Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

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Will installs in virtual environment count as new installs as well?
I was just imagining someone running one of those Android Emulators and installing a game in different emulated devices, if this counts, well, this means they can possibly "install-bombing" the game by just changing the emulated device.
And how exactly Unity would keep track/detect if its a real or virtual/emulated device?

 

Excluding some of the actually nasty responses, no. "Not that high" is still much bigger than "none" as it currently is, and they don't need to take 100% of your revenue for it to be bad. While I've nothing against paying for stuff that gives me value (and Unity does give me value) keep in mind that plenty of businesses have done their planning, budgeting, costing, pricing, etc. based on the existing model as opposed to this newly announced one, so there may legitimately be little or no room to squeeze this into margins for some.

Plus, that's ignoring the piracy / cyber-attack risks over which we have no control.

Edit: Plus, that's all ignoring the bigger, fundamental issue: Unity are attempting to retroactively change a long-standing agreement on everyone.

 

Yeah I'm waiting on an official announcement, but the context is apparently some unity execs had an NDA filled meeting with some top developers (among us) devs being one of them. So I guess we shall see
https://x.com/FreyaHolmer/status/1702763041123684601?s=20

 

Its not true and does not even make sense.

 

Yeah, it is. And spending too much time online was hurting my productivity, so i cut the cord.

Also, why should i have to log on now, and let unity track me? Oh.. i see, retroactive ToS again.

 

Plus, that's all ignoring the bigger, fundamental issue: Unity are attempting to retroactively change a long-standing agreement on everyone.

 

Does everyone think that more answers are likely to come on Monday California time?

 

Is everyone waiting to be 10k?

Probably.

 

Thanks for the benefit of any doubt, and calling me 'intelligent'

As to whether I still believe, not so fast, that's clearly a trick question, i'm not falling for that, you can't make me (j/k)

My problem is yes I can totally read that graphic both ways, depending on how I frame it. I certainly do not think you are wrong in how you present it either and will admit it seems equally if not more likely that it might be correct.

However my point was not who was correct or not, the point was leaving such ambiguity in place ( from the beginning), in a graphic of all places! The most obvious way for Unity to have been clear about it, from the outset was to have simply extended their later written example to include multiple months.

More over it provides me a greater level of concern over the whole plan when Unity's announcement 'blog' is able to have multiple contradictions, ambiguities and plain bad takes that they later walked back. It just does not inspire any confidence they know what they are doing.

Anyway I hope you can understand why I brought up why I think there are two camps to this specific issue, its not to claim one or the other is correct, but to highlight that it was so easy for different camps to evolve from a single graphic.

also - Yay page 200, damn missed 10k, but i'll take 9999, it keeps me under the threshold

 

Unless it's "CEO fired immediately, all changes reverted 100%. We are deeply sorry. We will bring back the concept of eternal TOS", then I don't care anymore.

Godot all the way. I don't know if the engine is half as good as Unity, but at least they haven't changed TOS retroactively to backstab everyone.

Edit: Wow! 10000th reply! Which makes the post doubly true.

 

Congratulations, you have the 10k post in the thread.

 

Yes, but a few people all posted at once.

 

I don't know if you saw my post after I edited it once I went back to re-check that example again, but there's really no doubt about it. The example is of a game with 5M installs getting charged for 100,000 installs in a month at the highest tier.

 

Yeah, I regretted to post, because I was on timeout when the opportunity came.

 

If we don't hear anything on Monday or Tuesday. The likelihood of a rollback decreases. They said that they would add value in November. The policy does not go into effect until January 1, 2024

 

Well, from 5% to .1%. But yeah.

 

Yeah the longer it goes the less chance of a roll back, if anything because of how bad ( at least from my point of view ) it would look in a business and for the share market viewpoint. I'm already thinking that the roll back isn't happening and I'd be amazed if my 'must haves' will be addressed at this point ( TOS, retroactive old games, installs ).

 

10k replies and 9 likes... wow... I've never seen such severe ratio.

 

I was thinking about it. So i reached 200k downloads, delete game from idk Steam or Google and somebody reupload apk etc of this game. Should i still pay for it?

 

The answers will come sporadically over time, probably without major fanfare because they were stealth updating the FAQ all day after the announcement. This plan was clearly revealed prematurely before they had everything ironed out. Which is why all the taunting, insulting, and threatening Unity employees is tacky. This was purely a failure of executives and PR. Not the rest of Unity's thousands of employees

 

Did we ever find out what happened to Mike-Geig? Is he still waiting in the airport since Wednesday or was the plane diverted by John R to an undisclosed bunker and hes being tortured, or knowing John, sexually harassed?

