Unity caves in a "liitle" to pressure. Writes open letter.

[Gamernyc78]

An open letter to our community

An open letter from Marc Whitten to the Unity community in September 2023.

blog.unity.com

We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version.

For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month. Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.

We want to continue to build the best engine for creators. We truly love this industry and you are the reason why.

I’d like to invite you to join me for a live fireside chat hosted by Jason Weimann today at 4:00 pm ET/1:00 pm PT, where I will do my best to answer your questions. In the meantime, here are some more details.*

Thank you for caring as deeply as you do, and thank you for giving us hard feedback.

Marc Whitten

 

[TubzGaming]

We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version.

So it stays the same but if you need to change/update in the future you pay the new fees.
Not really a rollback on what they said just a stop-gap, the damage has already been done the trust has gone and a lot of dev teams have been working on switching to other engines.

 

[Gamernyc78]

So it stays the same but if you need to change/update in the future you pay the new fees.
Not really a rollback on what they said just a stop-gap, the damage has already been done the trust has gone and a lot of dev teams have been working on switching to other engines.

I agree, it's just them trying to do damage control but still being greedy.

 

[Zzero]

4 percent is a ridiculously high rate. I hope they get sued in any jurisdictions where the law is violated and get fucked into the dirt.

Edit: Lol, they lowered it again. Still too high, tbh even one cent would be a line in the sand for me.

 

[JAHGamer]

4 percent is a ridiculously high rate. I hope they get sued in any jurisdictions where the law is violated and get fucked into the dirt.

Edit: Lol, they lowered it again. Still too high, tbh even one cent would be a line in the sand for me.

Doesn’t Epic charge 5% for Unreal Engine? And Sony, Valve, Xbox, and Nintendo all charge 30%. What’s so bad about a flat 4% fee? Not defending them I’m just curious. Devs should be up in arms against the 30% fee and not 4%, which is now 2.5%

 

[KiryuRealty]

I get a kick out of the line about wanting to continue to make the best game engine. When the hell did they start?

 

[Old Gamer]

#FuckUnity

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

The first version was a big ask, it's obvious that they were gonna come back telling everyone they are listening the community.

 

[Dr Bass]

Doesn’t Epic charge 5% for Unreal Engine? And Sony, Valve, Xbox, and Nintendo all charge 30%. What’s so bad about a flat 4% fee? Not defending them I’m just curious. Devs should be up in arms against the 30% fee and not 4%, which is now 2.5%

Epic is 5% after the first million in revenue I believe. Could be wrong on the details.

People are upset because of the way Unity handled all this, basically saying you are going to pay us per install, no matter the source (including piracy and demos). Unity used to have much more clear and simpler costs associated with it. Pay a reasonable fee, you get to use it. It doesn't matter if they backpedal at this point, because the trust is broken. Users know that the company might try to screw them again in the future at the drop of a hat.

In comparison to Unreal, that engine used to cost a million+ to license it. And you couldn't access it unless you were a studio that could pay the costs. So making it available to all for a pretty small percentage, and free to build with, is a big improvement. Unity made things much worse for developers, hence why people are mad at Unity and not Unreal.

In terms of the store percentage, that is neither here nor there in regards to Unity. Those are storefronts. Selling in any store is going to require you pay that store a fee. You can also release on PC and sell directly if you truly wanted to and pay 0% to someone else, aside from the government. Of course people might not want to do that but that trade off exists.

 

[JAHGamer]

Epic is 5% after the first million in revenue I believe. Could be wrong on the details.

People are upset because of the way Unity handled all this, basically saying you are going to pay us per install, no matter the source (including piracy and demos). Unity used to have much more clear and simpler costs associated with it. Pay a reasonable fee, you get to use it. It doesn't matter if they backpedal at this point, because the trust is broken. Users know that the company might try to screw them again in the future at the drop of a hat.

In comparison to Unreal, that engine used to cost a million+ to license it. And you couldn't access it unless you were a studio that could pay the costs. So making it available to all for a pretty small percentage, and free to build with, is a big improvement. Unity made things much worse for developers, hence why people are mad at Unity and not Unreal.

