Unity 6 Preview Released - The Final Before the Run-Time Fee! 

Hey! Just a quick correction on the runtime fee since you didn't click through the options in the personal version. If you make more than $200,000 yearly it just says that you make the cap for the personal version and have to upgrade to the professional license. The runtime fee only affects you if you have a pro/enterprise license and make the $1,000,000 yearly. Thanks for the video!

i don't care if Unity 8 comes out dude I'm never going back to Unity i don't want my company going bankrupt because runtime fees fk unity I'm using Unreal and Godot

i don't trust unity

Yes, any version that exists today, including this one, does not have the fee. The next release and theoretically all releases after, will have the fee.

@@gamefromscratch that's awesome, i will download it then i can remove splash screen also, its weird that they allow us to remove splash screen on unity 6 preview without any fees

@@gamefromscratch i just tested it, and looks like it have tons of bugs, lighting, rendering all messed up (i understand it use new api) but still we have to wait to get a good working version of unity 6, for now i will stay on 2022, btw fees are correct now soo i think to update in the future in LTS version

Tbf the current license situation seems fairly aligned with indie devs with smaller teams. And considering they clearly fear their developers what with walking their license terms back, I'd say its less of a gamble than usual. Heres my breakdown: If you as a company make over 200k a year, you'll have to purchase Unity Pro 12-month licenses for all your developers that use Unity for the next year (currently about $2000 per person). If you don't net that 200k again in the following year, you go back to the free version (according to hypotheticals, correct me if I'm wrong). So you make 200k, you'd lose 1% (that $2000 license) per seat if you want those people to continue developing. If you make more ($400k?), you lose less (0.5%). The smaller the team, the better (benefit for indies). If you are a unicorn on the other hand, and you gross over $1mil over the past 12 months AND gain over 1mil active engagements since you released it, you have to pay the additional: "2.5% of your game’s monthly gross revenue, OR The Runtime Fee based on monthly initial engagements. Whichever is lower" Again, once another 12 months goes by and you don't gross 1mil, that fee goes away. Doing the math, you make over 1mil for a year, have to pay

It is under the Splash Screen options in the Player Settings. There is a check box there to remove the splash screen. Just downloaded and saw the option.

It depends on your definition of Indie. The vast majority of devs complaining about runtime fee are one throw shovelware on to steam and mobile store with the hopes of hitting it rich one day. Some of the large devs that this actually affects are laid with technical debt that changing engine effect the business. Realistically speaking, every project should start with an evaluation of which engine is best for your project based on your team, genre of game, target platform and expectations. Godot, Epic, unity and other engine devs are business with the goal of making money. There is nothing stoping godot 5 from being closed source with a runtime fee or other shenanigans

I kinda kept up with the bcklash from when they initially changed it. Did they revert back to the old? what do you think abou it?

@Omnivoid22 realistically it's a problem I would love to have and exist on other platforms as well. You have making $1mil in revenue/funding in previous 12 month for the runtime fee to take effect. How many indie project do you know making at least $84k a month year after release ? The runtime fee is aim large mobile game like cod mobile and genshin impact.

IDK, I'm loyal to competition, I'm already messing with godot in my spare time just incase as backup. People used to on Blender too, but now look at Blender.

Biggest changes is probably the ability to more easily intermingle gameobjects and ECS, but otherwise not much.

​@@gamefromscratch If I'm not mistaken, you're referring to these: - Entities now have a global ID, regardless of which ECS World points to them - GameObjects now automatically have Entity counterparts making it easy to query them via ECS Hmm... my thought ended there. There really is not much. Hope to hear more about the ECS side of things. DOTS is heading in the right direction, I feel lke.

with the latest changes the runtime fee is optional, and not even present in unity personal, only revshare after 200k

@@bogoid Unity have proven that they aren't beyond making changes to their changes. Also, whilst these current changes don't look too bad on the surface, very few companies don't follow the boiling frog experiment of see how far they can push the boundaries into a new norm and these changes should be of major concern to everyone. It's not something we should be normalising.

@@odo432 The management that tried those changes are all gone.

@@MichaelGGarry And? It's not just management. It's shareholders. The company has a legal responsibility to ensure they aren't negatively impacted. So, greedy practices are routinely adopted by management even if not immediately noticeable.

