Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

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.

Q: If a game that's made enough money to be over the threshold has a demo of the same game, do installs of the demo also induce a charge?
A: If it's early access, Beta, or a demo of the full game then yes. If you can get from the demo to a full game then yes. If it's not, like a single level that can't upgrade then no.

Thats insane, and these are official answers from the first post

 

The only way I see unity coming out semi unscathed is with a hard backpedal and a gutting of management

 

$0 revenue from what you make in Unity? Then you're going to owe $0. You're better off than slightly popular devs who get just above the limits.

 

The only revenue that is considered is per game revenue in a 12 month period. Your other income, including income from other games does not factor in.

 

While I'm not super happy about this (as a contractor myself, and as someone who has worked at companies that might not be affected by this because they have to use the industry license which is except from all of this craziness), I think in your case you'd be fine, because the revenue is based on each game's/project's revenue, not your whole revenue. So if you made a project for free, the revenue for that game/project is $0... so you'd never owe any install fees. Assuming you do more than 1 project a year and no project makes you more than $200,000 in that year, you'd never owe install fees. Note that if a project takes 5 years to do and you earn $500,000 from it, as long it's split between those 5 years, you'd still never owe fees because it's on a rolling 12 month basis. Now if a project paid you $500,000 up front... you might have to pay install fees if you also had 200,000 installs in the next 12 months. But in that case I would just upgrade to Pro for 1 year, because then your revenue for that game would have to be $1 million before the fees kick in. Also if nothing you ever do has more than 200,000 installs, you never need to worry about this even if you have millions in revenue, which is kind of the spot I'm in, I build things for clients that end up only have a few installs, maybe a few hundred at most, so I never have to worry about hitting the install threshold so my revenue amount is mute and I don't have to worry about it.

Finally.. I think that the company you are contracting for would actually be responsible for the install fees, because most of the FAQs for this state that the distributor of the runtime has to pay the fee, which in this case wouldn't be you, it would be the company you sold your project to. This also means Steam/Apple/Google may be responsible for it as well... but of course the FAQ also says the creator is responsible until the payment from the distributor is verified... so it's super unclear.

 

My team and I are now talking about switching engines. Which will cost us hundreds of man hours to do, but will allow us to continue to make our work and pay our employees.

The fees here are wildly unclear and rely on Unity to 'count' your installs. That is not okay, 1 user installing the game on 3 systems, should not cost my team additional money. We're fine with a flat percentage towards each user as they accrue, but this is absolutely horrific.

We're awaiting Unity's prompt response on this matter.

 

So I haven't been able to find any information about this one question:

What happens if I push a game update under the new model? Is that considered a new runtime?

Have they clarified this in any way?

I'm more than a little bit worried about this. I'm positively freaking out.

 

This would be correct. The higher your game's revenue per sale/install, the less significative this Unity tax is going to be.

That's actually the problem, it hits mobile F2P games with high install counts way more than premium PC/Console games with $10+ revenue per sale.

 

Yep, at the point where you reach 200k revenue, you can now be install-bombed into bankruptcy.

 

I mean to be fair you have to reach a threshold of profit or revenue or something, so if it's just free free no money being made at all, you're still good to go.

that being said it's an over all S***ty thing for unity to do

 

No you are not! over 200k downloads and you need to pay up..

 

One troubling thing is... how do they calculate a developer's revenue over time? If there is a dispute between the developer and Unity Technologies over the revenue of a 12 month period... does your account get suspended until the issue is resolved?

 

I really hope this generates an Asset Store exodus, too. Devs, please, I will follow you to Godot (or Unreal if I absolutely have to, even though I find Epic to be just as scummy as Unity and I hate writing in C++) and give you money again for your trouble.

 

I wish I had your optimism Steve.. Unity clarified for me prior to this that the $200K is your corporate legal entity. Anything else you hear is BS. and if you have $200K in revenue per year you better believe the legal team at Unity will be knocking on your door. They think they own indie devs.

Like several people have said in this thread the CEO was right when making fun of us indie's "Your F***ing morons" (to be using Unity)

 

Demonstrating their ability to retroactively change terms is as bad, if not worse, for large organisations. How can we trust what Unity will do in the future.

 

No one from Unity is currently posting, but allow me a comment based on their FAQ. Y

You have year 2 wrong. You pay monthly, for the new installs that month. So over Year 2 you have 100k installs, you pay $20,000. You don't pay again for old installs. Check the "How will I be invoiced" FAQ.

https://unity.com/pricing-updates

You will be invoiced monthly based on the month’s install data.

