Unity CEO: Unity 5 Will Be Free, 'No Royalties, No F**ing Around' - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 March 2015 / 5,015 Views

Unity Technologies announced at GDC today that their latest game engine Unity 5. They also stated the game engine will be free. However, if you want to a Professional license it will be $1,500 up front or $75 per month.

Unity 5 is the third game engine to go free. Valve announced their Source Engine 2 and Epic announced their Unreal Engine 4 will also be free.

"If you're a seven-figure developer, you can afford $75 a month," Unity CEO John Riccitiello told GamesIndustry in an interview. "But if you're not, if you're just getting started or just choose for artistic reasons to give your games away for free, or if you're a hobbyist screwing around or a student, this is free. You get the full power of Unity 5 for free. There's no royalties, no fucking around. It's simple. That's really what we're announcing."

"That's actually what our tiny competitor is doing, but not us," Riccitiello said about Epic Games' Unrel Engine 4. "Personally, I like free-to-play games, and I've occasionally been a whale on different things. I readily admit to having spent well north of $3,000 on Clash [of Clans] for example, which is a point of pride or embarrassment depending on who I'm talking to, but damn it's a good game."

"With Unity, it's capped," Riccitiello added. "It's $75 a month or $1,500 for a perpetual license; we're not nickel-and-diming people and we're not charging them a royalty. When we say it's free, it's free. When we say $75 a month, it's $75 a month. Yeah, you can buy other stuff from us. We're not a one-trick pony, but we're not charging a royalty, which I think is akin to looking for whales. For example, if Candy Crush had a 5 percent royalty, the licensing fee for that would be billions over time, maybe $50 million in a given year. You have to pay $75 a month a lot of times to get to $50 million."

"I do think you could argue that royalties are quite a bit like free-to-play," he continued. "They sort of hook you and then try to exploit that relationship. That's not what we're trying to do. If you were to walk around Unity, you'll find this point about transparency, clarity... democracy is like every other paragraph of every other conversation. It's a deeply embedded value. We thought for a while about things like royalties, [but] we just didn't think it was right. We thought about the nickel-and-dime model of free-to-play, not to implement it, just to see whether it had any implications for us, but we didn't think so."

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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. Outside, in the real world, he has a passion for the outdoors which includes everything from hiking to having received his B.A. in Environmental Studies. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.

9 Comments

SamLeheny (on 04 March 2015)

...I'm sorry John, every time you open your mouth, I'm just reminded of how your area of expertise has nothing to do with videogames, and how EA's reputation plummeted under your leadership.