Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Read here
https://twitter.com/flassari/status/1701637581321183274

here is the relevant part

In short not retroactive BS
You agree to a TOS when you agree to it, it remains in effect until you agree to a new one ... which yes you may have to do to get an update but Unity is trying to apply this s-hit show retroactively to projects in flight and already released projects

That is the HUGE breach of trust
not that they changed it ... the change they made is stupid but we could press them to add a %5 cap and it would be fine

But to apply it to all existing projects released and inflight should be illegal because its absolutely I violation of trust

 

As long as John Riccitiello is CEO the enshitification process will continue.

 

Unigine is far more superior to unity in terms of graphics, it lacks tools like the unity animator but that will change in the future they are already working on it.

 

So... I've just booted Stride. Made a simple project & spinned some rocks around in the scene.
And honestly. I'm impressed.
They've got C# 10 and async scripts out of the box. With async callbacks supported directly from engine components.

UX is a bit rough. Alike Unity 5/2017 era. But it works. Its 3d, 2d, and C#. Android / IOS via Xamarin.
Still missing an ECS/DOD approach though. Maybe I'll just grab a C# package for it (or just implement a simple one).

Its FOSS. No install fees. Everything is yours forever.
For a small-medium indie size game - its a treat.

 

lol, no.

 

Nah, I feel if Riccitiello left today, nothing would change, the problems are endemic now.

 

If Unity is able to change that clause, what makes you think Unreal can't change it? TOS is can be changed at any time giving only 90 days. UE is not your friend. None of these companies are.

Unity has never done me wrong or anyone I know, same with UE. You can choose your corporate overlord at your discretion. Too many people on this thread seem to believe that UE is some sort of holy beacon. They take 5 percent of your income, way more than Unity. But if that's what these people want, then switch over. [shrug]

 

Unigine is my fave right now, it is a monster... it has been free for 2 or 3 years now, sadly no mobile, just pc, so i can use it for my main project... but i'm happy with it, also, check out the art demos and in the forum there is a couple of amazing demos too

 

Well, that's the thing. Unity aren't allowed to change it, but because they have binding arbitration, your chances of getting this in front of a judge are limited. Unreal -doesn't- require binding arbitration, so I can literally just pay a lawyer to draft a letter saying 'if you take me to court, I'm going to win and I'm going to make you pay my costs.'

If you tried to get Unity in front of a judge you might eventually get there, but you have to pay for the binding arbitration first. and even if you win, you're still stuck using a technology stack from a vendor that is actively trying to harm you.

 

Most claims here regarding devs going bancrupt from the new fee model are just as "trust me bro" >_>

 

If you're fixating on the '20 cents' rather than the 'we can change the price structure to whatever we want, whenever we want' you're probably not setting yourself up for success.

 

and yet, for some strange reason, I trust them a lot more, lol...

 

And obviously we put more trust in our corporate overlords than other indie devs.

 

That's the natural risk of supplier companies you are dependent on.

Yeah, certain types of people often trust the echochamber of social media for some reason. It is one of the biggest problems in our generation.

In every case it's weekend, thus hardly any chance for a new statement by Unity - therefore let's do something else than pointlessly discus here
See ya next week!

 

Nah, he's just the puppet. With some "interesting" thoughts about the gaming industry, but just a puppet after all, if the board of directors wouldn't agree with this, none of this would happen. That includes David Helgason.

You don't discuss anything here. You are mocking other developers who may have their business threatened by an absolutely bullshit fee, planned and every sign shows that will be executed poorly.

See ya next week, hope you will be able to show some more empathy towards fellow developers instead of a soulless multi-billion dollar corporation destroying smaller businesses and disturbing livelihoods.

 

No, it's really not. Unreal has language in their terms that explicitly exclude this predatory behaviour (and Godot is FOSS). But even if you did buy into the faulty premise that all companies are able to unilaterally change contracts at will and you have no recourse, that doesn't explain why you would continue to work with the company that is actually doing that right now.

It's very much "well, these other companies might hurt me, so I'm sticking with the one that is actively hurting me right now".

