Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Oh, and here JR is even quoted as saying he EXPECTED this to happen! Whoever stays is truly F***t!
“I don’t think there’s any version of this that would have gone down a whole lot differently than what happened,” Unity CEO John Riccitiello reportedly said during the meeting. "It is a massively transformational change to our business model...
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023...based-fee-caps-self-reported-install-numbers/

 

Your skill set is progressing.

 

In some cases it can get close but I don't know about a lot of the time. I've had reason to use a triangle rasterizer that I initially kept in C# until I couldn't squeeze anymore performance out of it. Porting it to C++ gave me 20x gains from just a straight port and was able to squeeze much more with vector extension intrinsics.

About half the time in the C# version was spent on bit manipulation for whatever reason, maybe it was running checks for overflows or something? It was just a lot of ORs and ANDs so I'm not sure what it would need to check for.

 

https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/csharpcore-gpp.html

Like I said, not all of the time, but a lot of time (cpu secs being the most relevant column).

But, we should endeavor to get back on topic here.

 

"Unity's CEO Hints at Price Hike for "Free" Users of the Runtime Back in May 2023"

Why do these guys look like the only video game they play is solitaire?

 

It's not official yet, it was an audio clip that went to a journalist, who then posted an article about it.

Here's the thing though, it's not a new offer. It's still the exact same pricing model. The 4% functions as an effective worst case scenario so that install bombs aren't a liability, but it replaces that financial liability with a legal liability that devs now need to figure out and track installs, which is still something no one can do.

Also, just because it's relevant information. 4% of the $1 million threshold to require pro in the first place is $40,000, while the first million installs are $46,500. And after that point it only gets cheaper, as your next 20 million installs cost just $100,000 to $200,000 depending on emerging market sales.

It still squeezes small devs, doesn't monetize large devs, and leaves all the same problems in place.

It still doesn't define an install either, and makes an even worse attempt to conflate installs with sales and/or downloads. These terms are just as bad.

Under these terms you start at a 4% share, and as you become more successful it gradually declines on a logarithmic curve to 0%. Contrasted with Unreal which starts at 0% and gradually increases on a curve to 5%. Despite how it's worded, it's the inverse of the model you would see with a revenue share, and is much closer to a flat fee.

 

well flax is underrated, it has lots of features, at least for mobile is not that bad, but yeah -.- i get it my project is too deep into unity and i think i should stay, but i'm going to try this week, my game is a mobile game, so you know why i really need to leave

 

Sadly my clients aren't paying me for that.

 

From two hours ago, at 12,000 views already:

 

After the announcement, many investors and producers are refusing to produce games with Unity.
Many Unity outsourced developers, including myself, are forced to switch to other engines.

 

Are your clients aware of recent developments? If I were contracting someone and they came and told me "oh uh yeah this thing you paid us to build for you? There's a chance using this one component could lead to some serious fines due to a scandal in this industry standard equipment. We don't know how it's gonna play out yet. We can avoid this issue entirely, but it's gonna be an extra month.", my reaction would very likely be "YIKES. I... guess lets delay this a month." with a little bit of "can we somehow make the company in the middle of the scandal pay for it?"

 

yeah its the sociopathic part of people that wont see that they damaged their company beyond repair. he and all of unitys leadership is simply put a bunch of arrogant useless c***s. it could have been so F***ing easy.

people wont stay with such a company for long. unity will become the new flash / internet explorer. even though the later were just bad software unity becomes evil software.
those people are parasites and they sadly hit their claws into this game company. im honestly sorry for everyone at unity and im now convinced that it is the end for this company. good luck to everyone.

ill finish my game and hope that in a year godot is ready performance wise. i hope that this is the way most people go.

 

Of course they are. We're too deep in the development to switch engines and putting out a game is better than not putting out one, so they decided that for now they continue. They are also waiting for the research where to go with their set of small games. I will obviously advise them but it will be up to them.

 

Still no word on whether they're bringing back Unity Plus...meaning we have to pay 4x as much to get rid of the now tainted beyond repair Unity splash screen. Yeah, no thanks.

 

i agree but we are facing the reality out ther -.- unity was the best and i totally understand why some of them needs to stay

 

You could take the lazy approach and just go to Unreal Engine.

