Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

It does not have "native" C# support.

 

One other aspect of this clusterf@ck is that also many Asset Store publishers will or are already jumping ship.

This seems to be the final straw in a series of unfortunate events.

Actually, we, the dev-people have lost our patience.

 

what is that then?

 

This is very demoralizing to say the least. I get that good amount of indies (PC world, not sure of mobile) won't be affected by this but charging per install is just a low move.

 

There are things in Godot you can't do in C#. That's not native. It has support though. (Last I checked, but I don't like the management of Godot's development, so it was a long time ago, maybe they added more C# support since then?)

 

Right so think big picture. What are companies like Steam and MS and so forth going to do? Give up their profit? F*** no. This will mean any Unity developer using those publisher services will pay a surcharge.. Just because its unity..

This whole thing is utter BS.

 

Hi, another first time poster here
Would have hoped to have a more joyous occasion for that, but well

And it's not just the pricing changes, for me:

[...] Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. [...]​

This is already due November (for Unity Personal). So when I for some reason lose my internet connection for a few days (happens sometimes if you live in a rural area), I am no longer able to work. Sweet. But it's understandable, because... uh, yeah. No it isn't, it's just arbitrary. Great. If you don't want me to use the engine, it couldn't have been spelled out more clearly.

This image sums the pricing up perfectly lol

Thanks for the encouragement. My game project is in very early stages, thankfully, so I'm kinda glad I will not have lost too much Unity-specific progress. Time to watch some Unreal tutorials!

 

This is asinine. Everyone who thought this was a good idea needs to be fired, immediately, cause they are clearly not suited to do their job. Especially the CEO, he should never ever again have a position of power anywhere. However, we unfortunately live in a capitalistic society and everything nowadays is driven by an infatuation of greed.

I would honestly rather learn Unreal, an engine I feel is actively working against me, than continue using Unity. While I'm not personally affected by this in any way; apart from the fact that it's stupid and disruptive to the community at large, what about a year from now, what changes will have happened that are even more asinine and out of touch? Will I be affected then?

All trust is gone, and there's very little that can be done to salvage the company from plunging into rock bottom

 

Thanks for the headsup

 

As devs, we are going to get it from all sides here.

From being gouged by Unity, boycotted by gamers, shunned by publishers. I simply don't see how staying with Unity is even slightly viable or sensible at this point.

 

It's not viable, even if they retract it all the publishers will never trust them again so they will never want to work with Unity Devs again. It's just too risky

 

Example: I have Personal plan. If I earn 199999 USD and the game has 300000 installs/downloads, then I pay nothing right? If I earn 200 000 USD then I should pay for 100k installs over the limit... this would be 20k USD. So isn't it better just to upgrade the plan and pay 2K USD yearly for Pro licence and raise both limits to 1 milion? Or am I missing something?

 

I'm not the guy you've asked but since I just saw your post: it's on the first page of this forum thread

 

Guys, have you seen this?

 

done that months ago after realizing they was going to this

 

The irony here is that Unity is based on .NET and C#. They actually think that they will be able to charge Microsoft a fee for a runtime that is itself based on MS technology? This really highlights how flawed and the ridiculous the entire model is.

 

I think all we can do now is a boycott. Many devs here using ironsource. You can just turn it off or even switch to another mediator. Only the loss of money will make them listen to the community.

 

Why do you think the 70+ pages of "eff you unity" in this thread? It's pure garbage.

 

Trust me bro!

 

I think the last two days can be summed up with this gif. Setting: Unity is excited to release a new pricing model and get positive feedback.



The deflating tail at the end is what really gets me.

 

Few tips. Don't use Vanilla VS. You'll need Visual Assist at least or even better use Rider IDE which is what I use.

Don't jump into the weeds right away with C++ apis. Get comfortable with blueprints, they're great. They give you good exposure of the engine features at a rapid pace. And most the functions/nodes you'll use are 1:1 with C++ so you're also getting familiar with the codebase as well. Once you're a bit more familiar with the editor, some of the apis and how things work you can dip into some C++

Unreal has its own native collection types that are GC'd so you really aren't do much memory management yourself or messing around with pointers (which you can still do).

Make sure you disable "Hot Reload" and Enable "Live Code Editing", one works, one doesn't.

