Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

I'm really at loss right now. Sort of in shock. I just read of this change on reddit.

It hasn't even been a year since I started my first major indie game's development, as a solo dev. Of all the options available, I chose Unity, and starting teaching myself its ins and outs. I'm in too deep to my project to change engines, even if I wanted to, I don't have the resources or time, so I'm committed.

But enough about me...

I simply just don't see how this pricing model could feasibly work.

And what happens if a developer can not pay for exorbitant install fees? What is the mechanism for having the gamed removed? I honestly don't even see how that could be feasible. On top of that, considering all the different laws around all the different regions games are published in, it doesn't even seem like this would be legally valid to enforce this new policy.

I also don't even understand this case: say an indie developer has $190,000 of earnings. They have a small niche game, small user base. Once they go over 200k they simply can not afford the charges that'll be applied. So what are they do to? Pull their game before they reach 200k, or take out a loan to pay this crazy new fees?

Whoever made this new policy is probably someone who is good bean counter, but completely does not understand much to do with the gaming industry.

If this policy is not repealed or changed drastically, this will be beginning of the end of Unity's market position. I'd wager the rest of my indie game's development budget on that

Surely their are many more ways to raise revenue, and more fairly.

 

we are confused with this:
a game on android gets 200.001 downloads and the game is 1$ game but then, 50.000 players get new phones and they get the game from their accounts, do i have to pay 10.000$ even if i'm not getting any money from them?? (because they already paid the game, they are just re-installing from their accounts)

(do i need to spam this to get an answer?)

 

35% of the install tax (completely made up, but probably correct lol)

 

Microsoft will ban unity games and be done with it

 

I can see Microsoft, Steam, Sony, etc. Just not allowing game made with Unity on their platforms because of this update from Axios.

How to kill your Business 101

 

What are the options for developers who don't agree to the new terms, but have games that are already released and/or unreleased games that are already multiple years into development?

 

Actually, I just came across these:

https://github.com/V-Sekai/unidot_importer
https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot

 

I don't understand how the leaders at Unity could agree to make such an arbitrary, and game breaking pricing model change just like that, in one go, effective after a few months. This is a very bad move; it's too big, announced too late considering it's impact and as such it undermines the trust between Unity and it's customers. Users have built their apps and in-house tech on top of Unity and are essentially locked to the tech for years to come. My company is one example, we have used Unity since 2012.

A developer with actual live games can't swap them over to some other tech without a huge cost so announcing this kind of huge pricing change to take effect after a few months is not nearly enough. Many devs will see their Unity costs jump to a completely different level than before and don't have sufficient profit per install to cover them. And as this is how Unity adjusts its pricing, what fun will come next?

 

Dude quit your job, jump ship asap!

 

Looks like some walkback is happening already. Time will tell how much changes.

https://www.axios.com/2023/09/13/unity-runtime-fee-policy-marc-whitten

 

I think that is correct, but only for the first month, the install numbers are accumulative, not per month. So the second month you would pay less. I think the second month of 400k installs would be
$0.075 * 100,000 + $0.03 * 300,000 = $16,500
That is the remainder of the up to 500k installs at 0.075, then the remaining 300k that month at the lower tier.

Then for the third month of 400k installs it would
$0.03 * 200,000 + $0.02 * 200,000 = $10,000
That is the remainder of the up to 1million installs at 0.03 and the remaining of this month at the 1 million plus tier.

Finally for each month after its just
$0.02 * 400,000 = $8,000

This is assuming for each new month your total sales for the last 12 months exceed the threshold which for these Pro fees is $1 million. If you drop below the revenue value one month then go above it the month after, than I guess ( as I don't think this is even acknowledged in blog or FAQ ) you pay $0.02 for each new install that month.

That's how I currently understand it, if anything can point out any errors please do.
Just typing this out was a headache, can't imagine how much fun it will be for a real multiple real projects!

Edit:
This also makes the whole thing feel even more insane, as the fees are front loaded, the longer your game sells high volume the better you are, but flash in the pan games will get hit hard!

 

you can spam but you will not get any answer.

there is(was) just one lonely unity staff member that tried to answer some questions but was just saying what he understood from all of this. Probably they found him and said to him to just shut up.

