Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

NFTs are back.

 

I'm sure you could name it something different enough and change something small enough about the game that you could have a good enough argument if you wanted to easily repost for more sales of a "new" game. I doubt Unity are capable of policing something like that anyway.

 

Yes, exactly.

There is no more desire from Unity to see games with low LTV / ARPU be released (or stay released).

 

This screenshot below is a simple open-source program that with a single click and few seconds change your Disk, Guid, Mac, GPU, PC name, Windows ID, EFI, SMBIOS, IP, among other things, all a person with bad intentions would need to do to harm devs is to put this in a while loop with a game reinstall script.
Have you guys thought about it before doing this S***?

 

This has a lot of indie devs scared, our studio has 20+ licenses, we've been with Unity for almost 10 years now, but as the person who decides what Engine we use for our next project, I'm certainly reconsidering.

 

If Unity can change the game rules during the game play, what holds them charging 100$ per copy sold and be it retroactive on engine level .

If they want to make changes IT SHOULD ONLY AFFECT NEWLY RELEASED GAMES . You cant change rules while game is going (already released game).

 

It took me a second, but I think I see how this model is supposed to work now, and if I understand it correctly, then I find it pretty intriguing. It's a fairly complicated idea that was poorly explained, and I sorta feel for you guys right now. I also have no idea how one would successfully implement install-reporting IRL.

Open questions:

• How will "Bot-Bombing" (scripted install spamming by a malicious entity) be handled?
• How will piracy be handled?
• How will installs be reported on non-mobile platforms?
• Through what mechanism are installs reported to Unity?
  
• What about microtransaction business models?
• What about charity/donation installs?

Kind regards.

 

The official announcement directly contradicts what Unity people posted here (they also contradicted each other). Until we get more information, I will assume that the official announcement is correct.

 

So I guess the new version of review bombing will be bankrupting a developer by coordinating a mass uninstall reinstall party.

 

Wow. Just wow. When I'm designing something, monetization is the LAST THING I'm focusing on,

 

This sounds like the kind of idea that someone on the corporate side came up with, rather than someone actually involved in software. There's no way I'm putting out a game with the spyware necessary to tell the Unity mothership how many times it's been installed, and it's magical thinking to believe that Unity could know this by any other means.

That, or they're going to make like my gas provider, and assume that I'm using 4000 times as much gas in July as I did in December, and charge that anyway. Took a hell of an argument to get them to back down on that one.

 

So 20 pages of response, questions, etc. and *still* zero response from Unity on how they're tracking installs. Are you building something into Unity 2022 or 2023 or something or has telemetry been built into my 2 year old game the whole time?

 

The treshhold is 1 million users, not 2.
$0.02 you need to pay when there are more than a million installations per month.
For the first 100k installs you need to pay $0.15. This is almost the entire income of a typical f2p game.

Considering that the license is not free, and that there is usually more than one developer in the company, it turns out that unity wants to get a very large share of income, much more than Unreal.

 

LOL have to do the same thing with unity as of late...

 

Can you or someone else link to any of them? I sure as heck can’t find responses from actual people within Unity as they’ve either been silent or are similarly acting negatively surprised. Who else can speak to the ACTUAL policies being implemented?

 

The greedy toads are hiding in their holes ️ instead of answering all the questions. Pathetic!

 

YOUR CUSTOMERS (who are the ones making your S*** engine relevant) DO NOT DESERVE TO SHOULDER THE BRUNT OF YOUR FAILURES, YOU DISGUSTING RATS.

This isn't just stupid, it's OFFENSIVE. This company is riddled by incompetence and greed. FOR YEARS you have all shat the bed, while holding hands and singing kumbaya as the walls fell in. You are burning the fields past developers have sewn that benefited all.

F*** all you snake oil S***s.

 

I thought people were joking about this and thought that surely a reinstall wouldn't possibly count as an install
but someone from unity says otherwise.

Woof. None of this affects me as of now, but its a really bad look

 

Wait I am confused, I thought the installation is total lifetime, the billing is per month.