 

Trust me bro. You'll be making a million and one dollars. Your mobile game will be getting two billion downloads. That means you owe Unity $400,000,000! That's just outrageous!

Trust me bro. You need to ditch Unity along with these other totally smart and sophisticated developers with decades of experience when companies that are totally real. Join the crowd bro!

 

You have no idea how much you're going to owe Unity. In a few months time, they might see a media company they desperately want to buy and suddenly everyone is paying a 10% revenue split plus an hourly run time fee.

 

Engines like Unigine start to public in their prices tables this: no runtime fee.

 

Of course! It's so much better to get cucked by Unity

 

Problem is not the current number. Its the potential future changes to TOS.
If you think they'll stop on these values - that's not going to happen. Once trust broken - always trust broken.

Its the risk some are willing to take. Most definitely won't, myself included.
Reputation damage is already done. Even if everything is reverted right now.

Project investors will be constantly reminded about that Unity install fee. Which will drive the choice to different engines.

Unfortunately, we've got Adobe Flash'ed.

 

My advice to everyone asking "which engine":

DON'T marry yourself to any one engine. Learn the principles behind the tech that can translate between engines, and learn how to move fluidly between engines. Learn how to write your games using interface-based techniques that allow you to separate your game logic from the engine it is on, so that switching engines mid-project is possible in an emergency such as this.

Nothing in life is guaranteed. Years down the road, Epic could turn into a really bad actor. Back in 2010, I would never have envisioned that it would end like this with Unity. Even open source choices are not safe from the chaos of time, as support can languish as contributors turn over.

Stay agile, and evaluate your engine decision on a per-project basis. Don't just stick with the same engine because that's what you've always done, because both the tech and the deals offered change over time.

 

Mrs. Putin wants your bank account number to know...

I would not bet on them if it were the only engine on the market.

 

we did this years ago... it work out well!

 

yes i feel this aswell, the name of unity will become so dirty it will be like the term "NFT", to the point that it will be better to lie about what engine you are coding in if you use unity

 

This is sound advice. My personal experience as a developer for 30+ years is, assume your next project is going to happen in a completely new environment and language. Because probably, it will.

 

After years of learning unity only as my beginning to programming and game dev, I've learned this the hard way. I'm learning Godot now, maybe will take a dive into unreal. But learning unity has not been a total waste, it has taught me many concepts I can bring to other engines like learning Godot much more easily.

Woot 200 pages, here's to 100 more!

 

haha, yes. this may be true. and then people will not buy your product, knowing dev may not have incentive to keep it in the store and it can be removed anytime making re-installs/updates impossible.

 

Its definitely not a wasted experience.
Getting used to generic concepts and terms in any engine usually translates to other ones to some degree.

Its not the same experience as just opening game engine first time.
You know what to search for and which questions to ask. Heck, there's even a ChatGPT now, and finally its useful.

 

If you can tell me what our number of installs will be over the next 15 years that would be great.

 

Maybe they have access to Unity's "model" and can see the future.

 

Unity while selling its new fee structure :



@lastprogrammer , @DragonCoder (and a few others) reaction :

 

I think the issue is that there is nothing close to Unity in usability, that i think is one of the main reasons they can afford to take such liberties and half thought out announcenents.

But i am sure did not expect that backlash, so hopefully will reconsider many of terms and make it simpler

 

im not sad that unity killed itself, im sad about my codebase

 

Unity is a tool not a religion
Learning a new tool is never as hard as the first
And what you know from Unity will carry over to some degree, and what you learn by knowing more than 1 tool will help you design better

I would suggest Unreal for learning I find Godot a bit underbaked at least for our needs but ya sample as many as you can there is O3DE, Stride and a few others worth a look

 

I guess another effect of this policy is you can never make one of your old games free to the world, once it went above thresold? Nice.

 

Wow are you off. You’re not just spreading misinformation, you’re damaging people in the process, people like yourself. I used unity ads for my game, .10 to .20 would be great.

