Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

To those saying that it won't (or probably) affect you.
Think beyond yourselves.

We are fighting on a greater scale. It is not about specifics and negotiations. We are far past that.
This is a full-blown conflict that should focus on communication, intentions, and hostility by Unity.

What terrifies me the most right now, is that they start altering the details instead of dropping it in its entirety.
Because they think that we will accept it in the end, but we won't!

Do not get fooled! The issue is much greater than this matter. It is only the tip of the iceberg!

 

How does this work in Games as a Service situations where people spin servers up and down? Is spinning up a new server an install?

 

Just found something amusing ...

 

Think of all other `online-services` they offer, like multiplayer etc. I would NEVER use this again, as you never know when they change the TOS or adding a pricing for each package send...

 

It is false that this only affects 10% of developers. It affects 100% of developers, in one way or another.

 

I think the biggest issue (of several) is this...

Accepting the Unity Runtime Fee, whether affordable or not right now, sets a precedent that Unity can charge anything they want at anytime.

Previously, you could invest a few years of your life developing a game on a platform knowing exactly how much you're willing to sacrifice for how much you could make. Now, developers are blindfolded, having to walk into an agreement that will be met with changing contracts as the years go on. We know inflation can get worse, we know shareholders want growth, we know the gaming industry is crowded, and now the revenue system will be run by people who neither create the development system nor create games on that system. So a few people at the top throwing levers until the creatives push back is a system built on pushing us as far as we can go. This is not a positive environment for people who are required to sacrifice much to work in this field.

At at time when open source systems are picking up steam, developers have choice. Unity may not only be sacrificing their long term revenue at this point, they may be sacrificing their short term.

Companies don't change contracts on software after an agreement has been accepted. That's not only unethical and illegal, it's disrespectful to the real people you partner with.

 

Why are you using Unity Free with $1 million? You've already violated the T&Cs of the Free license. If you've made $200,000, get yourself a Pro/Enterprise license.

 

oh man, just a few minutes till the stock market opens.

 

Wouldn't it be motivating if they charged us for every uninstall, instead of install? Lol.

 

Just make it 2.5% of gross after 200k. Make the editor completely free, keep it clean. You'll make bank, we'll be happy.

 

We understand that they need (i mean almost 1 b loss in 2022) to make more money. Many of us will agree to pay more money But not this weird install driven tax...

 

Exactly. 90% of those unity users are studends and hobbyists and people who try to land in the last 10%, so either you are directly affected by changes, or you will be if you are serious.
Even if you are 100% hobby guy, the fact it hurts everyone else will indirectly hit also you.

 

That's very frustrating. I believe better monetisation options were available to be explored. I'm moving my project fully to unreal engine, as unfortunately there's no trust into unity anymore.

 

Here's another query - what if I stop using and developing on Unity? I don't have any licence. What is my fee rate then on games already out there? I create a game, release it, leave Unity. It makes $5 million from 20,000,000 downloads. Let's say I had a Free license when I made it, am I charged Free? Okay, let's say I have Enterprise, and I'm charged Enterprise rates.

Now what if I have Enterprise, create a game, release it, retire and then get a Personal for just hobby developing. Are my subsequent downloads charged for the Enterprise that created the project, or the Personal that I'm currently using?

This whole thing is sooo messed up!

 

If you make that much, you will have enough money to take them to court and stop their inquiry because of the license was different when you made your game and you didn't upgrade your editor ever again.

 

After they removed Unity PLUS and introduced these excessive installation fees, it seems they are attempting to exploit developers in every possible way. Have they ever considered the possibility of removing the "made with unity" feature in the free version? Or will they stick to this approach, where you won't have to pay about $400 anymore, but $1,800? To achieve the same as what you were doing with the $400 license, which is removing "made with unity"

 

This pricing policy makes no sense.
Please withdraw it.

 

That is honestly why I'm still here on the forum in this thread. I'm making snarky remarks and jokes but I'm also trying to point out the issues and dangers. I'm done with Unity. But this fire needs to stop here. We can't let it contaminate the thoughts of other companies. They need to understand that this S*** is not acceptable and playing with our livelihoods like this won't be tolerated. We are the client. They work for us. Not the other way around.

 

Even if they reverse course, the average gamer will now remember Unity as "that engine that embeds install-tracking spyware in every game". And that will affect the sales and reputation of everything made it Unity from now on.

 

this is actually great news for open source.

engines like Godot will probably do well from this, because MIT license prevents risks of centralized management charging for anything, ever.

its not as polished, but with right investment/ contributions from devs who crossover, engines like that can improve and surpass Unity anyway, its healthy for the industry long term.

 

Has anyone big enough to get a response within the last 48 hours tried sending support a ticket like the one below? I'm hoping that they see sense, but I don't have much of that hope tbh.

 

Let's Go!

 

no, anything that is considered revenue for the game is part of the 200k. for example

• direct purchases
• monetization
• ongoing subscriptions
• dlcs
• season passes
• in game advertising
• patreon like fees
• player donations
• early access sales or investments
  
• kickstarter type of revenue if money flow comes after early access showcase
• fan merchandising (tshirts, mugs, virtual or not)
• third party sponsorship and grants
• player trading (crypto or normal)
• licenses fees from game content that was licensed to others
• earnings from non gaming business areas like movies, events, comic books
• anything that brings revenue to you related to your game.
• revenue made by selling the game franchise to others

 

Once they know you will do almost everything to get rid of the splashscreen, they will milk this source until you run dry. And that is just happening.

