Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

First Riccitiello doesn't come to my wedding, then instead of a late wedding gift or something he wants ME to give HIM money?

 

Johnny will light the fuse with what he thinks is a good walking back to what was planned in the first place. Other suggestions how it will go down?

 

they could have max capped it to 5% of a companies revenue and let people self report their installs. they need to trust them on the revenue side anyway.

if they really do not want to hurt developers like that.
but no they went with lets make unity maleware, change the TOS, hide the TOS changes and speak with our lawyers. its a masterclass in how to ruin your company and lose trust in 3 days. the leaders of unity are real morons

 

It's a matter of trust.

Developers cannot spend years making games not knowing whether or not Unity will retroactively change the terms of the deal on a whim.

This is not a deal that any of Unity's major shareholders would ever accept.

This is not a deal that any of Unity's executives would ever accept.

This is not the way you do business.

And the reason why they are doing this to developers is because they don't respect developers.

When the CEO said last year that he thought developers were "f**king idiots", apparently he wasn't joking.

 

It's for an industrial cad application. Can't use the game dev license.

 

That is a blog, not sure how a blog is legally standing, as it is not the TOS itself.

Also did they state that TOS will now change for all previous Unity versions ? And how that can happen to your local installation TOS ?

 

Yeah man for sure.

Totally.

It's almost like some of use actually make money with this engine and are already seeing the effects.

 

Okay, again, last time. There is probably no insider trading. If you think there is, you can report anything to the SEC online. But on executive level they usually either pre-schedule transactions or they hire a company to handle transactions for them without their intervention.

 

*points at everything*

 

I like to call them "ruin your company to make shareholders happy any%"-speed runners and so far it has been a tough competition this year.

 

If the previous terms state that can Unity change them, then they can.

If not, and state that cant change, then is illegal and Unity will be sued by every single developer.

I am not sure what is discussed on this, it is rather clear.

So it is suggested that Unity chooses to get sued by every single existing developer ?

 

Dude you are rediculously out of touch.. 5% is 5% .. It's fixed.. No BS.. What Unity is proposing includes v ariability that is out of the hands of the devs. They said late yesterday it doesnt look like they are going to walk back on the install runtime fee. Because they can track it with their new Billion dollar spyware they acquired.

So as an indie dev, you release a game for $5 make $50K over a few years, chump change compared to all the effor tyou put in to support it and someone makes your game go viral.... You are literally and truly F***ed. Unity's fee structures base don re-installs mean you will owe them more money than you gross on a million "sales" if everyone installs your game on 2-4 devices.

Read my friend.. Or learn to.

 

Are you okay?

 

Also, if it were handled exactly like Unreal Engine, you wouldn't be hit with anything until $1,000,000 per product and the first $1,000,000 would be royalty exempt.

 

Don't feed the trolls.

 

yes.
And by the EU.
And the UK.
And AUS.

Because what they're doing here is most likely not legal AT ALL.

 

Nas you really need to read man.. You are coming into an intellectual discussion poorly equiped.

ToS can say whatever the hell it wants.. That doesnt make it legal. I had a legal team fight unity over the last ToS debacle in 2019 when they tried to pull this S***. They were forced to walk it back. Not by my team and it cost my $2500 but the laws of a state or country are not dictated by some corporate ToS.. The Unity ToS is extremely predatory. Has been since 2017. However it's just slippery enough to not qualify for a class action..

This new ToS may be actionable.. I've heard from other game dev legal teams that it is possible in the state of California this will not stand whihc is why Unity has clamned the hell up. IF they say the wrong thing now some big law firm will see dollar signs and start a class action.

 

You are not allowed to per se, or is it because of some company revenue cap?

 

why you change engine- its weak
position. it should be protest in some form. are you frogs jump from one engine to another?

 

How is out of hands of developers ? Just add that $0.1 to the price and problem is solved by default.

For larger price games Unreal will cost you millions more.

So why is Unity scheme so much worse ?

 

Well in general its good to be diverse in multiple technologies, so u are not F***ed up when some 3rd party software decides to F*** u over

 

Hell, I'd be okay if they say $500k exempt on Personal and $1M exempt in Pro or up licenses. Or something. Almost anything transparent is better than this intentional opaque bullshit.

