Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

Big devs also have demands and file bug reports, and their needs are often prioritised, potentially unprofitably so.

If Unity can chase those devs away, or else make them pay vastly more, it's a win/win for them in the short term. Until they have run out of customers at least.

 

Making mobile games under this new pricing scheme is pretty much unviable now then as mobile installs go way beyond that of pc and console installs.

Say I did reach the 200,000 install threshold, and I was also lucky enough to reach £200,000 in 12 months (unlikely), I would have to pay Unity £0.20 per install from that point onwards? Regardless of revenue?

I also have no issue paying Unity, % of revenue is certainly a fair deal, or even being forced to buy pro. However making mobile games with your engine now is comes with risk, something indiedevs or solo devs simply cannot take.

I am sure if this decision sticks you will lose thousands and thousands of developers and asset store publishers (including myself).

 

So if you reach $200K in revenue, but 1 million installs, should that ratio/pattern continue, you would owe every single dollar after that to Unity in fees?

 

I think just the fact that we're strongly agreeing in a thread about Unity is proof enough that these are the end times.

 

@sacb0y After 200k installs and $200k in revenue, a game that makes $.10 per install will lose money because it will cost the dev $.20 per for each $.10 made. Yes, the $200k was made, but anything after that will lose money for the dev. Do you understand now?

 

I don't see how any of this factors in. A lot of people are making bad decisions cause unity misinformed them.

 

This is far from clear and comprehensive. The OP did not post enough information to ensure these calculations are accurate.

 

Yes, it's madness.

 

ok then why not just do revenue share? like 3-5% as an alternative over an treshhold. its easy to understand. this just kills free to play titles that come with huge install numbers but < revenue since there are just a few that really pay for those games. or please explain the numbers because it makes not much sense

 

If all 1million installs occurred in the same 1 month, sure. Is that the scenario you're thinking of? It's unlikely but entirely possible.

 

That's not the point, it just sets a dangerous precedent of an invasive monetization system that can be copied by others and a breach of trust. And none of the big Unity devs are liking it either. No one said anything when every company started charging subscription fees and now here we are in 2023 where car companies want to charge subscription fees for heating. I can already imagine all the others picking up on this "brilliant" idea an charging you for miles driven with the car you "own". I mean the car you purchased is essential to your travelling experience and you need it on a daily basis, why not squeeze more money out of the driver? In the end we all be working to fund big corporations with monthly subscription fees for everything and additional payments on top for "overuse". If that doesn't like a dystopian future I don't know what does.

 

In my view, better than creating a petition is to run a public campaign to massively discourage the use of Unity, showing that the trust and cooperation they seek to maintain with their developers is close to zero.

Better than speaking is doing, and in this case, not doing as well (i.e. stop using Unity for game development).

 

The pro license would have been paid even there was no runtime fee. Unity thinks license fee is not enough, does it? That guy said the very profitable game studios paid too little to Unity .

The Unity game service is not free, the UnityAds gets 10% cut. That makes sense because I earned the money. But installs doesn’t mean I earned money from them.

 

LMAO

 

No you are not.
Do not update the engine, the TOS retroactive change are illegal and proibited by their previous TOS. Even if they ask you money they will not be able to get anything (even if you use the new version since the download count is not a real number and they cannot charge you fake numbers).

 

I don't disagree on either point

 

People keep bringing up Mihoyo and Activision Blizzard but do you really think they don't have the negotiating power to get out of this? They've probably already long negotiated custom pricing licenses.

 

The breach of trust in making such a decision (which is also retroactive and far from being opt-in) is more than enough reason for him to have these feelings.

 

$200K PER YEAR.

I dunno a realistic scenario where someone sells a game for $0.10 and still makes $200K per year. But if they did they could get Unity Pro and nullify the issue.

90 pages in and people are still confused.

 

It's funny too cause I would posit that most of the white knights don't actually develop games, and certainly aren't trying to make a living off of it, because high volume/low revenue per user is the really only accessible model for a solo dev.

