New Unity Pricing Changes LEAKED

The latest updates on evolving Unity game engine drama.
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#unity #gamedev

[@phpn99]

It's not enough : John Riccitiello has to go. He's a massive liability for this community,

[@RobertStoll]

You also have the Ironsource bros on the board as well. They'd need to flush literally everyone.

[@vandermannmusic]

It's not just him. It's multiple people on the board of directors. People like Tomer Bar-Zeev has a part in this too.

[@EnderElohim]

Executives all need to go. Also new executive salaries need to be way lower until unity actually start to make money

[@rinrevo]

We need a tracker for when these CEO creatures move to other companies so we know what's gonna happen to that brand. Had no idea $1 Reload guy was at Unity. If more people knew, more people would have seen this coming.

[@carolinas8886]

Remember that execs are *not* the issue. They only execute what shareholders want. This exec team was put by shareholders.

[@MatrixQ]

I can't help but feel like the "leak" was deliberate. Schreier is good for something like that, and this way Unity can see the reaction without making an official announcement.

[@agamingtomato]

I agree, would be a smart move

[@JosepPi]

Agree. This is extremely standard in the industry. Call it a leak to see how the public will react without taking accountability for the decision and maybe changing it afterward stating "it was just a leak".

[@mallninja9805]

I suspect the whole debacle was deliberate, maybe to make people feel like the 4% is a good deal...

[@znzz1146]

Just like game leaks.

[@tomhan]

The literally cant do anything in good faith these days

[@cikame]

I love how quickly the idea of transitioning to a different engine went from being prohibitively difficult and costly to maybe not being so bad, and it's entirely due to the efforts of a community of extremely intelligent and hard working people who were burned and want to help each other. I don't know if Godot or other options are ready for the wide variety of games coming their way, but i'm fascinated to watch the progress.

[@Vash.Baldeus]

I think the main dev of Godot announced that they will be working on C# support, and other features Unity has for their engine. Which is going to entice A LOT of developers to go that route since it'll have similar tools and work scheme as Unity used to.

[@DEADEYESTUDIO]

i cant wait for godot to have a ton more tutorials, thats what i miss about unity, there were tutorials on every specific thing you wanted to do. that being said, i weirdly find godot's scripts to be a bit easier than unity's which is cool

[@DEADEYESTUDIO]

ooh shit, really? shit that'll be great if they do that. i'd love to be able to import some assets i bought into godot @@Vash.Baldeus

[@marvinalberto7963]

as much as I love Godot sadly unreal engine is more standard and better in 3D but depending on the type of game they are making for example: 2D on godot and 3D on unreal engine. you kind of get the idea of what they may choose. Godot is great if you want to keep more of your revenue though cause its free. at the moment though im sticking with unreal engine despite keeping an eye out for godot to get better.

[@chimeforest]

​@@Vash.Baldeus Do you remember what other features? Also, Godot already has C# support. It's one of the main languages which Godot programmers can use.

[@retroxify]

This isn't a "boycott" from a few disgruntled developers, this is a mass exodus. It's no longer about retaining your customers, it's about convincing them to come back; and most of us won't with Riccitiello still at the helm.

[@recxgems]

The audacity of them saying it wouldn't have gone down differently... Shows they either STILL don't get it, or don't care and now try to hide from responsibility.

[@robertfletcher8964]

sociopaths

[@ThiVasss]

He literally can't take the loss, apologize and move on... he had to have an excuse...

[@imqqmi]

CEOs and board members have huge egos, there's little chance they learn anything from their mistakes as they just blame the rest of the world. Leadership change has the highest chance of re-establishing a trust relationship, even then it may be impossible. The thing is that it's b2b not b2c but they treat it like it is. Partnerships need trust, transparency and consistency. If no partner wants to do business with unity, they may as well close up shop.

[@madtrini]

Game devs are awake early. Hope you brave folks are doing well

[@plankton383]

They have $3B debt. They need a way to make money and that’s the solution they came up with. They’re not changing it.

[@blacxthornE]

I love that they imply that the problem was with communication, rather than the demonic money grab itself. No. We all know defeating demons once is not enough to trust everything's gonna be okay. They will always come back for more. Developing with Unity from now on, no matter what they say or offer, is just asking for a rug pull later down the line.

[@idontwanttopickone]

Yeah. I just don't think the community are going to trust Unity for a long time. Anyone who can switch is switching engines. If they, Unity, want to build trust they need to issue an apology and John Riccitiello needs to leave Unity. It's the head that has to roll for people to actually start building trust in the company again. Until then I can't see people choosing to use Unity if they don't have to.

[@JoshTGW]

Too much Hubris

[@PipoZePoulp]

Notice how the new fees don't question the new economic model. If no one questions the model, they already won half the battle. The fee may be low now, but once the habit has settled, it's just a matter of dialing up the price.

[@dawidmurray]

This 100%. Fool me once, Shame on You. Fool me Twice, Shame on Me. Time to move on now.

[@user-tp5yb4hr4w]

@@idontwanttopickone i don't think an apology will cut it at this point, they already showed their hand in what they will be doing and this bribe of the 4% is really just that, a bribe, but that can also change at any given point in time if people are stupid enough to go back to Unity. also it's not like Unity has an EULA agreement to uphold to where laws are there to protect the coustomer from shady deals like this from happening in the future, so again, the odds are against them unless they really rethink their whole business model.

[@BeingBelligerent]

I think one of the biggest oversites Unity had with this is the fact that most people learning how to use their engine, are learning from the very people they just tried to screw over. If they lose that community of teachers and tutorial creators, they now lose a good chunk of new developers as well.

