Dear Unity folk,
What are the chances of sometime down the line offering a subscription licence, whereby a monthly fee is paid to have access to the unity pro versions, rather than buying a licence in one hit? As soon as I stop paying the subscription, access is revoked.
Adobe started offering this with photoshop and their other products and at work we subscribe rather than buy an outright licence and we prefer this. Also it makes the pro versions more affordable to hobbyists.
Thanks
Mat
I don’t really see that as being a very good plan for Unity. Adobe products are all or nothing with the subscription. With Unity, people can use 99% of the engine for free then only pay for one month to integrate the pro features (maybe a few months, depending on what you are using). Photoshop doesn’t revert to a “lite” version if you don’t pay your subscription.
I was about to point out that you’d get a swarm of people who’d just subscribe, export their game and unsubscibe, but it seems zombiegorrila beat me to the punch.
Yeah, I see this as an issue, too. I could buy a one month subscription for one person and upgrade my game to use Pro features, and then I have a game that was essentially made in Pro and Unity have only income for one month, despite the development actually being a year and a half (a few hours a week, but still) in the making.
With Photoshop you’re subscribing to use a tool. With Unity you’re not just getting a tool, you’re getting a perpetual license to use and distribute the engine runtime for your own stuff for commercial gain.
I see your points, I was looking at it from my own perspective and what would work for me as a hobbyist 
Their new license system already supports time-limited non-trial subscriptions.
From their last survey it seems like they’re leaning towards having a minimum of 6 months a subscription, so 1 month subs are not possible. I don’t think they’ve actually decided if they will offer subs yet though.
There are also build pipeline improvements that exist only in Pro that a lot of us will sorely miss that make subscribing-right-before-deploy a bit unpalatable.