Unity's pricing not to change, WebGL will be free

I am currently using UE4. I would be stupid not to since I cannot buy Unity Pro (2500 + 1500 per mobile platform (Android/iOS))

19.00 a month is an STEAL for a triple A game engine. Not to mention the revenue model.

I feel Unity is going the wrong direction with their pricing model. Especially with what I am da bawss said about the Eurozone crisis. Although They have been generous in the past for free users shadows, etc.

I just think Unity is going the wrong direction with their pricing model.
I feel that unity is aiming a little to high in terms of price for those newcomers and hobbyists who use unity. That newcomers will go over to Unreal 4.

In the end I think Unity is going to loose out a major share of the market (PC and Console games).

Anyway those are my thoughts.

 

Web gl is a nice thing to have, it will take some time to catch up but being able to experiment with no extra cost is nice. I understand that nothing is set in stone, but since unity basic, web deployment was included in price. Seeing that change was a dissapointment and I am glad this is fixed now.

When Unreal hit with its aggressive pricing model, I thought that my investment in Unity is lost. By responding with a similar model, Unity would probably suffer a depletion of resources, which could exhaust soon - less margins for ninja camps experiments, smaller platforms, crazy features.
Seeing Unity staying away from this path is great.

There is room for a less expensive subscription model, as well for bundle Pro platform licenses. Would make sense to offer those to studios - individuals with an income < 100k. Perhaps this will happen around Spring.

Unity is losing momentum, but is not on a wrong track. Let's see what surprises are left for Unite.

 

Do you subscribe to the newsletters and such? I'm not sure, but I think that's the list that usually gets the survey notifications (they might pare it down some though).

 

If the surveys are statistically meaningful they need to involve a random sampling.

--Eric

 

Why not just ask everyone?

 

Because that's like 3 million people? You don't need to ask everyone to get accurate data.

--Eric

 

I didn't get survey either. I am on the newsletters subscription list too. And I am paying customer (Unity Pro and iOS Pro). So now I am wondering exactly how large the sampling pool and accuracy of this so called "survey'.

 

Of course I do.

So who here reading this thread actually got the survey?

 

Not me. I check my email everyday. Just the usual Asset store madness emails.

 

Huh... I'm not sure how I get them then - maybe just because I'm old? Not sure.

 

Also, not everyone will respond, which leads to the data being skewed.

 

I haven't had any for a year, but have had a couple since we started using Unity at work.

 

Well, thanks Unity for WebGL being free

 

Who were these statistics from? Full paying pro users? Free + Pro + Educational? It sounds to me that they were only asking professional developers when I assume lots of market to be gained from going with a low cost pro option would be hobbyist developers?

 

Based on what?

 

Not that I'm certain or anything, hence why I asked.

 

Unreal doesnt have a free version though so i dont think there install base will ever be as big as unity.

Look at the market place for example its a ghost town compared to unity asset store forum.
https://forums.unrealengine.com/forumdisplay.php?56-Marketplace

 

IF you want things to be more free, you should leave

 

The fact that the marketplace doesn't actually exist for Unreal at the moment might explain some of that.

 

The one thing that really puts me off is the fact that I have to pay for the desktop Pro version AND to pay $1500 for Android and iOS being a mobile developer only. Include the add ons to the pro version and I would be happy to pay those $1500 but $4500? NO WAY. One of the reasons I still use Unity is just the amount of money I've invested in assets. Will take a closer look at UE4 now.

 

I think that everyone who's not happy with unity, and are moaning about the same flaws over and over again, need to leave. If you all leave en masse, not only will you be using a "superior engine", you'll also bring down the number of Unity users and force UT to act, thus helping those that have decided to stay. Problem solved!

 

And the subforum has only been open four days. Hundred new posts in that time sounds pretty active to me...

 

In most cases it only makes sense to leave for the next project and finish the current one on Unity. The impact of UE4 on Unity will take some time to manifest.

 

I just don't get it... In my opinion, there is one good reason to pick Unity for a new project, and that is if you're planning to do a mobile game. In that area Unity is still king. For a PC-only project I would lean towards UE4 or CryEngine, depending on the type of game.

Now, there are some features in the Pro edition that you really do need - e.g. LODs, profiling, and custom branding of your game. Which means you have to shell out $3000 to $4500, not just to publish your game, but even to develop your game. And that's the big hurdle for many one-man indies, I guess.

