Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Yes, I also thought about godot and stride... But we should actually get together on a project and expand it, creating a good community without dispersing our forces.

 

Ok, as I investigated this topic a whole day, I can say the current management is greedy. I ran a post production company here in Finland for 15 years, and if I EVER was about to pull a stunt like this, the result would've been me fired. Never, EVER give a middle finger to your clients.

What I can see here, is a bunch of REALLY idiotic investments, greediness, and the fact the management / board has sold some of their shares before this announcement. Now the stock value drops. What I can also read between the lines, these people didn't listen what their OWN staff was trying to say. I have NO idea how the CEO or the board was selected, but if Unity has ANY chance to recover from this, it's going to be full management / board change.

I think these people are still living in a glass palace, like the management of Nokia before IPhone killed them. I personally followed Nokia phones going down from the drain, when we created TV adverts for them and talking with the designers while the first Iphone was released. The problem was the same; The management is SO full of themselves, they don't have to listen anyone. Well, you people, owner of the shares of Unity, what do you wanna do? Looking where this path goes or be wise? Up to you now.

This change doesn't effect my range, as I'm an indie having just enough to be ok. AND, I ask no more. As I'm an old fart, and my business arrangements are done wisely, I also have few layers as my friend. One was the head Layer of one of the biggest GSM operators here in Finland, dealing with multimillion international business sales, and yes, this new "arrangement" won't see the light of the day here what comes to the deleted Github TOS.

But, the way this was announced, what I can also read between the lines is the fact that the people asked to do it inhouse, were against it. Like any NORMAL human would be. So we ended up having a really shady description.

Also, reading about the Kill the App Lovin, "this new arrangement is not for you, if you use our Ad system we bought..." As Unity has approached some companies. How low can you go?
And hitting back for the companies when they approach you with a kinda "Ad strike"? ARE YOU THIS STUPID?

I know MOST of the Unity people are really REALLY good, and I thank ALL the support I've had during these years.
But for me, and hundreds of other indies, it's time to move on. Management, keep playing with your sand castle and hookup to all those mobile games. No wonder why the engine still sucks what comes to the look, if all the money goes buying pointless S***.

I'm releasing a game end of this year, and it's gonna be Unity 2018 under 2018 TOS, not going to give you a dime, and yep, we can court for it if you want to do it. After that, my new engine will be Unreal.



Epic Games is laughing their asses off about this, having few friends there. They watch the show with a popcorns...

 

I certainly DO NOT intend to use Unity on new projects. But I have a number of already released products that use Unity that I need to maintain. So some minimal relationship needs to be maintained to facilitate that, and it needs to run by the rules of the road that had already been established.

 

The funniest part of this thread has been watching Unity employees publicly profess their corporate Stockholm Syndrome.

Unity killed itself last week. There is no saving this. Run or be laid off as the zombie corpse of your employer shambles to a shadow of itself across the next few years. Layoffs are coming.

After years of broken promises and half-shipped tech dead ends, the desire to profit off app installs is hilariously naive.

Here's what is going to happen:

• Unity will be sued by several AAA's, including some who launch consoles, within the coming weeks. This will public, painful, expensive, and joyful for all but Unity. Their TOS explicitly said that the version you were on is what you could use under that TOS. Unity will lose, but it will take a year or more. Unity will be confused.
• Unity will be sued by EU devs. The devs will win. California law is not magic and does not supersede country laws. Unity will be confused.
• Devs will create software to block external calls within 24 hours of the launch of this magic tech. Unity will say blocking is against their terms and charge a penalty. Devs will have already loaded their accounts with locked credit cards, ones from Privacy.com, or dispute charges. Unity will be confused. (Remember kids: credit cards love you more than Unity!)
• Unity cannot see the revenue of its customers, nor does it have any right to this data. Unity has no ability to accurately estimate revenue information or installs. Ignore their requests. Unity will ignore your legal requests for install data, so beat them to the punch. Unity can try lawsuits against 1,000,000 companies, but their lack of focus will cost them. Do use analytics outside of Unity to easily prove their install numbers false. The money Unity hoped to enjoy will be used to litigate at scale. Unity will be confused.

