Unity Runtime Fee is the Death of Unity! 

Feel free to leave me your comments on ideas, concerns or anything! Try to keep the discussion cordial even though it might be difficult as emotions are high right now 🙏🏻

Per install fee is the worst software business model I've heard of in my entire life. This is ridiculous.

Godot and UE are looking really good right now.

Unity is doing the best job they can to make ensure the success of UE5

This is such next-level money grabbing that even governments could learn from it. Truly impressive.

As a long-time unity dev, this unity per-install fiasco finally made me start familiarizing myself with Godot, which has apparently gotten a lot beefier in the past year. after seeing how Blender, being free and open source, went from garbage to galaxy tier animation and modeling software, I believe in open source and think it's smart to bet on a FOSS game engine like Godot, which can only improve over time, as opposed to some corporate products, which can slowly degrade (like Unity.)

The main problem is not reaching those thresholds. The problem is distribution and publishers. Publishers will think twice before giving a greenlight to your game made in Unity

It's so insane that this got approved.

Budgeting is important no matter what level of game development you're on. There's literally no way to budget for Unity's installation fee.

You can tell that Unity hasn't prepared for potential questions. So they were really convinced that the developers would accept it again without questioning it (as is often the case). Unfortunately, this time they leaned too far out of the window.

It is relevant to pretty much all devs, even small ones. Reason being, even if we're not in the $200k in the last 12 months category, we all aspire to be there and work hard to make games we think could put us in that category. Why aspire to go to paradise when paradise cuts off your testicles?

Sooo i am already in the process of switching to godot. looks like the perfect time

Damn it’s almost like the current CEO used to work for EA…..wait a minute…

Even if they backpedal the trust is already broken. They revealed their hand and it's horrific what stops them from pulling this again in the future secretly.

I had a bachelor's thesis on realistic animation in Unity 5. I feel you. I hope this will go away asap.

Masterfully said. This update was so wild that I didn't know whether to laugh or be sad.

Unity is making history the first scam engine. 😂😂😂

I’m so annoyed by this change. I didn’t reach any of these thresholds but as you said everybody has ambitious goals. This install fee just ruined my business model.

I think now would be a great time to make an Unreal tutorial along the lines of "Learning unreal for former Unity developers". I have been using Unity for 8 years now. Know it through and through. I've tried to learn Unreal many times but struggle due to the poor documentation. I'd love a tutorial that teaches unreal from the perspective of "So you know how to do X in unity, here's how that works in Unreal"

It looks like "Hey we have a very successful product, how can we ruin it?"

I have heard about this fees model change about 10 min ago, watched another video. I am not even a dev with a single released game, but I will start learning Unreal now because that is just insane. No amount of rolling this back from unity will change that. It's like when you meet someone new and they say something so profoundly stupid/insane that you can't help but question their sanity and level of intelligence for ever.

You did hit in the right spot, "per install" is the big issue, in the internet is common to bombing other people for different reasons, could be just to take out a rival company, this is shit.

From what I heard, Godot is pretty good for 2d Games and Unreal is really good for 3d games. Not to mention Godot is just free, meanwhile Unreal (as you mentioned) only makes you pay if your game sells a specific number of copies. Either way you choose, it would be interesting to see tutorials on different engines.

If, at this point, Unreal Engine uses the opportunity to add C#, as a secondary language, they will completely wipe out Unity.

It's crazy that they're actually tracking it, I figured it would be like Unreal where you just submit quarterly reports. Why do companies do things that are so bizarre and cannibalistic, who thought this wouldn't be a massive dumpster fire? Even if they were just testing the waters it's still going to have a huge impact on their reputation.

I was looking for a good excuse to try out Godot and Unity have now given me it.

how I didn't know this channel? haha subbed! and about the subject, I'll wait for next episodes, the whole thing is on flames yet, devs reacting, ceo answering and so on

This is going to affect indie devs so much. If they get a massive hit, they wont be able to funnel that money into starting a real game dev studio, and instead they'll be forking that cash to Unity😢

RIP unity

I see a lot of security issues with their "Trust Me Bro" tracking system. What's stopping someone from simply recursing an install/uninstall operation on a cluster of VPN connected VMs to potentially delete a company? Or finding a vulnerability to increase the payload of tracked installs? This is super risky for game developers.

Since the USFTC approved the MEGAOPOLY, I do not have hope anyone can put a stop to this. THIS IS THE DEATH OF UNITY!