 

Assuming you also make 200k, for the next 12 months if someone were to upload your game somewhere, and it be pirated, you will still have to pay for the installs.

 

The one part where this hurts the most is that this will mostly remove Unity from being viable as a game engine for devs who are looking at releasing pleasing small projects for barely any incomes. (Going for quantity over price/users)

The cool thing about Unity (and the thing that brought me to it) was that I could work on a small scale project just for the fun of it. Some project went really close to become some real important commercial project, but at that time Unity had its technical issues & lacking with specific types of builds and I decided to release those games for free instead.

Let's say that instead of releasing those for free, I would have sold those game for $1 each.
Well, one of those game have been played over 8M times by over 300K different users in 7 years.

If I was to release that particular game (with the fixes of course) at $0.99 on mobile and PC as an app, I might have sold less than the amount required for my (currently low) revenues to reach the 200K threshold, but that could have ended with also with more than 200K installs and, then, I would have to pay 20%-40% of that small bit of money to Unity on a bill later.
(I know it wouldn't have been 300K sales, but it could still amount for 200K+ installs if for example 50K bought it and installed on 4+ devices over the time.)

Especially with the "per install" strange metric used. In today's world where statistic shows that over 62% of the smartphone users changes their phone every 3-4 years, that's basically like a subscription with a cost based on the user-base that renew every 3-4 years, but where you might only make the money once, unless you flag your app with advertising to counter balance the costs.

Then I might have to pay as much as 34% of it as individual's revenues taxes by the start of each year.
I'm not counting the rent nor the electricity bill or the ever-increasing Internet bill nor the food.

This pricing policy basically pushes me to put less love in my game's state and more in the idea of pushing as many games out as possible even if the quality is down the drain as long as each game as a slice of fun to them.

In other words, this new price policy is prone to basically turn the fun and engaging world of video game development with Unity into a game of sweatshop and quick-game making just for the requirement of outperforming the never ending cost of new installs.

Either that or it will promotes
• The removal of games from stores once a game made with Unity reach its near-EoL cycle.
• No more 70% off on Steam for Unity games because the install fee might only cut too deep.
...

Wait a sec...

Actually, now that I think about it, there's actually one way of circumventing around this new fee, considering the recent changes published. The game installed from subscription services are not counted in the install count, right?

Well well... What if we launch our own subscription service?

What if a bunch of devs/companies were to group together and share the revenues generated by a subscription system that allowed players to play a series of games made by said devs/companies?

Wait... Wait another damn sec!

What about game funded via subscriptions services such as Patreon?
Put 2+ games accessible from a subscription on Patreon and this, legally speaking, becomes a subscription service like Gamepass on Xbox, albeit for a much smaller volume of games so void of the fee.

Well, wouldn't that be bad, right?

 

Oh, you mean the one dude on the thread spamming taunts, out of the 5000 other respondants.

You are so virtuous, your righteous indignation inspires me! I will be brave like you!

I KNOW THIS MIGHT BE UNPOPULAR TO SAY, BUT IM GOING TO SAY IT ANYWAY:


Kicking puppies is WRONG!

 

No. They are all too busy getting on planes and about to lose service. But they will get back to us when they land. Until then just don't worry they have it all under control!

 

Get lost troll.

 

Thank you, I'm sure your maturity and professionalism makes you the ideal role model and defacto leader at your work place.

 

There was no master plan, this was primarily an effort to extract value from the larger mobile players and also create a situation where devs were forced to move away from AdRoll. It exploded in their faces hilariously and now they’re in 100% “say anything to make the pain stop” mode, which will just make it worse. They done ******** up.

 

Urrgghh, I've read and re-read that damn example so many times now and come away with different interpretations!

For example, it says 'Let’s look at the game’s installs from the last month', but the fact that its at $2m and 5m installs means the month they are looking is highly unlikely be the first month it exceed both thresholds, as the month only has 300k installs. I think you could dream up a way that somehow it does $1m+ on 300k installs but it would be reaching. In which case if its not the first month then it clearly shows the fee tier has reset - as you say.

But then I read this

Note that this example shows just the fee for the month in question. Fees will likely vary month to month based on the previous month’s installs, including the potential for months with no charge.​

How can the fee vary month to month based on previous months installs if the fee tier is resetting? Sure fees will vary month to month as you never have exactly the same number of installs, but how does the 'previous month' come into it? Its not that you might drop below revenue threshold as that is mentioned secondary after the comma.