The best thing we can do is to turn off auto-renew, finish what you're working on, and then hop off this dumpster fire.

It's been a fun decade. ✌️

 

More from the article:

A second ToS?

The April update is bad news for developers who unknowingly used the latest version of the Unity Editor since then, seemingly subjecting themselves to the new rules in the process. But projects created under older versions of the editor (and terms of service) might still be shielded by the old "keep your ToS" clause, right?

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. That's because the Unity Editor Software ToS (which has been getting lots of attention on Reddit and elsewhere) is supplementary to a wider Unity Terms of Service document that applies to all users of Unity's products and services.

Those superseding terms are much more liberal regarding Unity's rights to "modify the Agreement at any time and without prior notice," full stop. And there's no sign of the "keep your old ToS" clause here, either:

By continuing to access or use the Services after we have provided you with notice of a modification, you indicate that you agree to be bound by the modified Terms. If the modified Terms are not acceptable to you, your only recourse is to cease using the Services. (emphasis added)

In other words, if you don't want to be subject to the new rules, these overarching Unity terms suggest your only way out is to stop using Unity's services altogether (which seemingly includes distributing the Unity Runtime needed to install and play your game in the first place). What's more, these overall terms explicitly allow Unity to "increase, modify, or add new fees and charges for any of the Services from time to time by posting such changes to the Site or within the Services Panel" with at least 30 days' notice.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023...d-to-just-change-its-fee-structure-like-that/

 

Yep, most of us here can’t just leave the boat. That‘s why I will try to get some clarification regarding EU laws. I will post an update if I manage to get some helpful info..

 

Could you please provide a link to a unity project of your own that won't be affected by these terms? I'd like to run my own estimates on it.

 

On GDK we where already taken hostage a while ago, for me this is the last straw in camel's back. Even if they revert this policy there is no way to rebuild trust.

 

Awesome! Please keep us updated on your findings!

 

I have a few times declared unity will get its way in court.

And i believe it. I suspect most who disbelieve dont cared much about "privacy policies", so they never asked, "They cant do that can they?", with other companies like Google or Facebook. I have, many times, and eventually learned they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, when it comes to law.

However, what bothers me the most about people looking gor legal solutions, is it is like you just found out your spouse has been cheating on you, and instead of dealing with it, you start looking for a lawyer that can somehow force your spouse to start loving you again.

That said, i am sticking with unity until my project is done. I simply can not walk back six years on another engine. I already determined over a year ago to see it through on Unity, after multiple insulting moves by Unity.

So this all is a bit hypocritical.. ..i guess to further the analogy, i am staying married until the kids are 18.

I also wonder if any in my position are feeling anger on behalf of other unity devs who care way, way less. Like this is mostly going to affect mobile dev "jackpot winner" f2p. Games that go viral, that took maybe a year or two to dev at most. Not lifelong passion works.

I mean, if i were only six months to a year into a project, i would have switched long ago.

 

In my case it's the limited platform support.

 

I'm with most of you here. For some stuff it's too late to switch, but after that everything is on the table... We're wrapping up the first stage of development for HU-man Dungeons in a few weeks and then I'm going to invest a week to learn Godot. Unity won't see that loss of all this nonsense until much later...

 

Can anyone confirm that unity runtime is actually spyware?

 

It is clear that unity is in danger of going bankrupt in the future.

Who will buy it for a "nice price" after that. meta is the most fitting candidate with their VR agenda ... or maybe apple even.

 

You are right, because the core of the problem in a public company that does anti-consumer things is almost always the board. John has been running Unity for A LONG TIME, and while I am not here to say he made good decisions, he sure didn't make decisions like he has in the last few years. Everything dramatically changed after the public IPO. CEO's become beholden to the board. If they do not play ball, they are replaced. Simple as that. So whether or not Riccitiello liked this idea or not, he doesn't have much of a choice other than to A) Do what the board demands or B) Quit in protest. I think we all know which option shows the most character.