If they're part of a studio, they can't do basic Business 101, because after everyone takes their cut, you still got Unity holding their hand out. Based on whatever the cucks in charge want for the install fee, they can bankrupt you instantly from just organic installs, much less malicious installs from motivated actors with a bone to pick against a dev/studio.

 

You were asked if this decision factors into game preservation, you said "people are making bad decisions because they were misinformed". Even if I think you're wrong about why people are upset and taking this action, and I do very much believe that, you just said that "I don't see how the fact people are heavily changing and possibly even cancelling their games due to the actions of Unity has anything to do with content from games and even full games being lost due to the actions of Unity."

I hope you're not trying to act in bad faith with your response, I'm certainly not in mine, but you seem to see the problem without realizing that it's the answer to the question.

 

You're right, but it still changes nothing. I haven't actually released a game in Unity and I sure as hell never will now, but if we all just sit here and let these idiots do this then that sets a precedence for the industry. If we just sat back and let them do this then who's to say Adobe won't try this? Or Epic? F*** that. Plus, it's inherently wrong. No company should legally be able to retroactively change its TOS - regardless of what they say.

 

But everyone wants to, so zero users will use Unity from now on, that is the point.

 

If it was applied retroactively to a game released years ago under different TOS? I absolutely would take issue with it.

 

Hopefully they allow you to upgrade to Unity Pro. Then you only need to pay $60,000 per million installs over the first million. Nuts

 

I agree, but outside of free to play this would be cheaper in the vast majority of cases.

 

it says 200k in last 12 months, so, you would have to maintain >200k to be paying the 20c an install. if for example you made 200k in the last 12 months, and then went f2p, unless you made it say in 1 month not split semi evenly over the months, the next month you wont have made 200k in the last 12 months so any installs dont count as while maybe you have another say 20k installs, you didnt make the money so it doesnt count - this is what their stuff reads as currently - it is of course also a moving target

 

Well lucky for you there are people around here telling that if it doesn't specifically hurt you that's an okay change. Next time try to be a little more understanding of unity's position /s

 

ah because the revenue track resets every 12 months, right?

 

Well done Unity, my 12 years of experience with your engine goes in the bin.

It's time to find an alternative

 

No you would just pay for Unity pro, cause you're not making a million a year.

91 pages in and people are still confused.

 

I'm not sure how thats handled tbh, i dunno if it's based on history or projections.

That would be an important question for sure.

 

You do realize all data can be spoofed right? Nintendo has to go to extreme step of using physical fuses to check your firmware so that you can't downgrade your Switch. Oh but you're gonna tell me someone with a bone to pick isn't gonna hack whatever method they use to verify installs to inflict damage on developers. Listen to yourself for a second.

 

Godot C# support is very good in the latest versions. And MonoGame is a very good game "engine" (it cannot be called exactly that, but it is powerful for making games with C#). None of these will abusively make retroactive changes and start saying you have to pay them per "unique install".

 

Who is excited for Unite 2023? Want to go to witness the lynching

 

This will prob get buried, but I just wanted to share a quick graph of how this pricing will hit at different levels.
As we're aware, unlike a flat % royalty, the fixed cost amount means that the less you make "per install" the higher effective royalty your paying. It works the other way as well, so you'd actually be paying a very low effective % royalty on higher priced games.

Additionally, I think they could have made this more clear by just not including unit pricing under $200,000 and requiring you upgrade to pro and start paying a royalty (or whatever). There's almost no case where you would make that amount and stick with a personal plan, so we can all basically ignore it. Only games with above 1,000,000 installs will matter. So it then becomes very much hinging on what Unity calls an "installation". Again, if you're making more than $200,000 a year, you upgrade to Pro and this won't hit you unless you're actively making $1,000,000 a year and also have a lifetime download count of 1,000,000. Not a ton of full-price games hit those numbers, and if you do the effective royalty is actually very low.

