Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Until they decide they want to change the ToS again like 5 years ago, or just this time....

 

Game making is both expensive and risky, this is same as say wont fund a game at all, because it may not sell.

Also from what i gather dont need to use a paid Unity until release, where need to remove the initial screen.

 

1. So they need to fire 5k ppl to downsize th team so they reduce the costs and keep the current sub system to sustain the engine ...They bloated this company to the extreeme, so if they want to reduce costs they have to make hard decisions if rev share doesnt work for them, i dont think they can sustain over 7k ppl with subs alone.
2. Then games reelased with 2022.X lts or 2023.X, ofc ppl can lock to 2021 , but then they would have to incentivize ppl to use the new versions of engine with cool features .

 

They said that you wouldn't pay for re-install on the same machine. But if you install on another phone, your wife's PC, the laptop you have to use, then is it a re-install or another install? They had different items for these in their document. At least in the last version I saw before they took it off.
Also, you will have to pay for installs that are not buys. For example, someone purchases your game on steam and gets a refund after playing 1hour. That still counts as an install. You got 0 money but you have to pay something.
Not counting the fact you have no way of knowing someone installed something.

5% of revenue is not what UE does btw. It's 5% beyond 1M. Unity doing the same would probably bring them little money. One can also question whether they had to put so much money into an ad-based company that is useless for at least half the games made by Unity.
For me, the problem is not so much the amount of money I'd have to pay, it's the changing of the rules and unpredictability of the pricing model.
If you know how much you're going to pay, you can decide which engine to use.
But if you risk a fee whose price gets multiplied by 4 (aka "bye bye Plus!") on a 3 month notice is not ok, and doesn't bode well for any pricing model they may announce in the future. That and the way they define installs, how they want to monitor them if they don't trust you etc.

 

This can happen with any other company. Actually can happen much worse, like impose a 5% percent of your earnings like Unreal did already.

 

Just wanted to mention if you sell on Epic's store they wave the rev share also.

 

So much cope..... Unity explizit stated in the past to not do stuff they just did. and you pretend like veryone does that.

 

I really get upset when ppl bring this up again. How can you not understand that installs are not something you can reliably measure, no matter who actually reports it?

 

The percentage is secondary. We all want Unity to do well. It's the underhanded manner in which they have tried to strongarm us that's the problem. This isn't the friendly Unity that we all cut our teeth on now. It's different beast. This is now a business transaction and we have to treat it as such.

 

Because its not like you can send fake packets to Unity or use VMs or botnets. /s
Way too many non-tech people use this forum.
This fiasco stems from the fact that the management of one of the biggest tool for PROGRAMMERS who want to create games do not understand tech on the very basic level.
Question is - why a tech company is lead by someone totally oblivious to tech industry?
All tech companies have better leadership than Unity... And I say all - because I do not know a different tech company that would do something so utterly stupid - physically impossible to execute.
They could as well write "After making $200k you need to learn to levitate or you can no longer use Unity".

 

And fraud will occur causing you to always have to pay 5%,
Never accept fee based on install count, especially they can't count it and just give you a random number ))

 

Yes, if they're a company like Unity who dont respect their own existing TOS.

That's a thing that Unity did do, not a 'can happen' by the way. Real events count, your hypotheticals dont.

Or even 100+% of your earnings, as Unity wanted to do. That's a thing that happened, not a 'can happen' by the way. Real events count, your hypotheticals dont.

 

You're talking a lot of nonsense tbh. I mean even at the most basic level you've said $6 and $600k instead of what should be $600k and $6M using your example of multiplying the game price by these 0.02 and 0.2 numbers. (Edit: Before someone replies to this, I recognise the $6 is likely a typo in retrospect and he meant $6M)

I don't know why you're even using these 0.02 and 0.2 numbers at this point when there's a good chance they won't be relevant anymore. Even if so, for some reason you're multiplying the price of the game by those numbers like 0.02 to 0.2 are related to percentage cuts of initial game sale gross revenue they're going to take. Obviously that isn't going to be what they do with those particular numbers.

