Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Not a good plan.

 

Maybe the employees are busy updating resumes.

 

The shareholders and CEO have declared war on us, they intend to exploit us and make our lives worse for their personal gain. Its really that simple in this case.

 

Just wanted to post my potential situation:

I am developing an indie game (on my own), using Unity Personal Edition. It's on the Quest App Lab, free to download with IAPs for extra levels. Currently sitting at about 20k downloads, £1k revenue, so ARPI (Average Revenue Per Install) about $0.05.

If I get it on the main Quest Store, I would expect it to get a lot more downloads, and hence more revenue, but if I hit the thresholds, that could swallow up all my revenue (and more). For example, let's say I get 1.2 million downloads, and make $200k. Then all my revenue is taken by Unity. Further downloads would supposedly put me in debt.

So what... am I supposed to hope my game isn't successful?

 

F*** OFF

 

Ah yes, indies making money with an engine that's charging them for games being installed many different platforms, all the while the Terms of Service change on a whim to make you even more uncertain of what's going on. Yeah, sure, that's how it works.

 

they are regrouping. probably JR is in meetings thinking about what to do.
probably we'll hear in a few days something. what. IDK... But i'm very curious what they can do (on top of reverting the changes) to regain our trust given the fact that they charge per installs of already shipped games!! WTF?!

 

Propably wait a month for unite 2023 and then act like nothing ever happend

 

Microsoft should just charge Unity .20$ each time the .NET runtime is used. Or maybe internet providers should charge .20$ Unity for using network while dowloading anything related. Wait just let the power grid maintainers .20$ charge Unity because everything needs electricity right? This is just straight ridiculous.

 

I await many many class action lawsuits over this scheme if this isn't walked back entirely.

 

Ofc they was doing the tech for everyone, so there were ingeering and stuff to prepare the tech at the moment of the VIDEO , they guys who made the VFX itself, was few.
So about the DEMO it became avaible once it launched for public on git (like exactly all other Unity tools), it was ready to use without hack.
Are you guys knowing about the process of release? Because BlackMyth is still not released too

 

what plan? XD

 

Yes, so far you might not make a single dollar and neither did I tbh but every time I try to make a game I do it with hope it'll be successful that is why I work day and night to make it the best I can, and I am sure you work hard on your game too. And if the luck some day brings you success Unity just made sure that it's possible for someone to bankrupt you out of spite or for whatever other reason. And even without that this kind of pricing is very, very unconventional and not transparent for you in the slightest.

 

Unity didn't clarified it, just promised that they have an undisclosed way of dealing with this (the "trust me bro, we've got this"). Anyhow, rest of us are aware of the existence of virtual machines, where you can configure your "hardware" settings.

 

They also said they will use "magic software" to track this "at their sole discretion".

 

The revenue threshold is for your entire business, not per game. They understand fine. You look like a fool.

 

They'll chase away so many developers they won't even need half the labor.

 

Join the Unity to Unreal Refugees!
https://discord.gg/ARfx3AB3ZF

 

XD Dude, they just designed an expoitable (if the sales would be the core metric then it would be different story), impossible to predict in terms of operation cost for the company model, based on 'inhouse, trust-me-bro' metric provided by them. If you think it's a smart move, then your economic knowledge is really 'special' one. Also, I'm happy for you and your 2k$ generating, solo, hobbist project. The real life is a little more complex...

 

Unbelievable and unacceptable. This is deeply flawed and poorly thought out. It doesn't pass the minimum amount of scrutiny, there have been countless of scenarios pointed out where this doesn't work out, and the worst offending elements are the obtuse nature of the technology used to determine install count and the fact that it is retroactive.

 

Helgason back in 2014: "I said on Twitter that it's now my personal goal that people will remember him as the CEO of Unity rather than the ex-CEO of some big publisher."

source: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/helgason-there-are-people-who-are-upset-about-it-i-think-theyre-wrong

 

I am fine with raising the price as I am indebted to Unity.
However, I doubt that I will be able to run code on my game that will send personal information to unknown servers without my permission (although Unity says they are not caught by GDPR).
If I don't want my personal information to be sent, can I just tell my users to put the game in airplane mode and play?
What happens if I don't update to a compatible Unity version by January 1, 2024 in the first place?
There are too many unknowns.