I am working with Unity now for 3 years and I am finally at the point where I can build my own complex games with it, but I think switching the Game-engine would not be the big problem for me, the bigger problem is to learning another Language and beginning the learning curve again also, if Unity dies, Unreal has almost the full market for itself, which leads to that there is no longer any competition against unreal, so progress would be slowed down enormously Its the same with the Hypixel Server, there so no such Server that would be competition and thats why there are so many problems which wont get fixed, 'couse the Players dont have an alternative

So glad i choose Godot to develop my game.

Looking forward to learning Godot!

Wow big sad. Great video - I've seen you a few times but nowwwww you got a sub

Even if they take it away, they could bring it back later. Even if they limit it, they can increase the amount to $1 later and make it unlimited later. They have essentially killed Unity.

Per install tracking is perfectly designed with no exploits

Unity blocks you immediately when you are in dispute. Meaning if your game uses any Unity Services, you can't even update it. And nothing stops them from adding that same behaviour to the runtime.

Thanks Unity, now I need to choose another game engine. Learn it from ground, learn a new programming language. And recreate everything that I have already done in my game, which I have been working on for many years. Big thanks!

Pretty sure how you implement this business model ends up being illegal in majority of the US, let alone in the EU.

That sucks. I was really looking forward to using unity dots.

Charge per install is just next level. Damn this hits hard. I feel sorry for the companies and indies that have been developing their next games in Unity. Now they will have to reconsider if it's even worth it to continue the project that they have spent months if not years into them.

our team almost finished making a mobile game in unity (our first project) and unity does this......anyhow you earned my respect and a sub good sir

Grats on the high views on this video! Adding my subscription to inch you closer to 1000

This is absolutely insane. This is truly the beginning of the end of Unity. What a shame!

Guess I better start learning Unreal Engine then.

8 years of experience gone to waste, same as you man I love the engine and have optimized the workflow, but I can't use it. Godot it is.

I found you from Modding Channel and damn this is crazy

I am several years into my game dev journey, and now I have to scrap all the work I've done so far in Unity and find a new home, which will probably be Unreal. I haven't touched Unreal yet so it is going to cost me the time to learn the engine plus the time to rebuild all the work. The only good thing is I made all my own assets so they are not tied to Unity through their store, so I don't lose anything on the art and music side. The game design and story development work won't be lost either, but some of the core game systems will have to be redesigned. I am not sure how Unreal works so I don't know how my code will interact with the engine yet. C++ vs C# isn't a big deal to me, but I will have to learn the a new API and the way the engine functions. It will take the time and the mental energy I have available for studying from other topics, like developing more advanced rigs for my characters. I'll have to push that work back a bit. Unity will delay me, but not defeat me!

Really even as an indie studio we are vigilant about the privacy of our users and how we handle that data BECAUSE we are small and because we are more valnerable to going bankrupt in damage claims over not paying attention to this sort of thing and getting ourselves sued because we did not disclose. Having to have a fat privacy consent notification all over everything now just adds additional concern and complexity to an already scary legal place to be when we choose Unity. Yes it's easy, yes it's compatible. But how much of my players data am I now selling or shilling out in these contracts? It's getting the point where I can no longer guarantee privacy even over offline single player experiences that use the runtime. :/ Unity is making itself less and less appealing with each update.

Note: if you are hitting the thresholds for this stuff, you will also be forced to upgrade to a pay per seat model (Pro, Enterprise or Industry). Note that they check against your "raised funding" as well.. so if you do a kickstarter and get a bit more than you expected, you may end up being in a cost-per-year license. This is over and above the fees being implemented. Yeah, %5 of sales is high, but it only applies to money made after the first million usd. And like was mentioned, it is stable, easy to track and understand, and only applies when you actually make money... you hust make a little less, and only if you make it big. Tying it to installs instead of sales means you could pay regardless of the money made, and now you have to decide on whether your game should stay availablr for download in the future or risk getting hit with monthly fees because people keep reinstalling the game a decade down the road... It is a "bad for industry" royalty model. I would much rather pay a % up front. Indie friendly is in the "keep your first million" clause. Plus.. don't even go with unreal. There's a lot of options on the market. This was such a terrible decision and I hope devs respond in a way that tells the industry that this kind of thing will not be tolerated.

In their latest tweet, they say this "Re-install charges - we are not going to charge a fee for re-installs." Just Trust Us, Bro.

