Unity has updated their fees after this video game out! Here's a summary of the new structure: • Unity Personal: Free up to $200k rev. No runtime fees. No Unity splash screen required anymore. • Unity Pro: Can choose either runtime fee OR 2.5% rev share after $1M/yr. Not retroactive. Installs and rev are now self-reported. blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee
@@JustinPBarnettIt's worse than that. This means they can retroactively change the terms of service and change the pricing at will. This makes any sort of financial planning unpredictable. Furthermore, the "per-install" method means the overall impact is very hard to predict. Plus Unity removing their Git repo that tracked ToS changes appears to be deceptive at best.
Longtime fan here, but this gets a thumbs down from me unfortunately for the apologist video. They will be guesstimating installs, and they are not discriminating by user, which means that if a single user installs your game on three devices, you're getting hit with three fees for one purchase. Your math breakdown assumes the dev is getting every cent from the installs, and that every install cost the same, and every user only installs on one device. It does not account for freemium games, nor does it account for taking part in things like humble bundle, steam sales, giveaways, or pirating. The most egregious part of this is that there are developers who have been building games in Unity for years only to be hit with this unexpected pricing change. I look forward to the inevitable lawsuits that come from this change.
I completely agree with all of your points. Justin was one of the reasons I got into VR development. His discord mannerisms as well as this video is making me reconsider following him
I'm not affiliate with Unity at all. I'm logical. Yes the way they communicated this change was horrible, but at this point you're crying over chump change in the grand scheme of things. Unity has said that humble bundle, pirating, charity, and many other installs will not count towards the game's installs. Plus, regardless of everything else you have to be making *$1 million per year* for any of this to actually apply to you. Which I think is a good problem to have. It's not like they're taking a huge chunk of your revenue (like Unreal does)...
@@JustinPBarnett I didn't say you were affiliated with Unity, so I'm not sure where that came from. You're allowed to consider yourself logical, but I'm also logical, and I'm pointing out that your accounting has some flaws in its model and the representation of the price schedule. Unity's FAQs do not reflect any plans to implement accounting for piracy, or humble bundling, sales, etc. They do state that charity and charity bundles will not be charged, but a charity bundle is still counted toward lifetime downloads. There is also no feasible way for them to implement that kind of distinction as far as I know, so even if they claim they will be taking that into account, there is little reason to believe they have the capacity to do so. Especially not when their own FAQ says: "We treat different devices as different installs. We don't want to track identity across different devices." This indicates that they will not be putting in the effort to make the distinction of the user's identity, which is directly tied to discerning whether or not an install is legitimate or pirated. You do not need to make $1 mil per year for the fees to apply. That is wholly false, and only true if you're using the pro license. This fee will apply differently to users using the personal and unity plus plans. The Unity Runtime FAQ states: "Unity Personal and Unity Plus: The Unity Runtime Fee will apply to games that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 per-game lifetime installs." I'm not writing all this to attack you personally, or to offend or insult you - again, I have great respect for your contributions to the VR dev community. I'm only trying to make sure that the truth about the pricing model is out there. I'm not attributing any malice or subversion to your representation of the plan here, but there are definitely inaccuracies. Source: unity.com/pricing-updates
Ye... first time visitor to this channel.... these levels of apologia make me extremely suspicious. It feels exactly the same as the times I've discussed "life in China" with a Chinese citizen.. And they go on to sing the praise everything in china - while downplaying anything said in "western media" :D
@@JustinPBarnett "Unity has said that humble bundle, pirating, charity, and many other installs will not count towards the game's installs." - or, in other words, "just trust me, bro". They can say whatever, you don't have any way of checking their claims anyway. Also, I bet there is not a single word about that in their legal documents. They will send you a bill on whatever they "guesstimated" and if you have any complaints they will send you a lawsuit. You will never know whether they counted something or not, and, more importantly, you will have absolutely zero ability to prove anything to them. Their response will always be "our best-in-the-world proprietary algorithms have determined that 10 billion people installed your game, so pls send all your money our way thx".
Your numbers are correct, but you didn't mention how this completely screws over free games that make money via microtransactions. The often used example being kicked around the forums right now is Flappy Birds, which had more than 50,000,000 downloads. Because of the dramatically increased costs, freemium games will struggle to break even. Innersloth games, developer of Among Us, has been talking about how they're going to need to port the game to another engine if this goes through. Also, there is some concern that the system could be gamed to 'review bomb' a developer. Unity says they have tools in place, but their official response (IE: We'll work with you if you suspect piracy is inflating the numbers) did not instill a lot of confidence. While the response is open to interpretation, folks are suggesting that it will be on the developer to prove that piracy is happening to unity.
Unity claims they have tools for piracy but once again they don't mention any specifics. What if the tool is buggy? Will it be up to the developer to freak the hell out over owing unity a million dollars unless they can PROVE that the installs were bogus? Do they have to take Unity to court? This is all very worrisome. It's almost like you should be fearful if your game becomes popular or not
Let's do some more math for the sake of your argument. 50,000,000 downloads comes out to about $10M in fees if we're going by the free Unity Personal plan. But if you're not stupid, you pay for the Unity Pro license, which only comes out to less than $2M. Fappy bird has made over $892 million in lifetime revenue. I'm sure they'd be happy to pay the $2M or even the $10M as a cost of doing business.
@@JustinPBarnett what if you never thought your game would make it like that? What if you built it with Unity Personal and after releasing it, it does better than you ever envisioned. If you go back and buy the Pro license, does unity lower the amount you owe them? If not, then it seems you either need to spend money you probably don't have on a Pro license ahead of time, or you need to predict the future and just know your game will be big.
@@JustinPBarnettWhat about the fact that this is retroactive and affects games already installed? And since they updated their ToS retroactively, what's stopping them from raising the fees retroactively?
@@JustinPBarnett impossible that flappy bird made that much money, during the hype the game was only up for like a month or 2 before the creator take it down, you are saying that flappy bird made nearly $18 per download with your number, where have you found this number ? the only number i see about flappy bird revenue is that it made $50,000 a day during the peak of the hype
You're basing your whole calculations on the basis that 1purchase = 1download, I've reinstalled games like Boneworks and bonelab many many times if nonsense like this was applied before I'd be a net negative for SLZ. highly moddable titles with long lifespans can easily cross 100 downloads mark by a single person, this would make long lifespan games a bleeding wound for developers. This is not even getting into the whole breach of trust unity did by attempting to apply this on all pre-existing titles that were released prior, who's to say they're not going to pull something like that in the future? trusting this company with your development future is like placing your life in the hands of a drunk driver at this point.
Re-installs do not count. Unity has stated this along with many other things that don't count towards the install count. I do agree with you on the breach of trust point. I'm in no way defending them on that.
@@JustinPBarnett Thank you for the clarification! although it seems like every device will count as a separate install so there's still a big possibility a single purchase will count as multiple installs, on top of that this kills any incentive for developers to release cross buy titles and one thing to keep in mind is with every hardware iteration or upgrade your customer does you will be paying that price again, overall still a huge pain and major deterrent for long term projects.
Anyone who saw the shit storm that game devs poored into social media over Unity will see, Justin, you... The problem is Unity's shady "trust me bro" methods of collecting data about number of installs. Besides there is problem of install bombimg developers (buy once, install 1000000 times). Why not take a fee from sale? Why install? Unity is trying to charge developers fees, that dont make sense. Try charging players, see what happens.
I do agree that the 'install' metric instead of the 'purchase' metric was a strange call. That was the intention I'm pretty sure, but a very bad PR move on Unity's part.
Was there some example of who made mobile games for children. Gross revenue little over 1M and almost 110M downloads so their fee would have been 108% what they got. Another case if bad actor reverse engineer fingerprint what they use to count first installs and use bot farm to nuke dev if they have wrong opinion.
@@LimbaZero You don't have to add the extra link in the chain. Unity already has low enough trust - that I believe there is nothing stopping them from claiming that you just made a billion installs - congratz, we now take your company.
My bigger concern is that as someone who does freelance dev work on the side for non-game industries, Unity is now requiring that I pay $5,000 a year for an "Industry" license. I'd have to do a huge amount of work to make that back, and since it's part time for me, it prices me right out.
I looked into this license along with the Pixys plugin and I’m honestly not sure why you’d need it. It provides a clean interface but I reckon you can do everything it does in normal Unity anyway.
@@shaunrichardson-wv8oh It's because my clients typically make more than $1million a year. You don't have to be a huge corporation to make that kind of revenue, but even so their budgets are limited so I can't just charge whatever I want.
@@joeysipos My clients know nothing about making apps, animation, etc. These are marketing departments that need something made, and they have limited budgets which won't afford buying a license just for a small project.
