Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

I'm confident that both Bethesda & Blizzard have negotiated custom ToS that can't be changed unilaterally.
Unreal corp declaration hinted to that : "we aligned our general ToS on the best terms from private ToS negotiated by top developers".

 

Unity have already said - if a user puts your game on multiple devices - it'll count for each device - this would also mean if a User upgrades their PC/Device - that'll then count as a new device - even though you're not getting a new sale.

And of course - You're making the assumption that Unity will calculate installs accurately and will pick up 100% of pirated installs on your behalf.

Also, you're assuming for "Start-ups", that Unity will calculate the Revenue accurately (and will take Fully into account any discounted sales you run etc....).

And they haven't even communicated how they'd count revenue in the case of Free Apps that have IAP's as their source of income.

So, although it might be not so bad in your specific example

It is bad for any mobile dev that chooses not to use Unity's Ad's as their monetisation model.

Also, in regards to Unreal - you're missing out that they also do Custom royalty free licensing, which would prevent the 5% blowing out - so that example was also flawed.

 

Plus here as well. Not cool at all. I have 10 months of it left for the year. All my reasons are dead in the water. The only tangible benefit I had was making game startup 3 seconds faster by disabling unskippable splash screen. Nothing else in Plus or Pro interesting to me. That by itself wasn't enough to justify a monthly cost when I make $0 from Unity to begin with. So my own justifications of the expense were 1) support the engine I've used almost daily for 4 years and had planned (past tense) to spend many more years / forever continuing to use. 2) Keep myself motivated to spend more time on game dev with Unity because I'm paying money for it every month.

I'm winding down my Unity Engine projects already, will be spending very little time with it and will be around here less and less. I'll be spending the next 4 months with another engine I've already started to learn in the last 2 days (which I'm now pretty excited about as I get up to speed with it, honestly), and then either the remaining 4 months of my subscription continuing with that, or spent learning the other major engine I'm interested in.

When my subscription is about to end, which will be whatever August 2024 or so, if Unity (the business) has smartened up somehow I may continue to use it for some projects, but NEVER again will I "put all my eggs in one basket" assuming there's no way such a large force in the industry could turn on us like this overnight. I'll have decent skills with another industry-leading engine by then, possibly two, and be capable of moving forward regardless.

What a sick feeling to have to put all my plans on hold and sink almost a year of my life into learning new skills, tools, frameworks and workflows again. The number of times I've already had to do this is probably why. I chose Unity because I thought it would be the last time I'd have to. I feel so betrayed, especially after defending my choice of Unity, spending time helping other people up, creating a codebase and tooling I could build on indefinitely and so on. And this happens just as I've begun to leave "hobbyist" behind and started working on commercial titles.

It's one think to be called an idiot - I mean who cares what someone thinks anyway. It's another to be treated like one and made to look like one. I guess it turns out I really was, to be 100% dedicated and on board with these guys. I'll forever love the engine and have respect for the people who created it, have fond memories of my time here (mostly), appreciate the help I've had from others here, but the decisions made by those at the helm are despicable - and that's coming from a user who isn't personally being kicked into the gutter and spat on.

 

The runtime fee doesn't make any sense whatsoever to dev's who are in the free to play space. Not every download is guaranteed to return a financial reward to the dev so dev's could end up finding themselves paying for installs entirely out of their own pocket. Honestly the runtime fee is a real stupid idea - a revenue share makes more sense to me then this nonsense.

 

Remember: no matter how or when they changed rules, they will change them again and again with no prior advise, and everybody will have to adjust. So in the end we are all attached to a company that can do whatever they want and destroy entire companies. It's not a matter of 2 cents or 20 cents or whatever. It's a matter of confidence with Unity.

 

This!
They have no problem lying to your face, getting you on board, and then holding you hostage. Honestly, John needs to have been fired yesterday. He is a despicable human being.

I really hope we see continued media coverage on this. It would make it more likely for the board to call a vote to remove the CEO.

 

I know it's a bit early, but any unity asset store devs notice a change in sales/page views/etc.?

 

Yup, but the want to kill AppLoving, and a revenue share will not do that.
I don't understand why a lawer didn't tell them that this is a bad ideas. MS lost in court for giving a browser free, they are intentionally trying to kill a competitor...

 

Can I get a link/copy of this spreadsheet?

 

The best article I have read yet about the situation.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unitys-self-combustion-engine-this-week-in-business

 

I'd like to ask if older Versions are also affected. As far as I heard, this is a change in the EULA, which seems to affect 2023, maybe 2022 and upwards. So if I would use Unity 2021, am I still affected by these fees, or do I have to switch to Godot? I can live with Unity having itself torpedoed into oblivion if it affects only versions from 2022 and upwards.

 

Then you didn't look very hard or are a shill. Free to play mobile games supported by Ads and IAPs...

*via occasoftware calculator.

