Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Unity's equation still screws devs who just pass the revenue target, but blow far past the install target. Some devs will owe more than they make. Needs a % revenue cap, or a complete abandonment of install fees in favor of revenue share ala Unreal.

New installs do not equate to income. We're being charged in cases where no additional income was earned. This is far worse than a revenue share because Unity, and ONLY Unity, is double dipping. Not the devs who make the games, not the distributors who sell the games, not the hardware manufacturers who run the games. Unity, the creators of a tool. If Unity thinks they are repeatedly owed money for a single purchase of an application that uses their tech, talk to distributors and hardware manufacturers as well, see what they think.

• Unity cannot verify what is a reinstall and what isn't. Unity can only get hard data on number of SALES, from distributors and from devs. They're just trying to keep all of their tracking in-house and it will never work. Unity doesn't run the industry alone.
  
  
• Unity's solution to pirates and bad actors is to "work directly with us". So basically we are relying on the dubious capacity of the Unity Help Desk to sort it out, for every dev, after WE need to now take on the responsibility of auditing ourselves for fraudulent INSTALLS and bringing it to Unity's attention? Unity would not need to work directly with us if they had the ability to tell on their own, so putting the responsibility on us is what they're actually suggesting here, and further weakens confidence in their black box tracker.
  
  
• Again, Unity cannot safely determine what a trial, partial play demo, or any of these other exceptions are without a conversation with a dev. Half of what they're describing are MARKETING terms. There is no hard technical rule about what is and what isn't any of these. Xbox allows you to install a game without paying for it, so it's on your hard drive when you decide you want to actually purchase it. What then? Is Unity going to add some new infrastructure to their black box to track that too? Or the next uncommon thing the industry (rightly) comes up with? I don't think so.
  
  
• Cool. So Unity should only be used to make web and streaming games is what I'm hearing.
  
  
• Again, good luck tracking that. The only way Unity can track this is to have a conversation with a dev and have them report their numbers to them from the giveaways so Unity can subtract them from their magic count. HMMMM. Working with devs to track verified sales instead of guessing at installs? Could we be on to something here?

 

No consoles and no mobile.

 

There was no problem => You create the problem (double-counting of reinstallations) => You provide the solution to the problem.

For the sake of completeness, explain to us what are those solutions then?

 

To be fair to yourself though that door swings both ways. They weren't making any money off of you with the old model. They still won't with the new one. The only real difference now is that I deeply suspect you never be a source of income for them due to what they are suggesting. And there is nothing wrong with that except that you lose out on that potential and by extension so do they.

 

I believe it. Many people have dedicated years of their lives to Unity projects and have deadlines to reach and are now panicking about how long it will take to port their entire projects to alternatives with massive gaps in their feature support because everyone trusted Unity on their flat fee system.

We are in the middle of a financial crisis in most countries and people are under stress already. Then this.

People are freaking out because their businesses, livelihoods, and plans have now gone up in smoke.

 

You should not apply these fees retroactively to projects made using versions of Unity engine under previous terms of service.

It's probably illegal, and it's definitely unethical.

This is a massive breach of trust in my view.

 

I've been using Unity professionally and personally for over 10 years now and have been working on a game in my spare time on and off for years. I've been working on it much more earnestly every day for months now and that Unity fee email this week was a heavy gut punch.

Unless this decision is completely reversed, I have to now consider translating my entire project over into a different engine and potentially eating a loss on any packages that I've purchased that can no longer be used.
I'm just a solo dev and the idea that you guys can just claim a number that I owe you for some nebulous installation number is untenable. Any money I chose to spend on Unity is for the development on the platform, any time after I publish my game you can keep your greedy hands off of. You have no right to my sales.

None of the recent decisions have been pro-dev, especially us devs who have been with Unity so long. You guys wouldn't be anything if it wasn't for us building things with Unity. Purchasing Weta tools is another example of this. Who the hell wanted that? You blow all that money on that and think: "It'll be fine... we'll just recoup the cost by stealing from our users/customer's work."?