[@marcar9marcar972]

It wouldn’t be an immediate thing. There’s tons of Unity Tutorials out there, it’d be new or changed features which suffer from it. And considering Unity’s decision making at the moment, I see tons of that happening soon

[@sekunriruisen506]

​@marcar9marcar972 but it could be immediate depending on the level of spite. Would youtubers want to make videos that bring in revenue disappear? No. But could they? Yes. A channels tutorials could vanish overnight if they really wanted them too. They likely wont until they can hold their own with another enginsles tutorials or maybe never, but its always an option if spite leads the way.

[@nand3kudasai]

ive seen a video from a reputable university that they are moving away from teaching unity obly to engine agnostic. and imagine also the job demand, a lot of people will think twice to learn unity if there are less companies hiring.

[@potato9832]

@@marcar9marcar972 The existing tutorials won't go away, but they will become stale. The KZbin algorithm will begin to push them down the rankings as they age. If there's not a steady supply of new Unity tutorial, discussion, and devotee videos, Unity's presence on KZbin will fade.

[@arkcritic6080]

It's very hard to expect them not to pull something like this again in the future. If they had been open with setting up a new price plan then, more developers might be ok with it. But since they pulled a stunt like this, it made them realize that putting all your eggs in the Unity basket is going to be a liability.

[@lightyagami6307]

I fell they can just anytime incease the percent to 8% 10% or more or anything that they like

[@recxgems]

And not just us devs, but also publishers, platforms, distributors, etc.

[@charliecharliewhiskey9403]

This isn't the first time either, pretty sure there was a unity TOS debacle back in 2019 too that led to a (much smaller) backlash and Unity giving in and reverting the changes. If this is the second time, then absolutely nobody should be able to trust them not to pull this kind of thing again. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

[@Suhov]

At this point it's not even future expectations. They are losing money and talent at very rapid pace. Some cynical people may say that somebody in management is involved in short selling the stock.

[@madjunir]

​@@lightyagami6307they just want to ease the transition now. They'll then start to up the fees once the waters are calm again.

[@Xirpzy]

Its sad to see all this. We've seen it with pretty much every major artist software going from perpetual and one time payments to subscription and service based monetization. And every time the software development becomes stale and it looses so much of the community and engagement. Thankfully there are still programs like Blender and Godot as well as Affinity software that keep things alive.

[@Snakebloke]

Yes I came here to suggest this. Corporate greed gets significantly worse when the companies go public. Shareholders don't care about the consumers, they just want quick cash.

[@Theydas]

That's true. It happens 100% because when company go public their priority to make better software just stops being most important factor. Instead, it's all about making money for shareholders.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

Open source was created for this reason. Proprietary software is bound to the "LINE MUST GO UP" businness model so it will always have to turn into aggressive monetization eventually

[@st.altair4936]

Switched to Krita when Clip Studio did this. FOSS is the way.

[@Mallchad]

I started quitting programs I like because of this... I legit can't afford to be preyed upon for software I use occasionally

[@TheDreadnoughtgames]

The reason for self-reporting is simple: they don't know how to do it themselves legally. They cannot tell the difference between genuine installs and pirate versions. If they could then Unity would be able to provide a DRM system which they don't.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

nobody can do that legally. The big issue is how did they think it was cool to just cowboy it and push an official licensing change without any idea of how to do it

[@muggzzzzz]

pretty good point!

[@fmo94jos8v3]

That's what I was saying, if they can tell a copy is pirated, why don't they prevent loading the game all together? Add in code to delete itself and/or make itself unusable, and BAM you've got DRM

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@fmo94jos8v3 because that's the fastest way to get it neutered by the cracking group that releases the pirated version. And if that is cracked now they don't know the game is pirated anymore. The goal here is telemetry so they can get paid by the developer, not fighting piracy.

[@Vendavalez]

All I’m hearing is “FINE! We are not doing retroactive charges right now. But definitely later.” They made it perfectly clear what they want to do and executive leadership has not changed. Anyone who can change engines should change as early as it is feasible.

[@railerswim]

They’ve admitted they only see this as a communications issue, not an issue with the new business plan. They will never fully deviate from the new business plan unless an activist investor steps in, and even then that’s just a sign of priming for a sale to another company at best. Unity is done, they will still be around but they will never stand tall again.

[@st.altair4936]

Remember, they did this same thing back in 2019 with SpatialOS... they've learnt nothing and never will; that's just how corporations, specially publicly traded ones, are. They'll keep pushing this. Godot's funding has nearly doubled over this past week though thanks to unity, and the 4.0 update went a long way in improving its 3D capabilities. FOSS is the way; I hope to see it become the Blender of game engines one day.

[@lexacutable]

SpatialOS doesn't seem to have had anything to do with Unity?

[@st.altair4936]

@@lexacutable Look it up. Unity retroactively changed their TOS back then too, to not allow SpatialOS to work on their platform; the same way they're doing this time. They changed it back then after a backlash and promised to do better, and made a GitHub page to report all changes to the TOS and be more transparent... which they deleted earlier this year to pull the things they did this time.

[@Sheevlord]

Something tells me that the main reason why they switched from the data collection model to self-reporting model for install count calculations is the fact that there isn't a reliable way to collect data without either breaching privacy of end users or opening the possibility to maliciously inflate install count to cause financial losses for game developers. Maybe if that was their original pitch (self-reporting, no retroactive fees, limit install fees to 4% of the revenue) it wouldn't have caused such a stir? So there absolutely could've been a version of it that would've gone down a lot better than the one they chose.