In terms of the store percentage, that is neither here nor there in regards to Unity. Those are storefronts. Selling in any store is going to require you pay that store a fee. You can also release on PC and sell directly if you truly wanted to and pay 0% to someone else, aside from the government. Of course people might not want to do that but that trade off exists.

Oh ok thanks for the explanation, Unity should do something similar to UE then.

 

[arvfab]

At least devs with games released and releasing shortly won't have to pull their games from stores/stop the release.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

Oh ok thanks for the explanation, Unity should do something similar to UE then.

This is like saying that some paint program that has been the cheap option for years will start charging as much as Photoshop.

That will not fly, this is not who their audience is.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

At least devs with games released and releasing shortly won't have to pull their games from stores/stop the release.

If I had a game in the oven I would to all I can to migrate to a different platform (unfortunately this is not always possible because finances are not unlimited).

 

[JAHGamer]

This is like saying that some paint program that has been the cheap option for years will start charging as much as Photoshop.

That will not fly, this is not who their audience is.

Not really, some of the biggest games in the world are made on Unity. Genshin Impact brings in more money than CoD annually and runs on Unity. Fall Guys, Among Us, Hearthstone, etc, I think it’s just as valuable as UE5

 

[Yurinka]

Epic is 5% after the first million in revenue I believe. Could be wrong on the details.

Yes, for UE you only pay 0% for the first million and then 5% for the rest. Meaning, if you game makes $1.000.001 you only pay them $0.05.

In the case of Unity you'll have to pay at 1877€/seat yearly for Unity Pro and on top of that the install fee they added now.

They removed the Unity Plus license, and you'll only able to get the Unity Personal (free license) if your games made less than $100K in the last 12 months.

Doesn’t Epic charge 5% for Unreal Engine? And Sony, Valve, Xbox, and Nintendo all charge 30%. What’s so bad about a flat 4% fee? Not defending them I’m just curious. Devs should be up in arms against the 30% fee and not 4%, which is now 2.5%

There's also the taxes and the publisher fee. Some publishers charge 50% of what it's left after all these fees, and that's after the publisher recoups all their costs getting 100% of the remaining revenue.

The most generous relatively common deals is 70% dev / 30% publisher with no recoup but this is often for cases where the publisher doesn't fund the project, doesn't do porting/localization/marketing/PR/physical versions. So basically they charge 30% for uploading the game to the digital store.

 

[Zzero]

Doesn’t Epic charge 5% for Unreal Engine? And Sony, Valve, Xbox, and Nintendo all charge 30%. What’s so bad about a flat 4% fee? Not defending them I’m just curious. Devs should be up in arms against the 30% fee and not 4%, which is now 2.5%

Nintendo, Sony and MS don't liscense engines. Storefront cuts make sense, just as physical storefront sales do. I don't know what Epic charges.

 

[JAHGamer]

Nintendo, Sony and MS don't liscense engines. Storefront cuts make sense, just as physical storefront sales do. I don't know what Epic charges.

I know, my point was they charge 30% for doing nothing, so paying 2.5% for use of a valuable product isn't so bad in comparison.

 

[AllBizness]

Doesn’t Epic charge 5% for Unreal Engine? And Sony, Valve, Xbox, and Nintendo all charge 30%. What’s so bad about a flat 4% fee? Not defending them I’m just curious. Devs should be up in arms against the 30% fee and not 4%, which is now 2.5%

Imagine giving up 30% of every sale to the digital store owner but also another 4% on top of that to the engine owner.

 

[JAHGamer]

Imagine giving up 30% of every sale to the digital store owner but also another 4% on top of that to the engine owner.

That’s why I said they should be revolting against the store owners. 30% is egregious ik it’s industry standard but to me that’s more obscene than 4%

 

[Gamernyc78]

That’s why I said they should be revolting against the store owners. 30% is egregious ik it’s industry standard but to me that’s more obscene than 4%

Yeah tht 30% is crazy.