It's sickening.

 

I hate to say it but star botting is as much a thing as review botting and like botting.

 

It is clear that the company needs to find ways to make money!, but running over large, medium or small devs in this way seems to me like Unity is wanting to be sold to some hidden investor!.. PLEASE.. LET THAT JOHN RICCITIELLO GO! the guy already did EVERYTHING wrong when he was at EA and now this curse has been incarnated in Unity! the damage is already done!.. you NEED TO GO BACK AND ASK FOR FORGIVENESS SO YOU DON'T LOSE EVEN MORE!...

 

I really don't understand why they didn't consult with us.
"Look we are in deep s**t. We have 1b loss last year. We need to make money. What do you think works best for you:
royalties, install count blablalba, tell us what other ideas you have."
I think most of us would have understand the situation. But when you put a pricing with a LOT of issues, that takes effect in 3 months and retroactively you destroy your community.

 

San Francisco is literally one of the most expensive places in the world. Don't get me wrong, this new policy is abhorrent, but if I made 1M+ a year I would be over the moon.

 

I didnt object to free to play - read all of it, i said reduce the scam ones that promise money payouts and pay the devs through ads and so on

 

Maybe not if it cost you 1M to earn it and then Unity comes along and starts scraping off your revenue (not profit, revenue).

And then looked back at your entire back catalogue and began scraping off the revenue for those too despite a terms of service that ensured that you owned the binaries with no royalties or fees.

 

Again, you dont know the difference between gross and net. Someone can make $1,000,000 revenue and zero net profit. So your point is completely invalid and irrelevant. Please stop.

 

managment. they lie and deceive. "you cant post this its damaging our business" ... "wants to implement pay per install and communicates like a sociopath"

 

Has the number of death threads been counted by their proprietary data model which they believe gives an accurate estimation?

 

because scammers would actually be concerned about paying their fees?

 

Seems like a massive mistake to hand Unreal your market share... but I guess that's your choice to make. Devs like us were on the wire making engine selections moving forward with future releases. I suppose thanks is owed for making the choice crystal clear for us.

 

Don't forget that they explicitly stated that they will be leveraging their knowledge gained from detecting fraudulent ad revenues which means they don't actually even have the tools to do this. They just plan to come up with that some time in the next few weeks before it all goes live. Something that has not be done in the last four decades. Cause Unity has a great track record with that sort of thing - rapid and bugfree releases of software.

 

true but there's lots of other metrics via github e.g. number of contributors, code frequency, then ofc just googling and checking how much activity there is on forums, reddits

the point im trying to get across for those here maybe not experienced in FOSS, is always check what you're getting into. if open source projects aren't active, whatever the features stated are, it probably means you're going to have a harder life or the projects can become unmaintained. I have been using unity since 2013 for hobby projects, today for first time i decided to flip and from initial RnD looks like Godot is the best option from an open-source perspective (which is my day job)... before testing everything in depth ofc

 

Wow. No others? Like...

How long do the thresholds stay at this stated level?
How much are they going to change by when they do?
But what if they start causing me to make a loss?
Can I really do nothing if you decide my installs are much higher than my end tells me?
Etc
etc

You need to read more posts in this thread, you have no idea what you are talking about and are very much effected by this

 

they dont. the will pull out random numbers of their ai arse and send random invoices around. you then get a high bill and have to give out your income information.

they changed their TOS while having a clausel that prohibits it. at this point unity is lawless

 

The current CEO has proved himself totally incompetent to lead the company.

 

If so, that means devs are the product, not the customer

Yes, the current estimate is 79,231.2 death threats.

 

One million is not what you would be making personally. if you were solo dev and everything went just perfect and you made no mistakes you'd make about 5%-8% of that personally. That might still be a decent number but again, that's if you pull it off alone. That is not realistic for most solo devs.

