Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

your management has milked billions of dollars out of the company for stuff that has nothing to do with the engine, and now they are in big debt. I have zero trust they can make a turn around or a good decision. Instead I predict more layoffs soon to cover the top management multi million bonuses.

if the weta tools are so valuable I'm sure they can find someone to buy and get a few billions in return and have all the money in the world. but it was a scheme to milk money out of investors and those pieces of software have zero value.

 

I don't have a twitter account and I viewed it just fine.

 

I can't see any effective way for them to monetize the engine from here. Changing the TOS and billing model required finesse and careful engagement with the community.

What we got was 'weekend coke binge plus powerpoint slides'.

 

Precisely!!!!
Unity has not enough money because they didnt improve their product and wasted their money on S**T purchases!

Edit: Can you even imagine how much work could be done on the engine for the 1+ billion USD that was spent on weta digital?

 

As i said, there is a good side and a bad side.

Hopefully they will address the bad side for very low cost games soon, i mean if after this reaction they dont, then for sure leaving Unity is the only option.

I would not want to loose millions of $ also if can avoid it, so for sure would never go with Unreal as first choice

 

THe only way is % of rev share for them to make good money and model to be stable for develoeprs. Ofc if u are mega successful u pay more, but u invest this money into company that makes the tool u make ur living off from.

 

Really? I will try again.

 

Unity can still beat unreal, send John Riccitiello to unreal as ceo & he will bring unreal to the ground.

 

And in the future they decide to screw u over again...but tehre may not be many developers left to uproar .

 

Thanks for breaking the silence, finally.

This may sound blunt, but it's about as diplomatic as I can be right now, having poured over 13 years of creative energy through Unity.

Ok, so for me, the thing is, Unity promised years ago (as a result of a prior loss-of-trust go-around) that we could stay on our current TOS as long as we didn't upgrade to a new major version. That was a covenant that was made with us. It needs to be honored. Period. None of this horsecrap about how that provision was sneakily removed (which, by the way, I have never upgraded and never agreed to a new TOS after that provision was removed.)

Given the loss of trust in Unity, no one is going to be comfortable with your number of installs metric. So it's a non-starter.

You keep saying things are improving, but when we ask about features that matter, we're point-blank told that improvements are years out.

Your CEO is prone to saying regrettable things, like calling us "****ing idiots".

Please tell me how we are supposed to move forward with a company that violates trust and fairness on such a regular basis?

 

The thing about 5% is that you can build it into your funding model as a constant. Every dollar you make, 5 cents goes to Epic.

Conversely, the reason why no one has ever tried to monetise 'installs' for gaming is because its a completely deranged approach that means that for every dollar you make you owe between $0.00 and "a billionty" because you have no idea or control over how many people are going to download your app and how often.

 

What Unity wants, is to be the one link in the chain that gets paid from every free to play game. Apple doesn't get that, and they host the game (and the 'Unity Runtime'). Even the developer doesn't get it. But somehow, Unity gets it.

 

All the things you said are wonderful, but it doesn't change the fact that the way Unity tried to get more money is idiotic, anti-developer and likely illegal. The fact that no answers are/ were provided for valid questions, the answers that are there basically boil down to "just trust us bro" AND the fact that a whole day passed without any communication makes things x100000 worse.

You can increase the subscription fees and add revenue share without causing mass panic, making people anxious over their livelihood, gaslighting and mass exodus to other platforms.

 

There's no guarantee the money you're giving them is going into investments in the tool. It's far more likely to be spent on another digital media company.

 

This is all great. But it’s irrelevant. Unity has burned the bridges and lost all trust with game developers. You are now viewed as being an openly hostile enemy of game developers, not a partner.

If a massive walk back of this BS is not done soon, you may limp forward with the projects that are already locked into Unity, but people aren’t going to start new Unity projects and the pipeline of games you can extort for this installation tax will dry up.

I think most people understand this isn’t coming from the Unity employees. Unfortunately that doesn’t really matter.

 

Well in case of unity yes, lets say i am talking about ideal scenario LOL

 

Well no. If that revenue is coming from the Epic store, it doesn't count. Otherwise you pay UP to 5 cent per Dollar but only above $1M of revenue and only if you're above $10k per month I think.

 

Imagine a world where Unity3D was considered to be the peer of Unreal. One where the company has invested heavily in tech and users view the Unity intro as a badge of pride rather than something you pay to remove.

The slide deck with that pitch was underneath the one pitching 'Spend billions on companies that let me be a movie producer' and they ran out of time before they got to it.

 

Which works probably for over 90% of indies, since how many indie games earned 1M$ over their lifetime?

 

Just read Troy Kirwin's Twitter thread. I concur with his solution. This install fee should have been offered as an alternative to the traditional revenue royalty.

And I would add that the choice of monetization model should be individualized for each distribution platform. For the same game, the Steam version can be monetized with the install fee model because Steam can give install telemetry close to accurate, but the GoG version can be monetized with the traditional revenue share since GoG cannot track accurate install number by design. Of course both models have to account for refunds. Pirated copies are not a concern since they are not tracked by the distribution platforms anyway.

As Kirwin said, depending on the spreadsheet numbers for particular games, either model could be the cheaper one. But if Unity doesn't let publishers choose, there's no point. Choices. Choices. Choices. The less choices Unity itself offers to the community, the more people are just gonna find choices outside of Unity.

This does not change my stated outlook on Unity. A termination for cause of Mister Riccitiello continues to be my condition to stay. Not a resignation. A termination for cause.

 

Clearly someone from Zenva is paying attention.

 

Thanks for posting this. Maybe the most interesting point in Troy Kirwins's thread is this part:

 

I agree, but i just doubt they are naive enough to not eventually cover this case by the time this change take place.

