Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Short answer : Trust us bro ! We have magic calculation algorithms and by pure magic, we are the same guys who will send over an invoice. Now do you trust us ? We listen to you, Unity Team!

 

That was ass.

 

Unity? Are you okay?
You seem to have hit your head a bit too much.

 

if your soft is free you will not pay, anything, you need to reach some numbers for that, incluiding revenue

 

It was amazing him and Code Monkey had videos ready to go. Code Monkey's was really well edited too. No way he whipped that up in a few hours. They were more than likely paid for these and had them ready to go. Told "post it a few hrs after to make it not seem sus"

 

Reading official Unity comms about counting installs - this is where it gets really interesting.
They going to use their own algorithms to determine number of installs.
This means... that... you're going to appeal to a bot!
No way to argue with them, you've been pwnd bro!

 

This is why it's 'pay per install'. Technically still royalty free!

 

What if a studio is not profitable at these revenue numbers. Do you expect them to go bankrupt?

 

hahahaha, wait...are you serious?
*free-to-play has left the chat*

 

I can see Tim Sweeney drinking his tea with glee at this crap storm. And no amount of corporate backtracking and PR lingo is gonna fix their rep. The veil has already been dropped like Fred from Scooby Doo showing who the real monster is

 

So if I were to release an F2P game and have a Patreon set up, then the rev would not count towards the game and never be taxed?

I could work with that.

tho 2k to remove a logo, jikes. The logo still has a bad taste in too many people's mouths.

 

Oh but you see, it's not a royalty, it's a runtime fee. You know, like what Comcast charges you to get access to your local TV networks that's not part of your advertised subscription cost but very definitely still billed to you regardless.

 

You can't, they will get you. They're after ANY revenue you get off the title.

Winter's comming!

 

Holy shxt! Are we going to see "Unity sues Indie developers after their data showed millions install" blogpots/news? I am not going to risk my future investment with all these license changes out of nowhere.

 

Per year. Then it resets. If you make a $1,000,000 the first year you pay per install over that for that year only. Next year it resets to zero again. LAST 12 MONTHS.

 

They read it fine

 

IDK if he consumes alcohol or not, but this occasion worth to pop a 50 years old whiskey open. Even if he doesn't drink alcohol otherwise.

 

You need to replace your leadership entirely. Something is wrong with your company and it's not going to end well.

 

Looks to me that valve will be responsible for paying the runtime fee from steam.

 

Sounds like the below might need to be considered a lot more closely.

Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs?
A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data.

 

And the betrayals keep rolling in. "Well there's two sides to this" No. No there is emphatically not.

Unsubscribbed.

 

It has gone mainstream now which can only be a good thing. Hope this applies the pressure needed to reverse this decision. Top trending article on The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/sep/12/unity-engine-fees-backlash-response

 

Microsoft : Bring your game on Gamepass and we will guarantee millions of installs per month!

Developer : plz Nooooooooooooooo !

 

I'm just re reading the runtime fee page https://unity.com/runtime-fee and it keeps tickling the back of my brain, the how, it's been asked dozens of times maybe even hundreds now across social media platforms but how do they intend to track installs.

especially with this whole chunk of text saying it doesn't matter who, what or why your game changes in anyway the counter does not reset.


what counter?

 

Folks, I feel we got this wrong. I feel we can use the fee-per-install pricing change as an opportunity to interact with our community. From now on people just buy our Unity games, but dont install them. Instead the devs stream the game to their players and they tell the dev what to do. Oh and from now on we dont call them players. Henceforth they shall be known as payers, since they dont play the games, obviously. The just pay.

 

I'm the lead developer for Gloomwood. It will be the last game I make with Unity if these changes go through. Several other developers at New Blood Interactive, including my co-developer David Szymanski (DUSK, Iron Lung), also plan to follow suit. Even if you all backtracked these changes, this severe breach of trust has made any working relationship a risk to continue.

An install fee is an absurd and horribly abusable system. I do not buy for one moment that the fraud tools will catch bad actors. Said tools are a blackbox and Unity, who has a financial incentive to over-report the numbers now, are the only ones who can calculate the true "legitimate" install numbers using a process we don't have access to. The fact that we have to report said fraud to a compliance team is an additional workload on teams already trying to focus on shipping games to meet deadlines.

