Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

That's why I said decently funded party. Us nobodies obviously have no recourse but to switch or wait for someone to give Unity a slap on the hand.

 

Sorry, in italian is Unione Europea, I just got confused.

 

First off, yes, but secondly, what is stopping them from changing the threshold and the terms to something else in a month and apply them retroactively?

How about no copies threshold and $1 fee per installation, why not?

How about 50% of your revenue?

Prima Nocta rights for Riccitiello?

 

Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs.

If I had those earnings I think the unity fee would be the least of my problems.

 

The Threads TOS are illegal in EU that's why the Threads app cannot be used here. They stopped a corporation btw... you say this is impossible... it is not.

 

Yup, and as far as I'm concerned, if some of us lose, we all lose.

 

Respectfully, this is not always true.

There is a difference between ignorance, and "seeing what sticks". In this case, I suspect it is the latter.

Lawyers represent their clients to the best of their ability, and will exploit any ambiguity to argue in their clients favor; even when said ambiguity is about as likely as a snowball in hell.

The previous TOS did explicitly state you could ignore updated terms, if they adversely affected you in a material way; provided such that you remained on the same major engine version. This would almost certainly qualify as a material adverse impact.

Unity's lawyers will argue that this doesn't apply; because they created ambiguity by posting the newer terms in direct conflict to the previous terms, however, the previous terms are very explicit about your rights.

Further, when interpreting an agreement like this, courts will look at relevant materials - I would look very carefully at both this blog post by Unity explaining the ability to remain on a specific version of the Terms; as well as Reddit comments made by Unity_John (who is a duly authorized officer of Unity Technologies).

In this case, the intention of the clause is made very explicit by Unity and its representative. The purpose, rationale and effect are given with examples; and these run contrary to the changes announced this week, and the updates to the Terms provided earlier in the year.

Unity's actions in hiding the changes (such as deleting the GitHub which tracked changes to the Terms) would likely not be viewed favorably by any court when it came to enforcability. As a contract of adhesion (also known as a standard form contract, or boilerplate agreement), courts tend to look very unfavorably on them - and rule against them routinely when they are manifestly unfair to the smaller party. I would strongly question whether Unity would honestly expect to be able to successfully claim these fees if contested in a court.

I would further add - that this is arguing over the agreement itself. There is a broader anti-competitive argument which can be made, Sheridan's (a law firm) have weighed in arguing that this is quite possibly illegitimate on those grounds overall, regardless of which version of Unity you are using. You can read their post here.

As usual, seek your own advice from a qualified professional, this is provided as general information only.

 

Being dominant in a field does not make you a monopoly. You have to be dominant in many, unrelated fields to be a monopoly. And monopoly breakups pretty much ended in the late 1990s. Google, amazon, and ms do ad they please, wield their power in unrelated sectors to stifle competition, and nobody does anything. Right now there are some threats, which get leveled periodically, but the governments are in regulation capture to monopolies.

Unity does not even come close to a monopoly.

 

This is not the engine you are looking for

 

Feels like the 8 years I've spent with your engine has been wasted, and for such bafflingly stupid reasons

Its been mentioned a million times in this thread already, but lets just remind you again why it is 100% impossible to track installs:

- In order to count installs, we need to send a message over the internet
- So the 'unity runtime' is going to send a packet to your server containing at minimum a uuid for the user and a uuid for my game
- So any machine/botnet can send this same packet to your server, and count as an install.
- We can generate fake uuids, change source IP, even change the game we want to count the installs to etc. It is impossible to filter legit from fake packets.

I can only assume that the execs there are completely technically illiterate and believe this core issue is just something that "the tech team" can handle. Maybe they think because the existing install tracking service has worked so far that you can just use that?

You've put yourself in a position where you either now have to immediately fire the CEO & all top management or bankrupt the company and ruin years of work & effort from thousands of developers and studios

 

Ugh.

 

Cause they're trolling, or their game sucks which is why the thresholds would never apply to them, install-wise and certainly not revenue-wise, which is likely since they can't grasp basic terminology.

 

Yes this is the essence of the problem. From my understanding he basically wants developers to sign an adhesion contract.. or even worse, they can do this for us.

 

MS in EU has been fined / forced to do stuff many times because they were deemed a monopoly.

