Unity Indie: Now Free

By: Paul Eres

On: October 28th, 2009

Unity is a middle-range game engine (cheaper than the million-dollar ones but more expensive than things like Game Maker) which has been used for indie games like Dock’s Tumbledrop, Derek Yu’s Diabolika for iPhone, Tale of Tales’ Fatale, and many more.

Unity Indie, previously around $200, has been renamed to just “Unity” and is now free. You can read more information on the whys on Gamasutra. Apparently Xbox 360 support is also in the works. To quote David Helgason from the Gamasutra interview:

“The thinking was that Unity Indie isn’t generating a significant portion of our revenue, and we’ve always had this vision of democratizing our tools. We have over 13,000 customers using our product, so we figured, let’s take Indie and just give it to everyone. Whether that becomes a cash flow positive or a cash flow negative – and some people will upgrade – is not really important. What’s important is to get this in the hands of as many people as possible.”

  • General Grey

    My God…

  • TeamQuiggan

    This is awesome!

  • michael

    beautiful

  • RC-1290

    Wow, that is nice. When I’m done with flex and 2d, there is a good free engine(+tools) availabe :). (without having to be an IGF winner)

  • http://blurst.com Matthew

    Couple pieces of info from the Unity conference:

    – The license structure is still the same, which means you can totally release commercial games with the free Unity (it has built-in splash screens for standalone versions).

    – Aside from feature limitations, you have to make less than $100k/year and you can’t mix/match free and Pro licenses on the same team.

    – I don’t think they have an official post on this yet, but I’ve heard there’s a 60-day grace period with recent purchases. If you bought Unity Indie in the last 60 days you can either get a full refund or $500 towards Unity Pro.

    Make a Unity game and talk to us at Blurst! http://blurst.com/developers/

  • Aaron

    Bloody hell. This is a good day for indie development. Unity is a really, really impressive engine — I’ll absolutely use it for my next project now.

  • jkohen

    Nice, I guess, however reading the quote hurt. *Democratizing* their tools? They obviously have no idea what democracy means.

    It makes absolutely no sense in this context, unless they start running ballots inside their user community to make decisions on this product, which has nothing to do with this announcement.

    I hope that whoever wrote the actual license has a clue. Or a dictionary. Otherwise, why should anyone trust a company that needs to use random words to color their announcements?

  • Paul Eres

    to be fair, they were probably using democracy in one of the secondary senses of the word. both of these would fit:

    4. political or social equality; democratic spirit.

    5. the common people of a community as distinguished from any privileged class; the common people with respect to their political power.

  • Melly

    Mmmmm sexy!

  • Shoo

    YYYYEEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!

  • Dorian

    I was like… WHAT? NO WAY! AWESOME! And immediately shared the story on Facebook.

  • huzzah

    amazing.

  • falsion

    Like I said in an earlier forum post, this is great. However, the download link isn’t working right now. For some reason, clicking on download just refreshes the page.

  • falsion

    Turns out their servers are getting hammered right now. I just sent them and email and they told me that in response. Guess I’ll have to try downloading it later.

  • Paul Eres

    it took me a few tries, but it works; they’re probably just busy with all the people trying to dl it

  • falsion

    damn, it’s like a lottery. 10 tries so far and no go. Maybe I’ll get lucky eventually.

  • falsion

    forget it i’ll try tomorrow

  • http://www.twitter.com/goodmorningcpt Allen

    I got it earlier today, after it’s post on RPS. The download link was quick but getting a license took an hour wait. I guess as people get off of work and come home they are seeing this and tearing up a storm trying to get it.

    Wonder if anyone will make 3d assets for Assemblee?

  • Dorian

    Just got my copy authorized!

  • DragonSix

    So much awesomeness

  • Darkebrz

    Well, I just got it on my first go, quickly downloaded then registered in a snap :)

  • http://www.daintyrhino.com Dave Cobb

    This is fantastic! I was just thinking about some things to do with this engine.

  • Strom

    I know what I would be using to build games for assemblee now….

  • http://www.klikscene.com Radix

    Fucking ace.

  • Flamebait

    Incredible! Though whenever this kind of thing happens, I always wonder how people who recently purchased would feel.