 

We are an indie developer that is barely successful enough to meet the income threshold, and since installs are counted by lifetime, we'd be on the hook for 20 cents every time someone from 4chan doesn't like that our game has a female protagonist and runs a bot to install our game thousands of times per day, which means our dreams are dead. Unity, bite me.

 

You still don't understand, Unity will pull data out of their ass regarding both your revenue and the installation rate. No one will care if you are right or wrong. They keep the right to bill you based on arbitrary numbers they burped up.

All these "what if" calculations are totally meaningless.

 

I will just leave this here while porting our plugins to the new engine.
https://flaxengine.com/

Rev 5% share above 200k yearly, free for non-games!

 

You're missing the point, the thresholds are not the problem.

There have been games in development for years that licensed Unity per seat. Now Unity are retroactively applying this new scheme to everyone, even released games and games that are releasing before January 2024. This sounds illegal and even if it's legal somehow, it's clearly unethical to do a complete rug pull and completely change the rules. It's also something they can clearly do at any time.

The price could easily double and the thresholds reduce in a year or two because anything goes. And all of this has happened with no notice and no consultations with the gamedev industry at large and practically no transition period. Even the biggest Unity developers and Unity's own employees weren't aware.

Furthermore, per Q&A in OP of this thread, installs are not tracked per user, you are charged for any and all installs even if they are performed by the same user on the same or several devices. And players typically install and uninstall smaller games on the regular, all of that are installs, which are charged. Even WebGL plays are considered "installs". Someone refreshing the page, accessing the game from different browsers or devices are accumulating several "installs" all of which cost money after the thresholds.

And there's literally no way for Unity to accurately track installs since they can't track individual users per GDPR rules, they gather aggregate data and then perform an educated guess based on which they bill actual developers. They can't differentiate free demo downloads for pirated downloads, they can't detect WebGL initializations from official sources from illegally hosted sources and they can't realistically determine if someone is spoofing device IDs and IPs at scale with bot networks to hurt a real developer. It's then up developers to contact Unity and resolve fraudulent "installs". All of these processes are opaque and actively hostile to the developer.

Not to mention, there's no cap to install fees. If you exceed the thresholds and have a free demo up anywhere, those free demo plays cost money. Low cost games that sell a lot are not viable under new Unity pricing scheme. Unity are backtracking on some of that now, but it's just PR, they have no tools and no feasible way of differentiating a demo from the main game or pirated copies of it.

TL;DR: Unity have no technically feasible way of accurately detecting installs, and no technical way of accurately knowing your revenue. They will pull the numbers out of their ass and bill real developers for it in a very unethical way.

 

https://twitter.com/UBadler/status/1701875801082167664

"Yes, in this current form, it's possible for successful games with very high install counts and low enough per-install revenue to lose money when more people install their game.

When this is raised internally, the answer is 'We would fix this with the customer to not bankrupt them'. It would be great to prevent this upstream in the actual policy."

 

No, the dev would have to reach $1,000,000 revenue before they need to pay any per-install fees (but they'd pay a Unity Pro licence fee). So they could earn $1,000,000 with a cost of about $2,000 per developer on their team.

If their game had very low returns per user and a huge number of installs, it's possible they would incur more fees than earnings, but that's an edge case, and I'm sure we'll hear from Unity about options to mitigate that soon.

 

And again, guys in suit and tie ruin a company built around their community.

Greedyness at it finnest.

 

Trust that gloriously inept Riccitiello to destroy yet another studio. How many beloved franchises and studios had he destroy back in EA? Westwood, Maxis, Bullfrog, Pandemic, Mythic etc. He knows nothing about playing games or what gamers want, let alone how to develop a game. Hated him with a passion back then. How he became the CEO of Unity is beyond me. With him at the head, don't expect anything good.

 

If they can retroactively change ToS without client consent, what stops them from doing it again? What if next time they'll decide to charge you $10 per each editor start in the past?
By all means just keep going if you like the pricing, but do understand the risks.

 

So their technology is so refined that they can just decide that NOW it won't count reinstalls, while previously it would? WOW. Magic. The fee page still says this though:

"All determinations, calculations of installs, and revenue related to the Unity Runtime Fee will be made by Unity in its sole discretion." ​

Do you trust them?

