Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Giving them the benefit of the doubt (which they don't deserve) I think what they are trying to do, and what I assume most people will do if available, is just use number of units sold given reinstalls (no longer) count. A new device they would mean to be purchasing the game once on Steam and then later on the Switch would count as 2 total units/installs, rather than expecting you to track that John Doe bought the game once on Steam and installed it to both his desktop and laptop.

Basically I'm convinced some marketing or sales exec thinks that "0.20 install" sounds much better than just a blanket "4% of revenue" and they're trying to keep it in there.

 

So if this is true, they plan to monetize the engine like UE but WORST becuase its based on installations....

How the hell, one could think intelligent ppl, could think that will slide with people . I just can't anymore...

 

Is there a source for that bloomberg article? Why is there no link to an official statement or anything?

 

It is a weird one. The idea now is we pay an amount up to 4%, but it can be less than, which I thing devs would be okay with. Almost like Unity wanted to avoid a flat fee and give smaller devs a better revenue share option...

...but the implementation is so dumb! Did they think they were being clever, hitting upon a novel way to revenue share that'd be fair , and just get it so, so wrong?

Or, did they know an announcement for a 4% revenue share would have had grumbling, but by leading with an insanity move, the reaction to the change will be a notable positive? From the market going down on the news of a 4% revenue share, it instead bounces up on the sensible, considerate decision making of the leadership, who have listened and adapted, pleasing everyone?

I expect JC is playing mind-games. His monetisation strategy of games involved mind-games. He'd be bringing that to his business operations too. How do we get more money and the best stock result? Lead with a bonkers move and back-pedal it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

And of course the subscription is also there to stay.... So, once you start making MORE than $1million, you'll get a cap of 4%, at least according to the article, and the subs stay in place (at least the article doesn't say they're being removed)....
For those games that stay UNDER the $1million nothing is said about a 4%cap......

 

I'll state for the record I am surprised by what they are floating. I'll believe it and put the pitchfork and torch away when I see it in writting... Although, as unity as shown multiple times now, writing is only good in the moment and they will throw us into the abyss on a whim the next time they want to gouge and change the ToS/EULA again...

I agree with a few other posters here. This was being floated in their town hall as a litmus test for damage control. Nothing more. John is going to keep doing this with his buddies and short of replacing him, all I see here is a delay of the inevitable.

JR seriously overestimated Unity's clout with this mess and he definitely under-estimated us "F***ing idiots".

 

Well they've proven they will change the deal on you, retroactively, at any time, so it doesn't really matter what they say. They will change it, at any time, retroactively, to whatever they want.

 

I don't care, they are doing it wrong. At this point: "hey, report your sales and pay us X cents per sale" would be barely acceptable. But they chose not to. Because that would eliminate all the other possibilities without renewed userbase-wide backlash.

 

Why are we even bothering with this thread, UNITY ain't gonna sh*t, it's done man!

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...9.TW0g4uyu_9WyNcs1sDARt9YUgkkzXQlA9BcsFmcr7pc

 

Wow, I'd definitely not have expected they'd undercut Epic
Thought the reason for the method they went for was so that they can acquire more than 5% from certain studios.
Well, let's see if this comes actually true.

 

What Unity did was wrong, even if you can make the case they had a legal right to do it. I am talking specifically about the retroactive aspect of the deal where it appears as though Unity is breaching its contract with developers by changing the terms of service after the fact. Aside from the practical aspects of engaging in unethical behavior such as the harm it does to Unity's brand, reputation, employee morale, goodwill amongst the community, etc., I think all companies have a responsibility to do right by the people and organizations they interact with. And this is important for small businesses and also for big businesses. And it is my view, that part of the reason why people are angry at Unity, is not just because of the loss of revenue this new deal represents, but also the breach of trust the developers had with Unity, and this breach of trust is a result of Unity not fulfilling its ethical obligations to its customers and end-users. Furthermore, all organizations, no matter how big or small, are embedded within a broader community. In this case, Unity is an international company with obligations to individuals and organizations all over the world. And no organization exists in a vacuum separate from society. You may look at things differently, and it's clear Unity's executives certainly do, but that's the way I look at it.