1. Do they make a million dollars on the app you design, or just in general? enough for your work. 2. Do they have 200,000 installs? You have to hit both the dollar value AND the install count. If you are producing a tool or a demonstration app but not a game that people are buying, then I doubt you are subject to this at all. p.s. If your app is the source of all that income, then you are not charging enough for your work. I have definitely been guilty of that before.
I think switching to Unreal Engine is the better choice even if I have to pay more because I need trust and stability. I know that the price won't randomly change year to year. With Unity they can change the price at anytime for any reason and charging based on installs is shady. With no clear and transparent way of showing how they got the number of installs its just smells like a trap.
Although the unity pricing is cheaper your calculations are flawed and I guess biased, its not downloads its installs. You are assuming everyone installs once. What happens when you release a DLC a year later or just a major update and 50% of your audience that has already bought your game installs again. It then becomes an unknown amount. Unreal is at least a fixed price and also wont change next year.
You missed the mark here, Justin. It appears you've not thought at all about how it's going to be technically implemented. Implementing is technically infeasible. Why implement a pricing structure that you literally can't reliably report on? How do they know when something has installed? Every month you'll get a bill from Unity and then you'll have to justify your sales, at which point Unity can just say "we don't believe you" and force you to pay. Their "proprietary technology" is a claim that they've solved piracy. Which is nonsense. You can control the host when you install something. I'm sad to see you parroting the Unity marketing but do whatever you need to do to survive.
The new "fee table" is not problematic, main problem is that people (players) will be hesitant to install games made by Unity because it officially became "spyware"
@@JustinPBarnett I agree, people (me included) accepted that big companies are taking our data. But now I must hope that people will be OK with my software potentialy spying on their machine and that was not even my intent
My biggest concern is with free games, for instance, if I want to release a mobile App, and let's say, optimistically that every user buys a $1 microtransaction. Now, 30% is being taken by the app store, and $0.20 is being taken by Unity. So now, my free game is losing 50% of its revenue, and that's before taking into account that this is a per install fee, so if one of my users gets a new phone and redownloads the game, or runs out of space on their phone only to delete it and come back later, then I'm responsible for that extra $0.20 every time a user does this seemingly innocuous activity. I absolutely agree with you that these pricing changes are not nearly as bad as people make them out to be in the realm of games that cost $10+, but for free games or really cheap games that depend on scale of installs (Such as the newly minted hit Vampire Survivors) this pricing change is much more significant.
This calculation is not a realistic representation tho, and *only* represents the best case scenario. Over 250k sales you are basically just assuming everybody will install it once, which is the best case scenario and definitely won't be the case. You need every single installation that happens over those 250k sales in reality for this calculation. Every re-install and seperate device install that 1 user does, is simply an increment towards the total count of installs. Also another very big point is that the "Unity Pro" plan counts for only 1-developer-per-1-year, and also this calculation just account for the best case with just 1 developer over 1 year. Meaning this calculation can vary wildly, and only goes up from here. I'm not here to knock on you or say that Unreal would be cheaper because that still depends on all factors, but it does need to be clear that the absolute best case scenario is shown here, that's taking in the least amount of installations and developers licenses. In reality the numbers between Unity and Unreal will be a closer for sure. One big issue with Unity however is that they basically have no garuanteed way of counting legit installs with 100% accuracy, which honestly is what makes this whole thing so ridicilous.
Why everyone is assuming that one sale will lead to one install ONLY ? This is per install, not per sale, that is the whole problem i just wasted my time thank you...
This calculation didn't consider business model & user group difference between Unity & UE. Unity have way more mobile apps developer which running free to play/download model. The pricing model is the problem, not how much Unity cost compare with others.
Changing the rules AND making them retroactive with less than 4 months notice is egregious. Also sales does not equal installs, so you have no way to budget. If a client has to reinstall or changes hardware -- guess what, you're penalized for it. If you allow re-install fee, you have no idea what you're going to be budgeting for. Yes it's 20 cents today, but perhaps in 6 months it will be 40 cents and 60 cents on mobile, etc., etc. It could be a constantly changing playfield. Now you can't have an offline game. With Unity: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."
This whole thing regarding the charging per install is a breach of trust. That's the biggest issue. This is not a business to consumer policy, this is a business to business arrangement. The most valuable asset to a relationship between businesses is trust, and that was broken with their recent announcements. This is why we should seriously reconsider our future relationships with Unity, not simply because of the money.
Subtly forgot to mention that Unity Pro price is per seat (employee) and they already multiplied that upfront cost to make it unaffordable for many gamedevs..
Your comparison was for an indie game that cost $15. But as you know, one of the reasons why game makers choose the Unity engine is its convenience for mobile games. Let's say a game costs between $1 and $5. Or even a game that is free and earns money through advertising. The prices will really go up for mobile games.
Sure, the numbers themselves don't sound that bad, but the problem is how they calculate those numbers. Are we really going to trust their system with the per-download BS? Also those numbers are not very accurate, a ton of games from that number come from bundles, seasonal discounts, free copies or gamepass and they haven't explain how are those gonna play out. Also saying that we're making near to 4M in this example is is rather inaccurate. This fee ads up to the 40% a publisher might be taking, plus the 30% steam takes and an extra 20% to 30% for taxes. All this without considering rent salaries and operational costs, so the real number is much lower than that. I really hate that they're trying to convert unity into a locked ecosystem virtually becoming landlords that can at any time revert or modify the terms of conditions. I've been working with unity 8 years plus and I feel rather comfortable with it, but if they don't backpedal their mess or make some radical change I'm gonna have to switch to Unreal.
Dude… I love you and Dilmer’s passion and skill with VR development. But your apologist take on Unity forces me to unsubscribe and find the insight and inspiration elsewhere… It really doesn’t matter what numbers you run in today as the problem is Unity’s top management. All has gone downhill since Riccitiello invaded what was once know as a BEST way to get involved in game dev biz. The ironSource was the last red flag for our team when switching to UE a year ago and I’m so glad we did it! Feels like dodging a bullet! Unity *will* keep changing their ToS and fees as witnessed already. Hell, they might see your video and think “Goddammit, this guy proves we are charging too little with $0,20!!” 😅 Pass over the copium to Dilmer as he hasn’t as of yet made a video like yours. 🤝🏻
From what I read, developers had a big big problem with how unity counted instal bases at first: x fee per install, uninstall+ reinstall counted as 2 isntalls, same person/account installing on 2 devices = 2 installs, etc Also, how does this applie to freemium games such as Fortnite (i know different engine) and gorilla tag
Thank you for the explaining, i do have a question, how does this work for free 2 play games? you have to meet both thresholds right? not just install threshold?
There could be an even bigger knock on effect if distributors push back. I can’t imagine Apple allowing Unity games on their platform if they’ve both got spyware and expect Apple to foot the bill. It’s a strange business model considering the Vision is just around the corner and the two companies seemed to be partnering up for it. Then you’ve got Game Pass and the cost to Xbox (and PS variant). You’ve also not mentioned cheap games. £1-2 games will take a massive hit after you’ve paid to Steam and Apple already.
Subscription services do not count towards the install count. Not sure about "spyware" but apple allows Facebook and TikTok on their devices and they have more intense "spyware" than this.
@@prestigemultimediagroup6436 I’m aware of that. That doesn’t mean that whatever they’ll be using to track installs will be allowed. My point is that we’re yet to see a distributors response to this.
I would be fine if it was $0.20 per SALE but per install seems a bit much. I already ruled out Godot due to lack of multi monitor support so looks like I am moving to UE
A few differences 1) a person may uninstall and reinstall a game. So you may pay multiple times for what is essentialy the same install 2) A person may install the game on multiple devices 3) Piracy is an install. I know Unity addressed the piracy but i dont know how they determine it on their side or how i would male sure i am not being charged for pirated copys without added overhead. I much rather give a percentege of revanue if possible or of i can't then do the .20 per sale.
Exactly. I’ll be more than happy to pay per sale, if they work it out with App Store / play / steam / and others to get accurate figures. But they won’t say how they track initial install, and I don’t see how they can do accurately without risking privacy. Then the language in pirated copies is even more dubious, “would work with dev case by case”, so charge first and up to the dev to deal with them for refund? Trust lost. Takes firing of these decision makers to make any difference, if at all.
@@JustinPBarnett lol, I absolutely love these copium takes. You do realize that people often have more than one device, right? For example, I have a desktop, a laptop and a steam deck, so every game is potential 3 installations right away. But it doesn't stop there. If the game is good, I will enjoy it, delete it, and then I will eventually install it again to play again. My most favourite games I probably installed again more than a dozen times. That is not taking into account technical reasons for reinstalling games.
Hi Justin! I am somewhat concerned about those F2P games that rely entirely on advertising or microtransactions (skins, etc). Do you know if this "install fee" also applies to them too?