[@albesca4615]

How can developer count the intallations for the self-report, though? Self-reporting works fine with revenue but the exact same problems of multiple installs, pirated copies, copies acquired through game passes and the like, still applies even if the tracking is done by developers

[@Sheevlord]

@@albesca4615Sales numbers I assume. One of their clarifications was that "install count" is supposed to count unique users (i.e. if I reinstall the same game 10 times it should only count as 1), but that contradicted their original statement. Actually I'm not sure they have a good idea themselves. With self reporting the only way I see this would work is to count one sale as one "install". After all, how is a developer supposed to know when a game is installed? The obvious question is: in this case why even call it install fee if it depends on the number of copies sold and not on installation count?

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@albesca4615 who cares? if it's a self-report they will just report sales figures and that's it.

[@Sheevlord]

@@crazywayne14 Ah, so it's a loophole type of thing. Well, I wonder if the court would make the same distinction if there was a class action lawsuit.

[@conspiracypanda1200]

Self-reporting profits so you can be charged a fee is exactly what Hasbro/WOTC tried with 3rd party tabeltop devs last year. Considering that their closest competitor, Paizo, sold 8 months of stock in 2 weeks shortly afterwards, DnD Beyond suffered so many unsubs that the website crashed and the Unsubscribe button was _hidden_ by the time it re-upped and WOTC eventually backed down hard but still suffered lasting damages regardless as their partners either released their own systems or fled, I wouldn't say it was that much better a strategy.

[@SkyWorldGamesStudio]

I think the main problem is that they have tendention to such big, sudden changes in policy. Unfortunately this company can't be trusted anymore, as in such important matters as engine royalty they switch their minds 180 degrees in just a week.

[@tetri90]

Yes, and that they are trying to push those changes on people who never agreed to them. The whole pay for install payment model is stupid, but it wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem if they had only said it was the new payment structures for people using new versions of Unity. By using them people would be agreeing to those terms. But to try to push those random fees on people whose game has already been out for years, who have already paid Unity the price that was agreed upon back then for the work done in Unity to develop those games, and who might not even be using Unity anymore, but somehow they suddenly owe Unity money for no new service or work on Unity part ? How would you ever choose to work with them when you know that at any moment they might know on your door asking for money that was never agreed to be paid ? What if they suddenly wake up one day and decide that Unity isn't free for amateur creators anymore and so that somehow means that anyone who ever published anything in Unity owe them 1k ? That legally dubious (just like their current retroactive change is), but a lawsuit would cost you way more than that and most people can't afford the risk.

[@knghtbrd]

The reason why Unity used to have part of the ToS that you could use the ToS from the time the game was released and a git repo tracking the changes to make that easy was THEY DID THIS BEFORE! Changed the ToS after the fact to say "oh yeah you now owe us extra money!" And that measure was the insurance that they'd never do it again. There is nothing this company can offer anymore that would ever make me get within ten miles of their engine.

[@marcar9marcar972]

What about a line in the TOS that locks in the rate and makes further changes not allowed?

[@blunderingfool]

​@@marcar9marcar972They'll just replace it like last time?..

[@nihadnasupovic1218]

Man, this is so sad. This reminds me of the debacle with Flash... After over 10 years in Unity, they are really pushing me to look into Unreal and Godot. I got to love Unity, and it took a sweat and tears to acquire the skills to where I can now pretty much build anything I want. I was even thinking of going pro, but now I've got a sour aftertaste when I open up the program...

[@-Believeinyourself-]

I don’t believe you will, and neither do they. I believe you will still use Unity and so do they.

[@-Believeinyourself-]

@@anonymous49125 time will tell the truth on whether you guys are all talk. I hope you are not.

[@mrcali2245]

​@@-Believeinyourself-nah I've switched to godot fully lmaooo

[@-Believeinyourself-]

@@mrcali2245 that’s awesome, I hope the majority does follow through with their outrage and this isn’t a bluff by most devs.

[@omnisimush]

You're not alone, I too have lost all my motivation to open up Unity and can't really focus at developing inside Unity editor anymore. I switch to Flax Engine right now because it has superior 3D features + it supports C#

[@cgfrog5]

I completely agree, it would be really great if they could restore the Plus subscription plan.

[@gravekeepersven82]

John Riccetto : NO YOU WILL PAY WHAT I SAY YOU WILL RIGHT NOW!

[@xerothereaper4158]

@@gravekeepersven82 you forgot to add, you have to pay for each word you speak or write in Cause that mf dared to add micro for reloading a gun in battlefield 3

[@KaliTakumi]

Honestly nothing they do would be great when you can't fundamentally trust developing on their platform

[@TurtleTracksStudio]

@@KaliTakumi Yup, a long term project would just be dumb to start now, unfortunately.

[@KryyssTV]

Given Unity's evident lack of respect for it's customers there's every reason to expect them to reverse their position again to reimplement this taxation once they think this has all blown over. Maybe not this year, but next year or the one after that. The 4% installation tax cap bevomes 6%, then 8%. Non-retroactive taxation becomes ganes from the last 2 years, then 5 years. Self-reported installs becomes mandatory DRM. They will just ease changes out incrementally so they can avoid the drama from now on because they think most indiedevs are clueless, myopiic manbabies drooling behind their keyboards with delusions of being "real" developers and won't notice what is happening.

[@-Believeinyourself-]

They are calling your guys’ bluff and I hope it isn’t a bluff but I think a lot of people are.

[@korenn9381]

all they've walked back is the tracking of installs, they're still steaming ahead with the per-install taxes.

[@madjunir]

​@@korenn9381the self tracking will be most likely temporary until they add some Ai or whatever to their tracking tech and "feel" is reliable enough. They might let a handful of big devs self report for a while. They just want to "ease in" quietly now.