 

Sorry but X/Twitter is public, why not show the names? Could you please provide a link?

 

Completely true, there are several examples including my game Real Drift, more than 20M downloads but nowhere near to that amount of revenue.

 

Phasmophobia dev here. We've been told that they will be conservatively estimating install numbers and there will be a dispute process if we disagree. They are not using the analytics monthly new users stat.

Biggest issue for us is the extremely short notice. They also recently made an even crazier change to the Analytics pricing which was a substantially higher monthly cost for us then this but at least we could turn Analytics off to avoid it.

 

And why would anyone want that creepy S*** on their systems?

 

That's not the main concern here. Consider this scenario in 2024: You launch your humble game mostly for the joy of creating and shipping it, without putting much effort into monetization. Then, out of nowhere, it gains immense popularity, receiving 22M downloads and earning just over $200,000. Suddenly, you find yourself owing Unity $4.4M.

The core issue here is that Unity is now gauging a game's success based on the number of installations rather than the revenue it generates. In essence, if you didn't take monetization very seriously from the outset, you're in a tough spot. You're essentially compelled to ensure a solid monetization strategy before risking the possibility of accumulating too many installations.

 

This needs an upvote.

 

Edit: Telemetry has been a thing for quite some time ;-) https://forum.unity.com/threads/disable-ugs-analytics-entirely.1400035/

 

Clearly you're a "f*cking idiot" if John Riccitiello is to be believed. How is this clown still the CEO?

 

Ask them how they track installs. Not getting any answer on that.

 

And what happens if you pull the game from sale, but people still install it?

 

This smells of "propose something ludicrous so you can compromise with something unreasonable".

 

maybe I'm being squeamish, I just don't wanna be the guy who sends an pitchfork wielding angry mob over to this guy lol
Hes not responsible for any of these changes afaik and hes being as transparent and helpful as possible
https://twitter.com/CreativeChris1/status/1701665162913079784

 

I was curious up-thread if there was anything in the Asset Store EULA that prohibited you from using assets in a different engine, and based on my extremely IANAL reading of it, I can't find anywhere in the EULA where such a restriction is laid out. Section 2.2 gives you a license to:

incorporate the Asset, together with substantial, original content not obtained through the Unity Asset Store, into an electronic application or digital media that has a purpose, features, and functions beyond the display, performance, distribution, or use of Assets (“Licensed Product”) as an embedded component of that Licensed Product, such that the Asset does not comprise a substantial portion of the Licensed Product​

but doesn't seem to restrict the tools used to produce said Licensed Product to one that is built using Unity. It also repeatedly states throughout that you can't use any assets in a way that is incompatible with the EULA, but that just seems self-reinforcing.

Individual asset providers may apply such restrictions, but unless they do, my (again, extremely IANAL) reading is that you are allowed to take the models and other "portable" (aka non-code) assets with you to another engine.

Well, the CEO did call anyone who didn't take monetization seriously a "F***ing idiot", so I guess now we know how he intends to punish us for our philosophical "purity".

 

They were probably hoping that analytics charge would make more than it did, after we all just turned it off because it was too much they decided to try a non-optional way to cash in.

 

I personally am okay with a 20 cent fee per sale, knowing the agreement before publishing. But that's not what you're saying. The language is causing a huge problem for you guys. Three main issues I'm seeing right now.

1) Installs imply tracking that nobody wants. Please tell us this is self reporting. You can vet the numbers we give you on large projects with platforms like Steam. You know you can. Doing otherwise is what opens the piracy/reinstall can of worms.

2) Don't screw the developers that already published. Ori? Hollow Knight? Cuphead? You're going to alter the deal on people who've already published and are still making money? Absolutely not. We will fight you on this as developers as a matter of... well... unity.

3) Add an exemption for charity deals, bundles, free weekends, and other complicated pricing situations. As worded we can still be charged for distributing the game for free or nearly free depending on those circumstances.

You ground level guys know we have reasonable concerns, I hope. We need you to communicate that to the people making decisions.

