Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

I know it's a joke, but I already started gardening on the side a few years ago. I can definitely recommend it because you make a connection to nature again and it helps to get back into a good mood. \o/

 

This forum has a nice feature. Click on the name of the user, then to the right "IGNORE".
Use it on trolls. Do it fast, I bet it will be charged 1$ and 0.01$ every time an ignored users writes in the forum.
Be strong and have a nice sunday.

 

I cannot find it now, but I’m sure they said similar games will count as one.

While looking through the FAQ to find the answer, I noticed a question about if this applies to non-gaming applications. The reply was “The Unity Runtime fee does not apply to our film, gambling, or education subscription plans at this time. ”. “at this time” seems very important. So we have a good idea of who they are going after next.

 

Unreal Engine is the only viable option for something close to Mecanim.

 

there is nothing wrong with staying. the product itself has not changed(?) and it is still a great tool. why many is considering leaving because sticking with unity will come with a mental burden and uncertainty. what next? what if this doesn't work, what's the next fee? what is the next TOS saying? some of us become too anxious to stay and it can feel like a prison.

 

100% here.
This time i just to try to save my project.
but after 3 Days i jump over to a lot of toturials
unreal
godot
Flax
Uingine

i see no chance to learn this in a short time.
This is just : start from noob again

( and most boring i think, is unreal. Even to replace a Charakter, takes:
4 Blueprints
more than 20 Settings
4 to fixed Bugs
and raytargeting -..... )

Maybe: unreal is nice for ppl never know better workflows.
i cant imagine, how unreal goes so big, in this workflow. It s a nightmare.

 

maybe stride can help you, there is this link full of assets, tutorials, demos and stuffs, maybe you can find something useful about it:
https://github.com/Doprez/Awesome-Stride

https://www.sebaslab.com/svelto-miniexample-7-stride-engine-demo/

You can also try flax

 

I am more afraid mroe companies will adopt this policy if it succeeds. Imagine u paying each time someone opens the word document or somoene watch ur video on Youtube X amount of money.

This is F***ed up

 

I do have a small garden
And I learned that one of my dogs loves tomatoes and squashes and my cat to stay under some brocolly plant.

 

So it's day six now of this debacle, and I'm checking in to say that I am just as angry and resolute as I was on day one, if not more so.

My personal key demands:
Unity, leave your hands off of my already released games. Let them remain on the old TOS, as you previously PROMISED could happen, in PLAIN LANGUAGE in your blog as well as in contract. Anything that you did to alter this promise that YOU MADE TO US as a conciliatory gesture after that last TOS fiasco was a shady and unethical shell game and clearly done in bad faith so that you could launch this flaming wreckage of a plan.

At this point, no one is going to trust your install number guesses. There is zero reason at this point to trust Unity to do anything other than serve its own purposes. So trying to base a fee off of this guessed number that you will have control over generating is a non-starter for pretty much everyone. Eliminate the install fee.

Until these things happen I will continue to standby with pitchfork and torch in hand and explore options to enforce my rights under contract.

No one can deny that Unity needs to do something to improve their income statement. However, core basis of the proposed plan is unworkable and unacceptable to pretty much all of us.

 

UE has a learning curve for a Unity dev, especially very different approach but having worked with it for a bit ya I can see the strengths of it.

The first thing is to get your head out of the world of everything is a GameObject and working with Actors and all this video for example I watched early on

So far I am finding I have to faf about a whole lot less to make UE do what I had in mind less logic that need be built fewer objects that need be strung together a whole lot more that is ready to go system-wise right out of the box.

I am forcing myself to work just in blueprints for now so I can see what's there and try to do it the UE way at first. But really looking forward to porting our Steamworks and other tools into UE ... course I enjoy programming so to me this is fun

We foster a game dev community and are interested in producing a series on Game Engiens, a compare and contrast of each and eventually a "how to port" between each if viable

We also want to port our core tools like Steamworks Complete to each. While we won't be using Unity for our own game projects any more we are still focused on helping game devs find a sustainable flow to do what they are after ... rather that be hobby, amateur projects, professional enterprise and everything in between.

