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New Unity pricing

paradoxical said:
One of my companies has an app written in Unity that has 100k+ users. It's a free app that only exists to supplement our hardware sales. The fees are not enough to bankrupt us given our low user count relative to a mobile game or something like that, but it's still an unplanned hit off EBITDA. This honestly might be the push I need to re-write everything in a different language, I am not convinced Unity was the right one to begin with for the type of app we have.
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If you do not reach a certain revenues in the last 12 month there is no fee, free app are not touched by this in my understanding.

RanceJustice said:
deciding there is a "credible" threat against them tends to be very suspect
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Yes I am sure they received a lot of them but credible could be being very generous with the term.
 
Ranulfo said:
threatening to kill businesses, livelihoods
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Because of issues with gamepass or free to play model that make very little money by install but still enough to reach the 1 millions in revenues ?

It can go has low as 1 cent by install-half a cent by install in emerging market with a unity enterprise license.
 
LukeTbk said:
Because of issues with gamepass or free to play model that make very little money by install but still enough to reach the 1 millions in revenues ?

It can go has low as 1 cent by install-half a cent by install in emerging market with a unity enterprise license.
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Sure, in theory but their system is effectively "trust us guys, our numbers are totes legit" for number of installs.

On top of that, they originally wanted it on demos too. What about mod installs? Some games, I technically have a game installed twice to run mods on it. Is that two installs on one machine count? Is it a privacy violation that they track that and have it phone home to the game engine devs?

Edit: I see HumbleBundle has a new bundle for Godot. How to build a game in that engine for $25.
 
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Ranulfo said:
Sure, in theory but their system is effectively "trust us guys, our numbers are totes legit" for number of installs.

On top of that, they originally wanted it on demos too. What about mod installs? Some games, I technically have a game installed twice to run mods on it. Is that two installs on one machine count? Is it a privacy violation that they track that and have it phone home to the game engine devs?

Edit: I see HumbleBundle has a new bundle for Godot. How to build a game in that engine for $25.
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Unless you build in your own telemetry you're just going to have to trust them. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a bunch of extra telemtry and installation restrictions included in Unity games along with all the bugs and issues that come along with them.
 
LukeTbk said:
If you do not reach a certain revenues in the last 12 month there is no fee, free app are not touched by this in my understanding.
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Our app is free to download but it is monetized with recurring revenue to use features of our hardware. Not a huge amount, maybe $40k a month or so in revenue. Not sure what the fee structure will be on that, I reached out to the dev team and will see what they say (we largely outsource development on this one since we acquired it).
 
paradoxical said:
Our app is free to download but it is monetized with recurring revenue to use features of our hardware. Not a huge amount, maybe $40k a month or so in revenue. Not sure what the fee structure will be on that, I reached out to the dev team and will see what they say (we largely outsource development on this one since we acquired it).
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You could be lucky and not be in the 200k life time install (1 million if you are on unity pro-enterprise), 40k a mount would also be under the 1 millions in the last 12 month revenue threshold for a pro-enterprise license.
Ranulfo said:
Is that two installs on one machine count?
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At first yes but they changed it quickly by machine installed.
 
jfreund said:
What else do you expect from scumbag John Riccitiello, of "Worst Company in America" EA fame?
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theres-a-name-ive-not-heard-in-many-years.gif


This all makes so much sense, now. I always wondered what happened to Mr. Charge-for-every-bullet-fired-in-Battlefield.
 
"I really wish more people used the giant gorilla competitor. Get on it Jenkins!"
 
paradoxical said:
Our app is free to download but it is monetized with recurring revenue to use features of our hardware. Not a huge amount, maybe $40k a month or so in revenue. Not sure what the fee structure will be on that, I reached out to the dev team and will see what they say (we largely outsource development on this one since we acquired it).
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Even if it doesn't affect you now, you'd still run the risk of future changes to the fee structure and, more importantly, you will also be catching the flack for anything shady that gets added to the software by a company that recently acquired a known malware provider.