 

No, that's assuming you have it turned on. In that thread the developer is specifically calling analytics and being told you can disable it with code. It is not turned on by default. Any Unity game that does not have it turned on, enabled, or the package installed won't be reporting anything from what I understand. Nothing of mine is reporting anything to a cloud service unless I enable it.

In the thread "We have recently upgraded from the Legacy analytics to UGS Analytics.It seems that even when we make no explicit calls to Unity.Services.Analytics.AnalyticsService, there is still network traffic.."

So they already had analytics added to their product. If you don't add it, you don't have any tracking going back to Unity. Or am I wrong?

 

Absolutely. Understand that..
Thanks for the link

 

They're not that cunning. The dumb investor money is drying up and they're having to try to right their ship as all the freebies are gone, but they've staffed themselves with do nothings and low lifes who provide nothing of value to the company, and now they're trying to turn profitable. Expect the next few years to be a sh*t show.

 

Is hard to make $200.000 But the Install Threshold changes everything.
But it's easy to have 200.000 install. How do they know that ? The Play store link?
So If I release a completely free game no ads, no IAP I still have to pay because this changes?
Means I have to remove the game to avoid this.

Example our game reach the Install Threshold 200,000 (life to date) Because Google Play says that.
The game have like 100 daily new install (no idea for reinstalls I assume the game itself report this.) means I have to pay like 2 dollars daily...the game doesn't even make 1 dollar. In this case means we have to remove the game.

 

What about free2play games with low monetization?

It's possible to publish a game with 60M downloads and earn about $1M...
What's the cost of Unity in this case ??

About $1.1M!

Do I understand well?
Anyone can confirm?

 

Blocky Ball dev here. No where near the success of Phasmophobia (yet). But since you've had some discussion with Unity and hopefully more insight... does this seem even remotely sustainably for a free to play multiplayer game like us? Our goal is to make money after user's install if they decide to stay around and enjoy the game. But if we have a lot of users installing and leaving, that would burn through any and all of our profits over 200k pretty quick it seems. Just asking some insight from a fellow dev who's had success in the market. Thanks!

 

The main question for me is... why have you decide to use installs instead of revenue? What is the hidden reason?

 

What is stopping me from releasing my game under different names in different markets to stay below the 200000 revenue limit?

 

I just laughed my ass off

 

AFAIK a bunch of stuff is on by default, but I can just tell you please use Charles Proxy to verify yourself.
I did a lot of testing when verifying my app does not collect any form of data. This should help cheers! https://support.unity.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002917683-Using-Charles-Proxy-with-Unity

 

Are you not economically incentivized to dispute and disagree with supposed install numbers every billing cycle? It seems like a full time job for someone to professionally argue with Unity to get those numbers as low as possible.

 

Can someone please tell me why I need to spend $2,040/yr to modify the splash screen?

Your account will automatically be converted to our Unity Personal plan at the end of your current term, and you will lose access to Unity Plus features including splash screen customization, basic crash and error reporting, and cloud diagnostics.

 

This is the exact concern I share :/

 

As far as I understand, yep. They are definitely trying to discourage or eliminate low revenue/download business models. Dunno why.

 

This really is the "writing on the wall" moment for Unity. There is absolutely no reason for any aspiring video game dev to start learning how to use Unity anymore. I was recently talking to one of my old CS professors who straight up told me that Unity can't stop shooting themselves in the foot to want to image it to their machines because it's like a ticking time bomb and there was no point teaching the ins and outs of an engine that becomes less developer friendly by the day, and looks like he was 100% right.

Unity doesn't seem to realize that the vast majority of devs start small in the hope to grow. This pricing change and the removal of Unity Plus is removing the "new aspiring dev" from the equation, why would they start with an engine where growth is disgustingly discouraged?

I want to say it was good while it lasted, but it wasn't, Unity has been terrible for years and continues to make decisions to keep it terrible. I installed Unreal today, and you should too, it's time to take that first step off this platform.

 

That's essentially all I know, I've asked a lot more questions, pretty much what everyone is asking here but I won't get a response until tomorrow.