Don't pay till you make your first 100,000 ?

you use to be able to get Unity 3D pro and publish a game and not have to pay for it till you made your first 100,000. What is going on with this? Is it still in play?

Eagle~

 

No, that was never the case. Buying Unity Pro is a requirement if you made over $100,000 the previous fiscal year. If you made less, you don't have to buy Unity Pro, but you can if you want. No matter what, if you want to use Unity Pro at all, you must buy it, regardless of how much you made.

--Eric

 

so I have to buy Unity Pro before I can develop with it, thanks for your input.

Eagle~

 

You can develop with Unity Pro under trial licence, if you are able to develop you game in 30 days. Or you can develop most of game with free and then switch to Pro trial build essential parts that require pro licence, and then when your game is finished you purchase Pro licence. This gives you some time to gather money for Pro for example.

 

You can develop to your heart's content with trial, and you still own the code, but you can't release anything with it during the trial. Have to $$$

 

Thanks Janpec and Hippocoder,
I plan to spend 3000 usd for what I need for this project Vickie Eagle and I are doing, it was a friend of ours (also a developer) that told me I should try Unity 3D, but I think it has been a very long time ago that he used it (laughs) He told me about the licensing thing where you don't pay till you make over 100,000 (which gives you about 3 months after the release) either way it really doesn't matter to me. I will use the free version till I learn all the in's and out's of the engine and see how hard its going to be to get Vickie's models to go into the game and how they react with other elements. I thought about using ShiVa but it will not run natively on a Mac and well, I'm a Mac guy.
Anyway, thanks for your help!

Eagle~

 

Your friend has merely confused the Pro and Free versions. Or you misunderstood him. The 100,000 revenue limitation applies to the free version of Unity.

 

So...the free version can also be used for comercial purposes? (earning money) I thought the indie version was strictly non-comercial/educational use only.

 

The free license has no limitations. Do whatever you want with it.

--Eric

 

Licensing terms can change over time guys for the latest terms, look at the product page.

 

They can, but they haven't. The free license has never had any commercial restrictions. Would be curious as to where that misconception comes from; I've seen it several times. Maybe people just figure since it's free, there's got to be some kind of catch?

--Eric

 

And of course, the indie version didn't when it was paid, either.

 

haha leadwerks is dying a slow pitiful death

 

Hi Blueradius,
Leadwerks has a pretty good engine actually, Josh is a really good programmer but the work flow is a bit cumbersome right now but I think it will come of age very soon.
Just FYI,

Eagle~

 

Why is that funny though? I don't get it.

 

it's funny because of the "Cosmic Debris Theory",

Eagle~

 

WOAH! Vicky Eagle?!!

Man, I can't believe you are active again!
I remember I started using trueSpace and saw your MMO there years ago! Then Realm Crafter, and weirdly enough... when I sign up for Leadwerk I saw you there too! You are everywhere! Then trueSpace got bought by Microsoft and went down.....then you disappeared....

Glad to see you are back!

To answer your question - Unity "Free" (Now just called "Unity") is completely free and you are free to develop commercial or non-commercial project, with only this restriction:

2) LICENSING RESTRICTIONS:

(b) Unity (free version) may not be licensed and used by companies, educational institution or incorporated entities that had a turnover in excess of US$100,000 in their last fiscal year.

(d) A company, educational institution, incorporated entity, or individual may not license both Unity Pro and Unity at the same time.

http://unity3d.com/unity/unity-end-user-license-3.x


Also there are difference in the features you get between Pro and Free :

http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses



So anyway, how are you Vicky? Where have you been?! (Internet stalker mode ON! )

 

Well, Josh seems to have expanded Leadwerks quite a bit since its inception. I started with Leadwerks in v1.x just before they turn v2.0, and I remember there was a huge riot and walkout over Josh switching off SM2.x support (or was that SM 1.0?) in favor of SM3.0 - I just remember there was a lot ATI and older generation GFX card users who angry that they were affected. But I think Josh made the right decision to dump SM2 support and his engine really made leaps and bounds since. And he has since partner with pureLIGHT and incorported it into Leadwerk SDK, which parallel Unity's Beast lighting feature at the same time frame.

Josh also started to hire some people to expand his business (not 1 man shop anymore!), which is great. The problem with Leadwerk is that its not as artist friendly as Unity - its purely gear towards programmers (much like C4 Engine is) - and you REALLY need to know how to code to be able to use it (even though he is starting to incorporate GUI interface to the SDK).

It was quite a good deal few years ago when nobody offer free version of their SDK and Leadwerk was selling for only $100 for commercial version (now $150 I think). But now since UDK and Unity offering free version - I think Josh/Leadwerk is really feeling the pressure being squeeze out of the market both in term of feature list and price offered to the end user by UDK and Unity.

 

2) LICENSING RESTRICTIONS:

(b) Unity (free version) may not be licensed and used by companies, educational institution or incorporated entities that had a turnover in excess of US$100,000 in their last fiscal year.

Unity would need to step in and say exactly what the license Restriction is 2) (b),

But in my understanding of the license clause, That a individual can make in excess of $100,000 that is not "incorporated enitity in anyway".

http://www.mega.nu/section_The_Incorporated_Entity.html
Incorporated entities are not as such entitled to the rights of individuals, and cannot be considered to be individuals or as though individuals in law.

In my layman interpretation a group of people join together "to make a game", regardless if it was profit non-profit then you are recognized as incorporated entity.

 

I don't see anything ambiguous. A business can be a company that is a single individual trading.
You have to be one of those types to be paying the Tax on the 100k you earned, or you'll have The Man looking for you!

 

I don't think I understand... is that business model Eagle's asking about at least realistic? Who gives a software for free, and only charge a small fee after the user accumulated 100 grands? Lol, I mean in any case they could charge a 20% after 100k, but not 1.5k.

 

another 3DRAD user migrating to Unity, welcome aboard!

 

So what is the actual license for the free version. Could I still sell games that I make ?

 

You can still sell games that you develop with Unity Free. If you make $100,000 in a single fiscal year you then have to buy Unity Pro.

 

First, I'm not Vickie, second; I have never used 3DRad, I know about it and Vickie likes to play with it but thats as far as it goes for me. The last engine I was using was called Lithtech. Lastly, it not uncommon for middle-ware engines like ShiVa or Unity to make deals with their developers. In fact it happens all the time but usually they choose people that have some kind of reputation so they can use that for their own gain, no one rides for free.

Its good to meet you all, my name is Mike

Eagle~

 

Ah I see. Thanks

 

Nothing to worry about, I doubt I'll ever reach 100k with unity free.. heck I don't think I'll make any money at all unless I actually finish at least a single game!

 

If you made 100k you would be utterely stupid not to upgrade to pro. Hell if you made 2k, you would be utterely stupid not to upgrade to pro.

 

Hi Mike, put Vicky on !
I am kidding I am kidding......

Lithtech? Do you work for Monolith? Or do you mean you did modding using Lithtech engine??

 

I had the littech engine licensed for commercial use once too (binary release license, just like Unity and UDK are). Was made possible with realarcade, from real networks (realplayer developers).
we are talking 2001 or was it 1999 or 2000 ..... anyway, long time ago..

maybe Mike ment that same license?

 

ok i know this is old but this is still something i want to verify...if you make a game with unity free can you upgrade that same game to pro? i would like to buy pro the second i make $1000

 

Holy crap, what a resurrection...

Yes, you can upgrade from Unity Free to Unity Pro at any time in your development cycle.

*Lays thread back down to its eternal rest*

 

Yes.