Imo, unity is a liability one can not afford to not remove.
 
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sharknice said:
Unless you build in your own telemetry you're just going to have to trust them. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a bunch of extra telemtry and installation restrictions included in Unity games along with all the bugs and issues that come along with them.
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There is a lot and it’s a PITA to filter as it operates as SSL on 443 to AWS servers mostly.
I gave up trying in the dev lab, I try my best to keep telemetry from getting out because I can’t trust it, so we just make sure the machines running it don’t have access to anything private and at least scramble the geolocation of the exit IP address. So as far as anybody is concerned that lab is located in downtown Burnaby.
 
LukeTbk said:
Because of issues with gamepass or free to play model that make very little money by install but still enough to reach the 1 millions in revenues ?

It can go has low as 1 cent by install-half a cent by install in emerging market with a unity enterprise license.
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You keep saying this best case scenario, but it seems possible for this to eat so much money in certain high volume cases that it actually puts you in debt without an alternative revenue stream.

Like a mobile app with tons of installs and cheap in-app purchases. Many millions of installs over the year with like a 1% conversion rate to a cheap in-app purchase can seemingly cost more than you actually bring in unless all of your player base is from the very beating heart of India or something. Actually, you might STILL basically make nothing in this case. The amount of stuff on the play store with staggering download counts that looks like absolute shit is bewildering, but seems a reasonable enough hint that these numbers aren't impossible, even for small devs that go viral.

I'm assuming such cost thresholds aren't an accident and are instead largely a ploy to push you onto their ad network
 
socK said:
Like a mobile app with tons of installs and cheap in-app purchases
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Not sure if ths is the difference of the free to play model I mentionned ?

Maybe Unity people are not at ease with that level of gambling app that make giant amount of money but from 1% of the user base and a reason to push their engine toward less predatory business models, but yes that was one case that came to mind, those gambling like app.
 
LukeTbk said:
Not sure if ths is the difference of the free to play model I mentionned ?

Maybe Unity people are not at ease with that level of gambling app that make giant amount of money but from 1% of the user base and a reason to push their engine toward less predatory business models, but yes that was one case that came to mind, those gambling like app.
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You do realize who runs Unity, right? He'd have no qualms running a casino and letting people bet their homes. "Predatory" is their goal.
 
jfreund said:
You do realize who runs Unity, right? He'd have no qualms running a casino and letting people bet their homes. "Predatory" is their goal.
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If they can get something by install yes (or push pro license for them to avoid to pay by install), but I am not sure they would care if that industry would be hurt because of it.
 
socK said:
You keep saying this best case scenario, but it seems possible for this to eat so much money in certain high volume cases that it actually puts you in debt without an alternative revenue stream.

Like a mobile app with tons of installs and cheap in-app purchases. Many millions of installs over the year with like a 1% conversion rate to a cheap in-app purchase can seemingly cost more than you actually bring in unless all of your player base is from the very beating heart of India or something. Actually, you might STILL basically make nothing in this case. The amount of stuff on the play store with staggering download counts that looks like absolute shit is bewildering, but seems a reasonable enough hint that these numbers aren't impossible, even for small devs that go viral.

I'm assuming such cost thresholds aren't an accident and are instead largely a ploy to push you onto their ad network
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There’s so much in the agreement update, but what it really does is force each developer to give Unity much more data so in the event you are one of those edge cases you can work out a “deal” with your rep.

Basically now you are going to have to run all the telemetry options with all the user and add tracking, it’s the only way to not find yourself getting seriously dinged.
 
Lakados said:
There’s so much in the agreement update, but what it really does is force each developer to give Unity much more data so in the event you are one of those edge cases you can work out a “deal” with your rep.

