Unity is a game engine that is frequently used by mobile app developers and indie gamedevs. It’s lightweight and easier to learn than its main competitor, the Unreal Engine.
Sometime within the last year, Unity adjusted their terms of service. It used to state that you were only governed by the TOS for the version of the Unity Editor you used. If you disagreed with a new TOS, you could use the older terms as long as you didn’t update the Unity Editor. This clause was silently removed a while ago, without replacement. Nobody noticed.
This week, Unity announced they are changing how they charge for the use of their engine. It used to be you had to subscribe to Unity’s developer accounts monthly if you were selling your games - this is how Unity made money. Unity has changed it so that you still have to do this, but they are getting rid of the cheapest plan (now the cheapest plan is $250/month) and Unity is now charging $0.20 every time your game gets installed. This is applied retroactively, to every game that has ever been made in Unity.
So if someone buys your game, installs it, then reformats their hard drive and installs your game a second time. You now need to pay Unity $0.40.
If you are selling your game for $1, then you effectively pay $0.30 in platform fees and $0.40 to Unity, meaning you only made $0.30 yourself. There were open questions about how this would work with GamePass, Humble Bundle, etc. - Unity has said they’ll just charge Microsoft (or whoever is the distributor) instead, without giving any details as to how this works.
This also means if you sold your game in 2012, you are now paying Unity $0.20 any time someone decides to reinstall your old game - even though at the time you were bound by a different EULA, which Unity now says is invalid and they can retroactively change the terms of.
People are saying this isn’t legal, but indie devs don’t have the money to throw at lawyers. Bigger corpo places do, but they also likely have a special contract.
People are understandably upset by this, as they are now going to be on the hook for money they don’t necessarily have. This is a threat to their livelihoods and many games are just going to remove their games from sale rather than risk losing being on the hook for a bunch of money. This means you won’t be able to buy a lot of indie games in the future.
Unity be trying to uber monetize people who use their engine and make their first or second game into a financial success. It provides a lot of risks and fewer benefits now for independent devs. At a time when Unity already has a bad reputation, and there are incredible alternatives in Godot, Unreal, and many others. Also some Finance guy from EA is behind this change at Unity.
Can someone explain why Unity is plastered all over my feed today? What’s going on???
Unity is a game engine that is frequently used by mobile app developers and indie gamedevs. It’s lightweight and easier to learn than its main competitor, the Unreal Engine.
Sometime within the last year, Unity adjusted their terms of service. It used to state that you were only governed by the TOS for the version of the Unity Editor you used. If you disagreed with a new TOS, you could use the older terms as long as you didn’t update the Unity Editor. This clause was silently removed a while ago, without replacement. Nobody noticed.
This week, Unity announced they are changing how they charge for the use of their engine. It used to be you had to subscribe to Unity’s developer accounts monthly if you were selling your games - this is how Unity made money. Unity has changed it so that you still have to do this, but they are getting rid of the cheapest plan (now the cheapest plan is $250/month) and Unity is now charging $0.20 every time your game gets installed. This is applied retroactively, to every game that has ever been made in Unity.
So if someone buys your game, installs it, then reformats their hard drive and installs your game a second time. You now need to pay Unity $0.40.
If you are selling your game for $1, then you effectively pay $0.30 in platform fees and $0.40 to Unity, meaning you only made $0.30 yourself. There were open questions about how this would work with GamePass, Humble Bundle, etc. - Unity has said they’ll just charge Microsoft (or whoever is the distributor) instead, without giving any details as to how this works.
This also means if you sold your game in 2012, you are now paying Unity $0.20 any time someone decides to reinstall your old game - even though at the time you were bound by a different EULA, which Unity now says is invalid and they can retroactively change the terms of.
People are saying this isn’t legal, but indie devs don’t have the money to throw at lawyers. Bigger corpo places do, but they also likely have a special contract.
People are understandably upset by this, as they are now going to be on the hook for money they don’t necessarily have. This is a threat to their livelihoods and many games are just going to remove their games from sale rather than risk losing being on the hook for a bunch of money. This means you won’t be able to buy a lot of indie games in the future.
Thank you for the thorough response.
Unity be trying to uber monetize people who use their engine and make their first or second game into a financial success. It provides a lot of risks and fewer benefits now for independent devs. At a time when Unity already has a bad reputation, and there are incredible alternatives in Godot, Unreal, and many others. Also some Finance guy from EA is behind this change at Unity.
nothing dw about it 😘
Ok, thx 😘