Also web browser based games you want to keep revenue under 200k or 1M because every page refresh was counted as download (at least this was case some point if they change that). Also how much this is hitting those gamepass providers.
Bottom line: "Installs" are a terrible metric, and possibly not a legal one. The entire scheme is a poorly thought out scheme. I initially looked at it with puzzlement, but the more Unity spewed BS about it, the angrier I got. The claim they'd exclude charity bundle installs and pirated installs is just impossible. They refuse to offer any technical reasons for their assumptions. Based on tweets from employees, upper management knew all of our concerns, or at least they were told what our concerns would be - but ignored them and offer no real answers. This was trust burning to the ground. If they think they can "change the deal" in this way now, what happens when they turn up the dials on it as devs leave and publishers shun Unity-based games? The easy solution would have been simply to increase the revenue cut, and figure out a way to make ad services more appealing.
I missed this video when it was new. I wish more UA-camrs would have taken a reasonable, rational take like this and done the math. Yes, there was some ambiguity in the initial announcement, but even in their worst iteration these fees had zero impact on anyone making less than $1,000,000 in a year. Unfortunately, their first attempt to clarify it had to be canceled because of bomb threats.
I appreciate the insightful perspective. In the long run, Unity tends to be more costly due to factors like team expenses and operational overhead. This can diminish returns even with a $3 million example. For aspiring developers, Unity's pricing can be a significant hurdle, especially for indie developers who may struggle with a subscription cost of $184 per month or $2,040 per year. Additionally, distribution platforms like Steam also take a cut of the revenue. All of this is just very "nickel and dime." Also, I don't think most are going to jump to unreal... I think most will jump to Godot 4 - this is such a good breakdown here ua-cam.com/video/H1esRJ9taSY/v-deo.html
Unity is free and does not require a subscription since adding this pricing change. You don't have to pay until you make money (a lot of money). Also team expenses and operational overhead are platform agnostic, so that just comes down to how good at running a business you are.
@@JustinPBarnettwhat unity is doing strikes at the heart of the way small studios will be doing business. This isn’t good no matter how anyone wants to try to spin this. Unity needs to CTRL-Z or command-Z if on Mac.
Looks like you don't understand the issue with this new pricing model. Please have a look at other channels and learn what might happen to some of the developers in some cases.
It seems they will remove 100k limit from personal plan but now it's always online. So it will work 3 days if not connected to internet. Another interesting thing is can you escape runtime fee if you make over 1M to switch industry license or is it reserved companies that do other stuff than games. Mostly industry customers install base is under personal threshold if they develop internal tools etc but if it's part of product then it can be large installation base.
worst case is having to even pay more then u made if next year the person does another 5 installs u owe unity 1€.... how can anyone think that will fly?
Did they get rid of the per download thing? Because that's an insane metric. Maybe it needed clarification. But if someone downloads, uninstalls and downloads again is that a double charge? For everydownload? Also how to F2P games deal with that. What if 500k people download and try and never spend a cent...
If I make up to a million dollars Unreal is the better deal but if I make over that Unity is a better deal. I think the chances of me (as a single indie developer) making over 1 million dollars for a game is relatively low; for me, Unreal is the better deal.
It's maybe time to move to Godot. I know some indie studios/casual games/mobile games, moving to Godot to save the day. No fees, no download/install counts, just you and your game. Off course it lacks many plug-ins that are now in Unity, but the more we take Godot seriously, the more it will improve. Opensourcing the tools we need is the best for all of us. Blender, Krita, Godot, libresprite, ...
The only thing that i really didn't undestood well is: you have to met both the threshold of the runtime fee? i mean, if i publish a free game, then i will never have to bother to pay unity, right?
You forgot to think about a very important point, if the game is downloaded and played and the person immediately decides to ask for a refund, the developer will lose the value of the game's sale and will lose the fee as well! Sorry for my English as it is not my native language!
@@newdiary6978 They can't. Steam is legally required by the government to provide refunds. This was decided years ago by the Australian government and the EU.
Hi, I'm a VR developer and at the end of the month I will finish my game and I will send it for evaluation for Applab release. So my question is it okay for me to release it with unity? because I saw the new runtime fee. So I was thinking to release it now with unity and after a few months to update it to use Unreal instead of unity what do you think about this idea is it possible for me to change game engine for my game after I release it? Honestly I don't want to change game engine because unity is the number one place with tutorials online to learn VR and also has the largest number of Vr Interaction kits assets. Let me know what do you think. But the issue here is that unity don't have standard pricing and always change so its become untrustworthy and complicate in the long term that why its better not just think the current situation but also the future.Thanks.
As a current Unity Plus user I feel like I'm forced to choose free version and display the splash screen of shame, or increase my subscription 4+ times without any additional benefits (yes, Unity Plus users lost almost all benefits over the years)
This is a good message, it's what I'm thinking even after seeing 100's of negative comments and Tweets. However, you should have included a rougher example like a free to play or mobile game because that's what people are really distraught over. Not me personally, I plan to have a sustainable business strategy that affords the 2-15 cents per install.
Here's one! Let's talk about Flappy Bird for the sake of your argument. 50,000,000 downloads comes out to about $10M in fees if we're going by the free Unity Personal plan. But if you're not stupid, you pay for the Unity Pro license, which only comes out to less than $2M. Fappy bird has made over $892 million in lifetime revenue. I'm sure they'd be happy to pay the $2M or even the $10M as a cost of doing business.
@@JustinPBarnett Some estimates say it was only $30-50M to be fair. I know some companies are concerned because they hardly make money off of millions of downloads, and while this new update makes some games unprofitable, then those devs could just make their games free or provide enough value to make them profit more than 3 cents per person on average.
But why? I mean, that's the simple and easy question. You start accepting something as arbitary as this pricing plan and it starts to become standard, at which point it does start to turn into an immense loss for develoipers. No one should have this price structure hanging over their heads in such a manner. There's simply no need for it. So rather than crunch numbers and justify it, we should be stating "No" and leaving it at that.
calculation shouldn't matter if one can uninstall and reinstall the game and cost the company 20c right assuming they are over the threshold? cuz knowing the internet everyone with an opinion could cost anyone they want a technical infinite amount of money. with some persistence of course, and even then per install vs per bought assuming most will install game more than once, no one will want to succeed and hit the threshold as that at the end of the day will lead to less profit and the possibility of losing more than gaining and putting your company under if the public decided so. but I'm going on random bits and pieces I've read from unity as from my information making a sure fire way of detecting installs accurately is damn near impossible
@@JustinPBarnett Do you Know the price of Lobbies,MARS or Relay. Now compare that to Unreal's networking choices and AR frame works. Again I have been using unity for over 12 years I love the Unity Engine but this is to far . Unreal has C# that is all I am saying......
Right this all sounds reasonable until you think just a moment. Per INSTALL?? Why would they use THAT as the term? A factor that can very easily be as many or as few times as the user decided. It's DANGEROUS. They could have very easily applied it to sales if they intend to charge only once. But they didn't. Meaning they mean to charge you every single time someone installs the game. No. Not cool or ok in any way.
Dude, unity can't be trusted. They can change the pricing anytime they want! It would be less today but we would never know for tomorrow. This is scary, especially for f2p games. 2M installs but with only 200k earnings from microtransactions, how much do you owe Unity? Prolly 300k+, tsk.
Same here. I just hope that at that time we won't have to pay a cent for every asset in the game. It's Riccitiello after all and I don't doubt what his heart is all about - a microtransaction utopia.
For some reason I thought the runtime fee was on TOP of their current fees. if this is the 'only' fee they are using then that makes a lot more sense and your example made this very clear...that said, Unity did explain this poorly, and their approach to it seems vague (as many people have pointed out)...and it's not like Unity has managed to build any trust over the past few years. It all reminds me of the OGL fiasco with Wizards of the coast. Companys losing touch with their customers when their customers are what create the value to them (in simple terms :) )
The much hullabalooed 20¢ fee was an option INSTEAD of paying Pro licensing. Most the time, purchasing a Pro license would make a lot more sense (as already required per long-standing prior rules). With Pro, you didn’t have any new fees until you cross the $1M threshold (about 0.001% of games) and then fees average 2¢. There were some edge cases (eg right at the threshold, with lots of developer seats) where to 20¢ fee might have been the better choice, but I get why they removed it entirely when they revised the new fees, as it was just too easy for less-principled UA-camrs to make click-bait doomsday proclamations based on ridiculous scenarios that ignored the existence of a Pro license completely.
