Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

[LeonhardP]

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November.

Please read our blog post for the details and consult our FAQ for additional information. If you have any questions about these changes, please let us know here in this thread so we can address them.

Edit:
Update from September 22

@UnityJuju

Thank you for all your feedback.
We’re closing this thread as its content is now outdated, and we would like to invite you to continue the discussion in our latest thread which includes updates to the Unity Runtime Fee pricing policy.

Update from September 17

@""

We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.

Update from September 13

@LeonhardP

We want to acknowledge the confusion and frustration we heard after we announced our new runtime fee policy. We’d like to clarify some of your top questions and concerns:

Who is impacted by this price increase: The price increase is very targeted. In fact, more than 90% of our customers will not be affected by this change. Customers who will be impacted are generally those who have found a substantial scale in downloads and revenue and have reached both our install and revenue thresholds. This means a low (or no) fee for creators who have not found scale success yet and a modest one-time fee for those who have.

Fee on new installs only: Once you meet the two install and revenue thresholds, you only pay the runtime fee on new installs after Jan 1, 2024. It’s not perpetual: You only pay once for an install, not an ongoing perpetual license royalty like a revenue share model.

How we define and count installs: Assuming the install and revenue thresholds are met, we will only count net new installs on any device starting Jan 1, 2024. Additionally, developers are not responsible for paying a runtime fee on:

• Re-install charges - we are not going to charge a fee for re-installs.

• Fraudulent installs charges - we are not going to charge a fee for fraudulent installs. We will work directly with you on cases where fraud or botnets are suspected of malicious intent.

• Trials, partial play demos, and automation installs (DevOps) charges - we are not going to count these toward your install count. Early access games are not considered demos.

• Web and streaming games - we are not going to count web and streaming games toward your install count either.

• Charity-related installs - the pricing change and install count will not be applied to your charity bundles/initiatives.

For additional questions, we have updated our blog and FAQ resources.

Highlighting some of the question/answer pairs from this thread below for visibility

Q: How are you going to collect installs?
A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project.

Q: Is software made in Unity going to be calling home to Unity whenever it’s run, even for enterprise licenses?
A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes.

Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game, will that count as multiple installs?
A: We are not going to charge a fee for reinstalls. The spirit of this program is and has always been to charge for the first install and we have no desire to charge for the same person doing ongoing installs.
(Updated, Sep 14)

Q: Do installs of the same game by the same user across multiple devices count as different installs?
A: Yes - we treat different devices as different installs.
(Updated, Sep 14)

Q: If a game that’s made enough money to be over the threshold has a demo of the same game, do installs of the demo also induce a charge?
A: If it’s early access, Beta, or a demo of the full game then yes. If you can get from the demo to a full game then yes. If it’s not, like a single level that can’t upgrade then no.

Q: When in the lifecycle of a game does tracking of lifetime installs begin? Do beta versions count towards the threshold?
A: If you can get from the demo to a full game (like via an in-game upgrade), then yes. If it’s not (like just one level that can’t upgrade), then no.
(Updated, Sep 13)

Q: Do Charity bundles qualify for the Runtime fee?
A: Any installs driven by charities or installs driven by charity bundles are excluded from the Runtime Fee.
(Updated, Sep 13)

Q: How will we approach fraudulent or abusive behavior that impacts the install count (bombing, piracy)?
A: We won’t count fraudulent installs or “install bombing” either. As part of our model, we are creating solutions to address the problem of double-counting reinstallations.
(Updated, Sep 14)

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games?
A: No, the Unity Runtime fee does not apply to WebGL games.
(Updated, Sep 13)

Q: Does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to gaming subscription services?
A: For creators using gaming subscription services, the game dev isn’t responsible for the runtime fee in this case.
(Updated, Sep 14)

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games that have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you’ll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they’ll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you’ll start owing them for the new ones.
A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game’s lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Q: Are these charges applied retroactively?
A: No, the Runtime fees will not be applied retroactively. If, starting on Jan 1, 2024, you meet both the revenue and install threshold for a given game, you will only pay for net new installs happening after Jan 1, 2024. We’ll look at your cumulative revenue and then installs from the past 12 months to see if you qualify for the thresholds of the new install fee but you won’t pay for any installs or revenue that happened before Jan 1, 2024. Starting Jan 1, 2024, if you continue to meet the thresholds then you’ll only pay for net new installs. Also, your qualifying for the install fee is measured every month on a rolling 12-month basis to ensure you’re paying the correct amount.
(Updated, Sep 13)

Q: Isn’t this a huge impact on indies?
A: This price increase does not impact the majority of our customers. In fact, based on internal data, more than 90% of our customers will not be affected by this change
(Updated, Sep 13)

Q: Does changing your plan apply the revenue threshold immediately?
A: Yes
(Updated, Sep 13)

Q: Is the revenue calculated before or after the platform fees?
A: Revenue calculations applied to the threshold for the Runtime Fee are gross - before any platform or other fees.
(Updated, Sep 14)

[jacob_unity577]

EDIT:

Unity, you have betrayed the trust of your customers completely. You removed the github repo to track licence changes, and sneakily updated the terms of service to remove the clause that users could stick to the licence of previous LTS versions.