 

No. Unity hasn't told us anything about it aside from it doesn't violate GDRP. Speculation is it's just a data model that they're using to predict installs.

 

I don't see Apple buying it. Would not be in their interest to support all those other platforms like Android.

 

I've contacted them to get a price point for the engineering SDK. It's around $8k per year but you have a minimum purchase order of 2 (so 16k USD).

 

I agree, i was mostly refering to the productivity issue, e.g when tried to run Unreal on my laptop it felt like crawling comparing to Unity, i could hardly work at all.

So from an editor usability standpoint seems Unity has the edge, as it seems to fly comparing

About the workflow, for sure i would also prefer Unity for the mentioned reasons, but that indeed is a matter of preference.

 

it would get way worse, because the ironsource guy is likely going to take over. he's the one who pushed for this change. remember: your fee gets waived if you use unity ads.

 

Ah, I didn't know this. Haven't seen much complains... but the price point is a killer for me.

 

You are breaking my heart with your new policies. I have endless respect and appreciation for Unity. For me, Unity is much more than just a game engine and development tool. I can't believe this is really happening. I hope the new fee policy is canceled, it's just terrible. I don't want to leave Unity, but I strongly disagree with the commission's policy, this simply shouldn't happen. I really want to continue using Unity and making cool projects. But it is quite obvious to me that with the new commission policy, the demand for Unity will drop significantly. And then, with a high degree of probability, this will lead to bankruptcy...

 

They will just take the revenue and divide by the average game price

The advanced estimation algorithm they will use is a single division imo and make perfect sense as is so easy

 

It seems asking them why cracked games exist if you can track installs convinces them quickly.

 

Oh yeah don't forget - some credit card providers provide digital auto-locking credit cards. Capital One, for example.

 

One thing about the whole refusal to honor the grandfather clause that strikes me is that they should not be concerned about grandfathered customers if they think what they have coming up is good enough to sell this new plan. They should not be concerned about users wanting to be grandfathered, because with all the new coolness in the new versions only available inside the wall of the new TOS, no one would want to be grandfathered.

Just a thought.

 

What about Animation?

Also, I've heard that Stride's development progress is very slow (at least compared to Unigine).

 

It's sad to read all of the replies in here from mobile developers. I'm commenting merely as an old gamer who's been seeing the Unity logo for decades when loading up so many different titles. I'm sorry to see so many fledgling developers getting jerked around.
Public trading and video gaming just don't seem to mix.
My belief is that Cyberpunk's launch was F***ed because CDPR was jumping hoops trying to do whatever shareholders asked them to, which resulted in a rushed release of an unfinished product. It seems as though that's what's happening here, too; shareholders and their pressure are influencing the video game industry in a very real (and obviously very negative) way, and here's the problem, gang--here's the rub: most of these gray old F***s have never played a video game in their life. If all you do is make money all day, you have no time to play video games.

 

I don't think the legal solution is intended to be long term.

Unity gave aproximately 3 months notice. Switching game engines for a large game could take much longer, and may not be worth it for games that are ready to release. My blind estimate: 6mo-1year.

A legal solution wouldn't be the thing that makes it safe to use unity for new projects, only protect existing projects and allow developers time to work on their ports.

 

That statement was true before the current board.

 

Someone did a test and verified that it doesn't phone home *yet*, but the issue is there's no way to have a "per install" fee without being spyware. So at some point it will need to phone home to make this system actually possible.

 

That statement became true for me when i tried to use Unreal, everything was just so slow to unusable on my older laptop.

Maybe when upgrade it will reconsider, but Unity editor still seems to fly comparing on my machine.

 

Interesting..

 

unity is a sneaky one. in their old EDITOR TOS they had defined that protective clause included:

6. Modifications to these Software Terms and Long-Term Supported versions.

Where people were giving the right to stay on a TOS as long as they do not update to a major version.
Then they referenced to another TOS that went into more detail with the payment plans etc.
And then they changed that TOS. So the protection that everyone assumed was given, was actually hidden behind Lawyer terms that were open for interpretation.

