Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Well, since we’ve officially hit “blame non-white and women engineers for this”-levels of horseshit, I’m just gonna set up a news alert for the inevitable ongoing shenanigans and peace out. I’ve got a new engine to learn anyway.

(spoiler alert: the guy at the top is still white, but surely he can’t be the reason for any of the decision-making processes at the company he literally runs. It must be the DEI hires.)

 

Well, almost the same things were told here in the forums those days back... but the users were ignored.
The signs were there.

 

Here comes the Unity bots talking politics so they have an excuse to close the thread and change the discussion into some american political nonsense

 

I can fully undestand if I earn above 1m$ i should pay 1-5% but if its dependent on installation, then lol.

just started working on godot, but still I have some hope that they will change their decision

 

Correct, Unreal is open source.

Incorrect, Unreal is open source.

 

As a beginner, I am very sad. Now I can't predict how Unity will treat me when I leave college. Now I will choose UE. I believe most beginners will choose to leave Unity.

 

Here to contribute to 200 pages

I think PanthenEye really hit the nail on the head saying Unity is a mobile ads company first and a game engine second. They want to keep their status as the underdog “democratizing” engine for indies, but their ever increasing flirtations with the shadiest aspects of the game industry put them in tension with this ideal. Unity wants to have its cake and eat it too. Watching them put on this clown show while other engines are actually improving their product and making it better for developers, switching has never been such an attractive option.

 

I don't know that I'd say it'll always be behind.

The real trap is that when there are innovations in Open Source, they benefit the Closed Source community as well.

Still... to say that Open Source is always behind is a bit inaccurate. The entire world (open and closed source) depends on open source encryption libraries. Super Computing and many microcontroler systems are built on Linux, not Windows, since you don't have to be Microsoft to start slimming or modifying the OS to fit the niche needs.

I would say the primary place closed source systems have an advantage is UX, since software developers will often choose ... new user unfriendly ways of designing the interface, while large companies have the funds to invest in figuring out what UX would be most broadly intuitive.

 

Start learning new things

 

To clarify, the source code is available to all Unreal users, but it doesn't qualify as open source. You can build upon the source code to add your own functionality, but it must all be done within the context of your project.

A small but relevant difference — it's all in here somewhere.

EULA - Unreal Engine

 

A good lesson for early in the industry: Learn how to learn new technologies, rather than getting entrenched in old ones.

That will serve you well when a technology changes, a tech has been abandoned, or a new and better tech comes along.

 

That's rather profound, and true. This applies to the oncoming wave of AI tech as well.

 

There isn’t and hasn’t been a single Unity service in the decade+ I’ve been using and paying every year for Unity that I wanted or needed. Not even the bundled services you get with Pro.

I have to wonder how many other developers are in the same boat, because as you say services are something Unity have strongly pushed, to the point of making it part of the ‘benefits’ of the more expensive plans.

 

Do you not remember when Unreal became free, and Unity had to just give away all of its pro features, some of which were very basic features that you'd absolutely want if you were going to release a game? A lot people on the forums, including hobbyists who just wanted to play with those features and hadn't released anything were paying something like $1500 a year for the license. Since then there hasn't been a reason to sub other than success. I remember many people were worried that unity would not be able to make enough money to compete with Unreal, and they were right, it's been floundering ever since, though a lot of that is also just bad decision making, which is really not what you want when money is tight.

You'd think they would have come up with a better revenue model during that time, but NOPE..

 

AI tech is a very different lesson.

How to identify the difference between a real tech and a marketing stunt.

 

ubisoft shut down their london studio , devolver entertainement won t accept pitches using unity ,FDG Entertainment shut down every project using unity , the other companies disabled ads are : Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Ducky, Burny Games, Inspired Square, Geisha Tokyo, Tatsumaki Games, Kayac, New Story, Playgendary, and Supercent.

 

Honestly I’ve been in the opposite camp since this was announced, and that install tiers didn’t reset per month as it just seemed far more sensible. However my point here is the only difference between the two camps is based on the interpretation of the context of a single word in a graphic! How the hell could Unity have made this announcement and left such a massive potential misunderstanding, that greatly changes the overall fees you’d pay per month to be present? It just cements how poorly this was communicated and questions whether anyone at Unity was even bothered to get this stuff right.

To be clear, I do not support the install tax regardless, nor the TOS changes and especially not the way the TOS retroactively affects old games and finally until we get an actual legal document, such as a license, T&C and/or service rules, no one truly knows what Unity is actually doing, as a blog is not a legal document.