 

Then you are below average IQ.. MANY indie developers have already posted in this thread 1M downloads of $1 games I think the highest I saw was someone posting 12M downloads and only 250K in total revenue. They actually would owe Unity hundreds of thousands.

 

Time to move to Godot community.

 

Say a freebie game with donations makes 200k per year but has millions and millions of downloads. It doesn't make much since most people that install it will only play for a few minutes then uninstall and not donate anything.

If that isn't enough to connect the dots, let me continue.

Since you aren't making 20c per install but have to pay 20c per install, you owe more money to Unity than you are making.

If it still hasn't clicked, read on.

This will bankrupt you.

If you are still lost, I cannot help you. Someone else take over.

 

Even if the threats are real I highly doubt they're credible and worthy of a full lock-down. But it does give them a very convenient excuse to cancel things and hide. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if they end up canceling Unite 2023 over "safety concerns" and lay low until the new fees take effect. Hoping devs will forget / accept it by then.

 

I dont lack ambition bro, im just putting a bit realism into the whole situation, if someone going to be affected by this bullshit, thats my team and me. He is acting a bit rash and maybe not according to the situation. I am entitled to my opinion, and there you have it, its still only an opinion, you can agree or disagree or dont give a F***, in the end who gives a f.

Nowhere near i approve or support this current bullshit.

 

It's just an excuse to cancel because Unite2023 would be a ghost town S***show. Now they can claim safety and "Cancel" an doffer refunds. John single handedly took out Unite2023. Great move by a CEO

 

Please don't mistake the figures. This is $200k of box revenue. This is not even a large salary for a solo developer by the time VAT, distributor fee's, (potential publisher cut), business expenses (physical & license etc.), corporation tax, personal tax et al have been taken into account.

The new Unity fee is also per installation, not purchase. So your company is liable for unlimited device installs for each sale (I always install Steam games to a main PC & my Steam Deck as standard). And this assumes all the conditions and cavaets surrounding piracy/demos/etc. are met perfectly.

 

Maybe it's because forn now it is a mirage for me for now but if I ever sold 200,000 copies with a profit of $200,000 I already be happy.

 

Dictionary definition: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.

Nothing about multiple fields. You have dominant control of a service. You are a monopoly.

 

How would Unity legally enforce the Install Fee tracker if you don't update your game after 31/12?

 

only if you made 200k in the last 12 months with that game, so if they all bought it in january 2023, and you didnt get anything since, and reinstalled in feb 2024 you dont pay a bean

 

the threads are just an excuse to cancel it

 

Quite possibly not that unlikely really. Average phone upgrade lifespan is 2.5 years. So if 1 million ppl buy/install your game, and they come back in 2.5 years, chances are they'll be on a new phone and you'll be paying for them twice.

 

profit, learn the difference between profit and revenue *expletive*

 

The updated explanations and FAQs just seem like a panic response when the entire thing was clearly not thought through in the first place. But so much of it is still just "trust us, we said so." such as when we're meant to just trust that you can spot all fake installs, reinstalls, and install spam. How do you intend to show that an iOS emulation is a fake install?

The entire change is still nonsensical and a terrible business move. You can cancel the entire thing and you will still be left with no trust from hobbyists and commercial developers alike. It is simply time for people to move away from Unity because of how you are prepared to screw us over and how terrible you are at even trying to do that.

 

Unity gave up and abandoned the thread. They have shifted to no comment mode to let everything blow over. That's all the indication you need that they're doubling down and not changing it. The productive conversations now are about sticking with Unity and lawsuits to contest the charges, switching to other engines/how to port it, and evaluating situations where Unity still makes sense given the new licensing structure.

 

Its not profit
not profit
not profit.

Not proft.

Not profit.

Not profit.

Its revenue.

Re ven ue.

Reee. Vvvennn.. neewww.

 

Lets say for example you have a free game with in game purchases. It has 2 million downloads and you get $200 000 only from in-game purchases. Now you have to pay Unity for the remaining 1.8 million downloads, which makes $360 000.
So Unity get all your earned money and on top of that you owe them $160 000.

Install does not mean payment. You might get money from the install or might not, but you will be required to pay Unity every time after the thresholds

 

Yup install there crappy ad/tracking software on our users systems. I make PC games and wouldn't dare even consider it so that puts me into the "Find a new engine and suffer the learning pains" group if they are for real and determined to go ahead with this nonsense. Ad Software is not an option for many reasons, many of em moral something publicly traded companies couldn't care less about.