I don't know how to tell you this many times to nail it into your head. Unity isn't charging per sale basis they charge PER F***ING INSTALL basis.

And they still will just make up a number for the basis of your bill. So you can't even tell what's real.

 

I've been deferring from commenting on this whole situation. I do hope they rollback these changes but in their best interest I doubt they would. They basically gave the ultimatum of "Use or move", if they make any concessions now it would only help people get more time to transfer properly to other engines. There is 0 reason for you to stick to unity with the current mindset that "It's only 20c after 200k profit". The point being is they are retroactively changing the terms of service on you, this means it can go to "$0.40 after 100k profit" in a month, a day, or year. The point being is they can throw out any number at any given point in time, regardless of your development cycle. Now obviously the higher the money the more likely the studios will leave and just stop releasing their game on platforms, so the balance is to have it low enough to tax the developers while also forcing them to stick to your platform for existing and future games.

Hence why this whole situation sucks, I feel bad for the people who spent years learning unity and focusing solely on that, and for future companies that were developing in Unity in hopes of making a great game.

For those reasons above, I understand that the best thing to do is move to other engines, but if unity (a public company keep in mind) is able to retroactively make these changes, then who's to say that Unreal or other game engines can't do the same later on? This is a huge loss for the game development industry as a whole, as if Unity wins this fight in any capacity, it means that Unreal might follow suit and do the same later on. "Well look at the profits for unity last quarter, they are doing relatively well and seem to have their developers by the balls, we should consider doing the same" - private game engine company.

Go learn C/C++, learn vulkan, start using open source engines or making your own from scratch. Now is the time to be a true developer and get what is rightfully yours, your creativity and freedom.

 

Just explain how adding $0.1 solves the problem of hundred potential pirated installs. Oh just adding $0.1 for all of them? If I only would know how many installs that will be...

 

Based on this article, I think it is an open question as to who would win the lawsuits:

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

The real leverage Unity has over developers is the services it provides to developers going forward.

The real leverage developers have over Unity is their ability to choose other game engines to develop their applications.

 

Yes, that is exactly what is happening. Everyone gotta agree with the majority, ignoring there is a lot of unknowns. Im sorry for caring about my possible money.

Why care about the real info? Lets all just make up a bunch of BS, "yes owning Unity a billion dollar is a real possiblity yall!". Im sorry, but today the deal is still better for my monetization system. My bad i guess?

Im sorry, my future isnt a popularity vote. I dont even understand why me not being just as angry as the rest of you is such an issue. My only problem is the wrong info, and the dismissal of useful info important to ALL of us.

If you move on I hope all of you make a lot of money. But dont get in the way of me making my own. Id like to think we all would wish for each other success, but seems like we gotta play this Reds vs Blues BS.

 

If they did the literal exact same thing as Epic but at 4.9% I don't think anyone would bat an eye.

 

Troll bait
/ignore

 

go a re rate your unity asset store reviews. Affect unitys bottom $$$ line.
if there asset store sales drop thats ok.

Unity Raising Prices = Corporate GReed.

In the end, the game engine that is honest and doesnt change their pricing with me, is the engine
that I will support.

 

What unknowns? Any example?

 

A suggestion to save Unity (the project, not the company):

Fire all the C-suite and high executives, except the founders. Make it open source with a FOSS license. Then, turn it into a community project.

As a company, trust is gone. You always promised NO ROYALTIES. You just cannot change it for released games. No one will believe in what comes next since your old statements were broken...

 

I think this is the biggest problem with what Unity has done.

It represents an enormous breach of trust that I doubt can be repaired.

This risk is ever-present in all aspects of life, especially in business.

But you have to take a leap of faith sometimes.

And the flipside to that is if somebody screws you over, you cut them out. You stop doing business with them.

 

213 Pages worth of discussion later and still no answers from Unity...

 

You are aware that the critics are absolutly in the right here? Unity could have just capped the maximum revenue extracted by their moronic system to 5% so they dont risk bankrupting a company.
Instead they wrote: if we gona bankrupt you, we ask you to come in contact with us.

They also make the Editor Online only. They have a blackbox that esitimates the installs and no solution to any critic about installs from hacked versions. Installs to other computers. You have 5 devices at home. 5 installs for the same game. 1$ great.
Pay per install will definitly kill the unity engine for good. Its technical stupid and practical inefficient.

