I am so extremely disappointed, can’t you just raise the pro license cost like you do every year…
Switching to another engine would cost us months again… at least we would have an engine that would have less bugs. We have reported so many bugs and filled out surveys for free for Unity and now we get this back.
6 Likes
“We will charge you whatever we feel like and there is nothing you can do about it, na-na-nana-nah”
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Charging per install is utter madness. I have been very happy with Unity and have released 12 games using this engine, but I do not see a path forward with such rules, I cannot use an engine that will charge me more than I make selling my games. It is incredible that you claim this is better for developers than revenue share.
So basically any install past these thresholds will be $0.20 more expensive than they already were. When you’re looking at a mobile install with razor thin margins between LTV and CPI, you think this will be sustainable?
Will you take into account marketing spends and budgets when determining how much revenue a game has made? Can we provide evidence that we spent thousands advertising the game on other platforms to bring the revenue to its actual net? I already know the answer, but wtf.
Nothing against polygon, but unfortunately in todays time most “news” articles are probably sponsored. Every news article I seen paints this as not bad, even, incorrectly, comparing it to Unreal Engines pricing model.
Not saying Unity paid for good sponsored articles at all… just to take those articles with a pinch of salt. It isn’t in their interest to reflect accurate information, but publish conrent that gets them paid.
Basically, to put it bluntly, polygon dont give AF about the devs who will be affected, bit they do care if someone drops them a few dollars for a nice, favourable coverage.
What I’m saying is, I’m cancelling my unity subscription and learning Unreal engine.
5 Likes
I believe you are right. This proposal is half-baked at best.
Problem is small studios
1st we used to use Pro but then they removed any reason to do so as we provide for our own DevOps, LiveOps, etc. so we now use Plus to remove the splash
So in this BS move we now have to pay 2k a year more or less to remove a splash screen so move frankly but whatever we probably wont bother and will just deal with the splash for this last game and move on to UE for the next
Then we started doing the maths
So we are in pre-prod on a F2P project to ship on Steam and monetize via DLC
Estimates are around 1-2% of players that try the game will end up monetizing for 5-10 USD … so for us to hit
200k we are looking at 1-2mil users which would cost us as a former Plus now Personal user putting us in debt 20-200k … that is after platform fees we will be left with 140k and then Unity will bill us for 160k to 360k
So … ya Unity is planning on taking royalties that amount to 80% of revenue up to 180% of revenue
In no world is that even vaguely reasonable
And sure we can go Pro and offset that but the issue remains
to do it as per install/user/etc means its absolutely possible to end up owing more to Unity in royalties than you make in revenue from the game. We will not participate in that so we have a support case out to Unity to see WTF is this even real? … and if so we will be forced to move engines simple as
Just for note
For us to make 1mil on the game we would have 100-200m, installs which would be 1 to 2 million owed to Unity
The issue here is Unity is basically charging the the same or more per install than most small-time games make per user … so ya the crack smoking is strong with Unity on this one … really hoping its a complete misunderstanding
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What the genuine fuck does this even mean?
Every tab is an install? Every browser ID? IP? F5 to bankrupt a dev?
Even for users that never reach the payment threshold, this will kill the ecosystem.
I feel sick for having successfully gotten people to choose Unity over other alternatives in the past.
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And if the app is making money, it wont be anymore, because you’ll be paying it all to unity. For the multiple installs per user, pirate installs, etc.
Just as simple as that, you turn me and my company of 50 devs from Unity lovers to an instant “let’s find another engine” - most likely Unreal.
And I guess I can speak for thousands more.
Unacceptable decison of a completely unaware executive board.
Just turn off the Analytics etc if you feel like a number of installs interfere with your system.
Or get in touch with Steam to get related to revenue. But then do not annoy me with ever-increasing PRO subscriptions costs.
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Your own FAQ gives an example of an effective 14% revenue share rate. Its not hard to do the ‘math’ and come up with a rate much much higher.
We make F2P games, charging a per install amount is absolutely crazy on top of a license fee. You clearly don’t understand the F2P mobile space at all, which beggars belief!
