Unity Plan Pricing and Packaging Updates

[ddavison]

I understand that people often jump to conclusions and that fear of what might happen often controls the narrative of events. The pricing that Unity announced for developers is not good for several reasons. It was poorly conceived even if it only applied to newer editions. It was horrendously bad because it also eroded trust in their company by trying to change the terms of the license developers have all been working with up to this point. The industry reaction was strongly opposed to these changes, and Unity immediately began walking it back. If they are smart, they will completely reverse course and provide language to ensure this doesn't occur again. I am waiting to see what that will look like.

Their quote on their website:

We hear you, and we’re sorry.

We’re updating the Runtime Fee, and we’ll be sharing a new FAQ outlining the details in the next few days. We appreciate your patience.

Source: https://unity.com/pricing-updates

It is very reminiscent of other recent events that impacted us.

We have years of development invested in Unity. Any change to a new platform would be costly. The new plan pricing that was posted would be bad but would not significantly change our business. The sky is not falling. There is, however, an entire industry of companies and creators depending upon Unity making the correct choice here.

If you know of anyone who is concerned about this issue, please have them engage with us on the forums or on Discord instead of jumping to conclusions. We will be monitoring the situation closely and reacting once the situation settles and we have concrete facts.

[ddavison]

I know of a few people who would stop using a program like FGU simply because they are attached to unity.

This is the part that makes no sense to me. Unity announced something that would harm developers who built their system on Unity. Customers are outraged on behalf of those developers. Why would customers further punish the developers by boycotting their work? That is like feeling bad for a store that just got robbed, so you swear to never buy anything at that store again.

[hackRPG]

... several of the less invested have already decided to run their games on other systems, and the rest of us are holding off on buying any additional books until everything is settled...

Interesting decision, not sure why you'd stop using one of the best VTTs out there because of something another company is doing regarding the platform, unless those less invested were looking to try something else. Also not sure what else gives you the mix of source content and VTT experience... everything else - Foundry, Demiplane, Alchemy, Owlbear, Roll20 all are strongly inclined in one direction, or the other.

[hackRPG]

We have years of development invested in Unity. Any change to a new platform would be costly.

Anything on the roadmap coming to give us a better interface / capabilities for reference materials and stories? It's the only part that really lets the experience down - the whole clunky right click to apply a simple effect like bold text (yes I know there are shortcut keys). I'm thinking more along the line of HTML formatting or markdown.

[Jiminimonka]

This has already impacted my group, several of the less invested have already decided to run their games on other systems, and the rest of us are holding off on buying any additional books until everything is settled. Mind you Paizo seemingly rewriting Pathfinder 2nd edition might be a bigger impact on us buying books, but the Unity thing has impacted our use of the program already. I am pretty heavily invested in FGU so I am going to be a hold out until something concrete happens, but it sucks people are finding alternatives already.

That is a knee jerk over reaction. It literally does not impact Fantasy Grounds.

[Zacchaeus]

Anything on the roadmap coming to give us a better interface / capabilities for reference materials and stories? It's the only part that really lets the experience down - the whole clunky right click to apply a simple effect like bold text (yes I know there are shortcut keys). I'm thinking more along the line of HTML formatting or markdown.

Not really anything to do with this thread but you can use html formatting now. See video forty six here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...-do-I-in-Unity

[Nylanfs]

I am not going to name anything but their are other programs that seems to attract pathfinder 2nd edition players more often.

I thought this part here should be addressed. Doug, & gang don't have any problem with people refering to other programs on the official forums as long as it's for valid comparisons or criticisms and not just promoting the other program. They have a firm policy that competition improves things, and ignoring the other programs doesn't do that.

[anstett]

I will say that a couple of my players expressed concern about these changes. They were more worried because they knew that I had spent a lot of time and effort to move our campaign from KloOge to Fantasy Grounds.

They all understood that it would not change their side of the equation (cost) but it might effect the speed of development. "Insane level of customer service with all these updates" was a phrase bandied about over the last few months.

[SilentRuin]

I plan to play on. Its a developer platform issue to resolve with Unity. Honestly, to solve issues like this you just follow the money logic and figure how it will play out.

1) Unity will be damaged now and suffer a loss of new customers and some old that do not have the resources to move off it. This due to retroactive pricing announcement - even if it goes away - nobody would trust them again.
2) Unity will backtrack to a point where this is no longer an install based fee as that is untrackable in any realistic sense. Users (dev houses) of their platform turn off the recording aspects in Unity in most cases so it would never be "on". Requiring them to track this for Unity is completely unrealistic. Determining a valid install for the fee is not possible in any fair way.
3) Unity will lose developers (has already) and find it hard to replace high quality ones as they will have better options.
4) They will probably stick with their ridiculous new license fees where they force low tier ones to move into higher paying ones regardless of any backtracking on install fees. Refer to 1).

This is only my opinion, based on how I follow the money trail and how they will minimize the damage from this. But no matter what they do, the damage has been done.

Personally the big corps will insure this happens if nobody else does (Sony, Amazon, etc.) who are impacted directly by this "install fee". They should have and probably will backtrack to some revenue fee like some other engines do.

In the end, this will likely result in a change of leadership in unity at various level.

[Sulimo]

Unity has announced major changes to their fee structure due to the 'confusion and angst' caused by the previous announcement.

In a new blog post, Unity now says that projects made on current and earlier versions of Unity will not be subject to the new runtime fee structure. Only projects that upgrade to a new "Long Term Support" (LTS) version of Unity starting in 2024 and beyond will have to pay the charges, the company says.

...

In addition, Unity now says the new runtime fees will only be incurred for projects that have reached $1 million in revenue in the last 12 months and 1 million "initial engagements" in their lifetime. Fees will also be capped at 2.5 percent of revenue, preventing situations where projects with huge install numbers but small amounts of revenue per install could theoretically go bankrupt via the accumulation of small fees.


...
Both "engagement" and project revenue numbers will be self-reported monthly "from data you already have available," Unity says, a move that should help allay some privacy concerns over Unity's previous vaguely reported methods of tracking installs.

While this is definitely a step in the right direction, I still think Unity needs to clarify and come clean about their previous announcement where they implied they could directly track installs, which rightly caused an uproar over privacy and vulnerabilities concerns.

There is still the trust they have to rebuild, it's not going to be repaired overnight.