[@KryyssTV]

​​@@korenn9381And quietly not mentioning that they were caught removing the user protections from the Unity TOS on github and then deleting the records of the change hoping that nobody would notice. Not to mention that JR sold a very snall number of shares but many of his executive buddues weren't so discrete. The other point is that in the public statement they appologised for causing "confusion and angst" but then you have JR saying that this couldn't have been avoided. Which means he meant, "Its you that is the problem not us". What a great way to withdraw an appology...

[@Laumania]

We game devs are not, as he might think, idiots. We understand that a business needs money, so I totally agree, they could have done this SO much differently being more transparent. I make money on my game, so I have no problem paying more for a Unity license (rather that than revenue cut, but that's just me) - if that is what it takes to keep the engine alive and improve overtime.

[@Laumania]

@@anonymous49125 Same here. I think they should have just added more sub tiers depending on earnings - but going forward.Not back in time.

[@NukeCloudstalker]

It feels like it's deteriorated over time though. Too many chefs, too many different ways of doing the same things, with poor guidance on when to use what.

[@user-tp5yb4hr4w]

weren't you already paying them a fuck load of money though? why should you have to pay their bad business mistakes with the mafia? i mean this is almost akin to them having gambling debts and because of their debts, they charge you the coustomer way more money that you could possibly or realistically pay all for their debts, i mean you were already paying them what was it, 2 grand a year for their product? and with that said all the same price per coustomer using their program which was in the thousands prior to this scam being pushed. so me at this point all just sounds like a scam, and you would have been the easily convinced people who would have just fell in line with what they were going to do.

[@ordinaryhuman5645]

Are you willing to pay enough money though? Last year their operating income was like -$822 million. They're bleeding money like pre-Elon Twitter.

[@6mrmeeker6]

unity's 4% would be more than unreals 5% as for unreal you pay 5% for everything above 1million, effectively lowering the percentage. Very succesfull games negotiate better cut too.

[@LatkaXtreme]

Also unless you are a multi-million dollar studio that needs professional support you don't have to pay for a license if you reach that goal. Their site even asks to contact them for a license agreement, so no license fee is set in stone. But let's be honest, if you reach that, you probably are better off paying for it anyways. So at Unity you also have to pay for a license above that 4%.

[@Juke172]

yeah if it's 4% before that first 1million. also the yearly cost of having no badge of shame at launch of your game.

[@xanaramus]

Article says thats above 1mil, so its same as Unreal, but 4%

[@Snakebloke]

Unreal is 1,000,000 per quarter in revenue; Unity is 1,000,000 per year... and we haven't even discussed the fact that Unreal is significantly more advanced and better looking.

[@MichaelGGarry]

@@Snakebloke More advanced - unless you are a AAA developer, how does that help anyone? As a non-AAA developer (any more) I care more about which platforms it exports to, what the support is like, can it do 3D and 2D, what is its performance on the lowest specced machines, etc etc.

[@looperx]

The difference between the engines: You have to pay Unity to hide their logo of shame from your splash screen. You have to ask Epic to have the permission to use their logo on splash screen.

[@EmptyNullified]

And Godot you do whatever the fuck you want.

[@blunderingfool]

​@@EmptyNullifiedI've been told Godot devs like to make their own version of the Godot robot.

[@MisterNightfish]

Very good point about the splash screen. I remember talking to some of my friends who thought unity games were always bad, so I pointed out a few good games from unity and they had no idea those were made with unity. Definitely more of a liability than an asset to be branded a unity game.

[@grapefruit256-wu5ml]

For me the biggest question is, when users in general will rather directly use and contribute to open source projects. At the end, what a user will contribute to an open source project will rather stay in his community. Fortunately, most open source apps today have already reached their (relative) usability peaks.

[@madjunir]

Godot user base. Donations just doubled in a week. I expect development as well. If Blender is to go by I think Godot has a bright future ahead.

[@4.0.4]

@@madjunir It does feel like that. Some open source projects like Inkscape or Gimp would have little new features to offer if someone hadn't downloaded a new version in 10 years, while Blender and Godot are the complete oposite, stay out of the loop for one year and you have a ton to catch up on.

[@NotSoCheezyYT]

​@@4.0.4Actually, Inkscape has matured quite a lot recently. They had a UI change a while back and they're adding features all the time. IMO it's better than anything commercially available and I use it for just about everything now other than photo editing.

[@jordanlis85]

@@madjunir omg I just saw that it doubled, yes ! That's amazing ! Best marketing ever of unity for Godot :) It was so difficult to get to the 25k/ a month, but now it's almost 50k/month ! That's incredible !

[@paulie-g]

@@4.0.4Not every piece of software needs 'new features'. I use a window manager that hasn't had a new feature in over 10 years and a panel (taskbar for you) that hasn't had a commit in 12. Both do exactly what I want and I need nothing else. Can you honestly say that Word 2019 is better than Word 2006? No, it's more bloated and they've changed the UI. Some software is just 'done' at some point. GIMP has significant new features btw, you just don't know about them.

[@OrbitalCookie]

Love big companies. When it's top-down orders, it's "vison". When it's fiasco, it's "WE could have done a lot of things a lot better".

[@wayamiownqwuj896z83ZMWAGVwfa]

Sounds pretty good... but they are going to fuck it all up again one day.

[@LostRelicGames]

The final outcome (part 4): kzbin.info/www/bejne/jmbVg5iOdspgbZY

[@vonpotatostein]

If I may recommend: The time you invest in doing again the unity specific missing features (like the particles) in your game when you port it to Godot will be actually WAY WAY cheaper than having the potential of Unity trying to egregiously seek ways to bankrupt you in the near or far future (they will try again, without a doubt, Unity will wait for this to be "forgotten").