If you wanted to use the 0.02 and 0.2 as dollars like it was initially and in the most favourable possible way, that would instead be an amount they take per sale, not a percentage. The calculation would be 10,000,000 sales x $0.02 = $200,000 and 10,000,000 sales x $0.2 = $2,000,000.

And then why 0.02 anyway? You're using 0.2 from Unity Personal and 0.02 from the lowest amount of Unity Pro when 0.01 was the lowest amount of the Enterprise tier if you wanted to to give the most favourable nonsense numbers. And these lowest numbers were for games that had over 1 million installs in a single month.

There's nothing wrong with preferring what should no doubt be cheaper terms with Unity, but making statements like "same as noone really likes a 5% in Unreal" is in bad faith.

I'd suggest the majority of people are and always have been ok with Unreal's 5% rev share after the first $1M. Epic have a AAA game engine used by the biggest developers in the world and by themselves with one of the biggest games in the world and they have a model where they succeed when you do. Yes, if you do really, really well then you're going to give them a lot of money, but that was the choice everyone that used the engine made when they started. Epic haven't unfavourably changed the terms on anyone.

Unity was the up-front fixed price/SaaS alternative. It won't be anymore. If there's a rev share difference of even a few percent between the two, Unity is going to have a hard time convincing anyone that's game would work in either engine to go with them after this. Epic have a whole infrastructure built around rev share and helping developers succeed in different ways. Unity have entered this realm kicking and screaming.

 

My suggestion for the new pricing model:
1. Current licenses stay.
2. Introduce 4% revshare after reaching $200k revenue threshold, deducted by 90% of the licenses cost, this way:
- Unity can still retain the current business model and just expand it by revenue share, where licenses for those who pay a lot of revshare will be very cheap.
- 90% deduction instead of 100% so noone will have an incentive to turn all % revshare to licenses and try to illegally re-sell them somehow.
- The best (and imo only) option to have both licenses and revshare, while not making people even more mad.

 

yes it is expensive. and that's the reason, why you shouldn't pay afterwards, if you paid already beforehand. serious developers probably has something more than personal licenses, don't you think?

and since unity is in "dream of making a game"-business, i wouldn't be surprised if they made more money with unreleased/cancelled games than unreal makes from released games...

 

1 - if unity is cheaper then it will be more attractive for devs that don't need the stuff that unreal offers and unity doesn't (as it is now)
2 - it's not like unity is a poor unreal version. those engines are different with different market focus (mobile/indies vs pc+consoles/AAA games)/.

let's not: "demos in unreal looks better , then unreal is better in all instances"

 

Making your own engine may not be that hard but you still need an editor.

Features like prefabs within prefabs take a lot of work to make and are essential if you want to be productive.

And even then, you're still left with a game engine that works on windows. If you want to export on webgl or mobile, you'll be buried under that load of tasks before you can work on your game.

 

That's a trust issue and you are right it is a problem and I don't know what they can do to regain the trust...
An appology will be a first start, but most likely not enough

 

They won't do it but...

...I'd like to see plain seat licensing for the engine itself with no % and no reference to "installs." Especially relevant if you are merely using the engine for 3D.

...and they can charge whatever they like in percentages for those who want to rely on the wider "ecosystem" for ads, AI and all the other stuff they keep adding to the mix.

 

How should anything solve it, based on their statement about commitment about transparancy and trust, and extra dedicated github for ToS, and they still did it. Who wants to get fooled a third time?

 

That's kind of brilliant. So, a "choose one" plan. Choose to pay before or use a rev share later (just not both). Maybe a rev share would be required if you use ads.

 

Ironclad TOS like Unreal would solve it. Trust in contracts is never a good idea especially when you do not trust the other party.

 

That would help to solve it. I think the distrust will remain toward the Unity board though.

 

Well I never said anything like that so that's a weird thing to say.

My point was that if Unity go revenue share then it's something they've come to basically under duress at this point and we're living in the real world where Unity has done the thing this thread is about where they've negatively changed the terms and tried to (and maybe still will) do so retrospectively to existing games. This can't just be discounted.

