Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

i will not switch... yet. but i will install unreal and start learning it just to be safe. there's another questionable decision by unity leadership and they are far too many of those to not cause concern

 

I think we should not ask questions, but demand that these predatory terms be abolished. And if they want to make money, let them introduce a scheme like in Unreal Engine. Installation fees are unacceptable and will ruin all small and medium-sized companies.

 

It seems to me this pricing model is flawed and unfair and it hurts customer relationships immensely.
Changing conditions for ongoing projects like that creates uncertainty and distrust and it exploits the loyalty of long term customers who are tied to Unity through years of experience and commitment to various projects.
The way it is not even thought through in a number of crucial points is frankly disappointing to say the least. Offering channels so we can express our concerns about actual problems instead of providing solutions is just not good enough.
This was a really bad move. It changed the way I see you as a company and I lost faith in your will to establish and maintain good customer relations.
As many others have stated before.. the ties that bind us to the engine are only so strong and given the situation I‘m certainly willing to go the extra mile and expand my knowledge of another engine if it means breaking free of exploitation.

 

With these changes, I think there will be more unemployed Unity devs than ever.
Smaller companies will cut costs. Current CPI costs for mobile are already too high.

So overall, it would be:
- Employee cost cuts. Yep, more layoffs and suicide / lifes destroyed;
- Some projects will never see the light of day due to CPI costs being too high (including Unity's Fee);
- Trust in Unity destroyed. As a result -> less newcomers will be willing to tackle that mess of a licensing;
- Less newcomers -> less new tech -> stagnation;
- Less stakeholders money income. Self-destruction at purest form.
- Major legal issues with laws. Yeah, tracking user data on their devices is not the wisest choice.

What's left would be big companies that are able to somehow cut costs & maintain staple of devs.
But then again, I think they're more likely to move to something else rather to keep constant risk of raising install costs.
Back to in-house engines, I guess?

This is the most destructive decision made by Unity. Yet. There might be more to come.

 

I'm uncomfortable installing what is essentially spyware on a customer's computer.

 

they will do another blog posts in a few days with "we look at the concerned and we changed according to your feedback" and a few minor changes and that's it. is not the first time they've done this

 

Can someone at Unity explain me how this new pricing makes them gain money when most of the people will just quit the platform?

I understand you want more money but you won't be making much if people quit the platform en masse.

 

The sad thing is that there's no alternative when you need C# and WebGL. Godot needs to focus on WebGL for version 4 to grab all the people that are currently holding off due to incomplete cross platform support.

 

There is so many post here, so I haven't read all... But we say if 100.000 people uninstall and install many times, so needs to pay everytime for that? Example "trolls" they know you need to pay 0.20$ for every install, they just install / uninstall many times...

Can't be like that right?

 

After a relatively sleepless night I've come on to see if Unity has backpedalled on this.
Seems like they haven't.

I bought my first Unity asset in 2015, and have subsequently spend several thousand dollars on assets. Many of which haven't been used yet. I just like having them available.

I released my first ever game on Steam in 2017 using Unity 5.

I've been working for over a year now on my current project and it is 90% complete.

It's with a genuinely heavy heart that I now say I can no longer feel confident in the Unity ecosystem and have no real choice but to move. Charging me for factors that I have no direct control over is a complete deal breaker. The only certainty I have now is that this can only get worse. It will not get better. it will not be walked back. Even if it is, the door is open now.

It's going to be a long process researching whether Godot or Unreal have all the features I require, and trying to salvage what I can from my asset store purchases locally. Maybe then I can rebuilt my game from the ground up and have it ready to go in another year.

I'm not even angry. I'm just sad. I should have seen this coming years ago.
I started my game dev journey advocating for open source software then switched to Unity when I saw how fast its workflow was and what I was able to make in such a short period of time. I should never have done so.

