Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Yeah, the entire scheme reeked of ineptitude. I don't believe the plan was to hurt developers, either. Riccitiello had been very vocal about "never using revenue sharing" but as they say... "never say never". Something is still very wrong about the way Unity has bene run though. They are blowing through cash like it's nothing, and even 3000 employees doesn't explain the burn rate - and the performance doesn't justify the salaries or insane stock options they are getting ad the C-Suite level. On a personal level, Riccitiello might be a decent guy, but he's quick with the hot takes when he's being recorded, was part of the worst era for Electronic Arts, and deserved or not, has a greedy reputation. I'm more than willing to admit he has done some good, in guiding Unity to a prime position in the world of VR, but they seem to miss the boat when it comes to understanding the mobile market.

It's never a good idea to assume you are the smartest person in the room, but in a room where board members are receiving well informed, well intentioned criticism from engineers in their company, explaining the issues with their plan, they damn well need to understand they are the absolute dumbest in the room (which is not to insult them - it's just truth in that case), and defer to advice of the ones who know. Their customers are very intelligent people who sniff out bullshit quickly, and also an impassioned lot of dreamers, who will get angry when realize that bullshit might bankrupt them or their colleagues.

 

They do have a forum (https://community.monogame.net/), and discord.
In my experience, you can get quicker help from an expert in discord than asking in a forum. Usually your questions may be context-sensitive, and it is easier to communicate back and forth in a quick manner on discord. Discord is not good for long-term information storage but rather short-term information seeking (if that makes sense).

 

And not just the devs it needs. Devs are good, but we suck at documentation and lack a lot of context. I am really looking forward to what happens when asset designers make their needs known.

 

While we can make the comparison that Godot can potentially have the same success path that Blender has had (myself included), one other thing stands out to me from this additional info.

Ton Roosendaal is a professional technical leader. He knew what he was doing. Blender was the way Blender was for a long time because he felt it was the right way to do things. He essentially sacrificed his own vision and gave in to the more popular requests of the community to become the general success that it is now.

If Godot leadership is as unprofessional and inexperienced as those accounts suggest, it's just another facet to consider if going with Godot. Can you imagine all these donations going towards a vision that may not eventually align with your own?

 

I get this all the time....industry. What about those of us who want to make unique interesting cool, fun, crazy wacky games that Industry would never make. So it is not always about wanting to work in industry, it's about art, making your passion project, working with a small young team and teaching each other. I never considered my work to be a hobby, because we have every intention to put our game out there. And we already have built a niche audience, due to my skill of talking a lot to everyone about it.

I am going to stay with Unity, I have used free personal license since Unity 5. Watching my kids work with Unity. And doing commissions with Unity.

There are some of us who are having fun, and if I have to pay .20 for installs, it is something worth it to me. We are among the 90% that supposedly will not affect us with the fees. That does not mean I think what they are doing is okay.

I do not want to throw away the hundreds of models made by my team, and the weird wacky magic spells made by my autistic son, and the laughs with my meetup group NJ when we tell them about what we are doing and show them hippie clothes and conspiracy dialogue. I am not giving up. Unfortunately Godot is not an option, maybe Unreal in a year. I am too old to wait that long. lol

 

yep exactly...

 

well at least this will give godot a boost
unity has a VERY bad management
unreal is 40% owned by tencent
we need a real alternative!

btw epic 2200 empoyees, unity 7000.... wtf?!

 

It is.

People talk a lot about the price but the fact that you can get a less worse deal if you use their services is an unacceptable anti consumer practice on its own.

The fact that they need to twist their customers arm for them to subscribe says a lot about the economical viability of these products.

 

Gotta add my 2 cents (or .20?) to this thread.

Firstly, I cannot believe that the original "confusing" announcement was published without a review by Unity's Legal and PR departments, so I believe the announcement was purposely published in that format for a reason.

I've been developing mobile apps and games (without fanfare) for about 11 years. I started with CoronaSDK (now known as Solar2D) and then moved to Unity around 2015.

Corona was a great engine... until it was bought by an Ad company, and the game engine became just another vehicle to their more lucrative ad product(s). Features and updates were slowing, unless it was to add additional ad plugins, etc. Currently, Solar2D is now FOSS and I use it to maintain my existing portfolio.

I think that is what we are seeing with Unity, and if that is true, their focus will be more advertisements, and less engine updates, regardless of what future announcements will say.

