Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

"text the word STOP to 1-900-FU-UNITY to stop paying arbitrarily changeable license fees"

 

They have been buying random tech companies like crazy for the last few years and I guess the current revenue isn't enough to sustain all that has been acquired.

 

Another fun example for the mid-size mobile gaming company with 200.000 monthly downloads on pro plan.

If they make $83.333 per month Unity will charge them $0 per month.
If they make $83.334 per month Unity will charge them $22.500 per month.

 

Really, I regret sticking to Unity for over a decade despite all the horrible bugs that caused countless allnighters. I just liked the old pricing model, felt fair.
With the new pricing model I'm not considering to start another project with Unity. tMargins are really tight and its hard enough already to make a living in games. Paying for (now more expensive) seats AND installs is just a killer for my small studio.
The install model is just complicated and unpredictable. How do you prevent malicious installs, multiple installs of the same user, reinstalls, all of this doesn't get me no revenue at all and just increases Unitys share. It is even possible to lose money on users who install the game and don't generate 20ct of revenue on that particular install.
If you have to go down this road do it like Unreal: Free engine and fixed revenue percentage. Simple as that.

 

Here’s a perfectly reasonable example of the math based on the current model for the white knights. You guys are not cool, the proposed system is absolutely ridiculous and untenable. ARPU of $0.5 is a ridiculously generous number as well.

 

You wrote exactly what I thought as well. Have been using Unity the day it came out for Windows. But this AND the industry license that is forced down your throat is really making the future of me working in Unity uncertain.

 

The personal editions need $200.000 revenue . A free app with 3rd party ads will have $0 revenue for them I guess?

 

Steam got solution

 

In this article they interviewed Unity exec Marc Whitten and he had to say this:

"As for Game Pass and other subscription services, Whitten said that developers like Aggro Crab would not be on the hook, as the fees are charged to distributors, which in the Game Pass example would be Microsoft."

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

Question: If I have game which is in Xbox Gamepass Microsoft is the distributor and will be charged.
How is this different from the game NOT being on Gamepass but just sold on Xbox, where Microsoft ist still the distributor?

The platforms are the distributor, that's a fact.
Why does the definition of the distributor change based on their business model, especially if they have multiple ones?

 

Has anyone seen any info about how this is calculated for multiplatform games originating from the same Unity Project? for instance if I have a Unity project that I publish on Android with 600k installs and iOS with 600k installs, will that count as 1.2M installs or will they be counted separately?

 

Don't forget to cancel automatic renewal for the subscriptions.

 

There's almost a need for some kind of store mechanism to disable any users from installing if there are more than 199,999 installs.

 

Ah that's good to know, thank you. Could you let me know where I can find a source for this? Would be good to alleviate their concerns.

 

What would happen with third-party developments? That is, I develop a video game for a client for a fixed amount, and I deliver the compiled binary to the client. How do you charge him? Are you going to charge me? How would this work?

 

I've opened the link. There is no mention of it on the timestamp. Or if they are speak on russian this make them sponsored by russian goverment or what?

 

I know some people will disagree with me on this, and have every right to be since they are in wildly different situations than me (solo offline game without transactions, without ads. "Pay once and own the game")

I'd much, much rather have an increase in revenue share.


I'm not a big fan of needing to keep the splashscreen but I'm too deep in my project to switch engines easily.

 

Shouldn't such significant price changes be announced a year or two in advance? People will not have time to switch to another engine in such a short period of time if they are not satisfied with the new pricing policy. I didn't expect such a trick from Unity.

 

imagine not having a business model that incentivizes developers to want to purchase a pro or plus plan. imagine not having a revenue model that scales with the developers success to encourage a we all win environment. imagine if microsoft charged you a flat fee every time you boot up windows.

 

I've been with Unity as a hobby dev since around 2008, when the indie version was still ~$200 (Lerps Tutorial!). I bought a pro license back then because I got an upgrade offer and just wanted to support this company. I started the first Unity User group in Berlin, with three other people attending that evening in a small café. I've been to three Unite Events over the years, went on Unity Plus, bought tons of assets on the store.

When Unity became "free" I didn't like it, because I knew that the forums and everything would get flooded with people who were not really committed and post a lot low quality content, which happened (no offense everyone).
When Unity went public, I had quiet hopes this could be a good thing, but it became pretty clear that the focus was stock price and revenue now, not the developers.
What I hated the most about the last years was the amateurish PR and the disconnect between management and users. I feel like Unity HQ mistakenly believes that the players of our games are their customers, not the developers. Like they are just looking past us. We're just the idiot monkeys in the middle.

