Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16hgmqm/unity_wants_108_of_our_gross_revenue/ Like this?

 

again... years of development

 

No, they did not provide any actual calculations or context surrounding the numbers.
They are making assumptions and not showing the work.

 

The mods are here just silent theyre actively taking down anything that mentions unreal or godot

 

One year of work on the game wasted.
I can't even imagine how some of you must feel with much more time and resources invested into this crap company.
Switching to Godot I guess (support for consoles is my main issue so far).
One last word to Unity management:
F*ck you

 

They can intend themselves all the way to cloud cuckoo land, but back down here in reality, they're asking us to trust them that they will, in less than 4 months, come up with a way to do something that nobody in the history of commercial software distribution has been able to do, and ask us to pay them money based on data derived from that miraculous feat. (And they've already outright admitted they don't know how they're going to pull this off yet, so the clock is officially ticking...)

And they're also trying to apply this revolutionary technique to games that were released years ago but remain popular enough to generate substantial revenue for their developer, despite there being no way on God's green Earth that they have the legal right to do so.

AND they're asking for us to trust them after silently modifying their TOS earlier this year seemingly specifically to pave the way for their lawyer's response back on page 45 regarding how they think they're allowed to get away with this.

 

Because this thing here will result in a ton of lawsuits challenging everything possible under the sun.
This here threatens business models of many companys that make money so any Unity employee running his mouth here in the forum will be a problem.

 

From the literal first post official FAQ on this thread:

Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs?
A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data.

On top of that, you could say "Unity will prevent fraudulent installs", and they may say the same as well, and they may say that they have technology already built for the ad system they'll use for a basis; but consider these two important questions:

1) Who benefits from preventing fraudulent ad views? Unity.

2) Who benefits from NOT preventing, or putting less effort into preventing, fraudulent installs? Unity.

Notice the disconnect and difference here? Why would they put the same time and effort into preventing fraudulent installs when it benefits them and their shareholders to *not* do that?

 

So? Does Unity solo games of that quality take month to make?

 

It's also quite interesting that old Johnny has been selling an awful lot of stock lately without buying any and just last week sold 2000 shares. Shows a lot of confidence in the future of Unity, eh?

Source: Yahoo Finance

 

Yeah, because everyone that doesn't like this should spend way more effort on their counter-arguments than Unity did when they presented us their new terms.

Also, scroll: https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/co...=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

 

This is not about numbers in the first place. The main problem is (trying to) change an agreement that has been agreed on by both parties in the past. And that they will try to do this again and again, to tweak the numbers.

 

The more serious and real issue is the proprietary method for determining installs. Why do you white knights refuse to acknowledge that motivated actors now have a(nother) path to inflict pain on developers and game studios, and that the thresholds and fees will only get worse not better. You falling for "it'll only be 0.01 cent after another +1,000,000 installs" is the exact response Unity is betting people will have to accept this new S***ty price structure. You're smarter than the numbskulls that drafted this plan. Don't fall for it.

 

exactly

 

then just unrelease it

 

I am ready to raise my flag in the courts that will arise in the dispute between real installations and Steam installations. As soon as the project in hand is finished, it is time to say goodbye to Unity permanently after giving a clean format to all computers.

I don't think Unity administrators have the slightest knowledge about game development, with such an amateurish pricing policy on top of their ignorant engine development process. The insults coming from the CEO had already fully defined his structure.

Good luck Unity. (You'll need this more than ever.)

 

just today a couple of big developers that used unity clearly send unity to hell and stated they will use other engines or build their own engine. I guarantee that their message was received by unity management.

This is the forum for the poor devs. Big studios have back end line directly with unity. They either found some way to be exempt or they have sent them to hell.

I don't see miHoYo the developers of Genshin Impact agreeing to this new license. If miHoYo give no public message about this issue then they have a different deal, (being exempt), which means unity behavior is way more shady because they are attacking medium to smaller devs that have less possibility to fight back.

 

That's not what most people are screaming about.
I would say that that criticism is completely valid, but it's being completely lost in the confusion about actual costs and numbers.

 

Thast my entire point.
How many of those developers showed actual numbers? Zero.

 

where?

 

Are you blind? Go look for them.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/co..._name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=13

 

I don't understand why people are so mad about this. 90% of people here won't even release their game, and maybe just a couple people will be able to make $200k a year with it.

