Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

if you are not making money, you do not have to pay

 

I thought what you are thinking, earlier this morning, but have you read through their Q/A? They will charge for installs that we are not earning any money from. That is mathematically unsustainable.

 

Whew. Figured out how to turn off autorenew just in time. Thanks for the heads up, Unity!

 

Unity PR department working OT tonight to makeup for the lack of thought (by themselves or whoever spearheaded this pile of flaming ***) that went into this announcement. Whatever you guys come up with, save it. Serious devs, the ones that make the hit releases you guys are trying to profit off of, are not braindead so your PR speak won't work.

 

I sorely regret not using Unreal Engine from the start. My current project has been in development for years- my publisher and I feel trapped. We will definitely be moving to another engine after this.

 

Unity will look bad on resumes

 

class action anyone? There's no way they can track this accurately while accounting for piracy. Also, they seem to assume all devs have future monetization schemes/predatory monetization schemes to subsidize each installation. No, many of us just want to make fun games. I think this would be an easy lawsuit to win.

 

For those playing at home, Adobe did this criminal activity too.

You're actually not allowed to revoke free licenses in many counties in the United States of America, you can class action Unity for taking away a free license.

In the short run, air gap your computer. Never let your unity computer on the internet... Ever again.

Good bye.

 

Lets hope this CEO guy moves on quick

 

Gamer: "I don't like the balance change you made in your Unity game. Change it or I'll write a script that will pretend to install your game in a loop"

 

Funny you should mention BMW...

 

That's not true. If you made over $200,000 you will pay on every install. Installs are not paid for. That's negative money.

 

Here you go:
UNDERSTANDING UNITY’S MILLION-DOLLAR DEBT TRAP

 

Was looking forward to continuing to develop many new games in Unity until I heard this news today. Looks like I’ve already started my last Unity project unless this decision is rolled back and the company does anything to earn developer trust again.

 

Nah, it makes you look battle-hardened.

 

That happened a very long time ago.

 

It is negative money just calculated it for your typical mobile game. This pricing is made by a crazy person.

 

Please don't get personal. I'm pretty sure Mike has nothing to do with this decision. He is a great guy with an unfortunate task.

 

Sorry guy for the OT, any advice to get any good introduction to Unreal?

After 12 years with unity we need to move on. The license model is a madness.

 

Probably a silly question (only just getting into publishing), but what's the downside of a revenue based license? If they said they want x% of the revenue earned, they'd still be keeping decent money off of even mobile games? Or do revenue based licenses usually not cover mtx? It seems very strange to me to charge per install, regardless of whether the install is happening by a valid user or whether it's reinstalled several times.

 

With how many old engine users posted here about considering to switch, it's starting to look like a simple "Sorry, we're reverting this decision" is not even going to be enough anymore

 

I was taking it easy

Till I looked at the numbers for our current project

And yes by the numbers they have provided the project could never be profitable ... not on the Plus/Personal, not on Pro

The project would have to remain a general failure or we would go into debt. The issue is the method of royalties being called. They are using per install, so for a F2P games monetizing with DLC hitting 3 year over 4m ya that project could easily hit the 1mil and start fees under pro ... but counting installs ... not active users ... not even users over life ... but installs the likely hood we end up with a bill that after pub, platform, tax, license, salary, etc. hits ... we would just be done.

Margins in game dev are tight for I would guess 90% of devs I am not trying to exsadurate here.
Something like 85% of games on Steam makes less than 5k over life so not affected but for that last 15% lets trim away the really big fish and just look at ... well where most of us hope to be or are at now ... that is who suffers from this model most. this model can bakrupt that slice of the community

Now look at mobile, F2P typically ... huge install numbers ... the picture is worse ... much worse. I have no idea what Unity was thinking with this plan. It will adversely impact the core of what made Unity. The small to solo that manages to make a meagre but sustainable living and maybe up from that a bit.

Unity needed a royalty model a long time ago
But royalty should always be either a flat fee upfront or % rev ideally % net rev

What the hell were they where thinking with this mess ... bate and switch maybe?
No idea dumbest thing I have ever heard and I was once a Pvt in the US Army lol I thought I knew stupid

 

Dude, just stop before you get accused of being a shill. There is no justification to this change. Unity just tanked basically the majority of their users' business model, and have opened pandora's box. It's $0.01/install for now (best case scenario), but who knows what it'll be down the road. nOOneCanPRedicTtheFUTure. Yeah, like we haven't seen this gone down in hundreds of other companies before that have gone public.

 

Fired? They need to be sued! This is insane!

 

This talk about Juan exactly explain why Unity business model doesn't work:

 

Good time to start learning Godot, I guess. Hope they have decent 3D support by now.

 

I am trying to turn it off, but can't find it. Can you kindly guide me?

 

That's what is so crazy.

Everything about this business model is unpredictable. You don't know how Unity will change the price and don't know how many installs you'll have.

It's not that we don't want to pay, it's that Unity removed our ability to have a business plan.

 

This would be acceptable if they at least introduce a cap. For example, $0.15 per install at a cap of 5% of the revenue generated during the month. Without a cap, this only signals bad faith.

 

paying per install is not acceptable in anyway, no matter how they track it, people will find a way around it and abuse the hell out of it.

 

There are some flaws in this logic. First: the payment is one time. Not monthly. It's monthly checked, how many installs you have. But you pay only once. Secondly, as the FAQ says, it's not you paying. It's the distributor. Valve, Sony, MS etc. If and how will they forward that invoice, that we will see...