Competition is the only thing I'm loyal to, In my world, I only use Unity cause of the numerous 🏴‍☠ assets. Everyone should look up "The mirror" a Godot fork.

how about all free.

@@mowenyaoWell I mean, Unity is a company dude; they need to turn a profit.

Optional Splash Screen Now available, do it

Battle cells hit game idea, army battles become cells, fleet battles become unique biological cells. save send to developers

No, the LTS is the next version of Unity. Aka Unity 6. This is the final release before that release.

We've spent 3 months porting a project to Unreal and 3 more months on productive work, and I'm of the opposite view. I think Unreal is simpler and friendlier, and more deserving of the name "Unity". The complexity was much higher for us in Unity, largely because of the constant workarounds for missing/limited features, and that really bites in total. The amount of stuff we're not building from scratch in Unreal is staggering. I've removed a full year of shader development and tooling because of things that truly just work in Unreal. I was jumping through hoops to get proper Virtual textures, GI, tessellation (literally writing my own tessellation because that's the world you live in in Unity). I've developed a genuine anger towards Unity after the fact, for such clueless flailing, while Unreal was quietly building a proper, professional product. Thank you Jesus that Unity pulled the runtime fee stunt. We were stuck in a huge mistake, and this was the kick we needed.

The big problem with Unreal Engine is the documentation sucks... sucks so badly. Also, the lack of C# is a mistake and verse isn't that answer. But mostly the awful documentation. From a feature stand point, you can't hold a candle to Unreal Engine these days.

@@gamefromscratch I felt that way working in Unreal 5 years ago. But since then, I remarked how many things in Unity were actually undocumented. And now with AI, you can really get an example of almost anything you want to do. It's wrong 20% of the time, but it gets you a foothold. I rarely struggle with how to do something in the engine. Most of my struggles are the problems I'm trying to solve in my own code.

@@HollywoodCameraWork I'd actually really like to switch to Unreal but it seems like trying to approach a behemoth. Coding in C++ was pretty much not an option since Visual Studio takes 2 minutes to process a single auto complete for some reason, and blueprints are not my cup of tea at all. Do you happen to have thoughts on this? I'd love to hear other people's takes.

Yes, if you use Unity 6 LTS or newer. But it's still cheaper than unreal.

If you sell for more than 200k USD, just upgrade to Unity Pro. For Unity pro the threshold is 1 million USD.

There's a lot of things URP still doesn't have, IMO HDRP is more of a candidate to be the default pipeline, especially that it looks better and many mobile devices can now run AAA games, so in the future HDRP should be able to run on mobile as well.

​@@thomasfalcon6350HDRP runs worse and iirc doesn't support mobile platforms as well

they said that themselves, if it's not already the default in the unity 6 preview then it will be on the release version

That's because Unity is the mobile engine, and URP is better suited for mobile, for now. But HDRP is the future IMO.

I would take a bet on that Thomas, simply because I think it will be easier for them to make URP better looking (theyve been porting HDRP features to it), than it is to make the HDRP versatile. I also think maintaining two pipelines is so incredibly problematic and costly from a tooling side, its inevitable they choose to go forward with one.

Nope, they said they were still doing it at their Unite Conference. This is the last version of the engine without the runtime fee while still getting the newest features.

I thought so too!

​@@MastermindAtWork they didn't remove it but they did change it. It's basically locked to 2.5% of your revenue at most but it can be lower (Idk exactly how, I just plugged numbers in their runtime fee calculator randomly)

There was only 1 issue: charging some people insane fees, and now it's capped at 2.5% at the worst case, so it's just like Unreal license, but ~2 times better even at the worst case. People who keep spreading the hate around the license even after the changes either don't care much about the engine, can't read or UE / Godot fanboys. The only issue is that they tried to change it retroactively which is a shady move, so you can assume that they may try to do the same in the future, but honestly Unreal isn't really safe from that either, so your best bet in avoiding that is to fork Godot and make your own engine based on it, and maybe pull some future features to your fork.

@@just_yuumi the other issue is the fact that this install detection is client side spyware basically. And can be abused. I don't think that's the same kind of pricing as unreal. Also why do I have to fork godot? It's literally done nothing with pricing.