  • HAHAHAHA

    I’M GONNA GET RICH OF YOUR PROGRAM YOU SUCKAS
    SUCKAS

    YOU SUCKAS

    GET IN MY MERCEDES

    UH UH
    UH UH

    MOVE YOUR BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY

  • falsion

    Looks like it was my .hosts file which is configured to block ads from malicious websites somehow blocked the download page from loading. I don’t know how or why. But I disabled it and it works now.

  • Soulliard

    This just made my day. I love Game Maker, but this is so tempting!

  • falsion

    Yeah, but this can do 3D. And I’ve always wanted to make the jump to 3D. I really want to learn how to use this. The thought of making my first game in 3D is pretty exciting.

  • trav

    aww, no linux authoring tools :(

  • ko

    Anyone know how the linux port is coming along? Unity looks awesome, but it’s worthless to me without cross-platform support.

  • http://www.twitter.com/goodmorningcpt Allen

    Linux port isn’t coming along at all. 5 months ago one of the admins on the forum says they hope to do it in the future, and that’s all he said.

    So, if you want to make or play Unity games you need a mac or a windows box. I would not look forward to a Linux version.

  • Sandcrab

    @Flamebait: Honestly, I feel a little cheated. I bought it maybe six months ago and that IS a while back, but even with a relatively “low” cost like $200 there’s a perceived scarcity value that’s going to be caused by it costing even that much. I thought I had something kind of unique, and now I don’t.

    But it’s a great move for them, and with a larger user base they’ll probably have better luck getting Unity games onto other portals that have previously been Flash-only. It stings a bit, but I’m sure it’s better in the long run for everyone.

  • Perludus

    Fantastic news! But I can’t help mentally combine “Unity + Indie” and feel like I should call it the “Undie” engine.

  • InfiniteAlec

    Unity is a pretty rad engine. It combines powerful tools with a very straightforward and easy-to-understand programming language. (Javascript/C#) Its designed very intelligently and with simplicity in mind.

    There are occasional weird problems with it (mainly the outdated physics engine), but weighed against the advantages, they’re pretty easy to ignore.

  • Joshua

    Seriously rad news. Now I have no excuses for not giving it a try.

  • C-

    This is amazing news, can’t wait to try it out!

  • Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen

    @trav @ko As other people have been saying, the Linux version seems to have some long outlooks… But if you can live with 2D rather than 3D, we’re working on something similar called Gluon :) It’s not at all ready yet, though, which is why you’ve likely not heard much about it – rest assured, however, that we’ll be showing it to the world when it’s closer to ready :) But, since you’re asking… http://dot.kde.org/2009/10/28/gluon-sprint-wrap ;)

    And to make this a little more un-spammy: Unity3D is one absolutely amazing tool! i worked with it during the May production at DADIU and is thoroughly impressed with what they have created. Plus, hey, it does make me a little more proud to be Danish, what with the company behind it being from our little country ;)

  • Twitch

    Put a bullet in Torque’s head… at least the 3D part, because Unity’s the stripper’s tassels!

    Of course, this also means a ton of people are going to be spitting out 3D crap and clogging up the INCREDIBLY USEFUL and VIABLE forums.

  • http://www.illogictree.com Eddie
  • Skofo

    Haha, I bet they’re feeling the threat of the rise of Canvas3D and 3D games in browsers in general.

    Yay for competition!

  • http://sadmoons.com Kaworu

    News is awesome :)

    But how can it be not positive for the company? More devs making games in Unity means more Unity games on the web. More games means higher popularity. It’s a win-win situation!

  • Jad

    This is hot, I wanna make games with this.

  • mr.mnml

    i smell huge quantities of awesome around here

  • Dinsdale

    Now we’re talking!

  • http://infiniteunity3d.com Infiniteunity3D

    @Twitch- Yep. That’s the first downside that came to my mind as well! Hopefully the good stuff will outshine the crapware.

  • ctankep

    I’m-ma make me some 4D games; Indie-finity engine are go.

  • Zuriki

    I broke it within 2 minutes. *sadface*

  • Juhkystar

    I <3 Tigsource. Thanks for getting the news out. Now I can finally stop killing myself.

    Unfortuently, there IS inevitably going to be complete idiots and jerks that clog up forums wanting people to just hand over code. I hope the Vets of the forums will be able to distinguish between those legitimately looking for sytax and theory help, and those just wanting to be like OMG I HAS GAME!

  • moi

    I heard it was not so easy to use for 2D stuff, is that true?