Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Microsoft and Nintendo are probably rubbing their hands in gley waiting to see how this pricing experiment turns out. Also, Unity knows they are a credible threat and will make a custom deal / settlement with them.

 

looks fun...
good luck with the sequel. Also yeah, i know you are right, thanks!

 

You can't easily sue them anyway, the terms of service (even the older ones) require mandatory arbitration in London or California. Actually getting them into a real court room would be an expensive and time consuming exercise when you could have used that time and money to migrate to another engine.

It's worth noting that Epic doesn't enforce mandatory arbitration and of course, Godot is FOSS that lets you fork an entire new distribution of their engine at will.

This is all kind of academic though. If your technology partner for your multi-year project is forcing you to take them to court to get them to honour their agreement, you should just be looking for a new one anyway.

 

Here's how crazy the unity change looks if other companies did this type of thing.

Photoshop: Charges 20 cents for every photo created and 5 cents for every photo viewed
Microsoft: Charges 20 cents for every c# file created and 1$ for every windows application installed
John Deere: Charges you 5$ every time you mow your lawn

 

ah. figured it out. Apparently I needed to re-select my role.

False alarm everyone. I was wrong!

 

Was someone naughty?

 

Don't you see that line of text created from emoj??

 

I bet Valve might.

They sold games to players for indefinite time periods in perpetuity from developers who had good faith reason to believe that they could, and who developed under TOS that said they could. Now Unity wants to either charge STEAM random fees, OR cause a chunk of their developers to pull their games, possibly requiring Valve to deal with a bunch of angry gamers who BOUGHT those games under said conditions that everyone had agreed to?

That... doesn't seem like a good situation for Unity to be in.

 

Now that I`ve read it.
Sorry, I misunderstood your reply. I thought you were pointing out that the emoticons could still be used, not what it spelled out.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

Nope. Just had to re-select my role to display them again.
Honest mistake on my behalf.

 

Could you explain how Unity is a credible threat? I'm surprised this thing is still on even before this went down. As a customer of many unity games there was a noticable decline in the "professional feel" of inputs and general clunkyness independent from a specific game increased in the last few years. Following early access titles made with unity it became normal that the devs at some point had to sort out some larger issue with the engine in a way I don't see communicated as often on projects with other engines. Note that I never used unity as a tool for more than a few hours many years back and am genuinely curious.

 

No they are a credible threat to sue Unity. So Unity will settle with them out of court.

 

Unity brought me a job and is the light of my life. So when this storm hit, I was really depressed for a few days, luckily because game dev skills can be transferred to other engines, but it's not as strong as with Unity.

 

Also company that are big enough to sue unity, and thus get special treatment, might see the news as good, as it prevent uncalled competitor to rise up against their product. It's all about that moat. Unity doesn't have one though, well trained unreal dev also exist.

 

You forgot the news I posted where Unity admitted that it's not possible to count installs or downloads.

=>

 

You posted it after I went to bed and I must have missed it while I was skimming to catch back up.

 

My bad. Trying to make a deal with Nintendo sounds interesting. They might be better off just asking if they want to buy directly. It would be a bold move to try to negotiate anything from this point of weakness so there are deals already existing or it will hurt.

 

Even if no deal exist at worst Unity can just say that the fee will not apply to any currant Nintendo games.

 

Missing out precious installs when they are already in panic mode pointing a gun at their user base. Ouch.

 

Some prefer Pathfinder. Alignments are officially gone, starting October.

 

exactly, that is the second worst part, after the change in their TOS

 

Just came back to point out that this has been going on long enough now that all the big gaming youtubers are covering it. As unfavourably as you'd expect.

The comments on those youtube videos speculate about spyware, data harvesting.
Gamers who normally don't care about Unity's dodgy business practices or only have a passing awareness of its existence are now becoming aware the unflushed toilet just behind the curtain they never bothered to check.

The trust for Unity on both sides of the developer-customer relationship is now gone. Even those who are clinging on at this point will have to admit that using Unity is now a detriment to your business from customer perceptions.

This is the worst thing that could have happened. I have honestly no idea how this ever came to pass.

 

Sometimes I seriously think that they did this to make the Unity brand so shameful that even hobbyist and small developer would have to buy pro just to remove the Unity splash screen of shame.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16j6cip/ironsource_is_the_reason/

It seems that is the reason, is it true...it has something to do with Ironsouce merger in 2012 (Unity-Ironsource); and that Unity wants mobile devs to go on that..to continue to do business with Unity...and that, perhaps, it's not (really) about money...after all.....I still think, it's a (little) about money..even so; but, yeah, it could very well explain why....these per-install fees...directed at mobile devs. And, they can be removed...-at the condition of using Ironsource....or whatever it is..it's also said as 'Applovin' and that Unity would waive mobile fees...if Applovin is gone...Applovin is something with mobiles...

