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

If Unity wasn't free, I would never have used it. Even if I plan on buying the Pro license. Even though I have the money.

There would just be no way in hell I'd use Unity if it weren't free. There are endless number of reasons.

Don't have to be old school to think like that
I had to learn that Unity, and everything, wants things the way IT wants things. Things became easier with Unity when I learned that.

Still hate it though. Still think it's stupid. Still get bored. Stlll sometimes think "Give up" only to be reminded "Almost Done though!" lol.

I honestly will give significant thought to using Unity when creating my next game. Even more thought, will I give buying assets from the asset store. I notice the feeling gets significantly worse when you have to incorporate not just Unity's way of thinking, but also multiple asset author's thinking. It gets messy. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if I continued to build my own engine. If things would be easier, or harder. People say harder, but then again...they aren't me. The way I'd do it would work very well for me, because I'm me. Unity was made by people who aren't me. People who may think differently.

 

I second that.

 

I have said it. I have said it on behalf of others. Others I'm sure have said it in your past. Then someone who works for Unity says it.

When will you learn dude? Unity is not as easy to learn as you think lol

 

@CarterG81

I agree, but also old habits die hard and all that jazz. You get used to a process and anything that interferes may feel the wrath ...

I also agree, I used Unity originally because it was free and just enjoyed playing around with it.

 

Ha Ha
Be careful with the X-rated Stuff though. The mods are very strict on that sort of thing around here. I had a humorous thing to say about what you said. Can't say it in open forum as per rules. So I am sending you a PM

 

If Unity were to scrap the free version and require people to pay monthly subscriptions, that wouldn't fix the real problem. Unity is not too expensive for the intelligent person. The real problem is that most people don't know how to earn the money to pay for the Pro version.

If we earned the money to pay for the Pro version, we wouldn't need to debate the possible cessation of the Free version. I think we should keep the Free version to help us in the meantime. It makes sense to do so as an Asset Store owner (I have a partner that manages the asset store with my stuff in it), because we want the Free version to test the assets we make before release.

 

What? All I was talking about was fluffy puppies.

 

Unity may not be too expensive for professionals. But being a hobbyist has nothing to do with being less intelligent. And the market is flooded with games. So even as a professional it's still a gamble to earn enough money so that Unity pays itself.

 

It doesn't matter if you're a professional or a hobbyist, it's not too expensive for either. Many people never take the time to learn how to earn money from their work, and some go a step further and complain that it costs too much. Last I checked, UDK for example takes 30% of your finished game's profits if you earn more than $25000 from it.

If your game did pretty well and earned your team $100k a year, $30k of that would go to UDK. Unity Pro costs $1500 and does not stick you with royalties after release. You might say that UDK offers the better deal, considering the license only costs short of $100 but I don't count on earning less than $25k for a game I release to avoid paying royalties.

Unity Pro is the better deal for the intelligent person. Being a hobbyist doesn't mean you're less intelligent. It just means you've decided not to turn it into a profession yet.

 

The free version of Unity is a huge boon to hobbyists, students, and pretty much anyone who is interested in game development but doesn't have the money to drop on an engine license. Being able to download Unity Free and just start developing is fantastic. Moving to a pay-only model would drastically reduce the number of people using Unity.

Some people look at the bloat of low-quality games coming out for Steam and would see this as a positive. Those people are short-sighted and reactionary. Raising the barrier to entry in game development is a bad idea. Game development should be cheaper, easier, and more accessible. Unity Free is a big reason why game development has become cheaper, easier, and more accessible in recent years. This is a positive change that should always be encouraged.

The industry needs more hobbyists, not less. Hobbyists are free to experiment in ways that professionals can't. That experimentation is going to fuel a lot of the innovations and changes that the industry undergoes over the coming decades.

Also, if Unity Free goes away, another engine, such as Godot, will take its place. If Unity phased out Unity Free, they would be letting go of tens of thousands of developers and hobbyists who would otherwise be developing for their system. The small developers and hobbyists of today are the paying Pro-license users of tomorrow.

All of this is effectively a moot discussion. The continued survival of Unity Free is assured by the continued success of the Unity Asset Store.

 

I am a hobbyist, and i can tell you that the Pro is waaaaays too expensive for me. And as told, this has nothing to do with intelligence. I simply lack the money.

