by aschearer on 9/12/23, 1:55 PM with 526 comments
by danShumway on 9/12/23, 3:33 PM
> Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.
Notably, Adobe Creative Cloud requires you to check in every 30 days to validate licenses. I feel like it takes some work to come up with a DRM scheme for a development tool that is more onerous than Adobe's restrictions, but what do I know?
I certainly have never left a demo laptop unplugged for a week and then set up a demo quickly without Internet access and needed to make a quick change in my engine. That never happens to indie developers, so locking down the editor until they reestablish an Internet connection totally won't be a problem for them. /s
by Kapura on 9/12/23, 2:19 PM
Unity's recent moves to me speak to a fear that they've more-or-less hit their market saturation point, and now they're looking to extract more from the developers who live in their slice of the pie. I fear this will make that slice shrink, which will create more fear, and then the problem spirals.
by dagmx on 9/12/23, 2:45 PM
This will absolutely kill any incentive for the remaining indie devs to use Unity with such a low floor and flat cost. Whereas your game going temporarily viral would have been huge , now it’ll be a huge burden. Meanwhile Unreal is 5% after 1M.
A progressive fee would have at least made some sense.
As it is, Unity lags severely behind Unreal for both features and sentiment. The big markets for Unity were indie and enterprise. They’d ceded everything in the middle to Unreal.
Epic provide megagrant funding to Godot, in what I imagine is a play to eat Unity from the bottom up. Unity will just accelerate that.
And enterprise is fickle. They’ll switch to something else as soon as any project lead feels like it.
Imho this is one more step down the road to the death of Unity. They have brilliant engineers led by very incompetent leadership.
by bodge5000 on 9/12/23, 8:17 PM
Funnily enough the changes have also made me look back into Unreal, I hear they have a proper Linux editor now and that their flavour of C++ is a bit nicer than I expected. I doubt I'll switch from Godot anytime soon, but worth a look.
EDIT: I see the point being made a lot that this won't affect many smaller devs as they'll never make enough money to meet the threshold, however it seems to me that if your choice of engine makes you hope your project isn't successful, then it might be time to choose a different engine. Unreal engine devs hope their game will make enough to qualify for the revenue share, not because the revenue share is a good thing for them, but because it means if they're making that kind of money it won't be a problem.
by LarsDu88 on 9/12/23, 4:33 PM
Unity did have some great and useful libraries for doing things like animation rigging and editor customization. RIP
by fidotron on 9/12/23, 2:13 PM
The question has already been "Why aren't you using Unreal?" and that's just going to get harder.
Given the current VC taste for eliminating all things which count against gross margins now might be a good time to be an engine developer again.
by bcrosby95 on 9/12/23, 4:11 PM
We're kinda busy right now so we're paying the fee, but buying a mac mini for builds is definitely on our TODO list now, and once there's some slack in our schedule that will be done.
We've also wasted weeks of time debugging bugs in their cloud system in the past, some of which were mysteriously fixed and they had no clue why. So I'm not even sure we've saved much time over just having our own in house build server.
by cheeseomlit on 9/12/23, 2:09 PM
by dindobre on 9/12/23, 5:15 PM
And what about the install fees? Let's say my studio fails but people keep installing because of piracy or any arbitrary reason, am I going to get charged for the remaining of my life? It's just a shocking move
by moogly on 9/12/23, 10:27 PM
"I got some clarifications from Unity regarding their plan to charge developers per game install (after clearing thresholds)
- If a player deletes a game and re-installs it, that's 2 installs, 2 charges
- Same if they install on 2 devices
- Charity games/bundles exempted from fees"
by pavlov on 9/12/23, 2:55 PM
The writing was on the wall then. These “pricing upgrades” today are designed to drive more adoption of Unity’s ad network. Popular free games will have to start showing ads via Unity to pay for the new runtime distribution fee.
by ponytech on 9/12/23, 4:50 PM
by KMnO4 on 9/12/23, 2:15 PM
So if you made $200k off of 1M installs, you’ll now pay $200k and your total profit will be zero.
I guess the assumption is that each install will earn you >>$0.20, but that’s a very generous assumption. What about a F2P game that has millions of installs but only a fraction support the game with microtransactions?
There’s definitely going to be some cases where studios will owe more money to Unity than their game makes.
by Borealid on 9/12/23, 2:24 PM
That's a change from the past, and the FAQ doesn't provide a reason why. My guess would be analytics over licensing, but who knows really.
by bnewton149 on 9/12/23, 2:40 PM
After taking some time to mourn I plan on looking into Godot. I expect to take a big productivity hit but at least I won’t be continuing to invest my time into working on a platform that is so anti-dev.
by Aeglen on 9/12/23, 2:32 PM
by peteforde on 9/12/23, 9:17 PM
In my case, this would be the final straw after years of baffling tech reorgs and broken promises, but I have such a massive sunk cost investment in Unity store assets that I am effectively locked in.
