Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Currently I'm trying both Unreal and Godot. The Godot tutorial is good and easy to follow. just for anyone who try out Godot, in their tutorial this line "private void OnBodyEntered(PhysicsBody2D body)" is wrong parameter type it suppose to be Node body instead. I'm a bit confused since it is new to me but now I'm a bit more familiar with it.

 

Want to know what I would do?

• I would remove industry and enterprise licenses, merge it all into pro as a single high end license.

• Then I would bring back Plus, and institute the old funding/revenue requirements for Plus/Pro.

• I would leverage asset creators as one of Unitys main advantages by using some of that Plus/Pro money to pay provide a credit in the asset store encouraging more to use it and promote asset creators (give this to Pro too I suppose, wouldn't make sense to not do it).

• I would remove the Unity logo from games, and not allow users to arbitrarily return it.

• Then, I would move to a revenue share model. $0 rev share free if you're on personal, $500,000 if on Plus or Pro. Then set the percentages of the share to whatever is necessary to fund the company.

• Then, I would allow game developers to optionally submit their game for internal Unity review and rate the games.
  • If passing one quality threshold I would let developers increase their revenue free threshold by $1 million (so a Plus subscription released game would go from $500k to 1.5 million exempt from the share).
  • If passing a secondary quality threshold give a reduction in the percentage of the revenue share (5% to 4% for example).
  • This means if you were on Personal and the rev share were 5%, if you made $2 million in sales it would be $100,000 in royalties (5% of 2 million), but if you were on Plus/Pro and passed both quality metrics it would be $20,000 (4% of 500k) or if you were on Plus/Pro and didn't pass those metrics it would be $50,000 (5% of 1 million).
  • The idea would be that this would start encouraging Unity logos on only higher quality games and improve the brand image with both gamers and developers by helping companies pay for additional development time to polish a release without having to directly subsidize them.
• Last, I would change the TOS for one final time:
  • No license changes between minor/revision versions, only major versions, so that all versions of a release in a specific year are the same from a legal standpoint.
  • Then, I would bring back the language that each TOS is tied to that years releases, it's not binding for future or previous years.
  • To give Unity an out in terms of perpetuity so that someone couldn't simply sit on say 2020 forever, I would say that if the editor version is more than 5 years out of date it will be subject to the license that's 5 years old at any given time.
    • If you were on 2017 right now, it would use the 2018 license
    • If you were on the 2022 license you could remain on it until 2028 before it would be a forced update to the 2023 license.
    • This would give Unity flexibility while never blindsiding developers in the middle of development.
    • Finally, I would offer a paid solution to remain on a more than 5 year old license for a project in development so that studios with a very long development time would potentially have an option to remain on older terms if it's thought to be necessary for their game to release.

 

This latest change didn't really change much. Even if it caps at 4%, a 10-dev company would still be paying $21600 in Pro seats per year. Whether it's per installation or per download, those are dumb metrics to charge for too. One is impossible, the other is not always reliable (free to play, MMOs with trial periods) and has variable prices. A fixed fee per install/download doesn't really fly in Asian territories either, I'd guess.

Plus being removed and still paying for each developer's copy of the editor is just mean. Pick one payment model and stick with it.

 

I thought they also mentioned that developers will report those numbers

 

The real issue is that going from a free model to a paid will bring an uproar every time, there is no going around that.

If they announced a 5% like Unreal would be same bad and actually with 4% as cap to what can be much much lower than Unreal makes lot of sense. For sure will be further and further refined until application also.

 

The option could be to subtract the cost of paid subscriptions from the revenue share owed. This will be important especially for teams/companies that spend a lot on subscriptions.

 

Very important. ToS should be set in stone, otherwise our next game will be made in Unreal.

 

In the long run Unity needs to make a profit, whatever this deal is it will not last forever. They will in the long run ask for a similar amount as Unreal. Installation fees will just shift that amount to companies with lower revenue. Installation fees are also highly unethical.

When you add in subscription fees they already maybe asking more then Unreal.