 

But when gas meter goes up and you're not using any, you have a gas leak and you call emergency services. When install meter goes up, dev has no means of identifying if the installs are coming from existing or new users, if they're coming from the same or different device or if they're legitimate installs at all. There's no physical phenomena tied to installs. It could be users, it could be a bot net, it could be Unity getting some extra cash on the side and you have no means to differentiate.

 

Yes, but unfortunatley i have to study c++ and all Unreal API

 

I don't even make games but I feel you, other engines like Godot failed to attract me because of the lack of features and Unreal has been too heavy (though I had my eyes on it for a long time), the thing is, Unity has always been in a middle soft spot for me. I could just use unreal but at the same time I don't want to waste all those years of knowledge and hard work I'm putting into it. I guess I'll try to shift toward Unreal more while still working with Unity while it lasts.

 

I'm seeing a number of posts where people are disheartened by the learning curve they are encountering with other engines.

Remember, you were a Unity noob once, too. So yes, for a while, things are going to be slower as you learn new ways of doing things.

Take heart in the fact that by learning multiple engines, you are better learning the underlying concepts behind game development. And know that you are not starting from zero; your time with Unity has taught you some fundamentals that will translate.

In the end, it will all be worth it to escape the reach of an abusive business partner. From there, your generalized knowledge will give you more power to better be able to resist abusive business practices in the first place. Remember that whenever you start feeling frustrated about the slowness of the re-learning process.

 

Wow, it took me a while to understand this, great find, and thanks for sharing man!

 

Vanguard (and BlackRock) really don't care. Because the bulk of their holdings are under management for the ETF index side, it can go up/down and they still make their management fees. They don't touch the dividends as they are primarily flow through. Their only concern is liquidity of holdings and the ability to reindex to target. People buy into their funds because of how well they track the index.

There is a very small percentage that works on the hedge fund side but they're primarily concerned with asset mixtures and aren't really concerned with boardroom shenanigans. But I'm sure they do keep an eye/ear open to try and beat the hedge index by exiting before the fun times.

 

I also think I'll move to Unreal eventually.
It is a much more complete and advanced engine, while all the other options do not satisfy even half of the requirements I am looking for for my projects.

Furthermore, learning to program in C++ is easier for me because basically the programming languages have similar logic.

I just have to get back to studying.

I don't trust Unity technologies anymore
After they remove TOS they can do whatever they want, and they just happen to make crazy decisions.

 

Steamworks for Unreal needed. I will literally pay you now if you want.

 

A few days of using Godot for 2D and I have a mixed feeling with it. On one hand it is a very lightweight and easy to use engine, with out of the box features: Autotile is mile better than Unity RuleTile editor, build in support for BBCode rich text effects, can run the game directly from VSCode without switching to the editor,...

But on the other it feels sluggish and unstable in many cases: crash when close all scene tabs, corrupted scene file when moving resources to another folder while the scene is opened, tileset editor is slow as hell when editing large spritesheet (I created the same autotile editor in Unity with the help of GraphView and it is way more better), crash on Windows when launching editor with Forward+ renderer, need to press <Enter> twice to select a button when the game is running in fullscreen,..

I know these are all minor issues but I feel uncomfortable and It seems like I'm not ready to switch yet. Maybe I will stay with Unity at the moment, or try some other engines like GameMaker, Defold...

 

Not how I'd approach it.

5 million installs.
$2 million revenue
2M / 5M = $0.40 average earning per install.
300,000 new installs = $0.40 * 300k = $120,000 earning that month
$23,500 / $120,000 = 19.58%

It's not even that clearcut as the ongoing revenue per installed user is unknown and revenue from new installs is unknown. In one situation, your revenue is growing through ongoing monetisation of the userbase. For a different game, revenue may have been highest from the first installers and be decreasing for subsequent users.

