Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

thats fundamentally untrue. There are plenty of operations that in terms of raw speed are faster in C++, design has little to do with it.

 

It didn't go in without lubrication for the first time, and we're sorry it was painful. Now be ready for second attempt.

 

mmm not exactly agree with this, if you are old school on 3d, like many of us, i'm sure you remember the glory days of id software (they are still glorious IMO) is about being able to control your product, as you said.

good point but don't give them ideas xD

Lol, maybe they are pushing for AI to make us use it and to create a data base for their AI to make it capable to to create games without any human interaction... that is pretty "conspiracy theories" but hey who would have thought we would go through this "runtime fee" today? in their f up minds that AI can be something...

sadly is not the same company for years now...

 

I don't know about this one mate...I really don't know.

On a side note, apparently the new DLSS3.5 (with frame generation) doesn't support UE5.3 yet (only works with UE5.2 and earlier) so Unreal users are angry and are saying that it is taking too long...

I mean...

Us Unity users are fighting over this...and they are pissed at DLSS3.5 being a version late...
nVidia is working on it still....haha...
sounds like dev heaven....
weep...weep...

 

And the likes of Adventure Creator and UFPS and Ultimate Horror FPS Kit: purists may deem these UAS kits cheesy & amateurish (they're neither), but in reality they can shave off a full year or more from any given indie dev cycle. Such kits were the innovation of the UAS, and they'll be more or less irreplaceable if Unity goes to the dogs.

 

Wilco Echo Lima Lima Wilco Echo Lima Lima Wilco Echo Lima Lima

Greetings

 

I'have no intention to leave Unity for the reasons you mentioned.

That said, Unity needs to give us a fair business model. No matter what I like or want, I can't run a business being billed unpredictable arbitrary amounts.

This is the worst part. Unity is asking for more money while acting against us earning it in the first place. I'm surprised that's not illegal already.

 

He posted on Facebook, a friend of mine. Met in SF during GDC

https://www.facebook.com/davidhelgason

 

But I have to say,
as long as those responsible for this disaster "jump ship" because their cash cow is just too cumbersome for them(which might happen) I don't care.

 

remember fsr 2 on unity? so amazing hahaha

 

and when I started VR development ( DK1 good times ) situation was reversed. We got access to UE4 6 months earlier before the official release but still, Unity was the fastest to adapt new APIs and this was when I switched to Unity 90%.

 

I wonder how many users they really lost. Reading social media and forums it seems pretty much everyone who can has already mentally divorced themselves from Unity but that could be just the loudest minority. I'm surprised the stock price didn't drop more, but I guess we'll see what happens once the stock market opens.

 

Uhhm, did you happen to drop in from an alternative universe?
C++ is the "shoot yourself in the foot" language...
Hence why Rust was developed if you need a bare metal language.

With the burst compiler, Unity is sometimes faster than C++ unless you tediously use intrinsics/vectorization (which the burst compiler can add itself).

Bet after a month or two passes, they lost as many people as Twitter/X lost users after the take-over: rather few.
It's usually like that after S***storms.

 

And they still don't get it. Charging for installs/executions of a finished build is abhorrent. A non-starter. It doesn't matter how much people save versus royalties.

To them it's just "we failed to communicate the benefits. Have you tried our new calculator?".

 

From comments:

 

To me to little too late. And how believable that is in the end you only know when/if they give clearification that lastly was just abysmal.

 

I agree with that but when you run into situations where you need C++ because of its speed then something went wrong before in your game design. There are things like real simulations where that is different when it's all about precision AND speed but for games? I mean look at that ECS stuff and what you can squeeze out even using C# when you just have a clever data design. Because THAT's what matters most. The CPU is waiting most of the time due to unnecessary I/O operations and waiting for getting data from the memory instead of its cache.

 

Seems to have been deleted? As of last year he was still defending CEO so I'm not sure it matters what he says anymore anyway.

 

No its still there and I am reading through comments ATM

 

"We can improve teams and processes"

Soooo... Nothing. He's basically saying the board of members did absolutely nothing wrong, and it's just marketing team who did a bad post. They truly understand nothing

 

probably not deleted - but the audience for the post is "friends only".

 

Is David going to save this company?

 

I am waiting to see how this plays out. Being charged based on installations is not an appropriate metric. However, I am not against revenue sharing in some form.

 

And here your answer:

 

He did admit they F***ed up. Good for David for admitting it. Not sure if he can save the company but it seems like he is optimistic.

 

Nah.

 

I can not find the quote on Facebook either. A direct link would be really cool...
IF his quote is real - than a big "thank you" for his clear words.

Edit: it seems "friends only"? Ah, to bad. Would love to read the comments too...