 

I've tried a few, but never could manage to make anything useful with them. I don't even really look at the services anymore.

I'd just like the core stuff to work really, really well... then they could work on more esoteric things.

I thought the old model of $1500 for Unity X, with the 30 day trial, was perfectly fair. Hardly thought about it, and when I did I felt good about it, because every new version had great new stuff that worked pretty well.

Freemium and Greed have created some really bizarre and toxic situations.

 

Unity CEO se*ual *allegations:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattpe...olleagues-former-exec-claims/?sh=4c45ba7a435a
Damn:
https://venturebeat.com/games/game-...ity-ads-until-its-price-increase-is-reversed/
SIGN HERE:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeSRvFrXeDocqPwyjsYwbQ4fObJGJ2THrUjzSqHvMcoCWaIIA/viewform

 

It's just like an ocean eco-system, obviously John Riccitiello think only the whale matters, microorganism is meaningless.

 

Imagine they did it like this: Starting Jan 2025 all versions of Unity 2025.1+ will have a new TOS where you pay $1 a install, if you don't like it, dont upgrade. Isn't that more sensible

 

I'm going to leave this here for Unity Technologies....

I'm a user of Unity for 7 years. I've released a game called Astralojia: Season 1 on Xbox just this August.

I'm really thankful for all that you guys have done for me, I've had the opportunity these last 7 years to learn C# and game development, and am bringing my dream childhood project to life.

With that said, after I get out the next 3 games in the series, I'm probably going to have to be moving on to another engine or creating a custom one from scratch. I think Unity is still great to learn game development to a large degree, but I want to be able to eventually scale my business up...

Right now I'm using Unity Pro so that I can port to consoles. The truth is, the first 200k profit I make, if I ever get there, I would honestly at this point start to get a team together and just make a custom simple engine using a non-Microsoft IDE and C++.

One of the things that's bothered me is any kind of online requirement for anything. For me, game design is akin to being a scientist and having a private laboratory to do private experiments. Now it seems like everything these days has to be public or streamed, or online or on the cloud, but the real fun of inventing something comes from that raw private brain stimulation that we get from being deep in thought and solving problem after problem.

What's worse is that what if Microsoft one day decided they didn't like you, and updated their TOS so that they could ban you from using Windows? Sounds far fetched now, but seems like we could be headed that direction.

I hope that this pricing model is rolled back or there's just simply a price increase or percentage of revenue taken instead. Even so, you guys have to understand that you have a LOT of competition these days.

What else is there to say. Just thankful that such a simple suite of tools came out and met all the friends I met through it I suppose. Learned C#, had a great community, but looks like this is the end. It's a shame.

 

After giving a second look at this chart, and that tiny little cute black zone there, where you pay more than %100 of your revenue... I think it's not that dramatic...

After all, it's really a very tiny little zone.

The risk of losing all our lifetime savings is not that high.

Probably only a few of us will end up in jail.

Don't you think we're a little bit overreacting?

 

Weirdly, yes.

I mean it still kills Unity, and it still has all the same questions, but it doesn't trigger a mass exodus because it doesn't put any pressure on the community to react right now immediately or threaten existing games.

 

I've been working out all sorts of numbers and I can't seem to find any scenario where this is a bad pricing model unless you have a badly monetized mobile game with huge amounts of installs but only enough money to meet the threshold. But even in my worst case scenarios the mobile game still makes a lot of money, but consequently owes a lot of money too.

I can't find a realistic scenario that you pay more money than you make. That is entirely fabricated.

I'm going to continue to use Unity and hope that this panicked mob either calms down or moves on to different engines.

 

200,000 is pretty accurate based on their 10k and how it's set up. Subscription services and licenses are under the same category, if no extras are subscribed to, based on pro licenses they have a maximum of 380,000 or so developers on Pro.

 

Do you think what's happening with AI, including all the money flowing into AI companies and projects, is just a marketing stunt? Let's not derail the thread, but I will say that I think you'll be surprised by how many industries are affected by this as AI improves over the coming years.

Alright, back on topic. Learning new tools = good.

 

Downloading Godot as we speak. I've been a unity developer over 10 years too. What a sad day that it has come to this.

 

Developers don't get paid per download. They get paid per purchase. And one purchase has indefinite downloads.

I often install a game no fewer than twice (so adjust all the lines right) immediately after purchase, and then install them again months to years later.