I don't say that Unity Pro isn't value for its price, especially if you think about the no-royalties model. But for many it is too much money to invest up front. It's just too risky. Chances are very high that my neat little game ideas will never make it to the market or will never earn a penny. So I would definitely prefer to pay a few months of UE4 subscriptions to try to get my game into shape, even if it means I have to pay royalties if I really make money from it. After publishing one or two slightly successful games, of course I wouldn't mind to pay Unity's license fees, but up to that point I am certainly much more confortable with a subscription model (and no, $150-$225 is out of the question).

At least they could release Pro for free during development, but require a license for actually publishing a game (and maybe watermark the game before that).

 

I think the price is fine, great even if you already own a license and only have to pay the upgrade cost - even better during the discount phase before the next major release. While life would be great if everything was cheaper, I'd just as soon pay someone what they need to thrive, than pay them less while expecting more in return (because that's really unlikely to happen)

I echo the sentiment about the gateway license to non-desktop though (that you need a Desktop Pro before you can use other-Pro). It doesn't apply to me, but getting rid of that stumbling block could improve the mood quite a bit, and perhaps even improve Pro sales (how many people don't get any Pro because they don't want to/can't afford to buy the desktop license?).

 

theres only 12 there. Anyway I have a feeling that unity made the right call. I don't think the freeloaders will pay to make the $20/month fee anyway. With no free version it's going to mean most new users come to unity. I bet most will be too invested into unity to bother jumping ship. Now that means that marketplace is only going to have a fraction of the users of the unity store. Not to mention that unreal us going to require a much beefier machine then unity.

 

12 threads maybe, but about a hundred posts as I said.

 

I wouldn't count on that. You can cancel your subscription right away and continue using it free of charge, and with a feature set that would require quite a few additional purchases on the asset storeto bring Unity up to that level. Yes, you forfeit getting updates, but it's not as if Unity is getting them out on a weekly basis...

 

Many people said it already and I would like to hook up with them: Paying 1500 for Pro Desktop including a PC,Mac and Linux build means $500 per OS where Pro iOS and Android costs $1500 per OS. That alone doesn't look right and further more I need to buy PC,Mac and Linux to deploy games for iOS and Android.

Maybe it is technically hard to realize to roll out add-ons as stand alone but they could at least also combine some OS on mobile side - e.g. Android, iOS and WP in one add-on for $1500. That would balancing the relation a bit.

 

Yes, you got me there , that wasn't well-worded. What I meant was: If you don't get updates because you cancelled your subscription, it will be some time before you really *need* the next update - because an important bug has been fixed, or a necessary feature added. You will be fine to skip a few updates both with Unity and UE4. So the difference between Unity Free and UE4 is financially not really that big, you probably only need to pay 3 or 4 times a year and would be fine.

 

I think telling people to leave if they complain is not necessary. I'm using Unity since version 1.6 and - it sounds weird - I learned to love Unity over the time. Just like in a relation you won't leave your partner from one day to another just because of one or two flaws yet you want to let him/her know. Sure, if the flaws become more and more you will leave some day but people who complain here are not at this point yet and still hope that the partner/company will agree to a compromise.

 

Same here. I spend thousands here and no one asked my opinion at all. All I wanted to see was the subscription based prices either change, or let you own the software after you paid more then the person who out right bought the license. I find it extremely hard to believe everyone they asked said "yes! we enjoy being taken advantage of and don't mind owning anything in the end, keep it the same!". I can't justify spending $3,000 this time around. I'm finishing my project in Unity 4 and then moving to Unreal for the future.

 

So use Unity Free and pay nothing all year?

 

Never trust a statistics that you haven't falsified yourself...

I'm sorry but being a businessman, if someone would ask me "Pay $4500 or $1500 for the same stuff"... I wouldn't say "Well... let me think... you know what... I pay $4500." Whoever says that tells bullshit. This is business. I run a company. If I can pay less for the same, I pay less. I'm no social welfare office.

Competition is *always* beneficial to the customer. What we're currently seeing is competitors positioning themselves on the board. Each engine has its strengths and its flaws. Each customer has to counter check what he needs and how much he is willing to pay for it.

Currently Unity is on a strong position on the mobile platforms. They have managed to create a (good) running (,stable) platform for the main OSes and (it seems) a huge part of their customers are using the mobile platform as their main target platform. As long as the competitors are not up par to what Unity can deliver, they don't have to fear a drain of customers. They're currently milking their customers who are in midst of a project, inciting them to update because "the next version will be so much better".

So, once the competitors catch up on the mobile platforms, Unity will have to react. Currently it seems this is still 6-9 months away (regarding the current state of competitors mobile platform support).

 

I think what's missing in that argument (and what UT may or may not be missing too) is that if you ask the customers that are truly dependent on you, and for whom that $4500 is a drop in the ocean, they will prefer the $4500. Why? Because they also realize that you're a business, and the most immediately obvious outcome of a major price drop is less money to keep your product going - which in turn means that company that they're dependent on may go out of business.

