Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

The more important secondary concern

The pricing model and the ethics behind it are both so unprecedented and repugnant that it might be the best outcome if Unity were to bankrupt themselves as a result.

If Unity does not publicly fail, and are not publicly an example of how this price structure is a loser then expect it to become a standard for all software development tools.

 

I meant wait until they roll everything back.

 

Your question show that you haven't even correctly read the blog post (it's per game/project)
And it's not about a few cent, of course people want to pay Unity for the entreprise to finally make a profit.
No need to spend so much time on an answer when you didn't think about the situation.
But well, if you're curious you may find some clues on this thread I guess. Good luck !

 

Just wait until they report the revenue loss from this event, the sharks will be in the water ready to eat $U alive.

 

Maybe in the end the Unity I used to love will be bought by good owners! (Though there are SO many bad owners to potentially worry about!)

 

"never"

 

@LeonhardP Unity needs to address cases like this. What is your plan for f2p developers who have high installs and low revenue? There should be a cap of 5% of gross revenue or something.

 

Cool tip of the day: You can set people on Ignore if you click on their name, and never have to read their posts again. Regain your sanity with this one cool trick!

 

Wow.

 

Guys we need to hit them where it hurts. Make their stock fall more and let their stock fall rock butom

 

Some Devs on twitter are banding togther to sue unity in europe (most likely in the netherland and germany), i think i'm gonna join them

 

Why can I imagine Joachim Ante running through like a quarterback to save the game and score the winning touchdown?
On a serious note, I was gonna make some assets for Unity character artists, but it might affect my sales once I publish it. And if I make a game demo and people see that splash screen, which should be a thing to be proud of, players are gonna wince...

 

What are the two engines you've found that look good?

So far my personal shortlist to investigate over the next couple of months is:

• Godot
• Stride3D
• FLAX

 

Man, this right here. This is what the F*** scare me and so many others. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'm done with Unity. But I absolutely do not want to see anyone ever attempt to bring this back up again anywhere else. It needs to end here. It's like a car manufacturer selling me a subscription to use features that are already built into the car I bought from them.

 

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/blogs/unity-s-just-not-into-you-indie-developer

Another perspective. Unity didn't lose sight of indies now, it did a long time ago.

 

Massive cope. Unity will take unlimited amounts of money with unlimited amounts of installs. 5% revenue share from Unreal is like a soft fluffy blanket compared to that.

 

unfortunately it looks as they are sticking to break the old TOS which means unity will continuously be changing and adding more billing to devs.. as they feel like..

 

Oh just wonderful. Some idiot(s) made threats of harm now, allowing corporate to paint developers as the unreasonable bad guys here and shift blame and attention away from their own utter failure.

Well just another reason to stop using Unity, as I don't want to be consider part of a "domestic terrorist" group according to the FBI now.

I get people are very (and rightfully) emotional about all this. But please don't give those morons at fault cover with such stupid threats. A peaceful boycott is likely the only thing that will get through their thick heads at this point.

 

Unity, can I tell you a method that even the stupidest person can think of?

In the worst case scenario, based on a company's financial income statement, you can demand a share of X% on the developed project.

This X ratio may even be 10, because your current system contains an element of fraud that could cause a company to go bankrupt.

Look how simple it is, right? Now you can talk about this in your ridiculous meetings with your superiors who are industry insiders and don't even know the meaning of the word Game.

 

The problem is that I can equally imagine that some F***er made a threatening phone call and also can imagine that Riccitiello made the whole thing up so they don't need to answer hard questions.

Anyway, I do NOT condone any threat against anyone.

 

I think Unity employees should have staged a walk out and not the CEO.

 

$35.92 (-2.44%)

 

I remember the days when Unity was loved and when it didn't have its hand in the pocket I have all my money in.

 

Unity's new pricing system is designed to affect smaller studios more than bigger ones.

Whereas Unreal's pricing model is actually universal (democratic)

Here's an example. Let's assume a successful indie mobile team hits the $1M gross revenue, 1M Downloads in the past 12 months. i.e. per month we're making $83K and we're getting 83K downloads.

For that Unity's new monthly fee is 83,000 * 0.15 = $12.5K

i.e. it's $12.5K / $83K = 15% of Gross income.

This is WAYYYY worse than Unreal's 5%


Now, if I'm making $3M, 3M DL (i.e. $250K, 250M downloads per month)
The costs becomes:
100K * 0.15 + 150K * 0.07 = $26K (~10% of Gross)

It's still a pretty terrible deal, but it's saying the more successful you are, the less bad this will be for you.

The problem is, when we're starting out, no studio can tell you if this is a small hit or a mega hit.

-----------------------------------------------------

I absolutely get that Unity needs more money to operate. But an undemocratic approach (where the "middle class" gets the worst deal) is a sure way to enter a downward spiral.