Educate yourself and stop watching RU-vid, you are 100% wrong. I am very sure that you will never develop anything with $200,000 revenue.

They did, you are correct. The runtime fee is still coming. If you sign up for this "beta" you will have to sign up for the runtime fee to get the bug fixes. Stick with what you have.

@@rodvik Stop talking SHIT. The runtime fee does not affect anyone other than it can LOWER your fees.

The last thing i read is that you are able to chose between a revenue based model (2%) OR the runtime fee.

@@rodvik You need to learn to read.

Its only charged as an alternative to paying a flat fee, ie you choose whichever charges the least. The max you would pay is 2.5%.

You still need to pay for Unity seat licensing as you do now, so it's basically an additional 2.5% on top of what you pay now.

Runtime fee only applies from the Unity 6 GA release. Unity 6 Preview is not subject to runtime fee.

@@gamefromscratch Perhaps you could link to the Runtime Fee Estimator page up top somewhere? I don't know if RU-vid will remove links from my comments.

@@gamefromscratch Only on the pro subscription, which you only have to pay after your game has earned over $200,000 USD. That first 200k is free. You only then have to pay the run-time fee after you have earned $1,000,000 AND 1,000,000 engagements. So yes, the MAX you would pay is 2.5% + a Unity Pro fee which is $185 per month per seat, but you have to be earning in the millions before you have to pay both. Meanwhile Unreal also asks for a fee after $1,000,000 in revenue, but that is a flat 5%. Far more expensive than Unity.

That's never gonna happen since the ground can be anything based on your game. Fact of the matter is the included character controller is just for quick testing. Any serious game will always need a custom one.

It's self reporting. But you shouldn't give up your life just because something could spy on you. You can be spied on by your OS already, even when it is open source.

@@SnakeEngine I think "everyone is spying anyway so don't worry about a bit more spying" is a really bad take. Also, no one said anything about "giving up life", but I hear looking at different engines is incredibly hot right now, so that is always an option if the shit piles up to high.

@@tomwor3380 What I am saying is that it is pointless. You are not any more safe with any other engine. So your first priority is to choose an engine that makes you most productive, not non-quanitfyable safety concerns.

@@SnakeEngine I agree with the productivity prio, but it's not safety but privacy that I'm concernced about and this is not just a product I use for myself but an app that I distribute to others and I care for the privacy of my potential customers.

@@SnakeEngine phew, i thought they added the paywall thingy

hahaha :D

2019 is kinda a dream version because Script compile times and Editor times in general are so much faster. Unfortunately, a decent number of my Assets only work with later 2022.3 LTS package versions (Burst, etc), so I'm locked from backporting to an earlier version.

I'm still in 2018 LTS, still works for me!

@@dreamcatforgotten8435 I've read several times in the Unity Forum that some people tested this with a benchmark and found that their Project 2019 was the slowest and 2023.x was the fastest. I think in 2020 they introduced the loading bar, which has a physiological effect. But it also depends heavily on the project. Script compiling is quite fast, only the domain reloading takes the most time.

@@mapiideal I can only go by my own anecdotes between 2019.4 and 2022.3, and I can say with certainty that opening a new project in both and making new scripts takes significantly less time in 2019.4 than 2022.3 I don't really use 2023.x versions because I prefer LTS over alpha/tech releases. I can't say much about larger projects, but if I want to whip up something quick such as a test project for a friend, I always prefer using 2019.4 version over 2022.3 LTS since everything seems to resolve much faster.

As of now, Unity still has a better deal than Unreal because it undercuts it by 2.5%. Which region are you from?

Unreal is actually a much better deal if your game makes less than $1M.

@@atoaster2070 That's negligible. It hurts a lot more if a bigger chunk of yours is taken once you got rich. Ask any rich person for confirmation.

There are many factors to consider, including the number of developers, the length of the development cycle, and whether or not your game contains in-game purchases.

Lol, you're not gonna make 200k to get under the fee.

The finished version of 6 will have the runtime fee. Generally speaking, as a professional developer you shouldn't use the experimental branch for big commercial products. 2022.whatever is probably going to be the widely used stable version (for a given definition of "stable, considering that 2022 has some funky bugs).