In 2019, after your previous controversial license changes, you put out the following statement:

When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS.

In practice, that is only possible if you have access to bug fixes. For this reason, we now allow users to continue to use the TOS for the same major (year-based) version number, including Long Term Stable (LTS) builds that you are using in your project.

Moving forward, we will host TOS changes on Github to give developers full transparency about what changes are happening, and when. The link is GitHub - Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService: Current and prior versions of the terms that apply to your use of the Unity Editor software..

From the changes made then, the following clause was added to the licence:
(the old licence can be found here: Terms of Service Software Legacy )

[quote]
8. Modifications.
[/quote][quote]

[/quote][quote]
Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1). If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification.
[/quote]

You’ll notice, if you click that github link, that the repo to track terms of service changes no longer exists. It was removed sometime after July 2022.

You’ll also notice, if you check the new licence, (here: Unity Editor Software Terms ) that on April 3rd, 2023, the licence was updated, to remove the above clause.

You claimed in your terms that “if material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification”, and yet removed the repositiory to track these changes, along with removing the LTS clause without making that clear.

How on earth do you expect your customers to trust you on these new changes, after you

• Try to apply them RETROACTIVELY to already shipped games, despite the above

• Removed the LTS license clause, as highlighted above

• Go out of your way to hide you preparing to make these changes, as highlighted above

• Won’t disclose exactly how installs are being tracked, how reliable these numbers are

• Offer no guarantees that you won’t increase these prices in the future, or add more random retroactive fees

• Offer no guarantees again abuse of install metrics, other than “trust us”, and “we’re working on it based off some tech we haven’t made it based on tech used for ads”

• Offer a pricing model that instantly makes many business unprofitable, and may even put otehrs in debt

• Offer no opt-out of these new changes, or require any agreement to them for these new charges to start

---

original post:

How are you going to track installs? Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it’s ran, even for enterprice licenses? If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs?

How is this going to work for free, ad supported software, that makes enough money to be above the revenue threshold but the revenunue per install may be lower than the $0.20 install fee?

When these take effect, will people be charged for users that have already downloaded their game historically? Or will they count as a new install when they next run the game? Or will existing installations not count? How’re you possibly going to tell the difference?

If a game that’s made enough money to be over the threshold has a demo of the same game, do installs of the demo also induce a charge?

What’s going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games?

What’s stopping you increasing these prices in the future, considering you’re adding another fee to games people have already shipped. Why should your customers ever trust you to not further increase these fees?

I’ve been using unity for about 12 years now. I love working with unity, the engine, but ever since the IPO, every big annoucement have made me lose a little bit more faith in unity. The fact you’re adding more fees/charges onto ALREADY SHIPPED games, that aren’t even being updated anymore, makes me lose absolutely all remaining faith in Unity as a company. I don’t know what’s going up with upper management there, but they clearly don’t care about goodwill, or how the company is viewed by it’s customers. I’ve not considered making a serious project in anything other than unity for the past 10 years. I’m almost stuck using unity, with a combination of 12 years of experience using unity, memorized knowledge of most of unity’s APIs, intricate knowledge of the editor, the various packages, unity’s services, I’ve got thousands of pounds of assets bought on the unity store - but this move, is genuinely enough to make me go learn everything again from scratch. How do you make a move so bad it makes a customer for over 10 years not want to touch your company again?

I don’t want to stop using Unity. But if I can’t trust you to not switch out the pricing beneath me suddenly, why on earth would I continue to use it? When you could not only suddenly make my game unprofitable, but even put me in debt?

Sure, the actual pricing calcluations here, for what I work on, might barely even affect me. For something moderately successful, these fees are probably not huge. But there’s a bunch of games out there that these fees will make completely unprofitable, especially in the mobile space. While I don’t make those games, how do I know what decision you make next wont screw over my project??

[sacb0y]

Does this include WebGL and Demos?

I use WebGL for demos and marketing, and the scale of that is huge cause people can download the WebGL and host it.

EDIT: Like easily millions of plays and downloads from god knows where. I’m not over the 200K threshold yet (I pay for plus anyway tho) but if that was factored, I don’t think it would be viable?

Maybe I’m understanding something wrong?

[AwesomeX_1]

Dumb, overly complicated pricing model.

