Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Affordable console porting coming to Godot 4 Q1 of 2024: https://twitter.com/W4Games/status/1702803202289148153 Will definitely be much cheaper than Unity Pro at 2k, which is required for console porting now.

A venture capital investment firm pledges $10k/month to Godot Foundation Fund with no strings attached: https://twitter.com/godotengine/status/1702817797145784515 (not reflected in the total fund counter yet)

 

Can we not derail into politics? I think Unity devs are mostly in solidarity about this tragic change. This transcends political party, religion, and nation.

Let's stay on topic.

 

protecting predatory ceo's is your thing we get it

 

Some do, some don't. Epic has gotten a lot of flak over four major decisions with their store as they're seen as anti competitive:
1. If you agree to exclusivity contracts (generally 6 months) and use Unreal for your engine they'll subsidize a portion of your development.
2. If you release on only their store they reduce the store cut from 12% to 9%.
3. If you use Unreal and release only on their store they reduce the revenue share from 5% to 3%.
4. Epic promotes your games by buying copies from you and giving them to their players for free.

This means that if you used Unity and released on steam you could pay 30% to Steam plus Unitys fees. If you release on Epic you can pay anywhere between 17% and 12% depending on how exclusive you're making it. If you're seeing around 40% of a sale as a developer before the engine cut, that could represent a pretty substantial change in revenue which has to be weighed against the opportunity cost of not getting for example Steam only players.

 

Another Unity dev exploring porting to Godot: https://twitter.com/Maytch/status/1702801793439129700

 

I honestly feel bad for Unity's developers reading this thread. You guys are amazing and you've built a tremendous product.

Bu† your management and whoever made this call has killed your product. I don't see how we can trust the company ever again after this.

-Chilton

 

Sure thing, bud.

 

And we arrived to the 4chan level. No F***ing way, kthxbye! @zombiegorilla if you have time, would you please clear up this last page or two from political bullshit?

 

Long time lurker, just wanted to post that my office is stopping all unity development as of today.

 

So triggered.

 

Still going? Embarrassing brother.

 

Cities Skylines devs speak out, will finish current project in Unity, unsure about future: https://twitter.com/ColossalOrder/status/1702638723697955327

 

Never forget that such benefits tend to drop away quickly once a goal is reached: In this case to make the Epic Store a real competitor to Steam...

One could say that about Unity as well. The benefit of not having Revenue share of any sort was given until the goal was reached of achieving maximum popularity.

 

Can't we just raise funds and buy the company?

 

Yeah that was expected, they are near finish, wouldn't switch engine either.


---
Oh boy, trying to read CryEngine's documentation, it's a big pile of mess.

 

He is trolling ignore the entitled ceo's bit**

 

*drops $3.30 in change on the table* I'm in

 

For sure, I was just stating how it is right now (I think I got a couple of the numbers wrong though). You're going to see the same thing happen with Unitys ad platform. This whole thing is about forcing mobile devs onto their platform because Unity has been able to compete, by using the installation costs as a threat to bankrupt anyone that doesn't use it. The moment those devs are locked in, Unity can further lower ad rates and it doesn't matter. While Unity was trying to compete they paid 50% of their competitors for ads, but with that installation charge looming over people, they could pay 1% and it would be better to use Unity's system than someone elses.

That's a problem, and it's not going to work in Unitys favor. People will just use other engines instead. Walled gardens for development ecosystems lead to abuse, and there's enough options out there right now that people will take the options that are 50% to 80% as good to avoid getting trapped.

 

I need to lock unity forums and twitter away. My productivity has been near 0 for the past few days.

 

Another confirmation that Unity was profitable once upon a time: https://twitter.com/MattMirrorFish/status/1702654023277351359

 

My productivity has been great, it's just that it's been great in Unreal Engine instead.

 

-.-" i'm now facing the problems with open source things -.- does anybody knows a better short way to make stride work with android? mfg

 

Wait, I read that Unity will not charge on web applications?

 

The way I see it, I think, that what will happen, is that about 20-40% (..more) of Unity devs will migrate to some other engine (this was already shown in a graphic/stats that shown the 'depatures' of indie devs in the last 5-6 years; and Unity saw a loss of 30-35% of devs...to Godot (20%), especially/largest chunk, and to Unreal (15%); and like 5% for some other engine). Godot was the largest net intake of 'former Unity devs (2015-2022)', that's what the graphic/stats said, followed by Unreal, about half of those who switched to Godot). I mean, it's expected, devs can/may/might leave to other engines. That can happen at any time, no matter how good or how bad the situation on Unity side; sometimes, leaving, irrespectively of Unity situation; oftenly, due to production problems/while the game was made...stuff did not work, and, the dev could have liked better another engine or they 'fight' against the engine (you know..like when Unity editor pops 400,000 console errors, and you can barely fix 1)...

