IMO the only limitation of using Unity Free should be earning cap - and slightly lower than current one, maybe $10000. So those who make successful games will pay, but those who just want cool water reflection in their freeware game would be able to do so.
You only need to make 10% of that and you can afford Unity pro.
As I said, Free version, aside of exporters which I see as addons anyway, shouldn’t be limited feature-wise. The only limitations in Free version should be earning cap and maybe vanity thing, e.g. lack of black skin.
This way people who use it as hobby can truly unleash their creativity, while people who make relatively successful game will be required to buy pro license.
This by any means won’t kill Unity’s profits - I’ve already discussed it with my economist friend before posting this thread and he has said that it might even increase profits, because
- Earning cap is lower
- Good PR (Hey, we are giving you all features sans few exporters that you must buy separately from Unity Store, but if you make more than $10000 you have to put up $1500 for Pro license!).
You’re (conveniently) forgetting the downsides…
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You assume every person that gets their hands on pro will make $10,000. This is VERY unlikely.
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These same people will continue to release crappy products that may tarnish the Unity name further (Unity has a rep for not being a serious game engine - which is predominantly because of a crappy apps released by people).
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Unity would have to police every user to track how much money they have made. It would not be cheap to keep track of every user. We live in a world where every douchebag thinks they have some right to free stuff… do you think these people are gonna be like ‘oh hey Unity, I just made 10k, ill buy a licence now’. They wont.
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Make more money? See point 1. I can tell you right now, they would have made less money (I’ve brought V3 pro and upgraded to V4 without making a cent). That’s $2500 they would not have made if pro was free.
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Unity has good PR already from giving away free versions of the device licences.
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Why should Unity give away Pro to hobby developers? A hobby developer never intends to make money.
As far as im concerned, they have given enough away for free. Anyone who complains about pro features not being free is being naive/selfish.
Loving that argument form authority… economists generally look at the economy as a whole, not the profitably of an individual business case. You conjecture all you like on the profitably of a given business decision, you might even be right, but you would expect the people working in the business who have the data available might be more qualified to make that decision than you and your ‘economist friend’.
Personally I’d conjecture that the desire for the cool extra features leads to many many Unity Pro sales to people who don’t ever go on to complete a game let alone make $10,000 from their game.
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As I said there will be for successful games. Als again, this would be yearly income, as it is now - so even if you make 20 games and each will earn, say $500, you’ll be required to buy license.
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There always will be black sheeps, but the advantage outweighs risks there.
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And this is different from current situation… how? I can go ahead, make game with Free that by some miracle earns $100k, or even with cracked Pro, and never buy license. They’d still would need to know that game exists and if I sell it in market where not much people knows Unity exists but many likes games, then UT would never find out.
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Again, exporters, UT-developed assets/editor addons etc. - here cash lies. Not in locking features. That’s also $2500 you wouldn’t have to pay if you’re not making $10000.
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That’s cool and all, but they’d have better PR if they keep exporters paid and instead unlocked full potential of Unity.
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Why shouldn’t hobby developer be able to use actual water reflection or DOF/bloom effects in their games?
Your economist friend needs to learn economics better because it sounds like he doesn’t understand the idea of price elasticity of demand in a finite marketplace.
I’ve given UT hundreds of dollars, and from my games I’ve hardly made any money certainly not $10,000 not even one percent of that LOL, id dare say lots of people are the same just here for the fun with a pipe dream of striking gold(Or working on small games to get the skill to make a awesome game.)
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Yeah you may get to 10k with multiple games, but this becomes even harder to police. See point 3 (previous)
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What’s this advantage? I see no advantage.
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Unity can tell if an exe has been built with a dodgy copy. Chances are if you are actually making that much money, you wouldn’t be so stupid as to use illegitimate software. If you make that much money, Unity are going to be interested in your game.
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Sure there’s money to be made in assets, but there’s also the money to be made in developing a solid engine and selling it.
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Maybe. Or Unity might not make enough money to hire enough staff to constantly improve the engine. Im not going to pretend to know how Unity makes its money, but Pro licences would not be insignificant.