As you can see it's a very favorable plan for full priced game developers selling above about $5- actually better than the default 5% from unreal (though you can negotiate with Unreal for lower rates). It's just so odd because it's mainly going to target mobile F2P developers or low price Steam games (like Vampire Survivors) who do achieve those high download counts, and can easily become above a 100% royalty in those cases with low costs. Insane! They are on crack to think this works for that model, but that's basically what they seem to be targeting instead of succesful full-price games. Wack.

All that aside of how this plan could be adjusted and trying to count installs being insane, it's really that they're walking back keeping the TOS on a given environment. That's awful, insane and just straight up sounds illegal.

 

Too many trolls in this thread, for real

 

That is a problem with the Unity announcement, not the users.

 

what the hell are you talking, are you comparing devs with hitler's forces? where do you see that I am defending unity?
please think before you write or i will have to ignore you at least on this thread

 

BIG UNITY L

 

The probability of that spoofing happening en-masse for a single developer is minuscule.
And Unity explicitly says they will not charge for spoofed data.
They say that they can detect the anomalies, so they should be held to that, instead of just assuming they are outright lying.

 

Question, can we use the runtime install tracker to charge players a fee every time they go to install the game?

 

What people also don't seem to get is that these studios that now have to pay Unity for people just INSTALLING means less money that could be used towards other important things in the company like, oh I don't know - salaries? Rent for an office space? Other bills? Licenses to other software like Maya or any Adobe product? If you've watched the series on Youtube by 2 Player Productions on Double Fine's making of Broken Age, they made $3 million in the first kickstarter - and even THAT wasn't enough to complete the entire game. So imagine a small indie studio barely break $1 million and now has to pay for all of the above necessities ON TOP of the Unity invoices that we aren't even sure are accurate. BULLSHIT.

 

Accurate estimate? THat's an oxymoron. And an 'accurate estimate' is not good enough when it determines whether you are losing, or making money on a game's release.

 

That's not the point. It's about the POTENTIAL. Every single future Unity developer now has the POTENTIAL to be affected by this. That's not something to laugh off as being a non-issue just because you think most devs won't even make it that far.

This isn't even the worst part about this entire debacle. They LIED to every single one of us. They silently removed the Github repo that allowed us to track license changes, and then removed the clause that allowed developers to use the TOS from the version of Unity they shipped their game with. Now, these changes are possibly retroactive(?) - something Johnny boy said 5 years ago would not happen.

Completely disregarding all of these things, and accounting for the confusion surrounding this announcement, and possible misinformation taking place in this thread, the trust from the Unity dev community is now a sinking ship. That, and the damage to Unity's reputation, imo, are far more important.

 

no read what I said per million downloads over the first million.

 

Coming from a company that is paying for the Pro License, the problem here is that Unity is asking for more money in a way that violates trust based on shady ways to track legitimate installs that is impossible to estimate and plan for so it could be taken into account with UA costs and will damage ROAS, making f2p and mobile game publishing difficult and can bankrupt a lot of developers and companies. I'm flabbergasted by how Unity - THE game engine for mobile and f2p games in my mind - would come up with a way to ask for more money by increasing CPI.

Why oh why couldn't Unity just take a page out of Adobe's book and slice their services into monthly subscriptions. Many if not all students and indie devs can get access to Creative Cloud tools (and Substance Painter / Designer) due to fair fees and discounts. And, surprisingly, Adobe doesn't charge for showing or selling the artwork created with its tools.

For almost a decade I've been a Unity fanatic, proud to have visited their offices and wear their swag, glad to teach the game engine to juniors and develop with it myself. Now, I'm shocked and appalled by all this. Unity just went from a "trustworthy game engine that I endorse and recommend to others" to "yet another 3rd party service that screwed me over and I feel vendor-locked to for the time being".

 

this is plain extortion