A message to our community: Unity is canceling the Runtime Fee

News & General Discussion
275

Perhaps I was not clear. They do not.

Improving visuals is a constant thing in games industry. It’s not related to Unreal.

At some point a couple versions back they tried to match certain aspects, and that the wrong ones, but I do not see that happening anymore. I think the biggest wakeup call and all the anger that was penned up because of that broke out with the “fees” scandal.

The biggest mistake Unity did was, and I am not yet convinced this is not the case anymore, that instead of wanting their product to mature and become rock solid, they wanted to add new but ultimate unfinished bullet points on a piece of paper, to appear they were doing many new things in every quarter, in order to satisfy the investors.

And when these ran out, and the community was not happy that they haphazardly half-did things for 2-3 versions, they came up with the idea of the fees, which they probably thought since most people are not going to be affected, they would not care, but the whole thing burst out.

“Unity 6” is not about trying to match Unreal in the naming convention if you thought that.

But to signal the departure from the previous versions’ paradigm (the nonsense started with Unity 2019), and back to the good ole focused paradigm of version 5 which was undoubtedly the version that convinced many people Unity was worth taking for a spin for something more than mobile games. That is what got many of us experienced games industry people in it.

I actually dumped Unreal to get into Unity back then.
Demos such as The Blacksmith, and later Adam convinced us that Unity visuals were powerful enough to bother. But we already had seen that or better. It was just a sign that Unity can. That is not what got most of us hooked.

I loved the simple, free, truly artist friendly, and fast pipeline. That is what got me in it. Away from the rigid nonsense of Unreal that you could not even have a space between letters in the name of your asset. Or CryEngine.

Seeing Unity trying to match that outdated UX paradigm of Unreal with tools that are unfocused and inefficient workflows, was really scary and frustrating. For people like me it felt that they were going backwards.

So yeah, that is what “Unity 6” is about. Going back to Unity’s best time.

But as I said, I am not 100% convinced yet. They got me for a little longer until I see what they mean by “simplicity” in version 7. I was honestly that close to jump back to Unreal. Unity 6 held me back.

It’s a great new beginning.

Fingers crossed.

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276

you need to wait for the release of unity 6 (now is in beta) to verify the license it will have. there is no answer to your question because the license is not available yet.

as a trivia thing;

they have promised the new license one year ago, when we were talking about releasing unity 2023, it was planned at the start of this year. it was the license with the fees, user tracking for unity to check that developer reported numbers were correct, that stuff.

then they have decided to scrap unity 2023 and rename it unity 6, but because the next release got back to being an early alpha then beta, the new license was pushed again.

this got them more time to see what is going on.

it is going on that things are going downhill, 40k views on youtube for the video about the new unity features, while the unreal similar video sits at 1.8 millions (its an older video but usually the big chunk of views come up in the first 48 hours)

so back to your question, you need to wait for the license

277

No and Yes.

I do not think anyone has seen the new ToS, so how do you know they include that term?

2021 LTS, 2022 LTS are under the old terms.

2023.2/“6 Preview” are under the new ToS.

While you would expect that since they announced the fees would be no more from November on, that going forward, they would also retroactively update the terms of those versions that stipulated such fees, many companies find it more complex legally to update already agreed terms than applying them to a new version. This also helps that new version become more popular.

While Unity will probably update even these terms with backward effect, as far as I know, nobody has clearly stated that. So you can’t be sure.

In any case, I think all you need to do for the new terms without fees to apply, is upgrade your project to the new version when it comes out. They say the new terms will apply from November so I suspect the official release of version 6 will happen in November too.

278

Somewhere in these comments is an interesting conundrum. Unity devs are looking for ways how to not show the Unity splash screen, on the Epic side they show the Unreal Engine splash screen as a badge of power and see it as a marketing bullet point. Interesting to me in the different thinking of the user audience and maybe worth dissecting for Unity.

279

Unity used to force the splash to be present in all asset flip games, thus encouraging higher tier devs to want to hide the logo in their games (so they wouldn’t be associated with asset flips), further exacerbating and solidifying the impression that Unity is garbage. If I ran a game engine company, I would have wanted to opposite - discouraging asset flips from even being allowed to display the logo, while encouraging promising projects to proudly show it. But hey, each to their own.

