To be fair, Unity Pro was required for years for console releases, it’s just that the platform holders provide special Unity Pro Keys.
But except that I totally agree. When I read the blogpost I was so naive thinking: “Well at least they will reduce the prices for Unity Pro then right? Oh…”
AD revenue is equal to regular revenue?
I mean, I’m not wrong, am I? they are gonna apply it to games which 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.
If I’ve misunderstood, then I guess it’s 'coz it’s mad & difficult to understand how that’ll actually work…
It’s not like they’re only applying it to games released after January 2024, which was my point… or for games using Unity 2024+ etc…
Pay per install? Why?
A revenue share or a set fee would be way easier to do.
This will kill many mobile games, which get a ton of players with only a small fraction actually paying.
Also will place WebGL in a very awkward spot.
And how will it be tracked? Isn’t this basically an always online system that people hate?
It seems like this benefits huge setups like professional training very well, since it has a low install base. Or am I misinterpreting it?
Hi Mike-Geig, that doesn’t seem to be in line with the FAQ found at Changes to Unity plans and pricing
That seems to imply that install data is collected and billed per month, not as a one-time fee. Please clarify.
It only happens if you continue to make revenue above the threshold. There should be no situation where this costs you money if you aren’t making money.
Consider, if you make you game absolutely free, then you won’t be above the revenue cap and won’t be charged.
What? But…the blogpost says its a monthly rate though? Or is there a misunderstanding?
Wow, so many questions:
I have sold over two million units of games made with unity on Steam and related PC platforms in the last 14 years, and have still been consistently struggling. Trying to have any staff of notable size eats money like crazy.
How on earth are you going to track the installs? Most users won’t consent to this, and many devs don’t want to inflict it on users. Even I don’t know how many installs my games have had.
If you’re tracking installs via some service that you have, how are you going to prevent malicious users from just spamming fake installs to cause bills for a game that they don’t like?
How are you planning on tracking revenue? Does a prologue or a demo count against the install count?
How about games on GamePass or in Humble Bundles or whatever? Those all have way higher install counts compared to each unit of game sold.
How about users that install, uninstall for a few years, and then reinstall? They may be on a different device. Why am I being billed for them multiple times?
How about games that get installed on multiple devices? I’m being billed more for that also?
How about pirated copies of the game? How will those installs count?
I am already kind of irritated with the price hikes around unity, and the lack of notable feature improvements. This seems designed to just push lots of us to other engines. We can’t even predict our costs with this, and the costs will often not correlate with revenue.
Not to mention the fact that most of us have been developing games over years, with one expense model in mind, and nowhere in there did we plan for mysterious “oh now you owe us more all of a sudden because you passed a certain threshold” fees.
I hope this gets retracted soon, this is a terrible idea.
That’s good to know. Seems like this table is incorrectly labeled, or at least very unclear. Could maybe use an update? 
I don’t get it, you guys have a huge market share on mobile, you know the margin are very tight how can you even think 0.20$ makes sense? Why not go for X% of revenue?
So no more minimum sales revenue ?
I can use the Unity Free if I do >200k€ revenue per year ?
Bye.
Ya, sorry, I get how this wording is confusing. So, let’s say you have your 1,000,001th install, officially pushing you over the cap. You will have a fee of 15 cents. You will not pay that 15cents every month. Just a single time. The monthly thing is to indicate a monthly assessment to see where your installs are and revenue is to see if you had more installs or dropped below the cap. Does that help?
How would Unity be able to force this on older projects? This won’t work.
Correct
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA is this some sort of a joke?
Incredible. What is wrong with you?
I’m way beyond that, those are my numbers PER MONTH. 30-60K Just for a demo or preview build.
(Downloads, WebGL, etc)
And this is analytics driven, I assume? So, suddenly review-bombers have a new tool - send fraudulent, repeated install analytics pings to inflate the install count and trigger this new tax on the developer. This could under no uncertain terms completely bankrupt a small to mid-sized developer.
Unity seriously needs to consider its position in the market. You’ve been producing half-baked, under-supported software for years, causing abject misery to the people who actually need to use it. You do not get to suddenly and retroactively apply new terms completely out of nowhere, screwing up already tight budgets of developers that are likely already struggling in the current environment.
Unity going public was an utter mistake.
I can’t believe they are doing this…I can’t believe I supported this company for years.
Unity, you guys crossed the line.
Shame on you.