Don't go full blueprint, don't go full C++. The best workflow I found is in the middle. C++ handles systematic stuff and data structures, integral parts of the game. Blueprints handle higher level designer stuff. C++ fires callbacks e.g. when a "gun fires", and then blueprint handles spawning an FX, playing audio, anything visual/audible happens in BP. That way you're not hardcoding any paths, code literally just doesn't care. And you get the advantage of reference finding in the editor, if you want to know if an asset is used or not, you don't have to dig in code.

I use BP to quickly prototype a feature to see if it works, if it does I can see about migrating some of the code to C++, if it doesn't, then I didn't waste much time and try something else.

I made a gist a while back sharing my experience on the two engines: https://gist.github.com/vexe/c3d2cfe9546ab56b52ef5713efeb9d91

 

Does anyone know where to engage Unity officially on this. I said I wouldn't engage legal on this as it cost me a lot last time I did but I am doing it. I have their email for their legal team but is there a more formal place to provide clear articulation of our challenges with this new process? This thread is just noise to them now.. No one is reading this or responding to it.

Where and how are we supposed to engage these assholes to show them how ridiculously assenine this is

 

I am a new developer that is trying to get a game released and what I am seeing with Unity 3D's new pricing model is weaponizing trolls by creating a financial DDoS capability that the devs get to pay for. If a group of people say 2000 people install and uninstall my game repeatedly because they do not like my content, I would go bankrupt within days. Chinese gold farmers spin up over 100 VM installations of WoW (per shop / per version) and have been doing so for almost 20 years. How much would I be paying Gold farmers around the world to install my game and erode my finances.

After spending the last 15 years working for Federal Agencies and looking to change my career field, I have seen how many nefarious things go on in the cyber world. These are only two scenarios that came to mind after reading their pricing update. In the last few hours I have come up with over 20 scenarios where people can selectively destroy a dev without the dev having any protection.

Is Unity's runtime going to protect me from Pirates, Gold Farmers and other people that use this massive pricing model to inflict harm. At least Steam and other companies continue to do DRM with the 30% they take from my sales at the start. Even when a user gets banned on steam, that doesn't prevent them from installing it, so I as the developer would continue to get punished for the bad behavior of a user after Steam enforces the TOS on a game...

This is completely irresponsible on Unity's part... I for one am now looking at cutting my loses with the content packages I purchased and looking elsewhere. I can't think of any scenario where anyone would trust Unity at this point. Unity has spoken very loudly that they care more about profit than about their customers.

 

We develop 3D mobile games. Which one is better? Unreal or Godot? I mean, I know Unreal is a lot better than Unity in these last years, but it seems a little hard to learn. In the other hand, I have this feeling that Godot is not as powerful as UE or Unity. I'm watching some youtube videos about it, but you know, every developer tends to just talk about the good side of the platform they are using. Do you have some tips and opinions about it?

 

If Unity wants more money why not just introduce royalties? Because this new system is like royalties but worse.

 

ok, I see your confusion,

we are talking about the user reinstalling the game multiple times which creates NEW installs numbers

what you have posted is a statement that deals with not taking in consideration past numbers of installs.

not sure if is clear.

so the post you have linked said that if you had 10 past month and 4 this month they will not add the 10 to 4 and you will not have 14 this month? Makes sense? WOuld had been another can of worms on top of everything if they would had gone this route

BUT

the 4 new installs this month can come from the same user. so if he installed 10 times past month and 4 times this month for unity this means 14 distinct installs.

you wonder WHY? that makes no sense?

and the answer is:

patreon like subscription services where games are constantly updated and never "finished" where the user will effectively download and install a "new" version of the game each time the dev updates the game.

 

Note: This is all as far as I know. I've been researching this for a few hours now;

Godot seems to be build for 2D games but these last few years the 3D side of things has been improved. Unreal is build for 3D games but seems to be more "heavy". So for a lightweight mobile game you should check if Godot has the parts already that you need; otherwise you have to check if Unreal is light enough. It all depends on the features you want to have and how much that will cost.

Edits: Typos

 

https://discuss.cocos2d-x.org/t/unity-vs-cocos-creator-benchmark-test/52880/4
I'm learning about cocos creator, what do you think?

 

Well, it can't happen with an opensource engine, by definition. There will always be a free fork available for taking over.

A new engine with shared vision, may end up following unity's footsteps.