I made a platform fee calculator so you can see for yourself how much Unity will take: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hAxCGLtCXNDE81AduSsz05GBQT7UpMPICVyLTu8BbXI Additional notes not covered in the video: - I am in no way condoning the breach of trust Unity has made by doing this change. Only pointing out the price differences between plans and platforms. - Game demos, educational, charity, bundles (like humble bundle), subscription downloads (game pass, apple play store, etc.), free, and pirated games do NOT count towards the downloads. - An install only counts if the game is installed AND played at least once. - A player re-installing the game does not count towards the install number. - The minimums are a per-game basis. Reply to this comment with anything else you know and I'll add it!
Let's talk about free games... Flappy Bird, for the sake of your argument has 50,000,000 downloads, which comes out to about $10M in fees if we're going by the free Unity Personal plan. But if you're not stupid, you pay for the Unity Pro license, which only comes out to less than $2M. Fappy bird has made over $892 million in lifetime revenue. I'm sure they'd be happy to pay the $2M or even the $10M as a cost of doing business.
@@JustinPBarnett However Flappy Birds is an outlier that made a lot of money while most games on the app store make less than 500K and average 1.24 million downloads. This looks okay in math which is likely why they thought it was a good idea but the gut feeling that people have about this being problematic is correct. This is an ill-thought-out plan with many unknowns that have already caused some backpedaling from Unity. If they Want to make investors money they need a fortnight or some other game or multiple games on multiple platforms that THEY MAKE and this will help revenue while also helping their devs see issues and opportunities to improve the engine for everyone. Instead, they are trying to take profit from EVERYONE ELSE's games. It may not be much and it may in some cases be less than what other engines take but it is still a breach of trust, poorly introduced, and badly planned as it is meant to make the company stronger and may in time but in the short term it's going to hurt Stock and their EA CEO knew that and dumped stock like an insider hurting investor trust as well.
But you are all talking as if something can stop unreal doing the same thing if they want to. I understand unity broke trust but at the same time if they stick to their word it would help the engine. And c++ is hard to learn guys come on stay with me 😂😂😂😂
Dude that's a bit harsh. This is definitely a controversial take but this UA-camr has proven that he knows his stuff. Feel free to disagree with his take on Unity's new pricing but attacking him personally is an Ad Hominem fallacy. If you want to debate, then go after the points he makes in the video, and leave the personal attacks to middle schoolers.
Phenomenal way to take a good look at it. In the grand scheme. Unity is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper and I don’t think they’re dumb enough to scare away their developers by overcharging.
Thanks for actually taking a bit of time to understand the policy change from Unity, compared to most other ppl on youtube who just hopped on the shitstorm bandwagon without knowing anything about this and without having anything to add to the discussion.
Except he didn't really did he? His example shows what would possibly happen with earnings over 3 million and a fixed grame price of 15$ but the fee is static... the fact is unreal is now better in nearly 99% of scenarios in terms of pricing for smaller Indy devs and solo devs. It's only once you get into the multimillions of earnings brackets that unity finally pulls back ahead now. And that's IF you trust them about their data collection and anti piracy protection... and that's a big IF.. not to mention the damage they've done to the community itself. People are going to switch engines over this period. No matter if it's not a bad deal for some. And that effects everybody ultimately.
Its times like these where you can easily see what youtube channels actually care at least a little bit about quality of their videos and do at least a minimum of research (like this channel here), and which channels don't care at all and just quickly want to upload any shit for clicks, ridden with false and misleading information (like 95% of all other channels who jumped on this topic)
This video does not cover the situation where a customer installs the game multiple times (Unity has said that counts as multiple installations and will be charged multiple times). It does not cover the fact that every time a game is updated with a new patch, that counts as a new installation. It does not cover the fact that Unity Pro costs a lot of money every year, whereas Unreal is completely free to use. This video gives ONE best-case example (selling 250,000 games for $15 each). It does not cover the fact that the game developer has to pay distribution fees and taxes, so the game developer will be making much less than $15 per game. The video doesn't mention indie games that cost $5, it doesn't mention indie games that cost $1, it doesn't mention freemium games with microtransactions. If this is what you consider "high quality well researched content", then your standards are incredibly low. Other people have analyzed the situation in much more depth, and their conclusion is that Unity is sometimes much more expensive than Unreal. Sometimes the bandwagon is correct, and being a contrarian doesn't always mean that you're right.
I trust this new revenue will make their engine better, not worse. They should not die, this is capitalism and they provide competition. Also, you’re talking about a free software, we don’t pay monthly subscriptions. I’m sticking with Unity.
What? Unity charges tens of thousands of dollars every year for their Unity Pro license. Unity has NEVER been free, they've always charged a monthly subscription. Unreal doesn't charge any monthly subscription at all.
Finally a single reasonable dev talk, thank you! I thought there is no one left considering how people crying about things they dont even understand. A bit scary of modern dev community tbh.
Many people have done the math, and for many games Unreal is cheaper than Unity. Unity charges per installation, but Unreal doesn't, which means Unity is much worse for freemium mobile games. This video is simply incorrect, because it only gives ONE example (250,000 units sold for $15).
@@SchemingGoldberg I did my own math for my game. For me the example is fine. Also changes were made to ensure studio satisfaction. Now it's 2.5 percent or less < Unreal...
This is all well and good if you're charging $15 for your game but a ton of Unity games are a lot less than that. There are a lot of F2P Unity games that make pennies per player but make up for it by having millions of players. This pricing change makes that impossible to sustain.
Unity has updated their fees after this video game out! Here's a summary of the new structure:
• Unity Personal: Free up to $200k rev. No runtime fees. No Unity splash screen required anymore.
• Unity Pro: Can choose either runtime fee OR 2.5% rev share after $1M/yr. Not retroactive. Installs and rev are now self-reported.
blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee
The issue isn’t the fees themselves it’s the vague and arbitrary methods they are proposing to quantify them. However you look at it it’s not good.
I do agree that this is vague and they need to clarify their information gathering methods.
Aaaand also the fact that there are broken workflows and product problems that haven't been addressed as they ask for more money.
@@JustinPBarnettIt's worse than that. This means they can retroactively change the terms of service and change the pricing at will. This makes any sort of financial planning unpredictable. Furthermore, the "per-install" method means the overall impact is very hard to predict.
Plus Unity removing their Git repo that tracked ToS changes appears to be deceptive at best.
@@ChristopherCricketWallaceChicken and egg
Longtime fan here, but this gets a thumbs down from me unfortunately for the apologist video. They will be guesstimating installs, and they are not discriminating by user, which means that if a single user installs your game on three devices, you're getting hit with three fees for one purchase.
Your math breakdown assumes the dev is getting every cent from the installs, and that every install cost the same, and every user only installs on one device. It does not account for freemium games, nor does it account for taking part in things like humble bundle, steam sales, giveaways, or pirating.
The most egregious part of this is that there are developers who have been building games in Unity for years only to be hit with this unexpected pricing change. I look forward to the inevitable lawsuits that come from this change.
I completely agree with all of your points. Justin was one of the reasons I got into VR development. His discord mannerisms as well as this video is making me reconsider following him
I'm not affiliate with Unity at all. I'm logical. Yes the way they communicated this change was horrible, but at this point you're crying over chump change in the grand scheme of things. Unity has said that humble bundle, pirating, charity, and many other installs will not count towards the game's installs.
Plus, regardless of everything else you have to be making *$1 million per year* for any of this to actually apply to you. Which I think is a good problem to have. It's not like they're taking a huge chunk of your revenue (like Unreal does)...
@@JustinPBarnett I didn't say you were affiliated with Unity, so I'm not sure where that came from. You're allowed to consider yourself logical, but I'm also logical, and I'm pointing out that your accounting has some flaws in its model and the representation of the price schedule.
Unity's FAQs do not reflect any plans to implement accounting for piracy, or humble bundling, sales, etc. They do state that charity and charity bundles will not be charged, but a charity bundle is still counted toward lifetime downloads. There is also no feasible way for them to implement that kind of distinction as far as I know, so even if they claim they will be taking that into account, there is little reason to believe they have the capacity to do so. Especially not when their own FAQ says: "We treat different devices as different installs. We don't want to track identity across different devices." This indicates that they will not be putting in the effort to make the distinction of the user's identity, which is directly tied to discerning whether or not an install is legitimate or pirated.
You do not need to make $1 mil per year for the fees to apply. That is wholly false, and only true if you're using the pro license. This fee will apply differently to users using the personal and unity plus plans. The Unity Runtime FAQ states:
"Unity Personal and Unity Plus: The Unity Runtime Fee will apply to games that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 per-game lifetime installs."
I'm not writing all this to attack you personally, or to offend or insult you - again, I have great respect for your contributions to the VR dev community. I'm only trying to make sure that the truth about the pricing model is out there. I'm not attributing any malice or subversion to your representation of the plan here, but there are definitely inaccuracies.
Source: unity.com/pricing-updates
Ye... first time visitor to this channel.... these levels of apologia make me extremely suspicious.
