Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

No, section 2.1 is about the runtime

Edit: Section 6 is the bit that says that if the terms are updated that they can only apply to the next years versions if they're to our detriment, since they were updated in April 2023, that would mean that they only apply from 2024.x

 

You haven't published with unity yet, have you?

If you have, what games. Dont worry, people hating on you might be real, but doing something malicious, like running a fake install farm on you just to spite you could never happen.

 

In any quarter when you don't meet the threshold you don't have to pay. So it is not.

 

People jumping ship is as important feedback as any other post in this thread. In fact, its probably the only feedback that matters to them. How could it be counterproductive if people are leaving due to a wildly unpopular decision?

People do not share the same goals as you. Mine is to ensure we have a stable business that can provide me and other members of our studio a stable income. UT deciding to reneg on their previous promises of allowing us to stick with the terms we've agreed to in our chosen LTS version tells me they're an unreliable partner in our business. This is on top of providing a woefully incomplete terms and explanation on top of this new scheme, on top of all the constant issues I'm running into that has existed since 2016. Time and time again UT has proven to show little concern over the users of their engine, instead chasing the latest technology fad in an effort to make whatever money they can. Now they're altering the terms of our deal without any sort of consultation with their partners, while not providing any sort of benefit to us as we're on the LTS version we've decided to produce on.

If you have stake in UT, your issue should be with UT. They're the ones garnering this sort of feedback, no matter how misinformed some of it is. If you don't want folks to be jumping off of Unity, then maybe you should tell them how bad of a job they're doing in the next shareholder's meeting.

 

Where have they said only paid installs will count? There are games that make money not upfront when you pay to install it but while you play the game. Why am I explaining this to a fellow game developer.

 

If you're defending the new pricing on page 100 of complaints by every other developer from big to small, then you're obviously missing something or don't care about the industry as a whole, just yourself.

 

IF CONSOLE, PC AND MOBILE USERS ARE WORTH VASTLY DIFFERENT AMOUNTS WHY ARE YOU PRICING THEM ALL THE SAME???

MOBILE USERS ARE WORTH $0.02 TO $0.20 AND YOU WANT DEVS TO PAY $0.20... THE SAME AMOUNT AS A DEV WHO MIGHT CHARGE $49.99 FOR THEIR GAME????

THE MODEL NEEDS TO BE ON % NOT A SET FIGURE WITHOUT CONSIDERATION OF PLATFORM!!

 

Okay real deal for your head are team is 8 people right 2 license's as only 2 people work inside unity. now one contract we just finished was a web casino game for a client for entertainment on there web page. They charge nothing for the game but as we half to count there cash flow witch is over 4 million a year now every time someone goes on the web page to play the do i get a coupon game I half to pay. My options are one pull down application and try rebuild something for them before jan 1st refund them the cost are team spent making this webgl application. At the same time we payed for unity pro the whole time we developed this so we already paid unity.

 

What level of cope is this

Those are the exact companies who won't care about requiring a $0.2 ARPU, they've already solved for that. They'll likely just stop releasing games in underdeveloped countries (literally instituting a "no poors allowed" policy from an engine)

Games which aren't monetized to extremely aggressive levels typically see maybe $0.01 -> $0.05 ARPU, and the 5c is even still on the very high side. That means these games need to be removed from their respective storefronts after hitting $200k in revenue, otherwise they'll begin to run into loss-leading territories.

You'll still get the extremely deceptive and predatory games - it's likely all you'll see built with Unity moving forward. Games that avoid predatory market behaviour - you'll see far less of those.

Unity is now solely an engine for releasing the exact type of game you're hoping to see less of.

When it comes to high quality AA/AAA+ development that charges up-front, nobody uses Unity. It's an inferior tool at those levels, and developers already disliked Unity's required profit cuts at Enterprise levels regardless.

 

Exhausting trying to keep up to date with this. Feels so worthless to do so; having a hard time concentrating on working.

3-4 years deep in to their systems on my game. Utilising addressables/burst/jobs/netcode; so much time spent getting stuff to play nice on every platform.

Love their package system - being able to just hack the source how you want. Especially how they mostly end up in an abandoned state

Not that the threshold is something I'd ever expect to pass but maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan that loss of trust.

Just focusing on making my game and not doing hypotheticals of business costs on some fuzzy math system they haven't even implemented. Absolutely echo the sentiment of I'd pay more for the service...not like this though.

 

Welp, at least one of them finally admitted it. This is basically the common factor of the contrarians in this thread. It doesn't affect me and it hurts the people I don't like so I will make up S*** and make dubious arguments to defend Unity cause our interests align. Yeah, just wait till they don't align anymore.

 

"It's not illegal if he always dumps stock before delivering news that further tanks the value of the stock"

 

Or they're just unity shills on sock accounts doing damage control, because as soon as an actual "official" unity team member shows up here, they know they'll be fed to the wolves.

That's why every unity staff is doing the picture below rn.

 

On the topic of trust and even plain business sense, this really deserves highlighting. Unity doesn't want to reveal how they are going to get this number, but it's clear with the use of words like 'aggregate numbers' and 'believe', that this is just an extrapolated and estimated metric, rather than one that is absolutely defined.