 

Yes, I read the article, but where is the information in it coming from? Was there anything announced publicly from unity itself?

 

There is enough time to silently change it until January. So doesn't matter anyways. They do not address the biggest problem, people don't just take their word for it anymore.

 

live stream now, primeage + casey + piratesoftware,
about unity https://www.twitch.tv/theprimeagen

** finished already

 

I see nothing about grandfathering those of us who want to remain on the old TOS as we were previously promised we could... Hopefully its just omitted from the article because without that protection the pitchfork and torch stay equipped in the primary and off-hand slots.

 

Too little too late, imo. That this happened at all and that the rollback is so very clearly slapped together is enough for me to not trust Unity anymore.

 

I'm pretty sure most individuals here are thinking: "What?", and that keeps getting worse when we log back into these forums and realize this thread still exists and we didn't just dream this up.

 

This is why, if you're planning to release a large game, it's important to make sure you separate your game code from the engine code as much as possible, and consider the licenses and source of all the third-party assets you are integrating into your game. When something like this happens, you're more at ease that you can port your game. But the more immediate advantage is that your game becomes more modular and easier to manage over time. It becomes a huge headache, but it can be the difference between continuing or canning a project.

The larger your project is, it becomes exponentially more challenging to maintain, test, and that can suck all motivation out of anyone. But will any of you listen? Even myself? Nope.

 

No they don't announce it. This is just Bloomberg talking to them directly. They said they are currently carefully making official announcement to not have any consequence again. Bloomberg just take their word to show us just some glimpse of what they are planning to do

 

So, if one makes less than a million could still be charged with over 20-50% of their revenue?

 

TITAN is extremely safe submarine. It can even count your installs at the depth of 3000m and more. Trust us bro

 

They probably will like the last few times.

 

Where do I sign up?

 

So we will be self-reporting our installs ?

When we thought we hit rock bottom, Unity was taking out its shovel !

 

Just to be clear they didn't take our concerns and feedback into consideration, they are backing down due to bad publicity players revolt and stock price, they have evaluated that implementing there proposed run time fee would result in a loss for the company, its just business folks

 

You nailed it Aero. Aakrana is an MMO. Not an MMO like most people think of by an indie.. "Hey I got this great idea last night and I am going to make the next wow!!". I have been working on this since 2001. We ported the project from GameStudio to Torque in 2004 I believe, Then from Torque to Unity in roughly 2011. Over the last three years we have invested over $40K in Unity assets of my own personal monies and the technology stack is very dependant on Unity.

I want people to read this and understand how important your post is. If you develop with an engine run by a money grubbing and unstable company, they basically have you by the short and curlies. I am hoping to hear more about the client port to Unreal this week. Our server back end is mostly Java and Python but the client and assets with over 32K person-hours of development in the last 4 years is all Unity.

Yes I am angry. Yes I am vocal.. Yes this affects me.. What publisher in the world will want to touch indie Unity devs with such an unstable track record..

Hell no.

 

I bet at the end they will just introduce a 4% royalty starting at 1 million.

 

Assuming everything else was unchanged:

1. sales < 200,000k = Pay nothing
2. 200,000k < sales < 1,000,000 = Pay $2040 a year for Unity Pro
3. sales > 1,000,000 = The install fee scheme stuff but capped at 4% total revenue (oh and also Unity Pro)

 

Also heads must roll

 

"Under the tentative new plan, Unity will limit fees to 4% of a game’s revenue for customers making over $1 million and said that installations counted toward reaching the threshold won’t be retroactive, according to recording of the meeting reviewed by Bloomberg."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...9.TW0g4uyu_9WyNcs1sDARt9YUgkkzXQlA9BcsFmcr7pc

 

It's a free shovel! Well, until 1,000,000 push, after that, it's $.2 per push.

 

I was thinking the same thing. The only item I'm not sure about is forcing using their ADs. I think that was one of their objectives with this new license structure.