There's also this language:

" Please reach out to your account manager to learn more."​

We don't have an account manager. Never did. Who is this language aimed at?


BTW:

 

Wasn't there some controversy with Flax?

 

Yes, I know the process of release - I am a CTO with more than 15 years experience in this industry.

The demo was ready to use yes, BUILDING IT took them editing the engine. What about that don't you understand?

 

The management team at Unity, including the CEO, should be held accountable for the recent decisions that have adversely affected developers. These decisions have eroded the trust that developers have placed in the company for many years. To regain that trust, a complete overhaul of corporate leadership is necessary, along with a renewed focus on Unity's core business as a game engine developer—rather than expanding into mobile ads, AI, cloud services, DevOps, or film.

 

Unity wants us to believe that they have solved a literally unsolvable problem when they still can't get input working.

 

I promise I'm not affiliated to this channel or anything, it's just that it's on point.

 

If anybody is scoffing at the idea of malicious download scripts to bankrupt a Unity Engine using game company, they shouldn't.

Politics are very ugly. War is ugly. State actors are ugly... ...and all this pales in comparison to the raging nerd who has been banned from a game he/she/they/ze is obsessed with for cheating or harrassment.

Indeed, IIRC, a huge multiplayer game was taken down once by a spurned player. (I watched a youtube video about it, some big FPS).

It is a serious question to Unity that must be addressed. And do not count on a court of law to rule against Unity. As another poster here noted, lawfare is a horrible state to be in for a little guy.

 

How dense are you to not realize the terms of the deal will only get worse as time goes on?

 

if anyone is on /r/wallstreetbets or whatever should really push them go after Unity.

 

He said it wouldnt have happened under helgason, not that helgason was clairvoyant. He believed his point in 2014, but hes not capable of telling the future.

 

No, you're missing the fact that you can just buy a Unity Pro licence for about $2,000 per year and raise those thresholds to $1,000,000 and 1,000,000 installs.

You would not have to pay any per-install fees until you reach $1,000,000 per year revenue for your game.

 

Revenue here for one month, not for year, that mean it exceeds both thresholds. If you yourself understand that it should not be difficult for you to calculate the commission for this project for a year.

 

Why would you not just implement a revenue share like Unreal? You wanna improve your bottom line, I get it. But why a huge song and dance just to do effectively what a rev share would do?

This section is insanity. You make it sound like you don't have a solution to this major issue yet, as though you didn't anticipate it. You can't just say "submit your concerns to our team", you NEED a way to absolutely make sure this DOES NOT HAPPEN AT ALL, WHATSOEVER, otherwise this entire system is pointless.

You are underestimating how smart piracy crackers are. They will study the telemetry data that gets sent and WILL abuse it.

You know what wouldn't have this issue? A rev share!

 

All developers can unite and create a petition

 

I know they're working on a "calculator" to help see examples with real data. But they don't seem to realize that's not the point. Nobody cares about your calculator. The fact that you need a CALCULATOR to math out fee scenarios is embarrassing in itself. The fact that you're charging based on user installs - a metric which devs are not in control of - makes the process of releasing a Unity game extremely stressful. What's incredible is that there are realistic scenarios where developers could LOSE MONEY with MORE SUCCESS. The incentive structure is completely, unbelievably warped. Installs are not equal to revenue. A monkey with a smartphone could figure this out.

The only explanation is that execs with mobile game tunnel-vision came up with this scheme and then ignored the outrage from smarter employees. There is no plausible explanation other than sheer, blinding ignorance.

I don't blame UT for having abandoned trying to post in this thread, these are piranha-infested waters and rightly so. You just know there's some sort of longform apology/FAQ/retraction being scribbled furiously right now. My only shred of optimism is that the few good guys I know working there have not yet publicly quit, so perhaps there is a sense amongst them that this decision could be reversed. @Mike-Geig blink twice if you're okay.

 

Firing John Riccitiello and whoever else was responsible for this clusterfuck is the only thing that would restore some trust for the future.

At the moment, it is absolutely impossible to consider Unity for a future project at any scale.

 

Better, we can create a competitor, our own engine. WE ARE DEVELOPERS.

 

Great approach. Unreal once refunded all publishers from their Store after the successful launch of Overwatch. And here, they're burying us alive))) I'm just laughing out of nerves now...