But, with that said, there will Still be a 40-50% left...still trucking along and sticking around.

Why? Because, though they may feel that they lost the 'trust' in Unity and feel letdown....they don't have much (other) choice.

Sure, they could call it quits...and move to some other engine.

But, some, can't.

Some, are 'knee-deep' in a project since 2010s....and still not done, and on, Unity engine.

They're (quite) locked (and hands-tighed behind back). Some, have the possiblity to switch to another engine at like
73% of completion of the game's creation progress...but, some (other) don't.

It is a big (deal) thing to 'switch' to another engine, and can be very costly....time/money/resources....it's not just (necessarily) 'snap your fingers -- port the whole Unity project -- in new engine'....some things, can't, be ported, and are Very specific to Unity...they're not Found in other engines...you have to 'compromise' and sort of 'find the equivalent' in another engine....that can be Long..

Of course, some would say, I much prefer that...than be charnge per installation fees...totally understandable..after all, a business must survive...and if the engine's monetization..cripples your 'business' (to possible soon-bankruptcy, if too much)..than, I guess, no other choice, but to swithc.

I think, there is still a 30%, solid, of devs...who will not move an inch...mostly the solo devs and those (obvioulsy() less impacted by this....Obviously, the ones more impacted will leave (the Mobile Game Makers...especially, they make lots of downloads (millions..), some revenue, and no profit...their situation is very dire because they end up losing money 'per installation fee' per download and end up paying more...than having a return. Thus, negative/no profit. Only a 'cost' as they sell millions of copies of their mobile game, but does not translate to any profit, just a cost.).
This is where the '1 price' 'solo dev-made games' PC games on Steam or Console platforms are more safe..because it is a 1-time price and so immediately profit; but not with mobile games/mobile game downloads that many are F2P/FTP/Free-2-Play Games...that are --- free. mobile games, or (25c/40c..) and make no money.
I mean that 0.20cent per installl fee/cost is more expensive than that mobile game's 10c asking price.
You end up owing 10c...per purchase (-10 c/minus 10 c, per copy). Mobile game market is Very saturated, ultra- saturated and it's incredible that anyone can survive there...I mean, you can, but must have a very AAA like 'mobile game'..and Then,, it's Very Lucrative - since millions/billions.. of mobile phones....not on PC/consoles...
so the potential is much higher on mobile market...but the competition is so extreme there, and so peopple expect F2P/FTP/Free mobile games...or 10-50c...mobile games. I don't see much beyong 99c per AAA-mobile game.

I see on Discussions (discussions.unity.com), there, the devs are there...and like, many are asking questions to continue making their game...I mean...they are continuing doing -- the doing -- the 'deving'....developing their game.

Their - Unity - game.

So, I think, some won't leave - despite that- they will 'chug it' and' take it'...and because they have so much experience knowledge (which Can be transfered to a new engine) but that'S a very personal decision...and some, may decide Despite All this Debacle...--- All in Alll -- One in the Other ---- to stay with Unity, even so.

Per-install fee, or not. Crazy as it may seem, or not. ''you like punishment/you are 'pain lover'...you like pain and you like to take it...if Unity 'runs over you' 'pancakes you' 'steps on you like doormat 'welcome carpet - step on me'' 'throws u under the bus' -- you take it and don'T say anything else.''...yep, some will stay even if they are punished in a sense...all they know..is Unity. They have been many years...it's almost irreversible, and impossible to switch.
Like, in my case, it kind of is...Unreal would be the other possibility (for 3D fidelity requirement of my games) but, like, the stuff I did I did in Unity...and some, no, it is not just transferable....yes, it could be possible/I could/might do it..but it couuld be very long also; so like, I'm like, I guess this is 'catch 22'...I sort of have to remain quite neutral about it and just 'see where this goes'...and, until then, continue working on Unity project/game. (I know, it sounds/seems 'surreal' and 'ostrich head in the sand' 'ignoring' the whole thing...that happened, like it never happened (only...it did.).
So, it's why on the discussions website...it'S almost 'surreal'..you're like...how can these devs...'work' right now with such a 'cloud' over the head..I guess we kind of have to play ostrich/pretend (all is well), some times. I guess, they just don't bother or just doesn't apply to them (mainly 'solo devs' (like me) and that sell PC games..not mobile games).

