Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

I don't think the discussion is about ethics. It is about LEGALITY.

If you are trying to run a legal business, tracking users who have opted out or not given consent is a very bad idea.

 

Actually, we did agree to exactly that. It's in the license agreement. Section 9.1

There is no breech of contract. If you're alleging there's a breach you'll need to point to a specific clause in the current license agreement that has been breached. You can't just say "BREACH!" SOMEWHERE THERE'S A BREACH" and expect that to fly, even in conversation. Exactly which section do you think is in breech?

Contracts of Adhesion (which is what this is) are generally legal in Canada and the EU, and clauses specifying changes to the terms are also enforceable provided that the notification for those changes is done properly, according to the consumer protection laws in those jurisdictions*.

There are more restrictions in the EU than US, but nothing in here that would appear to violate them. Terms can be unilaterally changed by the service provider so long as the reason is valid (not your or my opinion opinion on what's valid, but valid according to law).

The forced arbitration clause, would, in the EU likely not be enforced...

*however in combination with the jurisdiction clause (also known as Governing Law clause) which is generally enforceable in the EU due to treaties with the U.S., it may be enforceable. The TL;DR of this is that, while you can bring suit in your local court (as per the license agreement, section 23.4) that court is obligated to follow the laws of the specified jurisdiction (New York, in this case) with some exceptions for rights or protections that, as part of the local law, cannot be waived in an agreement (this has to be specified in the law). So which EU protection laws are even applicable is going to depend on the individual locations and how they worded their consumer protection laws.

 

I think I see what's going on here. A pricing model that is obfuscated by and set by their algorthim, that is like the real win for them.

You see with this Unity devs just need to trust that their system for tracking installs work. Like can you even dispute it? What does that process even look like? Reminds me of how insurance companies just tell you, yup stats are in, wrecks are worse for your state and city so bill is up. What can you say or do except accept it.

This is the strategy here.

Pay what their algorithms say you should pay not pay based on something you yourself can track. Note only Unity knows when a chargeable install happens not you.

 

Their current plan only charges 2k up to 1 million in revenue. Your plan is more expensive..

 

No because Steam users agreed to their ToS/privacy guidelines etc. But you put your unity game in their store, your customers, your responsibility

 

This is the EXACT kind of S*** that will get people to stop using your engine. You tried this once before REMEMBER? How did that go for you? You idiots are dumb enough to try it again? "We can change the rules whenever we want".

I doubt this is legal, but even if it was, the fact that you morons don't see the consequences right in front of your F***ing eyes, is baffling.

You will lose all your users trust. No one can feel comfortable using this engine anymore, because 10 years down the road, you guys will just try to introduce some wack-ass fees that were never agreed to from a specific version and TOS. We thought you learned this lesson with Improbable. But it appears you guys don't learn from your mistakes. Thanks for letting us know. Give your lawyers a nice "F*** you" from me. I'm glad I've been learning Godot on the side.

 

Dear Unity,

I'm leaving you.

We've had some great times over the past 14 years, and at first we were growing together. However, for the past few years we have been growing apart. We've both changed. However, there are some changes that I have seen in you that I just am no longer able to live with.

You never finish the projects and features that you start any more. At least, not the ones that matter. As a result, our shared space inside the Editor has become intolerable and unlivable, littered with half-finished things, infested with bugs, and cluttered with things that I never wanted and that are not in my taste. When I ask when things are going to get cleaned up, you tell me that it will take a couple of years at least. Well, I'm getting older and I have games to create and release. I just can't keep waiting years and years for things that should have been finished long ago.

At one point, you even tried to gaslight me that one bug that I produced a reliable test case for was not a bug at all but just the way it had to be. Only for you to quietly fix the bug months later, after I had already resigned myself to your indifference and had put in the effort of a workaround. This discouraged me from putting in the effort to create test cases for other bugs, because you didn't really seem to care.

Then last summer, when I respectfully disagreed with you over monetization strategy, you outright became verbally abusive and called me a ******* idiot to my face in public. You tried to apologize, but your outburst was already the talk of the town. I was embarrassed for both of us.

Now, you are unilaterally trying to change the terms of our relationship, saying you need more from me. I just don't have it to give. You are trying unilaterally to change agreements that we made long ago, fully undermining my trust in you. You agreed to license me a game engine with no per-install fees, and now you say you're just not willing to provide that anymore, and furthermore, you want to renege and rework the licensing terms under which I already long-released several games.