Since it just not make any sense, my opinion is that they just rushed a silly proposal and will refine it until january, maybe wanted to gauge user response too.

Covering for that 5% by adding extra is not much different than covering for the $0.02 by making the price plus this ammount, only in Unreal case can end up paying millions more than Unity

 

I was trying to keep it simple, but I guess I could have used Godot since you don't have to pay anyone anything for that

 

I need an explanation,,,
If I start from 1000000 installations, the first month I do 100k installations and pay 0.15 each, the following month another 100k I pay them 0.075 each? Once you pass the 1-100k range, will it never come back?

 

Lol, naive Perspektive, why would i touch unity ever again when they decide to charge me for things already payed for long time ago, again.
We now demand you to pay 20 Cent to us each single step you make because you purchased some shoes.

Really hope you get nice bonus for throwing yourself into the fire.

 

Byebye and hello Godot.

 

There it is everyone. Game over.

Among Us are engine shopping. 16 of the big boys are on Ad strike (including Voodoo).

And Unity arn't backing down.

3.5 years unity dev on my current game. 95% finished. I feel robbed.

Oh well. Time to download Godot for me and begin the migration. Open source baby let's gooooo ✊

 

Unity Removed part of my posts here (about staff layoffs) and banned me from posting in this thread. Good Luck people!

hope editing messages works because posting new messages doesn't work.

He is speaking personally, and probably didn't asked if he can post in the tread or not. He doesn't have any answers for the questions you are asking.

I hope he will not have troubles internally because of that post

 

How long will people still ride on that?
Context matters...

 

I'm already affected by it and I haven't even released my game yet. We're all affected by this.
You didn't just attack 10% of us at random, you attacked the dream of success that every one of us strives to become. Of course it affects everybody. It takes ambition to do this stuff in the first place.

 

FOrever as long as this guy is a CEO.

 

So far it's quite good! The style is in the old Maya tutorials; I like it.

 

Nope, it's per month. You get charged monthly for how many installations you have that month over the threshold, in this case 1,000,000. So each month you would pay $15,000 out of the $100,000 that you made if your game is $1. That's 15%.

 

That's a weird take because AAA studios are the ones with the most capability to adopt another engine. (And in fact the suggestion that AAA studios are using Unity rather than UE5 or an internal engine is definitely a bit cooked.)

 

Thanks for posting. I am sure these are hard times to be a Unity employee that loves his company.

Some of the points raised in that twitter thread are valid, indeed it's not as bad as it seems on first sight... but it's not time to debate how many developers are affected, or if 5% > $0.20, until:

A) Unity offers some clear explanation on how are installs measured that, without a shade of a doubt, leaves out pirate installs, reinstalls, and multiple device installs. And no, "you can call us if you think you're being pirated" is not a valid explanation. Three times I've emailed Unity about issues over the last years, and never got a response.

B) The original LTS terms that were stealth-modified are restored to what we agreed upon installing, and people using old LTS versions is allowed to remain under those terms, if they choose to. *JUST AS THE TERMS THEMSELVES STATED*

Because you'd never haggle a few dollars up and down when buying a car, if you don't trust the seller at all. Why making the effort, when we're goign to be charged for fake downloads anyways? Or terms may change retroactively again? If you have a chance, try to get this accross to some of your bosses, as it'd be the beginning of a solution.

The rest? It's the shareholder's choice how to monetize their product. It's very debatable, what option is better for developers. I for one always considered Unity too cheap and wouldn't mind paying more. I just don't want to get scammed every month, and having to pay each time someone pirates my games or buys a new phone.

 

Questions:
1. What if we develop a free complementary mobile game/app for a client's product (eg. AR coloring books, toys, furnitures), surely, Unity will not count the revenue from the physical product sales (or will they)?

2. Or say we develop a free Unity game/app that redirects users to an e-commerce store or some other monetized app, surely Unity will not count revenue from that other platform (or will they)?

Either way, this is already a huge red flag, and can be a major turn-off to many clients.

 

I have a Unity Plus account and happy to pay every month, I have spent a lot of money in assets, and I'm willing to pay more if it's necessary. I can understand that. But a company must be serious and not change the rules at midnight and not knowing how to implement their own spyware to know how many installs there are and how to work their ideas.

No. It's not about money. It's about confidence. It's about loyalty and respect with the developers. I will pay more. But don't fool me with crazy and impossible ideas to implement.

 

I think Unity is on the right way after see the actual fees, which is not flat 0.2 but can be low as 0.02.

If sell well in a $30 game, e.g. 1.000.000 copies, Unreal gets 1.5 million while Unity get 20k only, the difference is devastating.

So this change will mostly affect games below $0.02, which will hopefully be addressed asap by Unity team

 

The context being that he thinks anyone not willing to propose the brilliant idea of charging someone real money to acquire more ammo in a round of CoD (sorry, I mean “aggressively plan how to monetize our games”) is a F***ing idiot.

 

I hope the best for unity employees, but hey, it's too late, Unity already lost the trust of developers and there is no return possible at this point...

 

Hello, i don't think so..check the new table...they removed "monthly" in the first column

 

He very clearly still views users with utter contempt even if he has learned to control his tongue.

 

Most of the haters are users themselves...

 

Nobody in the real C# world writes code or develops apps like this. Unity's version of C# has always been far behind and different in flavor. You will not learn how to become a competent C# developer just by writing code in Unity.

 

Until they realise they're not making enough money and increase the numbers. Which they have decided they can do unilaterally.

 

That's the old one. Besides you have it there, "Standard monthly rate", "x per install".

 

I was pretty disappointed to learn that Unity doesn't support multiple inheritance in core.

 

Lmao does anyone over there have eyes