It's in short impossible to calculate unless you can predict your user spending. Perhaps why the calculator hasn't appeared!

 

That's my concern with many alternatives - having to wrestle with WIP engines like Unity from some few years ago. For me, Unity is stable and working. I'm not using new features, just a solid set of tools and assets that work for me.

For me, the only good resolution is a complete reversal and Unity being the dependable tool it is and is supposed to be.

 

And even if you aren't worried about any of those things, you should still worry about what happens when the community shrinks to a fraction of its previous size (with the most advanced users disproportionately fleeing)

 

As an all round dev, I like high-level programming but not low-level. I can't write code that uses generic .dlls and don't want to get into that. Unity provides all the tools I want either in Unity or other assets. On another engine I'd be beholden to the community progressing things fast enough to cover the holes from Unity. That itself is also a gamble.

All of this is gambling and uncertainty. 'Tis the age we live in, I guess.

 

Why do people trust Epic? They have been shown to be all about the money. Any 'pro developer' moves they've made have been to try and secure stronger market positions, such as undermining Apple to get an Epic store on iOS.

None of these companies can be trusted without enough competition from comparable, portable platforms that they can actually lose their clients. Where devs are so committed to a platform, at any point that platform holder might get the Greeds and do something toxic.

That, or proper governmental regulation and legal protections.

 

I thought just like you, but now that I have learned a little more about Unreal Engine, I can say that you don't really have to fear the change:
In Unity, if you want to do anything, you'll have to directly code in C#. There is a visual language but it's a joke and you will end up having to program your own nodes in C# anyway and things like that.
In Unreal Engine it's not like that.
You're not expected to program in C++ unless you really want to.
Instead, you're expected to use their visual language called Blueprint, because you can do EVERYTHING in blueprint at nearly the same performance as native C++ code.
Programming in C++ is reserved for expanding the engine at a REALLY low level. Not something anyone is expected to do.
Also, since Unreal Engine has been growing from the experience of making countless games in the past, it has everything you will need included in it in a form or another.
The key here is to work WITH the engine, not AGAINST it.
When in Unity you would program your way to any feature that is lacking in the engine, on Unreal Engine instead you dig deep in the manual until you find the feature you need, because it IS there somewhere.
In a sense, it's more like modding a AAA game than programing it from scratch.

It's clear to me that Unreal Engine is just superior to Unity as a game engine. No contest there.
I still find Unity is more flexible and gives you more freedom in some ways, especially if you have a programming background, but the downside is that you have to reinvent the wheel for everything and integration is a nightmare.
In that sense, integrating other people's work or assets seems easier on Unreal, since everybody is modding the engine instead of reinventing it.

My only issue with Unreal is that Epic could make us the same dirty trick as Unity some day in the future and I don't want to get F***ed again, but realistically, at least for me, there is no other option for my projects.
I wish I could go with a FOSS alternative instead like Godot or Stride.

 

This is a great video. When I spent a few months seriously evaluating and working in Unreal in late 2021 after working almost exclusively with Unity professionally full time since 2009, it was these types of differences that were often the most difficult for me.

At the time I remember putting things in this very immodest way: I felt that if I was an inexperienced programmer and developer, learning Unreal would be so much easier because my Unreal knowledge and general programming knowledge would be similar. Unfortunately the breadth of my programming/development knowledge is so wide(!!!), and my Unreal knowledge so narrow, that it's a tunnel that's very difficult to squeeze through.

In many cases there are things that are 90+% the same in Unreal, but then they might just be named so bizarrely that it can take forever to find them. In other cases Unreal will have an entirely different solution or workflow than Unity and you almost have to force your mind to let go of what you're expecting so you can properly absorb the Unreal version.