Such c***s

 

I feel the same way. Thank you for posting this.

 

I like Ukrainians too, especially Eastern Ukrainians., Odessa trade union ukrainians, crimean ukrainians, not a big fan of the swastika waving galician ukrainians or the sonnerand tattooed Azov battalion Ukrainians, but apparently Unity endorses such things.

I like Chinese too. Sucks they arent allowed to play games, (at least according to major western propaganda outlets), and development is restricted by the government. Again, a rumor, may mot be true.

Unity picked a side in the NATO-Russian war, and supposedly donated 10% of March 2022 asset store revenues to NATO. Weird, i thought they need money. Maybe it was for a tax deduction?

I believe I read, also according to major Western Propaganda outlets, they have some nice contracts with NATO defense ministries, but have not looked into any of these rumors deeply enough to confirm.

 

Gotta love how some random ass topics just pop up on this thread...

 

Incidentally, every game and software developer who could afford it, moved out of Russia in recent years - including developers of Unigine themselves, who moved most of their staff to Armenia. Probably something bad about climate, there can't be possibly any other reason why everybody who has brains runs out of country with such lovely people and government, right? Keep shilling for Russia lol

 

I mean, I would actually say this thread is more on point than the average multi-page Unity forums thread.

 

Didn't even consider this could mean denuvo 2.0, lmao.

 

Several legal teams have chimed in now saying we have cases. That UK item there is unquestionable. If you spend years developing a game, 3 months is not enough heads up that you might want to switch platform because exponential fees are being implemented

 

has the new price plan been removed any news now that they are getting death threats?

 

this is my thinking too, Im already learning unreal and looking at Godot, I hope unity can make a good call on monday and even do some managerial changes, but if nothing changes it will take years for them to recover from this exodus

 

Reverting on monday is the difference between sudden implosion and slow death.

 

If this is serious, I will 100% move to unreal or godot. For f2p mobile market it's an unbearable risk to take - no way that's going to happen. It's just cheaper to pay moving to godot.
You're forcing mobile game designers to put even more high priced micro transactions into the game and make the market even worse.
Not speaking about the fact, that you completly betrayed your long time customer's trust. Changing TOS retrospectivly??
I really regret every minute I spent learning Unity. You are now officially the worst engine out there, congrats

If some one reaches the threshold, and after that makes <0.2$ per user on average, game studios might go bankrupt. Why would any mobile dev consider Unity anymore? It's such a high risk and you're definetly not that much better than Godot, that would justify this insane price changes.

Very sad that it will end this way - but I can't trust an engine that makes dramatic changes like this 3 months before that.
If I develop Unity games, in 10 years you might wanna have 1mio $ for it bc your TOS changed for past LTS. That NO ONE EVER AGREED ON!!

Shame on you! Digusting humans

 

they shut down all the studios due to a death threat.... that came from a unity employee, or so the police reports say.

we won't hear anything until Monday at the earliest.

either they did it to give themselves room to breath or it was a legit threat from an employee

 

good keep the pressure on unity we will not let these corrupt greedy people win

 

I wouldn't hold my breath for significant changes.

 

I think 'the Great Migration' started for most of us. Now looking for Open Source Engines instead of anchoring myself to engine of another company that can start adopting similar unreliable behaviors later. And as I am aging to be middle-aged, I don't think it will be easy to re-learn another engine easily after some years later. So a good, promising open source engine is what I consider and Godot or Stride look like good alternatives.

In order to start, I tried to find some Converters and UnityPackage Importers to make a quicker transition from Unity to Godot (supporting C# scripts). Anybody tried them or suggest any other particular method for an easier or smoother migration?

Here is what I found but I didn't try any of them yet. I am looking for a nice and easy way to convert my current Unity project to Godot or any other Engine easily without investing huge time in trial & error.

https://github.com/Zylann/unity_to_godot_converter
https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot
https://github.com/V-Sekai/unidot_importer