I’ve just recently gotten into freelance coding. And its raising some interesting situations with respect to assets from the store and managing licenses. I’m curious about how other people are managing this.
For most of my projects the client wants source. This means that we need two copies of each asset used, one for my computer and one for theirs. I’m okay with this and have no issue with actually paying for two copies of the asset. The challenge is more on the administrative side. Typically clients are getting me to do the development work because they don’t want to. They have other things to do. This makes asking them to go on the asset store and download everything that ends up in the project a pain. As far as they are concerned managing licences is what they pay me to do.
The other issue I’m seeing is receiving partly completed projects from clients. As I understand it I will need to purchase my own copies of the asset store assets to be in compliance with the licence agreements. Is there a way that I can verify what assets that are part of the project originated from the asset store?
So anyone got any thoughts on this? Its mostly theoretical at the moment, but I’m interested in making sure I get it right as I take on new projects. Some of the assets are pretty amazing, and I want to make sure the content creators are getting properly reimbursed.
There was some discussion about this last year in the Asset Store forum. The direction we got was:
If it’s a per-seat license (as with editor extensions), every seat needs a license. As a freelancer, you have a separate seat for each client. Just buy the license with your own account and include it in your cost to the client. Make sure the client buys their own, too*. If you’re working for 5 clients, you need to buy 5 seat licenses for yourself. Advise the client not to go buying unnecessary editor extensions, as this will obligate you to buy a seat, too.
If it’s a standard license, each client needs a license, but that license applies for all seats, including yours while you’re working on that client’s work. The client buys the license*. If the client has already bought a standard license before hiring you, you don’t need to buy another license while you’re doing work for that client. Since the license is in the client’s account, you don’t need to buy multiple licenses yourself (and in fact you can’t with standard licenses).
It’s easiest if the client is willing to take care of these purchases. But it’s perfectly reasonable for the client to ask you to take care of everything. You could use their account or set up an account specifically for them that you then hand over at the completion of the project.
I can’t think of any way to verify which assets came from the Asset Store except asking the client.
I’ve done this in the past by making a new Unity account just for purchases for that client. Anything purchased for them gets purchased via that account, only stuff in that account gets imported into their project, and at the end of the project that account gets handed over along with the project source. This is partly for a clean handover, and partly because I don’t want to accidentally get licenses purchased for different things mixed up with one another.
This doesn’t sit right with me. Why would I maintain a seperate seat for each client? My business would own one seat, and use that across all clients. If I hired a second employee, then I would need a second seat.
Flip that around. As a freelancer, anyone who wants you to use software they’re licensing by the seat needs to supply you a seat.
Though in principle I’d agree that if you already have a seat then I can’t see why they’d have to also provide you with one. I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s how it works if you’re a graphic designer or whatever. The people who hire you don’t also have to buy you a Photoshop license, you’re expected to already have one.
My experience (admittedly in a completely unrelated industry), contractors and vendors are basically expected to take care of their own stuff, like licencing etc. The only time you would expect to see a line item for licence fees is if you were asking them to do a one off, basically moving their business in a direction they had elected not to support. In general vendors would pay licence fees out of whatever we paid them.
The way I was thinking of it was that I wouldn’t buy a new licence for every new personal project I started. I’d quickly run out of cash the way I run through my own projects.
That works too. I was thinking if the client bought a seat for you (i.e., if you charged the client for the seat license), then the seat license would technically belong to the client, not to you. Licenses are tied to the purchasing entity. For your personal projects, you’re the purchasing entity, so your single seat license applies to all of them.
Okay, that’s a relief, I was worried I’d missed something in the licence terms. My general thought is to charge the client directly for any seats they want to use, and then pay for seats I need out of my revenue. That way I can start building up my library of extensions.