And despite completely destroying my trust in you over the years, with your unfinished features and abuse and now wanting to break the terms to which you previously agreed, you have the audacity to ask me to trust you in your calculation of install numbers on which you will base your fee, but deliberately offer zero transparency into this calculation process or how it works. Your whole plan regarding this change in terms is so poorly conceived that you cannot even properly and fully describe it to me. And all of this you ask without offering to provide anything of comparable value to compensate and after several years of adding little value to the engine.

Despite all of your problems, I know that I am not perfect, either. That is why, now, I am laying it all out and making my own confession. I've been working with other engines. For six months now. And it has been wonderful. I even released a product using another engine. I know that in the past I vowed that you were the only engine that I would ever need, but that was before we grew apart and changed. So if you've been wondering why I haven't tried to click on your icon lately, that would be a big part of the reason why.

And no, you will never see any install fees for any of the games that I have previously released with your engine, not when I am the one providing 100% of the support for these games. You can ask a judge but I doubt they will award it to you.

I hope that you will not create drama for us while I move fully into development with the new engine I've found. Maybe someday I can bear to look at your editor again, but right now the hurt is too fresh and painful.

I truly wish the best for you and hope that you seek out the help that you need to be able to act like a respectable, reasonable, and ethicial business partner again to someone else. Until then, farewell.

 

unreal is still way better they offer Quxel scan for free + meta-human + they offer monthly free assets

 

If they do this, then they must remove the monthly fee and the splash screen. There cannot be a subscription AND a revenue share at the same time, for maximum greed.

 

If everything I have EVER done with Unity is subject to the terms and conditions as they stand right now, what's to stop them from saying "Change to the TOS. Now, Unity doesn't allow games that feature cheese. Your game from 2016 features cheese, therefore your account is banned."

 

And pay the fines.. for example, Google got fined 2.42 Billion Euros for abusing market dominance. Meta/Facebook got fined $1.3 Billion for sending data to the U.S. etc.

 

A rehash on the topic:

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-death-of-unity

 

This is what gets me too. They can decide who makes a little money and who makes a lot of money. They already determine who can be on the front of the store fronts, now they can tweak and tune what % of the money goes to the developer.

This is about having absolute and total control while appearing to have a system based on user activity in the same manner scoring systems on social media is manipulated.

They want control of both your brain and your wallet. It's sickening.

 

Useless factoid but in the 18 years of announcements on this forum, this announcement has generated the most responses by a large margin.

 

If this goes through, I would not be surprised to see many lawyers making many similar arguments.

And also if this goes through, I also wouldn't be surprised if Unity purposefully leaves any sufficiently large company alone that would fight back with effective legal resources so as to minimize the odds of getting spanked court.

They will certainly run into issues with the likes of Valve, Google, Sony etc. if any of them take umbrage to the fact that Unity wants to collect the fees from *them* rather than from us directly. They don't have any such agreement with Unity after all, and trying to apply this retroactively to titles that are already on sale on those storefronts... yikes.

 

i answered it here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...ackaging-updates.1482750/page-46#post-9297611

 

No need to agree to it. They would just do it anyways and charge the developer for making them go through the hassle of dealing with Unity's payables team. Call it a Unity tax, on top of the install tax.

 

I don’t have words… you guys just fell on your own sword.
There are people that I’ve never seen post, literally coming out of the woodwork.. people like me that have used the engine for a long time.

This is insane. Who in their right mind would think an announcement like this could possibly go over well?

Pro now just to get rid of the splash? In 2023?..Get real… there are other options now.

The one and only good thing I can see coming from this is that you guys will finally listen to your community.. only it will be too late. Money talks.

 

This new pricing plan of Unity is a nightmare for free-to-play mobile games with ads only.

 

Its amazing isn't it.

Their little post about the law reads like a self-congratulatory affirmation of their legal rights.

Whereas all they've achieved is affirmation of how insane we'd have to be to continue doing business with them.

 

Hm. It honestly feels too damn onerous, and that these aren't fee changes these are additions and a complete restructuring of the model.

 

Nobody else can detect pirate copies reliably. This is why DRM doesn't work. Why and how are you different?

Even if we could detect it, we can't do anything about it until post-install, when we're already on the hook. (Even if we have a launcher, that could be sidestepped.) So we can only leave it up to you. That's a pretty big risk.

