Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

That's how you rise the ranks, show you're as corrupt as the other big players. Now we reap what they have sewn.

 

You have clearly not bothered to read the announcement at all. It was made explicitly clear that the install fee only kicks in after BOTH a minimum install count AND a monthly revenue limit are reached. A totally free game with a billion installs will owe 0 money, because the revenue threshold has not been passed.

I'm as baffled at this policy as anyone but the least you can do before complaining is actually read what they provided.

 

There seems to be some sort of core misunderstanding here Unity.

You don't get to charge $185/seat/mo on the front end, and still expect a right to anything on the back end.
We pay you a monthly subscription fee to use your software. That's the end of our transaction - period.

Our company will not comply with this fee.

 

As you said, not many earn 1usd per user, not even close to that. If you have to make 1 million last 12 month to start paying the fee to unity, number of install won't matter. From what i understand, you need both threshold to be reached. I heard it from some admin on unity discord, and here, and if you read the article it clearly state Thresholds that need to be reached.

 

What defines a game install? Do we get charged for pirates? I'm switching engines... this is ridiculous...

 

Oh... thank you! I appreciate <3

 

Yeah, what the hell... So I have to be basically online ALL THE TIME to use Unity Personal for my projects

 

Polygon article.
https://www.polygon.com/23870247/unity-engine-pricing-model-install-fee

I don't think polygon fully understands the severity of the situation nor do they mention the stock/share selling fiasco.

Eurogamer a bit better
https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-rev...criticism-from-development-community#comments

 

"So instead of removing our games from all stores we will make a laucher that cut off the tracking"

Is what I heard one guy saing, on reddit, what you guys will do in this case? This guy in question said he had thousands in purchased assets and is very motivated to do a thing like that.

 

What it really says is "we believe it gives an accurate determination of the bill we are going to send to you". Having worked several years with Unity and seen the part of the code that is not closed source, I'm somehow not inclined to trust that "it just works".

All in all, this is pretty horrible - just the install tracking alone will most likely require additional TRC headaches on most non-pc platforms. And while they will most likely backtrack on this, we'll probably still look at a 400% increase in price to remove the splash screen.. Because they "want to simplify the number of plans".

Short term it will probably increase Unity income a bit, since it is unfeasible to change engine mid-production and creators are just forced into paying, but over time Unity is surely going to bleed creators that can absorb the hit of changing engine.

 

No problem: Unity on X: "@CactusVRStudios We leverage our own proprietary data model, so you can appreciate that we won’t go into a lot of detail, but we believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project." / X (twitter.com)

 

I am so extremely disappointed, can't you just raise the pro license cost like you do every year....
Switching to another engine would cost us months again.... at least we would have an engine that would have less bugs. We have reported so many bugs and filled out surveys for free for Unity and now we get this back.

 

"We will charge you whatever we feel like and there is nothing you can do about it, na-na-nana-nah"

 

Charging per install is utter madness. I have been very happy with Unity and have released 12 games using this engine, but I do not see a path forward with such rules, I cannot use an engine that will charge me more than I make selling my games. It is incredible that you claim this is better for developers than revenue share.

 

So basically any install past these thresholds will be $0.20 more expensive than they already were. When you're looking at a mobile install with razor thin margins between LTV and CPI, you think this will be sustainable?

Will you take into account marketing spends and budgets when determining how much revenue a game has made? Can we provide evidence that we spent thousands advertising the game on other platforms to bring the revenue to its actual net? I already know the answer, but wtf.

 

Nothing against polygon, but unfortunately in todays time most "news" articles are probably sponsored. Every news article I seen paints this as not bad, even, incorrectly, comparing it to Unreal Engines pricing model.

Not saying Unity paid for good sponsored articles at all... just to take those articles with a pinch of salt. It isn't in their interest to reflect accurate information, but publish conrent that gets them paid.

Basically, to put it bluntly, polygon dont give AF about the devs who will be affected, bit they do care if someone drops them a few dollars for a nice, favourable coverage.