Your wrong assumption is that every Unity user does it for money. I make games now since 15 years. And i know i will never earn a dime with my games. It is not my goal. I do it for fun. In the moment where i do it for money it becomes work and business. And the fun ends.

 

Mentioning intelligence in a price debate is offensive, fiscal gain is often soul sucking I know first hand, I traded it for a portion of my life. A friend of mine is a coder very intelligent, extremely competent.

He does his 9 to 5 earns enough for a house, a car and his family, the man is happy. His choice, his life and from where I stand I often wonder who's the smart one.

Point being there's more to life than money and circumstances sometimes don't permit. Some might be happy just doing games as a hobby and students are a given, well a lot of them anyway.

Also you seem to miss the point that when you're doing commercial games, the cost of an engine is the least of your worries.

 

That would kill some one like me, while I am new to Unity, I can't afford $19.00 a m/o to learn how to make a very basic game.

I think Unity does a great thing, it brings in new people to the world of game development with out having to invest too much money in learning the basics.

 

I agree with unity3d, free version absorbs users, when some users grow up, they will upgrade to pro version.
Growing with users is a good idea, I like the idea.

 

What about making it "freemium". In that the basic program is free. But then you can "unlock" different advanced features for a price such as dynamic shadows. Thereby anyone can advance to the "next level" by programming things themselves or "cheat" by unlocking features. Also, you can unlock some features by posting on Facebook or Tweeting.
It seemed to work for Candy Crush Saga.

 

There's Unity Pro for that. Shadows weren't free until a 4.x version.

 

Unity Free is not the problem. The problem is that there is no step between Free and Pro. Unity needs a Pro version priced to compete with UE4 to satisfy hobbyists, but that should happen in addition to existing Free and Pro options.

 

^ yes.. i'd pay instantly for an "unity indie pro" (could be something like 300-500usd or some cheap ~10-15usd subscription)

or, if you could buy features as modules into unity free (i'd buy rendertextures, maybe profiler, and few others.. even though you would actually end up paying more, since you are buying in small parts..)

 

The only way I could see a cheap Pro working is if free is abandoned in favour of it, turning a huge bulk of free into paying customers. Except if they keep free for evaluation/educational purposes but strip the ability to build the final game.

 

Stripping the ability to build a project is F***ing stupid and I don't understand why people keep suggesting it over a watermarked build.

 

19$/month is reasonable. anyone can't pay or don't want to pay, is only making us the paying costumers deal with bad support.
99% of the support section is unanswered questions or self answered.
at least make a special icon for the pro users and priorities the support.

 

Or just have a pro only support forum section where only pro licence owners can post questions and assign sufficient resources to that section so that answers are posted within a couple hours.

 

1. Relax
2. Watermark free is fine too, maybe even better, as long as there is a cheap Pro

 

Haha, seriously, how do you want me to respond to that? "Oh shucks, you're right! I struggled with Unity for ages and then just gosh darn forgot about it!" No, I did genuinely pick it up and get productive with it in hours, and since that's the only perspective I've got it's the one my opinion is derived from.

Plus, whenever I've said that about Unity I've also explained the background to it, so it's pretty clear that I'm not saying newbies to the craft will have a similar experience. Plus plus, I also regularly give people the advice to go and learn programming separately as its own dedicated pursuit, and so on and so forth.

 

That's the worst option imho. Watermark makes it a demo version. Nobody wants to play a demo game. And nobody wants to buy a watermarked game. This makes the whole "use free to earn enough money to buy pro" obsolete. And is also for hobbyneeds a no go.

I still favour a non commercial version with nearly all the bells and whistles of the pro to close the gap between free and pro. A non commercial splash screen should be enough to stop abuse for most of the users. It can even cost some dimes.

 

That's literally the point.

 

A point that sends the folks to Unreal immediately then

 

Why would they go to Unreal if Unity would have a competitive pricing structure?

 

I mean a possible watermarked free version, This would immediately scare lots of users away.

 

It would... scare them away to something where they have to pay money to use at all?

 

Yes. A full version is a full version. And a demo is a demo. And a watermark makes it a demo.

Just aks yourself, do you play the full version games, or do you play the demo versions of the games? Demo is free ...

 

I agree with Tiles, watermarked free version is no use at all.
The problem is that the price of the pro version is getting higher and higher.(400->1500->2100)
I want to upgrade to pro, but scared by the high price.

