Unity’s new pricing update sparks controversy among developers
Unity, one of the most popular game engines in the world, has announced a new prici...
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I use Unity a lot for my business in developing visualizations and simulations in the B2B sector, and while I understand that there's some controversy surrounding the new pricing structure, it definitely isn't as bad as people make it seem.
For starters, many indie developers actually gain money from this, thanks to the removal of the 100k revenue cap for the personal license.
Further, companies won't be paying for every reinstall of a game, because Unity clearly states it only charges for initial installations of the Unity runtime. However they decide to track this is up to them, but you certainly won't be paying extra for every reinstall of the game.
I'm personally most annoyed by the removal of Unity Plus, since that was a cheap way to remove the Unity splash screen, but with the removal of the revenue cap from personal I understand why they did it. Sadly I'll have to pay significantly more to remove the splash screen now, but than again, the amount of money I save by using Unity to develop software far outweighs the roughly € 2000,- to pay for Unity Pro.
Tl;dr
I understand the controversy surrounding the announcement, and I would've loved if they kept Unity Plus, the changes definitely don't hurt the indie developers like everyone makes it out to be.
Counterpoint:
But hey, 200K revenue cap is a GREAT trade off, am I right??
While I understand where you're coming from, I think you're missing two major points.
The runtime fee's are only applicable for games that made 200k revenue in the past 12 months AND have over 200k lifetime installs. The percentage of steam releases that ever pass these thresholds are incredibly low. In 2019 this percentage was already lower than 10% according to market data. In the 4 years since this data was analyzed, this percentage has only gone down due to the massive influx in indie titles on Steam.
Considering the runtime fee is based on unique installs/hardware, you'd need a ton of people to make this even a slight threat. If you were to sell your game for € 10,- , after Steam's cut you'd be left with roughly € 7,- . That means that for every sale you've made, someone needs to round up 35 unique individuals in order to offset that amount of money. Honestly, if that were to happen, I think you have bigger problems.
But still, we're talking about extra cost increase for literally zero added benefits (for those who passed above the threshhold).
Not necessarily.
If you're making a live service game, or any game with an ongoing stream of income from microtransactions, you're probably making more profit compared to let's say Unreal's 5% revenue share. This means that all income after the initial €0,20 is 100% for you (Not counting platform specific fees, of course).
If you're making a game that only generates revenue from the initial sale, then yes, you will be losing some money. But depending on your revenue, this could again be either less or more than something like Unreal's 5% revenue share.
Also, if you've passed the 200k annual revenue, and 200k installs, simply upgrading to Unity Pro will unlock higher install and revenue caps. 1M installs and 1M of revenue in 12 months is something 99% of indies will never ever come close to reaching. And for the AAA studios and other industry giants that do, the benefits of using a feature rich engine like Unity, especially in combination with support and services that come with the higher plans, *far * outweigh the costs.
Exactly, I have no idea why they thought people would just agree and still use it especially because Unity is not even that good.
This new price is bizarre, totally unnecessary. Indie developers will need to found a new engine, luckily we have other engines like Godot
It's the first time I've heard a game engine charging per install. On top of monthly subscription. Absolute madness 🤯
Achilles' heel...
Technology is just getting more and more expensive, even for companies. This is passed on to the end user, unfortunately. ¯_(ツ)_/¯