Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

There’s no bomb.

 

Can't wait until Home Depot gets in on this business model. Retroactively, if a hammer and nails were used to add improvements to your home, you now owe Home Depot $0.20 per person who sleeps in that home, if the home is valued at more than $200k

This

The really big deal is that we had a TOS fight back in 2019, and Unity more or less resolved it in a way that satisfied the community and promised to never drop things like that on us again by building in safeguards into the TOS.

Now they ripped the safeguards out months ago while no one was paying attention, directly going against their own word on giving notice for important changes, all to basically trap as many game devs into agreeing to the new TOS before they explain how we've been had. This is the most blatant violation of trust I've ever seen a company pull.

There is no reason to believe they won't do this again and again. You can't plan out years of development and support for a game project with Unity's gun to your head like this.

 

But you don't pay EVERY month. You pay 0.20 per install, which means once you made 200k off your game, that game will start simply generating less revenue for your company (i.e. game price - 0.20). That's in the worst case, assuming you are not a PRO user.

 

Many of us raised alarm back in 2014 when Riccitiello took over. Moronic decisions one after the other since he took the lead. Somehow with all this funding, Unity's technology still sucks ass and is relegated to remain a "mobile" first engine.

 

Unity, give up on AAA, make these shady business models target only mobile behemoths, and go back to your roots.
Go back fixing and improving tools. No more discontinued packages, make DOTS intuitive or make it fully separate at last. Things started to go wrong when trying to catch up with Unreal and targeting AAA.

Sadly, none of this will happen. A very sad ending for an engine that was a major breakthrough and is already part of the game dev history.

 

No with Epic and we just confirmed this as we are switching there now

The terms of the version you built on are the terms you are on, if new terms happen you can upgrade ... or you can keep to the terms you are on. That is part of the terms.

So they have wording that explicitly prevents them from doing exactly what Unity is trying to do

 

well is not funny. is just a screen not sure is true but having one of the unity staff threatening the CEO makes sense in why they would close the office area. Is not that random people can enter there.

 

Entirely plausible. They are trying to create a closed ecosystem here clearly but bullying their whales into their ad service. Maybe even a Unity Store to compete with Steam. Trying to be the next closed off Apple.

 

They've also clarified that their method of determining installs is proprietary and they will not explain any of it to anyone.

--Eric

 

Um Epic is private and majority held by the CEO

And the rest is mostly held by Tencent ... there is a reason I hate Epic and that's it ... Epic will be a Tencent property in the next few years I would guess

It has also done some real S***ty things with PC Exclusives, etc.

Despite that Epic is at this point less of a liability and simply more trustworthy than Unity to the point of walking away from 10+ years of tooling, experience, etc.

Good job Unity

 

5$ per install? You are sharing misunderstanding here. That's 0.20 out of additional installs, only if your game is successful (i.e. made 200k+ in the past). At that point your game will generate just less (game price - 0.20). That's it.

 

beep boop bop does not compute.

 

Roberto, you seem like you know a lot about F2P business. Can you please explain to me why, on every single title we develop, we spend weeks just to reduce the CPI by 1 cent?

Why do we kill projects just because of measuring 2 cents more CPI?

If 2 cents of additional cost per initial install is not that bad why we, the F2P developers, keep killing projects?

Enlighten me, please.

 

Nah, but getting there, and it is growing fast.

 

Pump and dump

 

Just because it's an issue that will unlikely impact a tiny fraction of people doesn't mean it isn't disrespectful (or some have said, predatory) to the developer. The CEO could come out and say "Hey devs, I wanna punch you all in the face! But only 5% of you will get socked, so don't worry lol!" It doesn't address "why"? Like why introduce this unnecessary risk for us? Not only that, it's not even well thought out which is even more disrespectful.

 

An out of state one and on social media?

 

Wow.

I was taking the accusations with a grain of salt since Riccitiello operates in bad faith and nothing he says can be trusted...