[@mlykke]

Even the new version is flawed in so many ways, that we should all keep uprising against Unity until they do a full revert or a simple approach such as Unreal. The wording around a 4% limit for customers making above a million. But it doesn't mention anything about a limit being in place if you earn below a million - So could that still cause major issues with install-bombing on low revenue/high install games? We absolutely also need the plus tier back. Pushing the load screen customization to a tier that is 4 times as expensive is just bad. Especially for the small game developers(which are the majority of Unity users). I also don't trust that they will remove the install tracking spyware. I think they will keep it and compare to the numbers that people will report. Do not relent and accept a slightly shittier version!

[@johnsmith99997]

They wont revert, they'll just close down. Losing 1 billion per year isnt sustainable.

[@Merivio]

Agreed. The burden of proof of the number of installs will be on us.

[@sekunriruisen506]

Not entirely true. They could just stop acquiring new shit and focus on themselves. I mean... Unity could have an internal game development team and actually make games (like they were going to) and if they're good they'd bring in money! And guess what... they dont have to pay themselves the fees we have to pay them. But clearly the seemingly free answer is too complicated for the current management since they got rid of the team doing just that!

[@000Dragon50000]

The "4% for games making over 1 million" thing actually doesn't stop the pricing model changes from hurting indie devs who might just barely get 200,000 dollars in profit via FAR higher installs, where they could still hypothetically be charged more from unity than their actual revenue.

[@samcolserra2425]

At that point you would have no reason to not upgrade to a next unity engine tier for a flat price, which would also increase your required annual revenue to 1 mil

[@barrylee2001]

@@samcolserra2425 or you can use godot and pay 0 total lol

[@morganlean3412]

If Unity Expects a 4% cut, they should be providing source code to every developer. They are still a long way behind Unreal in a variety of features and Unreal provides source code.

[@dixiedad]

There is way more to this than most of us think, something else is going on. They knew people would freak about this new price change.

[@raptorcheesus]

inb4 comically evil tortellini ceo is an inside man of unreal

[@RobertStoll]

The good news is that if you have a project in Unity, it's not a completely broken situation. However the damage has been done. Unless the entire C suite is fired and blacklisted from the industry, with the company be taken private by a community trust, it'll take a serious bout of Stockholm Syndrome to start a game in Unity. They've showed what they want to do. Anyone who wants that deal is certainly only doing themselves a disservice.

[@youtubeuniversity3638]

Might I ask ye what a "community trust" is?

[@wackypocket]

@@youtubeuniversity3638 the community pools enough money together to buy (51%) controlling ownership of unity and take it private, that's never gonna happen but one can dream.

[@lawrence9713]

most fuck up for me is, how do I get the game mechanic systems I bought in unity asset store into Unreal. I'm no programmer, so I am very reliant on these assets. All that art stuff is easy, I just import it in Unreal. The pipeline is a bit different, setting up the materials, animations and such, but after a week this will be just as easy as in Unity. It's just that I'm now sitting there with art and without game systems and mechanics, which I have for Unity since I bought them for a lot of money.

[@Handepsilon]

​@@lawrence9713The options you can do in that situation then is to either look up for alternatives in Epic's store (some goes free at times) or Blueprint them up somehow. If you have soneone who knows programming, you might be able to ask for help too

[@universallyepicnarwhal9102]

@@lawrence9713unreal has great visual scripting, try that out

[@NewEnglandModz]

That’s interesting. I had never thought about a game engine splash screen being a sort of badge of honor. I think you’re right in that they should change it to not allow the splash screen unless your game is of a certain quality. Although, the damage has probably already been done (in regards to all the shovelware with the logo, not the latest drama).

[@Neekoolos]

I love your insight on the issues! Thanks for keeping us up to date :D

[@hacker_man_sam5157]

Thanks for sharing the articale clear and up front in the beginning of the video

[@zapoutix]

i cannot understand why unity take so long time to give their final plan answer .. i started to use godot after the "announcement" just to see, but now I am using it for few days, and as you said started to look at the tool and how I can migrate my 6 months works on Unity to godot (coroutine, shader graph, assets import, animations, cinemachine, tooling,). I am at the point that I start to be comfortable with Godot, switch my mind from "of course after this mess I will go back to unity" to "Godot can be a serious alternative for the game I am currently making" i evaluated the migration to 1 month, for my project the big part will be cinemachine replacement.

[@paranormalgamesstudios]

Should have just gone with 4% from the beginning. Thats fine. The problem now is the runtime fee will be in place and then will be completely open to being changed to whatever they want in the future. We shall see.

[@YonaSoundcloud]

It's such a shame because i absolutely love unity and the C# environment, it's very unique and a great workspace, but like many users i feel like I have to move on and now focus on UE5 and godot

[@MagicGonads]

Godot has OK (merely OK, not great) C# support. But it's surely to improve with the extra migration and donations.

[@SandroWalach]

What you said on the logo hit me hard. I never thought about it in that way and holy moly are you corret!

[@rahn45]

They told everyone what they wanted to do. They still want to do it. They will eventually do it. That was the only thing they were honest about.

[@twofarg0ne763]

I wouldn't trust Unity any farther than I can throw their greedy CEO.

[@SuPeRNinJaRed]

5:33 Very true an engine logo should be something to show proudly, which is why I never hide the RPGMAKER MV splash screen!