Framing the choice as entirely based on the technical aspects of the engines and the price difference completely ignores the past 10 days and the risk involved in entering a multi-year production with the company.

Obviously if you're making a game that Unreal isn't suited for then you're still more likely to use Unity. I personally prefer Unity over Unreal as it is less rigid and more generic so I have more freedom to create thing in the way I like to do instead of the way Unreal wants. However I have a company to run and if Unreal will suit a future game then under current conditions that's the one I'll personally be going with and it has nothing to do with demos looking better.

 

My bet is:

1- Unity Plus returns, even if it is higher I will pay it (of course higher != infinite).
2- No fees in any case.
3- Compromise not changing the rules for the version of Unity active (say 2022.3 LTS).

Bonus track: fire John Riccitiello or tie him with chains and let him not speak again.

If these 3 points are not met I will leave Unity.

 

Unity,

It is now day ELEVEN of the "find out" phase of your ill-conceived "install fee" plan.

You have turned OUR industry upside-down overnight just for your own profit motive, and not in a good way. Developers are having inked publishing deals cancelled because of this. Many games must eat the expense of switching engines to escape your predatory terms. Half of an entire generation of game developers have seen their hard-won skills obsoleted overnight.

Yet, even while all of this rages on and does damage to OUR industry every day it is allowed to continue, Unity has been inert and non-responsive.

You STILL have not proposed or leaked terms that we find anywhere near acceptable.

You STILL do not seem to understand that for many of us, the MAIN sticking point is the Unity's bad-faith removal of the ability for the developer to remain on their current TOS.

You STILL have not properly apologized for YOUR actions. You have only apologized for feelings you perceive that we have. We are not confused, we are righteously enraged. The terms offered are the problem, not our response to it.

You STILL have not even begun to properly engage US, the community, yet you tout on twitter that you have.

This will not go away for you. This rage we have will not lessen in degree. The longer you wait to address this, the worse that it will get, because your continued reluctance to do the right thing only reinforces for us how little you value us as partners.

So, I will state my demands plainly and succinctly yet again, along with my plan of action if these terms are not met.

Unity, leave your hands off of my already released games. Let them remain on the old TOS, as you previously PROMISED could happen, in PLAIN LANGUAGE in your blog as well as in contract. Anything that you did to alter this promise that YOU MADE TO US as a conciliatory gesture after that last TOS fiasco was a shady and unethical shell game and clearly done in bad faith so that you could launch this flaming wreckage of a plan.

Basing your fee on a number that is not tied to revenue is ludicrous and unworkable. You do not have the magic means to count number of installs, and neither do we. It's an unauditable metric. Eliminate the install fee.

Your CEO, board of directors, and management needs to be purged of anyone who proposed, touted, or championed this plan, or delayed adequate response to the fallout from it. That this situation has been allowed to protract for this long is unacceptable. Your failure to address the situation continues to damage the industry further and demonstrates clearly that the current management does not have what it takes to be good stewards of Unity technology.

Until these things happen I will continue to standby with pitchfork and torch in hand and explore options to enforce my rights under contract. I will also continue actively and passively campaigning against the use of Unity in the industry, highlighting your bad faith business dealings even further than they are currently exposed publicly.

No one can deny that Unity needs to do something to improve their income statement. However, core basis of the proposed plan, even with the Bloomberg-leaked updates, is unworkable and unacceptable to pretty much all of us. Over the last six years you frittered money away on everything else except the new technologies that we need for Unity to stay relevant. Now you come hat in hand for more money, talking about the need to balance some value equation, yet over the years, by letting your core product languish while chasing tangents, we are receiving less value from Unity than we were six years ago. Which end of the value equation really needs balanced here?

Grow some institutional courage and fortitude and come talk to us directly. You claim that you have talked to the community, but we here in the forums definitely do not feel listened to, having had zero meaningful contact with anyone from Unity in over a week. By leaving this forum thread for so long without engagement, you are displaying acute cowardice and apathy toward us. We may be angry and loud right now and VERY justifiably so, but generally we're really nice people and you used to know that.

