Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

A lot of this depends on Unity's ability to convince storefronts to do their dirty work for them. That's the lynchpin that makes it difficult to fight back.

But storefronts are under no obligation to do anything. Storefronts have no reason to let themselves get inserted into this mess, and plenty of reasons not to. A non-exhaustive list:

1. Storefronts that "pass on" costs to developers immediately take on additional liability. When publishers and developers inevitably sue Unity, now storefronts may also find themselves named in those suits.
2. Helping Unity is defacto bad for PR.
3. They risk publisher/developer boycotts.
4. Collaborating with Unity will be internally unpopular among the storefront's developers.
5. It's an additional hassle, requiring more resources to implement and manage.
   
6. You can't "pass on" a cost that is higher than what the developer brings in, which is theoretically possible.
7. There's massive uncertainty. Both that this scheme will collapse before it even gets going, and that Unity will implement additional schemes in the future that will lead to headaches.
8. Anything that hurts the industry as a whole hurts also indirectly hurts storefronts.

In order for Unity to have a hope in hell of getting storefronts to play along, Unity will need to provide a significant inducement.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the storefronts will be on our side. I'm saying for storefronts, the path of least resistance is to avoid getting tangled up in this matter altogether.

 

Perhaps:

 

''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.''



''The statements are contradictory. Fees will be incurred for applications released prior to January 1, 2024. Retroactive charges are not permissible.

Furthermore, it is intrinsically impossible to calculate the accurate number of application installations, thus correct fee computation will not be carried out.
The retroactive part is that if you started developing a game in 2017 and are about to release it, you're being slapped with a new business model days before your release.''



It's not an assumption (well, I am of this view, if you want to say I assume that, ok..), because this ToS (12 October 2022) is binding (legally) to the versions to it; and requires that you 'Agree(d)' to it...to Apply to you when you Use the Editor.

If you did not Agree, you can't use the versions of that time period; because, in order, to make a game with them, you must have agreed to the ToS (Updated Terms, of 12 October 2022).

If you did not Agree do the new version (After) April 3, 2023, then No, you are not on the New ToS (April 3, 2023)

Because, in order for this New ToS (April 3, 2023...or the one in January 1, 2024), you must Agree to It.
If you do not agree to it, they say: ''you can't use Unity services/engine etc...''; but that's this Specific ToS,
You Agree(d) - to an Old ToS - not the New One.

You Agree(d) to the One Prior to April 3, 2023. That is, the 12 October 2022 one.

People are not realizing that you can't just 'nullify' this older ToS (and fig...toss it in the tr*sh; I mean, you can, but yeah, some of us are using the Older versions of Unity and Never Agreed to New ToS);

Agree-ing, is the Key Element, to the ToS being Valid to You. You cannot force someone to 'agreeing' when they never agreed (in the 1st place) to use the software; because, if doing that, that is 'against the agree-ing' of the person, to use a product (like the Editor). It's as if, I decided --- '''you know what..I'm deciding --- for you --- I 'agreed' 'for you'....without your consent, without 'you agreeing' -- Not Needing you to agree....I agreed 'for you'...and thus, you are Forced to be on the New ToS---irrespesctively..of you having given your 'I Agree' consent''.''

Do you tihnk that would fly...(in court/not very legit)...as others have said, ToS are legally binding, and yes, ToS can be 'nullified'/'invalidate' ...I know that...but, there has to be Substantial Power/Reason to Nullify an Old Tos....beceause, the ToS...are valid/legal, legally binding -with engine creator, that made them.
And, sure enough, could invalidate/nullify/render them null...but, as said, there would have to be very Good reasons, for that; it's not a Whim.....because, many people Are on this Old ToS, and Agreed - to it; that's the legal binding thing...

If you started making game in 2017 (like me, am not finished); and you are on your 'way' 'to being finished soon...'
, The New ToS won't apply to you, because you made your game on Version Older of Unity (well, so long as you did not update to Unity 2023, or the last one, Unity 2022.3.f11 (the april 5, 2023, one; or for LTS, it's 2021 version (march 29 version)...) because if you Did update, you 'agreed' to the New ToS (April 5, 2023) and this ToS says 'any fees' (not just 'subscription fees' from October 12, 2012 ToS); which means in January 2024 'any fee' can go/be charged....

With that said, one thing i am not sure...is if you did Agree to the April 5, 2023 ToS (by downloading a Version of Unity after that time and 'Agreeing') and you Stay/Continue using a New version (like Unity 2023)....well, you are then assured to be 'elligible' for the January 2024 per-install fees ToS....because you had accepted the April 5 one, that says 'Any Fees' (which means any fees 'later' can be added)...

But, That is resting on you Using Unity 2023, if you do Not use Unity 2023..and do not Release a Game with Unity 2023....this is where I am not too sure....like, you Agreed...but decided to Not Continue to Use Unity 2023.