[@deefdragon]

side note regarding the ceos sales. at an estimated 50k sold so far, the ceo is basically selling at a rate of 2 million dollars per year, which is actually less than what I would expect their share compensation to be tbh. I suspect they are just increasing their effective "cash" salary as opposed to decreasing their hold of stock of the company. I do similar with the stock I get vested to me at my job. (tho obviously at a much different scale and time frame)

[@Invariel]

It's important to remember that these leaked details are not an official announcement. Even if the announcement DOES come and the details match up 100%, the verbiage is "we may", "we are considering", etc.. Things can change at any time, and until there's an actually updated license, be wary.

[@MrZtapp]

Fully agree. Also without the Plus I will jump ASAP even if all other stuff is retracted.

[@LostRelicGames]

This one is pretty big deal for indies. I've seen some gamers mention they will downvote and uninstall games with the unity splash. And while it might be melodrama, small indie's cant take the risk, it only takes a few downvotes to ruin some launches.

[@_Ganjatobi]

The Plus is a biggie for me, and I actually designed my main intros to include the splash screen. Thought I'd show a bit of respect to the engine. But nope gone now.

[@not_ever]

@@LostRelicGames Punishing indie developers who may have invested too much time already into their game to port to another engine, is a special, kick someone in the nuts whilst they're down, kind of stupid,.

[@ZeoWorks]

Thank you for giving a shout out regarding plus memberships, pro is simply too expensive for our needs. All we want is to remove the splashscreen.

[@LegendaryFenrir]

At the end of the day, there's things that money can't buy. Trust. But greed sure can make you lose money. Good on these devs for speaking out!

[@robrobusa]

Yeah I’ll not hold my breath on this.

[@littlearvin1641]

I don't care what Unity does. Their actions made clear that you cannot rely upon them. If you can, switch to another engine.

[@voxkine9385]

It’s great news! Now anyone who continues to use Unity has some real assurances that they won’t be financially ruined until at least the next time Unity decides to unilaterally and suddenly change the pricing structure and make it all retroactive!!!/s Doesn’t matter. I’m not a developer on any engine, but any developer that continues to use Unity in the future is an rube no matter what the new deal is. Unity showed they can and will change pricing, retroactively, to ruin your existence! The damage has been done, boot Unity.

[@kcorac]

I have been finally learning to use Godot the last few days and it is incredible how quick it is to get used to it and also how fast it loads. It caught my attention that tiles creation is much easier and the same goes for UI elements. I haven't try the particle system though but seems to me you don't miss a lot from Unity, except maybe for 3D

[@MikAlexander]

They couldn't come out and just say it as it is because there would be a massive sell out from the investors immediately.

[@Dredguno]

Unity has been on a decline for years anyways, best to jump ship regardless. no retroactive changes are good because current unity games on the market wont be removed

[@andrewallbright658]

The alleged 4% revenue cap is interesting because it implies that the bean counters inside Unity were anticipating greater profits than that. The fact that it’s a part of a concession implies Unity was calculating taking an even bigger cut than unreal. It’s also crazy how Unity allegedly isn’t getting rid of the per install fee. Seems like it’s important to Unity’s monetization strategy to establish that precedent. If game devs accept the fee than later it can be tweaked up (or the alleged 4% revenue cap removed). It also sucks that Unity hasn’t released anything officially yet. It’s like they’re trying to wait until the outrage dies down.

[@RobopYoutube]

Most likely they would have thought about these changes in principle, but in order for the community to accept them they decided to put the previous changes, which were much more aggressive, the changes are like Christmas offers, first they raise the prices and then they lower them saying that it is a great discount, when in reality the price barely changed at all...

[@chrismc3744]

Very informative. I think the trust in Unity has been absolutely squashed. Who could possibly think that they won't try this shit again in the future (this would have been a better play if they had waited for some major releases next year, so they at least had those suckers on the hook for the rest of 2024). I think the tire analogy would be more like if you went to buy new tires, but they sell you the tires for the list rate; Then charge an extra fee based on how many miles/km the old tires had on them.

[@LoneWolf6063]

Quick context, unreals 5% cut requires 1 million in a quarter. unity requires 1 million in a year

[@Snakebloke]

Oh really?? That's a big deal...

[@syriuszb8611]

"...you will only owe royalties once the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in other words, the first $1 million will be royalty-exempt." I have no idea where you came up with the quarter. The quarter is how often you need to report it, not when it resets. With Unreal, it never resets. "Once you've begun collecting money for your product, you'll need to track gross revenue and pay a 5% royalty on that amount after $1 million USD in gross revenue is earned*. To report your earnings, complete and submit the royalty form on a quarterly basis. *Please make sure you submit your Release Form before you ship your product or begin collecting revenue, in order to be entitled to the $1 million USD gross revenue exemption."

[@mikaelfinsrud9359]

Wrong.

[@BillyViBritannia]

I believe it's 10k per quarter and 1kk lifetime for unreal. Still ok but nowhere near as good as you described.

[@PobreIndieDev]

How much was the price of the PLUS plan?, I use the personal version, but I never paid attention to that point... I would only be worried about it if I reached the 100k that the old rule required

[@StealthyShiroeanGames]

Over the past few days I had been thinking about how it would be good to learn Godot on the side. But after watching a few "getting started" videos and Oliver's stuff (been a fan of his channel for a while since you posted that video way back of him testing out Blood and Mead), I think I'm ready to just cast off the Unity shackles and dive into the deep end with Godot. Hit the books hard, as they say, and try to learn the foundations and, hopefully, I enjoy it enough to start working in Godot and leave Unity behind. Having not made a commercial game myself or being in the middle of a huge project, I feel that this is the best time as ever to switch engines even though I am lamenting the last couple years I devoted to learning Unity and coding in general. I'm hoping that time won't have been wasted and will help me understand some of the things about Godot faster than if I would have just started learning game dev from nothing. I think the leaked revenue policy seems like a better step but I still feel that Unity really damaged the branding. Possibly beyond repair. Or, if anything, it will take a long time for them to build up trust again. I had been wanting to learn Godot for a while now so this was just the catalyst I needed to get me going with it. I do hope that Unity recovers with a policy that is acceptable for everyone but if not or if they screw things up again in the future then hopefully I'll be using a different engine by then anyway.

