs. They must be super pissed off too.

 

hmmm...let's be clear.

Unreal asks for 5% after $1M revenue per game, and once over $1M, the 5% on the first $1M is waived.

There is no subscription fee what so ever.

So.
Revenue:
$1M -> Pay nothing
$2M -> 2.5% (since first 1M is exempt)
$3M -> 3.33% (since first 1M is exempt)

and so on.
And when revenue is $10
$10M -> 4.5% (since first 1M is exempt)

So, in reality, since the first $1M is exempt, the total royalty never reaches 5%. Even when the revenue hits $10Million.
Also, if your monthly revenue drops to something like $10k, then they also stop taking royalties (I am not 100% sure how this works though, if someone knows more please correct me)

I am not going to even say if UE5 is better or about the same (it's definitely not worse) to Unity.
But just from its revenue share model, it is stupid better than this new Runtime fee.
Let's just be objective.

If one makes the argument that 200k(personal) or 1M(pro) is good because most indies will never reach that threshold. Unreal is just straight up free up to $1M. No subscription fees. No royalties. Just zero.

And this is all Per Game.

Plus, what ever you sell on Epic store is exempt from royalty fees.

 

Just to add to this, I've been a loyal Unity developer from all the way back when Unity was called OTEE. There is no other way to say it: This really is shocking and seems to me to be against the ethos Unity has had as a company for all these years. Applying these terms to games that have already been released (or soon about to be) seems to me to be the most outrageous of the changes and entirely unethical (and probably illegal too).

I won't go into the details of how this new licensing approach is incredibly flawed (to put it nicely), others have explained many of the issues already. Unity may squeeze more dollars out of us over the next 12 months, but that will hardly be worth it when many do the rational thing and migrate projects to other engines the year after.

Unity need to roll this back immediately before the damage in trust is irreparable. It's getting dangerously close.

 

There is no instant idea. I agree with everyone's point above, with Unreal offering more stable and transparent solution, but in the end, why would you fuel further corpo methods.

We need a change of system, i mean look at Unity, someone just came up and was like, hey lets make something, started amateur like, like most things and it grew, with the help of community. Thats why everyone needs to have a proper alternative, sounds utopian like, but open source is the way to go. It requires strong foundations. Me first, if project goes as planned will pour couple of mills into new engine, either supporting some existing or just find a way to collaborate with similar vision people on creating it, and offering to everyone who is interested.

Its a community based approach, people lived like that year prior capitalism bullshit.

 

Holy S***....then what are? Slaves?

 

On the original blog it says you pay for unity pro, about $2500 a year, you need to pass 1 mil downloads AND $1 mil in the last 12 mo before it affects you. And it’s actually $.02 or $.03 per install after that on that plan. Still crappy but not as bad as $.20 after 1 mil downloads.

 

To determine the cost according to the number of installations is undoubtedly foolish and self-destructive

 

At the very least though, they would not try this brazen retroactive change of ToS.

 

That is capitalism at it's finest!
Thanks for your trustworthiness unity! :-(
Bad decision!

 

So this is the end of engines war. Unity just started a civil war to its developers.

 

No its 15k each month. See here on how to calculate it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VUeUshho03braI7rx02X_C6osU6QwmuiTfQ77QLlS3w/edit?usp=sharing

 

He, or his less enthusiastic older brother will send you your invoice saying that you are over the line.

 

You have 10 friends but one of them reinstalled himself 5 times? Pay up!

 

Got a link to the 2/2 of it? Nontwitter user here.

 

Yes I got your point, you're correct, thanks for your time to prove me wrong on that matter, @TheOtherMonarch sorry I was incorrect about your message.

 

Too late; my associate and I have already begun looking for alternatives. Fortunately for us, we were at the beginning of the project. And a lot of other devs already announced their "departure" from the Unity "ecosystem".