Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

I'm a casual hobbyst that never released a game. But all of this affects me. I've been working in the past 2 years on my first, 2d free game in my free time. And now:

1) I considered purchasing the Unity Plus plan to have a customized splash screen - while supporting the engine I love/ed. This is no longer possible. The Unity Pro plan is much more expensive - for a game that is unlikely to make any money at all.

2) The dubious runtime fee per install, that has caused all of this outrage, is causing developers to lose trust and even abandon unity going forward. I find this justified, and thus this affects me and every unity dev out there. What happened to the engine and standards we used to withhold and praise in the past?

 

How disconnected from reality do you need to be to think that this was a good idea? Somehow I'm glad I didn't end up in the game dev industry. Crazy. just crazy. Politics standard have creeped into Unity's management.

So many companies in the recent years have pushed the boundaries in their TOS and EULA further and further to somewhat criminal levels. Microsoft is one of them and Unity just got in line.

I always praised Unity for revolutionizing the engine market and forced pretty much all other engines to come up with a similar model. Now it seems the power they got turned the management insane. Even IF their method how to determine "installs" is the most robust thing under the sun, how would you ever convince a single developer that this is the case? Apart from that over the last decades I've seen countless, COUNTLESS of cases where big companies screwed up basic data security and haven't even thought about the most basic attacks. Does Unity even hire pen-tester or security experts? That's almost criminally irresponsible.

Since this backlash is already 10 times larger than what they got after the brilliant idea of shutting down UA, they probably will backpedal several times. Though when the results are similar to the transition from UA to Unity Discussions, the future seems really dark... Looks almost to be the strategy. Propose a complete outragous idea, receive massive backlash to negotiate a "better" solution that's still way worse.

What have you done, Unity...

 

I love how you guys have your own separate discussion in this thread. It's like you have your own separate thread. Lol

 

These big publishers are the beginning of this problem and the ones who caused this trouble to us. They have no right to do this. I hope they go bankrupt first. The system(hypercasual) within them was already a complete system of exploitation. They get and publish the games of small devs who use Unity Personal, and I think this is the biggest reason why Unity fires its flare. Not to mention the hundreds of solo developer ideas they stole. They are wrong, let them d**.

 

Making fun of people for having very real fears and concerns for their FUTURE? Essentially ridiculing their feelings, #1 dick move of all time since the first human settlement probably?

you seem great.

/s

 

One could argue that we wouldn't be living in this free prosperous society if it weren't for guillotine.

 

The financial market still believes we will ultimately do nothing and just accept this as the new normal.

 

The understanding made to me was that if you at any point downloaded pretty much any version after the TOS change that removed the TOS change protections you're F***ed and beholden to the newest TOS perpetually. Which version that is, I can't say. I'm thinking 2020 or 2021? Maybe someone else can clarify.

I just want to be clear here though - it's not enough to simply develop on 2018 you must not at any point ever have installed one of the newer versions or you are stuck with whatever the TOS is as of today and going forward forever.

I suppose you could try to get around this by creating a new account and downloading only the older version you intend to use...

 

At this rate, future versions of Unity will mine bitcoin in the background.

 

I am using 2021. I have terms that say i don't need to update to new terms if I stick with this editor.

Unity have tried to erase that clause from the internet and of course failed. Many of us have it to hand.

But do you think Unity are not gonna bother chasing us if we refuse to pay their bill? Do you think they will cause you trouble with the platform you chose? Get your game pulled?

For me these are all, rhetorical. Because I don't want to waste time fighting them in court. Instead I just move to new engine. Not like it used to be... There are good alternatives now.

 

Nope, ideas are just that, ideas. Just because two platformers are similar, you wouldn't accuse one of them stealing from the other. Or maybe you actually would...

 

No, the stock market doesn't care about people. The stock market sees potential future profit from these extra fees; they are there to make a quick buck; not to help the company. This is a long game sadly; that's why all of us need to move on and away from this abusive relationship with Unity. Less people; less assets to sell; less students learning Unity; less profits for Unity; stock price goes down.

Stop hoping Unity will reverse this decision; they had plenty of time for it already. Either get bend over by Unity or leave.

 

Revenue share is MUCH more sensible. Pay by installs is idiotic - it's inaccurate, demos and pirate copies count, free releases count, invasive tracking would be required or Unity would be pulling the number literally out of their butt, and mobile has insanely high install to revenue so much so that successful games could have Unity claiming more than their entire revenue.

The fact that they are making this change retroactive to games released long ago while Unreal has a specific T&C clause that prevents retroactive contract changes is also a massive knock to Unity's trust.