It's definitely not easy to jump into a whole new engine when you consider yourself a veteran, and it can be very humbling and frustrating watching tutorials made for novices just so you can learn the basics. All the while you'll have in the back of your mind: "I could have done 10000% more than I've achieved in Unreal if I'd been using Unity".

 

The reason why Unity is such successful engine, is because it's popular and common. It's like the golden standard of making mobile games, and the first step when someone wants to join gamedev. There are schools teaching Unity, it's present at universities, and it has huge job market. Let's be honest. What features added to Unity in last 5 years, are crucial for mobile development? Adressables, ECS, Burst, UI Toolkit, Cloud services, AI (barracuda), SRP - all these features are more like improvements over old systems, but not really game changing. You can basically build the same game without all of these, and all you loose is minor performance boost. You can fill the gap with paid assets , external libraries and in-house solutions. Big companies do not choose unity because of these things. They choose unity, because there is huge talent pool in the market. You can place a job offer, and get hundreds of great developers, artists and UI/UX engineers, then build and ship your game in months. You don't have to teach them your proprietary engine, tools etc. You place them in the team, and they are able to deliver since day 1. It's a great self-propelling machine. Once you kill 90% of your user base - it's over. In short term, big companies will win. There will be more talents in the market in first years, but that will drop eventually. At that point, there will be no reason to pay this ridiculous share for simple assets renderer and editor (which isn't as fast and robust as it used to be).

Another point some people miss, is how big companies evaluate risks. Many of us worked for these "top 10%" companies, many still do or know people who do. It's not like we are all indie devs trying to guess "what's going on at the top". We actually do know, and what I hear is not as optimistic for Unity as some of you may think. Not all large companies negotiate custom terms, even if they do, it's not "lifetime" contract. These companies also had emergency meetings, and asked themselves, what can they do in case of another even more harsh retroactive TOS change, price increase etc. They think about all consequences, even these I raised at the beginning of my post (I didn't think of these myself). They can't put entire company security on trust. They have their own management, investors, often non-technical people who ask their lawyers and engineers "what if?". And trust me, answers they get are not something management would like to hear. Right now, many companies wait for official response from unity, but still evaluate possibility of adopting another engine - just in case. In many top projects, Unity is just "frontend". Actual logic behind some of best mobile titles, lays in backend. Whether these project will still use Unity or not, is not simple decision based on purely financial and engineering reasons. It's evaluation of many factors, where stability, trust, job market, and company security also play huge role.

 

I can't help but feel that Microsoft and Sony will be taking Unity to court over this for saying they'll be responsible to pay the install fees because of GamePass and PlaystationPlus.

 

I kinda think the 90% this supposedly doesn't affect are the 90% who haven't released any games, but need to buy various assets. So much potential backfire to look forward to.

 

please I am a teenager QAQ

 

If they don't like the changes (they will probably not like them because if hurts their business) MS (probably even sony but to a lesser extend) can say: "you can't use VS anymore, we will not give you any help with c# and net " etc etc etc
most likely they will not do that, but in theory they have many means to fight back.

 

Great video and one I wish I had watched when I started learning Unreal.

You can learn any skill that you put your mind to. If you have the intelligence to learn Unity than you have the intelligence to learn Unreal or any other engine you desire. Just keep remembering that you can do it, you can push past the learning curve and escape this mess. Write it out on a card and tack it to the wall if you need a visual reminder.

I'm speaking as someone who is on the other side at this point (aside from my already released games): When the contract I was on suddenly got cancelled earlier this year, it was much to my alarm that most of the gamedev jobs available at that time were in Unreal and there were barely any in Unity (a sign of things to come). I already knew at that point that I wanted to start moving away from Unity myself, so I had a lot of motivation to learn Unreal in that moment. I sat down for a few weeks and bootcamped myself on Unreal, and then proceeded to get a full-time position working in Unreal, and even released a plugin on the Unreal Marketplace.