The only reason, I can think, about that...is that Unity's Applovin costs...are too high...and as such, they are 'billing mobile devs'....for being/using Applovin....because it's too expensive; I mean, they would not make these fees (well, they are in lack of profit...but), so, I think,

it's because Applovin too expensive for them...so if you stay with that, they charge you...
if you change, and you go on IronSource/Levelplay...then, they waive the fee.
It amounts to that.....

They would not charge mobile devs, if Applovin was something they Can Afford...
clearly, they can't afford Applovin...and so, they force you to go on/use IronSource/Levelplay..
I don't think it's a 'money punishment'...but rather a 'money need' ---if you stay on 'costly Applovin', you cost too much....so they will charge you the bill....OR...you move/change to IronSource/Levelplay...that, most likely, is cheaper for Unity to have/pay for/can afford it.

Applovin = Can't afford it.
IronSource/Levelplay = Can afford it.



https://mobilegamer.biz/unity-is-of...ch-to-levelplay-as-it-tries-to-kill-applovin/

 

I spoke to my mom about this, and here's what she had to say:

• They probably weren't ever planning to go through with this nightmare of a change, but instead were probably using it to make what they were planning to do more paletable
• It reminded her of Cabel, where they kept upping the price and getting into wars. Ultimately, this lead to people switching to streaming services
• if this does go to court, it's likely there will be a stay on the change for those in the suit, but if Unity wins, those who were in the case will owe fees retroactively.
  
• Larger studios will know they have to be ducks -smooth sailing above, but paddling really hard below.

 

Yeah no, as I replied to a tweet that posted this yesterday, its not even close to being a reversal or even meaningful. It completely fails to address the TOS changes, the act of changing the TOS and the retroactive application of the terms to old games, even if the fees aren't retroactively applied before Jan 2024 date!

If none of those three aspects are addressed first, then anything else, all the little details like thresholds, fees, installs are irrelevant ( though interesting to discuss) as it would be totally foolish to ignore the fact that Unity is likely to change the TOS again in the near future and screw us over again.

Yeah I'm not a fan of that tweet and because it was apparently questioned by someone on reddit its become a stupid battle ground, with some people making it sound like they single handily told Unity what was up and got results. If they did then that would be amazingly bad as it means that somehow Unity;

• ignored numerous other employees ( at least one of which claims to have resigned over this ) for weeks
• deliberated prevented outreach over the proposed change to partners.
• ignored a now 10k post thread on their own forums.
• ignored numerous companies posting twitter images denouncing the plans.
• ignored numerous videos and other social media.
• some companies turning off Unity ads.

I mean if they were going to make a major change you'd assume it was due to the overwhelming online pressure being exerted. Its not like the reasons for the anger are unknown.

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/wait-is-unity-allowed-to-just-change-its-fee-structure-like-that/

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 that they 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.

Every engine may change its terms at any point also, so that means stop developing games altogether.

Imagine that Unreal has been charging a 5% for years, that is vastly more than Unity asks in most cases and Unity has charged nothing so far.

I would say Unreal has lost my trust years ago.

 

Yep, was just a matter of time, if a subset of developers and tech people are confused about how 'install tracking' can happen without explicit tracking, the general (gaming) public has no chance. Heck they may even be right, i've not bothered to test what telemetry builds are sending to Unity and there is nothing to say they wont add it in in new editor versions, if they feel they can get it in under the exclusions allowed with GDPR.

Judging by the amount of comments I see on Unity games in general, assigning blame for any bugs, crashes, not liking graphics ( style ) to being due to it using the Unity Engine, the 'data harvesting' thing is just going to become yet another one that is spammed in comments pretty much forever. However I suspect this will only really affect PC games, I feel the majority of people on mobile don't really care that much.

 

The problem looking back then to now, is that Unity had an estimated 600 employees in 2016 (couldn't find the exact number). Today they have 7500 while Epic employs 2500 people to work on Unreal, and other game companies at a similar level of revenue to Unity are around 2200 people.

Unity let costs run out of control without paying attention to their revenue, which those tweets allude to as well. And now everyone is paying for it.

 

i have a handheld, a phone, a pc and 2 laptops, all with genshin inpact xD

 

I wonder what 7500 are doing there, the engine was already perfect in Unity 2019, i guess you need lot of people to make everything worse and more complex like with the pipelines lol

Still Unity is by miles the best and most fast and versatile engine i have used so far.