 

or you can read that another way.. in corporate speak "improving teams" in that context usually means changing the people in them

 

He forgot the part where a lot of people (unity employees & insiders) said it was a gigantically bad idea _before_ the announcement was made...

 

Indeed, but considering his latest post, it mostly shows up as "we [as a company] f***ed up", as in failing to convey what they wanted through their communication team. I may be wrong, but this is how I understand it

 

Their marketing team dug their own grave. They should have at least add more table like $0-200k = no fee. Then everyone will not go flame like this.

 

If Helgason's FB post were public, I would say it's a small step in the right direction. But only getting through screenshots on private conversations just makes it hearsay.

 

yeah it seem its "friends only"

 

TBH the blueprint thing does work, what was a problem for me is I am formost a programmer and dabble in making games, so, i want to type, i know what i want to type, i even used c++ before so dont mind that.. So there was me, following a bit of a tutorial, and it said get this kit, do this, create new class, it will want to rebuild, and if you do hotreload it can screw up so you need to close unreal and compile, and then reload - seems a lot of bother, but i understand why, so I did.. except.. the kit had issues, and it wouldnt compile.. but somehow, that compile took an HOUR!!!!!! being new, I didnt know what was needed or not, but now unity wouldnt open the project at all, and it wouldnt compile.. so.. screwed..

when i tried again - so deleted everything, and of cos of course I did try again, I decided to make a rash decision to delete an entire folder of stuff that maybe I didnt need.. seems i guessed OK, but I cant say I was happy as unloading/compiling/reloading but it annoyed me that it had loaded the kit, never making any mention of not being happy, only when *I* tried to add something, and i hadnt made a duplicate classname or anything, did it moan it couldnt actually use part of the kit..

TBH the whole start with first person/thirdperson/topdown type stuff is good, you have a solid system from the off, none of this go find on asset store and import.. which is nice, more more akin to unity a while back where the starting assets were on a menu so you could do new first person..

while everythings different you can see what you want to do and what you're trying to do you just need to find the right names for things.. The blue print stuff does work well, except i dont think of code like that, i think of actual lines of code, and for the same reasons I wouldnt use the unity visual coding (previously bolt) stuff to make a game, its just not my bag, and i know i can make better code than it, i just wish like the visual code the actual code was load on demand and so not so much faff.

However, i primarily make webgl stuff.. so most of the talked about engines dont help me.

As others have said, from unitys point of view their new price models dont effect me, but of course they do, cos if they big boys leave, and all thats left is basically the freeloaders like me.. well, the gotta squeeze money out of something havent they.. and if its people like me left.. well.. thats where they will come, and/or unity development will cease, again, effecting me in the long run.. so sure. come jan i wont be asked for a cheque, but, thats about it.

 

If they don't stop the TOS alterations and retroactive cash-grabs then no-one is coming back no matter how low a possible percentage royalty scheme is.

I'm going to speak as one of the older nerds here to try and highlight how much damage this has done.

I have been with Unity since version one. I remember spending a few weeks using Unity and Unreal and Unity won out at the time because my PC was too weak to run Unreal and Unreal's workflow was disconnected back then. I remember when the particle system was garbage. I remember BooScript and opting for C#. I have spent probably thousands of dollars on Unity for various licenses (perpetual!) and the Asset Store, maybe tens of thousands. I have used Unity for more than a decade and the results of this are as follows:

Unity has completely reset the trust clock. It was sitting at 10+years for me. Now it's at -10 years. They have shown that they will seemingly (happily?) try the following:

• Silently remove the old TOS to hide the fact that they are preparing to alter the TOS so that everyone is bound, both forwards and backwards in versions and time, to whatever new TOS their parasitic c-suite drones think of.
• Force a blackbox estimation method onto everyone that determines how much money you owe Unity.
• Allow themselves the right to alter the TOS at any time to grab any amount of cash from you that their blackbox deems fit. Kid needs money for college? Too bad, Unity needs it now. Wanted to keep your family home? Too bad, now you have to sell it so the c-suite goons can make a coat of money out of it.
• Allow themselves the quite liberal validation and verification assessment method of "belief" when determining install numbers. I actually think that they've removed that ridiculous sentence now.
• Force you to use their ad platform just to survive.

All of this will probably result in the following reactions from devs:

• Someone will write a script and set up a website that lists all games made with Unity so that we can all avoid paying any money to those companies.
• Class action lawsuits.
• Regulators stepping in.
• No new devs learning Unity.
• Old devs moving engines if not for their current games but certainly for any future games. Current games, if they cannot be ported to a new engine will be left unfinished. This is what I'm doing with mine which I've worked on for over 10 years. It is too complicated to port alone and in my spare time. I hear the Epic Mega-Grants considers engine ports to be viable candidates.
• Old devs not recommending Unity to new devs.
• Old devs putting all of their experience and vengeance into contributing to open-source engines for free. These new engines will progress extremely rapidly as old devs will want features that worked well in Unity and instead of paying the cost to figure out through trial and error what's good and what isn't as far as game engines go we can just thank Unity for paying that cost for us and we can implement the features ourselves and improve on them too.
• Games being removed before the cut-off date. A whole generation of hopes and dreams and quirky projects will be lost. I don't mind that my first game brought in about $50 in 5 years. I love it and I think at least 50 other people do too and I love them for loving it with me. Thank you, global strangers!
  
