The new Unity store is live

My Pro subscription is 12 months although the last payment is August 1st.

 

Looks like a stupid question but: Unity 5 Pro owners can install all new coming versions of U5? (5.4 , 5.5, 5.6 etc...) I mean keep seeing my black editor as a Professional in U5 future versions.

 

If you are a Unity 5 perpetual person then you are good until March 2017. If you don't subscribe to the new Pro plan then that last version before March 2017 is yours to keep but it is not guaranteed to receive and further updates. I hope that helps

 

Can I ask a silly question? Why is the Pro Editor UI Skin highlighted as being so beneficial on the migration-roadmap? Compared to the other features it seems out of place.

 

People value it, so Unity uses that as leverage for their paid tier. Though if you ask me and most people, it really should just be the default UI for everybody.

 

I'm reposting a reply that got lost in this forum thread in the transition to the "new forum" and then back to this "old forum". I think my complaint is important enough to be heard by Unity Technologies.

I was very happy to hear of the new price plans at this year's Unite Europe Amsterdam.

But now I'm sharing Balthamet's frustration that as an existing customer I pay significantly more than new users will pay for the same product/service.

Since 2014 I've been paying 225$ per month for my Unity Pro + iOS Pro + Android Pro subscription.

But now that the new price plan offers a 125$ Unity Pro ( including iOS and Android ) I would have expected to be charged 125$ for the month of July.

But I'm still charged 225$ !

Am I supposed to stop my old subscription and register as a new client to get the new price?

I definitely prefer that I'd be ( automatically ) charged for the NEW price plan. And get my 100$ back for the month of July.​

I have been pointed to the migration roadmap by Unity. But this does not tell me when Unity will stop overcharging me. "Soon" is not helping. Existing customers should have been the first ones to go over to the new pricing plan. It's IMHO a bit embarrassing how Unity treats it's loyal customers.

 

Thanks Schubkraft, I did that.
So here's a small update. Thomas ( Unity Technologies ) replied that my transition to the new price plan will happen "soon". I replied to ask if "soon" can be defined in a bit more detail. I now learned that July is "likely" but not guaranteed. Retroactively applying the discount seems out of question. Let's hope that the transition will indeed happen this month or I will lose another $100.

 

I'm glad you guys removed "pro-forum features" from the sales pitch because:

1) In two years you never delivered it
2) It's a bad idea anyways

I bring this up, because to some people out there(there's always one for everything), that might've been a big deal. In most countries this falls under fraud and never should've been part of the sales pitch if you weren't going to commit to it.

Note, I'm not asking for this "feature" to return. I would just expect a company to follow through on their promises, and if they don't, they should at least own up to it.

 

So I own a Unity 5 perpetual license. I never purchased the iOS/Android Pro licenses, but now I would like to add those to my license sometime in the next few weeks.

How can I add them with the new subscription system? Am I completely out of luck until whenever I get the migration email?

 

Referring to the transition offer for Unity4 perpetual owners below, after the commitment period of 1yr?, I get to keep the pro version at that point of time?
Also what is a Pro add-on?
;When your commitment period ends your plan will automatically convert to the flexible monthly subscription. With the flexible monthly option you pay month-to-month and can cancel your subscription at any time. The rates for the flexible plan are $75/month for a Unity 5 Professional license, and $75/month per Pro add-on.

For every Unity 5 Pro perpetual license you have, up to a maximum of five, you can subscribe to the new Unity Pro at the special price of $75/month by committing to a 12 month period. Your new subscription will be free until April, 2017. At that time the minimum commitment period will start at $75/month:
- If Unity 5 Pro is your first version of Unity, you pay $75/month for 12 months.
- If you upgraded to Unity 5 Pro from a previous version, you pay $75/month for a minimum of 12 months, with the option to continue to subscribe for another 12 months, also at $75/month.

At the end of your specially-priced subscription, you can continue to subscribe at the regular price of $125/month.

 

If I subscribe to be a premium user with the express purpose of paying for 2 years what guarantees protect my right to own a copy of the product permanently and what would I end up owning if I did it now? What prevents me from being charged more if you raise the price of a tier in a year? As a developer interested in PC development at this time the price of the product just doubled (maybe) and I am stuck with the proposal that I should rent it for 2 years on an assurance after 2 years I will own something but what that looks like seems very unclear. Could you be much more explicit about that, what does a cross grade look like if pause my subscription after a year and wait 6 months before renewing, what happens to my right to hold onto the copy I was working against before I resubscribed?

 

Has this ever been addressed?
I am a one man shop, BUT I currently have a few people helping me with bugs and other features. They don't need a subscription as they will not be making builds, but I would like to have a sub to take advantage of the features. How can I run my company effectively if I have to keep a handful of unused seats in waiting.

