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.
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