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

You choose this when you bought your phone. I have a pay as you go phone.

Adobe's Photography package, which offers Photoshop and Lightroom, is annual but their other packages are available both monthly and yearly.

Maya can be monthly or yearly.

I won't touch on the others because I don't feel like digging any further into product plans, but generally the point of offering both is that yearly will offer a discount over monthly.

 

Yeah, and get this:

I'm not renting CS either. I'm actually on an outdated version of that.
I'm not using Maya either. I'm actually using Blender because Maya is too expensive and the sub plan is actually kinda wank.
Edge magazine continues to provide you with additional content if you keep paying them. This puts it well outside the realm of software.
Lots of rental properties have you pay first and last month's rent and don't have a yearly obligation.

And I never said that people were just agreeing to the Unity sub model all willy-nilly, I said that it was trash. I also think those other sub models are trash but actually exist in a different space than Unity and that there's a way Unity could make the sub model work.

 

@Murgilod

Don't take this as being disrespectful, but if you're really not happy why are you still using Unity? (If you are).

 

If you used Flat Rental Free instead, would you only have hard shadows from one source? Because, that would be cool!

 

I just wish there was a non commercial option, basically a long term trial version with watermark. There are so many common needs for plugin use, kinect2, oculus, augmented reality plugins, sphero, opencv, workarounds, various integrations, etc that do boost Unity into the professional world for many types of business. Currently if you can't afford pro you have to pirate it just to be able to learn...

I'd gladly sub for unity pro at $75/mo including mobile licenses, but definitely not at $225/mo

 

If it is trash, you don't need to subscribe to it; thats your choice! You could either use Unity Free or Pro; we aren't forcing people into the subscription model. Personally, I don't like subscription models and would rather pay full-whack in one go, if I had the money.

What would your method be to make the Unity sub work?

 

If its free, then im hardly going to complain.

 

Learn what? I am curious what you believe you can learn in pro that you can't in free.

 

Because I'm in the middle of development. At this point, I'd have to port far too much existing scripting and have to adapt a bunch of my shaders for UE4's fully deferred rendering engine (not having a light vector node in the new material editor is something I've had to account for in various ways).

The problem is that the gulf between versions is both wide and difficult to traverse because you're either locked in at $75 a month for a year when the nearest competitor charges a third that, or $1500 up front, which is pretty much impossible to negotiate when I'm already dealing with a fixed income and $11,000 in dental bills.

How to use the Pro features, for one. Right now, the only way to learn how to use things like the stencil buffer or advanced audio features is to use the Pro trial or pirate. Truth be told, a LOT of the problems here could be easily circumvented if there was an unlimited length on the Pro trial, seeing as it already watermarks everything anyway.

 

I listed a number of plugins...I have pro at work and have to bring a computer home to work with the following: oculus rift, kinect dev kit 2, sphero, metaio and vuforia, to name a few. Same with plugins for higher end cameras in unity, as well as some custom plugins we've had to make as workarounds for a couple problems using multiple plugins on android.

So without bringing a computer home I'm not able to fart around off the clock figuring stuff out.

Even simple stuff like using/tweaking a plugin to use the nunchuk and wii controllers.

I have the photon workaround for free so don't really care about not having sockets.

 

Well, that's all work related, presumably those plugins are licensed to your employer right? If you have a pro license at work it still covers multiple installs per user. Just have your employer get you a laptop.

 

screw you for suggesting it

i forget when... but, i wanted to make a game... and unity was Not free at the time.. so instead i started learning how to use BLENDER GAME ENGINE

which SUCKS! (actually not horrible, but certainly waaay worse than unity) ... but was generally easier than any other 3d game engine i could find

fortunately though, i have blender skills now so i can make my own 3d models

 

Every Pro License of Unity allows for two installations; people usually use this for either Windows/Mac development or a Work/Home split. Is your second activation used up?

 

Everyone? Well, I guess if by "everyone" you mean "one company plus most consumers" then we're in agreement. The one company is an outlier*, and it's a no-brainer that all consumers always want "more stuff at cheaper rates with fewer obligations". On the other end of the rope of course we have the people who are providing the goods and services being paid for and, well, while it might work in some cases usually it's just flat out not sustainable to give everyone super cheap stuff without obligations.

If my Internet provider can't be pretty confident that I'll be sticking around for 12 months then they can't be expected to foot the up-front cost of paying a 3rd party to connect a cable to my house. If my phone company can't be relatively confident that I'll stick out the contract duration then they can't be expected to give me several hundred dollars worth of handset as part of the deal. If Unity can't be relatively confident that subscribers will stick around for a while then they can't be expected to risk cannibalizing sales of their Pro licenses by potentially letting heaps of people just sub for a month or two at the end of projects.

