Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Sad to see what unity is doing. Right now, the only solution that developers and players should force is to return to the state prior to the news and make the ceo and most of the management resign. Only this could restore the damage. Even if they apologize and return to the prior state (but not resign), they will never learn and try to enforce similar practices in the near future, one way or another.

 

quite a lot of people. plus, it doesnt apply to anyone making less than $1million in revenue.

Its definitely 'better' than being derived from something completely unrelated to revenue, like the number of 'installs' someone makes up, or a random number generator. (though they might be the same thing in this instance, who knows.)

 

End of an era.
Dreaming Microsoft acquired Unity and rebranded it to XNA. John has his money and we have our beloved game engine(s) back.

 

This will be much bigger than just Unity

Everyone cheered when Adobe introduced subscription based payment to the market. And every company switched to subscription models one by one.

Remember to cheer now that Unity has introduced monthly black box metrics-based payment to the market. All the other companies will love to switch to that as well.

Soon you'll enjoy paying unpredictable monthly fees based on impressions on tweets. Monthly fees based on views on YouTube.

Subscription canceled. That's the only way to send a clear message.
Good job Unity

 

I think this alone,
putting out a dozen inconsistent and contradictory announcements all detailing changes, would invalidate any claims that it's binding. it's deceptive and unfair to put out a huge number of conflicting TOS advice and updates, then tell courts the defendant knew what the agreement was.

 

Hey everyone, I've been following the recent updates from Unity Technologies regarding their new fee structure and wanted to share some thoughts. While I understand that Unity needs to generate revenue to continue developing their technology, I think it's crucial to consider the impact this could have on both developers and distributors like Xbox Game Pass.

The Current State Before the Fee


In the current state before the fee, game developers use Unity's engine to create their games. Distributors like Xbox Game Pass then host these games, providing a platform for developers to reach a wider audience. It's a fairly straightforward relationship that benefits both parties.

The State With the Fee

With the new fee structure, Unity will charge fees not just to developers but also to distributors. This could create a ripple effect. Distributors might be less inclined to host Unity-based games if they have to bear additional costs. Even if they do, there's a chance they might pass these costs back to the developers. This could be particularly challenging for small or indie developers who are already operating on tight budgets.

 

This is 100% unacceptable and shows how little they value their developers. Very sad.

 

Quoting this so I'll have it saved for later.

 

If Unity wanted to milk the big whales why not put an extra term that the fee will only apply for games with funding more than a set amount of money. Indies don't have that much of capital investment you know.

I know that I will never reach the thresholds. But even so I don't want my players to be tracked. I want to ship a game, not a F***ing spyware that calls home. We got plenty of those already. And obviously there's no way they aren't calling home. And even if they insist they are not, I don't trust them with no access to the source.

I can imagine a kind of discrimination against future games made with Unity. Players will believe (even if it isn't true, that's irrelevant in today's hype/fake news world) that anything made in Unity is a F***ing malware. They already believe it's an unoptimized mess. Why should I endanger my future projects with this nonsense? Why deal with all this?

As for the stock selling a few days ago (aka money printing).... Mr Riccitiello, I believe there's a company that offers extremely safe visits to the Titanic wreck in the Atlantic. Please use the money you just made and book a seat for one. I think many billionaire CEOs have done it, even the CEO of that very same company

 

It may be the first step.
"Oh you don't like our install count? Well, if you use our store for distribution, we can detect installs from our site and we will not double count! If you use exclusively our store, install count will be exactly the sale count, and we might even remove this fee entirely!"

 

I am also considering switching my current project to unreal.
Can anyone with unreal and unity experience tell me how long it takes to get a good understanding of unreal?
Do I need C++ or can I do everything with blueprints?

 

I would think their TOS changes (really a back track/rug pull) last year we’re just in preparation for this. So while it’s a surprise here, it’s not internally. It also makes me wonder how this never leaked? Like, no employee cared enough to leak it to the press?

https://imgur.com/a/RBk0QKq


Original article (paragraph 10, ignoring images/quotes): https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/...larify-new-install-fees-as-developers-revolt/

 

Let's say an 18-year-old boy published a badly monetized F2P game developed with Unity-free, and after some time he abandoned it because it didn't receive enough downloads.

What happens if one day the game suddenly receives 2M downloads and generates slightly over $200K in revenue?

Would the boy owe Unity $400k?

 

Nothing like revert the fee changes or the Riccitello resign can restore the damage, the damage to Unity and his community is done, the trust in Unity is lost and big changes come in the game dev industry.

 

Yes

 

If you do not ignore but consider all the costs for server and Payment you will see that you barely will be below that 5% for your own solution and there is even a chance that you do not get that good conditions as Unreal gets and will have to pay even more. So the idea of not paying 5% is nice until you need to sell your game. Then the reality shows you how nice it would be to have to pay only that 5% for all, and being done with that and having additionally a great team doing all the work to develop the engine on top.

 

yes.

and that's the issue. it's an unenforceable potentially infinite liability to game devs.

 

Yes

 

Lol

 

it actually used to be well above that. 30% is competitive, and the only reason unreal can undercut it by half is that they actually make a loss on the store itself, but make money on their own games...

something unity could learn from, after making like 3 games, then cancelling them before release.

 

What are their monthly installs after that happens?

