Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Have you?
Of course an open source project can't be a scam, the thumbnail is clickbaity like everything on youtube.
What is important is the state of bug fixes, development and breaking changes from a version to the next. I had Unity flashbacks watching it.
I found it very interesting to see the not-so-nice side of Godot from the point of view of people butt hurt by it, because it would probably be me next.
Open source projects communities tend to be like cults (like Linux), so having someone to speak up about the issues is refreshing.

 

Out of curiosity do you mean they sent it as a way to fake the threats or the employee themselves were the one making the threats?

 

That's my point. Can robber guarantee you he not gonna try to charge you extra if he sing a song for you? He can. He's not even planning such extra steps, when you're already at his mercy. So, yeah, addressing this is last thing could came up to Riccitiello mind.

 

They've been hastily changing the TOS for two days now though. Revision after revision after revision. That's official enough for most at this point.

 

https://unity.com/social-impact
Just scrolled by error at the bottom of the page and read this... Oh, the irony!

 

Sure it is, you just distribute a link to the engine with your game (and any changes you make to the engine).

The GCC compiler in Linux is GPL but that doesn't mean every piece of software compiled with it is GPL.

 

On a related note: Does anyone have any tips on how to actually get https://www.stride3d.net/ running? I've seen a number of issues posted on their github about the "Could not find a compatible version of MSBuild." error and none of the suggestions made seem to fix it.

 

Important question.

Does taking the game off the market before January 1, 2024 will prevent paying Unity bills?

Or do we have to pay even if we stop distributing the game? (let's say the game had a one-time $1mil+ sale spike 6 months ago and the sales stopped. I need the money for making my next game, and not for paying for installs of the game that doesn't sell now)

 

Another key issue - Unity only announced this in a blog post. A radical change like this should have been emailed directly to every Unity user as there are likely thousands who were oblivious. The T&Cs even say Unity will attempt to inform users of material changes, which of course they are legally required to do.

 

Spot on!
The only thing I learned from going back to unity this year was how utterly broken it's become. Development is fractured and never seems to sync between the groups:
When one thing finally starts to work they break another. Choosing which urp version to use should be a breeze, "use the latest version", simply comes to mind. ...if only they made it that easy.

The only question now is: which other engine should one learn to use?

 

So if we manage our games to run on a web player, then we can all build with WebGL and throw a middle finger at Unity

 

If you have passed the thresholds, taking it off the market will stop future installs. Although honestly, just don't pay! Unity haven't really got a legal leg to stand on. First guy to get sued by Unity, probably some tiny indie they want to bully to set precedents, will get the full backing of the Unity community in a crowdfunding support program to cover their legal fees and crush Unity in court.

 

Unity slightly changed a table with fees, they removed word "monthly" and added AND condition for thresholds.

 

As per Unity's current interpretation of their TOS, it's completely retroactive, so it doesn't matter: they will bill you the same.

 

That is not how the GPL works you should read that license.

 

I haven't seen anything about this in their TOS which implies you have to pay the tax for as long as the game is being installed anywhere at any time. But who knows? I haven't been keeping up with the constant changes to the TOS either.

 

Thanks for the clarification on that detail.

 

Always assume the worst, and never, EVER underestimate the situation.
You can dismiss their tactics by just calling them idiots, but that's just going to backfire on you.

Truth is, it's happening weather you think they're just dumb or not, they rolled out an egregious proposal, and are "backstepping" to their original goal, but the reality is that there shouldn't have been an 'original goal' to begin with.

 

Well to be honest, i was going to stay while i finished my mobile project but, i was getting updated on ther engines and looks like i'm going to finish my mobile game on Stride it supports android and open surce, is a bit harder than unity :/ but meh... i need to finish this and i'm happy to move on away from unity... And for my next project i'm working with unigine for months now (because i can not see any value on HDRP really...) so yeah, i'm moving my already worked project from unity to another engine, i suck on code but anyways i prefer that work rather than be here, take this as a "message" too
Links:
Stride
https://www.stride3d.net/download/

Unigine
https://unigine.com/get-unigine

 

Every game is updated to remove Unity.
My company requests officially to close the pending contract with Unity.
Do they still have the rights to request money for a random user that didn't delete the installer and just enjoy his offline gaming in a remote country? Do I have to shutdown the company to be free from this nightmare (that wasn't present in the TOS when I signed...). How this can be remotely legal??

 

There are a lot of mentions about open source engines but you only have to look at their github contributions and commit history to see a big problem. They are almost all built and maintained by 10 people or less. It even says so on Godot's fundraising page. Stride was mostly built by one developer.

Although they have a community of hundreds/thousands, the vast majority just do patches here and there.

This isn't a reliable foundation to base a game or game company on.

I haven't heard of any community-driven game engine used for AAA game production.

There are only two real players in the game engine industry, Unity and Unreal, that's why Unity feels like they can do this, because there's no realistic alternative just now except Unreal and as others have mentioned, Unreal has the same potential problem with usage terms. Epic makes a ton of money from Fortnite so they have the luxury of being kind with their terms but the industry needs an engine that's not bound to terms of use.

