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Are you OK with Purchasing WebGL Add-On?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by jonkuze, Mar 20, 2014.

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Are you OK with Purchasing WebGL Add-On?

  1. YES, Sure No Problem I'll Pay Extra for WebGL

    12.8%
  2. NO, WebGL Should be Free Just like Unity Web Player

    87.2%
  1. Ocid

    Ocid

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    Good news :)
     
  2. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    That's awesome news, and I'm going to go as far as to say it's really generous of you. I know that "web deployment" has been standard since forever, but despite that I don't see this as the same thing, so I do feel that you're bending over backwards to help out your users here. A giant thumbs up!
     
  3. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    Other than the part about your pricing (which is flat out not true), WebGL being free is a plus...
     
  4. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    What's "flat out not true" about it? While I'm quite aware that opinions on the matter vary wildly, it rings true with my personal thoughts and makes perfect sense from a studio-/business-oriented stand point.
     
  5. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    The point about a majority of user said their pricing model was fine. I read all the pages about it, and a majority did not say it was ok.
    Take this thought:
    If U5 is listed to have said features, but said features are not in v5.0, but 5.1, or 5.2, or 5.x, then I am not getting even 2 years out of the cycle... WebGL is probably going to be 5.1+, other features have said not in version 5.0, That means I am getting 12-16 months of "close" to feature complete. That is not a good value, that is piss poor.
    Pretty much 90+% said the addons being $1500 was ridiculous at the very least.
     
  6. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    By "all the pages" do you mean all of the discussion here on the forum? Unity were most likely communicating extensively with people outside of the forum. The people who hang out here are only a tiny proportion of the overall user base.
     
  7. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    O ok, Guess we are chop soup then. Glad they ask their corporate buyers what they thought.
    /end sarcasm
     
  8. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Are you suggesting they shouldn't? Chances are that if there's no corporate buyers then there's no Unity. Then it doesn't matter what business model they use. ;)

    Besides, anyone who is making money is one of those "corporate buyers". Sounds like Tall Poppy Syndrome to me.
     
  9. superpig

    superpig

    Drink more water! Unity Technologies

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    As I said in the blog comments - and as Brett confirmed - the forum is actually a small minority of Unity's user base.

    And it's just plain idiotic to claim that Unity would lie about the majority of users being OK with the pricing. They've got nothing to gain by doing so and quite a lot to lose. If the majority of customers aren't OK with the pricing then Unity would make more money by changing the pricing - and they're not doing that, so what does that tell you?
     
  10. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    I can't answer that question, but companies can be arrogant about their product..
    Where did all this feedback come from? I am a buyer of Pro, just like all the others, and not on that email chain asking.. If its hidden, where all this feedback came from, then all that;s left to assume, is it either doesn't exist, or they selectively picked some to answer. (which could be selective in that the answer they want).. O well, no sense arguing about now, is there.
     
  11. superpig

    superpig

    Drink more water! Unity Technologies

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    I think you're projecting :p

    If they're being arrogant about their product then they'll make a lot less money than they could, shrug. It's in their interests to do accurate market research, which is why I think they probably have done. At the very least, if they haven't, it isn't deliberate.
     
    angrypenguin likes this.
  12. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    I don't know for sure, but I would guess it's taken from a sample of users, which is a pretty common (and accepted) way to do research and can be far more effective than asking everyone. In the past I've been asked to participate in surveys etc, which I assume means that I was selected as part of the sample at the time.

    Plus, they've got their evangelists, and probably a bunch of sales partners, travelling around and talking to people face to face in studios around the world. They'd get loads of first-hand feedback from that. In fact, I think that alone would get input from a greater number of users/decision makers than are present on the forums. They'd be in personal contact with thousands that way, where the forums are what... a few hundred at best?
     
  13. MD_Reptile

    MD_Reptile

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    I am happy to hear the good news about the pricing of webgl, but also I hope that in the decision of how to separate the free webgl from the pro webgl, that you PLEASE for us free users include at least an option of splash screens (im assuming your going that route) in UT's favor, like say white/gray/black logo on white/gray/black background, or alternative with unity logo progress bar or unity logo and a spinning "loading" circle (perhaps customization of aspects of the splash screen like to fade from/to a white/black version of it to transition into a developer splash well, or even scroll in from the side... so on...). This would eliminate small annoyances of transitioning from the unity logo (android anyway) which has a black screen that will abruptly go away, with maybe a big logo... maybe a small logo... depending on device size... I need it to fade out! And I can't really fake it if I'm not sure which size unity logo i'm gonna end up with! If there was consistent results I could just create my own unity loading screen texture, display it when the real one cuts off, then fade from that in a scene... you know?

    Anyway yeah thats my two cents, awesome work UT!
     
    angrypenguin likes this.
  14. Deleted User

    Deleted User

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    Well it depends what there asking, if they said is Unity the right price for your project then I'd say pricing is fine. If they said do you think Unity is expensive? Then I'd say yes (for mobile), but I don't do mobile so I think Unity's cheap.

    Also Unity apparently have large markets with AAA and indie developers for PC / Console in places like Japan.

    Great news on the WebGL front though.
     
  15. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Just wanted to chime in to agree with this, it's definitely an area that needs some work. If the device-side splash can't be consistent then can we just drop it in favour of a Unity-controlled enforced splash on the app side? Or can we be given some cross-platform method to access what that frame looks like so we can transition it manually?