...But on balance I still expected that this scenario actually happened. It's not exactly uncommon after all.

But it's all a lie, of course. If you're feeling super charitable (I am not), then you could argue that there is the smallest quantum of truth that was communicated disingenuously. I won't even give them that.

 

Unity employees are more mad then we are...

 

what about installs on new hardware? whats with emulators. whats with linux for windows subsystems that run android. do they track the licensing? what with hacked version or versions that run in emulators. how do they connect the reinstall to the person? it is not legal in the EU to keep data you do not need and users need to be able to opt in - not opt out - opt in.

it just is so insanley complex that they really considering it is borderline stupid. it will cause everyone involved stress. false numbers that cant be proven. legal troubles. we would need to ask our users that they allow us to track them. because we need to know how many installs were made so we can validate their claims. if they dont, we are not allowed to do that. how are they planning on doing this? will they use some malware? so we now install maleware with unity. is there already maleware? is unity now considered a maleware company?

its a absolute mess and shows an insanse amount of incompetence on the technical and legal level. they will just have to guess your numbers via a few metrics like app store downloads etc. its insane to me that they really want to go by this metric - its an absolute show of incompetence and anyone working in unity, that has technical understanding must be thinking what the *uck is my company doing. this is suicide. same with mobile free to play titles. its so damaging that those money cash machine game will *ucking just switch out the engine for hypercasual games.

followed by their hidden change of the TOS while getting rid of a defensive clause that would now allow them to charge whatever they want. if you upped to a newer major version of unity ~01.04 of 2023 you basically have accepted their new terms and they can do whatever they want with your game. they even lie about it. saying yeah no this now will legally go backwards, we never had this in our TOS. then they delete their TOS history that has shown what it really was like.

its as bad as it possible can get. this is gangster. its honestly nuts

 

I'm currently checking Stride as my next engine and it's looking really tempting. Like REALLY tempting.

Here is a blog post about migrating to Stride for Unity refugees:
https://www.stride3d.net/blog/embracing-open-source-stride-as-an-alternative-to-unity/

Features:
https://www.stride3d.net/features/

EDIT: as cool as Stride is, I'm checking Godot in depth and it's clearly going to be the next Blender but for games. It's much bigger in scope than Stride and has much more people involved in the project.

 

I'm really concerned about the splash screen situation, I could have afforded unity plus but pro is completely out of reach for me...

 

That's not what I'm saying, and you aren't comprehending the situation. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you should read my post again.

 

How much do you make, on average per game install? I assume you do make MORE than 0.20 on a solid basis, otherwise your company would not be profitable anyway...

 

Indeed, and they've been much more reliable for a much longer period of time. Epic Games is 32 years old whereas Unity is only 19 years old.

 

That's what they're asking for right now. But they've already demonstrated that the contract you start with isn't going to be the one you finish on.

The bottom line is that it's not safe to tie your company or project to Unity for multiple years because you're one coke filled binge away from Unity announcing its new competitor for Steam that all unity games must be exclusively sold on.

 

As per a "paid titles" company as we are, I can't find a way on how this could impact us. Maybe, F2P, but that's still to be defined.

 

It's not a theory, it's in the FAQ and has been since day one. You can get "credits" by using Unity's tools outside of the editor, like Game Services and Unity ads. These credits can be used to discount or even omit runtime fees. This was never a hidden fact, just one that media and social media haven't noticed or chose not to report

 

Do you understand the difference between revenue vs profit? Between sales and installs. Between taxes and royalties. Have you ever even paid taxes?

 

If you need money why do you not simply put a price on the free licence ? Like 10$ monthly with a try period
Your thing is just insane and i'm glad I can still go to Godot or Unreal because my project just started but I feel bad for people working on a project for months or even years, that's just nonsense

 

Why not work on the open source options? Monogame & Stride are C# heavy, Cocos javascript, Bevy in Rust. Flax in C++/C#. Defold in Lua. Godot C++/C#/GDScript.

