Should Unity stop it's Free version and just go with subscription based pro?

There are other posts about Unity moving to a subscription based payment model, but what if to do so Unity had to stop giving away the free version.

Would you be willing to pay monthly for a pro version without having the option to download a free version of Unity?

 

Sure, if the price was actually competitive and their subscription model wasn't the mess it is now.

 

I hear $19/month is a popular price for a subscription-only game engine. ;-)

 

Sorry that is too expensive!

 

I'd be willing to go double if Unity got at least functional feature parity if I didn't have to shift my workflow over.

 

Yay for yet another way to beat a dead horse.

 

I actually enjoyed back when Unity was $100, it kept out the MMOs. However, being free also allowed Unity to grow, and become the much better than what it would have been, it allowed this community to grow and become something useful.

 

Actually I do too, but for another reason.

Back then EVERYONE was a paying customer. So when everyone complained, UT had to listen and respond accordingly.

Now its the reverse. Few are paying customers. So when everyone complains UT can simply say "what are you complaining about, its free" and ignore the complaints.

 

Yes, if it was reasonably priced with better terms and conditions.

Currently ..... its not.

 

Currently at $75 a month, probably not.

 

Why would anyone not want something for nothing?

 

No because I use unity free. lol

 

Don't really care as I've already upgraded to Pro .... but perhaps when Unity 6 comes out, I'd like a subscription model. To be honest, I think the free version is just denying Unity some revenue.

What I do want though is Unity to step up their game in terms of features. That, to me, is the real benefit of the competition from Unreal. I don't see how Unity can be complacent in the face of such competition from a feature perspective. Price is irrelevant to me but features and quality is not.

 

Yes, provided they match UE's offering on Pro

 

Well it will weed out a lot of the noobs who want to make an MMORPG. BUT the free version is awesome and I plan on upgrading once I become a millionaire after my game kicks off. Cause its so awesome.

 

Yes, please.

Make it $20 a month, with PlayMaker, Shaderforge and other goodies. Then stop the free version.

Optionally,
Only allow those $20 a month subscription holders to get support on the forums when they pay for the subscription.

 

1. Unlimited Pro trial with a "not for commercial release" watermark.
2. If you drop $30, the watermark goes away for a month
3. To compensate for Unity not wanting to take revenue share, make it so that you need an up to date version to release updates and the like. This way, people will keep up to date on subs.
4. To further keep people up to date on subs, make it so they can't access the asset store outside of the ability to download assets they've already paid for. Keep them locked to the version they downloaded unless they've paid for that month. This incentivises people keeping up to date to make sure their assets are up to date.
5. Hell, with these systems in place, it wouldn't even be unreasonable to charge an additional $30 per month for mobile licenses.
6. Are you using multiple mobile licenses? Well now it's a great deal because if you have a desktop, iOS, and Android license you get a bulk order discount so it's only $80 a month. That's a $10 savings! Which seems like it's not very much but any savings looks pretty impressive.

 

I personally prefer paying straight up rather than monthly.

 

Free version. Why? Because...I'm hobbyist dev/indie-noob dev at the moment, but Unity allows me to have fun and freedom. Selfish reasons. But...I'm sure theres a benefit to a free version. Unity will figure it out . THANK YOU UNITY. I do plan to get Unity pro eventually.

 

I'm looking to change jobs but not ready to make the jump yet. $75 is just too much for the increased feature set.

 

Because Unity offer the free version that it grows.
Because Unity offer the free version that this community grow.
Because Unity offer the free version that students can download it instantly, learn before they went into professionals paying environment which then feed back Unity in term of PRO subscription and so on.
Because Unity offer free version that it is well known.
When it is well known and main stream, the more and more people are hooking to it.
Unity doesn't make money from the PRO subscription only.
But as well as the Assets Store.
Aside of that, giving free license grants Unity a "Powered by Unity" splash screen, that is a strong free advertising already.

 

Heh. Leave us freeloaders alone. Most freeloaders barring the occasional 12 year old are not asking for anything more from Unity. The MMO threads are now quite rare.

I had suggested in an earlier thread that you could stop adding any more features to the free version as a means of incentivising people to buy the commercial version so I cam recycling it again here

If there is some convincing evidence that as soon as you stop the free version, Unity is going to see a significant jump in profits, I would like to see it (For example some other company scrapping their free versions and as a result seeing more revenues).