Example 1
Number of Lifetime Installs = 100m
Revenue per Install = $0.02
Unity Tier = PRO
Lifetime Revenue = $2m
Unity Lifetime Runtime Fees = $1m (even more if installs Unity state are inaccurate)
Unreal Lifetime Royalty Fees = $50k
UNITY WANT 50% OF YOUR REVENUE

Example 2
Number of Lifetime Installs = 10m
Revenue per Install = $0.08
Unity Tier = FREE
Lifetime Revenue = $800k
Unity Lifetime Runtime Fees = $1.5m (even more if inaccurate)
Unreal Lifetime Royalty Fees = $0
UNITY WANT 187.5% OF YOUR REVENUE

 

The numbers are really irrelevant, the idea to charge a user for an action that a third party is doing that you have no control over and no way to stop and it can be done limitlessly, is so absurd the entire concept is a clown fiesta.

Then there is the part that those number are not there to stay, next year the threshold will be 0$ and everyone is just charged x install, so anyone that ever released a unity runtime is done.

Like a massive honeypot in the works for over a decade.

 

Unity Team, again same question:
```
We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes.
```

We want to understand how this "composite model" works?
How do you exactly get the data?

Based on GDPR and CCPA ( AS YOU SAID YOU ARE IN COMPLIANCE)

We as Data Owners ( The right owners of the games) are responsible for Data and we need to know how do you process it ( as DATA PROCESSOR ) to which we ( by the law ) don't have to grant you the access at all.

We are Data Owners, Unity is Data Processors.
Unity have to receive the data from us, we need to share it, and we have to know how they process it to inform our users. If they got some sort of mechanic to track our users without our knowledge, it's malware and it's illegal.

 

I believe Unity's employees have been persuaded to think that Unity is short of money, and that it's the only option available. Furthermore, I think Unity's executives don't grasp the problem, so I'll explain it using something everyone can understand:

McDonald's acquires Pepsi and Coca-Cola, pays its executives 200 million dollars, and tells its customers that it's short on funds.

So, McDonald's raises its $1 burger to $100, discontinues other burgers (but adds extra pickles and cheese).

Customers are informed that starting next week, in addition to the $100 for the burger, they will be charged $0.1 per bite after three bites. They will also be charged for bites of burgers they've eaten for years (with a discount for 10 or more bites).

Naturally, customers want to know how McDonald's can know the number of bites taken from the burger, to which McDonald's responds that they have a foolproof system to count them, but they won't disclose how it works.

McDonald's states that if you wear their T-shirt every day and tell all your friends how great McDonald's is, they won't charge you per bite.

By the way, even if you don't buy any burgers, McDonald's says they will retroactively charge you for bites taken from burgers in the past.

Clearly, customers say they will stop buying from McDonald's and go to other shops.

Within a week, McDonald's has zero customers and zero revenue. They fire all their employees and shut down the company, while all their executives and CEOs receive 200 million dollars each for closing the company.

Customers no longer trust that they won't be charged per burger bites in the future, so they never return (even if the new rules are reversed and assurances are made that it won't happen again).

The customer ALWAYS decides, and if trust is lost, it takes YEARS to recover.

Well, if employees still don't understand what will happen to their company, they need to learn the lesson by experiencing it themselves.

 

A better example would be that you make a burger and sell it for 2$, then every time your customer smells the burger you get charged 20c.
The customer is gone, he has his burger, you don't know where he lives and he can constantly keep smelling the burger for the rest of his life.

 

F***ING UNITY

 

About Godot I don't see things clear. Too much involved in getting money. That's not the problem; the problem is that I've seen projects going down because of the main staff leaving and no more money support or both. Going from Unity to Epic Unreal now. I know Unreal it's a corporation and has its own problems; but at least they don't change and can't change the rules for a version of Unreal.

It's important to clarify that I'm not against Godot; I only have lived too much moments where a free project is gone because support dissapears from one day to another.

 

I say this at least 50 times a day, and it never is actually Unity's fault.

But this time it is.

 

""Right everyone, the plan is MONEY! I hear there's a way that we know how many installs have happened. Tell the nerd department to use that somehow. Announce it immediately."

"But sir...."

"Shuddup. Wen money?"

 

I also want to know this!

 

It says #9981 for me now. Maybe Unity are deleting posts they don't like

 

If I thought royalties are bad then I would not be moving to Unreal.

 

@Tautvydas-Zilys

So yeah looking at it, not only was my prediction your lawyer is completely wrong, to the point you might want to explore alternative representation... there is a lawfirm agreeing that the 9th circuit decision in 2006/2007 agrees FULLY that Unity's changes to the TOS are ILLEGAL.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sher...development-activity-7108110372053606401-qcKQ

You can use the excuse "Well... Californian law..." again, California law STATES you CANNOT change the TOS without consent from us. This is NOT a fee increase this is a change in the model COMPLETELY. And your previous TOS which you deleted would sink you in hours going to court and I am thinking of actually getting legal representation unless you can point me to a department/contact where I can confirm, officially, that I and my studio will operate on the previous license TOS and agreement without updating any further.

 

It's not legal, looking more and more into it, California 100% would NOT consider this legal and there are a couple of lawfirms exploring the potentiality of taking this to court. Because Unity's "No class action suite" clause means NOTHING in California... that, too, is illegal there.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sher...development-activity-7108110372053606401-qcKQ

 

How can I stop people from installing my free app?

