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[Draugoth]

Changes to pricing and Unity plans 2023 FAQ | Unity

Introducing a Unity Runtime Fee, and new features for Unity Personal, Unity Pro, Unity Enterprise, and Unity Industry.

unity.com

An open letter to our community | Unity Blog

An open letter from Marc Whitten to the Unity community in September 2023.

blog.unity.com

From the article:

I’m Marc Whitten, and I lead Unity Create which includes the Unity engine and editor teams.
I want to start with simply this: I am sorry.
We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine.
You are what makes Unity great, and we know we need to listen, and work hard to earn your trust. We have heard your concerns, and we are making changes in the policy we announced to address them.
Our Unity Personal plan will remain free and there will be no Runtime Fee for games built on Unity Personal. We will be increasing the cap from $100,000 to $200,000 and we will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.
No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee.
For those creators on Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise, we are also making changes based on your feedback.
The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity.
We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version.
For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month. Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.
We want to continue to build the best engine for creators. We truly love this industry and you are the reason why.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

This is so much better

Guess indie devs will have nothing to complain about now

B-But muh communism!
Heavens, just be glad you don't have to do your own engine + tools from scratch.

 

[newtypepilot]

 

[Robb]

I feel like all this does is give devs a window of time to move on to something else.

But what do I know.

 

[geary]

The cat is out of the bag now...I don't think anyone can trust them from now on. The projects starting now, i bet are moving to Unreal or another engine. In 2-3 years (the cycle of and AA/Indie game) you'll see a huge drop of games made in Unity being released.

 

[Guilty_AI]

I feel like all this does is give devs a window of time to move on to something else.

Which is preferable to incoming lawsuits.

These terms are more reasonable in general, but the damage is done. Many devs will be moving on after this, afraid they'll pull something like this again 2-3 years down the line.

 

[Tams]

You don't need 7,703 employees, 5,864 of them full-time, to develop a game engine (and by no means a perfect or particularly advanced one at that).

 

[Banjo64]

I want to start with simply this: I am sorry.

These corpo apologies will never be anything other than hilarious

It’s like they’re apologising for causing cancer

 

[The Cockatrice]

 

[Bkdk]

The cat is out of the bag now...I don't think anyone can trust them from now on. The projects starting now, i bet are moving to Unreal or another engine. In 2-3 years (the cycle of and AA/Indie game) you'll see a huge drop of games made in Unity being released.

I think not really, unreal being the other obvious choice and when there are just 2 obvious choices for game development, I would think price hikes of game engines will be way more significant in the coming years pushing cost for smaller budget games up rather quickly. Quite a lot of that costs will certainly be transferred to gamers.

 

[mystech]

Typical corporate apology. They have demonstrated that their loyalty lies with their shareholders, not their users. The trust is broken and there's nothing stoping them from introducing something similar or even worse in the future. Unity has lagged behind Unreal for years but instead of building a better engine, they take the shady route to try to increase revenue. The entire chain of events following the original announcement just shows how disorganized they are behind closed doors. Rather than taking time to formulate a proper response, we got all of these excuses and then the half assed adjustment to charge Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo for installs only to now come to this open letter apology. This is NOT the level of professionalism I would expect from a multi-million dollar publicly traded company...

As an almost 10 year Unity developer, I un-installed Unity for the first time. I only hope this situation will encourage more open source options.

 

[MarkMe2525]

Typical corporate apology. They have demonstrated that their loyalty lies with their shareholders, not their users.

This is the case 100% of the time for 100% of publicly traded companies.

 

[Draugoth]

Typical corporate apology. They have demonstrated that their loyalty lies with their shareholders, not their users. The trust is broken and there's nothing stoping them from introducing something similar or even worse in the future. Unity has lagged behind Unreal for years but instead of building a better engine, they take the shady route to try to increase revenue. The entire chain of events following the original announcement just shows how disorganized they are behind closed doors. Rather than taking time to formulate a proper response, we got all of these excuses and then the half assed adjustment to charge Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo for installs only to now come to this open letter apology. This is NOT the level of professionalism I would expect from a multi-million dollar publicly traded company...

As an almost 10 year Unity developer, I un-installed Unity for the first time. I only hope this situation will encourage more open source options.

Thanks for telling me there's a bussness opportunity on a open-source cheap engine.

Going to start my own company now, hopefully i wont go towards the greed patch once i become a millionaire

 

[DeepEnigma]

Never has there ever been a more apt gif,

 

[ShadowNate]

Indie developers with new projects will probably go for another engine, but at least this clarifies the situation for games developed with older Unity version, either released or far into development, and for them it's good news.