* An outlier, it's worth mentioning, who have a stick to match their carrot for anyone who finds success. I'm not knocking it, but anyone who ignores it isn't looking at the big picture, or planning to make a living.

 

First, I was talking in the context of changes to the Unity subscription model. Second:

Other companies do offer POGO monthlies.

 

I didn't claim otherwise. In some circumstances it simply doesn't make sense to offer that. If I could buy Unity just by the month then instead of getting the likely $1500 from me they'll almost certainly get just $75 or maybe $150, because there'd be no reason whatsoever for me to buy it instead of just renting it at publish time.

 

You're dramatically underestimating the laziness of people when it comes to money.

 

How does laziness come into play? The effort is no difference whether I'm buying a month or a perpetual license. In fact, buying a perpetual license could be considered more difficult for plenty of people since it involves saving up to have $1500 at once, or getting a loan.

Also, you're talking about well over $1000 here. I can't personally say I know a single person who'd willfully throw away a thousand bucks out of laziness over something even remotely as minor as what we're talking about here.

 

The subscription factor adds a layer of complexity when you have to cancel. That's where it comes in.

 

And you're saying people will pay in excess of $1000 to not have to cancel something in the future?

 

I've thrown way more than that away on a lazy whim, my own personal stuff that is. So some people might buy pro and never use it .. You don't have to be rich, if you had a mid tier IT job you wouldn't bat an eyelid at $1500.00..

With Unity though I purchased subs due to the un-certainty of it's longevity period for me. So I actually put some thought into that one..

 

No the problem is more towards the user cancelling or stopping some UT subscription.
If the user rented Pro for one month (it it was possiblme like UE4) to add stuff , optimize the game and deliver the game than sell the game, it will need to rent again the engine , caus of players bringing bugs and problems that need to be fixed, or for additionnal content later.

It depends on your motivation, some people oculd be totally fan and found the money.
Others even having the money would say that's too much as i'm not sure to finish a solid game and sell it.

 

Actually it's a pain only being allowed to have a license on 2 computers. I have it installed on a pc and a mac due to targeting both ios and droid. And kinect 2 is windows only.

Yeah it's used up, I have it installed on a mac and pc. Kinect 2 is windows only, not sure if it works on a mac running windows.

I've also had some contracting gigs outside of work for other companies that are using pro, yet not enough work to justify $4500+upgrades.

I almost bought Unity pro during 3.x cycle because I could have gotten a student discount at the time but I'm glad I waited as now 5.x is nearing closer.

I'm also working on a game and some apps outside work with 2 artists and am considering the pro + ios pro subscription and just doing android free, and not until the game is completely finished.

 

No option for both...

 

I'm similar. We have dual-boot Macs at work, so we don't have the option of putting licenses on laptops or home PCs to be more flexible with where or how we work.

 

At work we only use laptops, and mine used to dual boot, but I needed more space for TV shows and Movies. (Robot Chicken is sooo much better than Windows). In fact, now as I think about, it has been around 15 years since I have used a desktop either at work or personally.

 

VS, Photoshop, Maya, Hardware, and people are complaining about $1500? My corporate laptop has $500k on it, so I'd expect my personal development tools to cost at least as much as 10% of what I could earn on my own.

 

Corporate you mean enterprise not personnal one.You can't compare that with all indie people having PC assembled for some 500$ or some more.

 

500K is a bit excessive, I think we probably have around 5 - 7.5K's (GBP) worth of software on every machine. It adds up when you're in a team.. But still, it all depends if you're doing commercial products then that's the way things are if you're a hobbyist generally you try to spend as little as possible.

 

The best move IMHO, would be to release Unity 5 only under a paid subscription model and make Unity 4 free with all features (for non commercial use). That way you still allow newcomers to try and work with the previous iteration of the engine for free, while also allowing for a lower subscription fee(due to a higher volume of sales).

However for this you would need
1) Significant discounts on Unity 5(perhaps retroactively) for those who bought Unity 4 to appease them.
2) Versioning in the asset store, so that assets that are updated can continue to be used with the last supported version for Unity 4.

 

When you will got V5, the V4 won't profit from bug fixes for a lon period after, specially that lot of code is rewritten for V5. That's a general situation where you have to upgrade and follow next version.
UE4 keeps rising the bar, non coders makes prototype gameplay without programming they couldn't thaught they could do it. I don't see where UT5 able to compete could it be in the visual programming style , shaders easy composed using Blueprints and many more.

Some of us using both could be disappointed finally with UT5 next annoucement.
I don't think we will see a blueprints like system or as good , no shader editing as simple as UE4 proposes, not so flexible terrain system where you can make your own shaders for it with no limitations. Also i think the pricing announcements will stay with same separation between amateur and companies using UT.

 

This... what?

This doesn't even make a tiny bit of sense on any level.