All of that said, I would put serious money on this getting at least partially rolled back in the next few days. The blowback is going to be big enough that the investors might tell the MBAs to stop sacrificing their long-term profits for short-term gains.
by blincoln on 9/13/23, 3:40 PM
Imagine Sony suddenly trying to impose a per-playback fee on all existing and future factory-produced Blu Ray discs.
Imagine Lockheed spending 5-10 years developing a jet fighter, then a year before it's finished, TI tells them that there will be a monthly usage fee for every TI chip used in the aircraft.
Imagine a retailer spending hundreds of millions of dollars to roll out a new Fujitsu point-of-sale platform, then a year later Fujitsu says they're updating the license terms to require a flat fee for every customer transaction. Or worse, imagine that the Fujitsu platform runs on Windows, and Microsoft tells the retailer that the Windows licensing terms have been updated to require a per-transaction fee for every Windows device that has point-of-sale software installed.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm completely failing to see why any business would continue to use a product that requires a long-term commitment when the vendor has acted this way.
Is it a last-ditch cash grab to appease Unity investors? i.e. do they know that it will kill their platform, but they're hoping the tail end of Unity-based games[1] will generate enough licensing fees to recoup some of the investment money?
[1] i.e. games already released, but still for sale, as well as games still in development but too far along to switch to another engine.
by tezza on 9/12/23, 4:43 PM
* Do WebGL plays count?
* This could bankrupt indies if too many people click the WebGL games
* What Unity Version is this effective from?
* Will games made on prior versions of the editor be affected?
by sammyoos on 9/12/23, 7:46 PM
by matt3210 on 9/12/23, 3:13 PM
by ddxv on 9/12/23, 2:16 PM
This was not clear to me at first based on their table which currently shows 1-1000 installs as falling into the $0.20, but it's in fact actually the installs AFTER passing the threshold I believe. So assuming it was installs, it would be install 200,001 - 201,000 that would be charged $0.20?
by Cloudef on 9/13/23, 1:33 AM
>An install is defined as the installation and initialization of a project on an end user’s device.
Lmao, so if someone pirates your game the developer has to pay for it?
by jay_kyburz on 9/12/23, 8:40 PM
We had over X million downloads of Void Bastards.
I wonder how many people are scrambling to pull the game out of Gamepass right now :)
Update: I updated my comment to hide the install numbers in case there was some rule that prevents developers sharing those numbers.
by bilekas on 9/12/23, 4:28 PM
I'm sorry but maybe I'm missing something obvious.. Why are they making this seem preferable to developers? Also what does the runtime being installed have anything to do with the cost to Unity? This is mind blowing, i have to missing something.
by matt3210 on 9/12/23, 2:26 PM
Watch your games get auto removed after the developer goes out of business or doesn’t pay RENT
by starburst on 9/12/23, 2:16 PM
by matt3210 on 9/12/23, 2:41 PM
I wonder if this entire fee will be passed directly to the customer
by vnorilo on 9/12/23, 6:55 PM
I think it's a play to force f2p games to use their ad mediator as the install fee will effectively raise the cost-per-install for anyone using competing ad networks.
Vampire squids doing vampire squid things. I'd expect them to get sued, and at least in the EU it seems likely to be difficult to defend.
by Zuiii on 9/12/23, 5:35 PM
by appstorelottery on 9/12/23, 4:44 PM
These days I'm doing WebGL and ThreeJS is not fun either with upgrades, depreciated functions.
The whole ecosystem is a mess these days. I need to shave my beard.
by raytopia on 9/12/23, 3:15 PM
Also this seems to be targeting the mobile market more than other markets because of how large install bases are on that platform. 100M+ users for each popular mobile game * 0.01-0.02 = a lot of money for Unity.
by m-p-3 on 9/12/23, 9:33 PM
I suspect this will significantly impact the Xbox GamePass lineup soon once it takes effect.
Also, imagine that pirated copies or even multiple installs by the same users counts into hitting that threshold. I could see a malicious competitor pushing a lot of installs to hit someone else bottom-line and sink them financially with a minimum of risk for them.
That new policy need to go back to the drawing board ASAP.
by consoomer on 9/12/23, 4:25 PM
With that being said, I have never had the desire to use it (or any other engine). Perhaps I'm a minority here, but I dislike engines and I dislike the idea of "building my own engine."
I think you should set out to make the game. You begin by creating a window. Then you draw some pixels or render a texture. You add events and controls. You make the game logic and states. Then you have a game. It can take as little as a hundred lines of code to have a basic game up and running.