Imagine if instead of this complete debacle, Unity had announced that in Unity 2024 and beyond they were adding revenue sharing like Unreal, but also pro features were now free. While 2023 and below would keep the old subscription model. Sure there'd probably be some grumbling but I bet that change would also be welcomed by a lot of smaller devs.

But instead we have this...

 

lol

 

https://twitter.com/LukeCorreiaVA/status/1702313669533602199

XD

 

Well, the Engine side of Unity more or less wasn't really profitable and it's also clear that this part cannot grow much more since Unity is already the "go to" engine for most things mobile.
As a result, even IF the Engine would die (what I personally don't believe at all) it would not hurt the prospect, aka the future of Unity Technologies. Therefore Unity stock can only win (since it is quite low compared to the start-up like phase years ago).

 

The news that have been popping up lately (no runtime fee if you use Unity's add platform, ToS link is broken, CEO selling shares right before changes, etc.) just keeps adding more and more to the pile. It's not looking good, Unity.

With that said, to the folks that work at Unity but absolutely despise this decision: I'm really sorry for you. Truly.

 

Wow, you are telling people what rights they have or not? Nah, that's not it.

 

Their lack of understanding is profound. It's precisely the lack of details with a looming deadline of weeks for a magic solution that literally can't work that is bothering us.

 

Before people here create some narrative that the engine side can't be profitable or some other bullshit, the engine side was profitable just fine before they decided they needed to grow to SUPER-MEGA-LET'S-SWALLOW-EVERYTHING size.

 

ChatGPT is in no way going to be able to convert your prefabs and your entire set of C# libraries based around Unity specific idioms to Unreal. ChatGPT can barely keep its thoughts straight when it's working with only one or two theoretical files, let alone an entire solution with DLLs

 

I know many developers whose game prototypes were stolen under the name of "testing".. The story is not just an idea!

 

That was there since day one. Specifically this part:

"
Fee reduction for use of Unity services
Qualifying customers may be eligible for credits toward the Unity Runtime Fee based on the adoption of Unity services beyond the Editor, such as Unity Gaming Services or Unity LevelPlay mediation for mobile ad-supported games. This program enables deeper partnership with Unity to succeed across the entire game lifecycle. Please reach out to your account manager to learn more.

"

 

The combined years of dev time down the toilet from this is the real great theft. Stealing chunks of our lives in the blast radius. It hurts

 

I often wondered if they didn't back when they introduced that half assed light baking system that would take ten hours to bake five foot squared room and still somehow come out looking like dogshit.

 

Started reading about this yesterday. Huge shock after 13 years of Unity development. I can't imagine why this isn't just a share of revenue instead of install-based unless they're intentionally trying to go out of business or something.

I'll develop the tools as long as people are still here to use and buy them. Not sure how long that will be.

Thanks Unity management

 

If the engine dies, where are they going to run all those profitable ads?

 

unity should have been making games with their engine a long time ago. imagine the state the engine would be in if the people making the engine actually had to use it. imagine having the source code to this engine and people who know the inner workings of every aspect of it and not trying to capitalize on it. if they did maybe they would have had a fortnite to bank off instead of attempting to swindle cash off petty install fees and shady TOS swaps. instead, they play victim as if they arent making enough money after blowing it on acquiring a malware company and try to squeeze it out of everyone else who are actually using the engine for what it was made for.

 

Quoting so more ppl see it

 

https://twitter.com/MattMirrorFish/status/1702654048367759403

You know who's responsible

"The motivation was that JR and his crew of hand picked EA people he brought with him all had BIG bags of Unity stock, that they’ve all been dumping since the IPO. They timed it well, share price shot up to 200$ at peak and they dumped. What’s left is basically a stripped carcass"

 

I wonder how long it will be before we see the kek or angry hilter meme videos on youtube a out this?

 

Are you saying that game mechanics cannot be replicated/ copied? The whole industry is based on iterating and reinventing old ideas.

Hypercasual games don't have stories, but if we talk about other games, stories are just ideas as well. How many similar books, movies, games are out there that have similar stories? Did they all steal from each other?

 

Not necessarly, it depends on what data is being sent. The GDPR doesn't disallow data being transmitted to the US in general, I believe I wouldn't be able to open a browser if that were the case.

That would be compliant per se, but doesn't explain how they'd rule out pirated installs as they claim to be able to (I saw sarcastic notes stating that Unity apparently solved DRM forever...), and neither how they'd deal with software to deliberately batch-install games on fake machines just to harm the developer - without sources, but apparently such a tool has been written for Rust as a proof-of-concept shortly after Unity's announcement of the pricing model.