 

That would be a nice gesture, but I suspect the Unity board will want to keep those profits as well. A simple royalty would make the most sense. By insisting on install counts, it's pretty obvious these execs want to get paid more than once per sale.

 

I think I might have got confused with the prevalence in large companies to 'fudge' their profits vs revenue - though it would not surprise me if the same was true for revenue too, with shell companies and the like. Now if we assume that there is no way for companies to fudge revenue, then I agree simple royalty works fine.

 

Well not the best, but easiest to get around and the one where you could create things rather quickest even with no big knowledge. yep my team is lucky that the project was not started so that we are still free to look for other engines. This is a part of reality that really sucks, and I feel for the devs now trapped with Unity.

 

I dunno, to be honest. You'd get some grumbles here and there, and maybe a couple developers jumping ship, but at least Unreal's model works for what it is, and is negotiable to allow you to potentially reduce the cut they get from you. It's also based on data that you're much more readily able to track, rather than the bizarre obsession Unity has with installs that it has no real way of tracking without being exceptionally invasive.

Like I said before, I get why some might not want a straight 5% cut out of their revenue when it wasn't like that before, but a simple solution like that would mostly have gone down better than...whatever the hell this has turned into.

 

They already have a revenue threshold so if you could effectively setup companies you could bypass the fees as they are written now. Doing that would be super complex and may not stand up in count. I also think one company would need to have Unity industry licenses.

I actually do not see this working unless you change the ownership of your game when you reach the threshold. You will need a super slimy wall-street lawyer and it is not free setting up a company. This is not something that will really happen and would be totally unethical.

 

We were told that it was set in stone last time.

 

The free license isn't valid when you earn over $100,000 a year. If you haven't switched, you are in violation of the T&Cs you agreed to. As such, you have to switch before the $200k threshold, at which point you are on the $million threshold.

That whole 'free license' column on the table for install fees is nonsense as it can't exist. Just illustrates how clueless this scheme was. Maybe it's there for punitive fees based on those that don't switch at $100k; perhaps Unity are afraid thousands of devs are making millions on the wrong license?

 

From the FAQ:

 

In the analogy of the Ten Commandments, the stones were smashed and the contract broken.

 

Oh, well, it was a bonkers option. Just get Pro/Enterprise when needed as the economy of the 'free' license isn't there at all.

 

I don't see many people talking about it, but I get the impression that Apple will play a very important role in this story. Apple can't stand by and watch Unity fall apart for several reasons:
- It's leveraging Unity a lot to get a lot of people willing to develop or port apps/games to Vision Pro.
- Somehow Apple also has a loss of image considering the fact that it did not properly consider the risk of doing a collaboration with an untrustworthy company.
- This Unity mistake greatly benefits Epic Games, and Apple does not like this.
- Apple is clearly preparing the field to enter the gaming field more heavily (the most glaring example being the latest iPhone GPU), so it has no choice but to support and collaborate with Unity, which is Unreal's only real competitor.
- In general, Apple will not like the fact that it has to manage and pay fees to Unity on behalf of developers.
- ...

Apple will certainly put pressure on Unity to change things radically, otherwise it will be forced to acquire Unity itself, although this will not please many. From the position Unity is in, it will have to accept Apple's conditions, considering that Unity's market value is currently 'high' largely due to its collaboration with Apple.

 

Apple hates C# and hates Unity. If they could ban they would.

 

If you cross the revenue and install thresholds and then you will have a sudden increase in the number of installs e.g. within one day, but no sudden revenue increase (if e.g. it is a free app with in-app purchases or a piracy/fraudulent case), the fees can become much higher than the earnings or can eat most of the earnings, which can lead even to bankruptcy. Even a small probability of bankruptcy is unacceptable. Unity, please address such risks. There should be a percentage cap in fees, e.g. 5% of revenue like in case of Unreal Engine.

 

I'm not sure Apple hates Unity and I'm not sure Apple is in a position to go without Unity right now.

 

Glad to hear they're listening.