Just let users selfreport their installs. Unity can track installs from AppStores & Playstores & Pursaches from wherever themselves and ask developers to selfreport.

But no they have a blackbox that their fusioned garbage of a maleware company had with them. That can do that. Yeah sure. So they are basically selling the idea that every Unity Runtime is maleware and are damaging every game every made with this maleware.

They have changed the TOS, while having an defensive clause in it, that actually should have prevented them from changing the TOS as long as you stayed on the same major unity version. They publicy said that this is important for developers.
They are absolutly abusing the trust that was put in them. Its basically now everyone get a gun and see who you can shot (e.g get a lawyer). Thats how they are communicating their decisions. I have never seen a company communicate that badly.

Its just one moronic and terrible decision after another. And the thing that is the worst, is that they could have increased the pricings and got closer to a revenue share, if they would not act like F***ing sociopaths that have no clue about the technical details of all the S*** they are writing. Its absolutly astonishing that a gamedev company is communicating with their base like that. Read it its all bullshit and makes no sense. No security that they wont take 100% of your money or change the rules so you have to pay them a ridiclious amount of money. If you think defending that makes sense, then yeah have fun with a dead game engine called unity.

 

Don't expect any until Monday at the soonest. They don't really work weekends in this context.

 

These are my honest thoughts as well. Starting to create an engine from scratch is actually a lot of fun right now, you know, when I was a kid I was a part of the RPG Maker community when Web 1.0 was around, and every now and then there'd be this genius kid who would use that legendary C++ and make their own games from actual scratch. It's pretty magical and nostalgic now learning C++, using tutorials you can use things like SDL, ImGUI, there's Youtube to follow along with, it's easier than it's ever been.

We honestly live in the age of digital opportunity.

 

Does this qualify for longest thread ever on the forums yet?…..it’s gotta be close.

 

Wasnt there that twitter about some unity insiders receiving NDA info and being hopeful?

There is also a bunch of places im not up to playing this 'lets imagine the worse scenario possible no matter how contrived so the terms suck' game.

Like, call me crazy but I think the 'you will have to pay for pirated copies' is a nothing burger. Like, cmon yall.

Like I said in other posts, if it sucks it sucks and I move on, but I aint gonna place weird feelings of betrayal above my hopefully millions.

 

That does not answer the core question though, do you have a written agreement with Unity that TOS will never change ?

In my mind is simple as that. If you dont, they can change it. If that is ethical or not is another matter.

Remember we dont live in an ideal world and all companies do anything to gain. That is how it is.

 

Easily the longest.

I think we can hit at least 400 pages by monday.

 

It might not be related but what about Plastic SCM. I kind of like it as it handles large binaries pretty good but as it's a Unity company now...

 

Sorry you don't understand how low ARPU games are going to be affected by this, I guess? You know, the most common games on the market? Not to mention the fact that we were all given three months to deal with a major licensing change. Not to mention how this change is being applied even to games currently in development.

You're the one being purposefully ignorant here.

 

Look at this crap.

These are not the transactions of company insiders who think the company has a future.

It's just one solid red wall of sells.

If the people managing Unity believed in Unity's future they would be buying more shares.

Instead, they are cashing out.

 

As of right now, the only answer Unity is willing to put is something along the lines of "You will pay per install, and you will like it".

Don't expect them to revert the pricing change.

 

UMA is the longest:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/uma-unity-multipurpose-avatar-on-the-asset-store.219175/

252 pages.

 

Can a mod ban this creature from the thread please

 

It's already been covered how this is completely meaningless. Take a look at where the tech market was three months ago (not a good place) and how Unity has 383,460,000 shares.

 

Just out of curiosity what type of companies sell shares for executives, didn't even know that was a thing.

 

Interesting article.

Certainly in the black and white language [in] the contract as it sits today, it appears that [Unity] are covered," game industry attorney Richard Hoeg said in an excellent YouTube livestream analyzing the legal issues here.

So seems can change the TOS and this is what everyone accepts when using Unity.

I dont say i like it, but it is what it is.

 

No, I don't agree. It's not completely meaningless. I buy the stock of companies all the time. But I buy the stock of companies I think have a good future. And I sell the stock of companies I think will not do as well relative to other investments.