The larger studios are absolutely and completely dependent on Unity to go on - at the very least for the game they're currently working on, but to a fairly large extent also for their next game - because they've spent lots of resources on hiring employees confident with Unity, training staff, extending their pipeline with tools that may or may not be geared towards Unity etc. etc. What would you rather do? Pay $4500 to keep the product going, or pay hundreds of thousands+ to switch to a different engine? Even between projects?

Which is the real reason I don't entirely buy this "we talked to people". If you're not talking to potential buyers, but only the ones who already bought in - and bought in big - you're obviously not going to get much of an idea about the future viability of your license model - only the viability here and now. Which is not particularly useful when there's a new major competitor.

A concrete example - since the company I work at hasn't actually "picked sides" yet (larger scale 3D development is somewhat a future venue for us), we haven't been asked by UT either. I'm just evaluating it in a spare time project.

So here is what I would answer, if UT asked me:

In spite of how much I prefer Unity at the moment; in spite of me really not wanting to return to C++; and in spite of our ultimate decision in terms of engine choice likely being solely based on my recommendation? I can't really recommend Unity to my boss. Not mainly because of the pricing or the features, but because I'm not all that sure where this engine will be in 2-3 years when we have become dependent on it.

To my eyes, it's simply too "closed box", a bit too old fashioned in its business model, and it appears a bit too focused on a few large current customers.

And in some ways that makes me glad I didn't need to evaluate the market a year ago.

 

Too bad.

I guess UT will get none of our money instead of some.

You'd think as a business something is better than $0. (Whereas Epic knows some is better than none at all)

Oh well, looks like when the current Unity projects we're working on wrap up its bye bye Unity.

 

I have 3 pro + mobile licenses, and I certainly won't be upgrading to 5 yet. My future projects will start with UE4 to test it, until I feel confident enough to replace Unity totally (or I feel I need the bug fixes in U5).

My main gripe in Unity is not just price, but value. I upgraded since 2.x and frankly ,a lot of "new" features are not production ready. Only for demo / marketing purposes. And it seems Unity is more interested in making more new shiny features than making it usable. Based on Unity performance for the past few years, I wouldn't dare touch U5 (I will write more in another thread soon about this)

 

Yes, it makes perfect sense. Developers, which are increasingly seeing more and more competition said "Nay, we LIKE paying more money for our tools. We NEED more things cutting into our profits!"

Sounds like Unity said "we're listening" all the while they had their fingers plugging their ears.

Logically, even if there were millions of Unity users out there outside the forums. How does this argument even stand up to scrutiny?

At which point does one say "Hohoho I'm making far too much money, I will go with the more expensive engine offering the least advanced technology. "

Unity has so many pain points for any project larger than a mobile game or a game jam game, to the point that there are Assets on the store dedicated to solve those problems. Innate problems like Nested Prefabs which should have been high priority years ago considering they are part of the Unity suggested workflow. How many years will pass before these large team workflow issues are addressed? Meanwhile, throw in more half baked features into the pot and rely on the Asset Store to both make you more money and fill in the gaps.

My project is being made possible by the Asset Store. Pretty much my problems with Unity come from Unity themselves, strangely enough. I'd expect the 3rd party stuff to break but more often than not, it's Unity. When Unity crashes its simply because "your scene has more than 20 game objects in it. You're not making a mobile game, so we will crash out of memory, bye!" It honestly makes me want to throw out the two years of work I've put into my Unity project and switch immediately.

I've also had the fun experience of Unity deleting my scene because it crashed whilst saving it. Thank god for source control. How often does that happen with competitor's engines, I wonder?

They sound like they're talking about big teams with big money, but I'd honestly love to pick their brains about how they're using Unity. Unless they're just using it as a renderer and then scrapping everything else, I fail to see how anyone making more than a simple game is so happy that they want the price to stay as it is.

Oh also, go integrate SECTR into Unity. It has so many useful things that make a large project at least feasible in Unity. That guy deserves to be paid his weight in gold.

Edit: Cleaned up a bit with less dramatic flair.

 

In the past few weeks, I've heard about many developers (even studios) switching from Unity to Unreal Engine. Just follow the UnrealEngine twitter account and you'll see. Unity really should rethink their pricing model or it'll break their neck sooner or later - and that would be a shame...

 

You linked to Epic's Marketplace forum, which is at this point merely a place to talk about the content people would like to see on the marketplace. Once Epic's Marketplace actually launches with 3rd party content available, it will likely feel like less of a ghost town.