What I'm saying is, I'm cancelling my unity subscription and learning Unreal engine.

 

I believe you are right. This proposal is half-baked at best.

 

Problem is small studios
1st we used to use Pro but then they removed any reason to do so as we provide for our own DevOps, LiveOps, etc. so we now use Plus to remove the splash

So in this BS move we now have to pay 2k a year more or less to remove a splash screen so move frankly but whatever we probably wont bother and will just deal with the splash for this last game and move on to UE for the next

Then we started doing the maths
So we are in pre-prod on a F2P project to ship on Steam and monetize via DLC
Estimates are around 1-2% of players that try the game will end up monetizing for 5-10 USD ... so for us to hit
200k we are looking at 1-2mil users which would cost us as a former Plus now Personal user putting us in debt 20-200k ... that is after platform fees we will be left with 140k and then Unity will bill us for 160k to 360k

So ... ya Unity is planning on taking royalties that amount to 80% of revenue up to 180% of revenue
In no world is that even vaguely reasonable

And sure we can go Pro and offset that but the issue remains
to do it as per install/user/etc means its absolutely possible to end up owing more to Unity in royalties than you make in revenue from the game. We will not participate in that so we have a support case out to Unity to see WTF is this even real? ... and if so we will be forced to move engines simple as

Just for note
For us to make 1mil on the game we would have 100-200m, installs which would be 1 to 2 million owed to Unity
The issue here is Unity is basically charging the the same or more per install than most small-time games make per user ... so ya the crack smoking is strong with Unity on this one ... really hoping its a complete misunderstanding

 

What the genuine F*** does this even mean?

Every tab is an install? Every browser ID? IP? F5 to bankrupt a dev?

Even for users that never reach the payment threshold, this will kill the ecosystem.

I feel sick for having successfully gotten people to choose Unity over other alternatives in the past.​

 

And if the app is making money, it wont be anymore, because you'll be paying it all to unity. For the multiple installs per user, pirate installs, etc.

 

Just as simple as that, you turn me and my company of 50 devs from Unity lovers to an instant "let's find another engine" - most likely Unreal.
And I guess I can speak for thousands more.

Unacceptable decison of a completely unaware executive board.

Just turn off the Analytics etc if you feel like a number of installs interfere with your system.
Or get in touch with Steam to get related to revenue. But then do not annoy me with ever-increasing PRO subscriptions costs.

 

Your own FAQ gives an example of an effective 14% revenue share rate. Its not hard to do the 'math' and come up with a rate much much higher.

We make F2P games, charging a per install amount is absolutely crazy on top of a license fee. You clearly don't understand the F2P mobile space at all, which beggars belief!

We've also spent alot of money working with one of your strike teams on a new title for 5 months. This announcement is just a slap in the face.

We have a smallish studio and already pay $10k per month on licenses, and have been for 5+ years now. Based on our latest game numbers we will now have to pay a further $30k per month (we do lots of downloads but very small amounts per user) effectively making us pay 3x more for THE EAXCT SAME PRODUCT we already have. And for the final kick in the balls, give us just 3 months notice!

Unfortunately our next release (just weeks away) will have to be shipped with Unity. We will be moving our next titles away from unity. The trust is gone. You can't just announce a new business model and drop it in 3 months later. What is to stop you upping the per install fees 10%, 20%, 50% each year?? What's from stopping you changing which countries count as standard or emerging whenever you decide?

Its completly unpredictable and your now an incredibly unreliable partner. A massive risk to our business.

It least with unreal the 5% rev share is predictable and can be factored in. You expect businesses, with titled and plans spanning years of development to just magic up 100ks of extra $ with zero notice and no time to adapt or change plans.

We made our games in Unity paying the license fee month after month, safe in the knowledge there would be no rev split once launched. This is a disgusting way to run a business.

Who thought pay per install was the correct way to go? Absolute madness. Pay per install is such backward thinking for F2P mobile, did you not wonder why no other serious player does this?