Again this is my point without very clear and explicit language ( like one would expect in a legal document ) along with examples from Unity I find it difficult to be sure of anything. Sorry not trying to be difficult, just honestly not sure I feel it is as clear cut as you do.

However I will say that anyone trying to manage and plan finances around this blog announcement MUST investigate and calculates the potential costs of both ways of looking this, to be sure they know what to expect. I am most definitely not advocating to only work off the 'cheaper' interpretation - that would be dumb.

 

Your subservience and acquiescence to anything foisted upon you regardless of past agreements makes you seem like the best employee one could hope for.

Want to come work for me?

The terms of service say you only have to lick my boots twice a day. A job you clearly would enjoy.

 

ANother positive outcome from this.

People will start reading ToS in apps before install . Unity the ultimate educator.

 

Where did this get announced?

 

Changes to pricing and Unity plans 2023 FAQ | Unity - look under Unity Personal Plan

 

The opposite when dealing with Unity. Don't even bother reading when starting your project because it will change before you ship. Just roll the dice.

 

LOL - looking at the personal Plan changes I noticed that one of the benefits is the 'Unity Asset Manager'. I'd never heard of it, and there was no link for it. So googled it, and its a package that is still in beta access and you have to request beta access to it.

 

I'm here to say hi only, Hi !

 

In all honesty, could just use google drive lol

 

Thank you

 

They refer to counting and charging for installs in the "prior" month in the example. Here they're saying "previous" instead of "prior", but in the same way, i.e., the charge will depend on how many installs there were in a month.

You're absolutely correct that it is all very poorly laid out and not in clear, legal terms, but you'd have to try very hard in to interpret what they're saying in a way other than the obvious in multiple places and multiple different ways to not appreciate that their intent is that a month's installs are counted and charged in isolation.

It would be the most extreme and disingenuous example imaginable if it were the first post threshold month in this scenario. It's almost hard to imagine how it could be possible with $2M in prior 12 months revenue and 5M installs.

 

Yup. Just look for the part that says they can change the ToS at any time, for any reason.

Clearly, the rest of the legalese is just to fool you into thinking anything more needs to be said.

 

The thing they could to to remove most of the pain is backtrack, huge apology outlining that they understand you dont change a deal you shook hands on when someone trusted you to begin the long process of developing a game.

 

It varies from month to month because it takes into account revenue in a 12 month period. Meaning every month that first month revenue is ignored and you replace it with this month's.

Once you hit the thresholds you can ignore the minimum install thresholds, since that one is basically one time only. The only one that goes down is revenue. Revenue is what counts on whether you pay for more installs.

You have to hit the revenue threshold every month again.

 

I work in a corporate environment for one of the largest companies in the world so as much as I know/fear it will end up as nothing more than a feel-good committee that has no teeth and no capacity to enact any real change, I do think we should also be demanding they form some sort of employee-led group that has direct access to senior leadership who's feedback is used in making decisions going forward to prevent this happening again.

Employees who have been with the company a long time and are in day-to-day operations positions in both the business and technical departments within the company. Not C-level people but Managers, Directors, and engineers in the trenches of the day to day who understand what makes the engine what it is and what their company's relationship with developers/customers is on a practical level. Who understand our needs and what is fair and equitable for us.

Right now everything is happening in the board room silo with people who have no real world experience outside of that environment. They don't understand this company or their customers. I can tell.

A boy can dream.

 

I wonder when that line was added!

 

While true, that's not what the example is saying. It's saying it varies month to month because the install count will be different month to month. What Noisecrime misinterpreted with "previous" month is that they are referring to how they will send you the bill in one month for the previous month's install count. Because they obviously need to wait for that month to have completed.

That's all they mean by "vary month to month based on the previous month’s installs".

It's just a semantic thing of thinking of being charged for the "current" month instead of always being charged for the "previous" month which is how they are phrasing it. If you think "current" then the "previous" month affecting it would be confusing, but they will never charge you for the "current" month until it is the "previous" month.

 

It is in every proprietary software eula or ToS, and has been for decades.

Its as common as the no liability for damage to your equipment clause.

It is used all the time for "updates to our privacy policy" pop ups you get from time to time on email services pr social media.

 

Did i miss 10 k party? This is sad..

 

When was it specifically added to the Unity EULA?

 

You know what?

I have rediscovered the motivation to create a game again after playing with Godot these last days.
I found most of the plugins I could need on github. Terrain, Ocean etc.

And the performance is not bad.
The possibility of using GDscript and C++ together along with the ability to alter the source code of the engine makes me feel safe performance wise.

 

Was it yesterday? Maybe the day before.