Personally, for me, I think it is about time I move on from Unity and try something new anyway. I started a retro space shooter in Unity that I can easily port to something else (thinking Godot right now). The complexity, bloat, and unfinished features (omg, UIToolkit is so annoying hard to use) of Unity is not needed for the games I release.

I wish everyone the best of luck, no matter what decision you make.

 

If its a waiting game then Unity comes off worse IMHO. Speaking for myself they have a few weeks before I have to decide my future. At that point I'll probably be forced to upgrade to Pro from Plus for a year due existing commitments, but will be spending most dev time exploring alternative engines such ass Godot, Flax, Stride and others to see which fits me best. Once I start investing my time in other engines I'm done with Unity ( again barring existing commitments ), at least directly, maybe indirectly will need to use it from time to time.

While I do occasionally finding myself trying to work through the numbers for Unity, I have to remind myself, the numbers aren't the problem, its the TOS changes, move to installs and generally that Unity can no longer be trusted and will likely always be clawing at any revenue I make using it.

 

In many cases models are not tied to specific engine. You should be able to move those across.

 

There was also an argument along those lines the last time something like this happened, in Flash. And sure, for a time, you could still create interesting or cool or wacky games in Flash, and distribute them in the dwindling ways one still could. And now you can't. Even the flash player itself, while theoretically installable this long after its deprecation and final released version, is such a security risk that you had best not bother.

In the end, like a zen garden, all the old work was wiped away and nobody was creating new work. The little new work made, was not seen.

You absolutely can continue to use it as a hobbyist while it lasts, but your success as a hobbyist won't keep Unity alive and your use case won't be one they care to support in their dying days.

 

It seems like that doesn't it? I totally agree that it seems so crazy to do what they did. I thought exactly what you did at first.

But I've changed my mind.

It benefits the major Unity shareholders and Unity executives for Unity to be as successful as possible for as long as possible, but it's not easy to come up with a good product or service that people want. That's why most businesses fail. And it's certainly not easy to come up with several good products, in a row. It's really, really hard.

I suspect they just misjudged how much their core products and services would propel their revenue growth. I think they thought they would have more time to develop new sources of revenue.

And every artist and game developer knows that new, creative ideas take time to develop.

And they're out of time. They're desperate.

I think it is more plausible that the strange failure to communicate the pricing changes to developers is based on two things:

1) the real decision-makers at Unity are completely disconnected from the rest of the company, from end-users, and from developers. We know that based on the product decisions they've been making, and also on intangible things like the CEO's "F***ing idiots" comment, or the poor Unity employee who got fired for publicly scoffing at the idea that executives think it's no big deal to rent a second apartment near Unity HQ.

2) nobody at Unity, when confronted with the directive to change pricing policy for developers, actually wanted to implement the plan. It's a stupid a plan and everyone knows it.

 

You people talk and talk and talk. It's time you pay the fee for those that have written more than 10 posts in here this week. Come on, we don't have all day, send money now!!

 

What if I embed your ADs with my future posts? Do you still want money?

 

If you are looking for an alternative, then come join me at MonoGame
No strange TOS, no 0.20cents, no greedy CEO....guys, we need to push this engine, it has a ton of potential; it just needs more active developers for it to flourish!
https://community.monogame.net/t/how-good-of-a-replacement-is-monogame-for-unity/19448/7

 

Honestly I don't know what to think.

If this was all planned, then you'd think they had the TOS fully worked out before and not have to clarify, or alter some of the specifics ( e.g. streaming, webgl and game subscription ).

However they can't have been oblivious to the backlash this has had, but if you dismiss it as only coming from 'low' value developers then they would have had to think it all through and do the numbers to believe they would still make bank off the 'whale' companies. So how did they not have all the terms thought out?

Nothing really makes sense, other than they have become desperate and need to get a cash injection come the new year and the only way they think they can do that it is via install tax on those mega big games, even the ads aspect wouldn't generate a huge influx of money in a short time and thats assuming enough dev's switch to use Unity's ad solution.

 

That doesn't sound right, there are 8 billion people in the world. 20% of them aren't game developers

 

We use Atavism for our game, it sped up our development and we have gotten far enough to be close to a demo. We were able to some fun stuff with it. The assets keep us from going to another engine. Also, I have two programmers, both prefer C#. I manage and do landscapes and payroll for the employees, and I write and do the lore for the game. We are kind outside of the typical indies I guess. I think Unity will be around long enough for us to finish it.

