Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Absolute worst change yet. Unity's had some questionable updates but this takes the cake. If this goes through I'm done with Unity for good. Godot-o-clock!

 

The new forums.. couple of years ago

 

This new fee structure continues the horrible trend of pushing indie startups to overpriced pro tiers. A new, unproven studio NEEDS to be able to put out demos to earn consumer trust and business - pay per play on every title? What a horrible model!

Like pretty much every indie, I started my journey as a hobbyist, learning as I went along. Even though my revenue didn't come close to requiring it, I subscribed to Unity Plus. Before they started stripping out features, the Unity Plus tier was perfect for me - I could learn GameDev as my second job, access the small scale features I needed, and (above all) could handle the smaller expense.

Instead of locking out your indie customers, create a low to mid-tier product for us! Give us a few more resources beyond the free tier at a low enough price point to encourage hobbyists and startups to choose Unity.

This was a TERRIBLE move, as evidenced by the size of this thread and all of the anger here. I don't need and can't afford Pro; Free doesn't give me what I need...I've effectively been priced out! I now have to find a product that fits - from a competitor.

 

Yes, the current pricing model was a result of them presenting something worse. Now they've had time to think up something even worse than their original offer, so let's see if they have something else to offer.

 

"Our mission at Unity is to capitalize game development, solve hard problems, and enable developer success, and make lots and lots of money"

 

It takes whole department to chase devs for their revenue reports, doing audits in Unreal.
Unity gotta show better results, drive up their margins - reduce costs. They went for automation as much as possible, that's why installs.

Interesting though is that still, this far, there's no official info how they going to track installs in PC...

Consoles/mobiles are easy - stores will ensure these reports and consistency, but PC... what's on you'r mind, John?

 

You guys can't say that I am not a big Unity fanboy. Well, thank you Unity that you are replacing my dying Unity Plus subscription with a relearn C++ course subscription and probably in the mean time while I'm working on my own framework, a free download and installation of Unreal 5.3.

It was a nice run. I'm a bit sad. I will keep my account for a while just to download all my assets I bought. They are as good in other engines too.

I have a little bit of time until my Plus runs out, will see if you reverse this utterly disgusting and probably on multiple points legally questionable decision. If not, thanks for all the fish.

 

Thanks...if you don't mind, could you please elaborate on that?

 

Please tell me how you will follow GDPR rules, while tracking UNIQUE user installs WITHOUT CONSENT and not getting hit by multiple installs from the same person.
Why are you doing it on installs and not the number of sales?

 

@Mike-Geig Let me explain - if a game earned revenue, that doesn't mean the game was profitable. In the scenario in my original post, a studio could exceed Unity's revenue/install threshold, but operational costs (such as paying developers) could be more than the revenue earned from the game. Then the game wasn't profitable, but Unity is still billing the studio regardless. Even if the game was slightly profitable, this new policy could still put the studio in the negative. Either scenario may cause the studio to go bankrupt. If the policy didn't exist, the studio could likely recover and continue forward.

Essentially, this policy could be the difference between a studio "making it" or going bankrupt. So, it's a harmful policy. Unity appears to be tone deaf as far as this is concerned.

 

I just saw the new prices... It's ridiculous.
I have multiple games pubished (10).

Let's take a simple example:
I published a game with Unity Plus few years ago... 3 years of work and I had 22M downloads but, it doesn't monetize well so I earn about $150k...
With the new prices, Unity would ask me to pay $4.4M!

It's possible on mobile to have millions of downloads but small revenue.

 

I don't remember the exact details, but it was something along the lines of higher monthly costs and lower revenue limits, and the lowest plan available was still paid. So the Personal tier came about as a result of the backlash.

 

Just by mentioning "pay for install" within any rules around, you are going to repel wide range of companies, developers, projects.

It's like intern-level business idea of where to get money from.

 

I need to look at that, because this corporate S*** is RUINING creative fields

 

unlikely. big customers will start leaving unity (hi, genshin)

In the best case, unity will all end with a purchase by Microsoft (they don 't really like that Unity is a disgrace .NET Foundation 100%)
At worst, games on unreal going fill the indie flat and there will be a monopoly, heh

 

Also a plus user, but I don't see the point in it now. Can't cancel it, so they're gonna charge me $40/mo until it ends for what?

 

BUT then you could be capped at 200K if all additional profits go towards game install charges. Which is especially problematic for games that have additional overhead of salaries and cloud services.