280

Back in the day 2003–2013 time frame, you had many unknown engines trying to promote themselves through splash screens. Unity was just another one of those engines. The splash screen stuck around long after Unity had become a household name.

By 2013 the Unity splash screen was already associated with poor-quality games.

Unreal was never in the same situation because it debuted in 1998 as a successful challenger to Quake. Unreal debuted as a game, not an engine, and was a household name overnight.

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281

Seems like the Unity guys were so focused on making cool tech and providing a service worth paying for that they just got outmatched by larger companies that had more resources in developing revenue streams, locking in their monopolies. They got burned for not being money minded enough, and that’s commendable. They stayed true to their purpose, to “Democratize” gamedev, not clasp it with an iron fist.

The way most view Unity goes to show that in this modern era of algorithms and social media, it’s a lot easier to buy a reputation than to earn it.

It’s sad, while companies like Valve made huge chunks of money and were then able to invest huge amounts of that into viral marketing to get the entire industry to worship them as they sucked up 30% of the profits from all developers, Unity was sitting around working their bums off on tech that actually provides better games and enriches the experience of both the developers and the game players.

This whole situation is so murky and convoluted, to say nothing of how Unity today largely isn’t the same company it was 6 years ago! So how much of this discussion is even relevant? We have no idea, but it certainly makes these discussions interesting.

We can harp on the past all day long, but I’m truly dumbfounded by how quickly they’ve seemingly turned things around.

I was worried everyone at Unity that cared about making a great game engine was gone, but what we saw at Unite and the fantastic progress we’re seeing in Animation, Terrain, and elsewhere doesn’t happen if that’s true.

282

My main desire for removal of the splash screen is to get to the game quicker. I’m not even a fan of having a start menu - just dump the player into the game, either at tutorial step 1 or continue where they left off, and press escape if they want to fiddle with an options menu.

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283

Splash screens don’t generally increase load times. They just put up a static image where there would have been nothing but a black screen. Loading still continues.

284

You know a lot of smaller games don’t have considerable load times at all, right?

285

There’s only so small a game can get, if you’re using the Unity engine. You still have to load all that.

But I am interested if you have some measurements showing that turning the splash screen on/off (using a version that allows that) shows significantly different timings between launch-to-start.

286

Many authors are saying that lost trust cannot be easily restored just because runtime fees are cancelled,

rather due to the malicious behavior shown earlier that surprised users.

This impact is very serious.

Therefore, it (runtime fee) should not be cancelled, but should be prohibited from appearing. Never test the customer’s bottom line.

287

You should continue to use the Plus version on the old version, and the Unity6 version can be completely eliminated, which is the most perfect solution

English is not my native language, which may be expressed incorrectly. What I mean is:
You must restore the Plus version so that old version customers (2018-2023) can continue to subscribe to it to remove the Unity startup screen.
Unity6 version can cancel this subscription and merge the removed features into the personal version.
Since you can cancel the runtime fee, reviving the Plus version is not impossible.

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288

Plus was discontinued, how would you keep using it if its not valid any more

289

It’s nearly instant on most modern platforms. Unity’s splash screen adds a couple of seconds.

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291

If you want to know that badly you can just inspect the file structure.

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292

And…?

I simply DON’T WANT ANY OF THAT! It’s a design choice. Get into the game right away, don’t faff about. Time spent not gaming is time lost!

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293

I presume that is a request/suggestion to unity not something you can do. he said he doesn’t know english enough to write confidently.

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294

I think we should give old customers a choice so that they can stay happily in the old version, because not everyone likes Unity6. For example, I don’t like features like UE, and I hope it’s not that heavy. The 2020 version can meet my current needs, so I don’t need to transfer to the latest version,
But canceling the startup screen requires subscribing to Pro, which is a terrible option because it requires a high cost to complete. This makes it seem like if I want to cancel it, I have to choose the personal version of Unity6, which is not what our old customers are willing to do. I suggest keeping the Plus version, so that they can pay an annual fee of $400-500 to cancel this. Meanwhile, Unity can also continue to receive subscription fees from old customers, which is a mutually beneficial option for both parties.

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295

They have removed the screen now i think in Unity 6. Or something changed in the latest announcements ?