[JoNax97]

What an excellent moment to remind everyone that Godot is absolutely free (both in terms of price and restrictions) and getting better every day

[GiantLightStudios]

I’m also curious about how this affects webgl and demos. This seems like it punishes developers who are doing small or low-priced projects, which seems like the one market unity has cornered. Why a flat fee and not %? I get the need for price increases, but this seems really misguided.

[Doddler]

The lack of revenue split and ongoing fee was the primary reason I went with unity in the first place, and one of the last good things worth sticking around for. Really unfortunate decision.

[mgear]

wow, another disaster : (

[Pitou22]

What are you going to do with the money? Pay talented engineers to fix all the bugs or just give it to shareholders?

[SevenPointRed]

No unity plus anymore? Forced to pro, that’s insane.

[Dennis_eA]

Question to the team: How are installs tracked on devices, I’m Not collecting any data from my players / clients and I don’t plan to do so in the future.

no data packages going out - Unity can’t verify the numbers. Will the game be FORCED to do it? In that case I’ll probably look at Godot for future projects, that’s a big No for me.

A reply to clear that would be highly appreciated.

[Qleenie]

So what’s with returns / refunds? And will you work with Steam etc. to get the data of installed copies? Out of all possible pricing models, this seems to be the most complicated to track, there will be so many corner cases, and als it seems at least legally in grey zone whether you can apply those fees on titles which are already published using another pricing model before.

[saskenergy]

What about free games that live on ads? The blog post mentions that those who integrate ads will have a reduced fee. Wouldn’t it be better to waive it entirely?

There’s also a concern about what constitutes an “install”. Is it unique per user? For example, if a user downloads and deletes the game repeatedly, in this case 5 times, would I get charged 5 times?

This is a massive concern on piracy too. Android has a ridiculously high amount of piracy. For example, Monument Valley has a piracy rate of 95% on Android! (60% on iOS) This is a case where piracy would actually hurt developers now.

[Onigiri]

Why not pay fee for every module like audio or render? When the user installs the game it has to be rendered by Unity Render so we should also pay for that. Heh atleast we can now embed AI trash into our games absolutly with NO COST wow rip unity.

[SpAM_CAN]

This is utterly unfathomably insane. The level of abuse and derision Unity has for developers using their platform is completely beyond the pail, and you’ve gone off the deep-end.

We will be taking our business elsewhere.

[unity_1D14A70C0043D4349DE7]

this feels greedy and a good way to get developers off to your competitors, great job guys

[JiRo_Dev]

This is actually really good and really generous, for the people anxious about tracking, Unity already have events in our games that let them collect data, otherwise how would they figures like over 2 Billion installs per year and the metrics of each platform, they already know that data and we already gave consent by using their licenses, switching from a share based to a per install cost after a certain threshold is good, previously it was a share on $100k, now it’s a per install cost once you make $200k in 12 months AND reach 200k installs. Meaning we’ll get to keep more revenues than before and gradually pay when success is achieved. Some reductions based on how we’re using Unity’s other services like UGS is really good, this will encourage people to use Cloud save and other solutions at the very least. Overall, I like it, I don’t think it’s against us in any way, it’s more dependent on our success than ever before so it should incentivize Unity to make a better product as well and should incentivize us to make better games with better services and features.

[PixHammer]

This seems absolutely ridiculous to me, It doesn’t seem to factor in mobile free-to-play at all, to the extent that it seems obviously determined to stomp out it’s existance entirely.
Mobile developers will likely not use Unity after this, as they rely on scale to get their revenue, and most users make <$0.10 each, a sizable percentage don’t even open the game, yet you will charge for them the same. This seems like a really naive decision, or one that is purposefully destructive.

[GiantLightStudios]

Wait. It’s a monthly fee? So for every install over the threshold I’ll pay the cost every month!?

[Dennis_eA]

@JiRo_Dev

This is actually really good and really generous, for the people anxious about tracking, Unity already have events in our games that let them collect data, otherwise how would they figures like over 2 Billion installs per year and the metrics of each platform, they already know that data and we already gave consent by using their licenses, switching from a share based to a per install cost after a certain threshold is good, previously it was a share on $100k, now it’s a per install cost once you make $200k in 12 months AND reach 100k installs. Meaning we’ll get to keep more revenues than before and gradually pay when success is achieved. Some reductions based on how we’re using Unity’s other services like UGS is really good, this will encourage people to use Cloud save and other solutions at the very least. Overall I like it, I don’t think it’s against us in any way, it’s not more dependent on our success than ever before so it should incentivize Unity to make a better product as well, and should incentivize us to make better games with better services and features.

No, tracking user data is an absolute gray zone and a lot of devs/companies disabled data tracking entirely in the products.
Verified that my apps to not send any data packages out. No plans to change that.

Question to the team: What happens to games/and or updates released before January 2024? Can they just keep existing in the stores?