We’ve also spent alot of money working with one of your strike teams on a new title for 5 months. This announcement is just a slap in the face.
We have a smallish studio and already pay $10k per month on licenses, and have been for 5+ years now. Based on our latest game numbers we will now have to pay a further $30k per month (we do lots of downloads but very small amounts per user) effectively making us pay 3x more for THE EAXCT SAME PRODUCT we already have. And for the final kick in the balls, give us just 3 months notice!
Unfortunately our next release (just weeks away) will have to be shipped with Unity. We will be moving our next titles away from unity. The trust is gone. You can’t just announce a new business model and drop it in 3 months later. What is to stop you upping the per install fees 10%, 20%, 50% each year?? What’s from stopping you changing which countries count as standard or emerging whenever you decide?
Its completly unpredictable and your now an incredibly unreliable partner. A massive risk to our business.
It least with unreal the 5% rev share is predictable and can be factored in. You expect businesses, with titled and plans spanning years of development to just magic up 100ks of extra $ with zero notice and no time to adapt or change plans.
We made our games in Unity paying the license fee month after month, safe in the knowledge there would be no rev split once launched. This is a disgusting way to run a business.
Who thought pay per install was the correct way to go? Absolute madness. Pay per install is such backward thinking for F2P mobile, did you not wonder why no other serious player does this?
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I have read the annoucement. If our game is not making money BUT if OUR COMPANY is above the revenue threshold and the app above the download we will have to pay for the install fee despite the app not making money.
Just like in the previous licensing where we had to pay the Pro licence not because OUR COMPANY was above the revenue but because OUR CLIENTS were.
2 Likes
Just coming here to say F*** this! Unity has become such a broken mess over the last few years, then you force everyone into a subscription model and now this… Seriously. F*** this.
But what a great opportunity to watch enshittification from up close.
Cory Doctorow coined the term: “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.”
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I am actually learning UE5 from scratch now. I am starting with this vid. But seems very basic.
Does anyone know a better source material for advanced users? I just want to transfer my skills ASAP and move on. A detailed C++ based tutorial would really help.
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You have completely misunderstood the calculation. The number of installs matter because it determines the fee. Let’s say you have 10m installs with 1m revenue (which is still an extremely unrealistic ratio considering Unity confirmed reinstalls also count as 1 install).
Install threshold is 1 million so you will be billed for 9m installs. Let’s assume the best case scenario and that you somehow broke ARPU records in an emerging market, and that you have Unity Pro. You now owe Unity 45000 USD, in addition to the Unity Pro seat-based subscription you’ve paid during the entirety of your game’s development, which is 2000 usd annually per seat.
Even with these unrealistic revenue/install numbers, it is obscenely expensive. When you plug in realistic mobile f2p numbers (I won’t go into detail because many people have provided examples earlier in the thread), Unity ends up taking the majority of the revenue.
Under same conditions, if you had used Unreal instead, you would have to pay nothing because they do not take royalties from the first 1m usd and a straightforward %5 beyond the first 1m.
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If they go through with this, we are witnessing the death of Unity, really sad to see.
I’ve been using Unity for almost a decade as I think it’s a great product and it’s true they should have a better monetization model but this is insane.
Any small aspiring dev will know that if one day they’re successful, their entire profits could get squeezed by this and potentially even get into DEBT because of the engine they used to build their game.
It’s the most backwards thing they could have done for monetization.
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Thats where i think we got it wrong. Its impossible they take 80% of revenu, no one gonna make game on this platform.
Thing is if both thresholds are needed at same time, thats different. If you have 2m user with unity plus and make 200k, well, you still havent reached one of the threshold, which mean you pay nothing.
@Mike-Geig Here is example from FAQ:
So… If the game made 2M in 12 month, it means 166.7k per months. 23.5k / 166.7k = 14.1%. Is it fair?
Oh my god, I almost want to admire this “Trust me, bro”-move. Who thought communicating like would be a good idea?
1 Like