After all this why lock back into another closed source system when there are so many open source free ones to consider?

 

I think the pricing structure is overly complicated and a chunk of whatever Unity generates will just wind up going towards supporting the tech it needs to manage the pricing structure and customer support staff rather than being reinvested back in the platform. There are too many gotchas, points of contention and potential loop holes in the new system.
I know every company is struggling against interest rates right now, but this is not the smartest way to raise revenue.

 

Flax isn't open source. It has source available like Unreal but you're not free to do whatever you want with it.

 

The last things I heard about Xi Jinping were this, followed by this more recently (possibly related).. so who's to say where it all ends up with him. I'm personally more concerned with what John Riccitiello is doing.

 

Imagine working at a very successful company for many years, and suddenly someone comes up with terrible ideas that will effectively destroy the whole ecosystem built over decades, and when this happens, it will be you and your colleagues who lose their jobs

 

A more crafty person will set up VM's to install bomb their competition and force Unity to waive it. An even more crafty person will anonymously install bomb themselves to force Unity to waive it.

 

I'm not a game developer - But I have played games made with Unity engine in the past. That's not going to happen in the future. Will be checking what engine the game is made on and will boycott all games made with this engine no matter what licence. Thankfully - there are plenty of good games out there made in other engines. Shame on you Unity.

 

Likewise, my game's best year was actually year.. 7. After I got discovered by a youtuber with a large following.

 

Yeah but that won't "encourage" you to start using all those Unity services they acquired for billions. Install-fees will. Yes, this Unity move is all making sense to me now....

 

I feel gross having to use unity now. Like having to crawl back to an abusive relationship.

 

Flax is not open source. It is source available though.

 

... I really hate to say it, but this is the first time since 2007 that I have considered Unreal Engine. At least, with them, I know where I stand. I'd also like to point out that Unity has consistently failed to deliver a working editor for Linux for the past 4-5 years, that has not had some major flaw preventing base items (Lighting, textures, asset downloading, etc.) from working. Now, After paying for a broken editor, I get to pay for a supposedly "separate software" runtime? Because the game engine is the runtime, and the editor is useless for anything but making "runtime" (Unity Engine) games.

I get that your (UT) CEO is a "F***ing idiot" (I'll make an apology later, mkay? then I will do something else that is incredibly stupid, like charge people real money to reload their guns in an FPS, because in the heat of battle, they won't mind) And that Breaking the Trust of the people who put Unity on the map is a great way to have a successful business. I also get that you (UT) lost money in march due to SMB going under which ate up your success for last quarter.

I've been using unity for a really long time, and I have made original games (sorry to the person that is clueless and sucking down the kool-aid, but I didn't need a YT tutorial to fluff out a copy cat game *cough*Jiro_Dev*cough*) and I see this as an extremely bad move on Unity's part.

Setting everything aside, and just looking at this for what it IS... you're changing the rules of the contract, without notice or actual agreement to the new terms. There is no consideration on the part of the actual developers using your engine. And, you're now charging a Engine Install Fee - because honestly here, that's what this is. leave the F***ery aside and actually call it what it is. *Breathes* it's a major understatement as to how much this... THIS... pisses me off.

Your pricing plan says one thing, and then Unity Representatives say something else... but in the end, what's written down as the official pricing plan is what takes precedence, and is what will be pointed at in a legal sense to justify the costs to the developer. AND that pricing is based off of "proprietary data aggregation and algorithms" that only Unity has access to, where the Developers are told "this many people installed your product, pay us." We have no way to dispute it, because we don't have access to even the numbers - we have to trust you *when you have destroyed the good faith and trust that we have for you.*

The trust is broken, your destroying games, and punishing people that actually make a good game with your engine with this absurd move. There is no clear "these monthly payments stop when..." in the pricing plan, and it does say monthly payment for installs. That, in plain English and understanding, means a monthly payment for all new installs over the threshold. IE, paying over and over again for the same installs because "they won't mind." -- And, this is not an overreaction; in fact, it's genuinely an under-reaction with an understanding of contract law. (Plain English and the spelled out "spirit" of the agreement is what is held up in court.)