 

We need a clear definition on what constitutes an install, unity have been providing different answers,

simple scenario,

i sell 1 copy, its installed and played.
tomorrow this same person in his same steam account installs the game in a different computer.

Does this count as two installs?

 

that is just a clickbait article, there is nothing new or different that the official announcement of this thread

 

[/QUOTE]
Ok that's great but I don't want to pay an install fee

 

That's what Unity is banking on

 

The hope is to get over the hump, to be able to afford to sustain the work you put in to making your product. And when you do, you are subject to an unpredictable, infinite charge based on an arbitrary number of installs that do not correlate to sales. This is not a case, like Unreal's 5%, where you can plan to pay once you make enough money. This is punishing you for making enough money with a lifetime of potential debt.

 

If free apk and ios app download sites get more downloads than our legit versions from app stores, your install data monitoring the engine install counter may not be reverse engineered by the free apk sites. This can allow developers to get invoiced for illegitimate, fully unlocked apps where the developer make $0 from ads or microtransactions.

I have an app with 10000 pirated downloads which would cost $2000 in unity install fees.
The app is $2.99 and I have 100 legal purchases with revenue at $299.90

If my firm was over the revenue threshold which allowed installation to be billed, Unity would consume profit and an order of magnitude more in losses on this new app.

How do you plan to circumvent this?

 

Yup, if at any moment you generate revenue that hits the mark, would have to pony up based on past financial performance. Forever

 

[/QUOTE]


I thought the distribution platform pays the per install fee... at least according to Marc Whitten that's the case... which begs the question: how will the platform even know what unity tier I even have?

 

We still have no way of knowing how unity are tracking installs, there is literally nothing stopping unity from straight up lying to get us to pay more.

 

He said why he had to stop responding: he had a flight to catch.

 

Mate we are all VERY PISSED off at Unity right now but this guy is in the trenches, lets not make it personal or make ourselves look even half as bad as Unity.

 

I am sorry, but you have to realize at some point that they made you calculate how much extra abuse you can withstand before you go bankrupt instead of doing the right thing and ad acta this whole BS built on simple lies, oh pardon, uneducated guess how much user installed your application.

WTF?

 

Released games - Lawyer up or pull your game from all the stores/don't generate revenue.
Unreleased games - pray for a Unity to Other Engine program to get released with a decent accuracy rate.

 

Agreed, it's written out in the FAQ but there are some questionable wording issues (like the heading of "standard monthly rate" that people interpret as "monthly fee").

The "aha" moment for me was that it was based on the installs per month after the new policy. Up until that I kept believing that it would be $0.20 per install over the lifetime.

It's a huge difference. Still will make some people jump ship and is a cash grab at best, but not the nuclear option I see people posting about.

 

Time to place arcade stations in bars and hotels again and ask your potential customers to only play your games at designated verified arcade locations.

 

Completely depends on when the purchases occurred. Installations are tracked for the lifetime of the product but the money that you make is only tracked for one year.

 

If you don't hit a perceivable revenue of 200k and 200k downloads, you should be alright. Do keep in mind that if you do have 200k downloads, they will find a way to think you've generated 200k in revenue though

 

stoked they walked it back. thanks for the update. I'm still a little put off and lost some trust from this whole ordeal - but I can at least finish my current roguelike game in Unity without concern of popularity hurting sales revenue. I'm not saying it'll for sure hit the threshold to incur the costs... It's just a genre where you really would have to worry about users reinstalling! I personally rage uninstall Noita all the time. So that alone was reason enough for me to switch engines and rewrite it.

This model without reinstall fees is definitely not a problem to work with. It is sustainable and if it supports more Unity tooling then it's a good thing long-term too.

Now get the executive in charge of this to step down and you'll have my trust back! Kick em out. They aren't meant for this industry. A fee for reinstalling was terribly short sighted and greedy. They almost lost a majority of the Unity community in a single day. Don't trust them with more decisions like this!

 

Basically yeah. I think the idea is that 'install spamming' would lose its effectivity quickly because it would go over the 100K threshold and quickly drop in how much it costs them. One of those self correcting things.

While I definitely don't agree with charging for multiple installs as that introduces a completely unpredictable runaway expenses for businesses, this is otherwise a non-issue to devs selling a game upfront (i.e. not free to play) and not grossing millions. The 200K threshold shouldn't even be there tbh because nobody in the right mind is going to hit that and not get the pro license.