 

what about Unigine?

 

Stride3D is currently at the top of my list. Followed by Bevy Engine and Unreal. I know, I know that last one is a big scary corporation. But I've been meaning to at least familiarize myself with their tech more so that I can competently do some work in a pinch. Diversify the skillset.

One thing to keep in mind is that Unity doesn't have to be a completely dead skillset. I have lots of edit-time tools that I can still use freely for the time (until Unity gets wind of that and tries to change things). It can still be used to bang out tools for processing assets and data without having to build a whole windows application from the ground up.

 

This would still be unacceptable. Charging per install in any way shape or form is just wrong.

Forcing devs into a dev share when the previous agreement was license subscription is also wrong

 

I don't believe that's true. Unity did a good job at manipulating the situation.

 

2023 - $38.97

2024 - $12.34

2025 - $3.89

:b

 

Can anybody remember any incident in Unity's past, before John Riccitiello became CEO, where death threats were made against Unity Company staff?

 

I still remember Joahkim on stage talking with a slight blush - introducing ECS (the term DOTS did not exist yet).

I really liked that a tech guy was spear heading this company.

It really felt like a company to be trusted.

Sigh.

 

I'm guessing they're deliberately making this bad for Mobile dev's to try and force everyone on to their AD Platform, which comes with offset credits that they're yet to communicate.

So I'd also guess for Free ap's with IAP's - they'll probably count each IAP as a download (since they'd see that as unlocking content, which they mentioned before when talking about when Demo's would count).

Re-Installs - don't count - but Not clear on how Updated Versions will get treated

Obviously doing this via Estimated downloads is Crazy and open for Abuse
Applying this to released games from older versions, where Unity promoted it as Royalty Free - should never count, should be a choice if dev's want to push out an update after Jan 1st.

This will also probably catch out games where dev's have already switched platforms, but pirated / abandoned versions still exist.

Other big problem I see, is they haven't said how they're counting Revenue - Assuming it'll just be Downloads x Full Price and of course won't factor in Discounted sales etc.....
And as said above - how will they count it for Free games that Only have IAP's - Will it be against each IAP and thus would each IAP have it's own threshold

And of course, They're delusional if they Believe MS, Apple, Google etc... are going to pay for Game/Play Pass situations (or won't pass that on to dev's).

Not to mention it's funny how they consider These platforms the publishers who'll be charged for the Sub-Style games, but apparently they're not the publisher for non game-pass releases.


Now If this was a charge against Actual Sales - don't think many people would have such an issue as they could easily partner with the Main Stores to work out accurate numbers without compromising any of our users personal data etc....

Heck, they could probably do a deal with Steam and actually get Dev's a better deal (by having our combined sales counted to get below steams base 30%, and we'd probably have no issue with them taking the difference).

I think the real problem is Unity is losing money every quarter and someone didn't put enough effort into working out a monetisation model that is fair for all concerned.

Getting Rid of Plus was a bad move

Actually think lowering the Price of Plus and making it required for publishing to Mobile, and then maybe requiring Pro for publishing to consoles (Similar to how GameMaker structure theirs). would be a much smarter move as the main problem is too many people are using Unity for Free

And yes, there should probably be credit-incentives for people who purchase assets via the store rather than from other sources.

And if Unity truly wants to increase their revenue - then Having their Own Untiy-Games store, like Epic has for Unreal would probably be a Smart no-brainer kinda move.

I'm just annoyed i've invested a lot in Assets, with the plan of running with Unity - only to now having to re-think my entire plan. because, depending on How IAP's will be treated, i'm probably not going to be on the radar initially - what scares me is not knowing how they'll determine the revenue threshold and how many times they'll effectively count it.

and it's THAT un-measurable risk that is why everyone is angry.

None of us have a problem with Unity making enough money to stay in business

 

Just take a percentage from the revenue. It would be fair enough.

 

Stock market analysts don't speak to developers, we do. Of all the semi-successful developers I've spoken to, not one has said they would use Unity to start a new project moving forward, I don't know if Unity realises how screwed up things are to reach a 100% failure rate with developers who have reached their minimum revenue target.

Unity as a platform is dead. Even with complete reversal of the updated pricing changes as well as previous TOS guarantees, in which case they may get a fraction of previous successful Unity developers back, Unity in its current form no longer exists. Maybe this is what they want, perhaps they have a new idea for a business model moving forward, but the damage is done.

The precedent that Unity has set here, where they may arbitrarily gain access to a distributors revenue through shady TOS changes is one of the most tone deaf pricing changes I've ever seen. What's stopping Unity changing their TOS to gain access to your entire first year sales revenue? What's stopping them to gain access to every sale moving forward?

These are serious and actual concerns developers are currently talking about. The precedent that has been set kills Unity in its current form, and stock market analysts haven't a clue.