 

I have read the annoucement. If our game is not making money BUT if OUR COMPANY is above the revenue threshold and the app above the download we will have to pay for the install fee despite the app not making money.

Just like in the previous licensing where we had to pay the Pro licence not because OUR COMPANY was above the revenue but because OUR CLIENTS were.

 

Just coming here to say F*** this! Unity has become such a broken mess over the last few years, then you force everyone into a subscription model and now this... Seriously. F*** this.

But what a great opportunity to watch enshittification from up close.

Cory Doctorow coined the term: "Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them."

 

I am actually learning UE5 from scratch now. I am starting with this vid. But seems very basic.

Does anyone know a better source material for advanced users? I just want to transfer my skills ASAP and move on. A detailed C++ based tutorial would really help.

 

You have completely misunderstood the calculation. The number of installs matter because it determines the fee. Let's say you have 10m installs with 1m revenue (which is still an extremely unrealistic ratio considering Unity confirmed reinstalls also count as 1 install).

Install threshold is 1 million so you will be billed for 9m installs. Let's assume the best case scenario and that you somehow broke ARPU records in an emerging market, and that you have Unity Pro. You now owe Unity 45000 USD, in addition to the Unity Pro seat-based subscription you've paid during the entirety of your game's development, which is 2000 usd annually per seat.

Even with these unrealistic revenue/install numbers, it is obscenely expensive. When you plug in realistic mobile f2p numbers (I won't go into detail because many people have provided examples earlier in the thread), Unity ends up taking the majority of the revenue.

Under same conditions, if you had used Unreal instead, you would have to pay nothing because they do not take royalties from the first 1m usd and a straightforward %5 beyond the first 1m.

 

If they go through with this, we are witnessing the death of Unity, really sad to see.

I've been using Unity for almost a decade as I think it's a great product and it's true they should have a better monetization model but this is insane.

Any small aspiring dev will know that if one day they're successful, their entire profits could get squeezed by this and potentially even get into DEBT because of the engine they used to build their game.

It's the most backwards thing they could have done for monetization.

 

Thats where i think we got it wrong. Its impossible they take 80% of revenu, no one gonna make game on this platform.
Thing is if both thresholds are needed at same time, thats different. If you have 2m user with unity plus and make 200k, well, you still havent reached one of the threshold, which mean you pay nothing.

 

@Mike-Geig Here is example from FAQ:

So... If the game made 2M in 12 month, it means 166.7k per months. 23.5k / 166.7k = 14.1%. Is it fair?

 

Oh my god, I almost want to admire this "Trust me, bro"-move. Who thought communicating like would be a good idea?

 

Unity was founded on the mantra of "democratizing game development" in a rather hostile and inaccessible landscape. However, charging per install is deeply questionable from a legal and ethical perspective they've clearly abandoned their core beliefs.

The developer has no control over their users installing/uninstalling a game and cannot be held responsible for it. This is a *platform* monetization point. Unity has no sensible right to monetize it.

I don't see how I could realistically recommend any studio to engage Unity at any scale with this policy. It's invasive. It poses serious threats to both publishers and developers. How would you engage any sort of deal that has wide distribution if you knew you would be charged this runtime installation fee? It doesn't even cost Unity Technologies any money to install a game - and if it does then it's probably because of GDPR violating tracking calling home with heavy analytics.

I just hope someone with deep pockets questions the legality of this at scale. The ethics of it aren't in question - it's definitely on the wrong side of the fence.

 

You're not even taking into account new device installations, people change phones all the time, app sharing with family members, or games on Steam where users install on several computers, install on their Steam Deck, change PCs, so in practice the developer is FOR SURE going to be charged MULTIPLE times this .20 cent value. And of course, let's not forget PIRACY, you will also be charged for each pirated copy of your game, just brilliant! So what's left for you developers who continue using Unity is to hope for your game to not be well received, also hope it doesn't get pirated and hope no malicious user uses scripts to artificially inflate your game's install numbers because I'm absolutely certain that GitHub will be full of scripts like this once this wonderful change kicks in.