This is NORMAL and part of the NORMAL contract between players and game sellers. We purchase the game and then install/delete/install whenever we feel like it. We're not supposed to be causing additional charges for the developer when we do that, cause they're NOT SUPPOSED TO BE INVOLVED with that part of the equation.

 

Sad news for sure, however its not first time EA (in this case ex EA) messed with a popular game engine, remember RenderWare? Back in the day was a VERY popular game engine, and probably the same guy was around when EA decided to shut it down...

 

Umm... if the chart is correct (I have no idea), all but the small upper right corner (and free users) pay well over 5% of revenue. That's pretty bad.

 

Bing and Google are pushing AI like a search engine, when it absolutely CANNOT "search". A lawyer even got in trouble due to this.

Can AI in some circumstances be useful? Okay, so it does better image recognition than anything we know, and it's actually pretty good at generating believable noise. In that sense... maybe it CAN be useful in video games in places where plain procedural just isn't enough to flesh out the world.

But I find it's often sold on capabilities it does not actually have, and thus should be recognized for the marketing stunt it is.

 

That graph is frightening. And only that small top right corner makes the engine cost less than Unreal.

And that is all assuming that the data accumulation of unique installs and fraud detection works perfectly, which we already know is pretty much impossible. Phoning home with personal data that would actually ID a unique install is illegal in a lot of places, and even if it weren't would probably still be subject to fraud.

 

It must be ZERO, no matter if it is that tiny, we are ethical people working hard. Why should we have even a minor probability of getting bankrupt or going to jail just by using Unity?

 

change the plan !

 

theres going to be a lot of developers and studios swapping away from unity. even if this is walked back the trust is broken. now is a good time to start learning other engines and working on your ability to transition between whatever engine you work with. learning the process of figuring out how things work on the fly makes you a better candidate for employment. studios might be stuck with their current project, but in the future they are going to be picking up a new project outside of unity and they will be needing talent. no better time to start learning than right now, especially if you truly feel like youve been betrayed by unity. what is the worst that can happen from learning a new engine? learning new engines and workflows increases your skillset.

 

https://x.com/Ivmen/status/1702801617777565764?s=20

 

There are a lot more engines than Godot though to use, and remember Godot could some day go public, so if any project you're going to make is going to take more than 3 years, be careful. I started Unity when Unity was Unity 5, and it's changed so much, it's really under my nose too, I wasn't paying attention to the internet and just kind of reading documentation...

It's the 3 render pipelines though where I think all this trouble started, it's probably where they went public.

 

There is no question of giving a rest, its straight facts . Unreal still invest a lot in the engine and they have infinite resources compared to Godot, so UE would have to completly stop developing their engine for Godot to catch up at some point .

Still I plan to use Godot for my hobby shenanigans, since contrary to what You may think, I very much want Godot to be as popular choice as possible since Open Source or not, competition is always the best in capitalism .

 

Hmm so that they could say, "See told ya, 90% Not affected." At this point anything is in the realm of possible.

 

"Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect."

F*** you for this too unity

 

Disappointed t

godot is open source, nobody owns godot. Its FOSS

 

its literally impossible for godot to go public and ruin anything. they would have to create a new tos under whatever version they are running that isnt MIT. its impossible for that license to retroactively apply to anyone. people can just fork the last open source build of godot and continue with developing it. its a community driven project. its open source.

 

90% of the users don't earn a penny

 

They're keeping silent? they really look us like sheeps with full of wool?

 

Could someone like Google and Microsoft for the mercy of god acquire Unity and free us from that Tomer Bar-Zeev?

 

Alternatively you could negotiate a custom license. Which anyone making millions of dollars absolutely would.

 

Spectacularly! We're almost at 200 pages!

Great diagram. I think that pricing model would be ok if they could show us how they count installs.... and hadn't decided to retroactively change the deal on people.

Underpinning this whole economy of ours is the number of minutes players have to play. If you're in that black zone, you're sharing unity tech with a lot of people for very little gain, and preventing them from engaging with something more profitable. The dev in the black zone gets paid, but at the cost of sucking up players that other devs could be monetizing more vigorously.

 

Godot isn't locked down to a private company. It's open source with a well known FOSS license.

If the group behind Godot went off the rails, the community would likely fork the project like they do every time a popular FOSS project falls.

If the fork lasts, the community wins. If it doesn't (which sometimes it doesn't), the community gets a drop in replacement until they're ready to migrate to something new.

It's why there are a lot of non-niche linux distros (ubuntu -> mint, for example), why we have Libre Office (came from Open Office), an why we now have Pulsar (fork of Atom).