Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Or becoming a student. It's cheaper, depending on the country of course.

 

If true that is insane and the most 'trust me bro' thing I've ever heard! How can that even be legal beyond if one agrees to it under contract.

Lets face it Unity have hardly proven themselves trustworthy in the past, let alone this insane new plan, and now there wonder 'magic' we can track installs is just a 'trust me bro pinky swear'?

 

This is what bothers me, it specifically damages small indie developers who rely on word of mouth, and low price points.

 

And what about refunds?
For any game concerned by the fee, if I understand the install correctly, every time someone would buy a Unity game to try it, and then refund it, the game developer will lose money.
The usual refund rate (on Steam) can go from around 5% to 20%, so it's not negligible.

 

That still doesn't tell me that Unity is tracking anything unless you add in analytics. Create a new game with the default packages (no analytics) and there's nothing going back to the mothership. Some people keep saying wireshark will show traffic (and I have yet to see that) but that's what I'm after. How is Unity tracking, if at all, a game that has no analytics, services, etc. enabled/added/installed? I don't believe it does, but willing to accept it is after seeing some proof.

 

FAQ says unity can decide to combine games download counts if they are sufficiently similar.

GG, no re.

(of course they will only combine if that puts you over 200k, not if that would put you over 1M, then your 4 games will each pay the 200k+ install cost)

The more I look at this, the worse this whole deal gets.

 

This is F***ing disgusting, and the worst decision unity made ever. Get screwed.

 

They don't even need to refund it. Uninstalling and re-installing is a new install. Installing on another device you own is also a new install.

I think for each "sale", you can expect to have around 2-3 chargable installs per user on average.

 

My main fear is being caught in a 'doom loop' of customers exiting -> need to squeeze existing customers harder -> customers exiting etc etc

Especially since my trust in Unity as a business has now evaporated. Just because I'm lucky enough not to be screwed by this set of changes, what about the next set, and the next set, etc..... ?

 

It is so confusing.

Firstly, how installs are counted? If 100 000 players will pirate my game, do I need to pay for that?
The fact, that you are applying something retroactively is insane. What will stop you to introduce additional fees in the future and apply it to already released games?

 

Damn, I'll have to take out a loan. This is what happens when a company is run by a former Electronic Arts executive.

 

This ^^^. And it's now Unity - not you or your team - that decides what the shape of that monetization strategy should be, how much a user is 'worth'. Or is it download? Or re-install? Or stream? I'm trying but finding myself unable to look at this in any other way than 'insane'.

 

It's just it seems so easy to exploit at the moment. Virtual machines, android emulators, etc. Who came up with this idea?

 

can you elaborate please? i'm sure i'm not a MBA (whatever that is xD) but all i can see is users ranting for something they do not understand, most are saying that we will be charged monthly for installs that we already paid, also, almost no one from unity is here to clarify those awnsers, so it looks like you know more

 

Sounds good! Thanks for the update! You can feel free to @me or dm if you get any other info and are feeling so obliged. Thanks again!

 

Here's how it will go down: business execs come up with an idea to make more money, Unity makes more money in the short term, shareholders and investors are happier, business execs get bonuses.

 

At this point, and until Unity steps in and answers some of these questions, they're not tracking anything in every shovelware and free-to-play game on itch, gamejolt, etc. unless you add in a call to analytics or add the analytics package (or use some unity services).

The only "official" response I've seen (c'mon Unity, get some answers on the tracking thing) is that they're looking to estimate installs (based on what I don't know) and charging based on that (along with a dispute process) (based on what the phasmo dev said).

 

Yes most likely, also not sure if we are obliged to tell them if they under estimate the amount.

 

Reinstalls count as a new installation and as a new fee? So bad actors can just run scrips and reinstall the game hundreds of time in a row with the malicious intent of getting a developer in debt?

Gotta give them credit, they managed to monetize DDoS.

 

I would say this is absolutely a requirement. You'd probably want to dispute every time as slowly as humanly possible. Might even be worth seeing if they'd try to take you to court to get the money tbh, lmao.

 

In short: today (12.9.2023) you killed Unity - RIP.