The thing is, an engine is a big time investment, and it is easier to tweak existing one. I already listed some: Ogre, Godot, Stride. Those are under non-viral opensource license. There were few more.

Original id software engines were released under opensource licenses, but their licenses are viral. GPL.

 

Please, post the link. It's pure gold.

 

If Unity will no change this, I will move forward to another game engine. This is the end of the Unity.

 

I don't know but I've downloaded godot and a 3D project and it works just fine

 

So your one example is probably the most famous mobile game ever? Even #2 sorting by downloads dont qualify, but sure buddy.

Listen, im done. Yall cant read or do math so no point. Move to godot or whatever.

 

Hopefully, this will push Godot's development so we don't have to deal with problems like these. I would like to switch to a direct competitor but on the other hand, I don't want EpicGames to become a monopoly of Game development.
Honestly, this will kill some Indie games that don't update their price regularly to follow inflation in each country. I bought Rounds for 10TL and I have installed it at least 8 times, 10TL is 0.4 USD. So more hassle on devs I guess.

Godot Github: https://github.com/godotengine/godot

 

Unity share price chart rn:

 

Benchmarks are useless as it all depends on the parts you want to use. Some stuff is better in engine A and other stuff is better in engine B. Look up the stuff you want to include and how much that roughly will cost (both in time and performance) and choose the engine that will fit your project.

About the Engine; Don't know; added it to my list of things to research.

 

Hey,

I suppose the more influential developers speak up about this, the better. I created a game called "Player Non Player," which won this year's Amaze best award. It was made with Unity.

I'm not so much concerned about the fee given the thresholds, but you have completely lost my trust as a company.

This is the last game I'm making with Unity.

Bye.

 

Apparently even BattleBit wouldnt get a better deal in Unreal than in Unity, but sure, yall gonna be screwed with your itch.io games.

An quite sucessfull indie game dev thoughts. Yall would be well served to watch it.

 

Just another thought on this:

Unity itself has been on the decline since Unreal 5. We see it, we feel it, we get to feel it anyway.

This license change, however, is the opportunity to fully exploit all older, successful projects. Things like a Genshin Impact, or what a player base has, will not be discontinued.

And new, large, really profitable projects are hardly to be expected given the expectations of the players compared to the increase in the Unreal Engine. Especially not after Unity develops a lot of nonsense, but no sensible things, and remains married to the bad HDRP and the cheaply made URP.

So think about it: that with this license they actually want to exploit everyone who HAD some success with their project.

It's not even about the future, because how many "new" devs, with big ideas, still rely on Unity?

Those are probably the fewest. I myself am sad to have started using Unity. Back then the licenses were simply better than Unreal. Today, not only are the technical possibilities 10x better, but Unreal's licenses are also much tastier.

So if you just assume that:

It's nothing more than what has been said since the release of Unreal 5: something huge has to happen in Unnity.

That happened, unfortunately everything was negative.
- worse licenses
- pointless render pipelines
- no new light
- no nanite
- in short:

We have poor support at every turn, but we pay at most.

Running.

and now that even the asset store is slowly declining, as you can see in all the sales and the like, which is also logical, the stuff has been on sale for 10 years, the skins are falling away.

Just bad economy.

It's super clever, I exploit those who were successful. They don't delete your project... they pay.

It's a real shame!

 

Sorry guys I'll stick using Unity, it's just better,

 

Unity support and forum staff as soon as the new pricing blog post was published

 

What’s crazy to me is people believing the thresholds won’t decrease and the fees won’t increase, and the downward spiral this creates.

 

How could management possibly think it is a good idea to charge the developer when a player installs on multiple devices or gets a new computer? This is such a bad pricing strategy that I assume it's going to be walked back somewhat.

 

Thank you for the insightful tips and well-written article. But precisely, what has kept me loyal to Unity until now is its flexibility, specifically the ability to create at any moment a custom button in the editor that does precisely what I want. Over the past few years, I've invested significant effort into customizing my editor, so this is a major consideration before I consider switching to a new engine. However, it's becoming hard to trust Unity. Nothing is set in stone anymore. Plus, anyone publishing mobile games risks being undermined the moment they release something successful, which is bonkers

 

Ye wahtever,

 

MS buyig Unity is the best case scenario now....

can you make that in a game as an indie?!
unreal is better for AAA games, but I don't think they are AAA devs here.
Let's not transform this post into Unreal vs Unity!