Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Correct and the details are confusing however in order to even hit the threshold for the runtime fee you need an install base (200k for personal/plus) AND $200k in revenue over the last 12 months. If you've never made a cent, no matter how many installs you have, you pay nothing.

 

That is a terribly oversimplified misrepresentation of the facts. *The only way this could be true is if we are also charging the end user for every install. Otherwise this is a formula for runaway costs and abuse.

The update earlier says we'll be responsible to pay for an uncontrollable, unpredictable amount of installs. That is an unacceptable risk.

 

Looking at 12 years of experience, my entire career, literal headaches and health put into becoming a good unity developer going down the drain. If this decision isn't rolled back - well, going to switch to something else, even if I have zero experience with other engines.

 

Sure, the numbers can be good if you're selling a $20+ game and that's it. But that's only assuming Unity can somehow magically differentiate pirated users (they cannot).
And just because the change could be good for some developers doesn't make that okay, when a profit share is equally fine for all and has no surprise fees.

 

Outnumbered maybe..

 

Reprehensible. Subscriptions are cancelled. Projects will be migrated. As if there wasn't enough reason to move away from Unity anyway.

 

You're thinking of insider trading, which is illegal

 

These two, combined with the piracy aspect (which can be exploited eventually) are perfect recipe for disaster. You guys can't be serious, there is no way this is real... Just what the actual F...

 

Come on, I have been working on a project for so long now.
but now I'm terrified of the success because If I'm successful i can be charged a ton in installs/re-installs even if It's pirated.

Can we just go back to how it was? The only thing stopping me from switching to gadot is Cinemachine - I love unity`s camera system plus the prefab system is also amazing

 

You forget about the thousands of freelancers and small studios working for outsourcing. If previously it was convenient to pay $45, now $180 a month is already a significant amount for many freelancers and small studios.

 

This is the nail in the coffin for many I am sure.

 

Whoaw, this is so stupid. Time to start learning Godot.

 

Why would I trust Unity ever again after this?

 

Not like this. All that time and energy spent finally learning ecs only to have to start thinking about switching engines already lol. It kills me.

 

Guys, stop trying so hard to accept this new scam.

1. Unity will keep doing this, why? Because we no longer matter. Shareholders and stock prices do.
2. This is only the beginning. They know many will leave, but for those who stay, they know they can milk you a bit more.
3. With this new scam, you and all past projects are literally co-owned by Unity. Why? Because they get paid when someone plays it. Congratulations on co-authoring your game.
4. But wait, you owe them 4 times the subscription!
5. Oh hold on! There is "trust me bro" fee as well.
6. Get in huge debt and cry.
7. Get in audits, number disputes every month! Yay!
8. Transition to Unreal 5 years later than everyone.

 

Its good to highlight this, not because I think its a good plan, but that it just goes to show how many damn variables and options you now have to track to work out what the most efficient way to keep your profits will be once you hit the thresholds. It proves just how convoluted and ill thought out it all is, especially compared to just raising prices for subscriptions or trying to move to a royalty system. It almost feels deliberate at this point by Unity.

It seems ludicrous to me that it eventually gets down to crunching between paying fees or switching everyone in the company to a new subscription model to minimise your expenses. But you know that's developers will end up doing that, because you know developers are gamers too, and gamers love to min/max

 

ACTAULLY!!!

YOU KNOW WHAT???

I THINK THERES SOMETHING TO THIS!!!

This is the dumbest move I have EVER seen unity make.

Are they deliberately driving down stock for a buy back???

And then reverse the decision after they bought it up.

 

I like that they say "guys, we made a FAQ with all important questions answered " and then every answer after answer makes it WORSE like even WORSE than everyone thougt. This is like the most out of touch thing a company spat out the last 15 years.
I will switch engines when my game is finished. This is just pure madness. I can't believe a human thougt this up. Or more than one person said "THAT SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA!".
Unity said this thread is for discussion. But as far as it looks they are not open for discussion, because this tax plan is just completly one sided.

 

I know everyone is still just reacting to the "per install" nonsense but this change also kills (true) indie development for consoles.

Unless you have $2000 per seat to throw away on the off chance you hit the jackpot on that console port that's swimming in a sea of other triple I "indies".

Good luck with that.