In the near-term, Unity can do some damage control here by being honest about why the change is being made and put in safeguards like capping the fees. They could cap it at 5% of yearly revenue so people know they'll never go bankrupt with fees. For some, no damage control will be enough but there needs to be damage control here for people who don't currently have a viable alternative.

 

Even if you do believe that dynamic linking attaches the GPL to your executable (and there's no court ruling to suggest that it does), they can just use the MIT licence or the LGPL instead. There's a wealth of open source licences to choose from.

 

This scheme is plain extortion.
Since the fee is retroactive, in January 2024 they will start sending bills to everyone like a generic patent troll.
That's what Unity has become, a patent troll.

 

Well its based on installs after 2024, not purchases. And staff hasnt responded in days now. So who knows really.

 

If you are not generating revenue you don't have anything to worry about.

 

Will it?

People bought the game 2 years ago. Played, uninstalled.
Now they will install it again in 2024 - I BET it will be counted as "the first install", because "firsts" will be counted probably from January 1, 2024.

 

What Unity can't do is promise us they won't do this again in 3 years time. Games are a long lead item and you generally need confidence that your business partner isn't actively looking to harm you the second you stop paying attention.

 

Or if they've replaced their computer and are installing it again.

 

I'll still have revenue with the new version of my games, just without this malware inside.

 

Right but big differences between MIT, Apache and a copyleft license like the GPL. You cannot use the GPL for a game engine and have a API that you call into.

 

stop bargaining, they are trolls, you can't trust anything they say, what you see is what you get.

 

So after going through all the stages of grief on this, this is where I have landed with acceptance. I will continue to use Unity until I land a true commercial success. Once I have done that I will use the $ means to pivot away from Unity. If I don't find that success within 5 years and Unity's policies are as bad or worse than today, then I will pivot anyway.

Is that the intended outcome of this policy? Unity devs pivot away once success is found or after some set amount of time? Because that is definitely what this inspires me to do.

 

Fair enough.

 

just don't pay. they have no proof that it's been installed, and if they say you signed a contract, you signed the one that allowed you to keep the old one, and if they come at you some more, ask them to provide the proof and the methodology of their "proprietary install counting system". if they refuse, then they'll refuse to give you proof of services rendered, and therefore are not payable. if they do have proof, like I said, the contract doesn't hold up, legally. you cannot hold someone accountable for a third party's actions, especially when the contract is between only you and unity.

it's unenforceable.

 

The solution is both godot and/or stride should explicitly have royalty fee above some threshold of revenue and start becoming the actual company. Then sell themselves to Microsoft and tie their engine fully with dotnet ecosystem

 

Kinda knew it was getting bad when they for some reason made John “When you are six hours into playing Battlefield and you run out of ammo in your clip and we ask you for a dollar to reload, you’re really not that price sensitive at that point in time,” Riccitiello ceo...


never expected this greed and destruction though

 

As a reply to myself in case anyone else has this issue:

If you are getting the "Could not find a compatible version of MSBuild" error when starting up Stride3D, make sure you actually have the .NET SDK 6 installed. My issue was that I had several versions of .NET SDK 7 which Stride will ignore. Also importantly even though I thought I installed .NET SKD 6 it actually wasn't installed at all. Make sure you go into your your 'Add Remove Programs' list and search for .NET SDK (this is for Windows obviously, can't help with other platforms). It should look something like the following image where you clearly see .NET SDK 6 is installed. I ended up having to remove several old versions of 7 before I could actually get 6 to install for real.

 

I'm not paying a cent. A reverse class action. 1 extremely unethical company vs 100+?

 

They've clarified they make up the numbers.

 

If you're not generating revenue, you're not a full time game dev and doing this as a hobby. If you're generating revenue, you're confronted with an equation with lots of unknown parameters now, so you simply cannot do any business plan anymore.

 

Reminder that CEO and President of this company is allegedly a predator https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattpe...olleagues-former-exec-claims/?sh=4c45ba7a435a

This article can get a spike in views from us, hopefully prompting writer to shed light on new details. This deviant needs to GO

 

Looks like a reasonable thing to do now is to raise the prices of Unity games. Because what you want now is:

1. Very low install count
2. Very high revenue per player

But honestly, I don't know if I can exist in a business where every month I'm like "ok, how much this month? Did a famous Youtuber make a video and 500k people reinstalled? Did Unity count those as reinstalls correctly? Did they change anything again? Will it be $100? Will it be $100k? Who knows? Roulette, every month."

 

I was replying to the guy who wanted to stop using Unity.

 

If Unity does not reverse this decision immediately, it will go down in history as the most unethical company in the world!

 

So basically:

Unity: "Hey you owe me money now"
Devoleper: Nope

 

Imagine we started charging streamers for those views. Its a huge revenue source we look the other way on because its just envy that would cause such a call to action

 

Meanwhile, Nestle are stood at the bar chuckling at that hyperbole.

 

that is not a bad idea, in fact i really like the idea of webGl games, the problems is that you allways need online conection, we, gamers hate that (at least for single player games)