Basically now you are going to have to run all the telemetry options with all the user and add tracking, it’s the only way to not find yourself getting seriously dinged.
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Yup, and I'm sure Unity would totally not sell that data to any interested parties for marketing purposes.
 
Ranulfo said:
Yup, and I'm sure Unity would totally not sell that data to any interested parties for marketing purposes.
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Of course not, they are upstanding and trustworthy members of the gaming community, why would they ever betray the trust of their paying developers and the gaming community as a whole for the chance at an additional revenue stream as underhanded as that one?
 
I'm not the only one seeing the parallels here with what Oracle did to everything Sun Microsystems made, right?

Take a popular software tech that's mostly free to use (Java then, Unity now), suddenly tack on all kinds of fees when those devs are entrenched in that tech because of how convenient it is to use, and leave them scrambling to switch lest they get bankrupted, especially if extortionate auditors and lawyers suddenly come knocking in typical Oracle style to collect per their licensing terms? (No, seriously, don't install the Java runtime from Oracle's site, get OpenJDK instead if you don't want to deal with that crap.)

It's rather concerning that game devs are now facing this crap and are looking at delisting their games just to avoid those fees, particularly since they get charged for every reinstall, which is ridiculous. One user may have multiple systems on which to install a given game, especially in the age of the Steam Deck, or may have to re-install due to troubleshooting reasons.

Furthermore, Unity's own developers were largely against this, and several have resigned in protest once Riccitiello and co. pushed it through anyway. Just goes to show how a real slimeball of a CEO can ruin a company in an instant.
 
NamelessPFG said:
I'm not the only one seeing the parallels here with what Oracle did to everything Sun Microsystems made, right?

Take a popular software tech that's mostly free to use (Java then, Unity now), suddenly tack on all kinds of fees when those devs are entrenched in that tech because of how convenient it is to use, and leave them scrambling to switch lest they get bankrupted, especially if extortionate auditors and lawyers suddenly come knocking in typical Oracle style to collect per their licensing terms? (No, seriously, don't install the Java runtime from Oracle's site, get OpenJDK instead if you don't want to deal with that crap.)

It's rather concerning that game devs are now facing this crap and are looking at delisting their games just to avoid those fees, particularly since they get charged for every reinstall, which is ridiculous. One user may have multiple systems on which to install a given game, especially in the age of the Steam Deck, or may have to re-install due to troubleshooting reasons.

Furthermore, Unity's own developers were largely against this, and several have resigned in protest once Riccitiello and co. pushed it through anyway. Just goes to show how a real slimeball of a CEO can ruin a company in an instant.
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He is very much the, “Fuck him I can hire a team of 3 and a manager to run them from <hot tech developing country> for what I was paying that guy. Let them quit, nothing they did can’t be done by somebody else cheaper.” Kind of guy.

So I have no reason to believe he took an ounce of consideration to anything they said and he’s surrounded himself by “Yes-Men”. He’ll ride the company into the water, and leave somebody in charge of the boat while he sails off on his golden parachute, then cut the line when the boat sinks and land safely on his private beach and repeat the process.

He’s cruel not stupid, he likely took one look at what Epic is doing, where Nintendo is going, and what Apple has cooking, did a fast calculation on what they need to spend to stay competitive in an increasingly diverse market and said OK how do we exit this with as much money as we can get.

And this was probably step 2 or 3 but the previous steps sailed past us because it was so dull and mundane nobody took notice.
 
Quite a corporate suicide. Per installation based tax? Oh that is totally not vulnerable for abuse of any kind, either from disgruntled gamers or from Unity themselves... 🙈

If they are really hurting for money then they should have gone to a 'cut from revenue' based system like Unreal does. IIRC after certain thershold is passed Unreal gets 5% of the money the game makes. Obviously 5% is quite a lot but if Unity took something like 1% or 2% then that is more than fair. Similar business model but cheaper than competition. And no risk of engine provider making more profit from your product than what you are making, if any at all.