In long:
- many customers require no internet connection (like prison facilities or private stores of telco operators, for example). How will be installs tracked? Probably internet access will be needed and I will not be able to meet criteria of these customers,
- I am small developer and I use services of publishers. There is usually chain of publishers and each point in chain takes 50% of revenue. Brief calculation showed me that I will earn less for install than I will have to pay,
- good thing for me: I never got it over $200k in revenue. I do not mention here, that definition of $200 revenue is vague - is it from Unity games or total "company" revenue? (I make most of my revenue from games made in great free HTML Phaser engine, which I monthly support at Patreon),
- I am bellow $200k limit, but as I loved Unity, I paid for Plus plan - $362 last time (with VAT). Option is to pay for Pro ($2468 with VAT) or go with Personnal. What do you think I will choose? I will miss "custom splash" feature and go free (if I do not change to Godot or so...)

 

They will surely update that EULA as soon a lot of devs are switching over to unreal

 

We have tomorrow internal meeting to switch with project to different Engine.

We've been prepared a bit for that. Of course its lost money, but we won't be able to trust Unity anymore after this.

This business is all about ROAS and ltv vs CPI why we would choose unity on start of the new project if it ads flat fee from begining lowering your chance of competing in already tough UA market.

Different engines are now the advantage.

 

Hey Unity, new idea! What if instead of per install you would charge per keystroke? You would assign every game a key secretly, no one knows but the IT guys at Unity which key. When a player hit that key, you are invoicing the developer $0.001. Or a pixel coordinate on mobiles if it touched by the user, the invoice is emailed...

Just an idea, if tracking the installs doesn't work out.

 

Ok, listen I'm not an expert, I just try my best.
Install Charles Proxy and test yourself.
Believing is always bad.

 

A similar position for us here
We have a game in pre-prod now F2P multiplayer with optional DLC as the monetization method

Obviously, we are going to end up with WAY more users than we have paying users. So if we find success are we just NUKED out of the water owing more money than we made

I mean lets assume 10% of our users monetize ... which LOL that's optimistic but easy math
then lets assume we manage 200k revenue assuming the average user purchases 2 of the DLC it would take approx 20k users or 40k units to hit that ... so if that is 10% of our total users and we assume each user counts as 1 install ... so we are now at 200k installs and starting to accrue costs

so lets say we manage 30k users 300k revenue and we now have 100k extra users or 20k owed to Unity
In short Unity is taking 10% of our net rev after platform split and that's assuming 10% of users monetize ... which again LOL never gonna happen

more likely 1-2% of users will monitize

So lets check those numbers again
so to hit 200k rev will require 1-2mil users which means we will owe Unity 160k to 360k
Well S*** ... we are now bankrupt

200k rev * 70% platform fees
leaves us with 140k then Unity bills us for (best case) 160k more likely 360k ... we are now in debt to Unity for 20-220k

Obviously, if this is true it means we simply can't use Unity no one can
same maths by the way ... if unity took 5% lets say or even 10% which ya na screw you but still

that would be 120k profit for us vs 220k debt for us ... do you see Unity why % rev share is okay but fee per unit is not an option

 

But does that actually refer to WebGL builds hosted somewhere? Or is that referring to distributing the game via a site like Itch.io? It's not clear. I'm guessing it's the former, but it's still just a guess. God I hope it's not the former, because you're right. There's no way they'd ever be able to reliably track that stuff.

 

makes two of us. over 500 of my assets are paid for. i've spent a fair amount of money on unity, but this is where it ends for me too.

 

Speaking of which did you see in the FAQ section for Unity Personal where it will deactivate after 3 days without Internet?



https://unity.com/pricing-updates

 

It's awful and I have a lot of questions. Even if Unity c-level changes its mind and changes these conditions, let's say, from "per-install" to "percent from revenue" - it's still pretty bad news. You gave only 3 months of notice for devs! How I can be sure in the future that another decision like this will not be made?! How I can trust you now? What positive changes were made last time to increase the price?

 

Seems like a really short sided approach to increase revenue. Looks like they want some of that big mobile money, but it appears that effort is going to damage the mid level and below. I can't imagine any new user wanting to use Unity knowing that potential success could be detrimental.

Won't be surprised to see an exodus of users. And that will effect everything with Unity, including its asset store. I can imagine right now Godot and Unreal are having an amazing amount of downloads, and Tim Sweeney is gathering his team on how to capture a huge amount of developers discouraged by this news.

 

The removal of the Plus tier might actually be a genius move in disguise.

The reason? They've rendered the Unity brand so toxic, that paying $2k/user/yr seat fees for Pro is now worth it just to remove the hated 'Unity' brand from the splash screen

 

Better yet, haters can buy a game, spam reinstall it a bunch of times to cost the developer money and then refund it.