The fact that I'm a hobby dev makes all of this a little easier for me as for a lot of other folks around here doing this for a living, I'm really feeling sorry for everyone who feels the rugpull this much stronger.
But as a hobby dev I also don't have the luxury of a professional distance to the tools I use and I have to say that Unitys decline just somehow deeply saddens me.

 

Assuming that's true (is that what they actually show in the dashboard?), here is his math done right, then.
He says he gets on average 400k installs per month.
He says he earns 1 million per month.
That is 4.8 million installs per year and $12 million in revenue per year.
Subtract store fees, and that is $8.4 million.
Subtract marketing costs and that is $4.2 million revenue per year.
Subtract 1 million installs for Pro and that is 3.8 million installs that will be charged.
3.8 million * $0.15 per install is $570k in install fees PER YEAR
$4.2 million - $570k = $3,630,000 Revenue per year AFTER everything is taken out
That is $302,500 per month left over for funding the rest of business.

His math was totally wrong.

 

Man I have a hard time processing how someone is selling 300K a month and struggles like this.

 

Please consider implementing a middle-ground solution that ensures higher revenues for Unity while being fair to users and maintaining the value proposition of the subscription model (from individuals and small indies to largest companies).

Idea: Introduce a revenue-sharing scheme for earnings above a certain threshold/thresholds. Deduct the paid subscription costs from the revenue share owed.

Most users (to a greater or lesser extent) will accept the fact that Unity needs more revenue, but the strategy for a new revenue-sharing system must be effective, transparent, fair, efficient and resilient to errors, imperfections, and fraud.

 

Timestamp should've been around 6th minute. Though 5th minute is even more ridiculuous and seems to suggest they work directly for military

 

That is 570k dollars in EXTRA expenses every year. That's 13.5% of earnings just gone.

If the game shipped in early 2023, that is most definitely not part of the business plan.

Any business taking a unexpected 13.5% year-on-year hit in EBIDTA is going to feel it, most might end up in financial difficulties.

And let's talk about it - it's a 13.5% earnings share. Compare that to a 5% gross revenue share for Unreal.

 

Man people really really don't understand these changes at all. 57 pages in and people are STILL confused.

How will unity even recover after confusing people this badly.

 

Still cheaper than Unreal Engine tho.

Unreal Engine doesn't factor in gross revenue.(EDIT: Actually this is wrong, my bad, but there might be some nuance)

 

Indeed, but there's a caveat: you need to have generated a revenue of $200k over the past 12 months. Many, including myself, find this so outlandish that it almost seems like a setup for introducing a lesser evil later on. I certainly hope that's the case. Meanwhile, Unity faces challenges in turning a profit, and with investor expectations looming, it's plausible this policy could be here to stay. Time will tell.

 

They already said it’s gross, so before platform fees. Why would they make it unfavorable to themselves.

 

With this way Unity is going it is not worth to keep its brand name anymore in my opinion.

At the beginning of Unity I felt that they had the target to democratize game development and to make it available for everyone. It encouraged talented developers to also provide solutions which were available for free.

So developers literally formed a unity in the same development direction based on the engine.

Today Unity is a stock company, buying companies, forming island solutions and tries to sell them as a workflow solution by simultaneously forming islands and focusing on "industry" where they want to get the most money out with their island solutions.

I hope Unity's stock price will drop like a stone after this, and they learn that they are currently trying to compensate their own inefficiency with only more money. Their management level and CEO should half their salary.

 

I am more disgusted with Unity-paid YouTube monkeys. They 100% got notified ahead as always and suddenly came out with "reaction" videos claiming this is all good for developers. Be a man and stand out for the right principles for once!

 

Unity: stick to your purpose which is to facilitate the creation of great games by empowering developers. It's the reason you succeeded in the first place.

Or perish.

 

Unity needs to go on a weeklong campaign of properly informing people of these changes or people will be confused forever.

 

It is a scary mechanism considering the refund policy on Steam.
The more refunds that are made, the more money you pay as a fine for letting them install it, even though you did not profit from it.

 

He doesn't make $1 million per month. He just made more than $1 million in the past 12 months.

 

No, it's not. UE 5% royalty starts only when you reach 1mln$ revenue. So if you reach 1.000.001$ - you will have to pay 5 cents.