 

I feel for you, but for the right person/company who can now looks like a spectacular time to release a convert your project from unity to <insert here> tool

 

Are you sure? On renewal we were asked about a new employee who hadnt been assigned a seat - we actually had spare licenses - Unity seems to be able to track user/projects

 

WT*, I barely said anything, so stop what? My point was just that SF is the most expensive area in the world, not that $1M revenue equaled $1M profit. Chill. Like I said, the new policy is abhorrent.

 

See, the reason that I feel that this isn't legitimate is because it was John Riccitiello and maybe one spokesperson (who wasn't named) saying it happened. And I don't think I can trust anything that man says, especially since this was a town hall he was supposed to be going to and maybe some people might want to get some answers out of him. The fact that the town hall was cancelled and that two buildings have been closed conveniently during the time that this new pricing nonsense occured and people are demanding that things get reversed seems to indicate to me that he's trying to run away from the problem and hoping that it'll just blow over.

 

ToS update:

Users of the editor must now pay .10 per death threat.

 

Firstly it is unclear if such avenues are included or exempt, at least according to the Runtime-fee FAQ as of this post, which states

Revenue definition
A game or app’s “total revenue” includes all revenue generated (without limitation) from retail sales, in-app purchases, subscription fees, web payments, offline payments, ads-based revenue, etc. Total revenue is calculated without deduction, including any relevant digital store fees.​

I'm no lawyer, but my understanding of 'without limitation' is as a phrase it is used to refer to a list but without being necessarily complete. Whether that incomplete list can refer to things that are not associated with the items in the list I have no idea.

But for the purposes of this reply lets assume that the Revenue definition does, or Unity changes it tomorrow to include those other avenues, then there is nothing to stop you from receiving an email from Unity Accounts saying ( this is not a real email, just an example )

Hi we noticed that your <Insert Game Name Here> has a

<Internal use only - Tick any that apply>
Patreon page
Merchandising
Sponsorships
Grants
Events
Books​

As stated in our TOS, please send us a detailed breakdown of the revenue earned through these options, so we can check how much might apply to the revenue of the <Insert Game Name Here>.

Failure to do so within X days of this email will as stated in our TOS lead to termination of you Unity subscription and Unity account.​

Now what do you do?
It would take a Unity employee mere minutes to discover this about your game as the whole point of all these avenues is to obtain money for and promote your game. At best something like Patreon might be support the company not a game, but nothing to stop Unity from claiming that a percentage of Patreon was used in lieu of revenue for that game.

 

Sorry maybe I have you confused with the other person who was replying and kept acting as if you make $1m in revenue (enough to meet the threshold) that you are set for life and should be fine with paying whatever Unity charges you, whether it's based on a ridiculous metric like installs or not.

I was trying to call that person out because $1m in revenue does not mean you have the funds to be subjected to a black hole of billing from Unity's made up install count. You may have nothing left after all other development costs, or maybe 5% of it as profit. Which isn't even enough to pay per install.

 

Again, I know that. Even at 8% of $1M, $80k/yr is a lot of money for a lot of people around the world. I just wanted to shed some light on the economical reality of the world... the new policy is still bizarre, as in a scenario like this it would eat a huge chunk of the dev/team profit.

I get it. Got it from the beginning. I'm not shilling Unity, guys.

 

This seems to outright ignore the previous terms which DO allow for you to comply with those versions.

Specifically the version of the terms prior to October 12th which contained this language.

Specifically the bolded section.

Please check with your legal department again, I think they will find they are mistaken on this matter.

 

If you've got the ability to chart U | SPY (relative) it's a bit more insightful since all investments are relative to indexes (sticklers will argue relative to bond rates, but this is good enough for a market-feel).

Regardless, there's definitely a bit of exit volume that's on par with any 'event', but nothing cataclysmic yet. June on the other hand was fun. Weird thing is, they bounced up on 'bottoming out' on mobile apps and the Apple Vision partnership.... which are both things that conceivably are going to be hit hard by this 'install count' and fee thing. I think it's still got a long way to slide when the outlook on those things get factored in.

 

No problem, but wasn't me, lol. Like I said, I fully understand the potential for bankrupting lots of small/medium teams of this new policy, and the scumminess of deleting the TOS repo.