 

This is definitely a valid concern. I think if they can address the reinstall issue it might help a bit. Like if they can say "reinstalls won't count" but currently they are saying the exact opposite. I think the cost is too high per install for this to work if they also are going to count reinstalls. If they were doing like $0.001 per install, even if they charged for reinstalls it wouldn't be nearly as bad.

I would hope that if a game had this kind of resurgence that it would happen over a long enough period of time that you would see it coming. If one month an old game all of the sudden makes $100,000 in revenue, you should know that relatively soon, so you could say "to be safe I'm going to get Pro". Not saying this is a great solution... which is why Unity needs to get their act together.

 

And then the minute you hit that threshold, you will start to pay for every install. So either we have to hope that we can't make a sustainable return, or make a terrible business decision to volunteer to eat unpredictable costs.

 

This situation is entirely their creation. They could not go through with the IPO, step down as CEO, hire Johnny (although I don't blame him, some committee thought it's a good idea to milk customers).

 

What a joke

 

it is for me at least. I'm currently checking out other engines. No kidding.

 

NEXT we'll see their AI (being included) making copies of our games and selling them, asset flippers in style.

 

I do hope they roll it back, but this is going to harm us either way.

 

Actually, they added that to the front page on here. Each WebGL cache is a "download" of their runtime, and will count as an install.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games?
A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee ... Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

 

tis why I said "take it with a grain of salt"

 

What has Unity done lately to justify this?

I can't recall the last major feature they've added that I cared about, but surely it was at least 5 years ago.

 

hmmm... have you asked Valve, Google, MS, Sony or Apple what they think about this? I'm sure Nintedo will love it... ;p
Because, they are the distributors. Will they pass on the bill to us? How will that work? This seems really not properly thought trough communication. Time to wait a few days for the things to clarify, but it smells...it really does

 

"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."

I'm sorry but if reinstalls have a cost to them... I have no choice but to simply not use Unity for game development. That is entirely unsustainable.

Let's say I sell a very difficult but fun rougelike game that gets popular and hits the threshold for this pricing model. It's hard enough that a user will typically rage uninstall it from time to time. I'm selling it for $10 per copy. If the user reinstalls this game 50 times in a 10 year period just based on rage quitting. That's the entire cost of the product? After a bit longer time period I'm paying you for a game I made that got popular? Why would I ever risk making a game with this engine if it could potentially run a deficit cost for me? That's absolutely predatory and all I can say is "good luck to your legal department" and move on.

This will hurt Unity as much as it hurts indie developers and pushes them away. The only benefit of this is potentially larger short-term profits for Unity.

Not only that but the current well-off Unity game studios that have to start paying based on reinstalls will most likely consider the long-term cost of switching to a new engine. Games can be rewritten. Custom engines can be made. It may become more profitable for them to just hire a few extra developers for a bit and switch off of Unity permanently.

We can't control how often a player will uninstall/reinstall for any reason. You don't have any right to charge developers based off of an end users reinstallations.

 

If the CEO is not thrown out, I think I will have to leave Unity behind.

 

I'm genuinely worried about this, because my current project I've been working a year on would need to be cancelled if this sticks.
I'm distributing my game for free and making money through donations.

I literally cannot continue to do that without the risk of actively losing money.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/wallstreetbets
Remember these dudes how they destroyed wallstreet in one day?
Now imagine a group of wallstreetsgamers that get together with a bunch of VMs and download/install/uninstall a game in a loop. This could easily destroy a brand or worse bankrupt it quickly...

 

Thank you for the confirmation reply.

 

All of this, except Epic is going to do this once they're the monopoly too.

 

As I understand it, the third party distributors are responsible for the cost. Meaning Steam, who would pass it on to you as part of their administration of the platform. I could be wrong about that? But it does open the door for platforms to ban Unity games to avoid the hassle or just raise administrative costs.

 

This business model is not an option. You just cannot apply this. Just make a rev share. Are you that dumb ?

 

Hopefully everyone will take a breath soon (although given the media coverage, I doubt it).

It was mentioned above that "suddenly Unity would slap you with a $200k bill". Well, yeah, but that assumes (under the personal/plus program) that you made over $200k in the last 12 months and you have 10,000,000 installs. I don't know how many people fall into that category but seriously people look at the numbers.

