Unity is awesome again!? | New pricing update 

You can't really call them the good guy if they are the ones who caused the problem in the first place. It is like calling an arsonist a hero because he doused the fire he started.

When a former EA head is in charge of Unity you can be rest assured...They're not the good guys. The fact they even thought this was a brilliant idea tells you all you need to know. They want to profit in anyway possible...they're just sorry they couldn't get away with it.

As good it seems, I don't like the idea that they have changed the ToS so suddenly twice

I appreciate your enthusiasm for the future. But the same executive team is still in charge and they've done nothing to lock these changes into place longterm. It still seems like a very shaky foundation to build a future on.

It’s not true that Unity _had_ bad management, they _have_ bad management. None of the executives have resigned, they are still merged with ironSource and they are still a public company with big losses and shareholders that are screaming for increased revenue. The most important lesson they learnt is to slow roll these changes so that they can make the community accept it piece by piece, like a boiling frog.

Unity pissed in our faces the moment they said that the changes are not gonna affect 90% of indie game devs, implying we are never going to make it.

They post the worst scenario to prepare you to take an advantage of you, and you will feel it is good now, then give you the finger and get what they want anyway, that is put their hands in your pocket.

I was going to comment that I strongly disagree with Unity being the “good guys” again, but it’s nice to see most comments already share that opinion. Management screws up and now it’s actual passionate employees (that were against this in the first place) that are left picking up the pieces. I’m planning a 2D game… I think I’ll choose Godot.

Once you understand who the CEO is, then you’ll get why things happened the way they did

Even if we were to admit that Unity is the "good guy" again, an admission I do not make 😋, I would be concerned about their outright competence. The notion of install-based is so unashamedly asinine, it's kind of a microcosm of how the company's been managed. Even if they manage to rub a couple brain cells together and satisfy folks as well as climb out of 800 million bucks into the red, there's still the fact that they're beholden to shareholders. It's also quite clear that this backpedal isn't out of the goodness of their hearts. I totally get sticking with Unity (for a currently developed game at least) if you weigh everything and switching is just sinking your own ship, but I think they are about as close to deserving of accolades as is my house to Andromeda.

Totally respect anyone sticking with Unity with current projects, and the pricing doesn't seem unreasonable now. Even without counting the sunk costs of existing development into the engine, I would get anyone who has spent time learning how to do things in Unity to want to continue because reskilling in a new tool is always time-consuming and risky. Given, though, this is the second time they've tried to change the TOS retrospectively, can any developer really rely on the company going forward? It shouldn't take mass outrage to keep a company in check, especially when it seems they're willing to reset and try again. I'm personally hoping that Godot starts becoming more popular in the Indie community so that it means more content aimed at getting people up to speed with Godot, and in turn pushes Godot development along to meet the expectations of those using it. Even if Unity keeps a lot of developers, a competitive open source engine is a win for Devs because competition fosters innovation.

I'm really happy for all Unity Devs that it went this way in the end for now. And that kinda includes me who now has options i didn't have before. I do not think Unity is S-Tier however because some issues stay, and i am not talking about business and betrayal. Unity had a good run between 2019 and 2021/22 when they fixed a lot of the broken messes they had in their new replacement systems where for some time every system, pipeline, ui module etc. was either deprecated or in preview. It helped that they had teams work on demos and dogfeeded their systems. ...And then they had layoffs and they are back into "well, that's gonna happen maybe" mode. Like where's the internally ecs powered navmesh that without any requirements would be so much more powerful and inherently multithreaded? Oh, instead we get stolen assets-trained AI because it's the thing now. They try to grow healthy by diversifying from games or shrink healthy in terms of games. The issue that lead to this is till there and we do net get the best possible product because of it. Still good, Unity certainly is, but not the best.

