Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Because it were a bunch of sociopaths and talkers on top. They looked at it together with their lawyers and said that this is not sustainable, they need cash.

What they did is also all their fault, IPO and the unsustainable growth, buying all that garbage. They did so so the bankers evaluated them heigher. And unity did have tons of potential. A company where 50% of mobile games are made with. Thats a golden goose.

Their managment sold stocks over the past year, they cashed out already and they do not really care for developers nor games. They are eyeing the ad buisness, thats where the moneys at.

They forgot that their ad buisness is tied to their game engine buisness in a fundemental way. Most were thinking about maybe using Unity Ads, if they offered it in a nice way. Why not if it works and they can compete. You can run multiple ad providers. People used to like / love / hate this engine.

Now they shown that they are willing to bankrupt everyone that uses their engine. And force them to use their Ads. They really did the most stupid thing imaginable, communicated it in the most stupid way imaginable. Their offered deal is cancerous and damaged relations beyond repair.

And they could have monetized it so F***ing easly. But whoever at unity thought that fee per install is a good idea, needs to get fired a 1000x times. Changing the deal with a bad deal is a break of trust.

But changing the deal with a F***ing moronic deal, is not even a break of trust anymore. Its a break of trust, credibility and future relations. Because we have to assume unity heads are F***ing morons

 

It's been more than 15 minutes since the last reply in this thread... is everyone running out of steam?

 

Its the time, NYSE just opened so we can see Unity shares go down again

 

more like, everybody is in other engine's forums now XD

 

I wonder what the requirements are for an engine that people are looking for

what it seems to me is that

- needs to use c#
- needs to convert the c# to c++ (so that it can target all platforms)
- needs to have good renderer performance, with good shaders support
- needs to have good physics and good performance
- needs to have many tutorials, and all documented
- needs to to be free, or small rev share with a TOS that cant be betrayed, like open source that can be forked

all in all it seems pretty slim that this engine can exist

 

Not just dumb, not just greedy. They are DANGEROUS. Malicious. Vindictive. They've shown themselves to be petty, to hold a grudge against those who actually give a damn and want to make cool sh*t while they twirl in circles trying to conjure money out of their own bullshit.

This is a self destructive move, one meant to destroy, made by the company that is meant to foster this industry, nurture it, help it to grow.

Words escape when trying to describe how F***ed up what they've done is. It shows rot not just in the brain, not just in their company, BUT IN THEIR SOULS.

F*ck Ricitellio, f*cking clown show he's turned our lifeblood into.

 

not a lot but yeah there are some engines with those features... BTW i have a , work in progress discort server with info about other engines, incluiding links of the TOS and all that stuffs
https://discord.gg/WbEXfVuZ

 

i like that with new crysis all people with mental and psychological instability leave to another engines. so unity ecosystem will be more healthy in the end

 

It would fit even your demands:
1. Unity Free: 5% revenue after reaching 200k USD threshold

With Free license you wouldn't pay any license fees, only revenue share.

You misunderstood the sentence completely!

+ There will be zero differences in engine feature set - yes including the splash screen.

What it says is that there would be only one version, the PRO/Enterprise version. Which also includes the ability to change or even completely remove the splash screen.

 

Whatever happening I will create a small prototype of my next game in all three (Unity, Unreal and Godot) engines to learn and evaluate. I will then

Before becoming my own I worked on high level in a number of medium-2-large Corps. and based on that experience I am sure that the people that cooked this soup is non-industry people with a high level of MS excel skill.

 

I’ve thought that too… if the fees are that high, why would a studio that large not make their own? It would be more customized, less fees in the long term & no future surprises.

Open Studio…

To that end, why not have a more organized game developer consortium like some are proposing here?

The fees the ‘ten percenters’ will soon pay are so astronomically high anyway, that if they invested that into an open source solution now… they could escape Unity completely by the time Unity does their next retroactive price hike.

It’s also about taking away the power from these massive Wall Street companies. And making an engine that actually does what we need & runs fast and is robust, instead of AI and cloud features that are just talking points.

 

You're joking, but I bet this is part of Unity's plan. I mean, people can only complain for so long until they get bored. Just look at the Netflix password sharing drama. The end result was that now Netflix has 6 million new subscribers and is making record profits.