 

And unfortunately this is why Unity is in the state it's in now. Everyone making excuses on behalf of the company that is reaching into their pockets for more money. Unity's pricing model never should have progressed beyond "royalties for games over $100k." Now look at all the current nonsense they've gotten away with.

 

I did. Nobody posted them, or posted the actual calculations.

They just scream I WILL LOSE MONEY!!!! with no real or correct math to back it up.

 

Same. Unity is a stain on this industry now.

 

they don't need to show you any number to send the message to unity.

although if you read this thread from beginning you will find devs have shared the math with real up to date numbers and that they would pay more that they make and end bankrupt. they already did what you are asking.

 

You are trolling at this point. https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/co...=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

 

Unity pricing update explained: concerns about per-install fees, plus required internet connection for Personal plan | Game World Observer

 

Man the entire thing is just sad, Unity was always such a fun engine to play with, easy to pick up and learn. I feel like it's lost its innocence now for me, and I've always defended it and stuck with it even though it gave me many headaches over the years. Now in the back of my head I'll always have the thought that they are TRACKING my every move just to make sure God forbid I'm not breaching the install threshold...gamedev shouldn't be like this. Not even platform owners like Apple or Google behave like this, and they have a monopoly.

I guess that's what you get for not using open source and relying on proprietary stuff. We should've had a feature-equal open source Unity alternative already back in 2014.

I had a similar situation with Playfab, where they suddenly wanted to charge hundreds if not thousands of dollars on games that barely made any money but used the Playfab backend. This happened after they got acquired by Microsoft. I switched the backend to open source for future projects, even though in the end I didn't pay anything because I simply deleted inactive users, but the trust was already breached especially when the service was free before, with limitations, but hardly unusual in the backend world. I'd rather run my own servers than deal with this. I guess it's time to start thinking which open source game engine to choose for future projects...

Really hoping Godot or something else will get some more funding like Blender and start reaching feature parity with Unity. Especially its Asset Store equivalent. Because for me the biggest draw of Unity is the community, the assets, I couldn't live without many of the advanced systems I bought from the asset store that would be impossible to code on your own because of how much time it would take. I guess Unity realized this that they have an upper hand over us with the stuff they didn't actually create. Because if it was just the engine itself, then forget it, but the community-driven part of Unity is very hard to replace, the only thing comparable is Unreal and that's proprietary too.

 

Am trying, but it's difficult to stay motivated at the moment.

I don't even wanna know how it's for actual Unity employees right now. Has to be hell. Working your butt off only to be spit in the face by higher management. Then you walk home sobbing and there on the street is basically the whole internet mob waiting to hit on you.

 

That first post states releasing an update for the game, not uninstalling and reinstalling. These are different actions.

Reread the first post in this thread. Uninstalling and then reinstalling the game, as stated in their FAQ, will incur a new fee, as they have no way to track whether it is a new install or an uninstall/reinstall. Updates they can track and will not cost anything. Uninstalls and reinstalls will, because "they only have access to aggregate data".

The second post you quoted above:

1) Is not guaranteed to be an official source, but let's assume it is.
2) They don't *WANT* to charge for fraudulent installs (at least to this employee's knowledge), but refer back to the Q&A from the first post here. Desire and outcome are different things. They currently have no way to track fraudulent installs due to aggregated data and will charge for them, because they have no capability to track that data.

You will be charged for uninstalls and reinstalls.

 

Not Unity's official policy as of right now and unknown if that person actually works for Unity or not. Even Marc Whitten's statements I'm not considering until Unity updates their blog or the first post of this thread since that's the only official information from the company.

 

Loosing control, not (just) money.

 

I've already debunked this

https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...ackaging-updates.1482750/page-87#post-9305645

so you probably stop with posting a bit and read this entire thread to make yourself an opinion

 

Likely, I'll end up paying less, when it is all said and done.

Still confused?
It has been spelled out many times.

1. Charging by the install, is ridiculous.

2. Changing TOS retroactively, is probably legal, but dishonest.

3. Changing the subscription plans and pricing, again, and nulling perpetual licenses, is stinky balls.

 

Yeah, let me know when they revise their policy or something, I'm not considering random posts and interviews as reliable sources of information.

 

Frankly, I've been using Unity since its early versions, it's been 7+ years since then. I must say, despite all the obscure and unspecified things you've done, this is one of the most glaringly absurd and terrible things I've seen. I have had the opportunity to view many of these actions more favorably, but this one is so strange and frankly abusive that there is no way to see it.

