Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

You are missing the main point: Unity is a DevKit. Every devkit has to have its own export tools unless it is open source. Otherwise, what? I will develop my game and share the editor? What is called Unity Runtime is the work of export tool of that devkit. So, Unity is actually charging for their export tool, which sould be a part of the DevKit. And I have a Unity-Plus licence. Which means I have already paid for that export module. So, now, Unity is trying to charge me more? Why is that? Is Unity open source? Do they provide me a chance to write my own export module? Do they provide the source code for me to write my own export module? And then, but only then, they charge for their own export tools if I do not want to go into the workload of custom export module? Do they do so? Or, they do not?

This is what is happening. And I am really sad, because I am releasing my title this month, and I am working on it for almost 5 years, now, and these terms came out of nowhere, with no prior warnings. I can not move to another Engine just right now. This is how I feel trapped. This is the word: "trapped". There are also other words that can define this action of Unity. I can not say many of those. But I can say, this is done because of greed.

Well, no more projects with Unity, even if they reverse this decision and apologize for the inconvenience they created. But, with current one, I can't do anything, I am just trapped!

 

Unity cannot even detect fake purchases from apple & google play store every day there are hundreds of $ iap in some games shown in unity dashboard but in play store revenue is zero & still unity wants revenue per install.

 

Megascans are for free , so at least assets are covered .

 

If Unity can add a new type of fee to a game that was designed, marketed, and released before today... what's to stop them from making these fees even higher? They seem to have unlimited ability to change how they make me pay for a game I made years ago.. even if I have no on-going relationship with unity.

It's retroactive on older games, even if it's not retroactive on their install counts. But if they added the fee, they could change it to make it fully retroactive at any time.

They could change the number of free installs before it starts.

Seems like they can change anything, whenever they want? How does a business plan for this?

 

I don't like the new model at all because it creates unpredictable costs. Unity forces developers to monetize their users to the maximum, otherwise you pay for the users as an developer.

Personally, I'm currently developing my first game (casual since 3 years) with Unity. I use Unity because of the previous licensing model. It would have been a pleasure to acquire a license had I ever reached the threshold. The new model may sound tempting at first, as long as you don't generate any revenue, but if you reach the threshold, you'll be saddled with unpredictable costs.

In short, it's possible that my first game with Unity will be my last game with Unity. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

too bad, I actually liked how HDRP looks

 

Guys, this whole thing is like this:

You go into a restaurant, you pick a menu.
Now, mid eating, they say they are changing prices, and they will also charge you extra every time you blink.

Some say that's fine, and they are confident that they won't blink. They think it is NOT SO BAD.

At the end of the meal, you get the check, and you cry because you are homeless.
If you want to dispute, then you have to "prove" the number of times you blinked. Easy right?

By the way, you are in a 2 year contract with this restaurant, you have to go eat there every month.

Isn't this just fantastic!

But wait, few years later, they come knocking at your door because you owe them. Apparently their new system pricing says so!

Yayayayayayay!

 

Hmmm Already heard about cocos. There's this post from a Unreal guy on Twitter:
Projects made in Unreal can target both lower-spec mobile devices and powerful consoles and PCs, even when made without any C++. "Cropout" is our sample project showing how to do that, with an in-game UI that works with mouse, controller, and touch input.

Maybe Unreal is the best option for me in the end. Even for mobile.
Thanx!

 

When someone is about to do a something that is very likely to hurt them, I believe it is polite to inform them of consequences of their actions.

The point of releasing something opensource is normally to relinquish control. In my opinion, past that point the project is no longer "someone's" but belongs to everybody and its creator becomes its caretaker and not owner. Trying to use that to get some leverage or make some point will backfire. It is highly likely that people will scramble and make a fork, and then can go as far as exclude the original creator from participating in its development. And in that fork will no longer be under creator's control.

But like I said, your life, your decisions, your consequences to deal with.

 

Just absolutely ridiculous - goes to show how little they understand the landscape that their platform is used to build games in. I'll be looking at alternatives for sure as if they can change something this drastically on a whim whos to say they won't do worse in the future.

 

ok, wanna play to the most beatiful?

 

If this comes through, I'm done with Unity forever.

Even if I tried I wouldn't be able to think of a worse licensing model.

Why not use a percentual cut, same as Unreal? I have no problem with that...

 

You are so dense if you cannot see the problem with Unity making such sweeping, poorly communicated, ill-conceived, unilateral and RETROACTIVE changes.

(by the way, that video was so painfully obviously filmed and edited prior to the announcement on behalf of Unity as damage control... pure unconscionable shillery)

Unity had a million other options at their disposal that wouldn't have burnt a fraction of the goodwill they have with this... monstrosity. It is obvious that they are strong-arming people into Pro, but the important point that is causing the community to fume (rightfully so) is that they are making these changes where they are the judge, jury, and executioner... when you get your bill for 1 million installs, you HAVE NO RECOURSE.

"I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further"

 

Now threshold is 200k. And $0.20 per install.