It's stunning and disappointing how a team of professionals and engineers concluded that this pricing model might work.

 

Forgot to mention, the blog post states:

• Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs.
• Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

Please note that the "last 12 months" statement only applies to the revenue while the install threshold is explicitly written as lifetime installs.

 

Unity, are you stupid? Who thought tracking installs was a smart idea? One of our titles has a lot of piracy. Not to mention refunds which most games average at about 10% on Steam.

Good job we have Unity Pro so we can hide the Unity logo on the splash screen. Wouldn't want malicious users to know they can just ping an API to completely destroy a studio now would we?

 

Unity licenses have never really made them that much money.

 

After 9 years using Unity, I started learning Unreal Engine three weeks ago. Now after this, I'm more motivated to learn Unreal Engine.

 

So they will bill you based on proprietary information they will not be disclosing to you, and you'll just have to accept their numbers and pay? Sounds reasonable.

 

It is not even just new device installations, it includes reinstalls as well. For F2P online games, installing when a major update hits, uninstalling once they're done with content and coming back again when there is a new update is very standard user behaviour.

 

This is what happens when a company goes public. Dead-eyed ghouls like John Riccitiello are dispatched to extract every ounce of money from their new asset.

It's only going to get worse - they'll keep sucking until there's nothing left but a crumbling husk. But hey on the bright site at least destroying a useful tool created by people with actual knowledge and talent might buy some rich parasite a new vacation home.

 

John Riccitiello was right.

We were f#cking idiots.

 

If Unity wanted more income out of the upper echelon of developers, just update your revenue tiers or something. Pay per install is already proving a technically absurd idea with way too many unknowns and potential for abuse. We're not going to trust Unity's black-box system for counting the install base. It's a nice analytics number but not something we want to tie financial impact to.

 

This is a nightmare.

 

Sorry, your statement is incorrect, according to the blog post:

"Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs."

With your numbers, 2m user with 200k revenue means your Unity Runtime Fee is 360k USD.

 

What about drm-free games? Will they need to phone home and require an internet connection? Will you just stop any games to be on gog?

 

Not really standard behavior. You do delta patching, not a full game install.

There no way they can know if a game get installed offline or not so the only way for them to count it is by revenue AND installs from services like steam or google play. Which mean BOTH threshold has to be met for you start paying fee. Its really not much, about 2k for under 200k$ a year, 10k for 1 million a year. And you need to make that in the past 12 month.

It would be illogical for unity to take 50%+ revenu from people, they wont make any money or have anyone using the engine at that point.

I think what happened is the first article that got out this morning had a very bad wording. It should have specifically pointed out that both threshold has to be met. Which change alot of things.

 

dude iam barely even using Unity ... I have like 20 or so assets that do most the work... cause Unity doesnt have these things that are essential...

proper database tooling
behavior trees
actual good level editor
actual good terrain editor
actual good hierarchy and project view
actual good multiplayer networking
actual good FPS character controller

 

13+ year Unity dev vet here. Everything's already been said, just adding my voice to the pile. This is too much. It's a triple dip, a hard greedy push on mid-tier indies, and a stunningly brazen bait and switch on one of the core reasons I adopted this tech in the first place... "Unity is royalty-free".

I've stuck with and promoted Unity to all my clients over the years, through thick and thin from version 2.0. Now I'm actively looking into eating the cost to migrate my current project to Unreal and delisting all my old games to avoid any sudden "successes" on installs. So incredibly disappointed and frustrated in this company's leadership.

Thanks and shout out to the many hard working individuals at Unity that have nothing to do with this decision and have helped me over the years. Really unfortunate.

 

the only thing that matters at the end off the day is that unity becomes a better product and if this new model makes this possible then I understand their decision

 

I have a feeling if you go ahead with this, it's just a matter of time before someone figures out a way to patch out your tracking of installs on a compiled binary rendering your entire plan useless anyway