It feels exactly the same as the times I've discussed "life in China" with a Chinese citizen.. And they go on to sing the praise everything in china - while downplaying anything said in "western media" :D
@@JustinPBarnett "Unity has said that humble bundle, pirating, charity, and many other installs will not count towards the game's installs." - or, in other words, "just trust me, bro". They can say whatever, you don't have any way of checking their claims anyway. Also, I bet there is not a single word about that in their legal documents. They will send you a bill on whatever they "guesstimated" and if you have any complaints they will send you a lawsuit. You will never know whether they counted something or not, and, more importantly, you will have absolutely zero ability to prove anything to them. Their response will always be "our best-in-the-world proprietary algorithms have determined that 10 billion people installed your game, so pls send all your money our way thx".
Your numbers are correct, but you didn't mention how this completely screws over free games that make money via microtransactions. The often used example being kicked around the forums right now is Flappy Birds, which had more than 50,000,000 downloads. Because of the dramatically increased costs, freemium games will struggle to break even. Innersloth games, developer of Among Us, has been talking about how they're going to need to port the game to another engine if this goes through.
Also, there is some concern that the system could be gamed to 'review bomb' a developer. Unity says they have tools in place, but their official response (IE: We'll work with you if you suspect piracy is inflating the numbers) did not instill a lot of confidence. While the response is open to interpretation, folks are suggesting that it will be on the developer to prove that piracy is happening to unity.
Unity claims they have tools for piracy but once again they don't mention any specifics. What if the tool is buggy? Will it be up to the developer to freak the hell out over owing unity a million dollars unless they can PROVE that the installs were bogus? Do they have to take Unity to court? This is all very worrisome. It's almost like you should be fearful if your game becomes popular or not
Let's do some more math for the sake of your argument. 50,000,000 downloads comes out to about $10M in fees if we're going by the free Unity Personal plan.
But if you're not stupid, you pay for the Unity Pro license, which only comes out to less than $2M.
Fappy bird has made over $892 million in lifetime revenue.
I'm sure they'd be happy to pay the $2M or even the $10M as a cost of doing business.
@@JustinPBarnett what if you never thought your game would make it like that? What if you built it with Unity Personal and after releasing it, it does better than you ever envisioned. If you go back and buy the Pro license, does unity lower the amount you owe them? If not, then it seems you either need to spend money you probably don't have on a Pro license ahead of time, or you need to predict the future and just know your game will be big.
@@JustinPBarnettWhat about the fact that this is retroactive and affects games already installed? And since they updated their ToS retroactively, what's stopping them from raising the fees retroactively?
@@JustinPBarnett impossible that flappy bird made that much money, during the hype the game was only up for like a month or 2 before the creator take it down, you are saying that flappy bird made nearly $18 per download with your number, where have you found this number ? the only number i see about flappy bird revenue is that it made $50,000 a day during the peak of the hype
You're basing your whole calculations on the basis that 1purchase = 1download, I've reinstalled games like Boneworks and bonelab many many times if nonsense like this was applied before I'd be a net negative for SLZ. highly moddable titles with long lifespans can easily cross 100 downloads mark by a single person, this would make long lifespan games a bleeding wound for developers.
This is not even getting into the whole breach of trust unity did by attempting to apply this on all pre-existing titles that were released prior, who's to say they're not going to pull something like that in the future? trusting this company with your development future is like placing your life in the hands of a drunk driver at this point.
Re-installs do not count. Unity has stated this along with many other things that don't count towards the install count.
I do agree with you on the breach of trust point. I'm in no way defending them on that.
@@JustinPBarnett Thank you for the clarification! although it seems like every device will count as a separate install so there's still a big possibility a single purchase will count as multiple installs, on top of that this kills any incentive for developers to release cross buy titles and one thing to keep in mind is with every hardware iteration or upgrade your customer does you will be paying that price again, overall still a huge pain and major deterrent for long term projects.
Anyone who saw the shit storm that game devs poored into social media over Unity will see, Justin, you... The problem is Unity's shady "trust me bro" methods of collecting data about number of installs. Besides there is problem of install bombimg developers (buy once, install 1000000 times). Why not take a fee from sale? Why install? Unity is trying to charge developers fees, that dont make sense. Try charging players, see what happens.
I do agree that the 'install' metric instead of the 'purchase' metric was a strange call. That was the intention I'm pretty sure, but a very bad PR move on Unity's part.
Was there some example of who made mobile games for children. Gross revenue little over 1M and almost 110M downloads so their fee would have been 108% what they got.
Another case if bad actor reverse engineer fingerprint what they use to count first installs and use bot farm to nuke dev if they have wrong opinion.
@@LimbaZero
You don't have to add the extra link in the chain.
Unity already has low enough trust - that I believe there is nothing stopping them from claiming that you just made a billion installs - congratz, we now take your company.
My bigger concern is that as someone who does freelance dev work on the side for non-game industries, Unity is now requiring that I pay $5,000 a year for an "Industry" license. I'd have to do a huge amount of work to make that back, and since it's part time for me, it prices me right out.
I looked into this license along with the Pixys plugin and I’m honestly not sure why you’d need it. It provides a clean interface but I reckon you can do everything it does in normal Unity anyway.
You don’t have to the Enterprise Ed… if you do the company that is hiring you needs to pay for it!
@@shaunrichardson-wv8oh It's because my clients typically make more than $1million a year. You don't have to be a huge corporation to make that kind of revenue, but even so their budgets are limited so I can't just charge whatever I want.
@@joeysipos My clients know nothing about making apps, animation, etc. These are marketing departments that need something made, and they have limited budgets which won't afford buying a license just for a small project.
1. Do they make a million dollars on the app you design, or just in general? enough for your work.
2. Do they have 200,000 installs?
You have to hit both the dollar value AND the install count.
If you are producing a tool or a demonstration app but not a game that people are buying, then I doubt you are subject to this at all.
p.s. If your app is the source of all that income, then you are not charging enough for your work. I have definitely been guilty of that before.
I think switching to Unreal Engine is the better choice even if I have to pay more because I need trust and stability. I know that the price won't randomly change year to year. With Unity they can change the price at anytime for any reason and charging based on installs is shady. With no clear and transparent way of showing how they got the number of installs its just smells like a trap.
Although the unity pricing is cheaper your calculations are flawed and I guess biased, its not downloads its installs. You are assuming everyone installs once. What happens when you release a DLC a year later or just a major update and 50% of your audience that has already bought your game installs again. It then becomes an unknown amount. Unreal is at least a fixed price and also wont change next year.
Repeat installs don't count. Also they've added a 2.5% rev cap now in case the number of installs is higher or your game is priced lower.
You missed the mark here, Justin. It appears you've not thought at all about how it's going to be technically implemented.
Implementing is technically infeasible. Why implement a pricing structure that you literally can't reliably report on? How do they know when something has installed? Every month you'll get a bill from Unity and then you'll have to justify your sales, at which point Unity can just say "we don't believe you" and force you to pay.
Their "proprietary technology" is a claim that they've solved piracy. Which is nonsense. You can control the host when you install something.
I'm sad to see you parroting the Unity marketing but do whatever you need to do to survive.
The new "fee table" is not problematic, main problem is that people (players) will be hesitant to install games made by Unity because it officially became "spyware"
Sure, but 95% of people are not technically savvy enough to care.
@@asimdeyaf oh wow, so we just now accept spyware and hope people don't figure it out? Can't you see how wrong this is?
But you have facebook, instagram, tiktok, and everything else on your device, and you're worried about a game company stealing your data?
I don't have the listed items either. So yeah. I'm spied on by Google, UA-cam, and others but I try to limit it.
@@JustinPBarnett I agree, people (me included) accepted that big companies are taking our data. But now I must hope that people will be OK with my software potentialy spying on their machine and that was not even my intent
All my future games will be limited editions. Only 199,999 copies available!
Brilliant
My biggest concern is with free games, for instance, if I want to release a mobile App, and let's say, optimistically that every user buys a $1 microtransaction. Now, 30% is being taken by the app store, and $0.20 is being taken by Unity.
So now, my free game is losing 50% of its revenue, and that's before taking into account that this is a per install fee, so if one of my users gets a new phone and redownloads the game, or runs out of space on their phone only to delete it and come back later, then I'm responsible for that extra $0.20 every time a user does this seemingly innocuous activity.
I absolutely agree with you that these pricing changes are not nearly as bad as people make them out to be in the realm of games that cost $10+, but for free games or really cheap games that depend on scale of installs (Such as the newly minted hit Vampire Survivors) this pricing change is much more significant.
1st, re-installs do not count.
2nd, I'd say you need a better business model if you're only making an average of $1 per game download.