 

Dude I'm not paying a single cent, they can bill me till the cows come home, I'm upgrading to 2075 if i want to and will ignore bills from this shake down

 

In africa we call that complaining with a white bread under the arms.. Translated rich man's complaining about being rich

 

Don't worry, he underestimates by an order of magnitude how much it takes to migrate a solid game from one engine to another.

 

Don't forget about cities skyline 2, valheim, subnautica, NO MAN'S Sky these devs will be hit hard

 

No man's sky uses a custom engine, not Unity.

 

And some apologists here suffer from stockholm syndrome...u will accept being abused .

 

Paying for a projected number of installs, regardless of whether they're over or under the actual count, is like visiting a grocery store and being charged for a guessed quantity of items, irrespective of what's in your cart.

 

How can a free app make 200k?

 

I've just heard C# on GODOT doesn't work with Android. Are there gotchas like that which will ruin porting across all engines?

 

you can delist it, but people already owned it can still install it. that's the "beauty" of this measure.

 

I just checked the Unity Analytics for my game, to get an idea of how many installs I got so far.

1st, let's have a little laugh by checking the tooltip for "Daily new users" :



It states :

So there, they say that only App Stores can know the number of installs or downloads.

Magically, since 4 days, now Unity also knows these numbers. Woh, they're good !

Moreover, the "Daily new users" is twice bigger than the daily new users derived from "Monthly new users". Both have the same tooltip :"players that have sent data for the 1st time". So already there, they are unable to count things correctly. How could we trust them to count any better, without true analytics (they'll use a "model"), and when they'll get more money by getting things wrong..?!?

And for the little story, I have almost 2 installs per purchase if "Monthly new users" is right (and a high refund rate, so that's more than 2 installs per paid customer); and 4 installs per purchase if "Daily new users" is right. (so 5 installs per paid customer, after removing refund)

 

Latest Dev version does apparently

 

People will probably bite my head off for this but here goes..
Firstly I am no expert. I don't pretend to be a finacial expert, lawyer the best dev ever. I am yet to make a game that break even. So maybe I am bad at it. I do enjoy it and unity allowed me to do it.

Why are people not trying to be constructive?

2 factors at play here:
*unity needs to make money
*devs feel betrayed.

So what can be done to fix these steps?

Here is a few ideas I have. I might be wrong but I will give them anyway.
1. Have a different free to play model. e. g. A per micro transaction fee after criteria met instead of installs(different amount of course)
2. Allow free version to disable the default logo or have seperate charge for that. Expecting someone to pay pro license fee to remove it is not fair esp if the game makes no profit.
3. Demos are exempt of install count
4. Explain how tracking will be done. It feels to some you are going to force us to ship spyware with the games.

This is just a few ideas maybe smarter people can improve and add better?

 

It's a known bug that happens if you have Dedicated Server module installed..
everything in this engine needs a workaround to work

that's why I'm afraid to trust their tracking system

 

Same goes for unreal

 

This mostly affects "freemium" games, which are a vast majority of mobile games. They make money from other sources, (like ads, extra levels, skins, trading cards, in game purchases or loot boxes)

 

You seriosly need to educate yourself on some basic economics. Solo devs with 200k gross revenue can barely afford to pay themselves a small salary.
This has absolutely nothing to do with being a rich man.

 

so they just left everyone hanging here, no new info since thursday?


unity values,
well at least the go bold & fail, then go bold and fail again (and again) holds!

 

I get that but it is a f2p game then not free game. Micro transactions adds etc means it makes money and is not free from the devs perspective (sorry not English so might be wording it weird)

 

I have an idea:
Release Lite free version with only few levels(no IAP) and release a paid full version.

and in the lite version we introduce player to try full version.

 

Put the financial model aside entirely because even if they fully withdrew the proposed changes, it doesn't fix the underlying problem.

How can Unity rebuild trust with a community after repeating the exact thing it promised it wouldn't do again a few years ago? Is there even a way that someone looking to start a multi-year project can go 'ok, I can definitely trust Unity and I'm sure they won't try to unilaterally amend our contract for a third time'?

 

true and I personally HATE epic, I use epic to try some games and then bought them on steam. That much I hate epic.
But I might be forced to use Unreal instead (already downloaded it and bought some books) because ATM Unity policy is just worst. And to be worst than Epic It's kinda hard, at least in my mind.

 

I am ok with a royalty that I can understand. It needs to be fair and it needs to be based on revenue, profits or sales.

 

If I sell 200k copies of a steam game that means a success? Not barely breaking even. If it is mobile then clarify that yes I understand mobile rage but that does not achieve anything. Suggest improvements! These people on this forum have the right to be upset unity did something bad. Acting like petulant children throwing your toys out of your Cot does not achieve everything. Why not be constructive rather than destructive that will get no one anywhere. Yes protest, yes let them know you are upset, but offer a solution. That is how negotiation to achieve a goal work. Not.. I don't like this you are bad and so is anyone that disagree with me.