 

10 developers to add the half baked features that inevitably get abandoned.
7490 to stand around and clap.

 

I watched the Richard Hoeg youtube video a few hours after it came out, and that is a simplification. There are definitely avenues that can be explored, and the fact that one TOS ends up conflicting with what is said in a supplement service agreement, means it could go either way.

The problem with this has always been that only a massive company or perhaps something at government level or EU could ever get involved with and hope to win or have some effect. Alas any company that could will likely just get a deal from Unity, maybe even custom TOS, just to avoid court which again doesn't help us.

As for 'it is what it is' - NO, the whole point was that it wasn't supposed to be that way, hell they even added wording explicitly to that effect, that gave us all a level of security.

I cannot fathom how you are so happy to go along with this, even though by your own words they can literally change it again whenever they want, to whatever they want, and have it apply to anything you have released! You keep saying that any company could do this, but those companies DID NOT do this, Unity did and will do it again!

 

This per-install fee they're attempting

More like 7490 in marketing and billing.

 

I am happy for two reasons

For most cases Unity scheme is must cheaper than Unreal, in some cases by millions. I just dont want to pay a 5% when i can avoid it by just adjust my game price instead to cover that $0.1 or $0.02.

Second and most important is that Unity is by miles the best and most fast and versatile engine i have used so far.

There is no way to use any other unless there is a cataclysmic kind of event like Unity becomes unusable or they close down. I dont want spend the rest of my life baking Unreal SDFs and handling the slow editor for example or reinvent the wheel in other not feature full engines.

Also if the above image is for real, i dont see any issue whatsoever, i am a sole developer, so for sure dont qualify for 50 seats.

 

You're all missing something BIG about the option to use LevelPlay and be exempt from install fees.

LevelPlay (and Ironsource) have long used in-game and in-app advertising to advertise work simulators they've A/B tested to within an inch of their effectiveness, until they're near flawlessly optimised and maximised micro-transaction sucker machines posing as "games".

And one of their prime drives in media and conference communications is the pursuit of developers willing to work on these types of games.

By making the market for cheap mobile games difficult, by taxing the very notion of minimally intrusive and lightly monetised mobile games and hurting most precisely the types of games that conceptually, ethically, experientially and culturally outcompete the qualities of microtransaction laden, low effort bilking "games", they're making a win/win/win for themselves because of Unity's dominance in this space.

 

Unity is indeed the best engine I've used. Or at least, learning Unreal is a bit of a headache I'd have preferred not to do. I still kind of hold out hope they'll walk this back.

However the cataclysmic event you're talking about is successful developers abandoning Unity for their future projects, new developers being warned off it due to controversy, customers muttering about spyware and corruption, regardless of any truth to it.

Unity will lose a lot of users, especially the inexperienced ones that have no time investment to justify clinging on when they can just walk away.
As a result the asset store will dry up, that'll push people further towards competitors as asset makers need somewhere to go (and it'll be Unreal)

The only way Unity can recover from this is to fully walk back per-install pricing because it is a terrible decision on an unprecedented scale. Every day that they refuse to make an apology and retraction statement we get closer to that cataclysm. There will be a point of no return. We are very close to it.

 

I dont see that hepening so easily, if an inexperienced user on a budget tries Unreal, will just go right back to Unity imo

 

I don't think they could. That's a long term solution, but their finances according to their public documents make it look like they don't have long term. A $920 million loss from 2022 to 2023, and just as much (maybe more) from 2023 to 2024 with only $1.6 billion in the bank. That's a 21 month runway at that rate.

If rev shares applied to only 2024+ at a bare minimum everyone would stick with 2023 LTS through 2024, and probably 2025. It wouldn't really be until 2026 (unless there were some must have feature no one could replicate in an earlier version) that any devs would even begin to consider a rev share licensed model. And then once they did consider it, you would have a 1-2 year dev time for that game to get developed and sold before Unity could start collecting on it.

Meaning, if Unity implemented rev share right now for versions 2024 and later, they likely wouldn't collect anything from it until 2028. Which means they need something else to bridge the 4.5 year gap between then and now, and if we exclude any sort of extra license monetizing that leaves them with laying off the workers that would make their rev share licensed versions desirable (7500 employees, that collectively cost unity ~900 million/year), trying to get people to buy more licenses, or doubling down on the subscription add on's that have not worked out well for the company.

 

If is so they will probably also have to cut back on some of the 7500 jobs that i still cant grasp what they can possibly be for.

 

Please be an off-season April fools joke...