 

i think he is talking like a sequel of the game, like ghostrunner II for example

 

If he really doesn’t think there’s any version that would have gone down differently, then he’s completely out of tune with his customer base and needs to resign.

There’s a ton of changes that we’d be okay with to help them make more $ and survive… they just literally chose NONE of them.

 

Maybe I'm misreading, but does: "I don’t think there’s any version of this that would have gone down a whole lot differently than what happened."

Sound like he's basically saying: "No matter what, devs were gonna b!tch and complain."

Or is it just me?

 

you can, there was an error on the link
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...9.TW0g4uyu_9WyNcs1sDARt9YUgkkzXQlA9BcsFmcr7pc

 

I take it as "Our customers are angry because now they need to pay and it has nothing to do with the dumb S*** we do normies don't get anyway."

 

Not saying it's not deserved, but every change they have ever done has resulted in outrage.

 

The what now?

You can wrap direct to metal ability into high level construct, and classes can sit on stack. That's the power of C++, that's what RAII relies upon and RAII is pretty much critical. See things like linked pointers. Those allocate nothing aside from block they govern.

Yes, there's massive difference to C# insisting on the opposite is sophistry. That's because C# also does fun things like strings being immutable, meaning any time they are using, the code spews garbage. And allocation-less design is in C# is pain in the ass. Another problem is that C# has reference types, coalescing together values and pointers to values. That creates ambiguity regarding whether references should act as values. Currently the designers are trying to plug this with duct tape, using ? syntax, nullable vs non-nullable references and directives which make references non-nullable, but this whole thing is error in fundamental design.

Anything that is related to burst compiler is a unity specific dialect that can lock you into the engine.

And frankly, aside from things that can be streamlined as a array of uniform objects, trying to implement something like custom polygonal collusion system in C# is royal pain. Because of all of this.

C++ developers have a choice of not being an idiot and not using naked pointers. Smart pointers are available. Then you get all the power and automatic memory management on top, which is also deterministic.

---

Anyway, there's no point in argue. I believe that C# is not well suited for games, and it was unity who made it more popular for this purpose. But you could do worse. Python lacks a lot of security features C# has. And C# lacks multiple features that C++ has. Const correctness, for example.

 

The list of grievances is incredibly long at this point.

Yes, but in the past, they only outraged 5-50% of developers. This time they managed to outrage 95-99%. The magnitude of the business model has never changed this much.

 

That's what I was getting at. It's just annoying to hear "it's unsafe" two decades after the fact. Even before you basically built the thing yourself and included it everywhere.

 

Why is Flax even an option? They have a 4% royalty that kicks in at $250K revenue. How is that better? You might as well go to Unreal and get the first 1 million free.

 

I remember back before Unity looking at game engine in 2007-2008. You would pay 25%+ royalties. Unity was undercharging and losing money for years. 4% is acceptable.

 

The only thing I'll say is that my day job is ~30% Cpp and I don't wanna program games in that. Never ever.
Game engines tend towards high scripting languages... or even something like Blueprint. That has a reason.

Their goal was to get more money from devs. So of course they knew devs would complain...

A common ground will be found eventually and the dust will settle.

@pop_co_rn_ Why are you liking 50% of all posts in this thread, lol? xP

 

That’s exactly how it comes across, unfortunately.

 

Yes, he thinks outrage is the norm. He thinks, just like with EA, Unity will get away with any action regardless if they are the most hated company in the gaming scene. Hopefully, he will be proven wrong. Developers are united and will leave unity. Maybe not today, but all future projects are now up for grabs for a new engine. The tools missing from Godot will be developed; UE will also cater for this opportunity of ex-unity developers streaming in, I am sure.

The only way to save this company is to fire this dumbfuck "idiot" CEO who knowingly and willing caused this, and will for 100% sure F*** over anyone who still remains with unity after this all. His own words are a testament to that.

There is a gap in the market; it is a new world, lets embrace our new engines as we once did with unity. F*** unity.

 

i think i can trust that model more, is simple and easily understandable

 

4% would have been acceptable, but it is only 4% now so that we dont all leave, and in 1year it will be 10% (plus another change to the TOS). This company can no longer be trusted even if it now "says" it will only charge 4%.

