Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

I feel like this is intentional trolling. Has a single person in nearly 200 pages said they would respond this way to a simple royalty scheme comparable to Unreal's policies? Many, many people have outlined comprehensively, in detail, and in an easy to understand, point-by-point manner, the dishonesty and disrespect displayed by the new announcement.

 

Especially coming from a guy like Aras. It's great to have confirmation.

 

I wrote up my thoughs in more detail here. I made a new thread, but it got deleted as "off topic" - nice, so we're policing the forums now and deleting negative sentiments towards this stupid move?

Anyway, tl;dr:
This is a short-sighted step in the wrong direction. This is a gross violation of the trust of loyal users like me. Hey, surprise additional fee for everyone who’s moderately successful!
And it’s done in such a stupid way - per install. So if you have a game with staying power you have another bill coming every time your user-base upgrades their phones and reinstalls your game? You’re going to pay for every pirated copy, for every review-copy, for every free copy you hand out? For every update you release? Every sale to someone with multiple devices or family sharing costs you twice, three-times, four-times as much? Oh the stupidity! And did I mention that somehow the gambling industry(!) is excluded from having to pay fees?
This shows us what the new Unity is all about. And it’s not us.

 

Don't even engage this guy. He is either a troll or a fool and he can get bent.

 

Unity was never profitable until January 2023... Not sure what that person's talking about, but Unity got into "better make a profit or the corporate handouts (investments) will stop and we will go bankrupt" mode. And their attempts at that have led to... this.

 

The tech investor in the Twitter thread you linked wrote:

Unity has a small army of 3K+ engineers working on it ~80% (est.) of Unity users don't pay anything for the service. Unity's ads business (highly profitable) funds the engine business The engine business is not profitable standalone It's not sustainable

He is very much mistaken. Because he misses the reality and is only blinded by revenues. It is not the mobile ad business that has subsidized the Unity engine, but the Unity engine has created and promoted the mobile ad business, because to show mobile ads you need games and these games were created by the creators, the customers and users of the Unity engine, who now have to pay this absurd runtime fee. Without games, gamers and game developers there is no mobile ad business and no profits! Unity stands and falls with the game developers and the engine.

The real problem with Unity is that for more than a decade it has only looked at growth. When I started with Unity 2.0 in the 2000s, the editor was already amazingly good. Honestly, the last really significant step was the transition to the standard shader with Unity 5, after that it really went downhill, new bugs appeared faster than old ones were fixed. At the time Unity iPhone was introduced, if I remember correctly Unity had less than 30 employees, today there are almost 8000. Sorry, but I don't see the equivalent value for all those employees. Not in the engine.

And to be honest, this is no longer the company I was happy to give my money to back then! With you, one financing round chased the other. In order to attract investors, you built up a really idiotic business model that was all about the masses. The main thing was new users. In return, at some point you effectively gave away the use of the engine for free.

It's their own fault. People like me have always bought the licenses, paid for updates and then subscribed later. But even all the Pro features were given away at some point to create user growth! If they would have focused on a more down to earth and natural growth, then the company could have worked. But instead, you wanted to turbo-charge, burn investors' money, move from Denmark to the US, and now afford the extremely expensive staff in one of the most expensive locations in the world, and have senselessly inflated the company without offering customers any real significant value for this high-risk bubble. Several people have become very rich in this process.

Now we are supposed to pay for this with arbitrary new absurd rules at any time? No, thank you! Up to here and no further! You've gone too far a long time ago, most of us are only here out of comfort, but there comes a time when it's over. If you don't roll back now and rebuild the trust you've destroyed, I don't think Unity has anything like a future anymore, and certainly I don’t think that Unity deserves a future at all then because the world would be a better place without this company then.

Easy for you to say all this because as an employee, your income comes directly from this unsustainable corporate culture.

 

I believe Unity did not go with the Unreal approach because insufficient Unity projects are breaking $1,000,000 income. Most Unity devs are indies and hobbyists or ad-supported or in app microtransaction based.