 

I know this will most likely get drowned out, but I just want to add that I've been using unity for about 10 years and never talked out against them or rocked any boats and this is just too much for me. I have never considered Unreal once until today and if this is not reversed, I will 100% be switching.

Just adding my voice hopefully to be heard by Unity management.

 

200k downloads AND a certain revenue threshold. Giving away games is not going to cost you, so at least that's fine.

 

What in the absolute F***

We are an indie game project and we EASILY get 80k plays from WebGL which we use as a free demo for our community. We have a FREE installer so people can freely try 12 hours of our content out. This will DESTROY our studio, I am not even exaggerating, we easily breach that threshold from people playing free copies of our game! YOu are killing our entire studio doing this crap.

And for what, attacking the mobile market like Genshin and phone games, you're going to just completely screw over ever mid-size indie developer making games on your engine? We don't have a Gacha pricing model and we CANNOT have that model. There is NO WAY we can cope with these changes and we are going to have to emergency port to GoDot. The funny thing is we have on our small team pioneered technology that other studios are looking into using and licensing off of us. You're losing us now, we are not staying with Unity.

Before we hit that 1 mil threshold we are GONE. We are currently working on a GoDot port which is going to waste time, resources, etc... but we have ZERO choice. We are not genshin impact.

 

Not so, if your game get over 200k installs and you need to pay up..

 

Christ, did a cell phone company write this contract???

 

So 30% from steam and google play, + unity license to get the splash screen off, + this fee
If its a mmo game well, server cost and everything to add
You end up with 50% revenu and have to pay 30% out of tax for your governemnt.

Your left with about 30%.
Guess i'll charge 200$ on my next game...Will anyone buy it?
I'm saying this but at same time.. all price in the world goes up, except games. Maybe we need to rethink our price a bit.

 

Agree but I read that no c# for iOS and Android??? is that correct?

 

Oh ok, that is better at least, so if we have free games we are not affected at all?

 

Finally a proper way to cancel a game developer by putting them in massive debt!

 

With f2p games, it's totally possible to have 60M downloads and make about $1M revenus.

In this case Unity will cost $1.2M!!

Do you think it's ok?

 

Exacty this is the biggest issue, even worse than the complex model and the double dip of both upfront and install based pricing.

You decided to use Unity under certain terms, and then they pull this massive bait and switch. https://twitter.com/JohnnyILV/status/1701713908577546285

 

Your game needs to have 200k lifetime downloads AND have revenue over $200k in the previous 12 months to have the install fee applied.

 

Yeah, entirely free games are safe.

 

It's OR. Our free installs will tank us, because not only do we get a revenue on our studio... we also have a TON of free installs and initializations. We have easily 200k free initializations, webgl access, etc. We have some people who load the WebGL builds EVERY DAY. We even rely on these WebGL versions for advertising they are one of our greatest promoters for growth and conversion.

 

Don't be naive. Shareholders don't care about some crap blog. They see big growth and smoothing out of revenue here. Time will tell if this effects unity numbers negatively, but I suspect it won't. Seen too many of these death of unity drama fest. Even Sweeney doing everything he can to out compete unity with all his Fortnite billions didn't even make a dent.

 

Someone needs to create the UNITY to UNREAL engine convertor pronto!

 

Did you guys considered that there will be haters that will use bots to download the game multiple times just to harm the developers/plublisher?

 

I've been following Unity closely and was genuinely disheartened by today's press release. It's clear that this decision has far-reaching implications, and I believe it poses risks to developers, publishers, and investors. With competition increasing in the development platform space, choices like this can sway decisions away from Unity.

The primary concern isn't just about cost – it's about the potential for misuse, the lack of foresight, transparency, and how unpredictable this makes future planning for developers. Such uncertainty can deter creators from starting a project on Unity or deter publishers from backing a Unity-based game.

I have deep respect for Unity and have preferred its workflow over my 15 years of experience with Unreal. However, decisions like this make it challenging to recommend Unity, especially when assessing potential risks for a project.

I urge Unity to reconsider this move and, more importantly, to engage in open dialogue with its user base. Constructive feedback, transparency, and collaboration can pave the way for a stronger relationship with developers and stakeholders.