When there's no real alternative, at some point people just stop complaining and learn to live with it. And once people get bored of the Unity drama, they either move to another engine, or, which is more likely, just take whatever Unity comes up with next.

 

That would count as Reverse Engineering. if the open source community thought they could get away with that, Wine would be even better at running games than it is now.

 

Great work guys, I see Godot is getting lots of funds. Can we get some money to go to MonoGame as well?
It is one of the few c#-based alternatives for us to go to and it is open-source. I was set on switching to Godot, then Unreal, but now I think MonoGame is where I will be headed.

 

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

They're using the engine as leverage to sell the other services and the reason we're having that conversation is because they're shoving it down our throats.

If it was just a matter of needing money, they'd have cut the fat a long time ago, not double down by merging with Ironsource.

 

People are emotional and passionate. Some go over the top, yes. But you're discounting many, many devs that are not, and are just frustrated and expressing their opinions. I never found the unity ecosystem unhealthy in the past, which would include the mental and psychological devs, as you call them. Also I don't think unity ecosystem will be more healthy with these Unity announcements, rather the opposite. But everyone is entitled to their opinion.

 

Per industry practices so far they are much more likely to build something proprietary. Most large studios work with proprietary engines in non-mobile spaces. Albeit, with recent trend of dropping proprietary engines(CD Project Red, Bioware) for Unreal, perhaps, that's about to change. Unlike with most other IT industries, FOSS has had a hard time with establishing a good base in video games.

Also, with the sheer amount of services and upkeep Unity does for mobile games like analytics, ads, various gaming services, it might make sense for a lot of the big guys to remain around. There's far more to rebuild than just the engine.

 

Good, solid move. Hits the pocket books, sends a message right to the investors. Stock market just opened - hopefully this news is doing the rounds and investors are getting antsy and demanding action.

 

... I don't know, those seem like reasonable terms. The only issue is that they're just now being spelled out.

If I were better at keeping on top of things, I'd make a list of games, and rate (with discussion) them on each of these criteria.

 

So... I was checking out Flax and its terms of service are a little scary:

and then:

So, they can terminate your license for whatever reason and you will have to destroy and cease distribution of your game.
You will still owe them 4% of your gross revenue made though.

And also, if you have any legal issues with them, I hope you're fluent in polish:

oh! and:

and of course:

https://flaxengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Flax EULA.pdf

 

Ask all the AAA studios that used to produce their own in-house engine but are now using Unreal Engine. These engines have had to become massive to do all they do. The investment is insane.

 

If you get rid of the c# requirement then Unreal would fit.

 

well... those aren't great terms, but they don't stand out to me as unusual.

It's about what I'd expect if someone from Polland filled out a standard EULA template.

That is to say it speaks more to what kind of terms we have accepted as standard than it does about Flax.

 

They sold shares before the announcement, made a crappy announcement so that the whole world knows Unity now has a problem, shares go down, make a half baked better but still bad announcement, shares go down further. Sell some more shares before second announcement before a price drop. Purchase a tonne more shares again. Someone like Microsoft or some other big company that is circling steps in and scoops up Unity and saves the day for a good sum. Shares go up. They cash in , and the CEO cashes out and leaves Unity, devs are happy he is now gone. The investors are now all happy who now have made all their returns on their initial investments and they simply move on and do it again to another company. The goal being to sell the company and clean up.

 

The greed isn't the only problem.
For those still indecisive, I predict that Unity will continue focusing towards automating the development of certain mobile "games" (like those runners you see in ads all the time), maybe a bit towards VR too, with more general features and bug fixes being shelved in favor of profit-oriented (a.k.a trendy) tools that will be abandoned within a month after release. Meanwhile, Godot could see a surge in updates for all platforms thanks to an influx of former Unity developers - perhaps even some from Unreal who are apprehensive about Epic's future plans given the reduced competition.
Hopefully, at least this will be the beginning of something amazing like Blender. People are getting sick tired of Techno-Feudalism and I believe that in the future, we will rely mostly on open-source products and the heroes that support them, either by contributing or donating.

TL;DR: If you choose Unity solely because of its past updates, don't count on it remaining one of the best engines in the long term. Unless significant changes occur in the leadership, I believe other engines will eventually surpass it in every aspect.