But considering the way development has been going with Unity in recent years its probably for the best I just suck it up and move on before I waste more of my time. Did they ever finish the New Input System btw?

 

You won’t when you see that the profit is going to Unity. Remember: it’s not the installs, it’s not the sales; it’s what is left for you and your company to pay the bills.

 

if is on mobile they may use the data they get from google for the "shared resource that is for all the game the same" better explained here

https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle

 

Cool, you make $200k before fees and taxes. Made that from Steam? Your $200k is now $140k. In America, the low-end estimate for taxes would be around 35% of that $140k. $91k left over.
What about expenses during development you need to account for? Advertising, time, etc...How long did it take to build the game? If it took a year, then you can say "I made $91k this year" if you took 5 years, then imagine it as a salary of $18k per year for 5 years. Do you have team mates that need to get paid? That's another chunk.
It's not that much considering the amount of time it takes to make a successful game.

 

I believe that for the installations there will be statistical evaluations to verify whether they are profitable or not.
Also because from what I read, the rates do not apply to demos, non-profitable projects, etc.

 

The mention of "credits" by using different Unity utilities like Unity LevelPlay (their new ad service) was in their very first announcement. A fact everyone is either ignoring on purpose or is unaware of because they're getting all their "news" from social media rather than the source.

To me the goals of this plan are pretty clear:
Get more people onto the Pro/Enterprise plans
Get more mobile devs to use Unity's tools beyond the editor
Force the billion dollar Unity mobile devs to come to the negotiation table over Unity's new slice of the pie

 

This feels beyond unfair to those who want to create freemium games.

The download of freemium often acts as a trial of the game and should be included as a trial download. If you wanted to keep this structure and have it be fair to freemium game creators you should do the $0.20 on the first in app purchase.

Which would still feel really unfair, because it isn't what we signed up for when we commited to spending all the time developing on your platform. But at least it wouldn't threaten to hard cap revenue at $1 million dollars for freemium developers.

 

Profit and Revenue are NOT the same.

 

The rate applies if you exceed 200,000
and I think that without Unity you wouldn't even have that 91k.

 

They are super clearly saying installing to multiple devices (your desktop and a laptop? Your phone and a tablet?) counts as separate installations, but believe what you will.

 

The Justice Department went after Apple for anti-competitive practices over eBooks and they DEFINITELY didn't have a 70% share of the eBook retailer market.

 

Now that is funny.

 

this is why these changes are made unclear on purpose. you have to excuse people being confused.

I've read around 4.5k comments in this thread and still have a lot of doubts and question about this whole thing.

the only thing I'm certain off 100% is that UnityCEO is a piece of work of the biggest dimensions.

 

yeah basically if you downloaded and installed a version after oct of 2022 with the new terms?

if you switch between major versions for a project you agree on the terms for that project. this is seriously scary S*** here. the TOS says itself, you can choose to stay on a previous version, as long as you do not jump from 2021 to 2022. then you will need to apply the version from the time you switched. which is save till

for me its Aug. 2022 i downloaded 2021 to try out if it works, afterwards i still used 2020 with TOS of that time.

so basically if you had a major version jump that unity recorded after "Last updated: April 3, 2023", the new TOS would apply.
if you ever downloaded unity 2023 and installed it you are *ucked or if you first downloaded a major new version, you didnt use previous, after a new TOS came in effect.

 

If you make $200,000 and that many downloads, you should be purchasing a Pro license anyway. That would dramatically reduce the fees.

 

Stride and godot looks very similar in 3d graphics, Why not Unigine? unigine is superior

 

That depends on an awful lot. Such as how many people worked on the game and the wage bill. And a big one with the current issue: It might take millions of installs to reach the $200,000. The Unity fee can work out to be more than the money earned.

 

For the past 8 years, I have invested all of my free time into learning Unity Inside out. This was to be a career change for me. I also started work on a project, and now I feel like someone just cut both my legs at the knee. Studios all around are now considering a switch to Unreal Engine, my employment opportunities will disappear if this happens. I swear if my life gets impacted by this, I will find a way to get you to court. I have invested too much of my personal life into this to let slide.

The Indy dev community made Unity, and it will take it down.

Someone forgot that you don't bite the hand that feeds you. Why can't we just pay you according to sales made? Isn't that fair for everyone?