 

Tell me, do you remember why your engine is called Unity? No, you already forgot about it

 

The ground floor Unity people are great. Chris, Chuan and other people on the 2D team have been nothing but fantastic to me. And hey, 2DLight shadows might still not be done, but the funding is drying up and that's the real issue here. It's no coincidence that the last time Unity was flourishing imo was around 2018, just after their last funding round.

But now it's time to turn profitable and the people in charge are doing it wrong. We shouldn't be surprised. The CEO did the same thing to EA and resigned.

There are good people at Unity. Unfortunately, it doesn't feel like they run the ship.

 

guys its the unity runtime, if you distribute the source, you are exempt from these fees

 

You pay only once for a user... unless the user reinstalls the game, or you do a patch (i.e. something that can't be done through asset bundles), or the game is WebGL and the user clears the cache.

Insanity!

 

Oh for sure, the change is unwarranted and like I said elsewhere probably the result of some board member asking how they can make more money. For sure since they have the right to change these rates, seemingly without advance notice, it'll be more prone to happen than not.

They need to do damage control but the genie is out the bottle and it's a mess, hence the very few responses from actual Unity employees in this thread despite them saying "talk to us".

 

This isn't just a greedy plan, it's a really stupid plan. Who's idea was it to go per install instead of per purchase, or a revenue split?

I've been working on a project for years now and there's all kinds of things I considered that could prevent me from finishing my game, but the engine I'm using being retroactively ruined by a suit who can't tie his own shoes wasn't one of them.

This is a rug-pull. The paste eaters in the c-suites of the world won't let us have anything.

 

i think it is, yeah...

 

Honestly, most likely for me. I'm on the art side and Unreal has been outpacing Unity for a while in terms of graphics, both looking better and being much easier to work with. I've been using C# for over a decade so I'm little hesitant trying to transfer to C++ but this might be the last straw to push me to just buckling down and figuring it out now. So disappointed in Unity.

 

I still don't get it.

If my free mobile game has 500,000 installs/re-installs and no (or very very low) monetization, I owe Unity $100,000 (and counting), while I "made" like maybe 60 bucks?

Or if my FREE mobile game has 1 mil installs currently and I update it in the future and everyone DLs the updated version, I have to pay $200k???

Is this like a version of US healthcare system, where if you go to the hospital, you basically committing a financial suicide, but here when you release a free or poorly monetized game, you have to pay thousand of dollars on top of the time and money already spent on development?

And what's stopping them to change the install fee in the future to 50 cents or even 37 dollars?

 

wait wait am I reading this right?

If I update my Early Access game, it WILL be counted as a new install?

If this is true, it could put me out of business. I support my family as a unity dev. This is my day job. You'd be taking my livelihood away. I'm not kidding.

Please clarify the above AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

 

This situation literally hurt me deeply. I have been using this program for 10 years and I have literally formed an emotional bond with that gray screen. Who knew that I would make an effort to break this bond?

This is a big trust problem rather than a bad decision. So far in every debate I've blindly defended Unity, even though I know its competitors have better features. How stupid I was. This company does not care about any of its users. The company, which now demands a fee even for games installed in the past, may in the future say "we have cut off all our support, you cannot develop games with Unity anymore" and leave all its users stranded.

I've been working on a project for about 3 years and this mobile game earns me $0.15 per user. And I passed the upload threshold. Now tell me, should I throw away this project, which I have been working on for years, all my efforts, in order to avoid loss?

Thanks for everything "old unity". I think we should switch to epic like everyone else does. how painful...

 

no you need to reach both the threashold for revenue AND installs in order to be dinged by the install fee

 

I agree. How could it possibly be enough? Existing projects, sure, but you would need to be insane to start any new project in Unity given a sword of Damocles over your head. Even if they can't make this work, it's not like they're going stop trying to think up new schemes. Unless the people responsible for this are purged from the org as an example and sign of good faith, you would need to be insane to do business with this company. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before they try again.

 

I expect your only hope would be that you don't quite earn enough to meet the threshold. Bad luck if you already do, and if you don't success will only hurt you.

 

I usually don't participate in dog piling like this but I've been using Unity for 10+ years, have been a Pro subscriber, and have sat through a lot of red flags. This licensing change puts me in a tough spot wrapping up my current project and has me considering switching engines out of monetary necessity for my next project I've already started and will need to port.

I hope this pricing is reconsidered. I have no problem paying the good people at Unity (I've had a number of positive experiences) but I can't when it puts my own business in danger.

 

Im just here shaking my head. I am genuinely wondering how this decision was greenlit by the Unity Technology management. I mean its really embarrassing. The worst part is, if you catch hints by the official responses by Unity so far, they re not showing any remorse. They are pretty much playing the “we will explain further” card. I mean how pathetic does the Unity leadership have to be that they genuinely thought this decision was clever and that devs will just accept this. I am questioning everyone that has authority at Unity and wonder how the hell they even got their positions to begin with..

 

Alright corrected it! Still I would be in dept with a mobile game with an ARPU below 0.2$

 

You're not thinking of long-term costs. If you sell a popular game that users reinstall frequently then over the course of a 10-20 year period it can lower your margins on the previously sold product immensely if not make it a deficit. Sure it won't make it a deficit right away but it's an unsustainable predatory business model and the outrage is reasonable. If it was based off per user purchase/device that's reasonable... reinstall costs push this whole model over the edge and open up a huge can of worms for everyone involved. Why would I give Unity 20 cents because my user rage quit and uninstalled for a week, just to come back and reinstall the next week? That's ridiculous lol

 

Where can I check lifetime installs for the game? Is it even being shown to a dev?