You Revert back to Older Version...this is where, I'm not sure, because if you Did Download Unity 2023 and Agreed to the April 5, 2023 ToS (by Downloading Unity 2023...and Using It); then it is Retroactive - this ToS - which means, that Alll you Previous ToS are Superceded and All the Unity Versions you used (before April 5, 2023) are rendered null/nill/invalid; and thus, the April 5, 2023 ToS applies to All Retroactive Versions of Unity - For You.
So, if you made a Game in Unity 2019...and you upgrade to Unity 2023....and you Agreed to the ToS....you are not able anymore to 'Stay' or 'Revert' back to the Unity 2019 -thence ToS. The April 5, 2023 ToS Takes Precendence,and is applied 'retroactively' to all your previous Unity versions/Unity Projects you made...and the game you will release if are not released yet (as said, like a game in Unity 2019....released on February 2024, will now be charged per-installation fees..because you downloaded/agreed to Unity 2023/April 5, 2023 ToS...that retroactively 'erased' the 2019 ToS...that you Had agreed, but you Also Agreed....to the New April 5, 2023 ToS...when you downloaded/used/and agreed to Unity 2023 (that is bound by the April 5, 2023 ToS).

 

If Storefront will help unity enforce this madness it would be extremely unfair for developer.
A game by developer A would get 30% of the revenue, a game by developer B could get nothing? Or negative?
And if it's automated you couldn't ever object to an invoice since the storefront would just tell you to talk to Unity and Unity would tell you to talk to the storefront. I would take out Unity of my games with a chainsaw...

 

I wonder how this is going to play out come Jan 2024. I mean how are Unity able to know or track what games have been made with which Unity accounts and been released?

Obviously some will be more easy to determine than others, if for example you've used Unity analytics or game services, then you likely have a Unity ID for that project, but what if Unity doesn't have that information?

I guess they have been getting telemetry for years from games that tie the game ID ( name, version, Android/Apple ids ) to an Unity account, but that wont have been set up as a database for these purposes, again not as easily as if you have used any of the game services.

So the only thing I can think of is come Jan 2024, Unity is suddenly go to spring on every Unity account a whole database of all the games they think you've made and released at some point in the past. Some of these games may even also have an install tax invoice associated with them too! So there could be lot of surprise data being tracked by Unity that they just decide to show you at that point?

Am I missing something here? I mean I could understand this working if it was limited to games that used Unity services, but surely that would have been mentioned and I don't remember seeing it.

 

Unreal can "change the rules" at any time too.
If you want something ironclad, negotiate a contract. Otherwise you're assuming a risk no matter what ToS you agree to on whatever piece of software

 

This forum has 167 pages full of developers who've been using unity for years say straight up; "we're moving to a different engine". Does Unity understand that they flat out lost their bet in thinking they had their whole customer base of game developers wrapped around their finger? Game developers are SCRAPPERS lol. And when there's a bug we just figure out how to fix it because that's all we ever do. This is just another bug we'll fix by learning new tools. All you're doing here Unity is stifling progress in the industry a bit. Nice one!

 

but what guarantees we have that exactly the same thing that's happened to Unity (parasitical management come in and tank / feed off everything) won't happen with Unreal engine? It's another proprietary codebase / corporation. Plus they have Tencent as a major shareholder, and with Unity looking flaky probably they get more of a monopoly. Which is why open-source / decentralized / open license is the way forward probably, at least a lot of people thinking that.

 

I've been using unreal these last couple days and I have to say it's amazing. C++ is not a monster and theres a lot of resources, tutorials and a decent store. I can recommend it

 

From the blog post:

@Mike-Geig

1. You are favouring Unity Pro and Enterprise users over Personal and Plus's (image), Why?
2. Aren't you afraid that unscrupulous devs use this new policy as a good excuse to raise their prices to an unreasonable level?
3. What happens if the revenue threshold is met by a game but the install threshold is never met? Could devs circumvent the new regulation by making their game, all of a sudden, unavailable for download during the rest of a month once it's reached install threshold - 1?

 

exactly rolce-royce. a car that cost 10 times more it should. hard to drive. expensive to repair etc etc

Both engines have strengths and weekneses and Unity is far better for small teams that Unreal. That's the worst part. They make the price bad exactly for people who benefit the most for Unity's strenghts

 

Yeah, I don't know either. This was actually the initial thing that made me resist posting anything or talking about my game that would be eligible in case it wasn't even on their radar. Ultimately I felt it was more important to do what I could to fight the change.

However Unity has always touted the number of games on mobile or Steam in X list or another (e.g. Top Sellers) that are made with Unity, and has thrown numbers of Unity games/players/etc around for years. They definitely receive some telemetry from any unmodified Unity game and intuit numbers from that, and I'm sure they know from which App ID/exe name/etc it comes from.

