Unity Technologies to Keep Working on Its Pricing Strategy

A few weeks ago Unity revealed new products and pricing. While some of developers were quite happy with the new offers, others were angry about the changes.

Some time later Unity Technologies made a move explaining its new subscription model. Make sure to read company’s post here.

As stated by Unity Technologies some of the developers raised major concerns with the new pricing:

• Some of them have been customers for a long time and have made use of upgrade discounts to your perpetual licenses. Those averaged to a yearly cost that was lower than the new subscription costs.
• If artists develop for desktop only, the new all-platform cost is significantly higher than your old yearly cost.

Unity Technologies might have found a solution:

Now, we don’t want to go back to the old model of having iOS and Android be paid add-ons, while desktop is included in the base cost. This was always rather arbitrary. Developing and maintaining our desktop platforms is a real cost for us, just like for our mobile platforms, and yet mobile developers have been paying more. Now we’re committed to making the price the same regardless of which platforms you target. We hope you understand and are with us in this decision.

At the same time, a lot of customers are telling us that the new prices are a very good deal. Some have the privilege to even say it’s too cheap, though these people, being happy with the new prices, have not been as vocal in comments and social media.

The objective for us is to make everyone as happy as is possible given a rapidly growing global group of developers using Unity for many, many different things. We want paid versions of Unity to be affordable for developers big and small who want to go beyond Unity Personal, or are required to due to the revenue cap.

Unity Technologies

Here are the changes to the pricing policy:

• Unity Technologies are making the Unity splash screen in Unity Plus optional, like it is in Unity Pro.
• Unity Technologies are raising the revenue cap in Unity Plus from $100k to $200k so that more of you are able to take advantage of it.

These challenges cost something. The company had to remove the option to subscribe to Unity Plus without a one-year commitment. They also restricted Pay to Own to only apply to Unity Pro and not Unity Plus.

For those of you whose revenue is beyond the $200k cap for Unity Plus, and who are already a Unity user, Unity Technologies announced Transition offers, which you can find below.

NEW SPLASH SCREEN.

The new splash screen will read “Made with Unity” in all editions of Unity – no more mention of “Personal Edition”. You will also be able to customize it with your own (blurred) background image and your own company logo in addition to the Unity logo. The customizable splash screen will be available in all versions of Unity, but can be completely turned off in Unity Plus and Unity Pro.

PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Unity Personal

• Free
• $100k revenue or funding cap
• All platforms
• Unity splash screen (with customization options)
• Personal tier services

Unity Plus

• Pay $35 per month with 12 month commitment
• $200k revenue or funding cap
• All platforms
• Optional Unity splash screen (with customization options)
• Dark Editor Skin
• Plus tier services

Unity Pro

• Pay $125 per month with 12 month commitment
• No revenue cap
• All platforms
• Optional Unity splash screen (with customization options)
• Dark Editor Skin
• Pro tier services
• Pay to Own

Both Plus and Pro tiers can be paid monthly or upfront (for people who find that easier for budgeting or billing purposes), and require you to commit to at least 12 months of subscription. There will also be an option to commit to Pro for 24 months, for people who want long term price certainty.

TRANSITION OFFER FOR EXISTING UNITY 5 PRO PERPETUAL LICENSE CUSTOMERS

The company has also prepared a few options for existing Unity 5.x perpetual license customers, who will no longer get new updates after March 2017:

1. For up to five seats, you may subscribe to Unity Pro at the special price of $75 per month for a limited transition period, after which the price will revert to the normal subscription price of $125 per month:
   1) If Unity 5 Pro is your first version of Unity, your transition period is one year. 2) If you owned Unity 4 Pro, your transition period is two years.
2. If you make less than $200k per year, you may choose Unity Plus and pay $35 per month with an annual commitment.

PAY TO OWN FOR UNITY PRO

If you pay for 24 or more consecutive months of a new Unity Pro subscription, you get to keep and use the version you have when you notify us that you are stopping subscription and choosing pay to own. At such point, you will stop receiving access to Pro tier services, new features and upgrades. You will receive the next 3 patches. We reserve the right to grant access to additional patches in the event that we find severe bugs. If you later resume the subscription, you will still own the perpetual license you elected but again start receiving updates, fixes and services. Once you have subscribed for another 24 consecutive months, and should you then elect to cease this new subscription, you will then be granted a new perpetual license of the then current version of Unity.

Unity Technologies

Source: official blog post