Today we announced a change to our business model which includes new additions to our subscription plans, and the introduction of a Runtime fee. We wanted to provide clarifying answers to the top questions most of you are asking. Yes, this is a price increase and it will only affect a small subset of current Unity Editor users. Today, a large majority of Unity Editor users are currently not paying anything and will not be affected by this change. The Unity Runtime fee will not impact the majority of our developers. The developers who will be impacted are generally those who have successful games and are generating revenue way above the thresholds we outlined in our blog. This means that developers who are still building their business and growing the audience of their games will not pay a fee. The program was designed specifically this way to ensure developers could find success before the install fee takes effect. We want to be clear that the counter for Unity Runtime fee installs starts on January 1, 2024 - it is not retroactive or perpetual. We will charge once for a new install; not an ongoing perpetual license royalty, like revenue share. We looked for ways to lessen the impact on developers, and provide ways to bring the Runtime fee to zero. If you’re using any of our ad products, Unity Gaming Services or cloud services, etc. please contact us to discuss discounts. We are actively listening to and following your questions closely. Please review our FAQ (on.unity.com/3PAiqHH) on today’s announcement. We also invite you to continue to discuss these changes with us on our forums: on.unity.com/3RmyLRx.
Hi everyone, we’ve heard your questions and feedback and are working hard to answer them as soon as possible. We’ve aggregated some of your top questions in our forum, and will plan to address them in the main forum thread here: on.unity.com/3PBclus
@unity How many shares of stock did the ceo sell on sept 6 or is that fake news?
@unity Absolutely unbelievable🤡 Unity confirmed they’re going to make install-bombing indie devs into bankruptcy possible, including for pre-existing games
Corporate greed at its best. You're an absolute shameless corporation and I really hope you go bankrupt ASAP. No need to choose you as an engine. Developers now have Godot (free) and Unreal (way better engine in every single aspect, with way more resources than Unity. This is a shameless corporate greed movement. You're going to start a new troll movement. It used to be DDoS attacks, now it's going to be "install attacks". At the cost of 0,20$ per install, 500,000 installs (which I've achieved by far in older projects, not in the market right now) it's going to cost 100,000$usd. Which is a house in a lot of countries. You not only are awful as an engine itself, now you're one of the worst examples of corporate greed I've ever seen, in my life.
@unity I've added "Unity Engine" to my list of things to check isn't in a game before buying a new game.
@unity I sincerely hope devs move away from Unity engine after this. I’ll feel better about playing those games and there’s plenty of other developer-friendly engines out there. I’d say it’s not too late to walk this back, but gamers will remember lol.
@unity Who would trust you now? Who would invest 3-5 years in a project right now, knowing you're capable of pulling the rug out from underneath them? How are you the last ones to realize this was and remains a terrible plan?
@unity here is a question : you are about to end as a company how does it feel?
@unity The worst. Our games are online forever, but revenue is certainly not forever. Price drops, sales, deals and piracy drive drive revenue down quickly. Also, a financial burden for reinstalls? We have no revenue on reinstall. Madness.
@unity Jesus ever-loving christ, whoever came up with this idea needs to be publicly fired and you need to back out of this idea and apologize profusely for ever thinking this was in any way reasonable
My heart truly aches at this. The countless years building games and stories, the amount of people I’ve tried to convince that unity was the best, the endless pits of information to learn all the features, functionalities and small little caviets, in this amazing software, all stripped and ruined by pure corporate greed. Please change this, for the sake of your fans and users, before Unity becomes #DeadUnity
@unity I've been working around Unity's flaws and quirks for the past 5 years but this is the last drop. If these unacceptable policies don't get rolled back, I will personally switch teams and advise ALL of my peers going forward to stay away from your god awful company.
@unity You're retroactively applying a new TOS - one that will just drive many of your customers out of business. This is a trust issue at this point. My current decision is to not start another unity project under this TOS. Silently removing THIS did not help:
@unity i will not be paying a runtime fee for user installs
@unity Thank you for these responses. We thought it was bad, but you guys are just psycho.
@unity Okay I have a good proposal for changes. We can split the revenue 50/50 for reinstalls. So we can break it down like this, after say 300k reinstalls. * revenue-per-install (RPI) = 0 * 300k installs x RPI = 300,000 x 0 * split revenue = 0 x 50% = 0 (for each) Easy.
@unity Ah, this explains everything! Thank you~ (said no one)
@unity Welp, I’ll be installing Unreal tonight. I’m not too far into development.
I strongly despise this entire new policy due to its infringement on privacy and unethical handling of personal data. Unity, your act of accessing and divulging user information without their consent is unacceptable. This not only breaks trust but also raises apprehensions about potential exploitation of personal details for commercial gain. I genuinely wish that legal actions are taken against you all, resulting in the downfall and bankruptcy of your company.
The feedback is pretty damn clear. DON'T FIX WHAT ISN'T BROKEN! In the sphere of unity I know, VR Worlds and Models in VRC All are built using Unity, so are model and world dev's expected to pay a fee every time a world instance is loaded? Every time a model is loaded by a player? How about when VRC Is installed? What about those who build their own AVI's and upload them? What about all the other Unity Games? Are some of those indie dev's expected to cough up hundreds on top of the existing fees? This is greed, plain and simple and if you go down this path you're going to lose a lot of customers.
@unity i'm going to charge you 50 cents for each time unity LTS has crashed in the last few weeks
@unity Here’s a question for you, how long will it be before these changes are reverted and an apology is posted for even remotely thinking this was a good idea?
@unity Top questions: 1 - Are you really this out of touch? 2 - When is the CEO buying the dip?
@unity So this means every sale generates finite revenue, but potentially infinite costs, as the player can reinstall the game countless times even without malicious intent. I am sorry, but this is insane. Anyone with even basic understanding of economics could tell you that. [1/2]