I do hope (with the last message) that it says, Unity may decide to not make 'full' per-installation fees or do 5% rev share or some other thing; albeit, I think I agree with others who say: ''No way...Unity won't budge...they need cash flow...and so, they Have to put these fees..no other ways...the're not removing these now-established per-installation fees...and even willing to 'eat' the costs...of that....and 'weather the storm' about it...like they will remain silennt...and just..wait it/the tempest dissipates..and those new fees, will be Jan 2024''. I have a feeling this other solution of Unreal 5% rev share...is just not enough or won't make enough money - soon enough; to reverse the negative profit accumulation (I tihnk it was 1 Billion in negative profit...they made 990 million dollars of Revenue...and are 1.5 or so Billion dollats in loss of Profit/no profit). So, it's almost a dire situation..of needing money (profit, not revenue), now.
It's the same thing or will be the same thing, for mobile devs, who will feel the same thing...anyways, just a 2 c.

 

I grabbed the sub data for the last few days from the Wayback Machine. This was my point from a few days ago. Godot is going to continue to gain support and they will wipe out Unity as more and more funding is dumped in to a fee free model. They will have the resources to build any number of modules that are far superior to Unity's current technology because there's no bloat from decades of Band-Aids. It will be cleaner and faster in the long run.

Unity's management accidentally created the worlds best emerging game engine. For no gain.



I love using Unity, but good god... The rollout of this was a complete disaster.

 

If that is correct...


...Whats stopping users from using the web exporter, and just making a wrapper that loads the web build as a Windows (Or other platform) application?

 

Everyone: Read all of Matt's tweets here. He explains succinctly how and when Unity went down the wrong path.

 

Well let me just say, why not use Unity, export for web, and use NodeJS or whatever to make the web export act like a native application, since Unity wont charge for web builds.

 

Hey Unity,
we will crack you.

 

maybe in 10 or 15 years, look man, open source is not that pretty, yeah is free but the tech is and it will always be far behind everything else, because they do not have the resources to pay for more devs, that is why we all prefer, for example, windows instead of linux

 

you are forgetting, webgl builds suck.

 

Because they could change their mind on webgl at any time. The problem is not the specifics of this change, it's the fact that any time they decide to buy another digital media company, they'll pick you up and shake you until all your money comes out.

 

That's the massive problem for Unity from now on.

Unity's big selling point was being the 1st choice for mobile game makers. Now, mobile developers will automatically worry about Unity's price trap, where they could get millions of downloads and less than $.20 per player. Of course, that's only if their game ever took off and made a million dollars (the whole reason we all do this), but now you're one of the few successes who are stuck in this dead zone for 12 months, or more.

What will this zone be like? On any plan, even the 'enterprise plan', you're paying minimum $.12 for every install for up to 100,000 downloads, which restarts every month. That's $12K per month to use Unity, on top of paying for 'Unity Enterprise'. And if those 100K users make you less than $.12 each (probable), you will lose money on them all. If you pass 100K, you only lose $.06 per download. So on, down to $.01 after a million each month. Many free to play downloads make much less than $.01 per player, so you could lose money indefinitely. Of course, you're spending on marketing and development. Unity gets their guaranteed cost per player, while you continually push past 100K downloads each month, to lose less, for the next 12 months.

If you don't make another million, don't worry, you're good. But now you're back to making less, too. And you still have to pay for Unity Pro or Enterprise, unless you want to deal with the same stress at $200K or 200K installs.

Just feels like opportunities for making it 'big' here are drying up. Makes it feel like there's less possibility, so why invest your life into this anyway? You probably won't be one of the 10% and even if you are, you're targeted and squeezed every month. You take all the risk, and Unity gets their guaranteed license money, and then bets on you either failing or falling into one of their price traps. And they can always retroactively charge you more at any time.

 

They specify downloads/installs, not runs.

Plus its near impossible to charge for web builds with any sort of logic in this kind of situation.

 

It doesn't matter what they specify today, because they could change it tomorrow. Logic also seemingly doesn't matter because the idea of a download tax is utterly deranged.

 

I imagine this won't fly. That is, if they catch you (and they will if you get financial success from the game), at best you will be charged normally per install. At worst there will be additional penalties

 

So what, will they charge per run on web???
Aint no way they can do what they are doing with standard builds, with web.

 

Maybe they'll charge per vowel in the filename. You have literally no way of knowing what they'll come up with, particularly if half the user base finds alternatives and pressure to return a profit grows.

It's really hard to do business when your primary technology partner views you as a cash cow and is trying to figure out how to get that cash as efficiently as possible.

