Jumping into Unity for the first time for profesional use has landed me with a few questions regarding monetization. Specifically regarding the Revenue Cap.
Having never released a game with Unity before I was first shocked to discover the revenue cap, as other engines don’t present this. I wanted to know how is it that this exactly functions.
If my game exceeds 100k a year will my revenue be cut off until I upgrade? Is it only applicable to existing companies, i.e. if I currently have a $ 0.00 net yearly revenue as a game developer do I get affected by this policy? What happens if my game has a popularity surge just like Flappy Birds and I only own a personal account, will it be taken down?
I’ll be thankful to anyone who can answer my inquiries,
Alejandro Planas
The revenue cap does not control the amount of revenue you get. The revenue cap simply limits how much money you can make before you have to buy the Plus or Pro version of Unity. If you make more than the revenue cap, then you need to pay for the software.
Thanks! Then I think I might go with Unity for this project!
Sure, I guess that’s how it works, but I imagine I will use the software in the future as well. So… I was just concerned with the state of my first Unity game.
I also wonder how they do it. But oh well… I just hope Unity 2017 makes as many improvements as 5 did from 4!
Yes, but there are engines that charge you a royalty on all money made with a game regardless of whether you’re continuing to use the engine for future projects or not. If you made the next Flappy Bird in Unity you could totally stop using Unity and you’d never have to pay again. That’s all my point was.
At the very least Unity knows who has which license. Additionally both the engine and the editor have analytics and report usage statistics back to Unity. You can see this mentioned in the Terms of Service under Consent to Data Collection.
Mostly they don’t. It’s up to devs to purchase the correct lisence for their own use case.
In the lisence agreement they have a right to audit your finances and systems if they believe you are cheating. And I suppose that happens occasionally. But it’s never made the news, so it’s not that big a deal.
Plus you’ve got the splash screen on Personal. If a game shows up on a bestseller list with the personal splash screen, Unity will ask questions.
They got a pretty bad business model than if that was true.
More large studios use unity then you think, and this is 100k gross revenue not net revenue. So pretty much any indie that has enough money to pay staff salaries is above the cap for persnal and is likely on plus or pro.
It’s a honor system for the most part, but unity does maintain the right to audit if they are suspecious.
For being a honor system it works, when it comes to the funding and investors, people just see liscenses as a cost of doing business. Than I find most developers see the value and work that goes into stuff like unity and will not rip it off.
I’m working on product configurator for my client.
If during a year my client will pay me 1000 dollars for making this product configurator, but then uses it as “online product configurator” in his own company website to attract new clients and make benefits from it - does his benefits counts as “revenue capacity” ?
Not exactly. But if they are a large company, and the are using they use the editor they will have to have pro. If you are just delivering a compiled product, then no.
One more question, sorry!
if suppose I’m a large company and my revenue in one year is few million dollars, but I download the unity engine and do not make profit from it - am I also obliged to pay for pro version? or only after I start to make money from UNITY product?
Yes. Both commercial and non-commercial entities that have revenue or budgets in excess of $100,000 cannot use Unity Personal and in excess of $200,000 cannot use Unity Plus. Whether from Unity or not is irrelevant for them.
If my Steam game is $5 and 20,000 people buy it, does it count as going over budget, or does it not count because the money is made off Steam, or does it only count if you use Unity ads. I’m making an ad-free game, but I’m worried because it’ll cost $5.