After having used many other 3D engine, Unity comes as mesi.
I use the free version, but the acquisition of the license a Pro version is too expensive for me, with a one time payment
. And I would need only some part of the pro version
Is that in the future, it would be possible to buy only supplements, for example, add the shadow engine, motor or video playback to the free version ?
I think it could be very interresting for many people, even if ultimately the cost of buying all the options would be more expensive than buying a pro license once.
I doubt it because then they’d have to provide support for all kinds of different versions of Unity or convert a lot of code to be able to work as modules instead of integrated.
I think I read once before that they don’t plan on doing different kinds of payment methods or splitting things up (imagine the tech support for the latter).
Generally people are advised to save up, or watch for deals where it might be sold cheaper. Or with the asset store, you could always submit assets for others to buy, which depending on how talented you are (and if you’re going to be making games, you should either be an artist or a programmer) could earn you the money for the pro version in next to no time.
@Nicolas: pour l’intérêt commun je préfère écrire en anglais sur ce forum, sinon bienvenue!
As far as I can see, the buying options are already happening to some degree with the per-platform unlock features.
The idea is interesting; it would democratize the engine features even further. However it might quickly become an organisational nightmare. They probably chose to sell the features in a single pack to make it simpler (I know that personally I prefer the “one purchase, everything unlocked” option).
And then there is the Asset Store to extend things further.
From what I remember, the engine simply isn’t designed to separate the features that people want separated. The only major feature which is disabled is render to texture, and then shadows, all the post processing features, etc are all disabled automatically because they rely on render-to-texture.
Furthermore, I would imagine that the forums would be rife with just as many people whining about paying full price when all they wanted was shadows as there currently are people whining that they don’t want to pay full price when all they want is shadows. Besides, why should people who want everything be asked to pay more in order to fund people who don’t? Basic business sense say that those willing to pay more are better customers, so if anything, they’d be cutting their own throat supporting the wrong customers.
Bottom line, if you can’t make a good game without shadows, you can’t make a good game with shadows. If you can make a good game without shadows, then you’ll earn the $1,500 (or more, if you have to pay VAT) like the rest of us did.
How well could a subscription based pro version work? For a hobbyist, $1500 will always be too much for me.
$15 a month would take 8 years to pay it off.
$40 would take 3 years.
$130 would take 1 year.
But of course, what happens to the people who spent $1.5k on it, when regular people are using it for years at a time for something radically cheaper?
(People who buy it for one month to ship it would be excluded - these are the same people who do not care if they crack their version for pro)
Subscription would still be outside the range.
At a 2 year lifetime per major version, you would pay $750 - $1000 per year (you would pretty surely not have a way to get even lower) as subscription naturally is more expensive than 1 time fee due to the risk that you jump off after a year.
Subscription models don’t seek payback, but ongoing payments for supporting the technology, the same thing 18-24h months between major versions target towards as well
but don’t expect to ever see a subscription, all engines basing on this model went out of business as far as I’m aware, with the last one that was there being an XNA engine (Blade 3D was its name I think), a field where very little competition existed at the time.
Also with unity it would not work anyway as people are expected to get and use the up to date bugfixed version, a subscription explicitely cuts you from it. A nightmare for support if 3-5 versions are in use in parallel potentially (3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3)
Also it makes no sense. If you want to pay in parts, take your credit cards, they are for exactly this usage, pay in slices over time.
What you will not get is the possibility to “buy parts of it”, the option of modular feature sell out was clearly and pretty definitely denied already by UT staff.
Unity free already gets 70% of Pro at $0, so every single feature would cost 300-700 USD, all summed up defnitely would have to cost 150%-200% of what Pro at the time costs to work out due to the “sale income fragmentation”.
The problem with buying options is that a lot of Unity Pro features are interdependent. Case in point: all the graphical features.
Unity Pro allows render-to-texture, which in turns allows dynamic shadows, post-process effects, and other features like refraction. These effects are impossible without render-to-texture, so you couldn’t really just buy the “dynamic shadow” module.
Ok I don’t support the idea of doing this (and I agree, it’s practically impossible to implement), and as I said before, it would be a huge headache for support, different versions, chasing bugs and just no, not a good idea.
But I did come up with a fun way they could implement it. You get the full thing, all the bells and whistles, use them to your hearts content, except… only the parts you paid for get saved or included in any builds, lol.
I’ll say again, I do not support this idea.
I just thought this would be an amusing way it could be done.
Well…no, actually, the terrain system uses rendertextures for billboarding, and works with the free license obviously. It would be possible to have dynamic shadows but not expose general rendertexture functionality. It’s not really a technical issue, but rather from a license/marketing standpoint, UT in the past has said they would prefer to keep the options simple.
