Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

For sure. The only reason i see them not just going per sale is the freemiums mobile games. Lets be honest, those are the ones they wanna have cough some cash.

If you only sell your game on steam or another platform there is no way they would legally be able to force you to pay for more than whatever is sold on those platforms.

"You must pay 10k installs!"
"Here are my info on Steam, Epic, etc. 2k new downloads/sales this month. 2k installs, take it or we will meet in court.' Like, legit easy money.

 

My point is that the Unity exe of the game is still floating around and therefore can be installed even though its an old version and not your primary release anymore. Does unity count those as installs too?

 

This is freaking landmine. It makes absolutely no sense to tie payments to installs and not to actual revenue. Like, imagine your game not getting a lot of revenue, but slowly accumulating installs from your playerbase. And then suddenly, sale or something, revenue spike, and you are forced to pay for all the installs that were accumulated before.

 

Still wondering if Unity isn't trying to hide their Unity Plus deletion and Pro price increase with this runtime fee as a huge decoy.
At LEAST that would make them look like 'they have a plan' (a bad one, but at least, that would make a little bit of sense)

 

Didn't think of that pun yet, thanks.

 

So users can just download and uninstall the same game over and over on multiple devices and charge us 20¢ every time? RIP Unity, switching to Unreal Engine that isn't charging people 20¢ per download that can be exploited. Whoever came up with this should be fired for killing the Unity Engine and your company. So greedy and soon to be so bankrupt. Hope it was worth it. ✌️

 

It sucks as someone who was developing an mmo for 5 years that plans to be released for very cheap (1$/month 10$ / year or 20$ perpetual license) to allow people with not a lot of money to play, I absolutely will not be able to use unity. if this goes into effect I'm just going to have to move to godot.

 

Clear cut and undeniable evidence that the shareholders and CEOs are making more profit by making the rest of our lives harder and poorer. Truly exposes the vile nature of these obscenely greedy hyper capitalists who run the show.

Now I understand why communism is becoming so appealing to the younger generations.

 

I think its a storefront thing, because Unity is packed - it doesn't have an actual installer, you run the exe its the full thing.

 

You're definitely not seeing the whole picture. Are you an Indie dev and do you make a living?

Currently a dev company is targeting the loyalty plans of platforms such as EPIC, Microsoft and recently Google and Netflix.

Many times we can't even get games accepted into these programs, but the simple fact that they exist is enough to boost the global gaming market.

A publisher comes to you and offers you money for your game because they hope that if your game is not successful in the short term, there is still the chance of a loyalty program.

An independent investor does the same thing.

A developer without a publisher and without investment does the same thing.

Today, loyalty programs are one of the biggest forces driving Indies.

With this bizarre decision by Unity, there is no doubt that loyalty plans for Unity games are being reevaluated...

For it to be worth it for these big corporations to take care of this on their own, there should be an avalanche of games being created every year, as is what happened until now with games made in Unity, but for this it is necessary to wait and see the future of this . And this waiting means suspending until you figure out what to do...

The simple fact that loyalty plan companies have to rethink the future of Unity games is a horrible burden for all of us.

You are just looking at the game scenario made by you without any aspirations. But that's not how the wheel SPINS.

 

The Unity stock is now like a submarine going down fast. Be careful with the pressure, you know what happens at critical depth...

 

Agreed. I was hoping their original wording was just terribly chosen. They are basically confirming we will never be free from Unity sending us a bill of any amount at any time. Since they make up the numbers. My 150 wishlist game already has 10.000 Demo installs, because some people on steam collect free demo's.
I doubt it will ever make me the $200k, so I will probably be fine. But what is stopping unity from retroactively changing these terms next year.
Games make most of their money in the first month, so this $200k threshold is not so high for a multi year project.

 

Nothing to see here

https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-bos...evelopment-fees-announcement-raising-eyebrows

 

I have said many times over the years that this would be the last straw. During that time I have learnt and experimented with Unreal, Godot, and making my own engine built on top of monogame.

I think I am finally ready to just move on, clearly waiting for Unity to go back to being a company I cherish and am aligned with, is never going to happen.

I wish I could see it earlier.

 

Yes, all the studious making more than 1M per year. Will have to pay after exceeding that.

Yes, im sorry. I dont think more than 0.01% of people here will ever meet that req.

And yes, the quote is dumb because that is how people here sound. We wanna talk about the big corpos having to pay? Lets talk about that. So then every single other person with 2k installs on their itchio game needs to shut up.

Yeah, the install thing is hella stupid. And every random flooding this with 'what if my game sell 10 thousand times more do i owe unity money?' aint helping.

 

It's so not what I want to see. Hope Unity team can fix this.

 

Wanted to pop back in and say again this idea is asinine, a lot of people are worn out already trying to make sense if it all but we’re still here and pissed off. Things might quiet down today but this spread like wildfire across the game dev community it’s not going to stay quiet long.

 

The unity stock market rn

 

This will only confort us thinking this is the right time to leave the sinking boat.

 

Unity Share price:

 

You are correct. I updated the spreadsheet to correct this now. Thanks!

 

$36.55 (down 6.21%)

 

Unfortunately your view is not based on the numbers among games industry professionals. Indie studios making few millions a year are not rich, they're barely getting by. Please do keep in mind that revenue is the metric used by Unity, not profit. For freemium games, this model eats majority of their revenue. Many indie studio owners have used their own company's numbers to show how this model would bring them from profit to debt. I recommend doing a quick research about mobile games industry numbers (common CPI, ARPU values etc.) to see how this is problematic. Please stop spreading misinformation when people are concerned about their livehoods. Have a nice day.