As far as support goes - Yeah. If Pro Holders want their own exclusive forums, exclusive Unity Answers, exclusive this and exclusive that, Go for it . I don't think many freeloaders are opposed to this. We freeloaders can always survive by getting the help we need from the general forums etc

EDIT:
Just getting back to the issue of 'Support' as noted by eskimojoe, Unity Pro users do have a legitimate right to get priority support. I always thought this was the case. If somehow Unity Free users are using support resources at the expense of Pro users, of course that need to be corrected immediately.

Paying customers deserve priority support and no Unity Free user in their right mind would begrudge that

 

Not going to bother answering the poll its too binary and a lot more options are possible.

I understand doing the Microsoft thing and offering 12 different versions of the product creates consumer confusion but there are definitely more ways to package Unity 3D than "all or nothing" approaches listed here as our 'choices'

 

By their own admission the Asset Store doesn't make much at the moment. Not in comparison to corporate sponsorship and/or Pro licenses.

 

Are you freeloaders saying you wouldn't even pay $19 a month. Unity should make unity subscription only and let the freeloaders stick with unity4 free. You can't get unreal4 unless you pay for it

 

Wtf are you talking about?

UT gets percentages of all sales in the Asset Store. 20% - 30% of ALL sales comes out to a hell of a lot per month. I'd wager they earn more in their percentages of Asset Store sales than they do with license sales. Purely for the fact that anyone, whether Pro or Free user, and even non-Unity users can buy stuff on the Asset Store.

 

Are they growing? Unity has yet to convince me that they are capable of adapting to the presence of UE4.

A modern education is very expensive. A one-time payment of $19 to gain access to UE4 for learning purposes is considerably cheaper by comparison.

Can you even name a successful Unity game that still retains the logo? I can't and that's the problem. Pretty much any game still using the logo is going to be poor advertising because it failed to be successful enough to require the developer to purchase Unity Pro.

 

Before you start swearing at me again, chill out and do some research. Pay attention at Unite if you ever go.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/09/c...nded-into-mobile-game-dev-services-interview/


Various people at different Q&A's at Unite last year even said the same thing. Asset Store does little more than cover costs and doesn't come close to corporate sponsorship or licenses. This will likely change, but that interview was valid as of May 9, 2014. It's not like Apple's iTunes.

 

He meant growing in a sense of more users; which is entirely true.

Wrestle Jump still uses the Splashscreen: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/wrestle-jump/id573992498?mt=8
Its a very successful game.

 

I have a feeling this is going to be one heck of a long debate (unless a mod closes it, lol)

I have mixed feelings about subscription based pro licenses. Sure, it is beneficial for indie game developers but will it be profitable for Unity? Unreal takes a 5% cut and 5% of 1 million is quite a lot of money where as Unity will only have to earn via subscriptions..

But the fact that there are literally hundreds and thousands of indie game devs who use the free version and wouldn't mind paying a paltry sum of $20 per month for pro licenses will actually tend to be more profitable.


Hmm, that's a tough one.

 

Seriously another thread on the same topic ?
I've read this as a quiet observer now over and over and over again.
Yes, I could just skip it....or we could keep this to the same thread instead of opening more and more and more of these topics over and over again.
As shaderop said, beating a dead horse...
Weall know there's valuable options for each and every person.
I'm super happy with unity and get to learn more and more about it with each project. I don't need nothing from the new spanking unity5 features nor unreal4 engine.
Can't we just be friends and make cool games in the meanwhile ? Yes ? Cool !!

 

Acumen++

YES. Half of the threads in this forum need to just die. While PHP not a pretty language, I love the fact I can do the following: die("die die die");

For such a cute puppy, I certainly have strong opinions. Time to go pounce on my skunk toy.

 

Unity is still an alpha quality product (maybe early beta, if you're generous). Until they fix it so that it can be relied upon, it's not worth a penny.

 

So long as this thread doesn't degenerate into a feature war between engine xyz, I see no reason it will close. It's a Unity topic discussing if free should stay or not.

 

Try harder, or you just wasted your time, signing up here and write that troll post.

 

There are some amazing games made with this product you say is in alpha. It must be a pretty solid alpha version.

http://unity3d.com/showcase

 

If you earn so much money, then yeah...5% might be a lot.
If you earn under 3000$/quarter, you don't pay Epic any money, excepting the 19$ fee, that you could pay it just once. So you pay royality only for what you earn above 3k/quarter. I don't know how many dindie devs get over 3k/quarter but in these conditions you get something like Unity free with full features.