 

Um no
UE I would argue at this point is easier to get stuck into coming in raw/new to game dev

Unity was the indie darling but UE has been stepping up there
And no you do not need to touch C++ to get started with UE or even ever less you want
The about of logic you need to build to make your vision work in UE is FAR less than in Unity

Unity is frankly less an full tookit in comparison UE and more a framework

Dont get me wrong I am a tools developer and Unity is FAR more friendly to us in that regard but no as a game dev UE is frankly easier to get stuck into and has more mature and robust tools just right there at your finger tips

Wasn't that way 5-10 years ago but today ... ya UE I think has it
Unity is the legacy goto at this point so I think they made a hell of a miss calculation

 

Would be great if yall made a YouTube tutorial on the quickest ways to port your unity game to another popular engine. Maybe even include a link to a few example scripts?

 

You would be able to since once you're below the revenue threshold you theoretically wouldn't have a fee assuming their guesstimates are accurate.

The far bigger issue is that all old your games will now be subject to ever-changing terms and conditions for distribution that could in the future catch them in a revenue fishing net. Unity made a covenant with us previously that they would not make us accept new terms and could remain on old terms until upgrading to a new major version, but now they are trying to rescind that

 

Reimagined Unity Payment Model: When you develop games for the Pico 4 Store, how do you anticipate access to performance metrics within the Chinese market?

China has strict regulations regarding data privacy and the sharing of sensitive information, including user and financial data. Therefore, any access to performance numbers within the Chinese market may be subject to compliance with these regulations.

 

Hello, is there a way to port our purchased assets in Unity store to another engine?

Thanks.

 

In general, yes, we discuss this here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/can...e-i-purchased-in-another-game-engine.1492205/

I mean legally yes (mostly), but you will need to deal with any actual conversion if needed.

 

yes, this is the point. they lured devs to a dependant position and now exctracts value in maximum force. of course they have made calculations which portions of the customers can/will leave.

the backlash doesn't matter if it doesn't affect their business directly. and in short term it probably won't. and when it will, they have made the money they are looking for. they pretty much can't lose here, which is sad for so many devs.

 

I'm not a big developer and also probably never going to reach the 200k threshold, but this announcement makes me consider switching my long-term hobby project to another engine or just dump it completely.

Who knows what changes will come after that. Maybe the personal tier will be removed at some point...

 

Its really not only the stupid pay per install, thats meant to target those 1 billion $ a month apps.
Its them changing the rules on the fly. They had it written in their old TOS that you can stay on an Editors Version and keep the TOS in place. They added that so they cant do what they are doing now. And they still want to go through with it. Legally they may be on the right side. But its like ok so nothing Unity says anymore will be taken for granted.

Everyone is fine if Unity takes a bigger cut to support itself. But only so far that they dont damage the whole ecosystem.
We do not need 80% of the S*** unity has bought the last 10 years.

And having a runtime fee, in your game install is F***ing insanse.
It will definitly kill this engine in the long run. Its a stupid metric and everyone should just run. A run time fee per install. Who in the world comes up with something stupid like that. It makes Unity garbage software instantly. All the games made with it will be considered garbage software. Everyone should be outraged, they will definitly kill Unity with this.

 

The world is a scary place, but this is not true. They are different, but not less viable or usable. I can tell you, I hate Unreal with everything I have. Because I loved that Unity doesn't force you into one specific workflow for the most part, you can develop your own workflow and tools, but Unreal does. Artists like UE for this very reason more. They don't get easily confused how to do stuff if it's only one way.
But it is not ulterior to Unity, not by a long shot.

 

Unity doesn't need to phone home to know how many installs an app has. Instead of that they can just ask the dev to share these metrics for them. And because this new model mostly targets large mobile games so they only need accountants to check regularly for these games and us smol indie dev can just ignore them

 

I love how everybody is mocking Unity.

 

I'm observing first-hand that UE's workflow standardization is what is making it win not only in gaming, but in other production fields as well. By standardizing on best practice for workflow, it is much easier for teams to work together and much easier to onboard and ramp-up new team members. It's something I've really come to appreciate as I've made the transition from solo game developer to team game developer.