What if unity decides to change that threshold to 100k or zero downloads.

And decides revenue threshold could be $0.00.

And then sends you bill of $63 127,37 based on "their install counter output".

And then decides this is great business, so they charge $0.99 per install because why not.

Or a bill of $315 636,85 next because they realized they forgot to also charge "retroactively" so why not.

There is absolutely zero visibility in "installs" and fraudulent logic in "pricing per install".

—

In short: The ”pay per install” is an absolute dealbreaker.

Absolutely not acceptable.

It is okay to pay 5+% from revenue (above certain $$$ if you want to make it fair for new folks).

It is not okay to ”pay per install”.

 

Well after being a pro user years, I'm unsubbing my pro.

 

Ye using hacked engine doesnt count .

 

Quiet down and let the adults talk.

 

garry has spoken: https://garry.net/posts/unity-can-get-F***ed

When long term Unity bigshots are leaving, it's a sign of what's to come. Expect mass exodus of well known Unity devs in the next 5 years.

 

Link source on that internet connection requirement?

 

Yes, because Epic gives you free use of the quixel library and nanite to render high poly stuff without much tweaking.
And hundreds of free assets per year.
They also are going to give their character creation tool for free.
Meanwhile unity...

 

There removing plus when this releases so get ready to pay for pro

 

Guess this is a good time to come out of hiatus from a very long time of not posting here. I ... am really sad to see this. I mean at this point I am sure that I will not go back to Unity for any projects I have control over in any way.

I've been with Unity for a loooooong time. Like - I bought my first Mac only to be able to use unity before it was also available on Windows. I taught unity at university a few times. Unite was pretty much the only plattform specific event I ever attended.
Just let me tell you this, Unity: I am really sad. Like. Really, really sad. I saw you abandon your game project and declare "it was only for learning", I saw you lay off people, I stood with you over the several botched releases of the new UI everybody anticipated for years and years. I defended you against people who found the missing dark mode in Free utterly ridiculous and against people who would tell me that it's stupid there are still no shadows in the lower tier versions.
(edit) I also defended John Riccitello when he was appointed as CEO because someone can behave very differently in another job and I don't like to prejudge someone. I didn't even say much publically against his infamous "compulsion loop" statement, despite that this kind of talk really strongly goes against my beliefs. (/edit)

But ... you lost me. I recently invested more and more time into Godot and I was at the point where I was considering going back to Unity because I have invested so much time over the years.

I won't. I've become really adamant about the importance of trust treating your user base fairly. And at this point even if Unity does backpedal like they did a few times already. It's just too much. (edit) You lost my trust and that is not something to recover from lightly. Just look at WotC Dungeons and Dragons debacle. This is a major mess-up. (/edit) I'm fed up with sudden changes that threaten existences and intrusive DRM and data collection.

This feels like breaking up a long term releationship. Because it is.
Sorry Unity, I guess we should see other people. Wish you the best for the future and that you find your way. But it's very very unlikely it will be with me.

 

An alle die sagen, dass es ja garnicht so ganz schlimm sei. Mit anderen Worten ist das für manche ein Glücksspiel, während U

I think you didn't understand the core problem. And CodeMonkey and other big Unity tutorial creators/influencers won't give you an objective opinion. They don't want to admit it themselves.
Watch this video and try to identify the real problem.

 

Nah, it's more like:
- you go to a restaurant with some people
- you pay
- the restaurant says ok
- you get the meal
- you and everyone else start to eat
- the restaurant says, from now on, they will bill you after how many times your guests will use the bathroom and then drop some laxatives in the food and make it impossible for you to see how many times your guests use the bathroom.

 

Because our games and revenue are ours its there run time environment that there charging for so they can keep claiming that what u make is urs and not theres

 

I am mobile games developer with mobile traffic on 2/3 consist from 3rd tier countries i'd never be able to meet those requirements. I have spent years building my pipeline and thousands of dollars buying assets not to mention I was using solely unity ads to support Unity the way I can afford. I am devastated and lost and this move completely destroys everything I have achieved so far!

 

Time to open up wireshark and see how I can stop your runtime from phoning home. This is nasty on so many levels and I will not have my players shoulder the burden of installing your "telemetry" on their computers just so that you can charge me money in this really scummy way.

That this applies retroactively feels like true bait and switch tactics as well. What the hell did unity give me with this new "runtime" that I need to pay them .20 cents per install?

 

No more PLUS subscription? Instead a PRO subscription for over 1800€ / year just to make things less complicated?

Never seen a more ridiculous advertising campaign.
And just to remove the spash screen?

All other PRO features are more or less useless for small developers. Setup a github repository and get a 50GB LFS plan for 5€/month and you are done with your project management. No need for all the B$ tools unity came up with over the years that no one wants or needs. Its not the quantity of the tools and features - it's the quality that matters. But that's not the case, and that's why the PRO plan is just a no go if you are not a big company.