I feel there is a good space in Godot right now for Setup and Basic build tutorials. UE5 seems to have much more established for tutorial videos.

Even EA and Acti-Bliz could not see that-like monetization system in their deepest and darkest dreams lol

The marketing team of Unity deserves to be demoted. I'm about 95% sure that none of Unity engine devs approved this ridiculous idea!

Thanks for your thoughts on this, and I was laughing (while frowning 😂) while watching this and listening. Greed gets in the way of so much.. so frustrating. I've had big ambitions of making a free-to-play 2D MMORPG for a long time, and this would really hurt that dream of mine. I'm strong in C#, but somewhat intermediate with C++.. I can only hope they reverse this awful decision, but if not, I think I finally have a reason to learn Unreal after 8.5 solid years with Unity... and perhaps start looking into C++ libraries that could make 2D pixel art games possible for me :) I definitely need to learn an ECS C++ library.. Subscribed btw, I love your honesty and experience, it's really helpful!

You know, once upon a time I fell in love with the internet. It was magic. Now I just want to build a 3 meter fence, go offline and pick up gardening or something. This doesn't even affect me personally aside from the games that are going to get pulled from stores. These suits are ruining everything I used to care about and I can only hope that one day they get what's coming to them.

The direction they are taking will destroy the entire game industry. You can't trust what they will do next after pulling such a disaster this time

It's been two years since I used Unity for any project. I always liked to perfect documentation and the easy learning curve for C#. But it has been so long since Unity added any significant features like Unreal did, and now, with a new price tag, I won't ever open that software again. At this point, they are just giving up!

Which engine do you recommend me to use? i have been using Unity for about5 years, but i still call myself some sort of a beginner, What engine should i start with? (e.g Godot, URealEngine....)

I've been using Unity for years, but this is a huge. red. flag. This is financially dangerous to studios. This single decision will EASILY make studios walk away IMMEDIATELY from Unity, even if they back-peddle. They have shown their hand, so now we know that it's just a matter of time before Unity gets developers on the hook with fees. It's the fact that they are wanting to apply this retroactively as well that makes this so dangerous. The more you invest into Unity by making games with it, the more you may dig your own grave. This should be an EASY DECISION for studios if they are smart. If you are brushing this off as nothing, you are naive. Get. out. now.

this news made me tear up for the Unity devs :( Big Hug

This per-install billing is basically asking every dev for a blank check every month. They get to fill out the amount, and you have no ability to verify any of this.

Well said; great video.

my 3 months of learning unity is now all garbage lol.. i guess its time to learn c++

GG, no re. Thank you for nothing, Unity. You owe me 15 years of my life. (well. 7 years, technically, had 8 years of non-unity projects in between)

I work on a big game made in unity, this is absolutely wild and even larger studios who use unity this is MASSIVE amounts of money, like a massive budget shift amount of money.

im happy this doesn't really affect me - I was planning on switching to Unreal Engine when I made the move to 3D anyway

Is it not possible that Unity was sold behind the curtains and the the new brand will be called X? Or maybe the new owner will say: "Why I need this crap? Let's call it Y."

Man, Unity was my go-to engine so i'm real sad to see this. I'm currently learning Gamemaker so it might become my main engine now

Was about to start my project in Unity. Thank god i find this vid first

Even if they rolled this back, I would still be hesitant to use Unity because you won't be able to trust them.

after this change i switched to unreal, haven't spent alot of time with it yet but the nanite system is pretty neat it functions as a procedural real-time LOD from just a single model, there is also the blueprint system which functions as an alternative to writing code and instead using a node system to build code from automatically and so far i like the layout and controls better than unity

As for the web, native WebGL engines, like Verge3D, Three.js, etc starting to look an even more attractive option now.

I was really into doing stuff with DOTS, waiting for it to improve and now this... it was a good run, boys o7

This is unity's Bud Light moment....

well time to switch to godot ?

I'm the guy who posted the "Is this an out of season April Fool's Joke" lol. I was actually one of the first licensed Unity devs in 2016 when they started doing the license tests in person. From 2015 until 2021 I was a Unity dev making product and AR/VR experiences for brands using Unity. Had an AR tracker experiance headline a huge display at thr Javits and built a Hololens demo for the head of Pepsico...yeah, Unity shot themselves so bad here. The reason why I stopped in 2021 was because the jobI had, which started to pivot to chatbots (but still had a Unity aspect to it) got sabatoged by people in the ad firm space of NYC. They were livid GDPR eroded what they were able to grab from people via trackers. It would seem they got into Unity after it went public and since devs werent using Unity Analytics enough (to where the Unity CEO called devs "fucking idiots")...they decided to force the tracking in as the stock continues to tumble. Not only will they potentially get tons of extra money from fleecing devs, their ad investor buddies will get juicy data on everyone so they can sell it. Its insane

Also, what holds them back to change their 'price/download'. It might be 20 cts at the start, but when inflation goes up, they might charge 30 cts or whatever. Everything seems to be based on 'trust us, bro'.