To be clear, you're turning piracy into a risk for studios it previously didn't matter to. With this, if someone steals from us then we owe you money.

Is there some consideration for outsourcing install counting to a 3rd party, for some sense of neutrality?

 

Worst than the confusing pricing model is the "we can do this, our lawyer say so, so f u"
Whatever directions this turns, I just don't trust this company anymore and will abandon it ASAP

 

Even one more install than sales is you paying, which is a bad business model.

 

Yeah, this is the thing. If they don't have agreements in place, then this move is frankly insane.

And if they do have agreements in place, well, we need to start talking to those companies.

At the least, there's probably something like a 0% chance that Epic agreed to this with their storefront.

 

Their payment is the sense of pride they get from being the "calm" voice. Priceless.

 

Unity is quite quickly putting themselves in the path to finding out. They already achieved the other half though

 

Great post. Kinda feel the same. A lot of us put a lot of passoin and hopes and dreams into this engine and what does Unity give us back? A cold hard bill of goods. We expected at least something out of this relationship, but this is how they repay their loyal users.

 

A truly revolting decision, you will ruin lives and livelihoods over this choice of greed and control above all else

 

Legal confirmed a workaround guys. Just don't set up shop in America/country with poor consumer protection laws.

 

Charging per install is bonkers. What about this scenario? If you cross the 200k revenue threshold, and for some reason, you don't increase revenue but increase downloads by another million, you now owe unity 200k, leaving you effectively at zero. Am I seeing this right?

 

This is a complete disaster and a betrayal to everyone who uses Unity. What an incompetent mess.

 

According to my proprietary guess (so I can't go into details), they will build remote config into your game without your consent and if you don't pay up, even after they are threatening you with baseball bats, they will just shut down all your game instances so the players will demand refund and bankrupt you regardless.
Your guess is as good as mine, but after today's announcement I'm pretty sure they are already have the plans to do exactly this.
Unity just hates game developers.

 

Still REALLY hoping to get an answer for this. Your current model would charge me 90%+ even with the Pro plan as I have many users but very little monetization. There HAS to be a cap for this.

 

They will have to write it up in their ToS or risk legal action.

 

been using unity for 10+ years. currently seriously considering downloading and porting to godot for my current project.

 

Good to know... Unity has ZERO future since they just proved beyond doubt that they don't care about us!

 

I like this image from that blog post



Had he kept his word, today we wouldn't be in this situation.

 

Unless one of those old games still makes over 200k by itself, you are paying nothing for that game. If you are, just upgrade to pro and pay 1% of your 200k to pay nothing additional until that game has 1 mill in revenue.

Remember, it's not your studio total revenue, each game is calculated separately. If you have 2 games that each make 150k a year, you pay nothing.

 

I'm no expert on anti-piracy tech. But I think Unity could make billions $ selling software that can detect where installs are coming from like that.

 

Well, this is it for me. It's absolutely insane that this is happening. You managed to completely destroy my entire trust in Unity in less than a minute. However you plan on implementing and enforcing this - it will be a complete S***show and I'm not going to be a part of it anymore.

 

I agree in that it feels bad, crappy, onerous, unjust etc... But what we feel and the legalities involved are two very distinctly different things.

 

I hope for them to have better lawyer than the one who answered in the thread, cause it seems that the EU regulation won't let them bind us to the Californian juridiction/law (and it's worst in France (for them))

 

you realize simply "upgrading to pro" is $2k a year right? you must because you did the math.

 

There may not be a breach of contract, but that doesn't mean that what they are trying to do is enforceable either. It is certainly not anything like iron clad.

 

Interresting, let's see if all the lawsuits that will issues the breach of privacies (yes, I know full well about your spyware) and arbitrary numbers based on opaque euristics, not even counting the bad PR at all, will be worth the small compensation you'll get to collect pennies.

I hope you'll hire a better lawler than the one that goes "Ahah we're californian laws, we do what we want lol"

 

S***s all fun and games till you realize it's not just you but your team's livelihoods on the line as well. The whiteknights can't fathom this. On another point, I'd imagine miHoYo has a custom contract and engine that prevents Unity from attempting this crap. If Unity wants some of that gacha revenue, they should just make an attractive gacha game... It would actually incentivize them to improve the engine.