"We spent the past few months talking to many of you around the world about Unity and the value proposition we offer, and we discovered the overwhelming majority felt that we were providing excellent value across the board. In fact, many of you expressed concern over a race-to-the-bottom business model for tools that your livelihoods depend upon. And you also raised a strong voice against a royalty-based business model. In our many years as a startup, we’ve always re-invested our money back into our product. "
Hmm… from what I understood based on the forums and people ‘I’ve spoken to’, everyone wanted the subscription price to come down. I certainly didn’t see the ‘majority’ voting that they are 100% happy with the pricing model.
“We believe the business model and pricing we have now is one that will continue to provide us with the resources we need to ensure Unity is the most reliable and delightful way to build games for the majority of developers. Nothing remains static though, and we may revisit our business model and pricing at some point in the future.”
Yes, the forums can sometimes give a very distorted view of reality, where a few people constantly repeating things makes it seem like a majority view when actually it’s not. (This is a well-known social phenomenon that goes way beyond the Unity forums, by the way.) They mentioned using a third-party research firm, so I’d trust that over a forum topic. That’s not to dismiss the views of people who don’t like the current pricing model, since I know it’s frustrating to feel strongly about something and not have things go your way. But in order to stay in business they can’t completely ignore the majority. They’ve proven on several occasions that they listen to customers about pricing and are willing to change their minds (the Unity 4 upgrade pricing and this news about WebGL being free to name two), so I think it’s disingenuous to accuse them of not listening.
Unless people are making assumptions I didn’t see anything in there that Unity Pro gets you Pro WebGL. The problem with Unity pricing currently isn’t $1500 pro, it’s $1500 pro + $1500 pro android + $1500 pro ios, etc or the absurd monthly pricing.
“So we have decided that with Unity 5.0 we’ll make the WebGL deployment option add-on available to both free users and Unity Pro customers without cost.”
I’m happy to see that WebGL will be free. Still, would have been nice to see Android and iOS fully included in a Pro-license. Oh well, I may have to just bite the bullet, then.
Yeah but having access to the add-on without cost != mean having access to all pro features without cost. I have access to iOS builds I just can’t use Pro features with my current license.
When it comes to the pricing of pro, one should keep in mind that the majority of Unity users are using the Free version and are making less than the 100k/year threshold - so of course they’d want it to be cheaper. It is most likely that Unity was evaluating the pricing model based on the balance between a potential user’s likelihood to produce a successful game requiring pro features, their willingness to pay the current price, and Unity’s monetary needs for supporting their business. Obviously the balance came out in favor of keeping the price the same - there are enough users willing to pay as-is for the benefit of pro features.
From what I’ve seen, the majority of people complaining about the current Pro price don’t need the features - they just want to play with them… and I can hardly blame them for that, but it’s not a good enough reason to lower the price. To the majority of Unity users, the engine is a hobbyist’s toy - and Free supports a low-budget hobbyist. Unity Pro is named as it is because it’s intended for professionals willing to invest.
It should be kept in mind that Unity Free was called Unity Indie before the cost was completely dropped; it was intended for Indie developers, and the free version has only improved since that time. The fact that people are still asking for a price drop and are still hoping that Unity will lower its up-front costs to be more comparable with other engines instead of just flat-out switching to the competition only proves that Unity is actually worth the current price.
If you prefer Unity and can’t afford Pro, then use Unity Free. If you think you’ve got something good going on with your project and you require Pro features, then you will almost certainly find a way to come up with the necessary funds. Just have patience.
Well - WebGL being free is good…
Regarding the pricing : really can’t complain, while the entry for Pro+Android+iOS might look steep, the upgrade pricing is quite fair IMHO ( at least at the preorder rate )
Indeed, but as a mobile developer I will need the Pro-versions of both add-ons. But as I said, just have to buy them with the current prices, then. I don’t think they’re outrageously expensive, but I’d guess more people would buy them if they were a bit cheaper.
EDIT: Ah, you were talking about the WebGL builds, my mistake.
I have always felt that Unity’s pricing on Pro was prefect. I felt the addon pricing could have used some adjustments but overall it was ok.
However, the subscription model in my opinion is way off the mark (ie. too expensive) to enable Unity to convert a large subset of the free users into paying subscribers (customers) which in turn would have enabled them to accelerate their revenue and overall business growth.
It’s unlikely they would have specifically said “available to both free users and Unity Pro customers without cost” unless they meant exactly that. In other words, the WebGL publishing is a direct replacement for the current webplayer publishing (or it will be, after the webplayer eventually goes away). They don’t advertise the iOS add-on as “available to Unity Pro customers without cost”, after all, even though that’s technically true in some sense, as you mention.
That’s pretty much exactly my thoughts.
I would have thought so, but evidently I would have been wrong since the subscription option was initially just a temporary experiment, but after a while they decided to make it a permanent option, which they wouldn’t have done if it wasn’t working.
I was always under the impression that the subscription model was intended for two types of developers:
Companies where funding comes on a schedule that does not allow for one large up-front investment.
Developers who believe they can finish developing a game using Pro before the subscription cost passes the full, up-front cost.
You don’t have to get your monthly-rate pricing from Unity Technologies directly, you could get a loan. Interest rates are particularly nice right now.
No, but it is a good reason to consider an alternative such as a more feature capable hobbyist tier or selling features individually. Otherwise any potential sales may be lost to the competition which is offering hobbyists an affordable price.
It all depends on Unity’s objective / definition of working?
At $75.00 per month, I don’t think Unity is converting 10’s of thousands (ie. a significant chunk) of their free users into paying subscribers so by my definition, the subscription model isn’t working. Having been in sales for over 30 years, I can’t help but think they are missing out on a huge opportunity here. But then again, I don’t know what their internal numbers show so who knows.
In the end, pricing and minor details aside, I love Unity.
Meh. Give them another year of Unreal 4 and Cryengine catching up and I’m sure they’ll change their tune a bit. At least they should have considered making iOS/Droid free for pro or making indie a bit more feature-complete.