 

The best thing for Unity at this point is likely for it to get bought out. I hate to say it but a lot of employees probably have to be let go as well. Unity does not need more money, they need to stop wasting it. Does the CEO and all the upper management think they deserve continuous pay raises when the company is supposedly not making a profit? Is that really a good time to acquire Weta's engineering side for billions? Is it a good time to turn down a very generous offer by AppLovin to buy Unity when things are so bad? No instead they merge with IronSource and try to make some short term gains, all aiming to line their pockets before this ship sinks.

I don't think users need to accept giving Unity more at this point, be it royalties or fees. Lets get back to the software as a product mindset, and not some exploitive service that also wants to tack on additional fees, that likely continue to get worse.

 

According to multiple people that are/were in the insider program who have spoken out about this. That is exactly what happened, and there is zero reason to doubt them.

Insiders had 24 hours advance notice and went ballistic with all the same feedback the community gave. Internal Unity employees at both developer and management levels have been voicing the same concerns for months or longer about this same thing. They don't seem to know how to follow through on any of it. And everyone there is stressed out with low morale, because every single warning that could have been raised was raised, and was ignored by upper management on social, legal, financial, and technical grounds.

It's hard to believe, but based on current and former Unity employees since this was announced, plus insiders and what little they've been able to say, it's as bad as it seems, and with all the NDA's involved for those groups there's a lot they can't say, meaning it's probably even worse.

 

Still wrong, even the 10th time around: https://opensource.org/license/mit/

 

MIT does not give you infinite updates, so if anything changes in needed specs on target devices you essentially have to rewrite the engine yourself, if at any point the updates become payable.

In the end, everyone working on a new engine is for eventual profit, trying to break in with free initial options.

Remember that Unity was free also. Unreal also charged 5% afrer Unreal 4 i think.

Saying that a MIT engine will remain free forever is like deny what is generally happening with all engines so far.

Also a falldown of the main Unity adversary, may hasten the monetization processes for all other engines.

 

What other engines you used and what was your experience?

 

Would mobile game developers consider Unity's 'LevelPlay' mobile ads monetization service, instead of 'Applovin'....they say that Applovin is better than Unity's LevelPlay....

How many mobile developers use Unity's LevelPlay/Ironsource vs Applovin...and would any consider it? Is it that bad, in terms of mobile ads monetization...I mean, I know some mobile devs said, no way...
but, the way I see it...it's just too expensive for Unity; Unity wants mobile devs to use - Unity's LevelPlay...not that Applovin one...even if it is worse quality.

Applovin 'takes away' mobile devs...off of Unity's LevelPlay....that's just what I'm (trying to) understand...
and this means loss of money for Unity..because mobile devs don't use Unity's LevelPlay...but, Applovin, instead.

So, I think mobile devs....have to consider this; it seems, either you stay on Applovin....but slapped with per-install fees...or you move to Unity's LevelPlay...and the fees are removed...you may make less money...but, I think, it will cost Less...but doing that..the per-install fees..are more expensive ..than the loss of money switching to LevelPlay, and thus, leaving Applovin...for Unity's LevelPlay.

I know, probably, mobile devs do not wish that and wish to stay on Applovin'...and feel forced onto LevelPlay...


Unity is losing money with mobile devs using Applovin instead.....and not using Unity's (own) LevelPlay mobile ad monetization service.

I think this is the crux..Unity is not getting any money ...from Applovin ad monetization..only from their LevelPlay. hence, they want mobile devs to move to LevelPlay...to make profit from their LevelPlay service.

Applovin' are making money from mobile devs using their service......not Unity, Unity is only making money elsewhere with mobile devs...

they don't make money if mobile devs do not use Unity's LevelPlay service...



Anyway, that's what I'm undesrtanding...(and it's late...good night.).

 

Damn, I just started the beta for my 2nd game and as a loyal unity developer since day one back in 2004, I have to say... I do not like where this company is going anymore. I was already unsure the past few years with how unorganized releases have become. From the buggy editor, to the forced unity player being packed into builds, this is just not acceptable. I am currently downloading UE5 now. I find it very ballsy to charge anything with your current pricing plan's which are extremely over priced for the many bugs present in every version of unity's release. I'm sorry unity team, you have gone a bit too far this time, even if this change doesn't affect me, it's the principal that you already make more than enough from overcharging for the editor. Now you are charging per download of the game I am making because I used your editor, you get enough credit already. This was the final nail in the coffin. Good Luck everyone. Sad sad day for unity. I can't even express how disappointing this is for humble developers such as myself. I am sure this has absolutely nothing to do with Vision coming out next year and how huge some of these amazing developer's games will be, you just want a chunk of that success. Nope, nothing to do with that at all... im sure.

 

Do community managers really work sundays?