 

Uh, no, a demo is a feature limited version of a full product. If I download a game demo, I get a feature limited version of that game that typically leaves out most of the content.

If anything, Unity Free as it is now is a demo.

IF ONLY I MADE A SUGGESTION FOR JUST THIS.

 

Your entire life and consciousness is suppose to change to where it was hard. Duh!

 

No. You can make a full game with it. With technics from yesterday since there are quite a few limits like just one realtime light and just forward rendering. But nevertheless, you can create a game that can be played from the beginning to the end without any further restrictions.

A demo would mean that you cannot make a full game with it that can be bought by customers. And that's the case when you label your game with a visible disturbing watermark. Customers will not pay for a watermarked game. They will not even play a watermarked game for free.

I agree with you though that the restrictions for the free version are still a bit harsh. You cannot really start with the free version and finish the game with the pro version then. You cannot simply turn on Deferred rendering when you have developed it for Forward rendering. But the Pro needs a selling point somewhere.

Skip the watermark idea and put this "not for commercial release" into the splashscreen and we are at the same road

 

From all pricing threads that have come before this one, it seems Unity aren't budging on price. I can't see watermark or build restrictions working either due to people who fiscally rely on Unity free.

So the only solution I could think of is to not kill Unity 4.0 pro and sell it off for $19.00 a month. Rinse and repeat when new versions come in.

Keep Unity 5.0 as the flagship.

 

That would not work since Unity 4 cannot really compete with Unreal 4.x. But the idea is appealing. Why not sell the older version for a few bucks less ...

 

From what we have seen neither can Unity 5.0, but we have been down that rabbit hole way too many times. At least it gives people a chance to buy assets to fill in a lot of the gaps and improve general quality.

I could see a lot of benefits to selling Unity 4 pro off cheap.

 

I'm on disability. After rent/utilities are paid, I have about $200 per month to live off of. I can justify $15 every few months for UE4, but I cannot justify $75/mo or $1,500. Certainly not for a product that is less capable even with unreleased versions.

Keep in mind not every hobbyist is interested in making it a profession. If I did decide to go pro though, UE4 is the more intelligent choice for me.

If I fail to sell a product with UE4, I am down a very insignificant amount. If I fail to sell a product with Unity, I am down a considerable amount of money.

If I do manage to sell a product, paying a minor royalty is the least of my concerns. If you count the amount I pay for rent and utilities, I am used to living off $8,400 a year. If I were making enough that I'd have to pay royalties (aka more than $3,000 per quarter per game), I doubt I'd care one bit about how much I'd be paying Epic.

 

This only seems like a good idea at first. However, this ends up manifesting in self-competition by pitting two pro versions against one another, and removing incentive to upgrade unless you really need things like the GI tools or enhanced audio. While the audio tools are a good bonus, things like GI are a bit too far outside of Unity's typical use cases to provide upgrade incentives.

 

But could attract quite a few hobbyists who would never consider to buy Pro.

 

Unless it attracts enough to offset the lack of people buying the $1500 Unity 5 Pro License, that doesn't really matter.

 

Or if you make beyond an income limit.

 

My first experience with Unity was somewhere between these two. Coming from a C++ background there were a few head scratching moments while I wondered where the hell the main was supposed to go and got to grips with Unitys way of doing things, but having worked with Borland Builder (...shudder...) during my degree I was familiar enough with component based development to stick with it. Soon enough there were boxes bouncing around the screen and dancing to whims of my WASD. This was rewarding enough to make me stick with it

 

That's the million dollar question. My guess is that it may even generate more income. Because currently the hobbyists are nearly completely out, besides the assets store.

 

That income limit would have to be pretty narrow for it to work at all.

 

In all honesty, I wouldn't expect to hear anything about pricing until Unite, which I'm ok with - I'd rather they take a little time to think about it, then do something kneejerk.

There was far too much talk about pricing in light of the other engine options for them to simply have no reply on the matter, be it one way or the other.

 

Kneejerk? It'll have been nearly half a year by the time Unite rolls around.

 

Gave them enough time to find out if people really jump off boat because of the price or not. Let's hope that this lesson wasn't too expensive ...

Or should we say let's hope that it was expensive so that the price goes down?