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If they care about that stuff enough, they can buy Unity. You do not need anything only available in Unity Pro to make a decent game.
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See my response to point 3 (previous).
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The advantage being giving more power to more people.
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Then how about many small games made in Free that reaches the cap and don’t need actual pro features? Like some crappy breakout clones or match-3 games? How UT will policy THAT?
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There’s much more money to be made in assets. See “sales” of F2P games and compare them to subscription-based (excluding WoW and EVE as obvious anomalies). Assets there work pretty much like “premium items” in F2P game.
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They already have enough people and I know for sure that some of them will work even for free because they like it.
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Not many people are so financially successful to buy pro. I know factory worker who makes games as hobby. He can’t afford Pro, no matter how long he’d save for it. Why he can’t use actual reflections or DOF/Bloom effects?
That doesn’t help Unity in the slightest.
Then why don’t you make one and use the money to buy Unity Pro? Problem solved.
Random Internet Guy claims people will work for free
Therefore, people will work for free
Regardless, those people still need to pay for say, rent, or a house or a broken leg, and they will need to get another job. The result? Less time to work on Unity.
Subscription. Or make a successful game and use the money for Pro. Or start a Kickstarter. Or sell some stuff. Or get a second part-time job.
The only way I see this working is if the price of the license was bumped up to $10 000. Otherwise, I just don’t see 1 in 6-ish people making $10 000 off Unity.
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lolwut.
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Explain how that’s an advantage.
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They dont need to police it. Free is Free, and that’s what its good for. Besides once you make 100k, you are obliged to buy pro.
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Im not disagreeing. Some people here earn a very tidy living off assets. That’s not Unitys core business as I understand. They make the engine.
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You know people at Unity that would work for free? I call BS. No professional works for free. If you actually knew people at Unity, I doubt you would be making bs threads complaining that you cant have pro for free. Maybe one day when you grow up and realise nothing decent in life is free you will understand.
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And how is this Unity’s problem? If your friend wants pro bad enough, he would release a few games and make the money needed.
squared55 Again, it seems like you thinking $10k of a single game. That’s obviously not likely. I’m talking $10k / fiscal year which is current UT line (though with 100k instead).
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More people can unleash their creativity. I’ve seen lots of great unity pro games that wouldn’t work in Free version (some of games used full screen shaders and render textures in creative and clever way).
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As you’d be obliged to buy license when making $10k with “Hey, we are giving you all features sans few exporters that you must buy separately from Unity Store, but if you make more than $10000 you have to put up $1500 for Pro license”. Again, it’ll be just as likely for people to cheat and earn more than they should with it and not buy Pro license as it is currently.
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Engine is pretty rock solid and there are already people improving it. Some of these guys could be working on UT-branded assets. Or lets 10% of sales in Asset Store go to UT, maybe that’s even better.
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Some people doesn’t do it just for cash, you know? Otherwise we wouldn’t have something called “open source”. Cash is nice bonus but I’m certain that most of people in UT works there because they love their work and if hard times comes, they’d work even for minimal wage or no payment at all (and at night work in 24h shop or bar).
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Problem is that his games are too generic (mostly breakout and Bejeweled clones I’ve brought earlier as example) - nothing that would earn him enough money to buy Pro.
Here’s a thought: why do you feel you need Pro to develop a good game and make money? Pro is already pretty affordable, even for quite a few hobbyists. And with everything Unity gives you for free, you can make a really good game if you wanted to.
Realtime shadows? Don’t need 'em.
Pixel shaders? Don’t need 'em.
Render Textures? Don’t need 'em.
Built-in pathfinding solution? Don’t need it, roll your own. Though, heck, Free includes navmesh now.
Occlusion culling? You can work around it.
Custom splash screen? Really? Don’t need it, and you can show yours immediately after.
Dark Editor Theme? Oh come on now -.-
Static Batching? Nice on mobiles (I’ve heard, could have heard wrong), but you can work around it.
Quite honestly, UT’s pricing structure is pretty good as-is. And if you felt you absolutely had to have the above you can: a) Buy Pro*, or b) Use something else. I still use XNA/Monogame for projects, as well as Unity. (tho my CES implementation is heavily influenced by Unity’s).