 

Again, in the sprit of honesty, that'll never happen. If he makes a F2P game and ends up being billed for $400,000, it's because he's monetising it. if the game is free, income is $0, below the $200,000, nothing paid. And if he's making enough money to hit the thresholds, he needs a higher license.
It's only that bad if you make money up to $200,000 on the Free license and then start giving your game away for free. If you're using Unity as a business, it's never as bad as the most extreme hypothetical scenarios being imagined.

 

That red candle looks promising enough

 

If it is impossible for them to track the revenue then how do they know if a game has reached a revenue threshold to begin to bill the install fee?

 

Yup. This was my immediate thought the second I heard about this. My game is pretty far along, but this alone completely destroys my confidence in releasing anything built with Unity.

 

So I'm to optimistic. Thank you for your suggestion and I'm update the results using accumulative approach. More on website https://studygamedev.com/unityfee/.

 

Seeing how the free Blender has progressed, we can but hope!

 

Tiny Tower survived Zynga, now let’s see if it can survive… Unity???

 

I can not understand. If this happens, you may end up having to give Unity more money than you earned. I have experienced many games being cracked and downloaded illegally. Download numbers may be distorted.

 

And what if he makes F2P games with donation button. He will receive $200k donations and 2M downloads.
He will be charged $400k while only making $200k.

DO YOU FINALLY GET IT?!

Edit: You can extrapolate this scenario even for Pro/Enterprise licences

 

This is exactly where I am right now. 3.5 years and 95% finished, for this to just pop out of no where on the last lap. So all this time I have had figures in mind and now I am expected to just blindly trust unity's figures regarding how much I owe them and thus how much I take home? And each instance is $0.20 despite mobile game players being worth between $0.02 and $0.20? No. Insane, half baked, illogical.

 

There might also be some highly motivated, extremely industry-experienced individuals on the market soon that could go to work for them...

 

Yep, they need to make money, just have to do it with a bit of knowledge, class, & ethics.

When Steve Jobs was let go from Apple, and they left a Pepsi guy in charge, the business slowly went bankrupts. When Steve Jobs was gone the second time, he put a more technology centric person in charge the next time, and they still made money, plus they made even more money, and became the richest company on the planet.

Unity telling developers the old ToS no longer applies isn't exactly a stroke of genius

 

here you can see a list of the transactions in real time (use mouse over graph to see the details) with number of shares sold and the amount they were sold for. refresh the page to see the newest ones

https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/u/real-time

 

What also doesn't make sense is everyone's ability to download unity-editor.
How about me using asset store to publish "my-game-kit", while players just build it? Or even better - third party site, so unity won't get a dime. Now it's unity who distribute runtime so they pretty much should pay to themselves.

Sure, as business model its not gonna go far. But maybe this hypothetical example clicks something in place?

 

You're correct that all these would count towards the $200k....

BUT

Unity will never know about anything but the runtime installs and anything running unity services (analytics, ads, game servers, etc.)

They wouldn't know about donations, patreon, investments, merchandising, sponsorships, grants, license fees, movies, events, books, etc.

 

Excuse me. Get out of here with your clean, crisp and fair propaganda

 

And for people who have released ad based games, honestly, I think we all know that players can be worth much less than $.02 at times.

Sometimes you only make $.002 per player or less. It fluctuates (which can also be prey to Unity's ad algorithm). So if you're making $1 per player when you pass the threshold and then dip below $.002 a month later, it's going to mess with people's business hard.

 

That's not the TOS that I agreed to

 

Game development involves various expenses such as office rent, employee salaries, and more. What if Unity tells me to pay an exorbitant fee later when the fee has already been paid? Legal proceedings create additional costs. 20 cents is not a small number. Download bots are running rampant in the store, and apk files are being illegally cracked and distributed in places we don't know. It's a pity. This isn't because Unity simply has a greedy business model. They don't know anything about the gaming world.

 

Unity team, anyone, please answer my question:

A game that does not send any data out, how do you know how often it was installed, where (by player X?) and what the source was?

And if your answer is you will guess the numbers, I can tell you that this won’t work. Not a single company will pay fees if you can’t proof and they can’t verify the numbers.

It’s day 3 now, and people are just getting more furious. Stop it, no one will be happy, not even shareholders

 

The problem with this is that there is so much uncertainty that planners have no idea how much it will really cost.

 

Sometimes I wish I didn't invested almost 7 years into my hobby project which uses Unity specific technologies.
I'd be jumping ship instantly. Godot has lots of potential. Well, at least for the hobby dev.

Imagine how it feels like for the DOTS team folks.
Basically they've moved from previous engine to new one to create and thrive. Only to get this.

Changes are heartbreaking.

 

The answer they have since deleted on twitter was this.

 

Let's go unity <3 <3
You can do it I believe in you! Let's round it down to 30!!

 

Fully agree.

The only way out for Unity for a chance of survival IMHO:

- CEO and all the people involved in that disaster need to resign immediately.
- Issue an apology to all developers.
- Sell/get rid of Ironsource.
- Rebrand to a new engine name.
- Open source the engine to regain trust because of the spyware issue.