 

They couldn't possibly have developed an AAA game for the money they had spent on buying those companies?
Or more like 10 AAA games they could.

 

It's okay if you fought against the decision but the leadership just pushed it down your throat.

It's okay if you can't quit your job because you have mortage or a familty to feed.

But if you believe Unity did the right thing than you're part of the problem. Sorry.

 

A unity employee with the initials J.R. to get out of having to host a meeting

 

It was profitable https://twitter.com/aras_p/status/1702609726654009702

Check this thread https://twitter.com/MattMirrorFish/status/1702654023277351359

 

I expect GPT could quite readily convert Unity C# scripts to UE5 C++, especially if it had embeddings for the UE5 API. As for prefabs, if you're able to make prefabs in Unity, you already have all the skills you need to use the UE5 interface.

I've had GPT4 develop a entire chess game from high level system design down to writing the actual code (including integrating mlagents). Just me cutting and pasting code from the browser to Visual Studio and pasting errors back for correction.

I've also had it develop a high fidelity physics library that models all the forces relevant for flight using a generic 4th gen fighter as a base. It wasn't good enough for science, but it was certainly good enough for a game.

 

Mine was set to renew the day this dropped. I had less than 5 hours to cancel. Mission successful

 

You’re a few pages late for the angry Hitler vid.

 

There was a decision made a long time ago that Unity would not compete in the same business with its development partners. Agree with it or not, that was what led this company to not have games as their second source of revenue to fall back on.

 

I've been expressing frustrations with UT since the layoffs in the wake of a merger, but none of these are ever targeted towards you or any employee that develop the engine and editor. I just hate your executive team, and they largely determine the direction of development on the Unity platform. This is something you or other employees cannot control, so would be unreasonable for me or others to express vitriol towards folks that actually produce the real value of UT.

We haven't lost trust in you guys, but we have lost trust in the company. You guys are not your company, it is the shareholder's. I do not appreciate the willingness to reneg on what we agreed to with UT and it would be ridiculous to continue this relationship for our business. Your executive team broke that trust, not the employees. It is not your fault; investors and big shareholders have been largely experiencing an immense brain drain in the last few decades where they demand infinite growth instantaneously.

On that note, please, please do not take business or technical advice from investors. Their only interest is their own, and they lack any mental acuity for technical topics.

 

This is obvious to all of us here. Thanks for posting!

 

I reread the ToS and I realized something, there is a wording that I did not take into account,

it is this:



'additional fees' is ambiguous and could be anything/any--fees; this is written in the October 12, 2022 ToS (the one, even previous to the last one of; April 3, 2023).



It says, that to obtain a non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free right, to install, execute, use the software...
you must pay 'all applicable subscription fees'.

How do we define subscription fees,

That's the Plans (subscriptions/plans/licenses): Personal, Plus, Pro (in date of 12, October 2022).

Thus, subscription fees, means the cost/price/payment of the Plan you are on. Personal is free and Plus, Pro were charged a certain amount then per month.

They 'all applicable subscription fees' must be paid to be able to obtain the license, to use the software.

They, also, say, 'and may incur additional fees', that could be 'any fee' (construed as that; additional fees, is vague/ambiguous and could be anything), therefore, it could be possible, that the 'per-installation fees' apply to this and fall in to 'additional fees' wording.

So, I mean, I don't want to say (Anything is 'set in stone'...nothing is..) but, I think we need to not skip/skimm over this wording, because it could be used/construed as 'per-install fee' applicable; since, it is vague wording of 'additional' fees, which means nothing but 'additional'...but not, specifics, of What these fees would be.

Therefore, 'per-install fees' would fall into that/be applicable...because additional fees...can be (construed) as
'Any..Other fees' that are 'additional' fees also. I think it was left ambiguous to mean/be construed as 'any-other-fees'.

and this other wording (October 12, 2022 ToS):



The April 3, 2023 ToS does not contain this 8. Modifications clause...but when it was release, on April 3, 2023, it applied to the 'most recent current-year version'....so, the most recent current-year version - in date of April 3, 2023...is the last one; which is, the one Before April 3, 2023 (there are no version on April 3), but there is one, on the March 31, 2023, and that's Unity 2022.2.2.13....therefore, the Previous Version to that One...is the one that is not on the April 3, 2023 ToS...after all, there is no version between March 31 and April 3....so that means, the Last most Recent One, is the March 31 one. And thus, the Unity version one that is on 12 October 2022 ToS...is the One Before the March 31 one. That's Unity 2022.2.12, dated March 22, 2023 (instead.. of Unity 2022.2.13; March 31, 2023).