* - If you’re a student, you can get a Commercial Pro license for half price, or ~$750 instead of $1500 from Studica.
Then why don’t you make multiple crappy games? And the fact that all $10 000 must be earned in a single year makes it even less likely.
Glares at GUI
As opposed to the 30% they take now?
Loving their work won’t make them exempt from paying for food. And I HIGHLY doubt that people would be willing to spend 8 hours working at Unity, then another 4+ at night. That’s over half the day. Work/Life balance comes into play here. Would you be willing to spend 8 hours working on your game + school/work?
How would you guys feel about Unity taking, say, 50% of your profits until you buy a full $1500 license?
sigh…
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The engine is a mile away from being rock solid. If you had any idea, you would know this.
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When you move out of your parents basement and start paying bills, come back and tell me you would work for free.
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So he’s making bejewelled clones and for some reason needs pro features… ok.
If you dont like it, go and use UDK. You get everything for free…
Numbered features for easier respond.
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Really? Not even when you want nice day/night cycle for your RPG or other game?
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Tell me that again, when you will try to make game with procedural textures that gets more detailed as you come closer to avoid jumps in quality characteristic for LOD systems - I’ve learned hard way that doing it on CPU is NOT way to go.
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Really? Not even for Antichamber-like “Twisted space” effects? Or making nice “guard room” in your stealth game with monitors?
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Not everyone has PhD in A*. So “roll your own” isn’t really an option. At least not for everyone.
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Again, not everyone has knowledge to “work around it”.
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Yes, this one is rarely needed and should be kept as part of Pro license - I wouldn’t mind “Powered by Unity” splashscreen if I get to work with all other features.
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Just vanity item, Again, can be part of Pro.
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Not only on mobile but also for lower end machines with things like core2Duo or even lower. So it is very useful, if you want to push your game to as many devices as you want.
a) I’m not student and my friend isn’t either. I also read that you can’t sell game made with “student” version.
b) Not everyone has guts to work with barebones engines. The thing I love about unity is that it handles everything for me, leaving me only to implement game logic. I don’t have to care about mesh loading/ asset rendering (or vice versa ;)) if I don’t want to.
- They don’t need expensive apartment, do they? Als you missed on this one. I’m actually living alone, paying bills… and still would work for free on project I love to developing, if I’d have to.
- Two words: Pixel Shaders. They add lots of possibilities to make those even more beautiful.
UDK? Yes pleas, if not for two things:
- Borked language. It’s weird mixture of C, Java, Pascal and some language I don’t recognize. Not fun to program in it.
- Astronomical royalties if you make anything noteworthy and want to sell it.
1/2. Eye candy. Exactly what the Pro version is supposed to be for.
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Those can be replaced. Not sure what you mean by twisted space (but it sounds like eye-candy), but the guard room could be replaced by simply swapping out a texture on the image for “occupied” “not occupied”
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Why don’t you get started then?
http://www.policyalmanac.org/games/aStarTutorial.htm
Although, you could just use the Free navmesh. -
Triggers. Like this:
When you pass a point (white blocks), stuff gets rendered (stuff in a corresponding green block). When you pass a second point (another white block), it no longer is rendered.
You aren’t them. And some would like that expensive apartment, and some would like to support families, and give their children a good upbringing.
Again, it’s eye-candy - what Pro is for.
“and still would work for free on project I love to developing, if I’d have to.”
You can argue it all you want, but if you want pro features you’ll have to pay for it. The majority of users are happy with the current pricing model, and I don’t think there’s any hurry to change it.
And if someone can’t figure out how to make a decent, profitable game without the pro features, then the problem lies with the game designer/developer - not the engine.
Unity’s 100k limit is not actually the reason people buy Unity pro, most people would buy pro the second they could, for things like the profiler, batching and occlusion culling. I’d say most people would buy pro at around the 2k mark where they would purchase Pro + IOS pro… Who would wait untill they have 100,000 to spend like 2k on a suit of software?
At the end of the day you are clearly just whining because you can’t afford it and maybe you should just design your game to work around the limitations(Which really isn’t that hard and became much easier with the features now free.)