A few big issues for Unity:

1... I don't think Unity realized how easily their users jump ship. Some companies have already ported their game to another engine since last Tuesday. Many Unity games are not that complicated. Among Us is a very viral and popular game, but that doesn't make it complicated.

2... I also don't think Unity is positioned as well as they thought. It's not as good as Unreal for high-end games, and for low-end games, Godot is already more than enough and it's free forever. Unity is adding AI and cloud stuff, but that's more than many entry level creators need.

They got their huge user base by dropping their price. This made their 'valuation' appear high... Look Wall Street, 50% of games are made by us & you can monetize them all! They cashed in on their IPO, and now they can watch Unity fail as a cash cow from the sidelines.

 

If I get audited for revenue I have stuff to show, if I get audited for installs, I don’t have anything.

 

Any news on the Plus license? ...I am suppose to renew in a few weeks.

 

Hopefully there is more info by then

 

If they don't want to rely on revenue, then probably sales/acquisition data are the most reliable alternatives. Self reporting of installations sounds impossible for most cases.

 

I don't think now is the time to post negative videos about Godot. If you like a different game engine, just post something positive about that engine.

Even the comments in that video say Godot is better.

 

It will take much more than an apology and adjustment. You've tried to do something unredeemable, and I believe you will bargain the hell out of this in order to keep this new model in one way or another. You won't just discard it, it's predictable.

The mere attempt of trying to charge a fee per install, the retroactive TOS override, topped with some "it won't affect 90% of developererserers!" completely reveals what your board of directors truly want.

Get rid of John Nutello and everyone else responsible for this scandal, let us use the Unity editor offline for unlimited time, give us Plus back and stop investing into generative-AI editor tools. Only then, you will redeem yourselves.

 

The 5 years license idea is too convoluted. I would drop it completely (they have to do the job for us to WANT to update the engine...something they haven't done for some years). If necessary, I would attach it to the Free version, making Free license only work for current year TECH and last year LTS, so you only have access to previous editor versions if you pay Plus/Pro. Not affecting anyway to already released (and not updated) games, that should ship with their current version license fees or whatever, forever unchanged.

 

They already made and broke that promise. How will you trust them?

 

I was prepared to pay $400 to remove the Splash Screen but will NEVER pay $4000 to get rid of it. The competing engines don't have this requirement, so why do we need to have it. Make it a choice or just simply remove it. I tried to comment about this in a new thread and basically some fan boys did not like it. The post was deleted as it was deemed a duplicate, so I'm posting it here as I believe it will mess up the branding of my game, now that Unity has such a bad reputation. So, 100% related to the pricing and TOS.

 

They tried and failed ;-). Then killed the project and fired the team ... lol

 

That escalated quickly...

I think we're going to see some real open source solutions for game devs. An amazing time to be a developer!

 

They actually are. Apple is company that hostile to any cross platform attempt. They want everyone in the world to use only xcode and swift (Obj-C in the past) so every app cannot been made and work outside apple ecosystem. But unity had ruin that dream for the fact that unity infect app store with games made by unity then it become cross platform solution of all mobile game. The world changed since then

I will not surprise if apple actually support Riccitiello to move from EA to unity

 

Unity can easily make a profit- do they really need 7000 staff and 39 offices?

 

I keep hearing of a leak, sounds like they might be feeling out the changes.
The community has not changed it's mind, and the cap on the current install method is not enough of a solution.
I am adding to the hundred others saying the same thing until it is heard:

- We don't want a cap on the ridiculous install counting method. It's overly complex and hard to predict. It makes us have to constantly have to contact Unity for ridiculous things such as doing a demo. Indie devs don't have time to constantly contact Unity support. And the issue of gamepass is still there. Just make it a rev share over a million! It doesn't have to be more difficult than that. Rev share over a million is simple, predictable, clean. Also, while 4% would be ok-ish, 3% would be more appropriate considering the recent lack of features the community has actually asked for. Unreal with its 5% comes out with nanite and procedural set dressing tools, and all kinds of other cool useful stuff. For Unity, version control and AI tools is not what we want AT ALL. Make the value proposition worth it and you can raise the % then.