I don't condone the strategy they're going after here and it's not the way I would run a company, but it's also not as scorched Earth as you might think it to be. I think Unity still does need to explain it better and will (probably) have to walk some of these things back. It won't be all sunshine and puppies as that ship has sailed but time will tell what the real fallout is going to be like.

 

Only way out of this I see for Unity is to copy Epic, including Epics TOS which stipulates you can stay on the old version (engine and TOS) if you want

This would mean
- 5% after 1mil game rev ... no install BS
- make less than 10k in a quarter at no cost
- TOS cant be changed on you

This would leave Unity laughed at but alive
The current model is just not something that would work for F2P, Fremium and various forms of small to mid projects ... you know the ones that created Unity in the first place. When they evaporate, UAS will be dead, user churn will grind to a halt Unity will become CryTech.

Even rolling it back or sidestepping and even if they add in some protection against future stupidity like this though a ton of damage has been done

pore communication and complete incompetence with what information is available coupled with clearly a willingness to burn it all ... that will have sealed it for plenty

 

If photoshop made us pay every time a jpeg was opened by a image I uploaded...
If BMW charged us every time I start the car...
If Samsung made me pay every time I turned it on...

This is way better than NFTs...just free cash everywhere.

 

Does this apply to all versions of unity or only new ones?
How is this even going to be tracked, isn't it illegal to be obtaining this data from users without their consent?

 

If that happens, then I will quit being a dev. I will start drawing on paper and make board games.

 

Not to mention updates. Any update that requires changing the core binary will require an install. This can't work surely. Many games have major updates or patches several times a year.

Honesty I think these terms must be set this way, so that in a week or so they can announce that they have changed them "to reflect community feedback". And they will still be eggregious, but it will feel better than it did, so they will hope people accept it.

 

Are you aware that the F2P Mobile game segment exists ?

 

Hi, are you guys proud of this move? Read all the negative comments!

 

There's fortunately The Game Crafter for that.

 

The individuals involved in this greedy, ridiculous, predatory, rent seeking scheme of dubious legality need to be fired. All the way to the top.

Even if Unity decides tomorrow to undo all of this, that's still not enough. Why on earth would I, or anyone else, ever use Unity on any future project when we know that the organization is willing to pursue extreme methods to enrich themselves at potentially huge expense to customers? No, it's not enough for this decision to merely be reversed. We need confidence that no one at Unity is planning to screw us over in the future. Only an idiot would do business with an entity that has the sort of predatory, short-sighted, culture that has been displayed today. In order for myself to use Unity on any future commercial project, I need to know that this culture has been cut out like the cancer that it is.

 

Based on previous communication by Unity, developers are bound by the TOS of the major version they're using.

I would like to know which version of Unity added the ability to call home?

 

Whoa, thanks for the heads up Unity, you going full suicide mode.

John Riccitiello a former corrupt Electronics Arts Executive, is still corrupt fancy that. He’s been sued by women alleging sexual harassment. Electronics Arts employees are power seeking corrupt jerks by nature, but this guy seems over the top. Recently he was quoted as saying,”‘Devs not baking monetisation into the creative process are “fu***ng idiots‘”

This is just days after Unity stock tanked the day after I posted this: https://www.starfightergeneral.com/2022/06/unitys-scriptable-build-pipeline-is-a-failure/ I did not want Unity’s stock to tank. I wanted Unity to make sure their stuff worked fully. It seems like Unity embraced a philosophy to seem really high tech and fancy when throwing out the philosophy of working reliably… This type of glitzy glitter fools gold only comes from an Electronic Arts style mentality where they shove graphics on you at the cost of everything that matters: Game Play, Plot, Game Mechanics, Puzzles.

So yeah, it turns out the problem is the leadership. People who are all for money normally want hookers and blow. When they have a sexual harassment lawsuit against them, it just damns em even further. Unity used to be in a really good place til this guy took over. Unity needs a change of leadership, not this jerk who thinks money is more important than a good video game.

In most situations, you want to make a good video game first then let money come in later. If you are all about money up front, you jeopardize your game’s maximum artistic expression for fun and enjoyment. You will not often make a master piece if you put money ahead of your art.

Riccitiello gotta go. Pray for the downfall of tyrants.


https://www.starfightergeneral.com/2022/07/john-riccitiello-ceo-of-unity-is-tanking-his-company/