@@JustinPBarnettbut what if you are? What if the game's style really doesn't support alot of micro transcations?
This calculation is not a realistic representation tho, and *only* represents the best case scenario. Over 250k sales you are basically just assuming everybody will install it once, which is the best case scenario and definitely won't be the case. You need every single installation that happens over those 250k sales in reality for this calculation. Every re-install and seperate device install that 1 user does, is simply an increment towards the total count of installs. Also another very big point is that the "Unity Pro" plan counts for only 1-developer-per-1-year, and also this calculation just account for the best case with just 1 developer over 1 year. Meaning this calculation can vary wildly, and only goes up from here.
I'm not here to knock on you or say that Unreal would be cheaper because that still depends on all factors, but it does need to be clear that the absolute best case scenario is shown here, that's taking in the least amount of installations and developers licenses. In reality the numbers between Unity and Unreal will be a closer for sure. One big issue with Unity however is that they basically have no garuanteed way of counting legit installs with 100% accuracy, which honestly is what makes this whole thing so ridicilous.
Check the pricing calculator in the pinned comment if you want to see for yourself
Why everyone is assuming that one sale will lead to one install ONLY ? This is per install, not per sale, that is the whole problem i just wasted my time thank you...
This calculation didn't consider business model & user group difference between Unity & UE. Unity have way more mobile apps developer which running free to play/download model. The pricing model is the problem, not how much Unity cost compare with others.
The model has been updated since the video released! Check out this latest blog post by Unity: blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee
@@JustinPBarnettThanks for the reply. I hope that they really take this as an experience and do better next time. Honestly dont want unity to fall.
Changing the rules AND making them retroactive with less than 4 months notice is egregious. Also sales does not equal installs, so you have no way to budget. If a client has to reinstall or changes hardware -- guess what, you're penalized for it. If you allow re-install fee, you have no idea what you're going to be budgeting for. Yes it's 20 cents today, but perhaps in 6 months it will be 40 cents and 60 cents on mobile, etc., etc. It could be a constantly changing playfield. Now you can't have an offline game. With Unity: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."
This whole thing regarding the charging per install is a breach of trust. That's the biggest issue. This is not a business to consumer policy, this is a business to business arrangement. The most valuable asset to a relationship between businesses is trust, and that was broken with their recent announcements. This is why we should seriously reconsider our future relationships with Unity, not simply because of the money.
Subtly forgot to mention that Unity Pro price is per seat (employee) and they already multiplied that upfront cost to make it unaffordable for many gamedevs..
Only buy one, and make the build whit that account...
@@DamianJuanMartinMilano as intended 😂🤌🏻
Your comparison was for an indie game that cost $15. But as you know, one of the reasons why game makers choose the Unity engine is its convenience for mobile games. Let's say a game costs between $1 and $5. Or even a game that is free and earns money through advertising. The prices will really go up for mobile games.
Absolutely. This would prolly end the era of f2p games in play store and app store xD
Sure, the numbers themselves don't sound that bad, but the problem is how they calculate those numbers. Are we really going to trust their system with the per-download BS? Also those numbers are not very accurate, a ton of games from that number come from bundles, seasonal discounts, free copies or gamepass and they haven't explain how are those gonna play out.
Also saying that we're making near to 4M in this example is is rather inaccurate. This fee ads up to the 40% a publisher might be taking, plus the 30% steam takes and an extra 20% to 30% for taxes. All this without considering rent salaries and operational costs, so the real number is much lower than that.
I really hate that they're trying to convert unity into a locked ecosystem virtually becoming landlords that can at any time revert or modify the terms of conditions. I've been working with unity 8 years plus and I feel rather comfortable with it, but if they don't backpedal their mess or make some radical change I'm gonna have to switch to Unreal.
Yes, you should switch to unreal not just because it has better graphics but because its simply Better
A bold claim 😎
are you ask me to choose between
pay free - 1500 - 2500 a year. or pay 100,000 a year.
Ya hard choice
2:10 what if i have ads in my game?
You tuber math and logic, expert advice.
Dude… I love you and Dilmer’s passion and skill with VR development. But your apologist take on Unity forces me to unsubscribe and find the insight and inspiration elsewhere… It really doesn’t matter what numbers you run in today as the problem is Unity’s top management. All has gone downhill since Riccitiello invaded what was once know as a BEST way to get involved in game dev biz.
The ironSource was the last red flag for our team when switching to UE a year ago and I’m so glad we did it! Feels like dodging a bullet!
Unity *will* keep changing their ToS and fees as witnessed already. Hell, they might see your video and think “Goddammit, this guy proves we are charging too little with $0,20!!” 😅
Pass over the copium to Dilmer as he hasn’t as of yet made a video like yours. 🤝🏻
From what I read, developers had a big big problem with how unity counted instal bases at first: x fee per install, uninstall+ reinstall counted as 2 isntalls, same person/account installing on 2 devices = 2 installs, etc
Also, how does this applie to freemium games such as Fortnite (i know different engine) and gorilla tag
Thank you for the explaining, i do have a question, how does this work for free 2 play games? you have to meet both thresholds right? not just install threshold?
From my understand yes. So games like Genshin are screwed unless they have another agreement with Unity
Correct, both thresholds have to be met. So the fees only take effect if you're making over $1M/yr on the pro plan or $200k/yr on the free plan.
There could be an even bigger knock on effect if distributors push back. I can’t imagine Apple allowing Unity games on their platform if they’ve both got spyware and expect Apple to foot the bill.
It’s a strange business model considering the Vision is just around the corner and the two companies seemed to be partnering up for it.
Then you’ve got Game Pass and the cost to Xbox (and PS variant).
You’ve also not mentioned cheap games. £1-2 games will take a massive hit after you’ve paid to Steam and Apple already.
Subscription services do not count towards the install count. Not sure about "spyware" but apple allows Facebook and TikTok on their devices and they have more intense "spyware" than this.
Unity merged with a known Spyware company mo the ago keep up dude
@@JustinPBarnett when did they clarify that subscription services don’t count? They said it would be distributors footing the bill for these services.
@@prestigemultimediagroup6436 I’m aware of that. That doesn’t mean that whatever they’ll be using to track installs will be allowed. My point is that we’re yet to see a distributors response to this.
@@shaunrichardson-wv8oh
I'm thinking This Justin dude has a sizeable position in Unity stock. :D
His faith seems completely unfounded.
Who's to make sure unity itself doesn't install developers' games to generate revenue? Or simply falsify the number of installations.
I would be fine if it was $0.20 per SALE but per install seems a bit much. I already ruled out Godot due to lack of multi monitor support so looks like I am moving to UE
What's the difference? How many instances of a game do you usually install at once?
A few differences 1) a person may uninstall and reinstall a game. So you may pay multiple times for what is essentialy the same install 2) A person may install the game on multiple devices 3) Piracy is an install. I know Unity addressed the piracy but i dont know how they determine it on their side or how i would male sure i am not being charged for pirated copys without added overhead. I much rather give a percentege of revanue if possible or of i can't then do the .20 per sale.
Exactly. I’ll be more than happy to pay per sale, if they work it out with App Store / play / steam / and others to get accurate figures. But they won’t say how they track initial install, and I don’t see how they can do accurately without risking privacy. Then the language in pirated copies is even more dubious, “would work with dev case by case”, so charge first and up to the dev to deal with them for refund? Trust lost. Takes firing of these decision makers to make any difference, if at all.
@@JustinPBarnett lol, I absolutely love these copium takes. You do realize that people often have more than one device, right? For example, I have a desktop, a laptop and a steam deck, so every game is potential 3 installations right away. But it doesn't stop there. If the game is good, I will enjoy it, delete it, and then I will eventually install it again to play again. My most favourite games I probably installed again more than a dozen times. That is not taking into account technical reasons for reinstalling games.
@@herbertng522 big companies should take this to court. To know the truth ...
Hi Justin! I am somewhat concerned about those F2P games that rely entirely on advertising or microtransactions (skins, etc). Do you know if this "install fee" also applies to them too?
Also web browser based games you want to keep revenue under 200k or 1M because every page refresh was counted as download (at least this was case some point if they change that).
Also how much this is hitting those gamepass providers.
@@LimbaZero i think web based games are not included
F2P are the ones going to be affected by this change. Install fees would also apply to them. FYI
Yes it does apply to them too, as long as they make more than $1 million in microtransactions. So this will hurt F2P games really hard.
Bottom line: "Installs" are a terrible metric, and possibly not a legal one. The entire scheme is a poorly thought out scheme. I initially looked at it with puzzlement, but the more Unity spewed BS about it, the angrier I got. The claim they'd exclude charity bundle installs and pirated installs is just impossible. They refuse to offer any technical reasons for their assumptions. Based on tweets from employees, upper management knew all of our concerns, or at least they were told what our concerns would be - but ignored them and offer no real answers. This was trust burning to the ground. If they think they can "change the deal" in this way now, what happens when they turn up the dials on it as devs leave and publishers shun Unity-based games? The easy solution would have been simply to increase the revenue cut, and figure out a way to make ad services more appealing.