The free version of Unity has definitely helped Unity capture dramatic numbers of numbers. Free is a tough price to beat. That is for sure. But Epic's $19/month option might still be as successful as Unity Free over time, especially if the comparison if between Unity Free users who have bought something vs Epic users. I have no idea how many Unity Free users out of the millions of installs have actually purchased at least one small asset from the store.

With UE4, every user will at least pay $19 one time to get started. Most users don't mind paying $19/month, especially when they realize they can cancel that subscription at any time and keep using UE4. Every UE4 user has paid something, so it proves they can purchase 3rd party assets as well.

The biggest draw I see for users getting into UE4 in the near future is the Unreal Tournament project, which is free and open source. That project will make millions of gamers aware of UE4, and some of those gamers will sign up for UE4 subscriptions (either for their own games or just to mod Unreal Tournament). Those users will be potential Epic Marketplace asset purchasers.

The big unknown is the UE4 marketplace terms after 3rd party assets become available. For example, the terms for UE4 currently state that only current subscribers can access the marketplace. That is fine since the only marketplace content at this time is directly from Epic. Once the marketplace allows for 3rd party sellers, then Epic might need to tweak their policy to let non-current UE4 subs buy 3rd party content through the marketplace. Otherwise Epic cannot sell party assets to the guys who pay once and then cancel their subs. Maybe it is moot, because those same users might be willing to resubscribe to grab engine updates at the same time that they purchase 3rd party assets. It is anybody's guess how that will turn out, but it will be interesting.

 

They already confirmed that you will still be able to buy marketplace content even if your subscription runs out, somewhere on the forum, but I can't find it right now.

 

If too many people leave, then Unity will need to raise prices for those who stay in order to cover their costs. Are you willing to pay significantly more for Unity in order to get rid of everybody who has offered suggestions/comments/complaints? If it goes that way, expect small but steady price increases as Unity relies on fewer and fewer users to pay the bills. Maybe $2000 per platform instead of $1500 per platform. Then a few years later maybe it will be $2500 per platform, and then $3000 per platform.

 

I did not get the survey. I am guessing that Unity only surveyed their biggest corporate customers.

 

I'm glad these two questions are resolved. Next question: are you releasing your source code to all users (or all Pro users)? If not, why not?

 

Unity does not need to ask every person who has ever downloaded Unity. They only need to survey the people who actually use Unity. Unity can track who has used Unity during the past month. Usage stats gets quoted from time to time by Unity staff, and the actual usage is a fraction of the total install base. So it would likely be 500k to 600k surveys instead of 3 million.

Unity could even tailor their surveys based on if it is Unity Free or Unity Pro user. For example, Unity could try to figure out what price point Free users might be willing to pay to get some or all of the Pro features, and Unity could deliver that question only to Free users.

Unity could even split the Free group based on users who have spent money in the asset store vs users who have never spent anything in the asset store. For example, I suspect there is a group of probably 100k users who has spent at least something in the asset store already and would be willing to pay a reasonable subscription fee (like $19/month instead of $225/month) for Unity Pro. Unity has the tools in place to gather those targeted surveys.

 

Again....statistics. You do not need anywhere near that many people to provide a statistically reliable sample. You can get within ~3% of accurately predicting the results of a national election (~150 million voters) on a sample size of 1000 respondents. If we assume Unity has hired/contracted a professional statistician (and they'd be fools not to, at their size) to conduct this survey, then maybe 1 in 3,000 users would have received a survey request (plus additional people for any number who declined to take the survey).

Furthermore, those people would be chosen to give a sample that is as unbiased as possible. Unity knows that (pulling numbers out of the air) 70% of its users use Free. If it sends out 1000 survey requests and 700 of them go to Free users, and only 100 of those requests are replied to, they can send out 600 more surveys to Free users until they get the desired number of responses. This is a power they wouldn't have if they sent out a poll to every single user.

Just because you haven't been personally polled doesn't mean that you're being discriminated against or ignored. I haven't received one, and our company has 3 Pro licenses.

 

It's a nice thing that WebGL will be available for free, but I really hope that it does not hinder further advances on this tech inside Unity. My expectations about it are really high now, the demo looks amazing and plugin-less games sounds amazing (I can't even imagine how many players leaves by refuse on installing the webplayer plugin)

 

I remember saying that, though I've yet to hear someone else say that.

 

This is elitist BS. Here's the simple fact. You might not own a Pro license but if you've ever used any of the paid assets on the asset store, you've put money into Unity's accounts.

Only makes sense. How else would they get their cut?

Wouldn't be surprised if they make as much on the Asset Store as they do on subscriptions.

So basically if too many people leave then Unity will commit suicide by alienating the hangers on?