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Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

unity.com

11–20 of 43 posts

Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

#11
post #3

I think if they had initially released this page there would have been very minimal outage. Not just the change in plans, but the language itself seems more thought out. The question is whether or not they have damaged their user's trust to an irreparable degree.

They have greatly damaged their users and their indirect users' trust. When big time streamers like cohhcarnage and asmongold directly replies to unity and tell them how much they have messed up https://twitter.com/CohhCarnage/status/1703577526809845760 https://twitter.com/Asmongold/status/1703636396718555428, you know you've done fucked up

Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

#12
> How does Unity estimate the Runtime Fee when I have not supplied data?

> While we always recommend you supply your own data, in the absence of that, we will use our own data from Unity services that you have agreed to integrate into your project, and readily available external data.

> Does the Unity Runtime phone home by default?

> It does not, unless you have hardware stats enabled.

----

I'm not a gamedev nor have ever used Unity to develop something, but those two sections seem conflicting. Can anyone kindly explain how they have their "own data from Unity services" while the runtime does not phone home by default? Thanks!

Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

#13
post #5

Glad my buy-orders went through Friday when it broke into the $31/share territory. This'll make for a tidy flip.

the stock is doomed, check out asmongold's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNXQ2bYik78 . more importantly, insiders have been selling a ton, for example the founder of iron source. Silver lake sold all of theirs direct stocks for example.

[deleted]

Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

#14

> How does Unity estimate the Runtime Fee when I have not supplied data? > While we always recommend you supply your own data, in the absence of that, we will use our own data from Unity services that you have agreed to integrate into your project, and readily available external data. > Does the Unity Runtime phone home by default? > It does not, unless you have hardware stats enabled. ---- I'm not a gamedev nor have…

Unity has way more services than turning on hardware stats. If you use them they can make some estimate of unique users. Unity would now prefer you give them the information yourself.

Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

#15

So they rolled back the most abusive aspects of the new fees but are still going forward with some fees... Seems like they win on the end. Looks to me like the good old strategy of we'll start with a very high proposal then come back with a more watered down version thst people will accept as being more reasonnable than the initial terms. But they still get to charge more and seem reasonnable doing so.

Downvotes notwithstanding, the reality is that Unity is not profitable. They desperately need a revenue stream.

And sure, they should have gone with plain old revenue sharing from the get go ("we get X% of your sales, so if you sell nothing, we get nothing, and if you move 2 million units, we get an amount you can quite easily part with"), instead they came up with a batshit insane plan, and their CEO should have been fired already.

That doesn't mean they can backpaddle on the part where they need to put a sales-based revenue stream in place. Either they do, or they go out of business (which is an even worse deal for everyone. Folks seem to vastly underestimate how close to failing Unity was even before this debacle).

As much as people will want to go raise pitchforks despite these changes, reading through them these changes are actually massive. The part where it only applied to Unity 2023LTS and beyond is a HUGE change. It's aggressive, and and a grandfather clause for already in-progress games is clearly missing so fuck em, they have more work to do, but it's also nowhere near as insane as the previous arrangement. And it almost certainly won't be their last change as long as the dev/studio world goes "good start, but this is still unacceptable".

Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our Unity rep has been applying a ton of pressure to purchase more licenses and I've heard similar stories from other companies. I think Unity has some bad financials right now and are pressing every part of the business to generate more revenue. I don't think this was some grand scheme - I think they're panicking about money and acting without thinking through the long term consequences of their actions.

The great thing is, if it was a scheme as implied, they now have so much reputational damage on their hands.

Which is why this "scheme" seems highly unlikely.

Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

#17
post #3

I think if they had initially released this page there would have been very minimal outage. Not just the change in plans, but the language itself seems more thought out. The question is whether or not they have damaged their user's trust to an irreparable degree.

They have greatly damaged their users and their indirect users' trust. When big time streamers like cohhcarnage and asmongold directly replies to unity and tell them how much they have messed up https://twitter.com/CohhCarnage/status/1703577526809845760 https://twitter.com/Asmongold/status/1703636396718555428 , you know you've done fucked up

Streamers don't really play much of a role in gamedev communities though. The professional perception of the developer community is what will really be tested here.

Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

#18

So they rolled back the most abusive aspects of the new fees but are still going forward with some fees... Seems like they win on the end. Looks to me like the good old strategy of we'll start with a very high proposal then come back with a more watered down version thst people will accept as being more reasonnable than the initial terms. But they still get to charge more and seem reasonnable doing so.

Aren’t the fees pretty much the same? Besides the 2.5% revenue option.

Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

#19

So they rolled back the most abusive aspects of the new fees but are still going forward with some fees... Seems like they win on the end. Looks to me like the good old strategy of we'll start with a very high proposal then come back with a more watered down version thst people will accept as being more reasonnable than the initial terms. But they still get to charge more and seem reasonnable doing so.

In the process though they've made many game devs start a transition to a more open or reasonable game engine. It's not much of a win when their userbase is now essentially falling.

Re: Changes to Unity Plans and Pricing

#20
post #5

Glad my buy-orders went through Friday when it broke into the $31/share territory. This'll make for a tidy flip.

the stock is doomed, check out asmongold's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNXQ2bYik78 . more importantly, insiders have been selling a ton, for example the founder of iron source. Silver lake sold all of theirs direct stocks for example.

> more importantly, insiders have been selling a ton

Hired execs always do that because they are paid in stock. They couldn’t even afford to pay their taxes without doing that.

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