Unity Engine Install Fee Price Hike

[pware]

From time-to-time posters in these forums have proposed that N3V should switch away from its own game engine and use one of several licensed systems in use in the gaming world. One such suggestion that I can recall was to switch to the Unity Engine.

Now Unity Technologies, the company behind the Unity Engine, has announced a new pricing policy that has many game developers "up in arms". In brief, they are introducing from 1 Jan 2024 a pricing system based on the number of installs for games developed using their engine. Each time a Unity based game is installed by a user it downloads and installs the Runtime code from Unity Technologies, so it is easy for the company to keep track of this data.

In a nutshell, the basic pricing is:-

• Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs.
• Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

The games that meet these criteria will be charged from $US0.0125 to $US0.20 per install, depending on their licensed system and downloads.

The details are at https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates
and some reactions (here in Oz) are at https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-09-16/unity-pricing-video-game-developers-confused-furious-fees/102855534

 

[hiawathamr]

I've heard of this glad someone here shared it here on the forums.
I was working on a project that I feel was very close at being finished but now thanks to this, this might delay it.
I wasn't going to be making any money off of my project since its Trainz related but with the tracked number of installs... might post a problem. I use the free license version if anyone wants to know.

Cheers

 

[JCitron]

I wonder how this is going to affect Speed Trees because Unity Technologies bought IDV a couple of years ago. From what I heard, the company is bleeding cash like crazy, thus the reason for the price hikes and charging customers, yet at the same time management is wolfing down the revenue with huge bonuses after laying off employees. Nice company.

 

[wreeder]

I've heard of this glad someone here shared it here on the forums.
I was working on a project that I feel was very close at being finished but now thanks to this, this might delay it.
I wasn't going to be making any money off of my project since its Trainz related but with the tracked number of installs... might post a problem. I use the free license version if anyone wants to know.

Cheers

It won't effect you until you reach the point of making $200,000 USD over the last 12 months. and having over 200,000 lifetime installs. Any Trainz add-on that reaches those levels would be huge.

 

[wreeder]

I wonder how this is going to affect Speed Trees because Unity Technologies bought IDV a couple of years ago. From what I heard, the company is bleeding cash like crazy, thus the reason for the price hikes and charging customers, yet at the same time management is wolfing down the revenue with huge bonuses after laying off employees. Nice company.

Typical behavior of a company that took venture capital money to grow enough to go public and then the vultures want a higher return on investment. My concern is not for the game developers as they do have the option of switching game engines. The people that are going to get hurt are the little creators that make content and sell it through the Unity store. As developers leave, their sales will dry up.

 

[JCitron]

Typical behavior of a company that took venture capital money to grow enough to go public and then the vultures want a higher return on investment. My concern is not for the game developers as they do have the option of switching game engines. The people that are going to get hurt are the little creators that make content and sell it through the Unity store. As developers leave, their sales will dry up.

That sure is typical behavior. Heck, I saw that at Polaroid when the VCs got on the board after the Disney attempted buyout. CEO et al getting humongous salaries plus bonuses while the company was falling apart. My division, one of the profitable ones at the time, was sold off and outlasted Polaroid by nearly a decade or until their customer-base went out of business due to the great recession in 2009.

Sadly, as you said the small developers will feel the brunt of the others leaving and eventually, the VC vultures will tire of the loss of money coming back and liquidate the shell when the expected profits drop by 0.02 % below analyst's predictions. Once that cycle starts, the end comes shortly afterwards as big layoffs will occur to keep the bonuses for management.

 

[boleyd]

I would say so-what. An end-customer can only look at the retail price and make a decision. But, end customers do not move in concert so it can take a long time for sales to get to a point of concern. However, as noted, when that occurs the owners and investors quickly move to siphon off as much as they can through pricing, layoffs and outright illegal actions. At Westinghouse they "invested in golf carts and a watch company". Both were dead -ends designed to take the Corporation's cash and put it in their pockets. Morals and ethics are not a popular component of the human race.

 

[JCitron]

Unity Corp. has had a change of heart and will be implementing the fee changes in a more logical way. I suppose the must've gotten scared due to developers saying they would up and leave and go elsewhere. The power of the pocketbook rules again.

 

[wreeder]

Just to add to the theme of this thread. Epic Games has announced the layoffs of 16% of their work force worldwide. Their two big products are the FortNite Editor and UnReal game engine. Supposedly, the layoffs do not effect those products but mostly non-related companies that they bought with venture capital money. Is anyone surprised? Kinda of looks N3V was pretty smart for developing their own game engine and not depending on someone else's engine.

 

[Fierogt87]

I've heard of this glad someone here shared it here on the forums.
I was working on a project that I feel was very close at being finished but now thanks to this, this might delay it.
I wasn't going to be making any money off of my project since its Trainz related but with the tracked number of installs... might post a problem. I use the free license version if anyone wants to know.

Cheers

I'm pretty sure these fees are for games using the unity engine, not for modellers who use the unity editor to make things. If N3V were to switch the software to a good 3D engine, Unity would be my last choice anyway. Unreal 5 at the very least would be better, and Source would be best, IMO

 

[wreeder]

A follow up to my last post. Epic Games has mentioned at a developers meeting that they are changing their pricing for users outside the game developer area. Again, this does not effect game developers. Starting with the next major update in 2024, commercial users using Unreal Engine for visualization or cinematic development will be subject to per seat pricing to use the engine. This is users like architects, property developers and film or television production companies. Basically, anyone using the game engine to produce animations or still images that they use to make money. If you aren't making money, the engine is still free to use. Make sense to me as this is an exploding market right now that they are not making money from so the change is not a big deal.

 

[PhilChorusch01]

Yeah, I wouldn't change a thing! Keep the current game engine. DTG used Unreal Engine for later versions of TS20xx/TS Classic including for Train Sim World 1/2/3 and 4. These games has nothing but problems of continuous crashing and out of memory issues, lets not have these same issues in Trainz..