Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Das bezweifle ich. Sie haben es derzeit mit Blizzard/Activision zu tun.

 

I really hope this is reversed because I enjoy using Unity. However if this poorly thought out pricing model stays I'm going to switch to Unreal.

Edit: Oh wow, they have a nice migration guide.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/unreal-engine-for-unity-developers/

 

Potentially yes, but only when the threshold criteria are met and even then you can bump up the thresholds considerably if you buy Pro or Enterprise versions ( for your entire company), but the cost of buying Pro/Enterprise might be more than the fee you have to pay. So simple isn't it /s

Oh and this is all the whim of Unity deciding hey you got to pay us in those circumstances, just becuase we say so now, not because you agreed or signed anything!

 

Thank you. Don't take all the heat personal, I think the majority here currently appreciate your posts! Please everyone don't forget we are all humans.

 

I appreciate you trying to clear up some of the questions people have. That said, I REALLY hope Unity reconsiders this.

I've been a PRO subscriber for three years now and I'm happy to support Unity financially since my game has become very successful. However, with this change, I'm put in a very bad situation.

My game currently generates about 1.3M USD in revenue each year and has millions of downloads, so I would be above the PRO threshold. That is before platform cuts and paying various licensing fees. Realistically, I make around 500k USD before taxes a year, so around 43K USD per month.

I use a freemium model. My game is free but users can pay for a premium version that comes with various perks. This monetization model is perfect for me and changing it would not work.

Across all platforms, I have about 400k downloads each month. Most users play the game for a few minutes and then never open it again. Which is totally okay.

Calculating my licensing fee for one month given these numbers, I arrive at 37.5k USD:

0.15 * 100000 + 0.075 * 300000 = 37500

That would equate to a revenue share for Unity of almost 90% if you compare the Unity cut to what I get at the end of the day.

Honestly, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. If you could please clarify what Unity intends to do for this kind of usecase, I would really appreciate it.

 

It is based on installs, not sales.

 

Think my name showed up on a response to someone else. In case they're relying on an inbox notification

 

that... I'm afraid that did not clarify anything.

can you clarify if you'd interpretation is accurate: *any* game that is *currently* being monetized, regardless of when it was published, is subject to installation fees.

 

Honestly. Unity has shown too much cooperate greed over the past years. Take the CEO for example calling Devs who don't monetize their games "F***ing morons".

For this already alone, when starting our current project we were already contemplating using CryEngine, Godot, or UE5 instead.

Unless the people (I am sure this was not a single person's decision) that are in fact responsible for this are replaced I will not trust this company anymore going forward.

Financials and the survival of my company is on the line here. The problem is not even necessarily the higher cost. It is the "undefined" and untransparent cost, which makes it impossible to calculate with.

How am I supposed to go into publisher talks, how am I supposed to go about undetermined financials when applying to financial support which require precise planning.

For me the solution after this is easy. My company will be taking their business elsewhere, unless, as you said, the people in place are removed from the org.

 

Yeah, but Unity hasn't thought ahead, or else they wouldn't have screwed us all in the process.

 

At least you are still eating! Many mobile devs will need a second job to pay!

 

This is exactly the problem, whether or not each of us is currently over 200k, what matters is once you are, due to bad actors/"install-bombing" or bad algorithms or glitches in Unity's systems you could owe an UNLIMITED amount, even far exceeding what you've earned. Game over. If this doesn't change, unfortunately it's goodbye Unity, because there is not a single sane developer or publisher or investor in the world that would risk it. Can't predict revenue, can't predict costs. Can't avoid financially-motivated attacks from competitors or people that just don't like you or your game. And Unity expects us to prove it when their numbers seem off? If that's true, is it because they can't prove their numbers are on? Forget it. All the humiliating PR responses won't change the facts here. It's untenable moving forward for all but the "having fun making free stuff" demographic.

I didn't agree to this when I committed to subscription term, I agreed to how it was at the time - so I want OUT of my obligation to continue paying every month. Either that or at least make a 5%/whatever reasonable cap to the fee based on what's been earned.

Oh yeah and Unity, also please entirely scrap the "10 years later someone installs old game I still have to pay Unity for it" ..thing, who the F would agree to that? No, seriously.. exactly who. the. f. ..would ever use an engine with terms like this? Wow do I ever hope I'm completely wrong and misunderstanding what's going on here.

 

Yeah, there is no built-in. Personally, we have our own tracking via Patreon's oAUTH and Subscribestar's login server, then we can track downloads and such via Itch, and webgl plays through itch, newgrounds, etc.So we don't even have a hard number but ffs @Tautvydas-Zilys you realise that this would actually bankrupt my studio. ACTUALLY BANKRUPT.