On the plus side, thanks to this diarhea brain fart of Unity, the open source Godot may be getting more attention and developement time than before.
 
Lakados said:
He is very much the, “Fuck him I can hire a team of 3 and a manager to run them from <hot tech developing country> for what I was paying that guy. Let them quit, nothing they did can’t be done by somebody else cheaper.” Kind of guy.

So I have no reason to believe he took an ounce of consideration to anything they said and he’s surrounded himself by “Yes-Men”. He’ll ride the company into the water, and leave somebody in charge of the boat while he sails off on his golden parachute, then cut the line when the boat sinks and land safely on his private beach and repeat the process.

He’s cruel not stupid, he likely took one look at what Epic is doing, where Nintendo is going, and what Apple has cooking, did a fast calculation on what they need to spend to stay competitive in an increasingly diverse market and said OK how do we exit this with as much money as we can get.

And this was probably step 2 or 3 but the previous steps sailed past us because it was so dull and mundane nobody took notice.
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The first few steps were removing their TOS tracking from GitHub, then stealth editing so that developers were no longer grandfathered in to the version existing when they began development.
 
NamelessPFG said:
I'm not the only one seeing the parallels here with what Oracle did to everything Sun Microsystems made, right?
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I think it's similar and I also think that changes like these have been happening more lately which for me makes it unsurprising. What's different is the way they're going about collecting that extra revenue. If it's accepted and works out for them, I'm assuming we'll see other players do the same.

If it doesn't and there ends up being a mass exodus of people going from Unity to Competitor X, then I think it's likely that Competitor X will end up in a similar situation to Unity. That is to say, great products that don't bring in enough cash which would allow them to create and offer new stuff to their stakeholders.... Rinse and repeat

I'm interested to see how this pans out
 
I would like an update on how large Tim Sweeny's erection is. Has he had to call a Dr yet?
 
uOpt said:
That's not going to work. Lawmakers will not touch the right to negotiate arbitrary contracts.
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At most, they could require a company to disclose their changes further in advance and bind agreements to a project.
So no 3 months notice on a change like this, but maybe a full 12.
And if you start a project under contract X and that project takes 2 years to build they can't change the terms of that contract mid-stream, when its' too late for the developer to change course.

So better notice, and version locks on contracts binding to a project. Start developing project X under Unity TOS contract 1.2.3.4 and even if they amend that TOS and contract down the road then project X gets launched under 1.2.3.4 but any new ones would fall under 2.0.1.2 or what ever the new contract version is.
 
Armenius said:
Developers are flocking to Godot as an alternative, not Unreal Engine.
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Not super surprised, Unreal doesn't have particularly good 2d tooling. It's a fucking behemoth of an engine on top of that. Godot is like... a 50mb exe and that's it to get started.

Also Unity stock appears to have taken another hit today. So, uncertainty seems to continuing to creep in and weigh a bit.
 
Almost seems like Unity is throwing in the towel. I guess after middling success (most prefer UE) they decided to try and get that sweet Baldurs Gate 3 money before riding off into the sunset.
 
Flogger23m said:
Almost seems like Unity is throwing in the towel. I guess after middling success (most prefer UE) they decided to try and get that sweet Baldurs Gate 3 money before riding off into the sunset.
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?? Divinity Engine isn't Unity. I am confused.
 
socK said:
Not super surprised, Unreal doesn't have particularly good 2d tooling. It's a fucking behemoth of an engine on top of that. Godot is like... a 50mb exe and that's it to get started.

Also Unity stock appears to have taken another hit today. So, uncertainty seems to continuing to creep in and weigh a bit.
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Yeah if you want 2D UE isn't really made for that. Godot is progbably their best option, especially since it's free.

If you were using Unity for 3D over Unreal Engine IMO you already made a poor choice, probably because you were already too deeply invested in Unity development to consider other options. In which case it will be a hard switch, maybe this is the tipping point though.
 
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