Damnit!!!!!!!!!!! I was HOPING TO GOD this was the thing that would make u switch 😖☹️😔
Need some VR Unreal tutorials? 😜
@@JustinPBarnett Mann i need a Vr unreal Course!! Take my Money PLEASE!!! Lol i will be training in Blender & Davinci until then 🧘🏽♂️
I missed this video when it was new. I wish more UA-camrs would have taken a reasonable, rational take like this and done the math. Yes, there was some ambiguity in the initial announcement, but even in their worst iteration these fees had zero impact on anyone making less than $1,000,000 in a year. Unfortunately, their first attempt to clarify it had to be canceled because of bomb threats.
I can hope to run into these issues.
Don't we all!
I appreciate the insightful perspective. In the long run, Unity tends to be more costly due to factors like team expenses and operational overhead. This can diminish returns even with a $3 million example. For aspiring developers, Unity's pricing can be a significant hurdle, especially for indie developers who may struggle with a subscription cost of $184 per month or $2,040 per year. Additionally, distribution platforms like Steam also take a cut of the revenue. All of this is just very "nickel and dime." Also, I don't think most are going to jump to unreal... I think most will jump to Godot 4 - this is such a good breakdown here ua-cam.com/video/H1esRJ9taSY/v-deo.html
Unity is free and does not require a subscription since adding this pricing change. You don't have to pay until you make money (a lot of money). Also team expenses and operational overhead are platform agnostic, so that just comes down to how good at running a business you are.
@@JustinPBarnett You are by passing all the services like relay or lobby( which is a lot )!!!!!!!!
@@JustinPBarnettwhat unity is doing strikes at the heart of the way small studios will be doing business. This isn’t good no matter how anyone wants to try to spin this. Unity needs to CTRL-Z or command-Z if on Mac.
Looks like you don't understand the issue with this new pricing model. Please have a look at other channels and learn what might happen to some of the developers in some cases.
Mr. Smarty Pants surely has considered the "Mobile Free 2 Play Model" yeah?
See flappy bird case breakdown in pinned comment
@@JustinPBarnett Sorry, but that's like saying houses are dirt cheap because Bezos can buy thousands of them :D
How would publisher fees add up to this?
It seems they will remove 100k limit from personal plan but now it's always online. So it will work 3 days if not connected to internet.
Another interesting thing is can you escape runtime fee if you make over 1M to switch industry license or is it reserved companies that do other stuff than games. Mostly industry customers install base is under personal threshold if they develop internal tools etc but if it's part of product then it can be large installation base.
So will unity charge you per download instead of purchase? If so, it feels scamy at the least
the problem with per install is that if you sell your game for 1€ and you pay 0.20€ per install.... 5 installs over 1 year leaves you with 0 profit.
worst case is having to even pay more then u made if next year the person does another 5 installs u owe unity 1€.... how can anyone think that will fly?
but heeey.....they wont try again ...right?.... suuuuure.... Fuck unity
Did they get rid of the per download thing? Because that's an insane metric. Maybe it needed clarification. But if someone downloads, uninstalls and downloads again is that a double charge? For everydownload? Also how to F2P games deal with that. What if 500k people download and try and never spend a cent...
If I make up to a million dollars Unreal is the better deal but if I make over that Unity is a better deal. I think the chances of me (as a single indie developer) making over 1 million dollars for a game is relatively low; for me, Unreal is the better deal.
If you're making a freemium mobile game then Unreal is always cheaper, because Unreal doesn't charge per installation, but Unity does.
It's maybe time to move to Godot. I know some indie studios/casual games/mobile games, moving to Godot to save the day. No fees, no download/install counts, just you and your game. Off course it lacks many plug-ins that are now in Unity, but the more we take Godot seriously, the more it will improve. Opensourcing the tools we need is the best for all of us. Blender, Krita, Godot, libresprite, ...
The only thing that i really didn't undestood well is: you have to met both the threshold of the runtime fee? i mean, if i publish a free game, then i will never have to bother to pay unity, right?
If its truly free, shouldn't be a problem, but microtransactions count to the revenue, right?
@@gonzalolo they do
Correct… it’s free if you are not making money…
You forgot to think about a very important point, if the game is downloaded and played and the person immediately decides to ask for a refund, the developer will lose the value of the game's sale and will lose the fee as well! Sorry for my English as it is not my native language!
Then steam and other store will remove the refund feature.
@@newdiary6978 They can't. Steam is legally required by the government to provide refunds. This was decided years ago by the Australian government and the EU.
We can’t let it just slide. If they think they can get away with this, they obviously won’t stop until their pockets are full.
Hi, I'm a VR developer and at the end of the month I will finish my game and I will send it for evaluation for Applab release. So my question is it okay for me to release it with unity? because I saw the new runtime fee. So I was thinking to release it now with unity and after a few months to update it to use Unreal instead of unity what do you think about this idea is it possible for me to change game engine for my game after I release it? Honestly I don't want to change game engine because unity is the number one place with tutorials online to learn VR and also has the largest number of Vr Interaction kits assets. Let me know what do you think. But the issue here is that unity don't have standard pricing and always change so its become untrustworthy and complicate in the long term that why its better not just think the current situation but also the future.Thanks.
You love Jordan Peterson, you defend Unity. Yikes.
As a current Unity Plus user I feel like I'm forced to choose free version and display the splash screen of shame, or increase my subscription 4+ times without any additional benefits (yes, Unity Plus users lost almost all benefits over the years)
This is a good message, it's what I'm thinking even after seeing 100's of negative comments and Tweets. However, you should have included a rougher example like a free to play or mobile game because that's what people are really distraught over. Not me personally, I plan to have a sustainable business strategy that affords the 2-15 cents per install.
Here's one!
Let's talk about Flappy Bird for the sake of your argument. 50,000,000 downloads comes out to about $10M in fees if we're going by the free Unity Personal plan.
But if you're not stupid, you pay for the Unity Pro license, which only comes out to less than $2M.
Fappy bird has made over $892 million in lifetime revenue.
I'm sure they'd be happy to pay the $2M or even the $10M as a cost of doing business.
@@JustinPBarnett Some estimates say it was only $30-50M to be fair. I know some companies are concerned because they hardly make money off of millions of downloads, and while this new update makes some games unprofitable, then those devs could just make their games free or provide enough value to make them profit more than 3 cents per person on average.
@@JustinPBarnett
What PHYSICALLY prevents Unity from claiming a billion installs?
But why? I mean, that's the simple and easy question. You start accepting something as arbitary as this pricing plan and it starts to become standard, at which point it does start to turn into an immense loss for develoipers. No one should have this price structure hanging over their heads in such a manner. There's simply no need for it. So rather than crunch numbers and justify it, we should be stating "No" and leaving it at that.
calculation shouldn't matter if one can uninstall and reinstall the game and cost the company 20c right assuming they are over the threshold? cuz knowing the internet everyone with an opinion could cost anyone they want a technical infinite amount of money. with some persistence of course, and even then per install vs per bought assuming most will install game more than once, no one will want to succeed and hit the threshold as that at the end of the day will lead to less profit and the possibility of losing more than gaining and putting your company under if the public decided so. but I'm going on random bits and pieces I've read from unity as from my information making a sure fire way of detecting installs accurately is damn near impossible
and im not even gonna with free to play games..
Bro needs to go back to school on his math. Her forgot a tone of variables like all the Services fees and the percentage the stores takes.
Which is the same in both cases and therefore irrelevant to this comparison.
@@JustinPBarnett Do you Know the price of Lobbies,MARS or Relay. Now compare that to Unreal's networking choices and AR frame works. Again I have been using unity for over 12 years I love the Unity Engine but this is to far . Unreal has C# that is all I am saying......
This comparison makes sense, Thank you for detailed explanation especially. I am sticking with Unity and develop VR experiences.
Glad it was helpful!
Right this all sounds reasonable until you think just a moment.
Per INSTALL??
Why would they use THAT as the term? A factor that can very easily be as many or as few times as the user decided.
It's DANGEROUS.
They could have very easily applied it to sales if they intend to charge only once. But they didn't. Meaning they mean to charge you every single time someone installs the game.
No.
Not cool or ok in any way.
Dude, unity can't be trusted. They can change the pricing anytime they want! It would be less today but we would never know for tomorrow.
This is scary, especially for f2p games. 2M installs but with only 200k earnings from microtransactions, how much do you owe Unity? Prolly 300k+, tsk.