 

No, it has to make 200k revenue in the last 12 months not in total

 

Feel free to checkout the fee graphs for new Unity Pricing Plans (more cases on my website: https://studygamedev.com/unityfee/)

 

Not a problem, some random streamer like XQc can grab the game some day and then taht boy is F***ed

 

hence the keyword suddenly, like, say, one of those games markiplier picks up and says "wow this game is super underrated I just found it on a forum somewhere"

 

Would you mind putting this source on a git? I think the only way to 'escape' this nightmare is helping each other.
That part would be great to import in any other engine part of our work.
It would be so cool to build a custom unity runtime that just reads assets from the editor and runs.

 

I don't have a ton of experience with I'll say this. Blueprints are great for sequenced logic but if you are trying to get into larger systems design you're going to want to do it with code. Need a one-shot bit of logic that fires some bullets or plays and animation or makes a sound when certain conditions are met? Blueprints will get ya there. Need to write a custom LoD system that will be integrated throughout the core of your game design? Better crack open that compiler! It's the one reason I stuck with Unity for so long. The ease with which I could write real systems code using a real programming language and just have it work without much fuss was an absolute joy for me for many years.

 

doing the real math

 

exactly. no indie dev with dreams to make it big will touch Unity now, which kills the vibe that Unity's value was built on

shareholders need to understand this is the opposite of how to build long term value / ROI and Unity is gonna tank from here. Management team (who apparently sold all or most of their stock already....) need to be ejected pronto before they suck all the value out of this.

 

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/U:NYSE

one hour till markets open again

 

If unity wanted milk whales or big receivers

He could add just that after 10million lifetime ravenue and 1 million sales unity Will get:
6% of total monthly ravenue for users of unity personal
5% of users of unity plus
3% of users of unity pro
Or 1% of unity enterprise etc.
That fee is Extra to the unity standard plan.

They could do much more with much bigger money receives.

Even add percentage based on ravenues after you reach a threshold and based on the plan you had. Even had a lifetime threshold based on ravenue. Still They choose the worst

 

Big guy would then calculate and abandon Unity leaving them with nothing . BIg guys have resources to switch engines etc., its the ppl on the bottom who will suffer the most

 

My biggest gripe, aside from the 'trust us bro' installs counting is that net terms on the monthly call haven't been defined. My worry is that we don't have the net receivables line up with the invoice from Unity. At the very least Net30 since banking takes time. But what about quarterly publisher agreements?

 

I don't see how a company can make it without ever getting new customers.
Just because we use the Editor we are still "customers", not "employees".
If I were a new developer just starting out and had to choose between Unreal, Unity, or Godot, under these new pricing rules "why would I choose Unity?"

 

the news articles under it are gonna brutalize the stock price further.

I love it.

 

If you do this on Linux you can even remove the

spoofHWIDs()

function.

 

Yes

 

MICROSOFT: Hey you know that book you wrote and published a while ago?

YOU: Yeah

MICROSOFT: Well because you used Microsoft Word, in January, you're going to start paying us for each one downloaded each month from then on. Ok thanks.

YOU: Wait wat

 

Spot on, it will take time to filter through, at which point current management will be long gone, but this will be the turning point when people say "remember Unity". The big games were already abandoning it and this will be the final nail for those on the fence. Without that revenue, and with a terrible reputation (which game engine should I use will be quite a bit easier to answer now), it will go downhill slowly.

Very sad and very unnecessary what they've done.

 

So, what about the idea it does not apply to all Unity versions, the new TOS are only since specific versions, is that correct?
Why is all of that so blurry?

https://gist.github.com/runevision/1c0d6a856dda1461577cf7f84574253a

 

And don't think for a moment that it wouldn't happen. I know the chance of any one of us individually getting hit with this massive life-shattering debt are small but in aggregate it's going to happen to someone, probably before the end of the first year. And don't think that S*** wouldn't be all over the news - mainstream and otherwise.

 

The malicious actors are one of the biggest problems with this price per install. Even in the updated response, they had a vague response, they said they have built in system for detection of fraudulence and you should contact them if you are a victim regarding that case but how can you put faith on it when hackers can literally crack games in couple days of release.

And no one wants to be problem solving for hours WITH YOU. I don't wanna also bang my head against the wall of why and how malicious actors were abusing the system to a point that I was left holding a big bill for the installs.

 

Under these new pricing rules, it is difficult to choose Unity even for veteran Unity developers who invested a lot in Unity

 

Dide you dont understand, the problem is not if you reach or not, the problem is that they will/may change the threshold and costs and plans and whatever at any moment and you will get under new threshold even if thought you way below the threshold. Like i dont object to this 1M thing if it is set in stone but its not.

 

Actually nope. Big guys will pay 1% or 3% instead of unreal 5%

 

I totally agree, just didn't want to make myself more miserable by mentioning this, but of course you are right.
I am just so late in my game progress that really don't want to switch engines for this one, I am more than happy to do my next game in a different engine.

 

... Stop spouting nonsense, the answer is "it depends".

Also the really big guys obviously have custom contracts and this doesn't apply to them, so whatever.

 

Someone should transfer this to Unity. I think this is really the best solution. I have a Photoshop subscription, and Adobe doesn't ask me to pay 0.01$ to show my images created in Photoshop.