[@GingerNingerish]

John Priccitiello

[@iplayoldschoolrunescape]

I feel like no matter how you do it changing terms of service or price changes will always have a bad reaction but the way they did it was so slimy and sneaky that they lost all trust. Maybe if they said something in the lines of to improve you unity unfornutely we are going to have to change our prices in the next year or give a timeline for people to pivot. And people on the old contracts should be kept on that for their games that are already out but new games should be on the new one moving forward. But it doesnt matter cause from everyone it seems like they didnt listen to any feedback before releasing the changes so this was all on them, money hungry leeches.

[@jumpkut]

Love your takes on this. Keep em coming, sir.

[@AndrzejGieraltCreative]

Thanks for your coverage on this :)

[@TheSpidermint]

You could see this as an opportunity to massively refactor your code as you port it over to another engine. We all know that with long development cycles code can become less than optimal and old code can hamper development as much as anything going forward. I am not suggesting your code isn't good, but it is worth considering that refactoring as an integral part of optimizing your game and even setting up a second version codebase. Just my thoughts as someone who finds a good refactor, especially on longer projects can save you lots of pain and time in the long run. Your particle effects etc. really shouldn't be key factors in your decisions as these are absolutely not what fundamentally drives your game or shouldn't be (IMO). Every engine has them and the tedious work of generating the art assets is already done.

[@LostRelicGames]

Screen shotted and will reflect on this more. You are right, the code set carries a lotmof legacy baggage which could be escaped with a port. Much to think about

[@MarcV_IndieGameDev]

4% decision is a hit on successful games, the 2-20cents per download approach feels like it was spreading the cost over everyone, which in turn really hurts lower/middle developers, and not really the successful developers. Unity opting for the 4%, they are really attacking their main money makers, big risk losing them over the smaller teams. But yeah, they should of been far more transparent and bouncing off the community for feedback.

[@Qendajar]

it will mostly be 1%. 4% is the cap which 1/10 games reach

[@NastierNate]

So many game devs are in small studios and are incredibly familiar with thin profit margins and the harsh realities of business ownership. There could not have been a group more sympathetic to an unsustainable business model needing a revision, but they decided to take the cartoon villain route over an honest conversation.

[@Glutymax]

The concerns you voiced with shovelware displaying the unity logo versus larger scale games hiding it, and how that affects the long term brand health were brought up in an interview with Johnny Rick by games journalist Laura Dale.

[@Alucard_Seven]

I never really liked Godot (in the sense of my workflow). Mainly since I prefer 3D games over 2D. But now since they getting more funding and trying to improve there engine I might switch over to it. Though my current Project is in Unreal engine maybe my next one will be in Godot. edit: Just my opinion. Don't go the game engine wars on me. Just a tool to make some games.

[@albertolameira5224]

what makes you think Godot is only for 2D? O.o

[@LoneWolf6063]

@@albertolameira5224 3d rendering was kinda meh on godot

[@blacxthornE]

@@LoneWolf6063Godot 4 already has major improvements on 3d as well as 2d. With the funding they're going to get now, hopefully it'll be even better.

[@Tearodis]

@@LoneWolf6063 It's definitely true that if you're trying to go for an Unreal Engine level of lighting/rendering you are out of luck with Godot. But it is definitely possible to achieve really good 3D graphics in Godot. If you're going for a stylized look, there isn't even a difference.

[@LoneWolf6063]

@@Tearodis Godot has better it's rendering now, a few years ago, general 3d wasn't great either, but yea now I do agree

[@erikm9768]

I really enjoy your videos, haha, the last part was hysterical. Payback is a bitch indeed, AppLovin earned some respect for that. I think the best we can do though is to instead of migrating right away, be very vigilant while writing new code and systems to the notion that these could one day be moved to another engine.

[@mb-andthenwhat]

The Plus tier would also be a perfect place to remove the always-online nonsense they’re forcing the free editor into in November. I’d like to be able to open the editor without being connected to the internet at that moment. No issue with the ‘have to be connected at least once every three days requirement though)

[@k-6353]

Hello, sorry if this isnt appropriate at this current moment, but does anybody know how to prevent camera from rendering postprocessing of the World Space UI without creating a separate camera? My fps gets cut in half on mobile when a separate camera is created for non postprocessing layers.

[@georgidimitrov836]

They can never recover from this. New developers will avoid Unity like the plague. I'm sad for developers too deep into a project that they are unable to switch engines.

[@marcar9marcar972]

They easily could. All they would have to do is lock in the rate and make changes not allowed. That being said they won’t do it.

[@elisavbizau9909]

Honestly, I feel they put out a horrible policy so ppl bash them and then they sell us something a bit better and we take it, which was their plan all along.

[@theplaymakerno1]

Secret Sage covering important Unity news is tight...... Thank you :)

[@rohitmalakar]

I was learning unity for more than months, now should i use it or move to other alternative ?

[@alaskacpu]

I won’t use Unity until this CEO is fired. 😂 He screwed everything up 💞

[@Rangeon]

Who can fire the ceo?