So my assumption is that they know. They know enough about what Unity games exist and where anyway. They don't know revenue, they don't know sales numbers and their proprietary Black-Box-Of-Bullshit™ doesn't know real install numbers, but it doesn't seem like they care about accuracy or want that to stop them.

 

John Ravioli is probability trying to think about what to do next.

 

unity IS better for small teams or 1 guy than unreal, that is a fact

 

As long as Tim Sweeney is the CEO of Epic you will never see that kind of dumb S*** done by them. Pray to god he will live a long life so that you could all enjoy his works.

 

Was

 

They will probably send a notice based on installs, and if your revenue is below the threshold, you report it. No way, given how aggressive they are being here that, they wait for self reported revenue.

 

Perhaps on Monday we will have news, for now the best thing is to think about a great plan B, Stride seems good, Godot too, but imagine all the work that these changes mean for those of us who have been working with Augmented and Virtual Reality.

 

A notice would be nice I expect an invoice. Or a charge on my credit card.

 

You can see all Godot games here: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Godot/
There are some hit like Brotato, Hall of Torment, Dome Keeper, Cruelty Squad... but it's not as impressive as Unity, Unreal or even GameMaker yet.

 

as an engine is still is. the pricing is a BIG problem.
JR HAS to go!

and an apology from Unity (and of course change this stupid pricing) is the minimum they need to do
but what scares me is that they may bought ironSourse exactly for this pricing model so they can't really change it.

 

For the majority of Indies who never make more than $1 million on a game, Unreal is free. This means in these cases it's certainly a better deal. Once a dev or studio finds success and has to start paying 5% on their second million in profits and beyond (congrats!), it's also possible to negotiate a custom license with Epic for even better terms.

So for devs and studios making millions on their games, thanks to these changes, sometimes Epic will be cheaper and sometimes Unity will be cheaper. The calculus involves estimating future installs to determine which engine will take the bigger cut, which is bonkers. Epic's terms are at least clear and predictable, which matters when running a large business.

 

What if I stopped with 2022? I haven't even touched the beta for 2023. Does that mean I'm good? lol

 

2022 is after 2021.

 

You have GOT to be kidding me...

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

 

Yes, except do not disable Nanite. I think everything runs faster with Nanite, even at low settings. It's Lumen that really needs to be turned off (until the average computer gets much juicier at some point in the future).

 

Right but it means I have the rights provided by the TOS from 2022? Or, you know, cause 2022.3 was actually released in 2023 does it count for that instead? See what I mean? 2023.1 isn't even expected to release until like, 2025 so it get ever worse!


On another note: Glad to see some folks have finally started to realize how messed up this whole situation really is. For those that might be coming in late to the game, I'd just like to point out that it literally doesn't matter WHAT the TOS says because it has been changing almost hourly for the past 48 hours. How are you supposed to plan a business around that?

 

Also I missed half the point in my other reply, but I'd be very curious what data is being sent back to Unity from the runtime and the editor at build time (if any). As in, do they bake an ID, based on your Unity license number, into every built application and that is transmitted when it is ran? Or do they maybe do something similar when you do a build, sending data about the build you've done and associate that with your license.

The former is probably more likely and I imagine could be determined through packet sniffing. Surely they must actually have something in place already to be attempting this. I know they are incompetent and overconfident in their install counter nonsense, but someone must have at least assumed it was conceptually somewhat possible in regards to associating an install to a game to a Unity developer account...

 

My understanding is if you installed 2023.x, 2022.x or 2021.x you agreed that they can change the TOS and you are bound by those changes.

 

"I understand Unity has to make money"

Please dont give john r a pass on this. Unity could be making money, if it made itself a game makers company.

Instead, he wants to make it an advertising and service company. Now they cant turn a profit, and keep buying S***ty adware back end monetization S***, instead of just focusing on being the easiest, best game engine.

If they had a ceo with vision, and not this stupid prick, they'd be making money fine.

A Previous rant from a locked thread about unity's stock:

 

right - so zero guarantees.

 

Right, now it all makes sense...

 

Hey people I'm tempted to go to Unreal, basically another big company that has its flaws but its powerful. But I worked with Cocos2D and was a great tool. Now, there are two options to consider (among others). What do you think:

Godot? Or Stride? I like Stride because it has C# as main language, but Godot seems to have more movement. I develop 3D games. What do you think?

 

Unreal has blocked themselves from retroactively changing their EULA. So any change they make will only apply to new versions.

 

If majority will leave unity and move to any other engine Epic and others will learn what not to do so by switching engine now we ensure safer future for all game developers.

 

You're not gonna find any guarantees. Just take what engine is best now for your needs and don't get overly attached to your tools.