Ie. if they went 5% revenue share they would have to set the threshold MUCH lower to be earning anything substantial as the average Unity dev will never come close to $1,000,000 revenue.

So if they said "We are also charging a 2-5% revenue split like Unreal, but starting after your first $200,000" everyone would have just said "Well why not just use Unreal then?"

Again this goes to what I was saying - Unity is misunderstanding (or fully understanding and then trying to abuse) their core demographic which are small teams and hobbyists not making a fortune.

This is why I think just having an annual per seat license fee makes more sense. Then all of us are paying something to keep Unity alive. But it is predictable and reasonable. Revenue splitting likely wasn't going to give them enough money is why I guess they went for this insane idea instead.

Either way, sinking ship ...

 

The silence and total opaque communication or lack thereof is what ruined the trust in this company.,
apart from the TOS withdrawal and install fees. Nobody knows what to do, we're all here like a stray pets
looking for a new engine to call home and all we get is deafening silence and uncertainty from Unity,
they can never rebuild the good will that they enjoyed, that's for sure.

 

Yep, and I was perfectly happy buying a new non-subscription version every year. But then they drank the VC cool-aid and had to have explosive growth do do all the nonsense that we neither want nor need, become an advertising empire, etc. Idiots.

 

Exactly. F*** 'em. I feel open source is the only way forward for me.

 

You are wrong. And "this person" was at Unity for a long time not too long ago. Maybe he knows a tiny, itsy-bitsy more than you. Anyway.

 

Well said. Rent seeking behavior may bring in the revenues, but you have to provide value to create earnings.

 

Aras was person #4 at Unity IIRC

 

And in the future, maybe Unity will be free for everyone and order you donuts whenever you release a game. Just because you want something doesn't mean it's worth banking on.

 

I'm not fine with paying a flat 5% royalty. That's why I never used Unreal to begin with

But this plan has absolutely no effect on that demographic. And they would be absolutely BLESSED to be "worried" about fees because it means they're literally making millions of dollars.

 

I'm testing out Xamarin with UrhoSharp right now while I still observe out of interest and curiosity to understand what has happened.

I think the basic points here are:

• Unity wanted to coerce the big mobile companies to use their ad-services, so they give an exemption from the fee to those that do.
• Unity knew they would never make enough money if they did the same as Unreal, since too few people earn >$1,000,000 on Unity, and setting the threshold lower would have made them look like an obviously worse choice.

As far as I can see that is what it all boils down to.

Plus stupid executives making bad purchases and then scrambling to bail the company out with half-baked schemes.

 

Aras was at Unity from near its inception to year 2021. He knows what he's talking about more than anyone in this thread.

 

ooh nice... nice

 

It affects any small hobbyist or team because every small hobbyist or team is hoping to one day make a living and break the $200,000 threshold. Only now they won't want to. There are likely a fair number of people making >$200,000 with Unity, but very few making >$1,000,000 or they wouldn't have put the threshold there.

 

I knew he was very low number employee, but I wasn't sure how low. But it wasn't the point anyway.

So you're trolling.

 

Just tested FLAX last night and i must say so far im impressed with the clean Editor that definitely took some ques from Unity's. Also i can navigate it with little effort, and its C# api feels very similar as well. im sure its missing a ton of what Unity can do.. with its small 160 mb size, but it doesn't have a retroactive TOS either..

Tried Godot , but its editor feel really clunky and tedious. same with stride.

 

Yup, a lot of people are just waiting for the dust to settle to make their next move. But Unity seems to be in no rush. As an asset store publisher, this is important. A lot of existing users are leaving, and new users are being scared away, so if Unity wants to right this wrong, then it be nice if they'd make a decision asap.

 

I totally get that. But I'm one of those with a multi-year project at the end of it's dev cycle, who are in a difficult position to just abandon it. I'm not a parent, but I would still compare it to raising a child with a spouse, divorcing, and still caring for the child.