With today's announcement, I'd be unable to recommend Unity for myself, my peers, development teams, investors or publishing partners.

 

100% free projects will not be affected by install fee in any way.
Thresholds are per game/projects and both thresholds: year revenue and lifetime installs must be met before fee became applicable.

I would still recommend to move from Unity. This is not a sustainable relationship with high risks, especially for those whose living depends on a products built on Unity.

 

So you NEED to have Pro if you make more than 100k? How does the 200k even apply then? This is so stupid. NO OTHER ENGINE has these bs confusing ass tables and no other engine has the actual capability to bankrupt your studio due to malicious actors (which their documentation says we studios are required to be the ones to prove fraud!?)

 

That's Gamasutra. That's not just some crap blog.

 

i thought this was from a ramdon guy -.- man unity is totally worthless for me now, i was going to release my android game at least with unity but this makes no sense at all now i need to waste time changing the engine and learning another workflow's engine.

What can unity offer now with this change?

Graphics? Unreal and unigine exist

Features? Experimental features for life that does not works and feels worse than anything from the asset store?

Easy to work with? Godot, Unigine and lots of 2d engines exist

Services? not really important for indies and the pros have enough experiences for that so...

Support? Maybe, years ago it was good

Documentation? nope, years ago it was very good, right now, it suck and we all know that

Can we at least change the splash screen? i guess no

AI thing? That is pretty basic right now and unity is not needed for that

So, why unity is more important now? where is the value for this change?
How do you justify the value?

I think the old suits are pretty old -.- they need money...

 

It's getting real. Just saw an article by The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/sep/12/unity-engine-fees-backlash-response

 

For now its $100k, from January there wont be a limit but it will have this bs fee

 

Do you understand what AND means? Think of it as code:

Code (CSharp):

1. if (over200KYearlyMoney && over200KLifetimeInstalls) {
2.   Developer.PayUnity();
3. }

You have to have both conditions meet to trigger paying unity so if you make no money, you don't have to pay Unity under this new model (though that might change in the future).

This is pricing model is bad enough when properly understood so no need to muddy the water with bad information.

 

You need to read the FAQ for the pricing updates not the store page which hasn't actually been updated yet.

https://unity.com/pricing-updates

 

Are they trying to destroy the product? Per install is just insane.

 

This just reeks of some CEO trying to make a fast buck before f'ing off to something "bigger and better", I can see it now...

 

Your situation may be different from the one I replied to with ONLY free games. If you have free demos AND revenue-generating games, it's of course different.

From:
https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates
"Games qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee after two criteria have been met: 1) the game has passed a minimum revenue threshold in the last 12 months, and 2) the game has passed a minimum lifetime install count."

So it's counted *per game*. Going to take some serious spreadsheeting to keep track if you don't give away everything.

 

As per that link...

 

https://twitter.com/MomijiStudios/status/1701669217609584669/photo/1
Sounds about right

 

Yeah like... we have a pretty large team for a new indie studio, 8 people. These pricing models eradicate any money we possibly could have to reinvest into the studio and new projects/games. Unreal's are so much more reasonable at this point like, it's laughable, that 5% flat is so much more manageable. GoDot is perfect but it's going to take a lot of work for us to port.

Work we're already started on. We have actually pioneered some 2D lighting tech for Unity, other teams copy us, other teams want to license out some of our tech (Our dialogue/quest editor is insane, our lighting model is amazing) and yeah we're about to just dive off this entire platform because of this. We can't afford this. None of us could, the only people able to afford this are mobile games or genshin impact because their monetization isn't based on per install, it's based on gacha, DLC, and microtransactions.

But the hilarious thing? I bet this will actually drive people like miHoYo away! I know for a FACT that Sunborn/Mica are not happy with these changes.


So any bets of Micosoft or Valve actually just straight up killing this because it will directly attack Gamepass and Steam?

 

What country are you in? In the US you don't necessarily, and generally shouldn't, incur taxes on payables (accrual method), you should incur taxes when you receive money (cash method). I wouldn't offer Unity payment based unreceived revenue, even if they are asking for it, which I don't think they are.

 

Really feeling like my spirit is broken.. 10 years of using Unity and I never once imagined it would come to this sort of debauchery. I'm completely baffled and feel like I've been completely betrayed. How is this legal, how is this ethical, and how could you betray your users like this? Are you trying to destroy the faith of your users?