So the goal of all Unity devs now is to make many small games that make less than $200k.
Oh wait, don’t forget the forced “upgrade” to Unity Pro!
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There are so many issues with this model it’s hard to even know where to begin.
I really hope they take on the mountain of feedback they will get on this and make some adjustments before this goes live, cus as it stands right now I will not be using Unity for my next game.
Per install? really? Wait until they realize the issues this will cause.
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What is worse if what if UNITY themselves install your games 1.000.0000 times and then send you the cheque for their payment? 
“Rent is due” - Unity
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It always happens if a company thinks they are not replaceable. We should have expected this when they went public. What a sad development for a company that started as a free alternative to the “big names”.
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hey, at least the shareholders are happy!!!
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It’s not about you making 205k revenue, it’s about that specific app/game making that much revenue.
It’s on a per-game/app basis.
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I have always felt that Unreal is sort of a better product for having a revenue share. As others have pointed out, it means that Epic succeeds when their users succeed, and that is a good incentive for them.
I love using Unity, I just feel it is less consistent and less stable.
With Unity not having the revenue share, and having a reduced income, this is perhaps why there are so many bugs. I feel that this fee is unlikely to help the situation and is probably to create more money for shareholders, as opposed to more money for developers to fix things, and improve QA.
I still would not argue with a revenue share similar to Epic’s, if Unity can commit to improving the above categories.
However, what is absolutely wrong is for Unity to retroactively impose these changes on existing games. That is, as someone else said, a complete violation of trust. Maybe there is some clause somewhere in the license agreement, but it still seems entirely unreasonable to do that retroactively.
How am I supposed to trust Unity if they will try to change the license agreement retroactively for existing projects?
Unity also must clarify how they are going to track installs. I do not want “phone home” DRM in my game.
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No, I think you are being naive. Unity will “invoice” you, and you will need to “prove” it. That is how it will eventually go.
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*[Original wrong response]*Well, you’d also have to meet a threshold in income. You aren’t charged for installs by Unity. There is just a dual threshold of installs and income limit before you pay Unity. So it is impossible for someone to destroy a studios like this. But if it’s a really hot game that hasn’t met the threshold, someone could theoretically get them where they need to be to start needing to pay Unity something.
EDIT: Nevermind. Once you hit the install limit AND the cost threshold, this sort of thing would start to cost the dev per download. That is INSANE…
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I have so much invested in Unity as an engine but first the subscription price boosts - Only Pro or the dumb priced Industry subscriptions now and now this incredulous install fee which will drive away all users!!
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Well dang. Hey, genuinely, thank you I didn’t know that and I’ve learned something today.
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Of course is not me. I am talking about a game
This is an absolutely unacceptable pricing model. We will be seriously considering porting our existing titles over to alternative game engines and will absolutely not be using Unity going into the future.
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I read the email this morning and nearly spit out my coffee. The level of greed on display here is disgusting and unwarranted.
Why did I dedicate a decade of learning to a platform only to have this level of greed upend the platform? Whoever came up with this plan should be ashamed and removed from any decision making in the company.
The past few years have been nothing but bad news from you all and it’s only pushing your user base further and further away.
Cancel this plan immediately.
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You guys have just killed Unity.
We had four Unity Pro seats that were about to renew on September 15th.
I have just canceled them.
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The FAQ says: “An install is defined as the installation and initialization of a project on an end user’s device.”
Since Unity doesn’t force you to use a specific installer, a game doesn’t know, how it has been installed (files copied/extracted onto the system). I assume the key step of the “install” is running the executable, which will check and create some registry entries and files if necessary (= initialization).
So install-bombers, who want to hurt a company don’t even have to re-install the game, but could just write a script, which:
- Removes the registry entries/initialization files
- Starts the game
- Closes the game
- Starts again with 1
And each initialization would count as an “install” for which the install fee applies?
This shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds, so per install-bomber machine that is 2880 “installs” per 24 hours, which is $576 € install-fee.
And developers would have to trust Unity to do something against the fraud, against their own interest…
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Each company has the right to decide when and how to disappear but this is absolutely out of the market. Not sure which studios are targeting with this but at least in our case:
Small development studio, focused in games for kids (we don’t display advertising for monetization), have million of downloads but only a few are monetized (we rely exclusively on In-App purchases), for now we are not reaching the million threshold but I made some quick calculation and in case we do, with the current number of downloads we would automatically owe Unity… 900.000$!!! that’s 90% of our revenue, if I place salaries and taxes into the equation, well, you can figure out.
With Unreal Engine that amount would be 50.000$. 900.000$ vs 50.000$ you made the mistake of your life choosing a per-download pricing model in the mobile era. Good luck with that.
This is absolutely non sense. I can understand that all companies get greedy sometimes, but not that much. You clearly don’t understand how mobile market works and that some companies are getting millions of unwanted, unmonetized, tier 3 downloads. You are trying to get money from wherever we developers don’t want to (because we don’t want to display advertising) or wherever we are not able to get from (because some studios can’t).
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Do we have to meets the both minimum thresholds ? Or only one (install or revenue) to pay per install ? We need real clarification on mobile games. Are we going to have to pay 15/20 cents per installation??? Even after 1 million installations, a mobile game will never earn enough for 15 cents per installation. You’re living on another planet that I’m going to leave. Don’t forget that if Unity is popular, it’s because we developers and studios use it.
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This is absolutely ridiculous… having just subscribed to Unity Plus for the purpose of producing Web-GL content to run in browser without having to show the advert - we wont pass the thresholds so unit costs unlikely to affect us (though over time this is uncler), at $399 this was a lot of money as it was but now to do exactly the same it will cost nearly 5x the amount, I cant justify this price increase to my customer! We will change platform first! Furthermore none of the new “features” are of any interest to us! Very disappointed as a new customer to find within a month of purchasing were now getting hit with a massive eventual price rise - we will be using the remaining subscription time to re-platform to something else.
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But pretty much everyone here meets that figure…the issue is “installs”. Are we not due for a fee then?
So for example, let’s imagine the game is making $200k and there are bout 200k installs in a year. Then something whacky happens and Unity registers 100k extra installs (Steam Deck, reinstall/uninstall, hackers, system bug etc) will I not be charged for that 100k extra install? And do you not think Unity will require us “devs” to prove that it is fraudulent?
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