I'm not that special where I can just go around and wave a magic wand and make things like that happen. It took a lot of hard and focused work, and honestly I flubbed the first couple of interviews. But I kept putting in the hard work and learning more and eventually it yielded results. If I can do it, others can do it, too.

 

I have already learnt 4 game engines: GameMaker, Unity, Godot, Unreal.
GameMaker and Unity for 10+ years, Dogot and Unreal last year.
Nothing can ever fcking stop me from making games now, but I still feel sick and tired of these events and dramas.

 

cheers for that, very relevant for us...

 

Me? Retroactively changing terms and conditions.

If you missed the fact that this happened, I suggest you reread, and pay more attention.

 

Or they'll say that the developer has to disprove it. Feel free to suggest how that will work.
You do realise the developer will already have been billed at that point, right? Would you like to speculate what happens to their licenses while that's resolved? Or how long the process takes? Or how likely it is to happen all over again the next month?

 

I mean, how is it even legal to retroactively change ToS ? What kind of stupid law allows this. Isnt it illegal in most countries?

 

Unity is successful in volume but not profits.



This is nearly half a billion loss in 6 months until June and has grown since last year.

For some reason they are burning through massive amounts of revenue on R&D and Sales&Marketing. They have around 7700 employees and this is under General and Admin so average salary will be about $70-80k.

This seems to be exceptional mismanagement of funds to burn almost $1b in 6 months on R&D and Sales&Marketing (more than 5x their staff costs). The latter more than doubled since last year.

Rather than hold the c-suite incompetents accountable for this, they are trying to pass the financial pain onto their customers. People are sick of this elitist garbage, where the c-suite get insane salaries and rewards while doing a job they clearly aren't qualified to do and they just line their golden parachutes for an easy exit while they burn companies down around them.

The board/investors need to replace their management with people who know how to run a company properly and hold them accountable for mismanaging the company.

Will none of the 7000+ employees speak up about this? This is your livelihoods on the line here. Form a group of representatives and directly address the board of directors about the management.

 

Oh for crying out loud, will you please get it through your head that its not about sales numbers?

 

If that is true, then let's stick with old versions of Unity (which don't count installs). It can solve problem for us. But I don't know, I really need a good confirmation on this.

 

Unity have said they cannot actually identify, and thus are not measuring, installs, they're estimating them. Next?

 

I said this to show that with the gas company, you have control and verification. Which you don't have with Unity.

 

You can afford to take a multi-billion dollar company to court every month? Lucky thing.

 

How am I supposed to plan for install fees for a retail game? It is impossible for me to determine if 1 sale means 1 install or 3 or whatever. This is a serious question since this factor is impossible to determine when setting a sales price. How is it possible to put the fee on a liability balance? These fees can potentially occur long after a game has been actually sold.

 

I understand your thinking and I am aware, but the problem is that other engines are too poor in resources and functionality.

In recent days I have evaluated many of them, but almost all of them have major shortcomings, not to mention the graphic rendering which is far from the HDRP we use on Unity.

The only graphics solution at the moment is Unreal 5.

 

My bad, didn't catch that.

 

Obviously FOSS is the gold standard for 'not being screwed over by a company', but Epic do at least have a line in their EULA to address the risk: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal

7. The Agreement Between You and Epic
a. Amendments
If we make changes to this Agreement, you are not required to accept the amended Agreement, and this Agreement will continue to govern your use of any Licensed Technology you already have access to.

However, if we make changes to this Agreement, you will not be allowed to access certain Epic services or download the Licensed Technology unless you have accepted the amended Agreement. If we make changes, we will provide you with notice, such as by sending an email or giving you notice when you next log into an Epic service.

They also don't use require binding arbitration so you can get it in front of a judge relatively cheaply if you need to. I think this is about as good as you'll get for non-FOSS.

 

Unity has been heading into strange direction right after that guy from EA became the CEO around 2015 I think? It's just not the same company anymore. The good thing about it is the base technology on which it was built. And now it's under tax. The future does not look good for Unity I'm afraid.