[@thunderbug8640]

To your point at 3:36 ish. This is a problem with a lot of companies. They always try and put one over on the consumer, and the consumer isn’t dumb, especially in this industry, and they will know if you are trying to shaft them and they won’t like it. Transparency and openness would be much more productive but either they think we are all dumb or they are all dumb.

[@-Believeinyourself-]

They are calling your bluff and for your own sake, I hope you guys aren’t bluffing.

[@thunderbug8640]

@@-Believeinyourself- I can only speak for myself but my game actually was supposed to release a week ago, I’ve delayed it while I wait for this situation to play out. I wouldn’t even have been impacted by the changes but the model they came out with was that bad.

[@-Believeinyourself-]

@@thunderbug8640 I commend your integrity to your morals and values.

[@magicorpse]

Thanks for the update and sharing with us a good godot channel :)

[@RebelliousX]

The momentum is with Godot now. I would say jump ship, don't wait, the stigma is really bad with the sinking Unity ship.

[@NewEnglandModz]

I personally will be sticking with a Unity. I tried switching to a Unreal once. I was under the impression it was miles better. The thing that makes Unity awesome is that you’re encouraged to make everything from scratch. Unreal tries to throw templates at you, so you start off with someone else’s movement or camera code. My goal when trying Unreal was to make a physics based character controller from scratch. All of the tutorials online were how to modify Unreal’s character controller, never how to implement your own from scratch. Maybe that’s changed since I tried it a couple of year ago.

[@teacupofdoom]

You could always try out godot. I've been told it's quite easy for unity devs to switch to, and it's free as well, so there's no cost for trying it out even if you don't end up liking it

[@dr.blockcraft6633]

I've been Hearing a Lot of Positive reviews From godot. Maybe you Should try That?

[@B16B0SS]

unity makes plenty of money, they have a management problem, too many hires, not enough efficiency in how they operate

[@thomasbrush]

Thanks for the update bud

[@B_Carr007i]

Great talk, good job dev-team

[@shogun2215]

I hope people continue to abandon Unity, the only way to hurt them is to hurt their bottom line.

[@chinchilla_irl]

good catch thanks for the vid

[@anshulsingh8326]

I'm happy if they make some agreement saying any new policy won't be applied on current of previous unity versions. Also if it's 4% of revenue so now even after 20years People using that unity version has to pay only 4%.

[@QuietPenguinGaming]

Would love to see your findings from looking into porting your game! Would make for a very educational video.

[@doghous3]

That's one thing that really got my goat, was removing the Plus sub - I'm sure they are well aware we only sub'd that to remove the splash (and previously to have dark mode). Going from 36 freedom dollars to 130+ ... dah fook.

[@agorilla7137]

I think the biggest issue that ultimately did the most damage was them coming out with the initial decision that it would retroactively count downloads for games published prior to when the policy was put into place. It seeds the idea that they're not opposed to the idea of changes affecting prior games which sours it in a lot of peoples minds. There's not really a good way to walk back from that.

[@PlayGamesWithX]

I like your game. Can you share how long you have been working on this game and the total time you have spent on it?

[@457Deniz457]

Somehow its nice to see u happy about the changes :)

[@BritBox777]

Don't forget, that's in ADDITION to the $2000+ per dev seat, since they've removed the plus plan (and nobody is talking about it).

[@TackerTacker]

0:54 [...] installations counted toward reaching the threshold won't be retroactive, ... That's such a sneaky wording, makes you think they say it no longer applies retroactively to games made with Unity before the change, but that's not what this actually says, it still means that games made with Unity before this change will have to pay, just that the lifetime installs won't count retroactively for these old Unity games.

[@darrenbeard44]

Problem is game devs don't know how to track installs... They haven't really changed much. They changed their TOS totally reliant on a non-existing tech. If anyone could track individual installs let alone differentiate between different types of installs, without tripping existing privacy laws worldwide, they would be selling that tech and getting rich. They threw a percentage 1% lower than Unreal to draw your attention elsewhere.

[@hanz_rx]

Godot is much better than I initially thought. I already shifted my new game I'm working on to the Godot engine.

[@andersmartensson8659]

Regarding Splash screen, I had the plus version just to remove it, but I'm quite fine with having to show it somehow, but I want my logo/promotion to be first.

[@swetzel227]

The Unity splash screen thing is so true though. I know people immediately set their expectations low the moment they see the unity splash screen pop up, and probably even now more than ever.

[@whiskeybarrelstudios]

Great video as always mate, and thank you so much for the shout-out! Godot , for me personally as a former Flash dev, just feels like that perfect halfway spot between Flash and Unity. Having said that, it's not for everyone. If you're halfway through a Unity project, definitely don't just abandon it all and start to port to another engine immediately. Wait for the dust to settle on the Unity outcome, and the best course of action will *probably* be to stay with what you're doing, and then reassess game engines when it is time for your next engine. (It doesn't hurt to dabble in a few different engines anyway, you could try remaking your game's title screen in another engine just to see how it 'feels'. As always keep up the legendary videos, great to see this channel go from strength to strength.

[@KamranWali]

Your points are spot on. To me it no longer matters what Unity does. I am already in the process of shifting to Godot and so far am loving the engine. I too was one of those Plus subs for Unity and in my case you are spot on as to why I would get this sub which is mainly to remove the Unity splash screen and seem more professional. Well now I will be donating that Plus sub money to Godot soon once I start my main project there. Also you are right about honesty. Unity should have come out and just say they were in trouble money-wise and almost all of us would have found some way to help Unity but instead they went with some of the chaotic and disgusting path. I also think the higher ups in Unity forgot that in EU there is GDPR and the way they would gather data from consumers would be illegal and eventually end up banning Unity. Awesome video as always.