These new terms actually don't sound bad at all; they are much more "conservative" than the turd omelette those initially announced plans were. But breaking trust with indie developers who are your main client base is not something that can be easily undone.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Very smart for them to remove the requirement for Made with Unity from the smallest indie devs… they thought they were getting free advertising, but as games made with Unity started reaching consoles they started earning a bad reputation… I think this was a strategic mistake hurting Unity and the devs themselves.

 

[midnightAI]

Indie developers with new projects will probably go for another engine, but at least this clarifies the situation for games developed with older Unity version, either released or far into development, and for them it's good news.

These new terms actually don't sound bad at all; they are much more "conservative" than the turd omelette those initially announced plans were. But breaking trust with indie developers who are your main client base is not something that can be easily undone.

I think it depends, lots of indie Devs are trained up on specific engines, it's not as simple as just changing engines for a new game. What if you have legacy code you want to utilise in the next game? what if you have multiple employees all trained up on Unity, would you spend time and money getting them trained up on a different engine? What if your game is primarily 2D? Unity is still a better engine for 2D games.

I won't be switching for my next game (I only do 2D though) and I'm certain the majority won't switch either (some will though of course)

 

[Kataploom]

The cat is out of the bag now...I don't think anyone can trust them from now on. The projects starting now, i bet are moving to Unreal or another engine. In 2-3 years (the cycle of and AA/Indie game) you'll see a huge drop of games made in Unity being released.

While you're right, we don't only have it well specified in their TOS which would have make them easily lose any lawsuit, but their own public statement in that letter that contacts are per version and won't be retroactive.

It was a matter of time before they ditched their previous plans, the thing they didn't consider was they were messing with people's money... Any publisher can sell the ending of their game as DLC, or any other BS but that's just people entertainment so nobody is gonna sue, Unity is B2B, anything they do will impact businesses and businesses owners are a different beast.

BTW they already helped other engines anyway, people already started learning other tools so they don't depend on unity alone.

 

[cartman414]

I think it depends, lots of indie Devs are trained up on specific engines, it's not as simple as just changing engines for a new game. What if you have legacy code you want to utilise in the next game? what if you have multiple employees all trained up on Unity, would you spend time and money getting them trained up on a different engine? What if your game is primarily 2D? Unity is still a better engine for 2D games.

I won't be switching for my next game (I only do 2D though) and I'm certain the majority won't switch either (some will though of course)

Isn't Godot better for 2d?

 

[Sorne]

Marc Whitten isn't the CEO, he is the "Unity Create Lead" whatever that means. I don't think it would be wise for John Riccitiello to show his face right now lol.

Anyways, I still don't understand why they keep insisting on the "initial engagement" fee. Just use rev share, everyone would understand. 2.5% is pretty good. But man, they've really messed up their reputation, and still haven't really answered to why the old ToS suddenly got removed so they could do this scummy stuff in the first place. That's a big red flag.
I'll keep using the engine to finish my game, but after that, I'll definitely consider other options for the next project. Like you always should, when making a new project. Use the tool that can help you get the job done the fastest/easiest/cheapest way.

 

[Valkyria]

This is so much better

Guess indie devs will have nothing to complain about now

B-But muh communism!
Heavens, just be glad you don't have to do your own engine + tools from scratch.

Like a clockwork we get the corpo boot licker.
Blatantly ignorant and acting edgy. Enjoy your future bankruptcy.

 

[ThatPolishGuy]

I guess people lost trust in Unity anyways. And some are investing in open source projects like Godot, FNA framework and MonoGame.

I've been reading that some Indie devs even say good-bye to Unity anyways.

Looks pretty good:


Hopefully it gets proper 3D support soon.

 

[midnightAI]

Isn't Godot better for 2d?

For simple 2D games maybe, Godot is good for its simplicity and ease of use but Unity has a lot more features and the ability to build for multiple platforms (including consoles, which is important to me)

 

[Silver Wattle]

If I were a dev I'd want to switch to unreal just for the clarity of the contract alone, having these clowns try to drop retroactive changes on businesses that can take several years developing their product is way too risky.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

Blatantly ignorant and acting edgy. Enjoy your future bankruptcy.

Noooooo, how DARE they charge me for using their product??
Everything MUST be free and pander to my sensibilities!
How will I EVER survive for being charged after earning 1 million in 12 months for my walking simulator about depression and self-discovery???

 

[Kilau]

Poor Unity, back to this for them I guess.