 

Yeah these are like the people who keep repeating that the CEO sold 2,000 shares so thats evidence he knew this was going to be bad for the stock.

They don't realize that small caps were down across the board yesterday and that is mostly why Unity was down. It has nothing to do with this. This isn't even registering anywhere with investors.

 

Unity-

I don't have anything to ask Unity that hasn't been asked or replied to already. Other than to come here and state along with everyone else, this was a terrible shortsighted decision on Unity's behalf. I'm 4+ years into my game using Unity and I feel backstabbed by this change, also the canceling of Unity Plus was the extra shiv in the side I didn't need. Anyway, this was a massive disrespect to your community and customers.

There's no "clarify" messaging that's going to fix this for me or anyone else. You can't un-ring the bell no matter how many times you edit the post and tweet about trying to "explain" this.

-C

 

MICROSOFT is one of us and still to comment. Yes unity are even telling them that they will need to cough up all those $0.20 from game pass etc.

Do you think their lawyers are gonna be fine with this retroactive change? No.

 

Yikes again

https://twitter.com/tha_rami/status/1702331275233902798


Rami Ismail (رامي) on X: "As of right now I have over 50 studios that have reached out to ask for advice on how to switch away from Unity, and I am not counting one-person teams or student projects. Absolutely staggering scale. Never seen anything like it." / X (twitter.com)

 

Stop calling it a revenue share. It is not. It is a "tax" per install.

 

Same. I posted about 40 pages back but 6 years in, solo-dev. I've experienced many kicks in the nuts along the way from Unity changing their terms but this is beyond the pale.

 

It would be nice to see you doing the same thing for Unity's ambiguous plan to rub all of us, the developers, including you. If it were to stoping living in one's room...

 

At first I was going to try and be helpful and list all my unanswered questions for Unity to possibly address. But then I realize that would only help them refine their propaganda further, and that's the last thing I want to do.

Their responses so far have also only further offended me with such insincere corporate non-apology gobbledygook as "We want to acknowledge the confusion and frustration we heard". Which only proves they don't give a flying fig what anyone thinks of the new pricing. You just gotta take it like a good little dev.

So I wouldn't even be okay with them simply switching to a flat % share anymore. Only a full reversal would appease me.. for now. But regardless of the outcome here I think this has been a massive eyeopener for most and shown we need to migrate to other tech and engines. It will take time, but it will obviously be worth it.

Ideally we need a completely open source and decentralized solution to prevent this from ever happening again, but in the meantime my advice is:

• If you make 2D games checkout GameMaker or Godot.
  
• If you make lightweight or simple 3D games checkout Godot.
  
• If you make complex / high quality games checkout Unreal or CryEngine.

Godspeed to my fellow Unity expatriates!

 

Its out of sync with the indexes today, they are all up.

5% down in a day is an event, but true, the volume was normal, so overall, no big warning for metric focused investors.

The corporation will win, as market overall is bullish.

Eventually, it will turn bear, and thats when all these dumb corporate decisions will bite the arrogant companies in the ass.

They all can afford to piss off their customers as long as the economy is good.

Stocks will go up, but they have to go up enough to beat inflation, or they are bad investments.

 

If we look back it seems Unity has been laying the ground work for this change for maybe a year or more. In all that time you think they didn't reach out to Microsoft and get the all clear on this?

 

Feel free to ban me for posting this, Unity:

https://mobilegamer.biz/unity-is-of...ch-to-levelplay-as-it-tries-to-kill-applovin/

 

As an asset publisher myself, I'm feeling this right here. Oof.

 

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

I am feeling pretty confident based on this that anyone using a 2022 version or prior will not be paying a dime of the runtime fee.

But what are the implications of not upgrading long-term in regards to whether games will run on future OS? For example, do Unity 5 or earlier builds still run fine on Windows 11?

The reason I ask is it seems at some point if your game is going to have a long life that you'd have to move it to the new version of Unity just for compatibility sake? Or no?