 

Unity took in over a billion dollars in 2022. But it has also spent many times that amount acquiring WETA and ironSource and RestAR and on and on and on...

The company could sustain development by keeping its head down, paying its developers, improving its core product and making a healthy profit along the way. It does not have to grow like a tumor in all directions and that growth does not have to be fed by aggressively squeezing your customers for cash.

SO?? So what? Unity is a tool not a business partner. Imagine if the company who made your IDE announced their intent to charge MORE than you agreed to up front because they were an 'essential part' of your game's success. Even if they WERE essential you'd call them mental and tell them to cast their envious gaze elsewhere.

I think you may have drunk the kool aid without realizing it.

 

I think in most cases it is good for devs, they just botched the roll out so badly everyone thinks it's worse than it is.

 

The reason Unity succeeded is that they built a okay-ish cross-platform engine at perfect timing (the rising of mobile game) and attracted a large enough community, which did the hard lifting for them.

The community is going to be gone in months. (perhaps weeks)

 

To be blunt, there's no way that this can hold up from a legal perspective. While Unity can put it into their contracts that they receive a portion of the revenue from sale of a certain game (it's what the competition does, so yeah), the legal issues that are encountered with this current plan are as follows:

The intention is to charge per 1 install of a single user, thus providing a metric on how many people are playing the game. However, there is no reliable way of doing this because if it is a raw number metric, then that is entirely inaccurate since games can be installed and uninstalled at entire random. if it is constrained by IP Address, a person may have numerous different IP addresses depending on their current location, as well as being able to simple use a VPN to go to even more numerous places. The hardest available identifier is a device ID, but this also doesn't work since an individual person may install a game on multiple different devices, as well as a device being identified as different if they swap out or upgrade their motherboard.

Point being, if you want a portion of revenue from games, just ask for a portion of revenue from games as a part of the license agreement. We get it, Unity is in the red right now, you want extra was to monetize. Fine. You just have to undercut Epic by enough to make it worth developing on Unity vs. Unreal. This other way is just asking for legal headaches in the future.

 

Actually, I calculated it worse still. it is $0.02, not 0.15


Assuming that's true (is that what they actually show in the dashboard?), here is his math done right, then.
He says he gets on average 400k installs per month.
He says he earns 1 million per month.
That is 4.8 million installs per year and $12 million in revenue per year.
Subtract store fees, and that is $8.4 million.
Subtract marketing costs and that is $4.2 million revenue per year.
Subtract 1 million installs for Pro and that is 3.8 million installs that will be charged.
3.8 million * $0.02 per install is $57k in install fees PER YEAR
$4.2 million - $57k = $4,143,000 Revenue per year AFTER everything is taken out
That is $345,250 per month left over for funding the rest of business.

Edit: ok it's a bit less than that, but it is a CURVE. 73% of his installs qualify for the $0.02 per install rate.

 

Still not a single correct thing in there. Read the post on Reddit again.

 

Might not even be that

 

lmao unity cant even explain how this is better were in your head of math skills can you not see a never ending bill able is bad for business?

 

Unity has quietly deleted my forum post in this thread where I've linked to articles about Unity CEO John Riccitiello dumping stocks before announcing these changes.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unity-software-incs-president-ceo-050515124.html

Is my personal opinion that he should be investigated for inside trading


EDIT: the deleted post is back. quietly again.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...ackaging-updates.1482750/page-36#post-9295835

 

How is 5 > 13?

 

My interpretation is that multiple platforms count as the same game. The closest I've seen is the quote about two devices same platform.

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

"But an extra fee will be charged if a user installs a game on a second device, say a Steam Deck after installing a game on a PC."

 

What is wrong in my post? I honestly can't see anything and have re-read the reddit post multiple times.

 

A revenue share -
That's what we're gonna get
This whole mess is just to make us think the situation could've been worse

Most of us say that unity will still loose a lot of users due to them breaking trust.
But imagine a situation where someone misses the entire drama - when they will realise, the only thing that will matter for them is the fact that unity has now royalty sharing - they will not care about this whole runtime fee trust-breaking since for them it will seem as something "unity announced but quickly cancelled, so there's no need to think abou it"

 

Name at least one case where it's better than what it was.

 

Dev studios making over 100k in revenue/yr from all their combined Unity projects (not just a single game) no longer need to pay for Plus.