Getting Flashbacks from Rust Foundation. And the Whole Twitter Chaos. Why is this the Year of bad Marketing, PR and Sales Decisions?

Unity is dead even if they backtrack. All trust is lost - who is going to build a game and business based on top of Unity, when you never know when they might decide to change the terms retroactively and charge you for every install of that game some day, and when you've built everything on top of it your only way to avoid the new charges is to kill your product and all the work you've put into it (or rebuild it from scratch using something else). You can't base your product on something that can change it's terms like this and apply these terms to past use of their product. If they wanted to create some new Unity 2.0 with some new features with some new fees if you choose to use it - fine. But if you built an app with the old Unity Editor, accepting the terms at that time, they shouldn't years later be able to say that now you have to start paying them money for all installs of that app, even if you're maybe not even developing with Unity anymore - you just paid for and used Unity to develop the app years ago when these fees didn't exist, and now suddenly they want to charge you for every install of that app you built???

Subbed to you for the upcoming Godot tutorials 💀

Conversation must have started like this.... Unity Exec 1: How can we get more developers to use Godot? Unity Exec 2: Well, we could do something to simultaneously destroy our brand and alienate our current user base. Unity Exec 1: I love it!

I literally have no words to describe that warm feeling inside. If frustration is 1, anger is 2, rage is 3 then... what's in between 52 and 60? I'm so tired of running into the walls.

It’s a hell of a thing when the software you’ve spent your whole adult life learning to use decides to jump off a cliff. I give it 90% chance this gets reversed, but I don’t care. When a company pulls this shit, you realize they’ve lost touch and you can’t trust them anymore. Time to finish this last project and go learn another engine I guess.

What about installing updates do they get charged for that to

Thanks for the rant. I really hope they'll change this up because the way they just changed the rules, just broke my trust

Why stop at per install? Make it per vCPU core, toss in per GPU core as well, those newfangled GPU's have a bunch of cores on them. How are you going to measure this? We believe we have a solution! Can I see it? NO

Godot Stride3D Flax Engine

This is insane. Ive been back and forth on deciding an engine as I dont primarily do game dev. Between all the new things like nerfs in unreal i dont think ill be using unity again.

I a unity hobbyist and cannot enjoy it till yesterday. It's like they shuttered the big dream... I feel so bad for people who invested amounts of money in a company going crazy like this...

I upgrade my PC about every 10 to 5 years. I reinstall Windows quite frequently as I also use Linux they dont play nicely always. So each time I build or rebuild ... I guess it says its a new install. A per sales, everyone would be happy. I have been trying to learn Unity for 2 to 3 years. I have bought loads of Unity Assets and course and enjoyed Unity's free course. I will now carefully consider buying anything more off the Unity Asset Store. I really want to develop on PC and Android. Why would I do a gaming in Unity now? I am inexperienced enough to start again and to rip up what I have dones so far. What I have learnt coul;d be transposed to Unreal or Godot. They have killed off the Unity Asset Store too if threy keep this nonsense. PLEASE GODOT tutorials!!!

lets just make a open source game engine, ohh wait there are 2, unreal and godot

it is also really cool to know that John Riccitiello Sold a lot his Unity Stocks before announcing those amazing changes to the company....

So, how it works when someone installs your game, plays for 30 minutes, does not like it and never opens again or just straight delete it?

Would’ve loved to be in the room when this decision was made, cons: pissed off customers, high potential class action lawsuit, complete destruction of public image/brand, massive future revenue and customer loss, pros: well there’s some short term profit and we’re not gonna be here in a couple years so let’s gooooo!

Instead of Unity runtime fee, let's start calling this the "Unity runaway-time fee".

I was just about to start learning unity today, I probably shouldn't now huh? Any idea what I should learn instead?

Darn! And here I was about to learn Unity. Which other engine is as good and simple to use? Any suggestions?

I love when success is punished, really inspires innovation ♥