That kind of metric should only ever be used for planning, forecasting, other business activities that are estimates themselves and not meant to have any absolute value. Who in their right mind charges for estimated unit numbers of any kind? That is them basically saying, we kind of think you're worth this much. Cuse we feel like it. Now pay up.

Even in the best case scenario, this means they could slightly overcharge or undercharge devs, but it would smooth out over time for both us and them. How nice for Unity, that it all looks so good on a spreadsheet, and that nickel and diming us inconsistent numbers from month to month with an impact on our day-to-day finances or our long term budgeting isn't their problem....we're just the cattle branded with the poker. You're A grade, I'm B grade, some other lucky S.O.B. is F grade.

 

There are games that I have bought on sale (for around $5) many many years ago which I have deleted and installed a LOT of times (Don't Starve, Don't Starve Together, Torchlight 2 to name some very specific ones).

I have installed and deleted these games in the order of 20-30 times each since these games each came out many many years ago.

If I developed that game in Unity under the new pricing model imagine how much out of pocket I would be.... whilst Unity would still be raking it in...

I have used Unity on and off over the years but I think this proposed policy is pretty disgusting and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth...

 

No exaggeration I think you might be onto something here. The only way this makes sense to even consider is if the revenue % was somehow impossible. There is no upside to doing it this way. It's an overly complicated and worse way to accomplish something that resembles the same thing, and the edge cases highlight exactly why nobody does it. It's like someone was asked to solve the problem of "how do we make more money off of successful games without a revenue share?" and this is the best they could do.

 

Can't get out of their hatred for microtransactions long enough to realize this will do nothing to reduce the amount of microtransactions as a whole, nor will it really make a dent to the amount games based on this model, since the devshops pumping out these games will repackage their games to effectively reset their counters, regardless of what Unity says.

 

The biggest issue is the ambiguity surrounding how they track the installs.

In Europe, you can’t get user data without user consent period. This is all uploaded data!

And yet somehow, Unity claim to be able to get this.

Who’s going to audit Unity to ensure that there system isn’t malfunctioning or the numbers aren’t being fudged.

Apparently, the developer is responsible for tracking malicious installs and notifying Unity to investigate. Unity investigating why the shouldn’t have to charge a developer is a direct conflict of interest.

 

It's not Unity staff. Any I've spoken with either are convinced the company has to u-turn, or are accepting that their job is likely going away.

Crazy shift from how everyone spoke about Unity pre-IPO. It was just assumed at that stage that every other engine's days were numbered, and that Unity would be an absolute powerhouse held within the S&P.

The level of mismanagement required for things to end like this is just phenomenal. It's at NFT Influencer levels of apathy.

 

Stop trying to fudge up some stupid numbers, we all know 99% of mobile games are free to play.

 

I own StudioWhy. We have published two smaller games on our website and itch.io, and we have one large in-development project. We receive funds and donations every month (which Unity has not indicated are included in a game's revenue, and even if they were, we are nowhere close to 200k), but our games are released for free.

Our games are released on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android and are localized in multiple languages.

I can't say our company is profitable, but we certainly have plans to be in the future.

 

F*** this, changing to godot

 

Balsically

Unity has been bragging about their installation count to investors for years. They seem to have become so detached from the realities of accounting that they now are charging based on installs.

 

Perfect time to short Unity stock. What a joke of a pricing system.
If Unity doesn't reverse this change within a month, Unity is going to die.

 

to me its more that unity decided to impose new fees and taxes out of the blue completely changing their structure. Who is to say there wont gradually introduce more and more cutthroat practices. Even if you re not a mobile dev, you have to show that practices like these dont fly.

 

Which means there are all internet based games from now on no offline games

 

everyone can look forward to getting this email:
"Dear game developer, you have 24 hours to send $2000 to this email's paypal account. Failure to comply will result in hundreds of virtual machines with randomized hardware IDs constantly installing your game for the indefinite future. Have a nice day.
Sincerely, your friendly neighborhood hacker."

 

Actually it is in FAQ, they are counting all install and re-installs no matter what.

 

If you aim to be profitable then switch engine. The question is not why but rather why not?

 

All money earned by your studio, including donations and kickstarters, etc, is considered revenue by Unity.
This includes revenue from swag, mugs, etc. Any revenue your studio makes from your products using their engine, is revenue.

 

Sigh, yes it could. Yes, the gov could tell me im a criminal out of nowhere on fake charges and jail me tomorrow. Everything is possible. That is why we have safety checks for those things in place.

Im sorry, but saying 'you have to hate this change that doesnt affect you or 99.999% of people save the freemium mobile predatory trash that abuse a loophole to not pay for their engine use or you are a shill' is just stupid.

Fearmongering isnt an argument.

I have seen it. I have done the math. Still a better deal than Unreal for me, Godot still sucks for now, Im staying. If unity does die, I will move on and lose more money on Unreal. Simple as that.

What i will not do is pretend this change is gonna bankrupt me when that is literally not a real possibility.