Just use Unity Tuanjie aka the chinese version of Unity 6, they also copied UE's Nanite and not too sure about Lumen. there's a channel that's been playing with Unity Nanite already.

That's a massive rework of the engine, they said they hope to release a CoreCLR version of the engine later this year so I'm guessing Unity 7 Beta. But yeah it's probably their biggest engine rework so don't count on it coming anytime soon...

@@jihadrouani5525 It's gonna be huge tho. Wondering if they'll support NativeAOT and if they do how does it compare to IL2CPP

the runtime free is not that high. they provide you a good game engine and want u to purchase the pro version and just %2.5 when u earn more then 200k. steam, app store or google play store cuts %30 of the revenue

@@mehmedcavas3069 It's not necessarily the fee for me it's the principle behind it, and that they so fragrantly threw away their trust and good will for profit.

@@mehmedcavas3069 Nah man, dont defend that shit. Fuck the runtime fee. Should not even be a thing.

​@@mehmedcavas3069"The water in the pot is not that hot," said the frog. "Certainly, it won't get hotter."

So you're assuming you'll be a millionaire from your creations? Yeah good luck with that. Runtime fee literally doesn't matter for 99% of indie devs out there.

basically in shortest of short terms, runtime fee is now optional, you can either pay 2.5% royalty (just like unreal requires to pay 5%) or choose to pay runtime pay which will always be less than 2.5% of your total income in last 12months

dude, no serious studio is using godot. use unreal instead. Stop the cheap godot promotion

@@desmasic I'm using Unity since 2014 and basically learned programming through it. The engine itself is awesome, which is why I'm so hesitant to leave. But Unity is not open-source and the run-time fee is the worst idea they ever had. Also, until now I was using 2023.2. I probably would have continue if they would at least update that version or make it a LTS. But they completely removed the version from the Unity Hub, which is a scary move in its own right.

@@desmasic Imagine pretending to be a developer in 2024 and not knowing what the hell you are talking about..... Also there are no "superior" free alternatives.

@@MedusaZenovka Unity 6 Preview doesn't have runtime fee, and is 2023.2 + all the final new features for the 2023/6 cycle (Unity 6 Preview is actually the new name for Unity 2023.3). We have had a standard practice of removing old versions that are no longer supported for a while now. With Unity 6 Preview being released, Unity 2023.2 is no longer supported, hence being removed from the Hub. However, all of the 2023.2 releases are available from the download archive as indicated in the Hub->Install Unity Editor->Archive section.

@@MrAndyPuppy Yeah, thanks. I know all of that already. What I meant by this "is a scary move" is that the much dislike run-time fee is approaching ever closer and the options seemingly diminish. It is a subjective experience from a long time Unity user. Nothing more.

Lets act like everyone makes 200k in revenue

It's still cheaper than Unreal

Exactly 😂

I look forward to sending Unity my 1st cheque!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

99.9% of people saying they are leaving Unity because of the runtime fee aren't actually affected by the runtime fee. It's just another excuse for kicking the can down the road in regards to finishing their first game.

I think over the next 5 years Unity's market share will 100% decrease. Godot can ONLY get better and is FOSS forever. Unity is still moving in the direction of killing themselves to appease shareholders. Just like with Maya users slowly moving over to Blender, I predict the trend for Unity to Godot will continue.

I dumped Unity years ago but I'd want them to be stick around 'cause without the competition we wouldn't have Unreal or Godot be this good :)

Stop going on about the damn runtime fee - it literally affects no-one!

​@@OrionhartGodot didn't solve 3D performance issues for decade, so I doubt it will solve in another one.

Unity is the worst of both worlds. Go with unreal for optimal experience or godot for optimal contract agreements.

Nah, they're vastly different, Godot uses a custom made GI solution, Unity uses APV for URP and Ray Traced GI for HDRP. None of them are alike.