 

I see, thanks for pointing that out. Of course $8,000 is still entirely unreasonable on top of the fee for the PRO subscription.

Unity, if you really need more money then please just increase the flat fee (which you're already doing anyway for many developers be removing Unity Plus)

 

Just working for a company and buying or selling stock at a convenient time doesn't automatically mean insider trading.

 

Did Hipocoder die the last time unity died? Haven't seen him crying in here with everyone else.

 

The method of tracking installs hasn't even been thoroughly tested to be reliable? Are you kidding?

 

Whoa.

I only use Unity as a testbed for deep reinforcement learning concepts that I'm playing around with and will never release a commercial product and this is pushing me to migrate over to Godot* as quickly as I can. I think the only thing that could save Unity as a going concern right now is Microsoft or Valve buying them out because you just blew away a decade of good will and trust.

*Sorry Unreal, I love you but your ML stack isn't mature enough for me.

 

Hippo has been on a break for more than a year. Last time I saw any word from him was in a private discussion.

Again that's not indicative of anything on its own.

 

So it's not immediatly if it's next month... imagine an indie dev who can't afford a pro suscription for any reasons and have a game which works really well it will basically get scammed by unity just because of that?

 

Valve or Microsoft might actually be two of our best chance at this being hit, alongside MASSIVE stock selloffs happening right now. With any luck this will do enough damage to Unity they'll need to course correct and just give us a flat fee and grandfather old license holders into their originally agreed contracts.

 

He left the ship months ago and got on the Unreal hype-train.

 

In over 6 hours this is still not done?! When scammers still search for a way to present the scam in a positive light....

 

More answers from around 1 hr ago. Please be nice.

https://x.com/antoniarforster/status/1701755914041098626?s=46&t=YhIB793Zz_Ok3Qzdib2kug

 

Absolutely correct on the financial bit. I would add however, that given they have no way to access your financial records, them thinking you made the revenue its mostly an interpretative matter. Which can in turn lead to time-wasting situations of you having to prove to them that the game did not generated the revenue.

Keep in mind that they are not reasonable people in such circumstances and you will most likely need bullet-proof documentation for them to withdraw those nasty fee invoices.

 

Just because he's awake at this hour doesn't mean the people who he can ask are.

It's not that difficult to prove financials nor is it terribly time wasting.

 

Technically I agree, however if you were able to predict future sales ( thus installs, ignoring that issue for a moment) and the potential drop off or long tail, I would not be surprised if there is a breakeven point between paying the fees vs updating every Unity subscription in the company, especially if looked at across multiple years.

Which raises an interesting point, that I've not brought up yet. In the FAQ it states that you will be invoiced monthly for your fees on your unity subscription account, meaning you have to pay your fees by whatever payment method is attached to it ( problematic by itself! ). So what happens when I decide to wind down my development? I no longer need Unity or a Unity account, but I keep my business account as I get trickle sales over the years. If you close your Unity account Unity can't take the fees! Obviously they can't allow that, so you will have to maintain your Unity account for as long as you sell you games anywhere.

ha, even worse, if you stop selling your game, they may still be keys floating about, for new installs, and people reinstalling your game that you are still on the hook for! How does this situation mange to get worse and worse the more I think about it!

 

Valves do not need a bug engine with a bad reputation, they will roll out source 2 to public in the near future and will be interested in what the developers would use it
Microsoft could do this as a product for .NET Foundation

 

I'd imagine the big studios have custom contracts that protected them from this cash grab BS. I'd also imagine they're drafting up plans to move to an alternative at this very moment before the contract expires

Let them walkback. No serious dev will ever consider releasing a live game with monetization with Unity again, bar the most profuse of apologies possible, replacement of leadership, and financial incentives.

 

Agreed. No business wants those untrackable runaway expenses. If a business is going to get charged every time a user does a certain thing with their product, which they can't predict, they're not going to sell that product. The initial install fee however, I can understand. It messes up free to play games but I frankly do not care for that business model and I think it's almost as shady as this one anyway.

A fee on the first install, though? That can be accounted for.

Honestly should have just been a revenue % like Unreal. They could have done 4% and still been a better deal than Unreal instead of all this weird sidestepping.