From there, you make the thing you want to create. No more, no less.
by pixelbyindex on 9/12/23, 10:42 PM
"How will Unity track installs?"
> We leverage our own proprietary data model, so you can appreciate that we won't go into a lot of detail, but we believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project.[1]
by matt3210 on 9/12/23, 2:56 PM
by CaliforniaKarl on 9/12/23, 7:44 PM
You are likely already paying a recurring cost to Unity, as per https://unity.com/pricing: Excluding the free Student & Personal tiers, the starting list price is $2,040 per year per user (for Unity Pro), going up to $4,950 per year per user for the top tier (Unity Industry).
So, this is a new charge, which becomes active when the following conditions are met for a particular game:
• # of installs, over the life of the game, passes 200k (Personal) or 1MM (Pro/Enterprise). • Revenue, over the last 12 months, passes $200k (Personal) or 1MM (Pro/Enterprise).
Once both of those thresholds have been met, then you get charged a flat fee per install over the threshold. So, if you meet the Revenue amount, and you've had 200k/1MM installs, your next install requires you to pay a fee to Unity.
This is all covered in the table at https://unity.com/sites/default/files/2023-09/NewFeeTable.pn...
For games that are not being distributed through a channel (Steam, GoG, console/app store, etc.), this is going to be really annoying to track and report on. This is also going to be annoying for games that are distributed through multiple channels. Unity's probably going to get into the auditing game at some point; à la Microsoft, Oracle, etc.
by garganzol on 9/12/23, 5:36 PM
Innovation requires talent, efforts and pain - and that's a scarcity, especially in the aging company which prefers an illusionary comfort to the true freedom.
by yalok on 9/12/23, 6:34 PM
My app is totally free, done as a charity/side project for disadvantaged kids.
I've been paying for their Plus plan - $35 a month. Now it will have to be $185 a month, or my app would have to have Unity splash screen...
Very sad.
Would have to figure out another engine to move to, preferably that has good native Web support as well. Any recommendations?
by madsbuch on 9/12/23, 2:15 PM
by Ekaros on 9/12/23, 2:26 PM
by stephc_int13 on 9/12/23, 3:29 PM
Per install fixed cost is a good way to avoid the race to the bottom and then the F2P nightmare that still plague the mobile gaming market.
Before Apple invented the $.99 pricing tier, most mobile games were sold for $7-$20 and it was, IMO, a much better market.
by wpietri on 9/12/23, 2:12 PM
https://unity.com/products/unity-pro
So I see $2040 per year per seat for Unity Pro. That doesn't quite explain why the per-install costs decline with volume for Pro/Enterprise licensees, but I suspect that's just that the Pro/Enterprise are more sophisticated and have better negotiating power.
by Animats on 9/12/23, 7:30 PM
So your game is dependent on their servers, and they can kill your game?
by berkle4455 on 9/12/23, 2:11 PM
by superchroma on 9/12/23, 11:35 PM
by damsta on 9/12/23, 2:29 PM
by 3seashells on 9/13/23, 5:20 AM
by matt3210 on 9/12/23, 2:31 PM
by gambiting on 9/12/23, 2:30 PM
by ponytech on 9/12/23, 4:12 PM
by Jigsy on 9/12/23, 11:45 PM
by hanniabu on 9/12/23, 5:29 PM
by gsuuon on 9/12/23, 6:07 PM
by tiptup300 on 9/12/23, 2:37 PM
There's MonoGame, but man, it's really a mess, they're still using Microsoft.XNA.Game;
And I always have a hell of a time getting it hooked into Visual Studio.
Recently started a C# project that renders using DirectX onto Windows SDK window.
Hopefully I can continue along with that.
by ravivyas on 9/12/23, 6:32 PM
Mobile games are already a risky business with success hard to come by. Marketing costs for games has already gone up due to due to ATT.
They are doing the classic chase current revenue while destroying future revenue thing
by binarynate on 9/12/23, 4:11 PM
- the per-install fee doesn't kick in until you've passed BOTH the annual game revenue and install thresholds (i.e. >$200k annual revenue on the game and >200k lifetime unique downloads)
- the fee isn't monthly, it's per unique download (poor wording in Unity's chart)
- you only pay the fee on the number of downloads over the threshold
This new pricing will actually decrease the price of using Unity for many developers. Before, if your company's total annual revenue was >$100k, you had to buy a paid Unity license no matter what. Now those company's can use Unity totally free until their game reaches $200k annual revenue and 200k lifetime downloads.