- You cannot retroactively change TOS. If the TOS I agreed said it cannot be changed, it can't, and Unity trying to make it so simply makes me think that Unity will spend the next years fighting legal battles which they cannot win. A contract is a contract, and you cannot change it no matter how much you want the Genshin money. Stop trying to do this, and figure out a clean way for people to either stay with the TOS they had when they got a Unity version, and offer a way to optionally accept the new terms. Of course, updating to newest (big) version of Unity can be subject to new terms.

- And this one is important: Unity said they would not break the trust, and they did it anyways. So people do not want to be fooled thrice. Even if unity does all the previous points, what stops them from trying to change the TOS again in a few years? The only thing that can bring the trust back is the firing of the CEO and anyone else in support of this decision. Under this leadership, Unity has lost all community trust and garnered massive backlash, losing money, stock value and long term viability. This is not good leadership, and definitely does not deserve millions as a reward. Fire John. Fire the board.

Unless Unity completely backpedals the decision AND fires the CEO and everyone involved in making this decision, we will very likely consider a different engine for whatever game we make next. We sometimes participate in gamejams, and those are great to test out and get comfortable with new engines, and we've already decided to try out Godot and possibly Unreal. We would rather not, as we have tools and plugins in Unity, but we are willing to sacrifice those if Unity is an unreliable long-term business partner.

 

lol, your next game is going to be unreal then, they already broke that stone

 

No they do not but running up debts and having excess expenses need to be paid for somehow. At some point they will go bankrupt and reorganize or be acquired. They made a real mess buying up other companies that will be hard to unwind.

 

Oh, you meant that. Nope, as far as I know nothing has been announced by Unity itself. I consider it to be rumours at the moment, since we haven't seen anything official.

 

It doesn't solve the problem that you already paid them with your subscription fee and they continue to F*** you.

 

The leak you keep hearing about, is probably this one.

THE information from this leak (if this is indeed true) :

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.
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Although the company first said it would use proprietary tools, Whitten said Monday management will rely on users to self-report the data.​

They're still talking about installations in the article, though. So I guess they expect US to do the tracking now??? Yeah, like hell!
And what about those customers who's revenues stay UNDER $1million? They do NOT get a cap????

Still not buying this.

 

Apple are contributors to Python and Go, and have had several job postings requiring these languages. I don't think that's a sign of hostility.

 

Glad I got out of the Unity Plus subscription model, Just In Time. So I'm no longer invested in Unity. Pitty I loved it while it lasted.

 

Apple lost this battle a long time ago and in any case does not offer a tool that allows developers to create games in its ecosystem. By now Apple knows well that the profits from selling Unity games on the App Store are worth a lot of money.

 

hmmm....I think some people have zero idea about any dev with common sense would react.

Let's just imagine.

If Unity announced, instead of that initial bs:

• Unity is completely free, but will work with royalties of 4%
• Subscription fee is gone
• All committed plans (plus, pro) will be honored for the remainder of its subscription period
• It doesn't apply to previous versions: so this applies to 2024.1+ and later

Then, I would say it is a fair, normal pricing change.
I would still move away and choose a different engine, as the terms are not favorable.
And for many devs, the biggest merit (no string attached, no royalties) is now gone.
I would conclude projects in the pipeline and move on.
I might do a few projects using the old versions but for very small projects

BUT I would not be angry.

or am I the only dev here who thinks like this?

 

I get what you're saying, but there's a reason for it. There needs to be a consistent TOS for people developing a game, but at the same time you need to be able to take into account changing markets without having old license terms working against your company. A shipped game should of course always be under whatever terms it shipped with (provided it's not updated), but I'm talking purely about terms for games that are already in development or are soon to be developed.

There's a balancing act there, because developers need consistency while making the game, but Unity also needs to be able to react to changing environments.

 

They've got Xcode, which now includes a tilemap editor, which works together with SpriteKit, SceneKit and GameplayKit. Can't say they have zero tools, and some people have been crazy enough to actually use them.