 

https://forum.unity.com/attachments/upload_2023-9-14_12-11-54-png.1304567/
That's some 4chan stuff, I do want to belive the gamedev community is better than this.

 

I see that the FAQ was finally updated a bit to clarify some things...

For the topic: How is Unity collecting the number of installs?
You state:
"We leverage our own proprietary data model and will provide estimates of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project – this estimate will cover an invoice for all platforms."

So you are invoicing us based on an "estimate"? Despite the fact that this still has other issues with things like re-installs that you're admitting you just can't know, that's super unethical.

 

Unity is done. It is barely a profitable company, and they are having a PR nightmare. I hate DRM in games. And I don't want my game to have one.

It sounds like a decision made by executives that has no ideas how the engine works.

 

If "staying in business" means buying random CG studios, make silly AI products, merge with spyware companies and overpay their C-Suite, I think I do have a problem with them making enough money to stay in business.

 

I do not know why everyone seems so upset with this new pricing plan it appears that they are just making people (Greedy Business) stick to the original Unity Agreement.

To use Unity personal you are saying that your Revenue is less than $100k in the last 12 months. Once you exceed that threshold it is only right to purchase one of the Unity Plans.

With this new they are kinda of politely saying "Hey it's time for you to upgrade your plan".

| | Personal | Pro | Enterprise
|Revenue Threshold (last 12 months) | $200,000 (USD) | $1,000,000 (USD) | $1,000,000 (USD)
|Install Threshold (lifetime) | 200,000 | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000


It is sad that they had to due this because of all the bad apples out there.

The only problem I have with this new fee is that all of your old Games out there will be charged the fee if there are new installs and you are over the threshold now.

 

Posting the link to the comment so others can confirm this is what was written:

"The terms cover a lot of things -- but we would never apply something retroactively after you buy a service. We will take a look at how this goes across our services and websites."

- Unity_John

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/agn89u/comment/ee7oi5i/

 

isn't that fraud? lol...

 

https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-and-commitment-to-being-an-open-platform

this didn't aged well

 

I'm afraid that the problem isn't the new fee (which is a complete insanity by the way).
I think that Unity, as a game engine, will die in the next 2-4 years.
Here is my reasoning:

Unity has started a lot of new features these last years, and finished none properly.
Even worse, they have fired a lot of engineers working on these features, meaning that they won't get finished any time soon.
Another thing is that they more or less stopped fixing bugs, I haven't the figures but I know that my bug reports are 100% of time rejected for dubious reasons:
- duplicate of another bugs which has nothing to do, and which is fixed, while my bug is still there
- too old Unity version (less than 8 months old...)
- 'not a bug' I like this one, it's their favorite, sometimes, if we're lucky they do provide a workaround
Note that it's normal to fix less bugs, with more open features and less devs...
In addition, the editor is slower at each new iteration, and with more QoL problems (more half-finished features + not enough devs = quality decrease)

We had a price increase a while ago, they more or less tried to put a stop to eternal licenses.
They added a lot of spyware (my custom translation of their 'analytics' word), subscription to half-finished tools, ads software, etc.
It is clearly a dying company which is using its last resources in marketing (new features, lots of announcements, etc.) to attract more studios in a very short time (the time we'll take to see that they won't finish the features).
Now that they have decided they have attracted enough studios, so they go for the last money grab, this insane fee.

I can see only 2 outcomes:
1. they earn enough money with that fee and start working again on the engine
2. they don't earn enough money with the fee

Outcome 1 means that they must earn an insane amount of money, enough for their high management, board and shareholders, and enough remaining to re-hire devs and start again to work on the engine.
If they only earn enough money for their high management, board and shareholders (or less) then it will be outcome 2 for us.

I'm a bit of a pessimist so I think it will be outcome 2 (why would the high management / board lose money over mere software engineers working on the engine??? That would be a complete insanity from their point of view).
In which case the fee is only an immediate problem, while the real and much deeper problem is the complete loss of all the expertise / work we have done on the last few years working on a dead engine.

 

Things are getting spicy over at Reddit:



And the cherry on top is that all the links at the bottom direct users to Godot.

Is this truly the legacy you wanted to leave, Unity?

 

"Retroactive TOS changes

When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS.

In practice, that is only possible if you have access to bug fixes. For this reason, we now allow users to continue to use the TOS for the same major (year-based) version number, including Long Term Stable (LTS) builds that you are using in your project.

Moving forward, we will host TOS changes on Github to give developers full transparency about what changes are happening, and when. The link is https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService."

 

Not really, If i take that perspective, it is not a lose of sight, it is not even a collaterla damage, it just doesn't matter at all as the services shall just pay up for any dev with his plus and personal edition that will leave, this is already calculated into their plan. They do not say anything because they do not care, really not care.

 

Unity wants 108% of our gross revenue

 

and is currently inaccessible