 

I hope you don't regret it in the long term, as from your technical and personal perspective it was entirely true. Just because Unity the company has decided to pivot and present unlimited financial risk doesn't suddenly mean that the observations about godot are less true. It just means that now there is yet another engine out there that has presented unlimited risk, but of a different kind.

 

Great write up.

Personally I believe it is either yield or die for them now. And I doubt they have the self reflection for yielding - Because of course it's not them or their vision, in their mind... It's us that are the problem and not seeing right.

They might have recovered if they hadn't took 8 freaking days to fix this craziness.

I still think they could just about scrape surviving to an lesser extent if they come back offering a fair rev share but only if the terms are reverted too and from a set future editor onwards.

Other than that, if they dare come back out with any of this install bull**** and dangerous open terms they are going to be toast as quick as everyone can port out. SO many have already begun. And even more have vouched to not start any new projects with them.

Wild business story that will be referenced for years.

 

Do not regret it. I am sure you helped more than you think you did. I have had so much help from the Unity community and in discord. I help teens make games in a discord server with others, I am not a coder, but I help them with what I can. I never regret it, and the reward is when a kid sends me a dm thanking me and that I helped him find his niche. Our words are more important than we think.

 

And even if they were, only a fraction of game developers use Godot, and only a fraction of those are contributors to the engine's source. Besides, you can just look at the Github and see the exact number, which is around 2200.

 

Yeah, that is a “trust me bro” source for sure, which of course doesn’t look right, just like what Unity told us about how the install counter work!

 

You're welcome. I blatantly stole that list from someone on Mastodon.
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@djlink/111057089188661945

 

Elon buyin Discord confirmed?
*ducks*

 

So strange, because of people in my Unity circle are sticking around, they have lot of assets, and not everything will port to another engine. Like me they feel like they lose more if they just leave. Starting over is not always easy. I know it is a risk but everything is a risk. Asset dev friends seem to be optimistic. I am not in the same category as many, my game is funded by my other work. I do not worry about money. I am fortunate. My family is well fed and college fees paid. Lot of us like that, the 90% I still remember when Unity 5 came out and gave us more so we could actually make a game.

 

Godot has about 2k total lifetime contributors, not all necessarily active and contributing right now.

 

EBITDA year over year growth would end up as 100% ($99m to ~$199). That's enough to give the stock runway as investors don't necessarily look solely at net income(loss). Net income(loss) is mushy as one can redirect a lot of the earnings to trying to grow marketshare/future revenue vs just paying down that gap. That can also fluctuate quite substantially depending on what opportunities arise each year. EBITDA tends to be a more stable measure of how efficient you're running and there's a somewhat implicit expectation that once market saturation is reached, all that previous money directed at growing the company isn't required anymore and a good portion of EBITDA is shed as dividends.

 

it was a great post and revealed a lot about Godot community - seems like its amateurs and hobbiests (which is fine ofc) but seem reluctant to do the things that can let pro games / devs succeed there. and lot of the typical FOSS hand waving. I think they're in this weird position, they have huge influx of community obvs and are marketing Godot as something you can use for everything except AAA. But when you dig into it that basically means low end mobile and not 3D and the leadership is your typical snooty FOSS devs except they are not pro game devs (so for example performance is not a priority, i.e largely clueless about what a game engine needs to make successful games)

nothing wrong with your post IMO if their community doesnt value the input thats not your problem

 

lol wut? 1 in 7 people on Earth are not video game developers. That means that something like 60-80% of people with access to a computer (not including phones) are video game developers. That's hilarious that someone claimed that in earnest though.

Maybe they meant "gamers" and not game developers. I'd believe that 1.2 billion people play video games.

 

Where is Flax Engine in this chart? I saw a lot of people hyping it in this thread as a feature complete alternative to Unity and Unreal.

 

The 90% os that "won't be affected" by this new policy, according to Unity will remain, because, sincerely, in the short term what choice do we have? I´m working in my game for the last 12 months, at the very least...

BUT, it was a mobile game and it´s only monetization was through Ads...

I changed it and now I´m aiming it to be published on Steam and other channels as a paid game, because, mobile Ads based games are EXACTLY what Unity is attacking with this new policy and it´svery easy to own them more in install fees than the entire game revenue thorugh ads...

BUT, I´m sticking with my personal license, whatever, there´s nothing the Pro license really have to offer besides removing the "Splashscreen of shame"

But those 10% affected by Unity, those big hitters like Mihoyo (honkai impact), those guys are already porting their games to Unreal or working on their own proprietary engine...

So, Unity won´t get any from those either...