I really appreciate this more balanced perspective. There’s a lot of crazy information out there.
🙏
Amen!
There's a lot of undeserved trust as well...
...there are also a lot of people with sizeable positions in Unity stock.
Ill stay using unity, because i will never be able to create a game that has 200k Installs :D And if i do, the price is ok.
Someone who understands 🙏
Same here. I just hope that at that time we won't have to pay a cent for every asset in the game. It's Riccitiello after all and I don't doubt what his heart is all about - a microtransaction utopia.
if Unity claims a billion installs - what can you do?
Thanks for this.
For some reason I thought the runtime fee was on TOP of their current fees. if this is the 'only' fee they are using then that makes a lot more sense and your example made this very clear...that said, Unity did explain this poorly, and their approach to it seems vague (as many people have pointed out)...and it's not like Unity has managed to build any trust over the past few years. It all reminds me of the OGL fiasco with Wizards of the coast. Companys losing touch with their customers when their customers are what create the value to them (in simple terms :) )
It is on top of their current fees. You still have to pay the Unity Pro fees, and then on top of that you pay the runtime fees.
The much hullabalooed 20¢ fee was an option INSTEAD of paying Pro licensing. Most the time, purchasing a Pro license would make a lot more sense (as already required per long-standing prior rules). With Pro, you didn’t have any new fees until you cross the $1M threshold (about 0.001% of games) and then fees average 2¢. There were some edge cases (eg right at the threshold, with lots of developer seats) where to 20¢ fee might have been the better choice, but I get why they removed it entirely when they revised the new fees, as it was just too easy for less-principled UA-camrs to make click-bait doomsday proclamations based on ridiculous scenarios that ignored the existence of a Pro license completely.
UE fee is clear and predictable, Unity arbitrary and accountant nightmare.
True...
GODOT GODOT GODOT 😂
I made a platform fee calculator so you can see for yourself how much Unity will take: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hAxCGLtCXNDE81AduSsz05GBQT7UpMPICVyLTu8BbXI
Additional notes not covered in the video:
- I am in no way condoning the breach of trust Unity has made by doing this change. Only pointing out the price differences between plans and platforms.
- Game demos, educational, charity, bundles (like humble bundle), subscription downloads (game pass, apple play store, etc.), free, and pirated games do NOT count towards the downloads.
- An install only counts if the game is installed AND played at least once.
- A player re-installing the game does not count towards the install number.
- The minimums are a per-game basis.
Reply to this comment with anything else you know and I'll add it!
This is a lot of fee for hyper-casual games.. where you earn from instal around 1$
@@avshkabura true. Seems like a better idea to take a percentage instead. I wonder why they don’t do that.
And how are they tracking all those download types? More Spyware or more work for the dev to fight the charges?
Let's talk about free games...
Flappy Bird, for the sake of your argument has 50,000,000 downloads, which comes out to about $10M in fees if we're going by the free Unity Personal plan.
But if you're not stupid, you pay for the Unity Pro license, which only comes out to less than $2M.
Fappy bird has made over $892 million in lifetime revenue.
I'm sure they'd be happy to pay the $2M or even the $10M as a cost of doing business.
@@JustinPBarnett However Flappy Birds is an outlier that made a lot of money while most games on the app store make less than 500K and average 1.24 million downloads. This looks okay in math which is likely why they thought it was a good idea but the gut feeling that people have about this being problematic is correct. This is an ill-thought-out plan with many unknowns that have already caused some backpedaling from Unity. If they Want to make investors money they need a fortnight or some other game or multiple games on multiple platforms that THEY MAKE and this will help revenue while also helping their devs see issues and opportunities to improve the engine for everyone. Instead, they are trying to take profit from EVERYONE ELSE's games. It may not be much and it may in some cases be less than what other engines take but it is still a breach of trust, poorly introduced, and badly planned as it is meant to make the company stronger and may in time but in the short term it's going to hurt Stock and their EA CEO knew that and dumped stock like an insider hurting investor trust as well.
Nobody even read the blog post lol
👆
@@JustinPBarnettyou and code monkey are the only ones that actually explain what's really happening. Everyone is just spreading misinformation.
Never touching unity again or spending a other penny on it... or any assets... this is disgusting
Thank you for the explanation. It's not as bad as I thought.
But remember that there's a difference between revenue and profit.
But you are all talking as if something can stop unreal doing the same thing if they want to. I understand unity broke trust but at the same time if they stick to their word it would help the engine.
And c++ is hard to learn guys come on stay with me 😂😂😂😂
You're completely wrong bro. Rather stop making videos coz you know literally nothing about gamedev.
Dude that's a bit harsh. This is definitely a controversial take but this UA-camr has proven that he knows his stuff. Feel free to disagree with his take on Unity's new pricing but attacking him personally is an Ad Hominem fallacy. If you want to debate, then go after the points he makes in the video, and leave the personal attacks to middle schoolers.
I totally agree with you. It's nice to hear a reasonable voice in the middle of all this insanity.
yes, research... that's what many (youtube) content creators have failed to do and ranting about going away from Unity. Nice Succinct breakdown.
Thanks!!
Phenomenal way to take a good look at it. In the grand scheme. Unity is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper and I don’t think they’re dumb enough to scare away their developers by overcharging.
But they have already scared away a lot of devs. Have you seen the cult of the lamb devs? Subnautica? Etc.
They're not malicious... just kinda stupid in the PR department, lol.
@@JustinPBarnett Multiple high ranking Unity executives sold their Unity shares just the day before making the announcement. They are malicious.
Thanks for actually taking a bit of time to understand the policy change from Unity, compared to most other ppl on youtube who just hopped on the shitstorm bandwagon without knowing anything about this and without having anything to add to the discussion.
Except he didn't really did he? His example shows what would possibly happen with earnings over 3 million and a fixed grame price of 15$ but the fee is static... the fact is unreal is now better in nearly 99% of scenarios in terms of pricing for smaller Indy devs and solo devs. It's only once you get into the multimillions of earnings brackets that unity finally pulls back ahead now. And that's IF you trust them about their data collection and anti piracy protection... and that's a big IF.. not to mention the damage they've done to the community itself. People are going to switch engines over this period. No matter if it's not a bad deal for some. And that effects everybody ultimately.
Its times like these where you can easily see what youtube channels actually care at least a little bit about quality of their videos and do at least a minimum of research (like this channel here), and which channels don't care at all and just quickly want to upload any shit for clicks, ridden with false and misleading information (like 95% of all other channels who jumped on this topic)
This video does not cover the situation where a customer installs the game multiple times (Unity has said that counts as multiple installations and will be charged multiple times).
It does not cover the fact that every time a game is updated with a new patch, that counts as a new installation. It does not cover the fact that Unity Pro costs a lot of money every year, whereas Unreal is completely free to use.
This video gives ONE best-case example (selling 250,000 games for $15 each). It does not cover the fact that the game developer has to pay distribution fees and taxes, so the game developer will be making much less than $15 per game.
The video doesn't mention indie games that cost $5, it doesn't mention indie games that cost $1, it doesn't mention freemium games with microtransactions.
If this is what you consider "high quality well researched content", then your standards are incredibly low. Other people have analyzed the situation in much more depth, and their conclusion is that Unity is sometimes much more expensive than Unreal.
Sometimes the bandwagon is correct, and being a contrarian doesn't always mean that you're right.
@@SchemingGoldberg Every single claim here you made is wrong. I don't even know what to say
I trust this new revenue will make their engine better, not worse. They should not die, this is capitalism and they provide competition. Also, you’re talking about a free software, we don’t pay monthly subscriptions. I’m sticking with Unity.
Finally someone who gets it!
So probably they should increase prices even more and stop being free software. This way they will make their engine even better.
What? Unity charges tens of thousands of dollars every year for their Unity Pro license. Unity has NEVER been free, they've always charged a monthly subscription. Unreal doesn't charge any monthly subscription at all.
Finally a single reasonable dev talk, thank you!
I thought there is no one left considering how people crying about things they dont even understand.
A bit scary of modern dev community tbh.
Haha it’s been hilarious see people run around without doing the math on both engines
Many people have done the math, and for many games Unreal is cheaper than Unity. Unity charges per installation, but Unreal doesn't, which means Unity is much worse for freemium mobile games. This video is simply incorrect, because it only gives ONE example (250,000 units sold for $15).
@@SchemingGoldberg I did my own math for my game. For me the example is fine. Also changes were made to ensure studio satisfaction. Now it's 2.5 percent or less < Unreal...
This is all well and good if you're charging $15 for your game but a ton of Unity games are a lot less than that. There are a lot of F2P Unity games that make pennies per player but make up for it by having millions of players. This pricing change makes that impossible to sustain.
They updated the pricing again since this video got posted. Check pinned comment