Lots of assumptions. If you happen to be be self-employed selling something with a 3% margin and $100k gross revenues, then Unity+iOS+Android costs more money than you made all year. Gross revenue tells you nothing about profits.
Its a pretty good assumption given the market. If you are selling software or services at a 3% margin you have a bigger problem than license costs. You might as well go open a grocery store.
Yes, I remember a grocery store manager telling me if someone steals a pack of cigarettes - that they have to sell about $200 in groceries to make up the difference.
It's actually ($4500 * number of developer seats) if you still want android + ios. Unless the entire company revenue comes from your unity3d project, this may certainly be a dealbreaker. Definitely makes it impossible to use on what would otherwise be a one-week project.
Yea, I just ran into this at work the other week when we wanted to take a look at Unity for a small side project. Just because the company that you work for is making several $100k (or even million)/year doesn't mean your tiny little department down in the guts of that company is seeing that money.
I would hope the total required is from revenue generated by your Unity project, not total revenue of the company. If not, that's a huge mistake on their part as it would encourage companies with unrelated revenues to go elsewhere. Which was exactly your response.
From the license: "The free version of Unity may not be licensed by a commercial entity with annual gross revenues (based on fiscal year) in excess of US$100,000, or by an educational, non-profit or government entity with an annual budget of over US$100,000."
My reading of that is that it is the total revenue of the company, no matter how small the Unity project might be.
I agree, the wording is total revenue, gross at that, of the company even before you start on a Unity project. But hey, it's their engine so they can license it however they think works best for them.
But I wonder how it works if a company with that much gross revenue hires a third-party that does not make that much revenue to create the content for them. I guess the rule would apply to the third-party.
If it's just for the project inside the company, a big company could set up an internal "project" for just the Unity stuff, and not pay for the full version. So no one would pay for the full version.
The full version does come with a bunch of extra features not in the free version, so there are reasons to buy it even if you aren't forced to by the licensing requirements.
> Note that you cannot use the non-pro version if your company has a turnover above $100k/year.
Hmm, 100K is about the salary for one developer - how can a gaming company not have revenue of at least that amount? Unless it's a side project people do in their spare time?
100K is the salary for one developer at a large game company in North America. There are tons of us indies around the world running a lot leaner, so to speak.
Well ok, so two developers at half that, that's still 100K. I guess outside of North America/Europe/Japan/South Korea salaries are cheaper, but in most of the market, 50K is low. And most projects have at least 2 people, don't they?