 

First off, let me make one thing very clear: I think it's great what UT is doing. In fact, I think lowering their prices and adjusting things could have greater potential. We keep hearing that they want to democratize game development. They're making it more accessible, and they really did that in a big way with Unity Free. Accessible doesn't necessarily mean easy, but it does mean "easier", a comparative word. They're also going to try and be competitive.

Corporate/enterprise... semantics... same thing. However, I will compare and contrast to make a point. The ease of earning potential of someone with a $500 PC is less than someone with more training and more expensive PC and software.

Unity basically implied some similar things when they said, (paraphrasing from comments on the forums and in interviews), "If you're making $100k, I think you can afford $1500 in software. Before then, maybe you don't really need it and can design around it." (Helgason, Unite 2013) Also, when they said, "If you're using the education version, you don't have very much money and shouldn't really need 2 licenses. If you can afford two computers or a situation where you need more licenses, then talk to our sales department." (somewhere on the forums earlier this year)

I'm not saying someone on a $500 PC can't be or won't be the next John Carmack -- far from it. I used comparative words for a reason.

I actually agree with you, but maybe I wasn't clear in what I was saying.

Point 1: In order to make money, we have to spend money. Like it or not, it's the way the world works.

Point 2: Unless you're freelance (and even then, factor it into the business plan), you're not really forced to shell out $1500. If it's that important and as already stated, save up for it. A painful reality for a lot of freelancers (even myself as I'm weighing my employment options) is that it is hard work, expensive, and there are lean months, typically when starting out. This is why corporations pay my employer $150-275/hr for my time and I'm lucky to see a salaried equivalent of $33 of that. (Aside from the fact that my boss is clueless and the people above him are greedy sharks.) Major employers absorb the massive costs and us peon employees. Therefore they get the lion's share of the profits and I see far less. When going freelance, we get the entire amount we charge, but we also absorb all costs.

Point 3: If there are laptops out there loaded with $500k of software to make corporations money and those people get paid between $50k and $150k per year, it stands to reason that a hobby developer is going to need to shell out at least a "little" bit in comparison to that to make some money. Also, having over $100k of software on a corporate laptop is not uncommon to the rest of the development world. IBM, SAP, Oracle, Boeing, Microsoft, and Palantir still exist, right?

If on the high end there are computers out there with $500k of software on it for corp's making a ton of money, and for our personal computers we have Visual Studio, Photoshop, Maya/Modo/whatever, and a few other programs... seriously, what's the complaint about $1500 as others have already mentioned? Especially when you are only *forced* to buy it if you make over $100k with it. If you're not forced, then it is your decision either as a hobbyist or as a business decision that must be factored into a budget. Yay for Unity Free.

 

Sure, but how are you measuring that $500k of software? I somehow doubt that it's half a million bucks of individually licenses software seats specifically for you. Having a few installations of epicly expensive company specific software I can see how it'd get that high.

(Though with some software we've looked at for work I can easily imagine an individual having in excess of $50k of licenses attributable to them as an individual.)

 

@inafield

I have worked at / with telecoms companies before I started with games and whilst with some of the big boys they'd have infrastructures that cost far more then 500K (FAR FAR MORE ), on individual laptops you'd probably never find more than a couple of K's worth of software.

Not to say I don't get your point and I don't disagree, but you seem to miss mine. I expect to pay for the software I need because it's a commercial venture, if it's a hobbyist you might not be so inclined but as you rightly say you're not forced to either.

I don't think Unity is expensive and price was rarely in question before UE4, (or if it was no where near to this extent). So it's good to get a lot of bang for buck as so to speak even if fiscals aren't the end goal, from my perspective UE4 is more expensive but it's justified and worth it.

 

As amateur the only software that costs me are Zbrush or 3D Coat, on the other side i have Blender for all animations and many 2D programs like Gimp. The cost is really low and UE4 just is fine on my PC.
You mean form Royalties point perhaps ?
But sure UE4 really worth the package, i can't imagine UT5 be able to compete with it in terms of features.

 

/me stretches from a long weekend.

@ShadowK Nah, I just was trying to make a point that it's going to cost money. I do get your point, I just don't think that hobbyists have a leg to stand on when there is a free version. I also am strongly behind that free version at least from my own opinions on business plans in the current ecosystem. But they are just that... opinions.

Realistically, 500k was a ballpark figure estimated high to make a point. I just inventoried for the sake of curiosity, and it's almost as much as my cheap-o 600sqft condo. However, I do know people with some tools that are just insane at some R&D divisions.

 

Unity Free may be good for indies, but it simply does not stand up to the competition with regards to hobbyists. Especially competition that offers so many toys for almost no real costs.

As a hobbyist I am not concerned with royalties, but I am interested in having a very large set of toys for a very minimal investment. Unity Free may be the solution if you simply cannot afford to spend anything, but UE4 is great for anyone who has $19 to spend.