Let's have some meaningful dialogue AS A COMMUNITY and not just these back-channel deals and attempts to mollify the enterprise customers.

 

I think that you don't have to wait anymore because it won't happen. Too good, to be true.

 

I don't know about that.

We heard a lot of bad stuff about ironsource and how their tracking product is labeled as malicious Spyware by other companies.

It looks like an attempt to leverage unity's userbase into making that Spyware product useful or legit.

It would be surprising if they threw ironsource under the bus after a multi billion dollars merger.

 

Again if u think they can sustain over 7k employees and huge board bonuses on sub only...u live in lalaland

 

And you think holding devs hostage is sustainable?

 

If they told us the current situation is the result of them trying an AI ceo, it would explain so much.

 

The only place that mentioned the 4% cap is an article from Bloomberg and there it is mentioned that it is "Runtime fee 4% cap after reaching $1M revenue." It is not mentioned what this "$1M revenue" means

On top of that Runtime fee tiers are "New installs per month" meaning the installation price counter resets to zero every month. That is, if you had 1M installs in the first month you reached $0.01 per install (in Enterprise) but the first install in the next month is $0.125 per install.
That's what you can understand from their table with the new pricing plan.

Still the re-install issue is they explained that reinstalls on the same machine don't count but on another machine they do. And a player can install on several machines + family sharing + gaming PC "upgrade" (replacement) = that's another installs
So to simplify: install = DeviceID + GameID pair

So it's cool how you do some calculation for $30 but don't do cherry picking, because even in your example it may not be worth it in the long run.

If you read the EULA from unreal engine then you would know that $1M is not the only threshold and comparing it with Unity new pricing plan then unreal looks like an indie haven.

 

Why do they need 7k employees? And why are giving board members huge bonuses when they are turning massive losses?

 

I'm not going to work with a company that changes the rules at midnight retroactively and with no way of controlling installs. And with a CEO that has lost his mind.

 

my bad, sorry, here is the full text with links but it is an old post so you may have to find thos downloads on your search engine, tbh it would be better if you just ask in the forums...
Here is the text:


Build for mobile platforms (such as Android, iOS or WebGL) available only in Unigine 1.0. To build the engine you should have the same Unigine Windows (or Linux) SDK version installed (for example, 2014-07-07). Also, arm-linux-androideabi-4.6 toolchain is required for correct compilation.

The current workflow for Windows is the following:

1. Install the source UNIGINE SDK and UNIGINE Mobile SDK (use version 2014-07-07)
1.1. If the UNIGINE SDK is installed via the .exe file, the paths will be added to the PATH variable automatically
1.2. If the UNIGINE SDK is unarchived, run the install.py, which will add all of the paths and variables

2. Install the Android SDK:
2.1. Download the installer from http://dl.google.com/android/installer_r21-windows.exe
2.2. Install it, for example, to C:\android\android-sdk-win
2.3. After installation, the PATH variable should have the following values:
* C:\android\android-sdk-win\tools
* C:\android\android-sdk-win\platform-tools

3. Install the Android NDK:
3.1. Download the archive from http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html
3.2. Unpack it to C:\android\android-ndk-r8c
3.3. Create the NDKROOT environment variable with the C:\android\android-ndk-r8c string
3.4. To the PATH variable, add: %NDKROOT%\toolchains\arm-linux-androideabi-4.6\prebuilt\windows\bin

4. Install the Java Development Kit
4.1. Download the installation pack from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7u9-downloads-1859576.html
4.2. Run the installer and follow the instructions. Make sure that %PROGRAMFILES%\Java\jre7\lib and %PROGRAMFILES%\jdk1.7.0_09\lib adresses contain the tools.jar file

5. Install Apache Ant
5.1. Download the 1.8.4 version archive with binaries http://www.sai.msu.su/apache//ant/binaries/apache-ant-1.8.4-bin.zip
5.2. Unpack it, for example, to C:\android\ant
5.3. Create the ANT_HOME variable with the C:\android\ant string
5.4. To the PATH variable, add %ANT_HOME%\bin