We;

1. Crowdfunded
2. Free demo
3. Web GL builds

This means we put out regular brand new versions of our game every other months which gets redownloaded and reinstalled EVERY OTHER MONTH. We hav a count of 600k unique installs, but that can't account for all the insane amount of reinstalls nd WebGL replays/reloads or recaches. This WILL PUT US OUT OF BUSINESS.

But not only that but your company is trying to change the contract/licensing of our engine!? No, we licensed out a previous version that did NOT have this pricing model. If this was on the table back then we would have 100% went with Unreal or GoDot. We would have NEVER went with Unreal if this was on the books. Does your company understand this change is illegal in most nations on earth? We need to be grandfathered in, or we need to see your lawyer's reasoning this could potentially even be legal. Because being a criminologist, reading over my nation's and France's laws, this is actually fully illegal, to change the terms like this. How does your legal team rectify and believe this is in any sense of the word, legal?

Because right now I can OUTRIGHT STATE that Team Dead Deer is REJECTING your new license, and we wish to stay on our old license and older versions of the build. We REFUSE to update. How do we opt out of this criminal plan which would actually bankrupt my studio?

 

What counts as revenue? No one can make a game completely for free. The labor alone costs money. Which monetization strategies are counted? And please, let us know your sources.

 

Have you guys seen Stephen Totilo's Twitter update?

"NEW - I got a major update from Unity about their new fees

• Unity "regrouped" and now says ONLY the initial installation of a game triggers a fee
• Demos mostly won't trigger fees
• Devs not on the hook for Game Pass"

For what it's worth. For me a fee on the initial installation is fine as it's an expense that can be accounted for. The repeat installs were a big problem that would have lead to runaway expenses. Though it's still messy for F2P devs.

 

Charge the fee per purchase (not per install), roll back retroactivity, bring back Unity Plus, exempt bundle and game pass purchases entirely and only then it will be reasonable. Otherwise you'll probably be facing a massive exodus from Unity, as you can probably already foresee.

 

I don't think I'm getting my question answered lol. I'm about five months into my project so it might just be worth it to take a week or two and learn Godot.

In all honestly I started playing with it this morning but the curve is steep

 

What an actual joke, Unity has no clue what its doing anymore, its bad decision after bad decision. They hate devs and only consider profits. Time to leave this S*** show behind and jump engines!

 

> uncalculatable risk

This is my biggest concern

 

I’d be interested to hear what publishers are thinking. Especially ones that rely on bulk installs, like Voodoo. I suppose they would just pass the cost into the studio contracts.

 

I put a sell order in for my stock, you should do the same. "I have a bad feeling about this" - Han Solo

 

What happens when a game makes $200,000 and has 5 mil downloads? That's $1,000,000 in Unity fees.

 

I'm sorry I think this came from me, I quoted you by accident and later edited the post (with a deletion of your quote). I lost track to be honest.

 

LOL - Does anyone really believe these companies are just going to lose money by giving it to Unity? Of course not, perhaps in some weird world they will pay Unity ( though they legal have no reason too AFAIK ), but you can bet your arse that payment is going to be deducted from your revenue from those companies in some way.

So while you may not pay Unity directly in some cases, you are still going to lose that money.

 

That's not the problem. The problem is that every install above that threshold will be charged regardless of whether there is a sale associated with that install or not. Besides, most games have to reach that threshold to cover the cost of development.

 

The thing is:

-If Unity goes through this, they will eventually realize that compiling information per game is a horrid task. Most likely, the same brilliant minds that came up with this idea, will decide to look at the studio's gross income instead and do the same for the sum of all game installs. That in many ways will be a massive gg.

 

It clearly state in big caps AND. So you need to have made 200k in that 12 month AND have at least 200k install from the beginning of your game. Because without that first part, the second is worthless.

https://unity.com/pricing-updates

 

BEYOND the deceitful business practices of pulling a new billing model that retroactively impacts EVERYONE regardless of their original billing agreement....

How STUPID is this change in a market of streamed gaming (on services like Geforce Now). Every time you go to play a game there, it counts as a NEW install. Have a patch done from the distributor? Possible NEW install.

What steps will be taken to prevent ABUSE of the install charge?
What will stop malicious users/botters from creating install/uninstall scripts to repeatedly install and uninstall a game over and over in a VM, for the sole purpose of costing the developer money? Hyper successful titles that do not charge much (even a $10 game), after platform charges and taxes, they take home maybe $5. A small game takes maybe 2 minutes to install and then uninstall. I could run 5 VM's, each with a script to install and uninstall repeatedly, and i could cost the developer more money in 20 minutes than they made from me.
And what about when someone learns how to pirate the system, and extract JUST the bit that triggers an 'install' be charged to them.
Run that on script, and you could do hundreds an hour, resulting in a single person costing a developer on the most basic plan, $hundreds a day from ONE malicious person. What about people with more robust and more malicious intent...