 

There is the sunk cost of it all

Many of us have built a small but stable business around Unity Tech
While we may work with other tech as well Unity is the bulk of that ... and Unity seems to know that

That said multiple engines and platforms are out there and trying to be "easy" to come to as a game dev, as a publisher, as a tools dev, etc. so ya there will be loss of users and each time they do something like this that loss will increase in severity till they are no longer relevant or purchased up by someone else

 

Who in the blue hell came up with such a moronic and abusable monetisation model. Which pea brained exec thinks it’s a good idea to have a model where its possible for developers to generate negative revenue! I’ve got a game too close to launch to switch now, but my next one is going to be on Unreal unless this changes.

 

I have been a unity developer for 15 years.
I went to the first Unite in 2008 in Compenhagen, we were less than 200 people.


I created an f2p mobile game studio which has 6 employees
I am a Unity teacher in 2 major schools and I have trained more than 600 students in Unity.

Today, I feel betrayed by this company to whom I have given a lot and of whom I have always spoken highly of them.

My team has been working on an f2p game for 2 years and we have to release it at Christmas.

Our business plan foresees 60M downloads for revenues of $1M which should cover our costs.
With the new prices, if we all upgrade to the Pro version, we will owe Unity $1.2M.
That's more than everything we're going to win!

Maybe the only way out of this is to block the game in all poor countries to reduce fees?

I put a lot of effort and money into this project...
And you're announcing this 3 months before the game's release!

How can you honestly destroy the professional lives of thousands of people who helped and supported you to make a little more money? You are already making more money each year (https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/U/unity-software/gross-profit)

You must have thought carefully about your plan before posting your new prices.
You have therefore voluntarily chosen to destroy a large part of the creation of video games.

 

Many are in that boat we have a community aimed at game dev in general most are Steam game devs and most are Unity but we have some Gadot and several that also work in UE
https://discord.gg/6X3xrRc

 

They just will lie and say that it is just a very loud minority, and that there would be more ppl joining than leaving. just the common stuff.

 

Who's coming to Unite next month?

 

I for one want to congratulate Unity for coming up with the vision for the future. Un-Doubly whatever engine developers move to shall receive an immense amount of support and be a great success. Thank you, Unity, for your bold leadership decisions!

 

My reaction

 

They believe they can calculate downloads. Alright then, I believe cucumber is an animal and whales can fly. Just ridiculous. There can't be belief in numbers. Analytic is a science, it is not a religion. You can't believe some magical numbers. You need methodology and proof. Demonstrate us the methodology.

Mehh.. Don't worry guys. There are plenty of open-source game engines out there. We can use other engines. As final words:

INDIE DEVS WILL RISE AGAIN!

Cheers

 

I really don't care much for any explanation, or analysis, or what have you at this point.

Fact of the matter is, what we had before was a very clear business relationship between Unity and devs. We pay for the license, we get to use the engine. Whether it was worth it, how much it cost, all of these are details that affected people in different ways. But regardless, there was a clear business relationship. And if we agreed to it, it was going to be on those terms.

Now that has changed. We are now being told that we can be charged for a nebulous metric that Unity will track themselves, but not share on how they do so and over which we have little to no control. We are being told that we will be charged retroactively (in the sense that games in development or already launched on existing unity versions will be on the hook), applying to us even though we bought those licenses for all those years. The business relationship has been upturned, because the terms of the 'deal' have quite literally been changed on us. As it turns out, Unity can decide to alter the terms of our licenses even for games already launched, and alter it to quite literally whatever it wants.

Tomorrow they could raise those fees further. Or they could start charging us for builds, or playtime, or whatever. Don't tell me they won't ever do it, basing fees on installs is already asinine and has no prior industry basis, tomorrow it could be something else equally nonsensical.

As many have said, the trust has been broken....along with the terms of our prior business relationship. It doesn't matter if this scheme is affordable or not for us right now. What reason do we have to trust what Unity does in the future? What reason do we have that one day, they won't run after us digging for even more money? How can any dev running a working business stick with a partner who breaches trust in this manner? How can we pitch projects to investors or publishers and plan budgets with a nebulous 'installs' metric we can't predict, not to mention 'potential new additional Unity fees' that could come any X years in the future? It's madness.