I expected better, I really did. I held out ... tried my best to help make unity better. But, this is just too much. Though, to be fair here, had I of known that your CEO is from EA, I would have switched YEARS ago. RIP Unity, we used to love you.

 

Okay, I think I finally figured out why some people include tax in the revenue deduction financials. I think there's some weird miscommunication that Unity needs to clarify/address.

I understood 'revenue' threshold as being the adjusted gross income (sans sales tax).
It seems to be the standard elsewhere that 'revenue' equals the gross income.

That does seem to make a substantial difference. Most distributor/warehouse seem to be based on gross. Most royalty agreements are adjusted gross. So Unity, which one is it?

 

Did I see you say .net 7? Well I know the engine I am looking into. Thank you for that information.

 

Bingo, my gripe is not financial at all, it's about the attempt to retroactively screw with years-old projects completed under years-old TOS.

 

They wanted to do Unreal-like revenue share, but explained and organized it in the worst possible way. Clarifications will come...for sure.

 

The most crafty person would ignore the install component entirely and pivot to the weak link in the system (the Unity system that receives the install reports).

No need to spin up a million VM's when you could just craft and send a million 'install packets'.

This whole thing is a technical and privacy nightmare that gamers are not going to stand for (and that most Governments will take at least a passing interest in).

 

I want to give an opinion on this, as I care about the Unity game engine and the Games industry as a whole. I am a Enterprise Software Engineer with a Degree in Games Development, I do not work with Unity or Games in my day job, but have worked professionally on a Gambling App in Unity on the past, and have been working on my game in a hobbyist capacity for the last couple of years.

There are a few major problems with this scheme:
Messaging: This whole pricing model would have been a lot more transparent with no "install-fee" for Unity Personal users, with a cap at only the $200K, any revenue beyond that and the Pro/Enterprise plans are required. I'd imagine most developers who hit both the metrics on personal are either already using Pro or would be happy to upgrade (although increasing the price of Plus would have also made sense), and the million/million is much harder to reach and will mostly only affect big companies (so there would be much less of an uproar).
Install-Fee: This is the worst part of this, the fee should only be charged once when a digital license is purchased, and not on subsequent installs. It has been clarified that re-installs on the same machine won't count (no idea how we could detect this, as there's not an accurate unique identifier), but I personally have a Steam Deck, a Laptop, a PC at my parents house, in addition to my main desktop. If I like a game, I'm probably gonna want to play it on all of them, now I'm passing a fee back to the game developer because I want to play their game. The Fee needs to be "per digital-license" rather than install, otherwise it cannot work.
Technical Concerns: Tracking this data correctly cannot work techncially, the only possible way that could work is for the distributed application to send environmental data to a unity api. To me it seems like enforcing an extra form DRM on both the developer and the consumer that the developer has no control over (also how does offline play work?), this could potentially be seen as malware by some. There is also no way to enforce this retrospectively on existing unity binaries built with older versions. Although if this is the case piracy won't be a concern, because the DRM will be cracked and bypassed instantly. Talented hackers will likely figure out how to fake requests as extra installs too.

Those are my thoughts. I'll say again the pricing doesn't really affect me at all right now, and is potentially unlikely to ever affect me, but I strongly disagree with the ethics behind it, to the point where I'm considering just giving up on Game Development entirely and finding another hobby (I don't really want to learn Godot).

 

Ok, that's what I was thinking.

But this analysis assumes the legacy TOS stops Unity from charging new fees. I'm not sure if it does. Unity's answers about this make it sound like they are trying to get older games included.