 

I speculate that since last week that this scenario would happen in the future, But still I feel like that was too optimistic and underestimate the stupidity of Tyrant Dictator

 

im little bit trolling. but this each day treads with theater emotions how they will leave to another engine is more annoying then unity fees. they think they are Hamlet or what ? just need wait unity final decision.

 

I suspect that Unity's "clarification" is coming soon. I also suspect it will fall well short of what developers want.

Non-Starters
-----------------
NO to counting installs — the ONLY post-sale metric that makes sense is the purchase itself, regardless of cap
NO to double dipping — charging for both installs and subscriptions
NO to stealth ToS changes with no reversion

Even if ALL the above went away — and it won't — the community's trust is gone.

Let's see if I'm right. For the record, I would love to not be right.

 

The long play.

 

The engine I was using before Unity had a great community. Once that engine fell apart, one of the community members created a forum for all of us to stay in touch and to discuss what engines we were going to next. We all registered with our previous usernames so that we'd know who eachother was. The forum has been quiet most of the years since the closure back around 2014 or so, but sometimes someone chimes in here and there. I haven't posted there about Unity yet.

 

To know how big this is, there are chats within fintech companies, I know of in New York, talking about this issue. Even there folks mention Godot and Unreal.

We're witnessing kind of a historical situation in the indie game scene right now and are downplaying it - but it's pretty serious. I'd wager this is a pivotal point in the right direction for indie developers where we embrace open source code finally.

 

I think everyone has said what they have to say ( several times now ) and so we are all waiting to see Unity's response. Outside of Unity I've been dealing with clients trying to work out the next steps, though they are pretty much in holding pattern too.

 

This is nothing similar to Netflix who sells entertainment to individuals and deal with something that was too good to stay.

Unity is stalling an entire industry so they can push commercial practices that are illegal or should be illegal.

Currently, every company using Unity is losing money and unable to sign new business contract. This is extremely bad for the economy.

It's like if Volvo Trucks decided to brick every vehicle they produced until the owners agreed to buy 1000€ of bananas each months from the banana company they just merged with, and my reaction was "well, my favorite restaurant stopped their all you can eat menu so I don't see the problem".

 

Yeah, don't use FLAX ENGINE people.

use either engines such as Stride, or even Unreal (although they may go public one day and do the same, it has less reason to cancel your project for whatever reason... I mean there are tons of adult games made with Unreal. In fact Unreal Tournament is pretty messed up in and of itself. Deus Ex was extremely political. Halo also touches on genocide and all kinds of odd stuff. You know, now that I think about it, tons of epic games are made in Unreal... seems kinda unreal in a way... eeh keh. heh heh! Heh Hehe heh! HehehE EHeheheh....)

Now as for GODOT (Godot), which for no reason except making you want to look for it a little more do I keep capitalizing its spelling.

Everyone, Godot is yours to own once downloaded.

It isn't an alternative.
It should be like Blender, just try it, hell, compile it yourself. I am on the 4.2 dev 5 build and its just great getting open source (MIT) projects up and running in it that can be mine to sell commercially. No baggage. Just so, just done.
It is basically FNA and Unity had a child. Please consider giving it a go.

Unity would be better if the source was available. I firmly believe this.

 

Wow, thanks Unity greed team.

https://www.cgchannel.com/2023/09/terraria-developer-donates-100000-to-godot-development/

 

Get called in to the SEC's offices... Insider trading is heavily regulated.

 

Except it would be more like if you stayed with netflix you would pay their subscription for the rest of your life - had that been the case then most people would have left as it would be unfair.

Will some people 'learn to live with it' sure. Some developers simply do not have an option, with existing commitments, but the thing we have to remember is that Unity unilaterally made these changes that apparently can affect even old games and there is nothing to stop them from doing it again. I think that aspect is the one that will hurt Unity long term, especially as it likely pushes away really business more than hobbyists, i.e. the customers who actually pay and will create value for Unity.

 

that is some terms. from 2017 i see. i think and hope there will be TOS/EULA era before and after unity debacle. the message is very clear, end users won't swallow everything and the TOS/EULA can also be a competitive advantage. i hope more companies realize, that they can't hide their bullshit into these agreements anymore.