Also like what many have said, my trust will not return even if they 100% walk back on this. No, the leadership at Unity also has to go. And I want terms of use for existing licenses to be ironclad and locked in for perpetuity for the version we come to use, just like a certain other major Unity competitor. And that will just be the starting point. Our trust isn't going to return overnight....but at least it won't be negative.

 

I am, but I'm already regretting buying the damn tickets...

 

Really wonder how the atmosphere will be there...

 

What a terrible way!
You don’t care about the revenue and profits of various games , rude mark out how much each player will charge. And don’t care whether this method will cause the developer to go bankrupt.

 

That will be a VERY interesting event... Someone please send pictures/videos

 

Greate Other Engine! Unity dead!!!

 

I expect a lot of angry devs if they aren't backpedaling this.

 

다음주까지 계속해서 발전해 나갈 프로젝트를 언리얼이나 다른 엔진으로 변경해야 한다.
유니티를 계속 사용할 자신이 없드.

 

A lot of energy

 

This has made us reevaluate Godot for an upcoming title, the last time we looked at it we saw it was lacking features that appear to have been added. We'll need to do a more thorough evaluation, but I don't think we would have done this otherwise.
Thanks, Unity.

 

What a horrible business decision, I’d be embarrassed . People use your service because it’s cheap, not because it’s good. If you want to raise prices make it worth it or you’ll run your customers out. Do better.

 

https://discuss.cocos2d-x.org/t/unity-vs-cocos-creator-benchmark-test/52880/7

Has anyone tried cocos creator yet?

 

I have been investing 10 years of my company as the basis of Unity. I understand them needing enough revenue to support the company, but this destroys my business case.

 

I just realized this is history repeating itself. 5 Years ago they tried to retroactively change the TOS, and after some backlash a safeguard was put in place to make sure that users can remain with the old TOS as long as they don't upgrade their version of the Engine.

Whatever happened to that clause?

https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-and-commitment-to-being-an-open-platform

 

This hurts to read...

 

Hi all!
I am new to Unity and this forum. I am going through the Unity pathways right now. I came across this thread and became a bit concerned. Is this price increase that you're talking about only applicable when the game you've made generates revenue? Will it still be free for single developers learning the ropes? I don't want a fee retroactively after committing to learn Unity. Then again, I guess I have to start somewhere. I can always change down the line.

 

I honestly think this is the thing to do if we want unity to listen to us, but not only for devs we don't like, but every games made with unity :/

 

Such a tragedy in communication. The price is actually ok in a perfect world. Often vastly lower than in the case of Unreal. Even if you count the per seat Unreal cost at 0.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hKdOR529Lf5RcDPANRncZC8W-zHY7eXk9x8zu4T39To/edit#gid=0

Still...co many stupid questions unanswered:

1. FAQ states the distributors will be the ones billed. Do Valve, MS, Nintendo, GOG, Epic, Sony etc have any reason to comply with this? How will they forward the bill? Will they bill the customer or the developer?

2. Donations / Patronite business model not tied to a specific product. How does that work? It is clearly noted, that this is a Per Project / Game thing. What if the business model is not tied to a specific product? (a dev. has 10 free games without monetization, but accepts donations or subscription via a 3rd party)

3. How does such a announcement go forward, without a very detailed show case in how it's supposed to word? How are publishers to trust a developer using Unity atm? How can we plan a budget in a pitch deck if we have no idea what's going on?

4. Again...WHAT ENTITY IS GOING TO PAY THIS FEE?
You FAQ states, it will be the Distributors. Why would the distributors pay this fee? Who will they forward the cost to? Devs or EndUsers?

 

And I believe I will be paying an accurate amount leveraging my own proprietary payment model.