 

I'm pretty sure this person who registered specifically to post this isn't exactly going to be swayed by any arguments.

 

I don't think it's a great idea, that's the selling point of Unity (besides everything else).

 

Probably not. Maybe he is working on disruptive new technology which he sees as a competitor for Unity, so it's a marketing ploy to say Unity is an alpha product?

We do see new adopter of Unity get into all kinds of pickles - it's not an easy product to learn. Stumble off the well worn path and there are all kinds of hazards. At the end of the day, we're all entitled to have our view.

 

I'm pretty sure his secret product is only available to people who make sure to note that they live under bridges on the beta signup form.

 

Even if that view is horribly wrong and mangled like a marmoset caught under a combine harvester.

 

Sure, if Unity find this a viable way to gain more income so they can increase quality and featureset. Couldn't see an issue with it, if it works as hindrence than it's not worth it.

Only one who know the numbers and viability is Unity themselves. Can't beat a bit of speculation and chatter in the grind times though .

 

But it's a view, right? It's not "wrong", it's just that their perception of things in no way even remotely aligns with our own.

I'm really interested to know, actually, whether this is true of "new adopters of Unity" or "people new to game development".

Unity has its flaws and all but, even 5+ years ago when I first picked it up, I was productive with it in hours, as was the rest of the team. Not compared to our expertise today, of course, but we actually made a game (an infinite runner) with it at the office on the first day of our trial. To be fair I'd worked in other engines, worked with 3rd party rendering libraries, written games from scratch, and studied computer science leading up to that... so I already had all of the generic knowledge down before I walked in the door. I was just learning Unity, not learning all of game development wrapped in a Unity-shaped box.

 

When I first tried Unity I simply gave up because coming from C++ I couldn't make head or tail of what I was doing. Nobody explained that you could have scripts everywhere and it'd just work, or that there was no equivalent to main.cpp - so I was like WTF and just left to roll my own / do other stuff. When I tried again a few years later I just stuck it out, because Unity was the best mobile solution so I had to give it further effort for business purposes.

With that in mind, Unity needs to be way more verbose about those sort of things, explaining the thinking behind Unity, and how it's set up. Examples are wildly different and do not necessarily introduce programmers all that well who might still be expecting to manage everything themselves.

 

@hippocoder that still freaks me out. No main, dpr, cproj, sln, or some other master file?! Scripts on everything everywhere? When looking at some projects I start to go, "ok, what GameObject has a script attached that is or is not modifying behavior here?"

The fact you can shoot your foot off 900 different ways is probably the closest way Unity resembles C++.

 

That's why I have an allergy to surface shaders as well. Supposedly they're fast, but whenever I make an equivalent, it's slower (although only by a couple fps) than cg, probably because I do less in frag. I couldn't give aras a good example because the surf shader does more (as it should).

 

Right, I can see how that'd be disconcerting for a newcomer, for sure. I can't remember where I'd learned it from, but for whatever reason I understood that going in and never really saw it as a lack of a main function or whatnot. I always understood it as the main function being provided for me, and that I operated in a framework within that main function. Since that framework has pretty simple rules it didn't take me long to get comfortable with it.

That's not to say that I didn't desire some main function I could hook into from time to time back in my early days. I grew out of that over a year or so, but for my first few Unity projects I did wish that I could, for instance, call functions or set up data without being attached to GameObjects.

Another initial hangup for me was the intrinsic link between a GameObject and a Transform, because sometimes I'd want a GameObject that didn't have a position in the scene. I got over that one when I realised how painful it would be to have separate representations for relationships between GameObjects and relationships between Transforms.

 

So does Hitman: GO

I heard rumours about an exclusive Pro users forum where the drinks are all on the house and everyone gets a free puppy.

*cough*

 

That's the issue with any engine I think, actually 3D modelling software for that matter as well. You need to get behind their way of thinking.. Also I believe if you're old timers (you more than me ), you don't adjust as quickly because you tend to fight the process. Thinking THAT's STUPID, bored *give up* back to my old school palace.

When I first used Unity I were in a similar boat to you, it took time to adjust. Now I have and stopped swearing at the monitor, I'm clawing at the screen saying I DONT WANNA GO BACK! NOOO!