 

No, it's not? It's 0.20 per install, not per sale ...?

 

I'm looking for a Godot mentor

 

Well spoken, this is exactly what I'm thinking too!

 

Retroactive is being used in two different ways here

1. Retroactively in terms of the install counter. I.E I have a 10 year old game that hit the $200k and say 1million installs so suddenly I have to find x amount of money to cover Unity's bill.

2. Retroactively in terms of it doesn't matter when or what version of Unity you made your game, any new installs start adding to the counter and suddenly you may find you have to pay Unity!

I feel like the clarification refers to the first, but not the second, though i'm not sure the second is actually a problem, I really need to look at the license in more detail. Again though this is just more of the poor explanation/communication that we have to dig into the fine details to understand this stuff.

 

Scenario.

1$ per game
1 mln downloads x 1$ = 1mln $ revenue.
Cost of running the company 1mln$

What happens then?

 

Unity what the hell

 

Man if that's true, that immediately disqualifies Unity for our web based app we are about to build. That would say they are charging per use for web based apps. If we have 1000 users, that's $200 (well, we'd probably get Pro so $150 per day but I'll keep it 20 for ease of math) or $6,000/mo. And that's assuming they only open the app once. What if they go to lunch and come back, is that a second "install?"

 

I think that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't appear to work here... if it is per install, then a one time purchase game would get charged with re-installs, which doesn't make sense.

I understand how you'd want to charge per install because it'd be hard to figure out revenue per install without having everyone's data constantly tracked, but at the very least a non-FTP model game should be a one time fee per purchase, since the game isn't hosted by Unity, it's hosted by Steam, Nintendo, Sony, etc. so Unity shouldn't care about any install beyond the first where the money was made...

It'd probably be better to just make it a flat revenue percentage if you're doing a one-size-fits-all model.

 

This is an absolutely insane change and needs to be backtracked immediately. I can't believe I've dedicated a decade of my life to an engine that continues being so hostile to its most dedicated users. It continues to be clear that Unity not having an internal team dogfooding the engine with actual games is holding the engine back in every way possible.

 

That's one hell of a bold claim...

This entire thing is maximalist rent-seeking capitalism in its purest, most unadulterated form. Why charge someone once for something when you could instead keep charging them for it forever? Keep coming up with new and exciting ways to inject yourself into the relationship between producer and buyer. If they could figure out how to implement a per-launch "Unity Editor Runtime Fee" scheme, I'm sure they would.

I've being using Unity since it cost $250 for the Mac-only indie version, which was a LONG-ASS TIME AGO, and I've spent a frankly unreasonable amount of money on assets over the years for what is, essentially, a dumb hobby I don't even end up producing much of anything with. Even so, the monetary risks associated with this new monetization scheme (and I do use that word in its skeeviest connotation) are so substantial that I am actively wasting time at my real job looking at Godot right now rather than put any further thought into possibly using Unity for anything. Too bad I can't take any of the stuff I've bought on the asset store with me... (I'm assuming there are rules against using models, animations, and other portable assets in non-Unity projects, but I honestly haven't looked. Yet.)

 

Oh I see the problem. Shareholders mad.

 

Then the studio goes bankrupt due to Unity's new policy. Exactly the scenario I described here and here.

 

Replying to your comment to help people who didn't read the blog post or the FAQ.
People are not reading the blog pages and only reading the comments or responses to it.

For those reading the thread it is only if you both make money over a revenue and also have over the certain installs.
For those with free games like uploading on WebGL demos or stuff like that this doesn't matter to you at all.
You don't pay anything at all and this only goes into effects for installs past the January 24th deadline not previous installs.

 

1) It's amusing that one poor employee is trying to sell the new tax as it will make developers more money. I'm sure unity board has made the calculations and decided to enact this radical change to make less money. Sure.

2) I'm sure you' all good people are making calculations. "oh it will cost us this much and that much". Yes it's not horrendous sum of money. But all your calculations are valid only until new post announces that they are not valid no more. Could be this year, could be next, could be dollars could be cents. I for one also made calculations when i was choosing an engine for my project three years ago. I was only wrong by an order of couple magnitudes of how much it'll cost me to make game with unity.

 

The question is about freemium (not 0 revenue) games with subscriptions etc., free demos paired with paid offline versions, and how "installs" are counted on monetized WebGL games

 

1. Does releasing a new build of an existing game (i.e. a patch) count as a new install?
2. Are old Unity games that still get downloads included in the install metric, even though said games generate no revenue?