There is no benefit for the engine's users in doing this; it's purely a one-sided issue. It's an authoritarian and retroactive decision that opens the door for terrible future decisions. One thing would be to say "starting from version X," another is to say that <all versions> are eligible, even those who started their projects months or years ago and are at advanced stages (and extremely expensive to change), trusting Unity's development team and its ecosystem, have been betrayed on such a grand scale that it's grotesque. There are no new contracts, there were no public consultations, there were no prior questions, there was no consideration for those already committed to their projects, there was no opt-in, it was just an aggressive move on developers.

I know that nothing I'm saying here will be heard, considering that nothing was consulted before either, but it's a clear sign that the platform is under terrible management and will continue to deteriorate slowly. Charging for runtime is an unparalleled absurdity; imagine if Microsoft charged you individually for each download of your engine because you're using .NET runtimes, or if Bjarne Stroustrup came to charge you for the rights over the use of the C++ language in your engine with every compilation. It was at least expected that there would be reciprocity for the generosity of the hundreds of thousands of people who made your software possible, and these attitudes are an ingratitude not only to the developers who trusted your engine but also to the very root of what programming and software development is.

 

No, you'll have at least one month's worth of full-price personal license install costs until the next month, at which point the installs may have returned to a trickle but you're still paying the pro license as insurance.

 

How about a simple example of a game making $.10 on average per install. For most indie developers, that would be a great amount to make. Once they get to 200k, they are LOSING $.10 per install. Remember, there were costs to make the game too, costs to market the game, etc. So when a game makes it to 200k/$200k, the game will LOSE the developer money.

What about this don't you understand?

 

My conspiracy theory is that unity want to get rid of small whiny dev that don't add to their profit but cost them support. There is simply to many of them and they harm the new movie prestige image they are cultivating since unity 5 to weta.

They want you out, to keep smaller pool of big paying customer, and their plan is diabolically and brilliantly evil

 

How would they guard against it, and why would you expect them to guard against it?

 

None of their walk backs matter. They aren't enough. Only the FULL cancellation of these changes will be enough and even then the trust has already been broken. Firing their CEO would be a good start though. The more that comes out about him the more shady he looks.

 

what makes me mad the worst, is why they did not just also offer a revenue share model, which for free to play models makes 100x more sense. having cost per install is a fuc*ing horror if you are not sure to make any money from it.

its a slap in the face of a lot of devs and shows that unity is a sh*tshow of a company

 

The most frustrating thing.... John Riccitiello managed to turn the Unity Game Editor into a steaming pile of fecal matter without a single Pull Request changing the code.

Take away this insane pricing plan, and Unity Engine is fantastic. Shame that the company is run by a short-sighted, greedy executive who doesn't understand a thing about his market. He's made it clear he should not be running Unity.

 

Yeah I'm still not paying Unity 20c per install. Needing to scalp users for a minimum of 20c ARPU to ensure I don't lose money per install just results in aggressive EA-Style game design & monetization.

There's plenty of other options and far more refined engines out there. This tactic probably would've worked in 2014 when we were starved for choice, but Unity choosing to S***can themselves nowadays just means moving on to better pastures.

 

A little inspirational poster I made for John's office:

 

I imagine there will be an avalanche of lawsuits against Unity that will be won, forcing them to put back the old ToS.
There's just no way this thing can stay and I'm sure they know it. There are a ton of illegal things here.

And the question is what kind of game are the CEOs playing with this move - purposely destroying the company after selling their stocks?

They decided there's no way to compete with unreal in the long run and that's their way out?

It's crazy but I don't see any other way this move can make sense.

 

No it is illegal in most countries (not just because they changed it retroactively but also because the terms are not clear at all) and it is also proibited by their previous TOS
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16hjic6/unitys_stance_on_retroactive_tos_changes_in_2019/
Not a single reason why this should be legal, not a single reason why anybody should pay for a game already shipped or that will ship with Unity with previous TOS accepted.
Furthermore, counting downloads with a method without any basis means going haphazardly, and no one would pay a bill based on absolute nothing.

And for anybody that say this policy change does not consern little user... you are wrong because they are trying to change TOS retroactively... if they can get away with this they will be able to do it again in the future. If you released 1 game you can be charged 50 years from now because the TOS changed... This make no sense.