I am working for a Government department (not in US) and I am going to work on a pilot program to develop a special software. Should the pilot phase of the program be successful then it will turn into a small project. Once this project is completed the end result software is to be used internally by 5-10 staff members.
I am considering using Unity to build this internal software. There will be only two developers working on the pilot and project phase of this program. I am required to provide licensing cost of tools that will be used in this project. However I am unclear regarding the Unity licensing.
Can two free license be used during pilot phase and then two pro license until the duration of the project? Do we even need pro license for the internal government project?
I would appreciate if anyone can help me regarding this matter.
Technically you must use the pro license if the entity you’re working (government in your case) makes more than $100,000 in a year (not sure if that’s revenue or profit).
The reality is that Unity’s not going to get very far in trying to strong-arm a government to use a pro license.
To be on topic, the best bet is to contact customer support for licensing information because international regulations can be a factor when it comes to software licenses.
The problem is that doesn’t work with the way Unity is set up. Anyone can set up a gmail address and then a Unity account, and Unity will have no clue as to whether or not they’re working for a larger entity.
I work for a university doing research (Not in the US). We are NOT eligible for the free license. We have to get the education or pro license. We confirmed this with our local unity representative. I believe it should be the same for a government organization. You can clarify with your local rep if you have one.
Of course! That explains why literally nobody has ever properly paid for a Unity license! How could I be so bli-
Ah, right, because they actually do check into things and have an entire system in place for project tracking and management and have for ages and actually do enforce licenses. Like, you’re coming at this from a real weird angle. “Don’t bother, they’ll never check” is absolutely ridiculous advice to offer here.
Not publicly on Steam or whatever, no. But there’s not much point making a thing that won’t get distributed to other people somehow, ROI for any significant project typically requires them getting shared around quite a bit, and I’m pretty sure that Unity can see both Editor and player sessions for stuff from Personal accounts.
Well, you told them what the rules “technially” are, and then immediately followed up with how “the reality is” different from that. While you may not have intended it as such, that structure is a common way to suggest something while maintaining deniability.
They get shared in domains Unity has no access to and thus won’t find out about, and those other people don’t care either way, and anything that gets released publicly is after a long enough time period and abstracted enough from the individuals who did the actual programming that it’s either not mentioned at all, or any chance of identifying the specific usage is unlikely.
Fair enough. For what it’s worth my opinion is “pay for the license,” but I have personal experience with…other perspectives.
The old system (I think it was changed around 2018) was prone to a few false positives. I got contacted about mixing licenses on a project where we specifically licensed enough Pro seats that it would be weird to buy that many AND mix in Indie licenses.
You know there’s only so many Unity Advisors, right? Like, you’re attributing a lot of malice to what is far more logically explained by “one of the advisors had something flagged weird that put a bunch of accounts in their To Contact folder.”
Because the simple reality is that indies aren’t where Unity’s license money is coming from, which is why Unity Free is able to exist in the state it does at all. The real money is coming from larger game companies (like every mobile title people play), archviz, video production, the booming XR markets, that sort of place, because that’s where things are easy and obvious to enforce.
If Unity wanted to make more money it’d make more sense to charge 1% more for pro licenses than to even send a single email to an indie developer.
That wasn’t what I was referring to, see my later post. And while they’re portrayed as monoliths, governments are made up of people who carry their own habits that often don’t fit their station.
I distinctly recall a conversation about a year ago where one individual pointed out a sort of licensing breach (nothing to do with software) and the response was, “But we’ve always done it this way,” and the discussion was closed.