 

$36.33(down 6.83%)

 

Thank you! Turns out my calculations were a little wrong. I had to do a monthly breakdown so it kind of is doing now also what you wanted it to do. Just add more months in the columns if you want to do forecasts.

 

Basically this is true for devs who sell games for an upfront cost like myself. Even if you gross over a million, the install fee is relatively negligable (and even if multiple installs count, comes to less than Unreal's 5% rev cut), but free to play mobile games are fuuuuuuucked because their businesses are based around getting millions and millions of installs and only making a few cents off of them, and making large advertising expenses.

 

Ah, the stocks are now in freefall.

Alexa, play 'Komm, Susser Tod' from the End of Evangelion soundtrack.

 

It’s not that I think my games will make that much, it’s the fact unity is clearly going to try and add spyware/malware to our games to track installs, they have to add it to every game built on unity to track lifetime installs.

not only that they have said here pages back that they can according to their TOS change whatever they want whenever do long as they give 3 months warning and even the 3 month warning can be changed. They’re over stepping.

 

People understand all that. It is just that "runtime install fee" is unacceptable in any form, and in current form the pricing can bankrupt you if you make something cheap that goes viral.

Another problem is that Unity wants to retroactively charge for already released games, and tracking installs amounts to "our secret algorithms are perfect, trust us". There's no reason to trust those algorithms and expectation is that the data will be incorrect or skewed in unity favors. This crap will be cracked, and then weaponized to take down studios. And "secret algorithms" are blank cheque you're giving to unity.

Effectively changes indicate that "Free/Plus" tiers are only usable for non-commercial purposes, but due to the way unity tiers work, you can't use t hem in non-commercial organization that receives any funding. For commercial tiers, engine is unusable for videogames, because a widely used product can result in massive fees.

If you check the table on blogpost, and run the numbers, it becomes obvious that unity wants ability to charge you up to $20k per month, if you're already paying, and in case you become successful using Plus/Free tier, they want you to die and your studio to disappear. "Free(?)" tier has $0.2 cost per install, and that's actually a very significant amount.

The pricing is simply unacceptable and the idea is insane. Whoever thought it up should be fired and then put into mental health facility.

Also, keep in mind that cost of installation of "unity runtime", for unity is zero. It is digital goods. Copying costs it nothing. The company is literally trying to create money out of air, based in activity that does not bring you any revenue.

 

Hmm. This feels very toxic to certain types of games.
- WebGL and streaming. This effectively means the devs have to pay for *every PLAY*.
- Free-to-play games, games monetized by ads, and games that only requires payment after installing (free install to get a demo, unlock full game later). Not all players pay or otherwise generate enough income, but all players cause this thing to tick. This effectively means once the dev passes the threshold for paying the per-install fee, it is entirely possible to lose money because of this fee. (N.B. Not every game is like those Steam games where you pay first.)

The business model is seemingly more friendly to, and only more friendly to, those games that have an upfront fee, like Steam games or console games. This badly hurts mobile game developers.

 

Unity, we know logical arguments you don't listen to, but maybe this.

 

-6.80% for the day.

That's harsh. Let's see if we can make it to -10%...

 

WTF? I think after this, you need to shut up, with all due respect.

 

What if the automaker that made your car charged you a fee every time you turned it on?

 

“What was actually happening when they came up with this lol”

 

I never expected to feel happy about the engine I used for 10 years going down. I don't know why, I don't know what to do. Should I take published games down? Should I learn Godot or Unreal? I was mid-development of my next project and now I am lost.

 

Unity please.... I do not wanna learn Godot.

 

Also on the detailed FAQ inferes that the check is going to be done monthl:



So in Personal License when both conditions are meant ($200k revenue and 200K Unity Runtime instances installed) there will be a one time big fee of $40K at the end of the month the game achieved those thresholds; however, since then, every new install of the game will be charged $0.20 at the end of that month of installation, and not added continuously through the next months.

Again, the information both in the table and FAQ is very unclear, do some clarification would definitely help us decide how to approach this change

 

$36.24 (down 7.01%)

 

Why don't they just charge $10 per month per seat for personal?
It's cheaper than a Netflix subscription, and almost everyone would happily pay for that.

 

Ok... sure it doesn't affect you now. But many of us want to make money

it's an example of the new unity fees. the pro subscription is another thing.
Look I hate the new pricing model, and i think they shoot themselves in the foot, but I don't think that video was made with the intention of lying

 

Count it yourself.

 

As someone who follows this stock almost daily, I assure you it does this every week. It jumps by this price and dives by this much almost daily in some weeks. This is not necessarily a direct correlation to this announcement. Nor is this some massive dive.

Remember, customers and shareholders are radically different animals. What infuriates and drives away one does not necessarily even begin to affect the other. Close to 0.00% of people like game changing mictrotransactions, loot boxes, and card packs. If anything, it drives away a lot of players - certainly much more than it draws in. Yet EA does it anyway, and its shareholders LOVE it, because it gets them more money from their investments. The point is, what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander, and acting like the stock market is parallel to the customer base is just fundamentally misguided.

 

Isn't it basically insider trading?

 

Now everyone holds a power to kill any developer with a simple looping reinstall script

 

Been done by BMW. They tried to introduce subscription fee for seat heaters.

 

Yeah, kill those pesky F2P, educational and indie games completely. Praise the shadow economy.

 

Damn the guy trying to fill his own pockets as much as possible before ruining down the whole company!!