Thus, the version that is the version Before the 'most recent current year version'

is Unity 2022.2.12 (March 22, 2023). (the one Before .. the next one, which is 2022.2.13 (March 31, 2023). The last ToS is dated April 3, 2023; so, obviously, the


So, with that said, Unity 2022.2.12, (March 22) is on the October 12, 2022 ToS...because it is the version before 'the most recent current-year' version...when the April 3, 2023 ToS was released -- that version, was Unity 2022.2.13 (released March 31, 2023...3 days before the April 3, 2023 ToS update appeared; the most recent version before). It makes senses that the 'last most recent version' would be the 'closest/last/latest' in date..to the Release of the April 5, 2023 ToS...and that one, is Unity 2022.2.13, (March 31)...and so, to still be on the October 12, 2022 ToS, it would be the Previous version to the Unity 2022.2.13 (March 31)...and that's (the one before), Unity 2022.2.12 (March 22).

And, well, there is still some ambiguity...but, I looked at the March 10, 2022 ToS (even Before October 12, 2022 ToS) and well, this 'additional fees' is also there...

so, it may end up, that this wording is used to say : ''All our previous ToS...had 'additional fees' wording to be paid...and this could be 'anything'....''.

so, it could be used, to say that the 'per-install fees'...is applicable to All previous ToS...because All previous ToS...had this wording of 'additional fees' and 'conditional to paid all subscription fees'. So, it could be said, that

''you have to pay all additional fees (any other fees) -- to be able to be on any subscription/plan (Personal, Plus, Pro)''.

That's what I worry that is 'spun around/construed as that'..which is understandable..but is quite hair pulling/is on the far fetching..but in court/legal..they will 'far fetch and spun it around in the favor of ToS maker'...'twisting words' and construing them 'as see fit'...I mean, this wording...could mean 'anything'..depending whatever you want...it to mean.

That's what I worry, that it would be said: ''it was left ambiguous..in order to allow - to charge 'any' fee...in the future..should it happen....and always be applicable''.

You know when it's said: ''any and all...and whatever...and any and all...''....like...this means, basically nothing..and everything....it's meant to be ambiguous and 'large encompassing'/'large umbrella wording' ..that means, anything and anything goes....so this wording could be used to say 'the per-install fees' are applicable per the 'additional fees' and you 'conditional license..to having paid all subscription fees'....

subscription, means your plan...so all the previous ToS...are talking about the plan/license...it's just another wording for the same thing...everyone is on a plan/subscription (even Personal plan one/free or not.....it is called a 'subscription' in the ToS, or we say a 'plan'...and with it, its royalty-free license to use the softwre..that comes with it...)

Anyways, I guess, it may end up that we can't Revert Back to a Previous ToS...due ot that. And, thus, everyone will be forced to be on the Per-Install Fees in January 1, 2024.

Only, if it would be proven to be 'deceiptful' this wording..but that'S in the court/legal...matter. And caused 'undue damage' to us because it'S very vague...and of course...we're then taken adavantage of...anyway, just my 2 cents...

 

7 years ago they claim.
True back then they didn't need a per-install Fee but remember how Unity Pro had significantly more engine features than the free version back then!
One of the things done after aiming for growth was to make everything free for small devs.

 

It hurts but don't dwell on it and focus on the values and knowledge you've gain. I've had some serious chunks of life taken by corpos like this. You just have to focus that there is more ahead than you think you lost.

 

That's not accurate. Royalties are nothing new, and threshold based royalty models are hugely beneficial to the vast majority of developers.. Successful companies subsidize the next generation of games, instead of the engine requiring exorbitant upfront license costs.

The key difference with Unity's model is twofold
1. Unity is charging per install, a metric that is easy to spoof, difficult to independently verify, and is explicitly unpredictable over time as users change hardware without a new purchase. Remember, Unity is explicitly hiding their calculation of installation as a proprietary data model. Revenue, on the other hand, is easy to independently verify via store or bank statements.
2. Unity is applying this fee to games that were published before the fee was announced. This is an absolute red flag--NO terms should EVER change after a product is published.

 

Really? Damn! Time to look it up for a quick laugh I guess.

 

i mean this f*** companies getting finished projects from devs under the" testing"..

 

Don't worry, there will be (most probably) bigger companies suing Unity, before any of us have to.
yes, they had to change the wording from "applicable subscription fees" to any "applicable fees" in preparation of the runtime fee.