The main problem is that they tried to make this retroactive. They did it despite the fact that they had tried to make a different change retroactive in 2019, and in response to outcry, wrote language into their license to indicate that they won't do it again. But, seemingly thought that by calling this a runtime fee that they would be able to work around that promise. To me, that is the part that is hardest to get past. Per-install charging based on a proprietary algorithm was pretty goofy, but at least I can sort of understand the logic. No doubt they were dazzled by an information broker like Sensor Tower into believing that they could just rely on 3rd party data for billing. Much in the same way that TV advertising has Nielsen behind its billing. I can forgive their thinking there, even if it is a good thing that it changed. Smaller studios won't be impacted, except now they can earn more before they have to buy Pro. For PC devs, the real threshold isn't whether their game makes $1 M. It is whether it reaches 1 million units in sales. That is a pretty high limit, even for a professional indie studio. For the big professional studios of F2P games, this is a bit more annoying. 2.5% of revenue is a giant figure relative to what they had been paying. A studio in a high income country likely needs to have revenue of at least $300K per developer-year to break even (consider that the storefront will take $90K, and big games have massive marketing budgets, say $60K per developer-year, and you are down to $150K per developer-year left, to pay the developer, all of the artists who don't use Unity, pay the testers, pay for the offices, managers, accountants, etc., and even that level of revenue would be difficult for a big studio to get by on). Right now, they only have to pay Unity $2,040 per developer-year. A 2.5% royalty would represent a $7,500 per developer-year increase. A more than *quadrupling* of their cost, for no additional benefit. That, I am sure is difficult to take. However, as Unreal charges double that amount, and it is a small cost relative to reducing developer productivity, I think the big studios would grumble but eventually eat the cost. For the big professional PC/console studios, that $300K of revenue likely reflects less than 15K of sales, which under the install fee is a bit under $2,000. So, for them, their Unity cost nearly doubled. Also, not fun, but as their entire Unity expense would be 1.3% of revenue...it would be tolerable. Which is a long winded way of saying: paid game developers seem to not be impacted that harshly by this change. But given that they have already tried to make 2 retroactive changes, it makes one worried about a 3rd. Though, it should be noted that both of their prior attempts had failed.

For me the trust is broken anyway, but i'm very glad of these new changes. They could have avoided this whole situation by putting like half of these changes from the start.

So it's 2019 again and once again they swear that the changes to terms of service will not be retroactive anymore... But hey, at least they began understanding how the logo policy is supposed to work. You shouldn't promote your product with free asset flip games made by kids, it's the big guys who should be showing your logo everywhere.

The thing is, this isn't Unity's first misstep and as long as Riccitiello is in charge, I'm not sure you can trust them to not totally change things again. Remember, he's the guy that weakened EA, too. I would trust them more if he was gone.

Confused how they "had" bad management

Never forget, they've tried to retroactively change their terms twice, it'll happen again. Never build on shake-y ground.

To me it looks like the Unity devs are all just happy to have the splash screen off - Now everything is ok ?- Game From scratch did a nice vedio showing this is the second time they have pulled a fast one on the T&C - I hope Godot get a lot of new dev - Godot is very welcoming PS: Facebook gave Godot some money to make the VR model in Godot.

its called Door-in-the-face_technique

Is not that they are making things better, is just that the illegal retroactive policy will no longer be happening (for now). They are still not explaining how the Runtime Fee ACTUALLY works.

still bad, good enough for current unfinished projects but starting forward, switch to different engine.

Most devs at this point will reply to this news with a solid: "New engine, who dis?"

You can just stay in an older version of Unity to avoid the new fee, which is pretty reasonable. For me, my project stays in Unity 2019.4 LTS. it is the most stable version, it supports almost all packages and I don't need scriptable render pipeline. Recent versions are not impressive enough for me upgrade.

Is it guaranteed that something like this won't happen again in the future?

Finish whatever projects you've invested development time in using Unity, then drop Unity and switch to another engine. Unity has shown they can't be trusted.

I think we all have to understand that indie devs were at best collateral damages in the original pricing scheme. It was pretty clear their major targets were mobile games. If you are an indie developer primarily targeting the desktop/console space, your concerns are mostly alleviated now that they actually have a plan. However, if you are a mobile developer, I think this was only a sign of what's to come. Mobile games are a big chunk of published unity games, and mobile is the platform where ads perform. What makes Unity money? Ads. So expect more strategies targeting mobile developers to switch to their ad platform

Understand unity is understanding their business model. This will happen again.....they must .. But it will be in another form.

I have to use unity for classes im taking but after that im back to UE

What's left after the dust in settled is that I don't think that unity is that good of an engine anymore.. is good in general, but tend to think it is better than it really is just because weRe used to it,. In reality is just another tool and honestly if it wasn't because of C# I wouldn't have thought twice before switching to other engines..going forward I think I'll put the effort in learning new tools, is an investment like any other,..

You are missing that the biggest lost was trust. Yes, they said you can use your current TOS, but they said that in the past and tried to change it. Its just a big risk.