 

4% vs Unreal's 5%
Stagnant engine with small updates and no performance improvements
Buggy slow editor
Lack of, incomplete and abandoned features
No source code access
No Megagrants or any similar help even as an option
No way of removing the logo without paying for Pro (still no Plus)
Installs as a way of charging is still there
No guarantees it won't get worse in the future

And Unity was a 4% for that? on top of a subscription too? and after removing the Plus tier? Unity not only didn't deserve it before the announcement a week ago, it deserves it now even less after breaking our trust and still trying to push installs as a way to measure a fee.

And a 4%, not only is that a bananas high price hike, they don't deserve it with the engine in its current state.

One starts using an engine to make a game, which takes many years to make, not expecting the engine to crap itself and change prices mid-development. That's why the least they can do is revert it, but they are still trying to push the change.

At least having a whole week to think while Unity has been doing nothing has been useful to get to terms with the fact that our next game won't use Unity.

 

They have raised sub cost several times, they will raise the revenue share % and install cost as well. Unreal isn't really viable for mobile at Unity's scale. And the next biggest mobile engine is what, Defold? Unity already feel like they can do anything. This week they found out it's not exactly true, but it's not hard to see them growing emboldened once again in a year or two.

And it's a disgusting precedent in general. If this succeeds, the industry at large will follow these predatory practices. It's free money for the owner class.

 

This is the thing that's really getting to me now that I've been working with UE5. The worst UE5 has when it comes to its features are a few rough edges, but they're very clearly something you can make use of in production without having to rattle off a whole list of caveats. I can't even remember the last time Unity did something like that.

 

if no revenue % cap they can still die

 

Foul Tarnished! Emboldened by the Flame of the board of directors! In search of the Elden Check!

 

The 4% cap is for those above U$ 1.000.000 it didn´t solve the problem the vast majority of us have of having to pay Unity more then gross reenue, even those with enterprise and pro licenses...

It´s also is still impossible to any mobile game based on ads alone to work anymore...

It goes without saying that thjey still wants to enforce the stupi "install fee" and that hiccitielo did not resign...

 

This.

If we let them get away with charging for "installs" in ANY form, even capped, this rot will spread like a cancer throughout the industry.

 

Although I'm planning on moving to Flax you are the #1 reason why the move is difficult. I purchased almost all of your assets and I have never regretted it. I count this as my biggest loss for changing engines.

 

This is their trial balloon. Put the word out unofficially to a news outlet, and see how people react. Since none of the information in their trial balloon includes anything about not retroactively changing the TOS on existing users or people on older versions, they can continue to shove it up their ass as far as I'm concerned.

 

oh and if they gave their first public response to bloomberg instead to the community. then unity can F***ing die

 

It seem they make a cap just so they can remove a cap later. And disguise the ironsource's trojan to count number of installation as a means to blatantly lie to us that they try to accurately make discount for us

Their core plan aren't changed. They just being slick to not hurriedly take money and make it seem they are backed down so much

 

Until they address the community directly, I see it as hearsay. Don’t go communicating with third parties to indirectly address the mess you made. I’ll be waiting.

 

If their goal is to target the big money makers in the free to play space, they should not only have a higher revenue limit before royalties kick in for the smaller creators, but have the royalties be much lower than Unreal's, which quite frankly actually offers more to the user for the revenue cut.

Lets put in perspective.

Unreal's 5% nets you:

• The latest technological breakthroughs in game development including nanite and lumen.
• You get a whole library of megascans open to you, no extra charge.
• Substance designer/painter like software from Epic's ownership of Quixel (Mixer),
• Meta human & face tracking,
• Free monthly addons and assets via the marketplace,
• Portfolios + resources on Art Station due to Epic's ownership.
• Mega grants which fund other projects, Even fellowship programs that pay you to learn
• On top of that, if the game is published on the Epic Game Store, the royalties are waved.

What would Unity give with 4% and likely a subscription fee on top of that?

Its still not a good value proposition when you look at the two. If they are fine with .20 cents per "install", then get the closest % that would equal what they expected to earn from a single account based install. Better yet, go back to simply offering software as a product, earn our money with updates that have value, though we know they won't go back to something that actually requires them to earn sales.

 

Just treat the installs as non-existent and financials as the only thing you care about. Once you've hit $200K/1000K just assume you've also hit 200K/1000K installs.

 

Everyone should self report 199,999 installs. They can't audit everyone.