This licensing scheme is actually very similar to licensing the AVC/H.264 video codec from Via LA (for example, if you want to ship a build of Chromium with MP4 enabled). In their case, licensees self report the number of units they've distributed per year and pay a small fee on the number of units over 100k. If you ship under 100k units, there is no fee.
by readyplayernull on 9/12/23, 5:10 PM
Last time I checked their storage limit was around 40GB, that's too little unless you are making 2D casual games. I'm making a 3D shooter that takes 300GB+.
by tekronis on 9/12/23, 6:24 PM
by wly_cdgr on 9/13/23, 5:12 AM
by gavanwilhite on 9/12/23, 5:00 PM
by gsuuon on 9/13/23, 7:08 PM
by RobKohr on 9/16/23, 12:11 AM
by phendrenad2 on 9/13/23, 12:54 AM
by matt3210 on 9/12/23, 3:16 PM
by dschuetz on 9/13/23, 12:44 PM
by jschveibinz on 9/13/23, 2:47 AM
by manicennui on 9/13/23, 5:35 PM
"We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user."
"Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee:
Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs."
by eljimmy on 9/12/23, 2:14 PM
by teruakohatu on 9/12/23, 7:31 PM
by MassiveBonk51 on 9/12/23, 5:36 PM
by droptablemain on 9/12/23, 4:03 PM
by LarsDu88 on 9/12/23, 9:39 PM
If you're an indie studio making small 2d or basic 3d games, you will use Godot If you're a big studio looking for AAA graphics capability you will use Unreal.
There is no other reason to use Unity other than legacy asset store purchases and existing project maintainence.
In 2-3 years those legacy projects will wrap up and Unity will be dead in the water as a company, mark my words.
by Geste on 9/13/23, 12:47 AM
by Explore3003 on 9/12/23, 3:13 PM
by ambyra on 9/12/23, 4:39 PM
by stolen_biscuit on 9/13/23, 1:24 AM
by no_wizard on 9/12/23, 2:12 PM
EDIT: The more I read the FAQ, the more I think this is a bad deal
by thrillgore on 9/12/23, 11:36 PM
by everyone on 9/12/23, 9:56 PM
by jakobson14 on 9/12/23, 8:05 PM
by daft_pink on 9/12/23, 10:06 PM
by mixedCase on 9/13/23, 12:55 AM
by herbst on 9/13/23, 7:49 AM
To many low quality unity games out there.
by sovietmudkipz on 9/12/23, 6:56 PM
by Takennickname on 9/12/23, 6:32 PM
by lowbloodsugar on 9/12/23, 5:50 PM
by codingcodingboy on 9/12/23, 2:11 PM
by nullifidian on 9/12/23, 2:35 PM
This reads as something insane. If a player replays a game on steam, redownloads it, the developer still pays for the installation? I know people who redownload games all the time, like tens of times over the span of several years. I hope it's imprecise language and only the initial install/download is counted.
I hope these changes (whatever they actually are) won't push game developers towards developing games that milk users more, with loot boxes, in-game currency, cosmetics etc, and away from stand alone you-pay-once games, single player or multiplayer, only to be able to pay for the ongoing engine fees.
by kmeisthax on 9/12/23, 2:07 PM
Also, this continues my pet peeve of disguising bad news with neutral headlines. If they had made anything cheaper they would have put it in the headline. "Updates" means "price increases".
by NotGMan on 9/12/23, 2:45 PM
Unity right now is only massively used by 1) Indies 2) Mobile game studios
They just made sure that all of those will switch tech.
Unreal Engine has a much better license because it says that "it's not retroactively changable": so if you eg stay at Unreal 5.2 forever no new epic changes to the license will apply to you since the 5.2 license applies to you forever.
RIP unity.
Even if unity reverts this (which IMO they will due to backlash) all new mobile studio game devs will move to some other engine.
by jsharpe on 9/12/23, 2:21 PM
by GenericDev on 9/12/23, 5:40 PM
I don't know what to do. I have a huge sunk-cost fallacy here.
I guess I'm going to ship it and pray, and then never use Unity again.
Jesus christ, what were they thinking?
Fuck Unity.
by faefox on 9/12/23, 3:55 PM
by tomnipotent on 9/12/23, 3:18 PM
Let's look at fictional scenario for Vampire Survivors, and model 5M units sold in the first 12 months at $4.99 per sale. We'll also assume a Unity Enterprise plan.
Units Sold: 5,000,000
Gross Sales: $24,950,000
Steam Fees:
$0-10M (30%): $3,000,000
$10M+ (25%): $3,737,500
Total: $6,737,500
Unity Fees:
0-100,000: $12,500
100-500k: $24,000
500k-1MM: $10,000
1MM-4MM: $30,000
Total: $76,500
Net Sales: $18,136,000
So in this fictional scenario, the Unity fee is 0.3% of gross or 0.47% after Steam takes its cut.
Even if we assume the average consumer downloads the game 1.2 times, that's still only $20k more. The bigger issue is how thresholds accrue, since that could push more installs into costlier lower threshold brackets.
I'm not sure I see the outrage.