 

"almost no real costs" is a very different thing to free. Several times on business courses I have heard a quote about the biggest step being from free to 1 pence/cent. As soon as a customer has to pay something, they think about the decision a whole lot more.

You only have to look at the App Stores. $0.99 is a tiny amount compared to the price of the devices it will be used on, but the downloads are massively smaller compared to a free app.

Unity Free is a massive advantage for the company, which they have talked about multiple times. But it is a large step from there to Pro.

To go back to the App Store analogy. Unity has a free app they don't monetise directly, and a high priced premium buy everything one-time in-app purchase. Perhaps it is time for individual in-app purchases?

 

How much a customer considers a product before purchasing though is dependent on the price of the product. I know when buying video games I am far more likely to just purchase the game if it is $10 or less without doing a lot of research than I am with a game costing more than $10.

A well known game engine priced at $19 could very easily be considered an impulse purchase. You could spend some time reading up what others have stated, or you could fork over a very small amount and evaluate the full feature set yourself.

This is likely the mentality Epic is counting on. Get people to try the engine even if they were happy with their current engine and hopefully hook them on its capabilities.

 

Unity Pro prices are not impulse purchases, whereas UE4 is. But Unity Free is not a purchase. The majority are going to try Unity first because of that.

 

Who said UE4 was impulse purchase ? I put months before trying it and finally i find i should have put 20$ lot before. The price is so minimal for all it has to offer , believe me i doubt people regret pruchasing such engine for a few bucks.

 

If your distinction between "indie" and "hobbyist" is that indies intend to make money from their work and hobbyists don't then I agree.

 

Pretty much. I view an "indie" as someone who is primarily interested in making money whereas a "hobbyist" is not.

Assuming they discover Unity before they encounter an alternative like Unreal or Crytek. I tried Unreal first, in the form of UDK, simply because I had heard of Unreal over the years from numerous sources. Unity has very little in the way of attention by comparison and I never heard of it prior to stumbling upon it.

 

Hobbyst can be skilled passionnated making demos or small games before searching success.Many hobbyst could make a small bad Android game and call themselves indies or make some retro game it's easier than pushing graphics and 3D models farther.

I'm amateur but more in the side of some indie trying to make a a good successfull demo before considering going further or pushing, so many in that case will also consider having fancy graphics effects.
You had Unity as best solution for indies at 1500$ some time ago , UDK was too complex , now UE4 is open and easy take, it is now the second big engine on indies market very complete and friendly to take, just asks you 20$ to have all features.

So you can try making a great demo game with all 3D features without having to spend 1500$ , specially when you don't know if your demo could lead to a successfull game. You'll pay royalties only when you are really successfull.

 

But it's not $19, it's $19 per month. Business class 101. Sure, you could discontinue payment but there is always a catch.

 

You still get to keep the engine in the state it was up until the point you cancelled your sub.

 

There is no catch after 4.3 i stopped subscription so i just paid 20$ and have last tech global illumination and SSAo , and many otehr tools and features.
I have enought features and blueprints stuff to make a good demo game; i will re subscribe the day i will need new features from new updates.
It's simple and clear.

Their message is friendly when you close subscription as they invite you to continue using the engine you baught , download new examples , and telling you that you can subscribe any time.

About the Roadmap, what to say it's totally different as this is very clear about what is developped.
https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap
What about Epic people on Twitch about what is made on UE4 :
http://www.twitch.tv/unrealengine

Unity lacks this sort of general communication.

 

Everything I'm about to say I've posted numerous times before, but I'll post it again for old times sake.


Not really, we have been very clear about what is going to be in the next 2 versions of Unity (4.6 and 5.0) and even beginning to talk about features aimed for future releases after them (new Networking and multi-scene editing). If you go to our blog, there is frequent posts going up focusing on different areas of Unity that we are working on.

If it's something as simple as a big web page that has a list, our VP of Engineering has stated that we will have a public roadmap, and that is in the form of being created. We used to have a public roadmap, years before UE4 had one, and we will have one again.

Also, we have an entire field team dedicated to hands-on, in-editor presenting new features and communicating what our developers are working on, to our community, and we have had such a team in place for probably 5ish years. Have an event in your area that you would love for someone from Unity to come by and demo new GUI and 5.0 features, in person? Just send me an email, tweet or respond right here and I'll do my best to make it happen.

 

My mobile phone is monthly.

Also offered Monthly.

So can I! For example, my Unity Subscription? Oh that's non-existent because while I've shipped a decent amount of Unity product, I've never found the Unity licensing attractive. (This refers to my own personal licensing, everything my clients and I have shipped has always been appropriately licensed.)

Don't worry though, you can keep your existing system and I'll keep not paying