    First impressions are super important, and when you're trying to provide a "smooth" experience the Android startup sequence somewhat necessitates a bunny beginning.
     
  16. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

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  17. jonas-echterhoff

    jonas-echterhoff

    Unity Technologies

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    As others have commented, the forum is only a sub-set of our user base. And it is probably fair to assume that those people unhappy with the current situation are more likely to raise their voices on the forum then those who are happy, so the forum "vibes" are probably also not fully representative of the opinions of the forum users.

    While it is true that "corporate buyers" tend to be the least upset with our current pricing model (because it turns out to be quite cheap, once you are making good money), there are also huge demographics of Unity users outside of the forums, who don't fall into that category. Currently, 45% of Unity editor sessions are in Asia (where there are a lot of users who don't speak english, and thus are very underrepresented in these forums) - compared to 18% in North America and 26% in Europe.

    Unity currently has almost 3 million registered developers (or 630k monthly active), so if we survey users, it is natural to take a representative subset of those - so if you personally have not been asked, that does not mean that we have not analyzed this in depth.

    All that does not protect us from becoming arrogant about our product, btw, that is a real risk. So, we do appreciate all the feedback we get here -- and as this thread and the decision on WebGL shows, we do listen - I just wanted to point out that it is not fair to claim we are lying about user opinions, when all you see is a limited subset of those.
     
  18. Wild-Factor

    Wild-Factor

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    "Representative" on which criteria...
    We are on the internet era... you can ask hundred of thousand people opinion for cheap.
    No need to select people, unless you want control and of course have bias opinions...

    Even if your subset is right, your community evolve, and if you want it to be representative, you need to make a survey to know which kind of people you need in your subset, and exclude old people or include new one.
    A survey is efficient, by only asking a subset of user, if you randomly select user for this subset... If not (what Unity do), your survey will give you bad result. (most survey using a subset of user have a 3 points error).
    That's a basic rules :)
     
    VicToMeyeZR likes this.
  19. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Okay, I'll play along.

    You say that a lot of your editor sessions are in Asia. I imagine that a massive portion of those uses come from China and India. Both of these countries are rising stars in game development, especially mobile! But let's take a closer look at that.

    Right now in China, the average yearly wage is ¥51474 CNY, which translates to about $8367.99 USD. Certainly nothing to sneeze at, true, but it's also not the highest number in the world. In fact, a $1500 license ends up being a pretty huge problem, since that's around 18% of their annual income. That's not exactly a drop in the bucket and this overwhelmingly favours large companies already in the region.

    With India, the situation gets even worse. The purchasing power of the people in the richest areas of India is actually up to $4000 less than the purchasing power of the global average. Again, this is something that entirely favours large companies in the region. However, if you read these forums and if you go even further to read the UE4 forums, you'll start noticing that there are people who fall outside the higher income ranges than are being considered here.

    This is very, very "F*** you, got mine."
     
    Ryiah likes this.
  20. kryptopath2

    kryptopath2

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    AWESOME!! :)
     
  21. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    That statement was an opinion, not labeled as fact. Obviously I don't have ALL the data, but only what I do have, says its false. Like the data you have says it isn't. I am sure we all appreciate the $0 price tag on WebGL, which clearly shows that you are, at least in part, listening.
     
  22. StarManta

    StarManta

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    You should probably learn a little about statistics and/or psychology; in this case, learn about the term "self selection". If Unity put out a survey for everyone to answer, 30% of people would answer it, and those 30% would be strongly biased in favor of people who were dissatisfied with the current situation, and believe their voice is not being heard. This would produce a bias against the 70% of people that did not answer the survey.

    By hiring a statistician to do a controlled survey, they can actually reduce the amount of bias. This isn't politics - this is business. UT has zero interest in producing a biased survey sample, especially since they aren't publicizing these survey results - they're going to choose the methodology that will give them the most accurate information on which to base their decisions. Even if their decision ignores the majority opinion, they're still going to want to have real information on what that majority opinion is.

    (The self-selection bias, by the way, is going to be exactly the same bias they already see on the forums. Commissioning another survey with the exact same selection bias would be doubly worthless.)
     
  23. Ascensi

    Ascensi

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    THANK YOU UNITY!! - not knowing what exactly would work for WebGL and because it is in early development was a concern for me but because you're making it free allows us to develop and experiment with it. I believe WebGL could beome a universal #1 format eventually mixing with cloud services, mobile devices etc.
     
  24. HonoraryBob

    HonoraryBob

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  25. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    This means nothing useful. You're talking about software developers, but the number you're using is what... a national average in a country where the economy is largely based on rapid industrialization via sheer volume of cheap manual labour? What's the average wage of people working on commercial games in those places? It could be a very different figure.

    Plus, you're ignoring the benefits of the availability of tools for the large companies who are employing people. I think it's probably far better that people are employed at a large company that can afford to get Unity licenses than not being employed, for instance. I've no idea if that would be the case, but a few random stats without context aren't particularly useful (and may suffer confirmation bias).

    Edit: And lets not forget the free license. If people can't afford Pro then they may well fit the criteria for a free license, even as an organisation. And something tells me that people in that situation aren't going to lament the lack of render textures - they're just going to crank out whatever they can to try and get themselves an income.
     
    elmar1028 and Ryiah like this.