 

I got ya. This thread serves a few purposes, one is for people to cope the wait till Unity announcement.

 

No, there is no way to do that and there will never be a way to do that, unless games would be streamed and you wouldn't own a PC, but use something like stadia-receiver.
The same way it is impossible to have a hackproof FPS game against aimbots (this is why most hackshields spy on the gamers to see if they have any "illegal" processes launched in background, which of course you can go around).
They will not figure it out, because this is just physically impossible to do, period.

I think you are dead wrong about that. Do not compare game developers who use UT tools to earn money, to your average netflix user, to whom, usually - netflix is not that expensive and does not really matter much.
If netflix were to start threatening their users that it will take away their livelihoods, you would probably see a different scenario play out.
Your way of thinking is probably similar to Unity heads and PR - but this only shows the amount of misunderstanding there is.
Unity might gain a bit of money short-term (unless they start losing lawsuits), but if this continues it will be dead in a few years.

You might be right, I thought about that too, but that would be very shady and imo illegal. Not that it ever stopped anyone, but... programmers are not idiots, so idk if they really want to mess with us like that.
Whoever buys out Unity after this fiasco was probably involved in this process.
There is no way such a big tech company would release such an idiotic proposal, which only could be conjured by a non-technical person - it is highly probable that something shady is going on.

I think someone should notify SEC to look into this.

 

FYI. Their stock is not rallying like it did yesterday. Down more than 1% today so far. Still early though. Maybe traders were expecting some announcement from Unity already by now?

 

I don't know, to be honest many of those sound like typical boilerplate terms you see almost anyway. The problem is that the company must be able to protect itself from abuse at the end of its customers, but that often comes out as being detrimental to its customers. Its tricky because unless you can accurately list all the possible reasons a company would need to terminate a customers access/use of its software, you end up with overly broad terms just to ensure its legally water-tight.

In the past I feel like there was a higher level 'gentlemans' agreement' that some things in the terms that sounded really bad, were only there to be used as a last resort and that most customers would never fall foul of them and most companies would never enact them. Obviously the way things have gone with Unity, I think we'll see far less forgiving nature on anything that doesn't offer at least equal protection to customers.

 

Anyone else getting a warning in the Unity Editor after using it? Since around Sep-12th.

It says:

"Warning, unable to trust game engine terms. Now please wash your hands."

 

Godot's sleek UI make me seriously considering it rn

 

Guys, lets get our weight behind MonoGame!
It is c# based, is open-source, has an active development team. It has a small community, but a LOT of potential. WE, the (ex-unity) developers, can shape it and help it to be 100x better than Unity's ceo would ever be able to dream of.

Here is an good extract explaining the engine's focus:

https://community.monogame.net/t/how-good-of-a-replacement-is-monogame-for-unity/19448

 

My Current position

I can't/won't use an engine that tracks my players or calls home in anyway.

I'd pay 5% on anything over £1,000,000pa but in exchange I would expect no subscription fees and to get full access to the engine, with no paying to remove the flash screen either...

No paying per install.

No using Unity's stupid Ad network, which is what this is probably really about.

All I want to know, Is Unity sticking with this scandalous plan?

I've been staring at my current project wondering what todo all week now, zero progress made just frustration the longer they take to make there mind up the more likely it is Im going to start moving to something under the MIT/GPL license and suck up learning the new tools.

Something I should probably do anyway to avoid this headache when they try something else along these lines.

As with all traded companies all that now matters is the shareholders and there dividends. The people using there tools are now just a funding source for the folk who own the shares and have put zero work into the actual development of the engine.

 

As far as I can tell, other than a brief uplift on the 12th, that day of the announcement, its been on an overall downward trend ever since. Its certainly not what I imagine Unity was expecting from announcing such a change in plans, even if the plans were more focused on clawing back money from 'new' revenue streams, you'd expect the market to look mon it more favourably than this.

 

Btw Stardew Valley was developed in MonoGame

 

the sooner they admit they are selling shovels and lanterns instead of midas' touch, the sooner this will end. the assumption of their dominance is false and this will only fuel their competition. this is good for all of us. i'm glad it all happened at once instead of milking for years ...

 

You can consider Godot without worrying about a sneaky license.

For all time!!