 

Is a free game without ads but IAPs a "free game". Sorry I'm confused maybe someone can clarify cheers

 

Only way unity can track is throught game portal like steam, google play, etc. There is NO WAY to track a offline device for a offline game. But it doesnt mean that the game offline doesnt cost 50$ to buy while the online game cost 0.
This is a complet rip off. It CANNOT work.

Now, if they only count what is being bought and downloaded from those services, that mean you can sell your game without them and be fine. Again, make completly no sense because you are taxing a service that is NOT yours.

 

<sigh>
First off thanks Leonhard and Mike for replying and trying to help make sense of all this, but apart from this plan being so badly misjudged, the second worse aspect is the completely appalling communication of a complex and convoluted system. Which sadly cannot be addressed by piece meal reply's to a thread like this and certainly not without the backing of statements having been run through legal departments to give us piece of mind that they are correct.

By all means both Leonhard and Mike should reply to this thread, but in my opinion, it should only to acknowledge they have seen specific points being raised and will be relaying to whatever departments are required to get it added to an official answer to be published in the next few days.


I say all that because the part I've quoted above is a perfect example of ambiguity!

You talk of the 'counter', but no mention of 'lifetime installs'. Whilst the counter might start Jan 2024, the bigger issue is when does 'lifetime' start? Because as stated 'lifetime' means 'lifetime' meaning a successful game has already crossed the thresholds and starting Jan 2024 you are going to get hit by fees, possibly for a really big game, then really big fees that are retroactively in effect due to 'lifetime' installs.

It would be easy to read the above statement as both 'counter' and 'lifetime' installs start from zero on Jan 2024, but it is equally correct that 'counter' might start from zero, but 'lifetime installs' is whatever the current install value is!

 

And one more: honestly, I couldn't give a F*** about extra cost or something, but I won't consent to track every installation of my game. It is that plain and simple.

If this goes through Unity is not a game engine anymore, it's a simple spyware.

 

It's an unknown amount of money until we know how installs are tracked and how Unity intends to avoid tracking pirated copies and malicious end users.

So we need a fix, the one that, as you say, will make this thread obsolete. BUT this thread is needed for that to happen.

 

Ugh, dogfooding. I've heard that at the recent unite and it was reeking with corporate stank

 

The install tracking has me pretty concerned, gamers don't react nicely when their single player games still need to connect to the Internet.

 

Its clearly doing it already. No wonder why unity get slower with every release. And god know what else they are tracking.

 

Even if all of this is true, the confusion around this change is going to cause a massive number of game developers to flee the Unity ecosystem. This change feels confusing and punitive.

During the time many of us have used Unity, we have seen it go from paying a small flat fee once, to a large flat fee once, to a monthly fee, and now to a monthly fee plus a fee per install. None of those changes benefitted us as game developers. All of those changes were done only to pay the investors.

Unity might have messed up too much this time.

 

There is one thing that players really hate and unity do what? That's right, put it on the core engine.
Do any unity shareholder ever used internet or at least played a game?

 

For ten years of work at unity-only development i ve first time heard talk about switching engine from our solution makers. It s just reason to learn new engines for me.

Unreal Engine for professional work. 5% per purchase is predictable and acceptable.

Godot for hobby.

What else i can do? I dont know. I Just have no choice

 

I've always felt shareholders are the exact opposite people that should have any say in running a company. It's not "investing" if you take control over everything while having zero knowledge of the industry.

 

No because you said per install not per purchase so you can't say that is correct without contradicting what the blog post said.

 

John Riccitiello, please resign and leave the company. Stop destroying this engine.

 

It's highly illegal to track users without their consent, world wide. This is nothing new? wth

 

This directly contradicts:
- the Blog Post
- the FAQ
- the Runtime Fee Page

They all state very explicitly that each download, each initialization, and each device, is what is counted as an "Install" (and all at some arbitrary discretion of Unity, making it a possibility that Installs really only are begun counting after the revenue threshold is hit, which can bankrupt a studio, who would be in the 1M+ bracket but will be billed for the 200k+ bracket).

And this quite directly includes reinstalls, certain types of updates (e.g. going from Early Access to live, Steam Betas, etc.), includes Family Sharing, Steam Library Sharing, and simply having the same game on your Phone and your Tablet, or on your Desk PC and your Laptop.

When I look at my favourite games, I installed these over a dozen times on as many devices.

 

The absolute contempt Unity has for developers is astounding