I like your video, man. Still pissed. I've been paying for Pro and haven't even released my first game yet. Their response time for email support has said two months. This whole thing is wild. I'm at it solo, intent on making AAA indie games that don't suck. There's still so much to learn and the last thing we need is to put our hearts into this company only to be stepped on with no recourse. I seriously got back into my two projects for the first time in months, all excited - invested several hundred hours into them and then freaked out. If they can't get their act together who is going to foot the bill - us. That's it. Who really provides the customer service - all the badass indie game developers who truly care about the industry. The $3k I've personally invested into this endeavor (including asset sore purchases) will get no appreciation. It only matters to me. Seriously. I've been burned too many times. The emotional and financial headache supporting an evolving company that can't get it's act together is too much. At times I can sound like a dick but that's because corporations can commit what you and I would deem criminal acts against their employees and customers while hiding behind a team of lawyers. I'm passionate about creative expression and the arts. It's my religion and all the corporate studios are the false gods. The battle has begun ;-)

The tone has changed completely, now shooting on Godot and unreal.

If i would be making such engine. Sure i might need ask funding but i would make top limit too there which where would funding from that game stop coming to me. I honestly wouldn't need milk money forever which is not fully mine. I just helped so why stick around forever.

People so desperately want Unity to succeed, that they are willing to see this as a good thing. They effed up, took no responsibility and essentially pushed through what they wanted by calling it an optional thing you shouldn't worry about... and make it mandatory down the line.

I still prefer GDevelop as my game editor and my own game engine for the runtime. Unity is crazy expensive. Unreal pretty expensive if you are successful. More than 1k a year is crazy expensive for the editor and runtime.

So they you a lesser crappy version and everyone is happy😂

Even if they hadn't backtracked at all, I wouldn't blame you for sticking with Unity for a game that's already in progress. I do strongly hope you switch to Godot for your next game after that one, though.

9:30 It's not even 1 million total (like it is in unreal), it's 1 million annually, which is basically only achievable by the most successful indie devs

The Evil Overlord question is: Did Unity release the original information knowing it would be a dumpster fire, which would allow their actual plan (the current one) to be widely accepted? *Muhahahaha*

How will they make it up to the unity devs that got in trouble because of death threats? Unless they fix all of that, unity can burn

Unity is better than Godot in certain aspect, but I don't think it even remotely close to Unreal and the technical marvel it bring to the industry like Lumen or Nanite. When was the last time Unity present some remotely unique tech showcase? And VR capabilities? Not unique to Unity. AAA studios have always consider between Unreal and their in house engine, no other engines.

5:25 if a feature exists, there is a way to abuse it. someone will find a way to hack this and bankrupt developers

No, not awesome. You just get *uck less. They'll try to sneak in something after this situation get calm for sure. Best possible outcome is to not charge for runtime fee at all (keep the old TOS for the future release)

You'll see next year when bots keep installing/unistalling pirate copies, devs who make 200000 will be broken.

To cook a frog you need to do it slowly. Given that idea I will never trust Unity again. This pricing will be back, they will increase pricing gradually for years and you guys will praise Unity for that

Unity is S tier. FIGHT ME IN REAL LIFE

no, no they are not they still got what they wanted and people are letting them get away with it after they used a carrot on a stick dont think for a second they wont implement more bullshit now that they know they can get away with this good video but you're not helping just saying

Seems fair. Earn more pay more.

Not sure why my earlier comment was deleted but here is the Marc Whitten interview he did today at 1PM PST regarding this. ru-vid.comqyLcI5O9iUY?si=7Zijqewjc62iEUWP

No it isn't awesome. You really gonna trust them and they are still charging for Bandwidth that isn't there's. Just take a cut per sale and call it a day.

Clickbait and misinformation. Outstanding.

Unity is an amazing tool. I was always grateful for it being free and I wasn't that worried about the initial pricing changes except if I was making a f2p game. But the new structure is now perfect. In the end I really want to support the tools and makers of the tools that I love as much as I can, specially the free ones. Because they deserve it for making such awesome and useful tools and letting everyone try them for free until they can afford to pay them back ❤

Unity is dead for me. I moved to Unreal Engine.

No

What’s y’all issues at this point in the comments? You guys are throwing a massive fit even though they not only fixed everything and put I back together but they improved it. Talkin about the hate train dang.

I'm first, so LIKE👇