 

Hi,

This thread seems a bit dead, so I'm not sure I'm going to get a reply without contacting the support directly, but maybe it's going to be faster since my last support email got lost (and I lost the chance to work on a project because the answer was time critical).

I'm a Unity 5.x Perpetual license owner. Yet, the benefits and costs of Unity Pro seem now a little out of my budget. I actually didn't need access to all platforms and other non modular features you're shipping now.
But, anyway, I see that you're offering discounts for people like me to transition to the new Pro subscription, at a discounted price for 1 or more years.

Fact is: even with the temporary discount Pro is going to cost me about double the cost of a Plus subscription.

And, I think I just need a Plus subscription.

Are you going to offer discounts to Permanent to Plus transitions as well?

I thinks it would makes sense, since you're somehow giving something in return to those who paid the product in full.

If you can do that for Pro Subscriptions, why not doing the same with Plus?


Also, as as an asset store publisher, what's going to happen to my assets? Are they going to be fully compatible with the new versions? Are we going to have versions? How is someone going to know if an asset for Unity will be compatible with his current version if there are no versions using the subscription modules?

May a owner of a Free Subscription develop and put to the store a product for Pro users, and viceversa?

I've read that October is the transitioning month for Perpetual users like me. Fact is: how do I apply, eventually? What happens if I delay the transition?

Thanks for your time.

 

Thanks, I'll wait for an email then.

I'm actually a Perpetual user who'd like to switch to Plus, but interestingly enough, there's only an offer from Perpetual to Pro. Which still could be a little overkill for small indie developers.

 

I am in the same boat. We have two permanent licenses and 3 ongoing old-style subscriptions. Your "double" cost for us is triple cost per month. We've been waiting on the "soon" pricing for about 6 months and received it the day after our existing subscriptions ran out.

We won't come anywhere close to break even on the price of the permanent licenses we purchased as we're having to lock anyone who works on our things in for 12 months at a time since you can't buy a lower license if you have Pro nor can you buy a shorter duration extra seat. Having to pay subscriptions on top of our permanent license and getting our at-least-twice-the-cost deal the day after our subscriptions ran out (after asking every month for an update) felt exceptionally predatory when that was sprung on us. "Hey, you're locked out - but surprise finally here's your (ahem) deal, pay it today or stay locked out".

For years we've been investing in Unity and assets, building our own engines on top, faithfully supporting the asset stores, etc.

Basically Unity just forced us to throw all of that away as their costing means we don't have an option but to transition out to another product for development which I've just given the orders to pursue. Margins are extremely slim on mobile due to the vast majority of entitled freeloaders who download or pirate games and videos that generate gross revenues of $1 per 1,000 views don't cut it. That's especially true as our players frequently find that Unity's video ads fault and/or are offline requiring that we manually and frequently change our ad waterfall - any revenue made is lost by the manual work involved.

We've had to significantly rework our games to keep them supportable as Unity changes significantly key game elements making an "upgrade" a gut-and-rebuild. But we've done that knowing that our permanent costs meant we could (just) eke out a profit later.

That investment is all money and time lost now as we can no longer operate within their terms and survive.

Frankly I feel completely betrayed. I am frequently asked if our indie studio recommends Unity. Until the past month, I've always said yes. That's just changed.

 

I can totally relate. I didn't need such a change, the permanent/modular solution was fine to me.
Now, back to the topic:

How is that I've just installed the latest stable Unity build with my Permanent license, and now my mobile builds have got the "Built with Unity" splash screen??? I signed a contract hoping to be able to use my Permanent license to the very end, and I was able to create mobile builds *without* the splash screen, even if I didn't own the Android/iOS modules (which can't be bought anymore, but since I didn't need their features it was ok for me). But now, for professional works, it would be *really* deprecable for my client to have such screen.

Am I doing something wrong? Do I have to forcefully switch to Subscription Pro or Plus to get rid of it?

I'm still waiting for "the transition email". I guess posting on this forum isn't effective as expected.
I'm also not sure email would work as well, since last time I sent a *critical* email I've been answered weeks later. I lost a job proposal because of that.

 

I have a question about the commitment period.

Is the commitment period of 12 months tied to the first seat (no matter of how many additional seats will be added later) or maybe every seat that is added later is tied to its individual commitment period?

Let's say that somebody would purchase a subscription (monthly payments) with one seat and after 6 months he would add one additional seat. Would the plan be changed to 'flex' for both seats after the next 6 months (12 months from purchasing the first seat)? Or maybe it will calculate the commitment period for every seat individually?

There is something about that in the FAQ but I'm wondering when exactly the plan is changed to flex.

"You can add and remove seats on a flex plan without having to start a new commitment period. "

 

Unfortunately that link only covers the new subscription plans.