• Finally and sadly, Unity becomes a parable and a meme at the same time.

They may regain some ground if they do the following:

• Remove retroactive conditions.
• Explicitly prevent retroactive conditions.
• Revert the license terms to what they were for existing Untiy versions of the editor and the runtime.
• Restore the github repo for licenses and prevent its removal without consulting the users.
• Only new versions of Unity have the fee changes.
• Cap the fees to a percentage of the income of the project.
• Create a bullet-proof contract that enshrines these points.
• Fire anyone that thought that this was a good idea.

 

Helgason is a board member to this very day, so he may or may not be one of the architects of the sh*tshow to begin with. Also, he was the one who directly passed down the CEO role to everyone's favorite JR in Oct 2014. So it is very doubtful that he would now come forward as the Savior of Unity.

 

If it ends up like Epic's royalty system as to who's liable, then it'll the government and your revenue is off the hook as work-for-hire. Sounds like Unity is pushing towards there with the FAQ language about distributors, but the install system and how it'll actually work is freakishly ill thought out and I can totally see the first dev get accidentally invoiced for their client's installs. If you're making money, I'd just wait and see until the actual contract/terms get clarified and not get emotional about it.

 

Not many yet.

Serious developers are currently in the project for months and may be considering switch, or will do over the time, unless ToS will be reasonable. They will not jump to new engine right away just randomly, withouth seeing clearly what is going on.

Mostly those who say that are switching RIGHT NOW, are devs, which doesn't have any serious project in baking, nor are expected to make 200k $ or sales anytime soo.

And for fremium apps for mobiles, need to consider, which engines alternative even support latest mobiles, to even consider attacking such market.

So mostly is just random noise in the Internet, over few made serious conserns.

 

That could be an angle they could play though. The evil CEO JR is ousted and the good DH will claim his rightful CEO chair to bring peace and prosperity.

 

Yeah nice fairytale, and now back to reality. DH making money from increasing shareprice due to new monetization model of the company, which is seen as an improvement in profits.

 

"We have heard you."

What they are actually hearing:

 

yep. the root problem is that it was announced the wrong way. now if we only add those few corner cases, it'll be all good!

no. it was not hard to understand. we understood every line. and even between the lines.

 

The fact is that Unity's stock deal has made David a very rich man. Based on his shareholdings, he should be - or was at least - a billionaire. BUT...as Unity is still Davids "Baby" - I can well imagine that the current drama also hits him on a personal level. Business or not, I can't imagine that he would want to see Unity crucified in public.

Ah, I have fonds memory of the times he was still CEO of Unity. Good old times.

 

I think it is us who should apologize for the confusion. Apparently, we didn't make ourselves clear.

To make myself clear, I am in NO WAY going to continue with Unity unless we get these 2 things:

1- A reasonable, comparable, and most importantly measurable pricing with NO Installation Fee
2- A guarantee not to be affected destructively by any future pricing changes

 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unitys-self-combustion-engine-this-week-in-business

Not sure if this has already been posted. Its a big read I guess but informative.
Not that it matters under the circumstances at this moment in time.

Peter

 

Please don't take this response as being argumentative,. My understanding of C++ and C# is limited but I believe games built on C# can be decompiled relatively easily if developers don't take extra precautions. Compared to C++ binaries which are less human readable and secure in the sense they are difficult for average user to modify or reverse engineer. Is all I meant!

As for speed, I do a lot of IK simulation, so for my use case C++ does sound like it might perform better, however it would be really awesome if C# runs faster than C++ because that's the language I'm most proficient with, I really hope unity reverses this decision and comes to their senses. I love Unity C#, but UE and C++ is a alternative for us,

 

You didn't read the posts from devs?! Of course they will not drop unity now. That's the "beauty" of this ... they will boost the income for a few years and then boom, everybody will use another engine...
Also some of the "noise on the Internet" has subscriptions which brings... you know... money to unity. IDN how much but they will suffer. If the "noise on the Internet" will leave, the forums, asset store (which is the strength of uniuty) will move to godot or unreal or whatever... and Unity WILL have big problems, just not in the next few months...

 

the dude was selling his shares days before the annoucement he was aware whats going on and wanted to cash on