 

unity is 100% profitable. Because they get cashflow and spend it doesn't mean they ain't profitable lol

 

Hey, gotta bank on something.
What do you propose, besides putting a negative twist to everything? I know you're murgilod, who's always pissed off, but, what are you suggesting? I don't see someone like you sticking with disloyal people. I know you're skilled, I've seen your posts, why be pessimistic about Godot? Unless you think UE has a shot at everything?2D and 3D?

 

Hello "current unity employee", we really appreciate your "shock".
Anyway, let's analyse your explanation.

Really? This is a shocking news, a company that have to generate revenue to be profitable. As far as I know, this is true for all companies around the world. Anyway, how come that unity realize at the end of 2023 that it needs to generate more revenues to be profitable? Unity exists since almost 20 year and it seems that things are not going so bad if we consider all the acquisitions done by unity during these years.

This is really the most stupid and presumptuous way to justify this S***. Don't tell this to, say, companies making professional cameras, they can start charging users proportional to their earnings. All creativity related works rely on some tools, but there is NO INDUSTRY where you have to pay proportional to your talent.

Do you understand that you are forcing MOST if not all users that are using unity for business to buy the pro version cause the thresholds are too low and the fees are stupidly high? We are talking about REVENUE threshold, not NET PROFIT threshold.

It's really hard to comment here. Less than three months and unity still doesn't know how to fix these extremely dangerous (for us) issues.

Really?? Are these distributor going to do all this work for free or are you going to add another fee?

How? Again, less than three months and unity still doesn't have a clue how to fix this VERY OBVIOUS problem.

My personal hope that all this stupid fee S*** is cancelled completely and the original Plus and Pro versions are reintroduced. We can even accept more pricey version(s) for more successful company.
Or, at worst, copy Unreal model based on ACTUAL REVENUE, not installs.

 

Only because of the devs that use their software. When people drop off that ship we'll see who's profitable.

 

This guy just made up his own terms. You realize theres, like, definitions for business words right? If you don't make more than you spend you're not profitable. They have revenue. They also have expenses. Those expenses exceed their revenue. Not profitable.

Now you could say that if they weren't spending so much on things they don't need they would become profitable. That would be true. But you can't just declare them profitable if they have no profit.

 

John Riccitiello: Chale, ¿ya la cague verdad?

 

The business model would be profitable if it didn't include getting bent over a barrel and ravaged by executive compensation and such.

 

I'm saying you shouldn't expect an engine that has repeatedly deprioritized 3D graphics and even a lot of modern and well-established graphics techniques such as multipass rendering to have a chance. This is not unreasonable but expecting different is. Godot is not going to be a major player in the 3D space and is, at best, going to remain for very simple 3D games.

You want to know what else Godot doesn't have that other 3D engines do? Per-object motion vectors. SMAA support. Loads of little things like this that all add up and can completely hamstring projects. This is to say nothing of how its shader support amounts to OpenGL ES 3.0 unless you start digging unnecessarily deep into the engine. If you want to work in 3D and you're planning on doing anything beyond beginner levels? Yeah. Use Unreal. For 2D? Fine. Godot is fine.

 

i was a fanboy and even i know that unity is not a "good polished" engine... maybe all pre-2019 years it was, now, is aged

 

Of course that is altering past transactions.
Imagine you developped a game in 2020 and decided to publish it today. You haven't been using Unity for 3 years.
You agreed to the following: As stated in paragraph 8 of the TOS "Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms (...) you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (...) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1)"
So, the terms just cannot be altered. So:
"Unity grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free right to distribute the runtime portion of the Unity Software intended for distribution as an integrated part of your Project Content."
Note the right is NOT revocable, contrary to that specified in paragraph 1.6 "Unity grants you a (...) revocable right during the applicable term to integrate and embed the Unity Runtime into a specified number of vehicles"
So. Can Unity decide you must now pay a fee? No, that's not in the terms of services, and you have no reason to upgrade so are not bound by the new terms of service.
You must upgrade/pay according to your "Total Finances" if you plan to use the software, but not if you don't and only distribute your project.