I have the Perpetual (previously known as Pro) license, those options have been grayed out, and I got a "powered by Unity PERSONAL edition" splash screen, even if I deactivate the splash screen from the global settings. I'm using the latest stable build so:

Long story short: you put a dire splash screen (or, changed it to "personal") on my Perpetual *Pro* mobile builds, even if I paid thousands dollars to get rid of it (it was one of its benefits). My clients won't be happy, and I'm not happy as well. Please fix that asap. I already contacted Support, but I fear they may be just answering to switch to one of the subscription plans. Actually forcing me to do that before I wanted to, and I have serious taxation reasons to delay the switch to the new version. I'd be forced to make a change I didn't want, forced to pay monthly (thus, more than in a single solution as I would have done in April), for years, and pay extra taxes because of that.

I think I should be able to use my paid Perpetual license with the core features it had when I bought it, until the very end of its lifecycle.
I think this change is annoying, disappointing, and unfair.

I'm sorry for the rant, but I can't hide I'm really upset because of this. I think this is totally unacceptable. And not even sure if it would be possible as per the Terms of Use that were in use by the time of my purchase. A partial refund would be welcome, since you took off one of the features of the Perpetual license, causing me different kinds of damage and annoyances.

 

I had the identical experience when my subscriptions expired. My permanent Pro license suddenly could not build without the unprofessional Unity demo screen. And so, the having to lock in was forced upon us with the terms provided finally that day. This is outrageous.

 

Update:

the person who answered me (REQUEST #69625) stated that "Unity hasn't changed anything about my license".

BEFORE:
I remember NOT being able to even be able to compile some projects for mobile if they were using Mobile Pro (Android Pro and iOS Pro modules) features.
And, I only had a normal splash screen when building for mobile without such features.

NOW:
I am able to compile every kind of project for mobile, but I always get a "Made with PERSONAL edition" splash screen.
The program also tells me that I'm getting that because I'm not a Pro or Plus subscriber.
Also, this is false. I don't even own a PERSONAL edition, why are you forcing me to declare the false???

Please correct me.
Someone please correct me.
Tell me that this is not a change.
Tell me that the operator is trying to make me think this is not a change.
And, even if you could actually be able to legally change the way my license works, why are you pretending to make me think otherwise?
Do I have any choice but switching to the subscription models?

Do you think that my thousands dollars license has increased its value with this change?
Or, instead, you're making it unusable (who, with a Perpetual Pro license would actually want to ship a product with the "Made with Personal Edition" splash screen? It's not true! this is not a Personal edition!)

 

Obvious question: Have you turned off the splash screen in the Project Settings for the builds you're doing? Perhaps those got changed in your project. Nevermind, you said it was grayed out now.

Also, if you go to Help->About Unity, it will show your license features in the lower right corner. The mobile ones that allow the splash screen to be disabled should show "Pro" at the end.

 

That was Unity 4, from over 1.5 years ago. Unity 5 has never had any Pro feature restrictions, aside from the splash screen.

You seem to be confusing a lot of things. Your license has not changed at all. If you had a Unity 5 Pro perpetual license before, it works exactly the same way now with Unity 5.5 as it did in Unity 5.0, and will in fact continue to work the same way forever, as long as you stick with Unity 5.7 or earlier (or whatever version is out by April 2017).

It's not false. If you registered Unity, you own the personal license for all platforms that you don't own the pro license for. The agreement was, you give them $0.00, and they give you the right to use the personal license for all platforms (aside from a few with special requirements, meaning consoles).

That was never possible, ever. To create mobile builds without a splash screen has always required a Pro license for those platforms.

Honestly you're not entirely clear, but this is what I'm getting from your situation:

• Own Unity 5 Pro perpetual, which covers desktop Mac/Windows/Linux/web builds.
• Do not own any other Pro platform licenses.

Now you want to remove splash screens from iOS/Android. OK, that requires iOS Pro and Android Pro. The time when you could have bought perpetual Pro licenses for those has passed, so your only options now are a Plus subscription or a Pro subscription.

--Eric

 

Thanks for your answers, I could be wrong since a lot of time passed. I've already contacted the Sales department and Support to ask more info about switching to Plus. I've also been said that 5.5 won't be featuring the "Personal" text in the splash screen.

 

Hey I don't understand why people say that Unity is more expensive then Unreal, Unreal is 5% royalties, so it is extremely expensive and they own a part of your company, which is a deal breaker if you are making a serious game. Unity is free until you earn 100K, which means until you are rich. So why?

 

The pricing topic has been debated to death. There's no point in arguing with people on the internet, a large amount of which have a brooding air of stupidity. I recommend just choosing the engine you feel you'll get the most progress done in.