Following on from yesterday’s good news for indie game developers that Unreal Engine is now free, with 5% royalties if you reach over$3,000 in sales per quarter, Unity have now announced that Unity 5 is out and the personal edition is free and there are no royalties. Although if your game or app reaches a sales figure of over $100,000 you are expected to upgrade to pro, and to be fair, you should be able to afford to do that if your sales are in that region!
Now for those who are thinking that there has long been a free version of Unity, that’s true, but with Unity 5 a lot of those old restrictions have been removed to make this the most powerful free release of Unity to date :
UNITY 5 PERSONAL EDITION: ALL ENGINE FEATURES & ALL PLATFORMS
Aspiring developers everywhere: Get ready for Unity 5 Personal Edition, the new free version of the best development platform for creating multiplatform 2D/3D games and interactive experiences.
Unity 5 Personal Edition includes all engine features: everything that’s new in Unity 5, all the top-tier features from previous releases that are loved by the pros, and deployment to all platforms (with the new Personal Edition splash screen).
The pro version, which still costs $75.00 a month (based on a 12 month contract) or $1,500 for a perpetual licence still has more features, but they are now with regards to cloud options, analytics, prioritised bug reporting etc. rather than extra game development features. I’m not suggesting the pro features aren’t worthwhile, but the free version is now a very powerful choice.
Unity believe that their royalty free option is a better deal than that of Epic with Unreal Engine and their 5% royalties model, according to an article in The Verge :
“Free plus five percent of your gross isn’t free,” said one developer on stage. “That’s millions of dollars.”
I’m ambiguous about this because it’s a swings and roundabouts scenario. If you know a 5% fee is due you’re likely to build that into your pricing where possible. On the other hand, the royalties for Unreal Engine kick in at $3,000 a quarter, Unity don’t expect you to switch to the pro model until your sales reach $100,000. Now if you reach that figure with Unreal Engine’s model, you’ll pay around $5,000, which is more than the $1,500 Unity Pro would cost you and then of course you’ll carry on paying royalties the more you sell with the Unreal Engine model.
Both models are good for indie developers in terms of them being free at the point of usage. This is really encouraging for independent game development.
However when it comes to education, Unreal Engine may hold the edge. Unity isn’t free for educators, indeed it’s quite expensive. All Unity have said so far is that education establishments should contact their account managers, although students can now download the personal edition for free to use at home, classroom usage is not currently covered by the personal edition licence.
However all round, this has been a positive and exciting couple of days for indie developers. One word of warning though, you will have to be patient if you want to download the personal edition of Unity 5, demand has reached such high levels that they have had to disable logins for now to prevent a complete meltdown.