6. Install Python 2.7
6.1. Download the python 2.7.3 from https://www.python.org/downloads/
6.2. Make sure that the path to the python.exe (C:\Python27 by default) is added to the PATH variable. Add new PYTHON_DIR and PYTHONPATH variables pointing to C:\Python27

7. Install SCons 2.2.0
7.1. Make sure that scons.bat is located in the %PYTHON_DIR%/Scripts

8. Build the application (works for android sdk 17. The version is set in the update.bat. For example: --target android-17):
8.1. Build the engine:
8.1.1. Make sure that <SDK>/source/Sconstruct contains the android-17 in the line 124.
8.1.2. Make sure that the PATH variable contains the correct arm-linux-androideabi-4.6 toolchain
8.1.3. Go to <SDK>/source/app/android/activity/jni
8.1.4. Run in command line: scons_adb (scons platform=android)
If the libraries compilation is successful, the following *.so files should appear in <SDK>/source/app/Android/activity/libs/armeabi:
* libUnigineActivity.so
* libUnigine.so
8.2. Build Activity-debug:
8.2.1. Go to <SDK>/source/app/Android/activity
8.2.2. Run update script
8.2.3. Run build script
As a result of the correct build the following folders will be created: <SDK>\source\app\Android\activity\bin\classes.jar
8.3. Before building *apk:
8.3.1. Copy <SDK>\externs\lib\android\arm\libopenal.so to <SDK>\source\app\Android\activity\libs\armeabi\. If the engine haven't been built from the source files, add the required libraries manually: copy libUnigine.so and libUnigineActivity.so from <SDK>\lib\debug\ to <SDK>\source\app\Android\activity\libs\armeabi\

After that you can build *.apk samples from the <SDK>/source/samples/Android via build.bat.



Thanks!

 

At the risk of repeating myself, clauses in TOS only matter if they are enforceable.

 

because they can. they believe in infinite growth. they believe their current c-level can make them billions.

 

So, do you guys think Riccitiello is getting fired?

 

The board of directors should also resign! They have all proven to be incompetent with years of unfounded decisions.
This is just the latest in a series of mismanagement, communicated even worse.
An elementary school child could do better without taking millions of dollars.

 

So your proposal is.... a more expensive model than Unreal?

 

nope, no way

 

I fear Unity will think everything is fine again after the announcement. We all know that pricing was just one issue, they have so many other problems.

Biggest issue for me now is they've completely lost developer "good will" and the leadership don't care. Even if they did, they wouldn't know how to get it back because they are not game Devs. Unreal Godot etc are all driven by people passionate about game Dev.

 

How is it not worth it in the long run, if in some cases Unreal ask millions of dollars more.

I dont understand, can you give me an example how in the case i mentioned may not be worth it ?

In a $30 game, Unreal asks for $1.5 per copy, while Unity could be as low as $0.2x1 = $0.2, if we go by the higher amount they have mentioned so far. With the lowest would be only $0.02x1 = $0.02

So if make 10 million sales, Unreal asks for $15 million, while Unity asks for $2 million in worst case and $200K in best.

 

Indeed you are 100% right, i did it fast and fail in the calcs.

So it is actually 3x times less indeed, eg. Unreal would ask $15 million and Unity only $2 million at the absolute worst case scenario that charge $0.2 per sale (and not $0.02)

 

they may sugarcoat some terms, but the total price increase will stay. it is already approved for the next year. they can twist and turn things to make them look different, but that won't change their goal. to squeeze devs more than ever.

 

How many Unity games sell for $30 or above? Not that many, I bet.

 

Not yet.

 

I like how the first cope was “no one makes over $1m, so it doesn’t matter”, but now the examples are, “but what if you make $300m?”

 

All those years of good fee free (personal) attracting the dev community were ruined in one day. Now they will have to rebuild trust from scratch, luckily for them there is still an asset store.

 

Is still much more in a $5 game