There is simply no legal basis for this scam.

 

Godot is not ready for bigger 3D games,
I'm now evaluating Flax and Unigine,
both great engines, Unigine looks almost like a copy of Unity,
down to the material editor, which I mistook for ShaderGraph when I first saw it, lol.
Point is, there's a lot of great engines out there, Unity is not the only one.

 

Alas that is par for the course for any publicly traded company. Going public really may have been the kiss of death in that sense.

However they are also making many other foolish decisions on where they spend money without the revenue to justify it. They are relying on venture capital to backstop their foolishness. This only works in a bullish economy.

In a down economy this money 100% will dry up. That time is coming soon. The western economies are descending into scary times ahead. The potential for Unity to go out of business is very very high for this reason.

This is why they needed to increase the amount they make in revenue from customers (developers) and why they rolled out this insane new model.

The problem is their method of charging developers has resulted in loss of almost goodwill and trust and backfired tremendously.

They will lose most of their community for this reason and but can continue to circle the drain for years as the ghoulish executives plunder the company dry. They will then move on to the next one.

This is just about written in stone now.

 

OK real question here, how are they gonna track single player games that do not use internet connection. I can also transfer it among 100 other devices without using internet and there would be no way to send data back to Unity without internet.

 

It's written in almost 200 stones.

 

They told us in the initial announcement: they will guess.

 

you are totally wrong, why you think we are all here? in fact FYI we were more, but most of us left when they went public... Also, that is Aras, he definitelly know what he's talking

 

Okay. Fair enough lol

Yea we definitely agree that unreal is definitely better at 3D and Godot will do for 2D.

I'm just open to the idea that there can be an open source 3D game engine too in the works. Maybe not Godot. Apparently not according to you.

But back in the 2000s Maya was the go to software for 3D modeling, and now we've got blender.

Who knows what this mess from unity can give birth to.

 

The magic ball points to this new pricing schema to target mobile or f2p which is largely on mobile. Sensor Tower already can give accurate estimate on the # of d/l. Not sure how they do it, but it would not surprise me if that is what they would rely on. Or maybe they got a deal with Google/Apple stores, to get d/l data. Not sure what TOS for those two stores is with regards to that. My 2c.

 

the issue is that unity basically changes the rules however they like. what stops them from just stealing more income from the games made?
its a disaster and they F***ed up so bad, they communicated so poorly and they are so greedy. and the majority is even in aggrement that they should go for heigher shared revenue. but the payment per install is as stupid as injust as possible.

its pitchfork time seriously.
what stops them from dialing up the % later on. you cant trust them on anything anymore. its a F***ing asshole move and everyone that uses this engine, should stop any payment and cancel every possible income for them till they make planable rational decisions.

it honestly is better for unity to go bankrupt then to continue like this because no one in their right mind wants to get a random 100k bill because some c***s in suits changed their money print license up.

 

Guess? Seriously? Is this out of seasons April Fool's Joke? LOL

 

I don't believe there was a realistic plan to implement this model. It was just some executive's intrusive thoughts getting the better of him. Ideologically, they don't believe that consumers deserve to be able to buy a perpetual license to a game and play it on their own time, on any device, as much as they want. They believe in software as a service, and you better be paying for that service at every moment that you enjoy the product, whether through ads, secondary transactions, or subscriptions. The problems with this are twofold: 1. the consumers don't agree with this pricing model, and 2. whenever greedy companies try to force it on them, they go a little crazy and try to charge impossible sums, giving the whole practice a bad reputation.

 

Unigine is a monster, go check out their decals system... that is another level

 

Eh, hardly an argument. The market was way different 7 years ago.

 

Here it is:

 

That's great, but maybe he knows about profitability not reported publicly? Because Unity was not profitable until recently. Not 7 years ago. Right?

 

it was Lightwave, for the big names