 

There is no information about "Unity Runtime Fee" in the Unity TOS. Therefore, I think it will cover Unity software that will be released after January 1, 2024. If it covers old version software, Unity will face very serious lawsuits.
https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service

If we accept this, Adobe and other companies may soon be charging per install as well.

 

Also, companies making decisions like this makes piracy an ethical option. Greedy corporations deserve to lose as much money as we can reasonably cause.

 

I'll be there, but this definitely leaves a sour taste in the mouth now!

 

The real sad part is the best decision Unity can do now, is to not roll back this decision, but to double down on it.

The damage has been done. From now on, no team with half a brain will start a new project in Unity. No new third-party plugins will be made, paid or open-source. At this point it really doesn't matter whether the price is 0.02 or 0.2. It only affects the bottom lines of existing or almost finished games, but it won't change the future of Unity.

The only reasonable thing the Unity can do is to milk the last bits of value from it.

 

You need to hit $200k in profit for this to take place so yeah you're unaffected

 

Can I get a refund for my Unity Plus seat? (Instead of upgrading to Pro, as what you suggested)

 

You keep saying that we won't be charged for this or that kind of install, but there is no way you can know which install is which. Even we don't have enough information to know which install is the pirated version or giveaway or install from steam. Also there is no mention of consoles. Without breaking NDA I can tell you that it's impossible for me or you to get install information from them.

 

Huge Unity fan here, but this one hurts a lot.

My first impression was "Oh, this is a bad post. They will clarify this and it'll be okay."
Previous "bad" unity news posts were okay for me personally. Bad communication, but nothing terrible.

The new Q&A here really get's me worried though.
I wanted to use a coming hackathon to evaluate Unity Game Services, as I saw no issue in a Unity vendor lock-in.

I'm now considering to use that hackathon to evaluate Godot 4.1 instead.
I tried UE5 and disliked the workflow and development experience.

 

I'm making my first game with Unity, it probably won't hit 200k revenue so I guess I'm safe but it's probably also my last game with Unity since this is too much of a Damocles sword.

 

Great, and perhaps not so great from what I can gather from this thread. Thanks for the reply.

 

No, you pay nothing if your game earns less than $200,000 in a year (or $1,000,000 if you are on a paid Unity plan).

 

The policy presented here allows for the infinite amount being charged, this is a fact.

'they said' does not provide any kind of guarantee that it will be handled properly - as a company they have every incentive to overcharge here.

'if you are making more than 200k in revenue you probably should have the resources' - 200k is a senior dev's salary in CA, not something you run a studio on let alone being able to hire lawyers - not to mention this is only rev we're talking about, after steam tax, state tax, federal tax, marketing, contractors, paying your own meager salary if you went full time and so on you could easily still be deep in the red while having 200k rev, hell, that happens to companies with millions and even billions in revenue all the time and is actually very common not to make any profit during first few years of a startup.

"your game and making $0.02 per user or less (the amount to lose money), then you are doing something wrong" - if you know how to make every investment actually turn a profit, in a world where 9/10 new businesses fail, then by all means sing me up for your course, I would unironically love to take a 100% guarantee profit course like that, and I'm sure so would everyone else here.

Everyone who has any kind of real life business experience knows very well that working with a company that can drop a few fold price increase on you out of nowhere and top that with 'we'll charge you based on the data you will never see and it's only left to us to judge if this is right or not' is not a company you should do any kind of business with.

And this is very sad, because people here (me included) are deep into their passion projects, months, years, some probably over a decade, and that is why Unity knows they can try something like that because there's no way to switch the engine for a project that takes years to make and is lets say 50% done with thousands of hours and dollars already poured into it. For some of us it will mean having to pretty much get out of the game dev all together because the risk to continue is simply to great, and this is really just sad. Especially that this is coming from a company that was positioning itself to be pro-indie dev, and not a 'giant corporation' and actually supposedly advocating for the little guy.

Maybe going with a 'greedy corporate pig' wasn't such a bad option, Epic at least seem to be honest in their 'greedy approach