Wanting to boost your productivity so you can focus your energy on the aspects of your project that inspire you the most? For a limited time only, new Unity Plus and Pro subscribers will receive an Essentials Pack for FREE ($150+ value), which includes the top-rated productivity tools and assets from the Asset Store. Choose from VR, Art & Design, 2D, or Mobile. These assets will help maximize your development time, get you closer to publishing, and save you a few headaches along the way.
I think the slightly more feature packed visual studio bundled with Unity might just offset that
As it’s basically free for new subbers or pro users, I think it’s a pretty amazing deal tbh and I’m usually grumpy and hateful of all things.
These are nice little incentives for people who are planning on making the jump to a paid version of Unity, but it’s really only for those who were just waiting for some kind of good deal before committing, right?
With an average undiscounted value of $166.50 for the listed assets, you’re paying that much in 4.75 months for a Plus subscription or 1.3 months of Unity Pro. So, essentially, this deal is kinda the same as “Subscribe now and get [4.75 | 1.3] months free!” except worse because there’s a good chance I don’t want / don’t need / already own / have to invest enough time learning the asset that I’m offsetting my monetary gain with time cost, that I’d rather just have the reduced price on the subscription.
Additionally, there’s the confusing message this sends. I’m admittedly a big fan of Unity and am a huge supporter of the Asset Store. But even I recognize the conflicting message your marketing team is sending with “Everything you need to develop great games!” and “Unity Essentials packs (sold separately!)”. It’s kinda one or the other, right?
Yes, I get that Unity includes the Asset Store, which has “everything you need”. But look at these essential packs:
Fingers Touch Gestures - Quickly create your project’s mobile touch controls
Fast Shadow Projector - Enhance the look and performance of your game
DoozyUI - Focus on gameplay, not UI code
DOTween Pro - Save tons of time on transitions and UI animations
2DDL Pro - Create high-quality lighting & shadows for a 2D environment
UBER Standard Shader Ultra - Beautify your scenes with AAA shaders
Final IK - Save days of work and headaches
Curved UI - Simplify the creation of your VR UI
Each one of these contains a message stating more or less “This thing is impossible or a real pain in the ass to do in Unity without this asset.”
Doesn’t that just invite the question “Why is it not included / enhanced / fixed in the engine, then?!”
I dunno… these kind of messages always catch my eye, but then I realize it’s like buying something I don’t need that’s normally $50, on sale for $20. I’m not saving $30, I’m still losing $20. But that could just be me, and maybe these marketing campaigns are really successful.
I would be willing to pay a monthly subscription of like $20 a month for Unity if they would just include all the massive features it’s missing. Their inclusion of Text Mesh Pro was long overdue, and Pro Tools should also be on that list.
To be clear, I love the Asset Store for content that I would never expect the engine to include by default (like models, sprite packs, etc), and for systems that are complex enough and suit a specific need that the benefit of adding them is outweighed by the cost of creating and maintaining them (voxel world creation kits, infinite runner frameworks, etc).
I agree with @boxhallowed in that acquiring and integrating Text Mesh Pro was a great and necessary move, and honestly I’d like to see much more of this for real essentials and what’s basically agreed to as Unity standards now. Why not acquire and integrate things like PlayMaker, Shader Forge, and Final IK and now be able to boast that your engine natively supports visual scripting, easy-to-craft AAA shaders, and top-of-the-line inverse kinematics?
I’d honestly be really curious to see the results from this campaign. I just can’t picture the developer who is in need of a Pro or Plus subscription that looks at these and says “Hey, I wanted to buy all 3-5 of those assets, too! I’m saving a load of dough!” I also can’t picture the casual/hobbyist developer (like me) who says “You know, I haven’t been able to justify the subscription price previously, but I’m suddenly on board with spending $1500/$420 per year since I get that one-time $166.50 value on those 3-5 assets I definitely wanted.”
If it’s not about converting unpaid customers to paid ones (and really, it has to be, right?) but instead about rewarding people who have to subscribe now because of their financial success, chances are they already have a collection of assets that work for them or their own suite of tools they’ve developed. Why not just give them $150 (or less, who cares?) worth of Asset Store credit to spend on whatever they want?
The idea of all this is nice, but it seems like a scheme cracked out by a marketing team who isn’t thinking about it from the perspective of real world game developers.
I got my response “Unfortunately, there was a technical issue with your Essential Pack vouchers that meant you and some others were unable to redeem them successfully. We have added your email to a whitelist and we are looking to get working vouchers sent out to you as soon as we can.”