 

? no, Nothing was hacked, it is just VFXgraph installed in your Unity with a timeline and some script that you can learn from, easily. This project is already downloadable and working for everyone,
talking about Black Myth make no sense here, it is one of the biggest asian production level, compare to that, the VFX demo was made by 3 vfx artist, so i guess in term of exemple your are far to convince me

 

Everyone gonna switch to Unreal right before they IPO. Capital markets are opening back up with IPO season around the corner.

Big Epic investors need an ipo to exit.

 

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=c#+game+engines
Looks like I'm forced to try Godot or Stride3d.

 

Hello, thank you for your feedback. I hope in the future Unity's community managers work with people like you to help plan announcements in the future because this has been manic.

Which that in mind, here are some concerns.

This is insane that a business would not even have a proposal to present to users as a part of the new pricing announcement. "We're going to charge you based on a metric we can't even begin to tell you how we'd measure it?" Who came up with this idea? Did they think Unity Technologies is a tech startup racing to Minimum Viable Product?

Do you think that some of the outrage may have been avoided if even a paragraph of the announcement was focused on how you'd implement this? Many users have expressed anxiety over spyware and other imagined tracking solution. It was the job of the announcement to calm these fears and they completely failed at this.

I'm not sure why Unity Technologies thinks subscription service distributors would be any more receptive to paying per unit than we are. A Unity engine game does not offer the distributor any feature over and above other engines (not to say me, the dev, doesn't benefit. Asset store good!) and so the expected result is simply for the distributors to not accept games made in Unity. Why would they pay 0.012 cents per unit when they could pay 0?

Also, what if the dev refuses to pay for Unity Pro? Are the distributors then on the hook for 20 cents a unit? Inventing an adversarial relationship between Unity devs and subscription service isn't conductive to a profitable business.

 

i don't get why they didn't just made it "5% rev share above 200k".

this smells like a get rich quick scheme from the ceo. get some good numbers, then f off in a golden parachute.

 

This dumb, and you should feel dumb for saying it.

 

I have a question. Let's say a user bought a game, launched it, and Unity counted it as +1. But after some time, the player returned the product. In the end, the developer not only didn't earn $0 but went into the negative. Nice move and most importantly, profitable for someone. The question is: if you install and then delete the game, will it still count as +1? Where's the logic in that? I've been with Unity since version 3.11. I've experienced a lot of interesting and not-so-interesting things. But I didn't expect this. So, I have a question: will you then resume support for older versions of Unity? Especially if I start paying a sort of "tax" for using the engine? Like Unity 2017, for example

 

If they wanted it to be good they would have done a percentage fee of revenue not a base cost that will make free games that go over the limit with ads pay on per install every install and if u think this is for us the ceo is ex EA guy who wanted to charge you money every time u reloaded in battlefield. Plus if thus was to make a better profit for the company to give back to the creators then why has the ceo constantly been selling his shares of unity and not buying any back. He knows unity is going to get hit jard by this and sold his shares while they were up to make money and is probably betting against unity with the money to make more money off it

 

Damn you just made every other engine so much more popular with 1 move.

You're a joke of a company and I pray you go under.

 

Made by one person

Well a bit of youtube and u can find a lot of cool looking stuff made by small studios . And dont compare game u can actually play to a demo

 

are they trying to reach genshin moneys? like they will not reverse engineered the engine and making it some chinese new engine.. and even trying to take money from microsoft from the game pass? what are they thinking? it's like firefox, they continue to lose share and nothings

 

For the first time, when games get old, prices increase to compensate the fees.

 

Ok, what happens If I have a game that meets the thresholds, last updated BEFORE this was announced, I no longer update it, and I don't have my bank account hooked up to Unity anymore?

They can't disable people's games. They can't get the money from my account. What then? They will sue, right? Unity will start suing developers, right?

Over an agreement which was retroactively changed today, even for already released games?

Unity will start suing us? Because there is no other way they can take the money.

 

Both Unreal and Unity in those examples are running very small scenes with low gameobject counts and limited to no functionality.

Those are just tech demos, not what will actually happen when you are running a large scale project.

Very off-topic

 

It means they’re trying to extract what value they can from the company so they can escape with a golden parachute.

 

Wukong from what i understand is a very much open world game or at least semi open world like Witcher 2.

 

Yep. And as they leave, Unity will have to find new targets for their 'aggressive monetization'.

Anyone remaining with Unity will be on their target list.

 

Increasing the price makes the game less competitive compared to large companies with big budgets.

 

I believe that is EXACTLY what will happen. And the next step will be to essentially portrait us developers as pirates who are unwilling to "pay for their excellent and legitimate service".

 

they will just send you invoices based on guesses. then you can either pay or lawyer up.

 

I think we just have to accept that the accountants and strategists at Unity have decided that the money they might make from MiHoYo alone dwarfs the money they would make from any other source as this appears to target entirely and exclusively their margins.

Supporting only MiHoYo gives them the benefit of having only one customer worth catering to, and if that means they actively scare away customers who are a net zero or a net negative on Unity's internal resources? All the better.