Time is definitely NOT on their side, unless their objectives were to anger and alienate their community which they actually succeded.

 

Godot has had only a total of 2200 people ever contribute to making the engine better.

 

This is the case with all open source, though - isn't it? I work on open source also - and I get pull requests that fix things and add things in ways that will break other stuff, or will only work in edge cases, etc. You have to review them, and choose whether to merge them, or whether to fix them, or if they are actually a bug at all.

 

I had a dream reccently. ( For real ) I was driving around with a decent bike. My bike was stolen in a company and and old man told me there was just a bike to rent there, with small tires and very slow to drive around with. And I had no control to know how far I get with that bike.

 

That's a whole game framework that you'd have to port. I understand your position. I also use 3rd party tools but in smaller capacity, so it wouldn't be as much of a headache. This decision by Unity affects everyone differently and to different degrees. Hopefully you can complete your game and if it is a success you might have income to hire someone to start the port.

 

Flax Engine is a better replacement for Unity. Here's why:
✅ C#, C++, Visual Scripting
✅ .NET 7, C# 11, PhysX 5
✅ Cross platform (exclude VR)
✅ C# Unity API (just copy paste your unity c# script to flax and it's works!)
✅ Performance first. (I tried enter the play mode with default scene and it opened INSTANTLY in Flax. Under 1 second. In Unity, you need to wait atleast 30 second to enter play mode with default scene)
✅ Unreal graphic quality by default.
✅ Built-in volumetric fog.
✅ 10x faster script compilation
✅ Hot reload
✅ Built-in auto LOD
✅ 64-bit floating point
✅ Built-in open world tools (world streaming, dynamic foliage, etc) without performance drop!
✅ etc. etc. etc.

 

Lol, nobody likes unity anymore xD, but this is a very VERY good news
https://youtu.be/AG9nWNI5h90

i would like to see this level of support to o3de too

 

The problem is, he's inching, he said this in the beginning of 2021:

Apparently nearly three years wasn't enough to ask a lawyer to write an EULA which doesn't screw over everyone else. Yes, that monstrosity originally contained that in case of termination you have to destroy all copies of your game.

Well, it takes a lot of successful endeavors to compensate for extorting children directly (fortnite), so Unity decided to buy up a lot of different companies and they forgot to lay off the people doing the same thing in different organiztions.

But the EULA is still garbage which is a no-go, unfortunately. And since we warned him years ago about this and he noted it, well, I guess it's not important.

 

107 games made with the Blender Game engine????

 

Uh, what? You're doing something wrong.

 

And then you wake up from your sweet dream and check if somebody in game dev business actually uses Flax Engine and not just hypes it...
https://steamdb.info/tech/

 

Godot isn't a company and doesn't have a CEO or board or anything. There's a non-profit foundation that supports development financially, but it's a legally separate entity. And even if development did go off the rails, a motivated group could take the code and make their own Godot (with blackjack, and hookers).

So yes, for all time.

--Eric

 

are you sure? if yes, that is pretty cool...

mmm this is not true

not true, in fact is kind of basic (i'm not saying you can not achieve good results)

 

this is all understandable. but in the end, it seems to be like an abusive relationship. at some point you may be forced to leave. and later it can be even more costly. then again, some of us can take bigger risks than others, and i don't blame anyone that stays. i wish all the best, but prepare for the worst, for your own sake.

 

Monogame: Building potential since 2009.

Seriously though, it's a great framework that took the reigns when XNA shutdown. I don't think it's quite the direct comparison to Unity than the other engines that have been suggested.

 

To me about the same level as a required 3rd party account. No deal breaker by any means, but it raises an eyebrow and it won't be a spur of the moment decision as it sometimes happens otherwise.

bingo

Because they are. They play a different game with great success and try to fool regular people into thinking they are partners.

From their own employee as far as I know. They probably are just not allowed to do anything. Don't want to see the TOS they give their employees.

Thank you for your insights, I learned a lot and appreciate your evaluation. Wasn't able to find your background quickly so it was natural to ask "who dis?". Sorry you got flak for the value you provided. I hope others continue to press on the pain points of Godot.

On a lower level this happened with Vulkan and it took a long time and more resources to get it where it is today. Dont't know how this would translate to doing the same on an even higher abstraction level.

The proposal is by design spreading FUD. It was never meant to be put in place.

Obviously Danny = Johnny
We are one bad unity take away from "include me in the screencap"

 

It's pretty wild that Unity has been silent for a week while they bleed users. We've had some reporting based on inside information but that's not official communication...