Go back to the drawing board if you ever hope to salvage whoever is left in the independent development scene that isn't already too embarrassed to associate with you.

 

"All determinations, calculations of installs, and revenue related to the Unity Runtime Fee will be made by Unity in its sole discretion."

I mean, good grief. That line by itself is enough to make me think about cancelling my Unity licenses right now.

That is almost certainly illegal to apply unilaterally, and there is no way in hell I can risk my company signing up to anything that implies I agree with that line.

 

That's why the FAQ explicitly includes streaming.
Can't you read? /S

 

You can't fix this, Unity. You literally cannot.

If you reverted this decision immediately, fired everyone involved with it on the spot, including your CEO, and issued the most groveling apology ever written, you wouldn't even scratch the surface of contrition.

 

If some body would tell me yesterday that UNITY Download Fee is coming I wouldn't believe...
I still can't. How this can be real... they literally want to charge you for traffic! made by 3-rd party!
This is madness

 

After thinking long and hard and carefully considering all the options I have decided to migrate my 3-year project onto Unreal. See you on the other side, developers!

 

Malice, go test it.. Unity confirmed back in 2019 that "basic analytics" are port of the core and they do information and data mining through it. Go look up the lawsuits with Unity and Disney.. Gathering

 

Why are you and Unity ruining this for me

 

I think what he meant was live streaming, like a YT Let's play

 

Thank god for publisher problems. We had a game with 5M downloads that barely crossed that $200k barrier. I didn't make that money, by the way, my publisher made $100k, and then we split the other $100k 5 ways. I'd be in a position to owe Unity more money than I ever made off that project. Thankfully, that game no longer exists, so no more downloads are to be had.

Unfortunately, I have about 10 other projects that I love that are basically going into the trashcan now. I'm never using this subpar, broken engine for anything ever again. It might not apply to some of you now, but if it ever does, it can be a real big problem. I don't recommend anyone release any project with this engine when there are alternatives available.

 

Once your game hits the threshold, you only pay for installs for the month. That could mean they bill you for the previous 30 days of installs if you hit the threshold on the 31st, but in reality it probably means you started getting billed the following month. Bigger issue, IMO, is the lack of transparency and vague way they are counting installs.

You will be invoiced monthly based on the month’s install data. Invoicing will be the same method as for your Unity plan subscriptions, though it will be monthly regardless of your Unity plan payment cycle.

https://unity.com/pricing-updates

 

It's crazy how the internet was popularized 30 years ago, and companies are still trying to figure out how to charge for software.

 

The installation counter they will pull out of their ass.

 

Worst thing is that they leave no space to negotiate - whole install counting scheme is "at sole discretion" which means - you can do shiiiieeeeeet about it - you'll get an invoice for a gazilion and... you gotta pay what you gotta pay!

 

Which one is it, Leonhard? You can't have both!

 

F*ck this S***, I'm taking down all my steam games! Biggest load of Sh*t ever invented.

 

Hey @Mike-Geig , It looks like Unity doesn't want to anwser...
But the only thing I want to know for now is : Is Unity a spyware ?
And if it is... how is it doing with law ?

Thanks !

Edit : Well it looks like it was kind of answered. But wow...
I'm kinda sad I can't leave yet. It's not about money, just the level of reflexion of the solution.

 

a fp2 game will not be affected, it need to reach some numbers on revenue to start paying...
why can't you guys understand that?

 

Hey, milk it until you can, you have time until January.

 

Okay, so Admob or Fyber Payouts come 1 or 2 months late, what now? For tax purposes the revenue is at the moment of reporting, so I have to front the money both to the tax man and Unity?

 

i sincerely hope you decide to go back on this or i do not see many people using the engine anymore...

 

Free to play totally makes revenue.

You are thinking of freeware.

 

is not, that is a fact

 

Unreal engine: Releases 5-5.3 with tons of new features, including TRUE realtime gi and reflections with no baking and no probes, better tesellation, rigging integrated in engine, actual working water tools...

Unity: Announces removal of mid tier subscription and starts charging developers per install.


it's F***ing ridiculous. The comparisons are horrible and rage-inducing. I was about to release a 7 year in development project that would partly be based on a free to play version.

 

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-death-of-unity

The word is on the street. Let's see how the shareholders feel about this tomorrow