 

That’s how it comes off, which is terribly disconcerting if true…

 

C++ is great to resolve bottle necks in gaming. But after prototyping a vulkan renderer with c++ bindings I decided this is dante's inferno and I need an engine.
Liking is mostly for bookmarking where I was, but you really can't agree with everything and most trolls or community managers are on ignore.

 

You're looking at the license but it's the features that are the selling point. It has the scripting update (C# 11 w/ .NET 7) that we've been promised for years, but it takes it one step further by having hot reloading. Compiling a script in Flax is nearly instant. It supports all of the major platforms aside from web builds.

Graphically it's not bad either. Here's a showcase from two years ago that already has features not found in Unity.

Spoiler: Flax Features Showcase from 2021

 

And that's called personal preference. And not an actual benefit of the language.

It is fine if you dislike the language, because to each their own. But in my case, every time I work with C# and have deal with immutability or every method being able to alter internal state of the class unless I use immutability and spew allocations, all those hidden newobj() allocations, or dealing with GetHashCode/Equals(), I miss C++. Because C++ gives you all the power you want. You can go as high level as you want, as low level as you want, and you can do anything. For example, protected inheritance is also cool.

But. To each their own, and C++ is not for everybody. C++, however, does have advantages over C#, and it is not good idea to deny their existence.

 

One thing I never liked about the Unity business model was that Unity never has a stake in making sure you could actually be successful in releasing a Game. Unity released lots of unfinished stuff, seemingly in order to attract or retain customers with the wow factor. Revenue sharing does encourage Unity to actually support successful developers and try to make more successful developers.

 

Unity is doing very well, people are talking about maths, being confused by that and they completely forget about the main problem xD

 

So the Netflix business model?

 

That's $250k per quarter. Unreal's 1 million is lifetime. Unreal has $10k quarterly exclusion on top, but basically, you can pay less with flax than with Unreal, depending on how income is distributed. Additionally, Unreal is 5%, while Flax is 4%.

 

- Time: i need to release the game at the end of this year
- Performance: once you tried other engines, you start to see how good unity is
- Tools/features: even godot which is the most popular, is far behind
- Yes i agree on mobile games being less complex, the change is not "that" hard

 

i tried the blueprints and imo is a mess
how are you doing with blueprints? do you think is good? did you code before?

 

installation fee, not download fee, it's thousands of times worse than download fee, please fix your description.

 

Yeah, I know. Sadly I quite enjoy C# and I have a metric ton of different code I could reuse if I choose an engine with strong C# support.
On the personal side of this, I really don't like Unreal Engine and I really don't need any of the super-advanced stuff it has. I don't give a flying eff about Nanite or Lumen (I do need lower grade hardware support anyway), I don't need open world support, I'm not a complete idiot, I don't do open world game alone. And I found the whole interface and things quite opposite of logical. IDK, I'm pretty sure I will get somewhat used to it, because more and more clients want to move onto it.
But for my personal projects I probably will go with Flax. I can (re)use my code (well, I will need to de-unitize them obviously), it's fast, graphically adequate, knows everything I need.
And since he wrote about it positively, there is a chance that Jason Booth will do stuff on it too...

So for me, it's probably both Unreal AND Flax.

 

I haven't gotten around to it yet, or much of anything since this whole situation started.

I've mostly been thinking the same thing.

There's also very experienced developers in the community recommending checking it out.

https://twitter.com/slipster216/status/1703099690261127602

 

is not the publisher supposed to do it?

 

I think the only engine to move to for professionals is Unreal.

Unity Job Postings: 7
Unreal Job Posting: 2
Godot/Flax/etc Posting: 0

I'm lucky to have a 6 figure salary working with Unity, so looks like I'm sticking with it unless industry massively changes.

 

fully expecting these guys to reduce thresholds on Unity Game Services for every byte of bandwidth soon

 

Behind, but not sure about far: "Godot 4.0 and later can only target WebGL 2.0 (using the Compatibility rendering method). There is no stable way to run Vulkan applications on the web yet."
Vulkan is getting along extremly fast on all fronts or at least much faster than I'm able to keep up with the new toys. Don't got that problem anywhere else.

 

Some companies have moved to other game engines, which is what worries me about the fate of Unity dev.