 

Even a complete rollback of the changes will not restore confidence in the company. At the very least, the management that allowed such a total destruction of reputation should be fired.

 

Godot's Discord is swarmed with ex unity users.

On twitter unity is getting slaughtered.

The dev cycle of Godot will get a big push and I suspect a lot of good pull requests on their github repo from talented unity devs.

 

Except under the new system it's per game.

 

Honestly, I'm still half thinking this is a psyop.

Unity is just releasing this news before "u-turning" and releasing a comparatively less S*** (but still S***) pricing model update.

Like, they're retroactively changing their ToS to charge people for old products, which you can't do in the EU without getting consent from the actual developer. Many of whom haven't opened Unity to update said products in years.

On top of that then they're tracking individual user installs - which again you can't do in the EU.

Lastly, Valve/Google/Apple and other storefronts that serve unity content will absolutely lose their S*** if a bunch of products get ripped down overnight by devs who can't afford 20c per install.

There's no way a company staffed with actual human beings would be stupid enough to carry out all that in one swoop. Given their financials, they couldn't even afford to fight the court cases from devs who refuse to pay up.

It has to be a psyop before a similarly aggressive, but less horrifying revenue siphoning model gets introduced. There's literally no other option.

 

Don't worry bro. Not only does Unity have this magic 100% accurate algorithm, it is also compliant with all privacy laws in major markets. Conflict of interest, conflict of schmintrest.

 

Because switching engines would have negligible impact on our profit, and would cost many times more over in development fees than any possible amount of money saved. As I said, we are not planning on introducing MTX into any of our games.

I've done the math, and there is literally no foreseeable significant impact on our anticipated profits.

 

It's not synced to any drama in specific, he's dumping stock in general, which could have its own implications.

 

Another trap is, what does happen if you had unity pro, released game, stop developing it, uninstall and close unity account. What kind of limits are for you? Who would unity invoice for installs? Would you meet some Unity Tax Collectors, that would break your legs and take your home in the middle of night?

 

Last time I knew about (I just checked and don't see any news that says otherwise now?), the quarterly amount to qualify and pay Epic was that you're making just $3,000 a quarter after the first 1MM, so functionally it's in perpetuity. (Has that changed?)

Regardless it's the same point, under this model for a $10 game, you can sell 1,000,000 copies and pay Unity no royalty. If it were a flat fee like Epic of 5% after the first 1MM, you'd owe $450,000. So it is a difference and my whole point is that at that price point, this is a favorable effective rate. The math just... it's cheaper.

It's bad for F2P games with a low ARPU and high install count, and the point when it turns bad is somewhere between $2-5$ and below. I'm agreeing, this is a broken policy in these cases, I'm not a shill for unity I'm just try'na clear up some of the financials a bit after fretting about this for the past two days!

 

I love how many unambitious people there are on here lol.

 

How in the heck is an "install" on web to be counted? You can't really get a reliable fingerprint through web. Track their IP? VPNs would cause issues here. Cookies? Cache clearing or incognito windows would ruin that too.

This pay per install garbage is ridiculous. The 4x price hike was one thing, but jeez... I'd absolutely not consider Unity for future projects. My game doesn't even make over $.20 ARPU for some countries. So I'd just LOSE money on some people playing my F2P game? As if store front costs, server fees, and taxes weren't already enough.

Absolute scum bags.

 

You don't get charged if you are not making 200k a year at least.

 

The big difference is:
- unreal expects you to report your revenue and pay your bill
- unity will report your own revenue and install rate to you and send your bill

Unreal trusts you until they find out you're screwing them, unity is screwing you until you can find a way to prove that they are wrong.

And obviously, Unreal only gets a share from every one purchase, Unity wants its share after every INSTALL.

Every page impression is an install when the player gets initiated.

 

I liked Unity's semi-flat fee's with thresholds. Games are products that once built, can be played for years and years, with some support here and there.

As someone looking into the possibility of a freemium game with microtransactions, I feel this fee is extremely targeted and painful for free games. Why?
Is the Unity runtime costing Unity money every single time someone installs? I don't want to have to associate with always-online spyware.

I would've been fine with, and I honestly expected, an increase in annual fees. $5,000 / yr would've been better than this. %5 revenue share would be better than this. Your own examples produce fees of $20,000+ and it gets worse. Some games literally go into debt from $200,000+ fees because they have a lot of players.

I know ads make up a majority of Unity's revenue. I believe there was a future where large ad-driven cash cows and smaller traditional games could mutually benefit from working under the same engine.
I don't think Unity management understands it's users, community, or employees. I don't think Unity will continue to succeed like this.
Looking to the future, it's not worth investing time into Unity for all of the above reasons.

 

Nah man, Unity is only used for creating AAA titles that collect their payment upfront and largely won't be affected by this change, and are also better than their competitors product for AAA titles. /s

 

If Unity have the tools to calculate download from each country, they also have tools to calculate the estimate profit, so they can easily have a royalty ceiling of 5% of total revenue, in case they estimate more, then the devs just need to provide evidence of the revenue in case of mismatch, or they could also implement a self proclaim revenue system like unreal does

 

waiting for page 100