 

Another Unity indie moving away from the engine: https://twitter.com/dreamfeelx/status/1702640218950525232

 

Caves of Qud developer is done with Unity: https://twitter.com/unormal/status/1702850329543381387

 

i think overall we should agree that unity can go and F*** itself

 

Hide yo revs, hide yo 'stalls, they snatchin all yo pennies up.

 

Dear Unity. You F***ed up here and silence is making our relationship worse.

I have been a fulltime unity developer for 8 years, the past 4 of them working for myself. I would highly request that any official responses from you on this to be rooted in technical fact. Over this new install fee, I am not concerned personally because I'm making a Desktop VR app which will almost certainly never have more than a million installs, giving me a 99% change of making install fees moot. This is not why my trust is fraying; it's because the licensing terms you are forcing on me actively and permanently put me into an unlimited billing agreement with Unity Technologies explicitly with no upper limit in cost, or time, nor external verifiability so far as I can see.

This "no cost change" still places my and every other Unity using business under a permanent wild and uncontrollable / uncapped substantial fiscal liability to you.

Under the "pro" license I would for the rest of my life in any given random month, may be forced to pay you up to $70k dollars for actions which are exclusively *outside* of my ability to control, specifically for all installing actions taken by all of my clients, legal and possibly pirated, both past and future, per their uncapped number of PCs (as you put it, from literally 1-2 million unique 3rd parties – all of whom you will somehow track for duplicates, somehow).

Furthermore, for every million additional random third parties, or pirates, randomly join this party, which I cannot in any way control, I will have to pay you up to $20k -- without any limits in $ or time.

Furthermore you have specifically (at the top of the FAQ on this forum) that you do not intend on actually tracking the thing for which you may charge me, but will just use a estimate I cannot control.

From top of your FAQ on this forum's first post:

Proprietary is lip service to the opposite of verifiability, accountability, security, and clarity.

My only real ask here is for any charges made to me to be itemizable, verifiable, accountable, and transparent.

ET Does Not Phone Home (Yet)

To that end, I have tested and made sure that the PC builds of my app (the only target for my initial release) definitively only communicates with services which I have personally written into the core services of my game -- specifically none of which include any of Unity's online services.

Here I have confirmed below through packet sniffing my own PC, that the current most recent version of Unity (2023.1.12f1) does not send unsolicited telemetry from my app to Unity (no unity service packages installed in this project). This is actually really easy to test yourself, e.g. here I've done it in about a minute with GlassWire.

Here the only hosts my game talks to 1) 225.0.0.222 (a local subnet broadcast, not accessible outside of my home's network), 2) my error tracking aggregation service provider (backtrace.io - which only reports errors to me), and 3) my custom login / scoreboard (which I’ve obscured for my own security).



So here is my point -- I literally don't transmit any data to you outside of my Unity Editor. And I can't / don't track installs, just optional logins for leaderboards, and anonymous bug reports. So how can you have any idea what my customers install count is if there is literally zero shadow data I've ever given you to feed your black box "about my customers"? You can't be tracking from within my app because I read my code, and inspect it's behavior well.

That only leaves you with tracking all of my customers with some data about my business that even I do not have access to, like identifying info for the exact PCs using my software which would be required to not repeatedly charge me for repeat installs on a single PC -- or you are not, and are just making up info to use in official billing in which case I can't trust you on "initial install only" clause you've added in the past few days.

So what feeds your company's black box?
After four days of only putting out vacuous platitudes with no technical content: this community is demanding to know how you intend on tracking "installs"; specifically what I'm asking you to elaborate on the specifics of what metrics you are using to inform the black boxes which will be your "definitive" defacto-dousing-rod for divining install counts out-of-the-ether?

If you intend on changing this / adding shadow tracking in the next few months, please let us know! Because I want to be ethical and inform my customers of any known third party sniffing I cannot control. Please note that I will continue to "trust" you, but I will continue to verify too.

 

man i think the whole intention was to destroy unity, sell everything they got and run with pockets full of money and that is why some employees are making those threats, because he literally kill this company for money

 

Great post and thank you for doing and sharing the research on the outbound network activity from your build. Gives a little bit of peace of mind if we at least want to stick on the current Unity versions and never upgrade.

 

i suggest everybody to not waste energy waiting for monday for clarifications... that "we will add value to the TOS" means nothing...

 

They tried to at first, but suddenly went back on it because we complained xD but I would expect them to do it at some point in the future

 

That is some real democratization of game development.

 

Please try to keep political stuff out of this thread. In my opinion, posts here should primarily be for feedback regarding the announcement.