Well optimization takes months of work the traditional way, and now you're complaining because they did that work for you but they aren't pressing the ON button? xD

​@@jihadrouani5525at least he is still using unity

This is the way

Good luck on your Trash Game Dev Journey, Everyday from now on you will make trash.

as someone whos been using godot for over 6 years, it is not the way. it might be comparable to unity in 5-10 years, but if you plan to do 3D (especially multiplayer), please do yourself a favor and don't waste your time like I did. going from godot to unreal has been seriously eye opening

L

OK, that's good, but why are you here ?

what's the other style called, when they introduce something but exaggerated/overblown, then expected backlash, then they reduce/tone down it a bit, but it's actually the number/something they want.

Thing is... what's keeping asshole unity corporate dorks from simply messing with the agreement again?

@@hipflipped Competition. As long as there are competitors as Unreal and so on, every stupid decision has to be revised. You are just as safe with Unity as with any other corporate software.

your game that has made $100 isn't affected by the runtime fee. it's time to take off the diaper and focus on actual problems

People love Valve/steam even though they don't even bother to finish up their franchises.

99% of the people here will never develop anything on any platform.

@@ShaolinDave What a load of crap. The Unity execs that tried to push that nonsense through have all gone. New team in charge and they have already changed a lot of issues.

Not sure how you can call that a load of crap, everything he said was factual and accurate. That they somewhat corrected course after the fact doesn't change the original mistake.

@@gamefromscratch THATS WHY ITS CRAP. It was never actually put in action and has been totally changed. It was a huge mistake, the people responsible are gone and they have changed it to a very fair system that in some ways is better than what went before. Constantly going over something that happened and was cancelled does no good to anyone.

You missed the part where it there is zero fee if you make less than $200,000. I'd bet that not a single person in these comments will even earn $2000 let alone $200,000. LOL

Err no.

Oh, you make over a million bucks a year and you're afraid of a 2.5% commission? 🤡

They know (correctly) that pushing the business model off a bit would save them some users.

Sacrificial lamb

They changed it you know? Have people actually followed the whole thing?

I think that's what they wanted from the beginning. Anger all the users with an insanly high fees then lower it back so we won't talk about the increase of the 2.5% share.

@ZedDevStuff No, people didn't even know how it worked to start with and still got mad about it. Even in this video, Mike says that you have to pay royalties with unity free, even though you don't, and have never had to. If you make more than the limit of free, you have to upgrade to pro, and if you THEN earn more than the limit on pro, that's when you actually pay royalties.

I just wouldn't trust Unity. If they tried it once they'll try it again. Or something else equally as scummy. Just a matter of time.

Or you can just go with GODOT or Unreal. The products who didn't on a whim change their pricing policy, while taking a dump on their user base, then later need to backtrack, but still left it unnecessarily complex. While leaving the door open, for further dumping on their user base.

​@@MarshalLeigh1911 you can say that about any company, unity got new ceo so i dont think there will be ever changes that wild like runtime fee

​@@MarshalLeigh1911 unfortunately every private company can do, just look at adobe, now that they are the true gods of creative market, they aren't improving at all, I am seeying a lot of crashes in my windows laptop, and its not a OS thing as its crashing on my mac(intel) as well.

They will flip it back to terrible as soon as people are acclimated to the smaller step changes.

The companies that did make that much "lost their mind's" more than any of us. Many studios were forced to change engines. It really was and still is an incredibly legitimate issue and will be the source of Unity's inevitable decline for the next decade. I'd put stake in the projection a few years from now, Unity will no longer be the go to indie engine. Something else will fill its space. Doesn't even need to be Godot or Unreal, but it sealed its fate in the hearts of many.

they're a public traded company, the only reason for the runtime fee is to make more money, and they will try to keep making more and more money each quarter. it will be the runtime fee now, but later on it will either be more predatory or they'll find more way to tax the developers, so no, I mind the runtime fee and so should you.

It became possible after they reverted a big chunk of their primary idea about RF

​@@IPlayKindred iirc they've been losing money for a while and the original runtime fee was basically a desperate measure, which even in that case was pretty stupid

Rather disingenuous thing to say, since many small and medium size companies would definitively be squeezed by it.

They have just put more effort into hiding their funny business. Unity will have to undergo another firing session of their employees before the end of this year. Their rate of engine features will slow

@@sean7221 They are way to overstuffed anyway, so that's a good thing.

Why?

Why?

I will thanks.

Honestly, you are misinformed. Nobody really cares what you think.