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Unity User Base Reaches 33,500 In Wake Of Free License
by Chris Remo
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November 9, 2009
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Unity Technologies' decision to offer a free license of its popular Unity engine is paying off: the company says that less than two weeks after it announced the plan, its overall Unity user base has more than doubled.
There are now some 33,500 registered developers for the multiplatform engine, up 158 percent over the count prior to this year's Unite conference in San Francisco.
The announcement of Unity's free license was formally made at the event, alongside news that the company would support Xbox 360 in addition to its current PC, Mac, iPhone, and Wii versions. The conference itself reportedly saw an attendance increase of 125 percent, although a hard headcount was not provided.
"The step we took to finally make Unity free was so logical," Unity CEO David Helgason said in a statement. "It remains our mission to take something as advanced as Unity and make it available to everyone."
Prior to last month's announcement, Helgason told Gamasutra Unity had over 13,000 registered users. At the time, he revealed that Unity's $200 Indie package, which was replaced by the new license, "isn't generating a significant portion of our revenue," making the decision to offer a free option easier.
"Whether that becomes a cash flow positive or a cash flow negative -- and some people will upgrade -- is not really important," he said. "What's important is to get this in the hands of as many people as possible."
Unity is currently in version 2.6, which launched simultaneously with the free release of the engine.
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http://forum.unity3d.com/memberlist.php?mode=joined&order=ASC&start=10000
Anyway... it may be moot with Unreal now being free too.
http://www.udk.com/
Not necessarily. Unreal is free for NONCOMMERCIAL.
"Use of the UDK for 'noncommercial' purposes is free of charge. If you are going to use the UDK for any commercial purpose or in any way that is not specifically authorized in the end-user license agreement (EULA), you must agree to appropriate commercial terms. "
http://www.udk.com/licensing.html
Unity is both for personal and commercial usage, hence the previous "Indie" moniker.
I personally like the "lighter" faster usage of Unity, so we'll see if Unreal will attempt to truly match it...
It's an awesome tool. I've been using it for 5 weeks and can say it is easy to learn, intuitive, and very powerful. I'll step up to Pro for the $1500 when I push the free version to its limits... which may take a while.
Here's hoping that someone at GarageGames is reading this and realizes that Torque isn't even in the discussion so far. They've mentioned the possibility of a less-expensive "artist's license" for $500, but that sounds to me like it could be too little (or too much?) too late to play at this game of boosting user base.
Someone who's actually read the entire UDK EULA can correct me if I'm wrong, but I did read that there are only fees for UDK if your project makes more than $5,000. They ask for 25% after that. On the other hand, the free Unity package is missing a lot of features, among them advanced lighting and scripting, post-processing, etc., while UDK gives you just about everything Epic's has to offer.
My understanding of the UDK licensing is
1) Free to use unless you go commercial
2) If you do go commercial it's $99 upon release of your game + 25% of everything over $5000
Still pretty darn cheap considering you only pay $99 up front upon release. So you can make $4999 - $99 before you pay any royalties. We're talking about the freakin Unreal Engine 3 here! Unity is nice (I have been playing with it some), but they kind of crippled the free version somewhat (no real-time shadows, no post processing, and some other things). The post processing I can see as a premium item, but NO SHADOWS?
I too really hope that Garage Games announces a free version in the near future. I would like to try Torque out, but not for what they are asking.
Marcus