 

Can we please get Microsoft to buy out Unity?
15B market cap... that's play money for them!

We need some professionals that know how to build developer tooling to run the show here.
They can sell Weta and get rid of all the other crap that isn't relevant to what devs actually need.
Focus on the core editor experience, make it usable and not crash every 20 minutes.

Charge for the Backend-Services, merge them with PlayFab.
Fits perfectly into their portfolio and Satya is the exact opposite of whatever clownery is going on here.

 

i think they are going for a "lower the value of the company, so someone will buy it" play

 

Should be a month...

 

Doesn't this Make Unity the King makers? They gather data and can arbitrarily decide who pays what on different games? This is some real Orwellian sh*t right here. Big Brother Unity can fudge a few numbers and dip their hands into your bank account. This reeks of collusion with other entities to throttle who succeeds and who fails in the marketplace.

This is a nightmare.

 

Wow, I thought forcing people from Unity Mediation to LevelPlay mediation without the ability to test in-engine was the dumbest move Unity ever made. Good job 1-upping your game.

To be honest, this change doesn't affect me yet because I can hardly scratch the required earnings per year but I can guarantee I'm going to start learning Godot starting today.

 

yeah just switch to Godot

 

We are tomorrow getting in touch with lawyers. And will ask if this is legal at all. We invest 8 years in development of architecture around the engine.

Its monopolystic move

 

Almost at the top of hacker news... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37481344

One user there points out how Unity also is charging by the minute for cloud build, but Unity also controls the amount of time takes for a build to complete, so their disincentivizing speeding up their own technology and charging more for it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37483465

 

1000 Comments

 

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/unity-to-start-charging-fee-pegged-to-game-installs

From what i read, you have to meet BOTH threshold. Am i right?
So 200k in last 12 months and at least 200k install since beginning of the game for unity personal (which cost nothing).
Most serious game studio are with unity pro to remove the logo. Which mean 1m last 12 month has to be made AND 1m install total in life. I mean its alot of money and install... Its no small company and a succesful game.

Now what would it cost for a company like this?
Your making 1 million a year+
You have to pay 0.01 cent by install, but you need to have capped 1m install already. If i could double that, 1 million install * 0.01 cent, thats 10,000$.
Out of a 1 millions.. its not that crazy.

Now if you are using unity personal, and made at least 200k a year, you still have unity logo (i personally dont know any succesful game with unity logo), and again we double the number of install just for the calcul, thats 200,000 * 0.20 cents. Thats 40k$ you gotta pay in the year. So you need to be at max 2 in the team, with a succesful game, and still on unity personal like a dumb ass cause you should really get unity pro which cost only 2k... That would become 200k * 0.01 cent (and you still need to meet the unity pro threshold, we aint there yet, so we dont count that, you just pay 2k for unity pro and save 38k).

So until you make 1 million in cash a year, getting unity pro at 2k a year should save you all this problems until your company is rich enough to pay 10k out of a million every year.

Its not that bad.

 

Maybe I will, I will go the wireshark route someone pointed me to first.

Basically if you do file > new project and don't add in any analtyics/services, I see nowhere a Unity game is communicating with the outside world to report an install.

Installing charles proxy will be adding in a tool that, by default, communicates with an online system so not sure that's going to help any but I understand where you're coming from.

I just want to know how, without me opting in with anything, how is Unity seeing my installs?

 

So, either "installs" are a *metric* or they're a number that Unity can just pull out of its arse.

"Estimating install numbers" is a HUGE red flag, they're basically admitting that they can report whatever number they want without any proof to back that claim.

Riccitiello at his finest.

 

Thanks for point!

It looks like developer related issue - still crazy! But many customers want the game without internet connection on game user side. Impossible to track or simply force internet access to all and loose customers.

 

I kept trying to learn UE and coming back to Unity, and thought I had finally given up on the UE pipe-dream... But this finally resolves that. I've uninstalled Unity and I'm not coming back, no matter what. Even if Unity reverses this decision. There's just been too many crazy decisions lately, and it's obvious they're going to keep coming. I'm done.

 

So in the past you need to pay if your company used Unity engine and earned 100 000 last year in revenue and no matter the source (even if it was not from selling Unity games). Did this change?

Imagine Valve, that earns billions in revenue, and released The Lab made with Unity which are free and had millions of installs. So Valve should pay thousands of dollars to Unity now?

 

When was the last time Unity made an announcement that was received positively?

2015 perhaps?