I'm looking to refund what i can, and am moving away from unity as fast as i can.

 

Ok if this keeps up Unity might have as much trouble keeping the lights on as we indie devs using their BS licensing model which can literally bankrupt us;



Good to see capitalism at work. F-around, find out.​

 

Yes, that's the 'mess' part. Impossible to predict runaway expenses.

But apparently they're now saying only the initial install will count.

 

I wonder how they are going to change the service contract so much unilaterally?
Is it legal?
Why can't I use the version of the editor released before January 1, 2024 and pay the old rates?
So, after reading so many discussions, it is not clear how they were going to pull off such a trick :\
It is necessary to claim a full legal document to lawyers to understand whether there will be courts on this matter

But obviously, while CEOs are not disposed of in any possible way (I hope he will be sued for illegal enrichment by selling shares before the publication of critical changes) - unity as a tool for solving business problems is disgusting


Microsoft please buy Unity... Phil tell me you need a game engine... bought blizzard and go buy unity...

 

We are close to 2000 replies on this thread in about 10h. I have seen only one like on the original post.

 

Yeah cause distributors aren't gonna pass on the costs to you lmao, or just ban Unity games to not have to deal with the added overhead. Unless ofc, Unity is giving them a cut of the install tax. Wouldn't be surprised. Either way, any game developed in Unity is a potential liability to developers now. Talk about incentives.

 

Better start making our games completely bug free and never do content updates either, cuz it sounds like those are going to count towards the total downloads number.

 

No it's not, it's only a measly $170,000

 

hunh...

I wonder how quickly I can instance a VM, install a game, destroy the VM, and repeat... I wonder how quickly I can get a rack of 3 dozen machines to do that...

yeah... installation bombing won't be an issue... right...

as far as "no, it's Microsoft/Steam/et. al. who will foot the bill"... I wonder how long they will foot that bill before passing it on...

 

Yep it just moves fee policing to be on the... platform holders? How on earth did they get Microsoft on board with that

 

So who's excited for Unite this year?

 

TERRIBLE PR

Why do we have to keep jumping between different Tweets and random articles to get the info?

So apparently it's a one time fee per device. So reinstalls on the same device will not trigger a fee, but installing an already purchased game on a different device will. So this actually doesn't relieve fears of fraud, it's so easy to emulate a new device. And it still has loopholes. How does Unity determine what a new device is? What if a PC owner upgrade their OS, does a clean reboot of their system, installs new hardware?

 

Today I worked hard on the game all day, and I’m so tired that I don’t even know what to write. But let this be a comment to get into history. This post will become legendary.

 

sadly, i'm one of those

 

I grew up with discs.
You bought a game and it was yours. It would be a dream to go back

 

If it's too big a pain in the ass (which it sounds like it is so far) some platforms might just straight up ban Unity to not have to deal with the hassle

 

Right except (and I think this is where people keep going and I don't believe it's totally correct) he's only going to be charged (runtime fee wise) for the *installs that month*. So regardless of 28M installs over 2 years, he's not getting 2M installs per month. It doesn't work that way, there's usually a big explosion at the beginning then it falters off. Still he's popular so I wouldn't disagree there might be a lot of installs come January 2024 (for example 10,000 or even 100,000) but even for that you would be paying $2k (or $20k for 100,000 installs).

In any case there is no way he would be billed for $5.8M or the $600k Unity said (unless he actually has over a million new installs every month, possible but might be unlikely).

We need a proper calculator spreadsheet (since the number vary wildly based on plan and number of installs)

 

It's a sad world we live in where everyone is shouting at one another not to tell the truth or to try to communicate. That's how we got in this situation in the first place. But that's the tech industry, lots of door mats doing the bare minimum to make their paycheck. This is what we get after years of these bubble huffers having absolute control and surrounding themselves with the most passive, do nothing employees they can find. An entire industry full of people happy to just not offend each other, no ambition, no spine, no principle, and no product.

This is karma, and it's been a long time coming.

 

Initial installs,multi-installs, unique users, free to play, fremium etc, can all be bundled under an already clean an simple monetization model, royalties based on revenue.

 

hahahaha so for game pass they want to charge microsoft the install and reinstall fees. Yea Microsoft is totally going to agree with this

 

The Stephen Totilo update is definitely a lot better if thats legit, but who actually trusts Unity to track when its a first install vs when its someone reinstalling or some pirate installing for the first time

 

Only with Unity Personal. If anyone has any measure of success with this new pricing model the only sensible choice is Unity Pro. With Pro you have multiple tiers that become progressively less expensive and that's how it goes from $1,000,000 to less than $100,000.