hey everyone,
HAS UNITY PAID OFF FOR YOU YET? AND HOW MUCH?
Some people would like to stay anonymous so I created a poll, and those who don’t mind announcing the answer then just post it. I apologize for the unbalanced numbers I can only put up to 10 answers
THIS POLL IS NOT PUBLIC
I haven’t made any money off of Unity yet (mainly because I haven’t monetized anything yet). I wouldn’t say it wasn’t worth my investment, though; Unity is worth every penny I’ve spent on it. It has been a great learning and prototyping tool. I am working on a salable project right now, but not to make back the investment in Unity. I bought it back when there was Unity Indie and also bought an iOS license. All worth it.
I mean 10k really doesnt tell you very much because its not really that much money.
I’ve seen a few post like this from you, how about you just hire locally , or fly out to meet some of these people, if your talking about paying thousands of dollars out this would make sense . A con-artist likes to hide if don’t allow this you wont get scammed .
Yet when I started a thread saying it was a bad idea to pay out large sums of money to folks you can’t meet in person , I got flamed .
Kind of a broad statement. It seems that many people are doing just fine and making money using Unity. Sorry you’ve had bad experiences (I have too), but that’s quite the jump to saying Unity is a “total waste of money”.
I suspect this overall attitude doesn’t help your situation…
@eskimojoe Sounds like you have a PEBKAC problem.
The question was “Has Unity paid off for you?” so I doubt the answer is intended to be taken as broad as the phrasing suggests.
EDIT: Oh, and BTW to the original poster: I hope you’re not going to use this as the basis for any life decisions because I strongly suspect you’re going to get a lot of dishonest answers.
I don’t think “Owning Unity” and “Making Money” are two things that should necessarily be related. Unity is just a tool. It’s what YOU create that has the potential to make/not make money.
Isn’t there an expression along the lines of “It’s a poor tradesman that blames his tools”?
This year I’ve been negative about Unity. Honestly I feel like we are working with Apple… Big company in the field, no competition so they can pretty much do whatever the F they want.
The business proposal and many other topics the community comes up with is totally ignored… Sure maybe some of the mods here might like the idea, but that’s as far as it goes.
I have to pay an additional $1,500 on top of the $1,500 to actually make any money, and that’s the case for almost everyone here that develops for Mobile (which is probably the only realistic and safe place for indies to go) those who are currently doing well I implore you to ignore the topic because you cannot relate anymore.
I didn’t make this post to talk about this but since we are on the topic I’d like to point out a couple of things
I don’t think anyone said anything about the engine friend.
Just to show the other side of this. I don’t have Unity Pro (yet), but over the past few years, have made a significant amount of money (for myself and developers I’ve worked with). Its on again, off again, with no consistent money, but there are a lot of factors involved in that; none of which have anything to do with Unity.
Also, Unity has plenty of competition on the market, and you can’t expect them to change their proven, successful business model because you don’t like it.
And yes, the quote “A poor tradesman blames his tools” is very accurate here. Unless, of course, you’re claiming that myself and the other developers who have made money are just so incredibly skilled that we can turn a profit, despite Unity always holding us back. I won’t argue with you if that’s your claim 
Saying its a “total waste of money”?
I don’t understand what you mean. You’re talking about whether or not Unity has “paid off” or been a “total waste of money”. I’m saying that Unity is not a money-making “thing”. What you create with it (potentially) is.
Hey hey hey… The engine is great… For indie developers it doesn’t have any real 1:1 competition(please drop it already…) I didn’t buy pro and then decided I didn’t like it… I’ve used Unity for many years, like i said this year I’ve been pretty disappointed with a few things related to the engine and whatnot. Your right when you said they wont change just because I don’t like it … I did say that!
I agree that the engine has nothing to do with it, this little off topic post has nothing to do with the main poll. It was a question I’m sure you wanted an answer to aswell
With everything said, I would of paid them $1,500 for the experience alone, I can lie about it but my passion for unity is stronger then my rage against the politics of it.
You could download Unity Free and make $1500 selling assets fairly easily. Probably take you 3 or 4 months if you did it part-time but it isn’t hard (assuming you have some decent skills). Use that money to buy Unity Pro.
Great choice of quote.
That’s a good idea.
I use unity as prototyping tool and for research for my own mobile game engine, so unity hasn’t directly made me any money :p. On a serious note, posts like this are the reason it will be free when my team finishes it.
^This^
And that goes for every creation software.
As for me. I’ve made quite a bit through asset store sales and some Unity related jobs. But it’s not my main income yet.
Very true.
I switched over to Unity from Director about 2.5 years ago and it very quickly became my primary development IDE and its has paid back its investment many times over. In fact I wish I’d switched earlier, but after more than a decade of using and learning Director inside out I was too cautious to make the jump and was convinced that Adobe would make good on their word to improve it.
Perhaps i’m just lucky, having gotten into multi-media over 15 years ago I was able to transfer most of my clients from Director to Unity so I wasn’t starting from no where with no potential business contracts. However I had to build those relationships in the first place and though it was ‘early’ in multi-media, there was and still is alot of competition.
I’m always surprised how game or asset focused people are on the forums, as though that’s all Unity is good for. I suspect there are many users like myself who use it to develop multi-media projects and make a good living off it. For example I just finished a browser based 3D trophy designer for the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering ( forum post here ). Granted it could have been done in Director, but it wouldn’t have ended up looking anywhere near as nice. I wish UT would actually give a little more focus to developers like myself, since as good as Unity is, it falls short in many areas that traditional multi-media devs need (e.g. video ).
In the end Unity is just a tool, its up to yourself to find a means of generating income from it. Simply buying Unity Pro isn’t going to start making you money, you need to invest a great deal of time to learn and develop revenue streams for it. Alternatively you don’t even need to make money off it, using it alone can be the only benefit you need. For example, I bought a drum kit a 18 months ago, it actually cost a little more than Unity, haven’t made a penny on it! Does that mean it was a bad investment, of course not
Huh? I can understand your frustration, but none of your reply has anything to do with Unity but with people you are working with, how does that make it a total waste of money?
A what? No Unity does not have monopol over engines market, not nearly close at all. There is quite healty balance between all big players on engines market comparing to Apple where they really are making the rules for everyone. And if anyone listens to wishes of little users especially on pricing side then i think Unity does the best job so far.
Still less than royaltie cutting on long term.
It has, but most people just prefer ease of use and Unity licensing over other engines.