 

It baffles me how much speculation about motifs is going on in this thread.
The base principle here will always be (and I quote Daniel Kaneman from his book "thinking fast and slow" here): "What you see is all there is."
Unless anyone here has some actual reliable information on more than what unity communicated then all speculation is just that. Speculation. I know the situation is exremely frustrating (duh) but guessing about motifs of certain people or mismanagements won't get anyone any further, here. I know the brain wants explanations for uncertain things but it's just so much better to focus on the things that are in reach of anyone unsatisfied, here. Take the steps necessary for what your project and situation requires. And imagine how you want things to be in the future and how much you are willing to trust this company in the future now.
If that means that you want to sway Unity to roll back - do that. If it means for you to actually be fine with thesituation and continue as usual - do it. If it means for you biting the bullet and finishing that last game with unity - go for it. If it means counting the losses and abandoning ship - do it. Whatever it is ... speculation is wasted time. Change what is within your reach. It's the best for your own situation and it is very likely that it will also send the strongest signa to Unity as a side effect.

 

My worrying is how they differentiate ( or if they will even bother ) between actual finished release games or apps on various stores, vs the hundreds of little test demo's I've made and built locally over the last decade. Sure common-sense would be to remove any project that has less than a few thousand installs, but you have to be careful as you can't remove a project just because it has low install count as that doesn't mean it isn't a game released to a store.

It would not surprise me to log into Unity account come Jan 2024 and find a new database that lists every single project I've ever started or made in Unity, maybe if we are lucky it will remove projects that have never been built. But even then I probably have a couple of hundred of projects by this point for ideas, testing etc and it will be up to me to prove they are not actual released games or something stupid.

The only alternative I can think of is that they have scraped every possible store front, publisher, distributor, etc to get a list of games and then compared against their telemetry to get a rough list of 'games' per an account - which apart from being scummy ( scraping ) doesn't seem very reliable either.

 

Even their own people are quitting over this crap.

 

I agree to that, they could definitely put money to better places. Also the whole pipelines deal was a disaster for long time and now start to rectify.

 

Ah so I'm F***ed for all time because I wanted some bugfixes for all the crap they did incompetently. Thumbs up dude! Just another reason why I'd never trust them ever again.

 

wrong - open-source / MIT license guarantees it, because you can fork the code if they go bad. If / when URE pulls a unity (or any other properietary engine), community can't fork 100% of the code and legally move it forward as it can with open-source, you're stuck.

 

They really have to do that. they have almost 1 b loss in 2022.
It's reality, It's business even if we don't like it. Many of us want also to make money with Unity
The problem is how they want to make money. And here is the problem. There are waaaay simples and better methods for everyone , than this. Also install counting is probably expensive so is costly even to implement it. But probably they want to do something that's not royalies because that's what Unreal does, even if this it's kind of a royalty, just different

Also a game is hard to make and doesn't guarantee an good profit. So them making games is an option sure, but it's not one that will guarantee money and will not bring them money fast.

 

it literally ensures nothing - apart from if URE goes the same way as Unity has, you can then maybe use an old version of URE, provided the company still provides it from their backend (which they probably wouldn't). Then you're stuffed same as here, still need to find another engine / reskill / port everything. The only benefit is probably you can't go broke potentially on anything you released in the past.

 

Unity Runtime

 

More employees with focus on microtransactions

 

The developer of Bits & Bops, which had a very successful Kickstarter earlier in the year, have just now publicly stated they are completely willing to change engines or build their own engine if needed, despite the dev time and resources required.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project..._email_backer_project_update_registered_users

Unity is vastly underestimating the tolerance of their market and the lengths they are willing to go through to avoid this change. I know a single developer is a mosquito in the ear for Unity, but this is the first of many, many developers in the early stages of a project that will reject the platform as a direct result.

It's not about money. It's the fear of uncertainty. Bankruptcy due to success.

 

One thing someone with some free time and 2 license keys could do is build 2 projects with 1 key, change the key and then build them both again and do a comparison on the results to see if there's something resembling an ID somewhere in them. Where the ID is the same in the 2 project builds for one key and the same in other 2 builds with the other key, but different than the build from the other key.

Then presumably packet sniffing on launch to see if that ID is in the packet and if not, at least perform the same comparison operation on the packets to see if there's a similar commonality in packets between 2 project builds based on the license key used to build it.

I'd be really curious to see the results and if something like this exists, from how far back in Unity Editor versions.

Without something like this I think any other method that doesn't rely on self reporting like with Epic/Unreal would be pretty ridiculous. But like you say, this method would not differentiate between builds from a store and the millions of test builds Unity users create and run.

 

What can you expect from a CEO that make it's costumers stupid and that thinks that charging 1 $ for ammo midgame will not make the player base furious?!