Unity Anyone experienced with revenue streams on Unity, care to explain licensing terms regarding Adult Games on Unity?

[lalilulelot]

I'm planning on developing my first game, and given how much time i've dedicated to playing Adult games, why not make one to test myself in programming and worldbuilding. However, i've been looking around for engines for my game, i thought Ren'Py at first, for the simplicity of it, there's hardly a Ren'Py game code i can't understand (except for Rogue-Like, god what is going on there), but im planning on something more ambitious on the gameplay side. Not a fan of any RPGM games i've played, so why develop something i don't enjoy. That leaves me with Godot, Game Maker, and Unity. For Godot, i don't think its worth the hassle of deeply managing performance even for simple games, Game Maker seems a bit pricey, for what it offers.

So i'm finally left with Unity. The problem i have with Unity is the Terms and Conditions, as well as limitations for the free versions (I'm on College student budget, so... yeah, not paying for a monthly subscription with my low income and low time availability to actually use the license). So, will i eventually face problems for making adult games on Unity? Most of the Unity games i have downloaded from here are asian/japanese and heavily censored, but i dont know if that's a coincidence or it actually has something to do with Unity itself and the reason behind Western publishers avoiding the engine. The other issue i have is how does Unity collect revenue from my game, do i need to manually transfer? Do i have to learn "Unity Finance" as i'd learn paying my taxes or something?

Anyways, any suggestions or help is deeply appreciated, although i cant guarantee a quick response, because, well, College.

Edited: Silly punctuation error

 

[aereton]

Quoting the

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Unity does not charge any additional fees to what is already outlined in your order with us.

We do not charge on a per-title basis and you do not pay royalties, or pay revenue share, even for games and applications made with the Personal Edition (free) version.

Unity also does not charge an additional annual fee, or maintenance fee for using our Editor outside of our

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licensing costs.

As you can see, there is no revenue to share with Unity. So as soon as you start earning more than $100k you will have to upgrade your license from the free Personal license which is a simple per person subscription cost.
See

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under "Financial Thresholds"

There are almost no limitations on the type of content you can do with Unity. Only gambling software is prohibited.

In your situation, I would start out with the free Personal license, and when you do earn money by selling your game, you will be able to upgrade your license appropriately.

 

[GNVE]

There are probably a few reasons that Unity is not widely used. The biggest is that most game devs aren't real programmers. Most started doing this as a hobby project and many have little to no programming experience.
And since most just want to make a simple story Ren'py will suffice. The help is also good because so many people in this space are using it. Lastly I think that Python is one of the easiest languages to learn relatively speaking.

But if you are comfortable with Unity and/or are willing to learn than it is just a valid a choice as any other. And as your game is complex as you say it might be the better choice even. I know I have one or two game ideas that would not work in Ren'Py or at least be very clunky. (although in my case I'd need a programmer to help me).

 

[WalkingCrow]

Heya Lali,

GNVE I agree with you and the python (even though that one is durn hard). I dev SFW in 2D mobile unity, and get miffed by the coders on the forums who say "well you have to learn some code, or you cant do anything decent unless you know C.". I detest C#. I mean really, C# is as hard as mandarin. That coded language may be established, yet, its just Fortran glorified.

The best thing is to get in Unity and just mess around.

*whisper* I don't even focus on code at first. I just play or learn a new 2D physic, until something pops.

Unity learn (also free) is the bomb if you get stuck. Github is kicking ass as a development share tool, and don't forget there are free assets in the unity store, so you can solo and play a bit with an already developed tool. Or if you are willing to drop 20$ or so on your project, it opens even more opportunities. And some of those $ assets come with individuals who will back up their product with their own skills.

I am sure you can make one of those engines *cough* pervy.

Store aside, my advice is, unique engine and a little animation, win, period. Look at angry birds. Ok maybe don't look at angry birds on this site. Hey, why hasn't anyone here perverted angry birds yet? Get those ecchi girls flyin folks. heh.

Animation is still a bit rough in Unity. I cant begin to tell you the times I have crashed/cried cause C# is antiquated and not built to animate.

Sounds like you have the inspiration to make something new, so maybe embrace artistry over code and create the next greatest story/RPG if that's what you want!

When you feel passion, ignore the rules, become samurai, draw your sword and just go for it.

p.s. if I offended any C# coders, I have nothing but respect for your wizardry. Total Truth.

 

[Tompte]

Most of the Unity games i have downloaded from here are asian/japanese and heavily censored, but i dont know if that's a coincidence or it actually has something to do with Unity itself and the reason behind Western publishers avoiding the engine.

It's not a coincidence. It's a legal requirement in Japan. Unless you intend to sell your game in Japan, China or the Middle East you should be perfectly fine. You are totally in the clear for making adult games with Unity. Like you said, other people are already doing it with no issues. I am is doing it as well.

I'm not aware of any Western publishers actively avoiding Unity for any legal or TOS reasons. It basically comes down to how much money a company is willing to pay for a third-party engine. If you're a small company, Unity is pretty ideal. If you're a major publisher or a game company expecting to sell games in the hundreds of millions, you may not be as inclined to share a piece of that pie with Unity. The license is also per seat, so more developers add to the ongoing expense and it adds up quickly.

In my opinion, it's all about perspective, really. On this forum you're going to find mostly hobbyists with limited programming experience, with a few exceptions. Discussions here tend to be about tools that make your life easy, and not so much about code or game development in of itself. The post above compared a programming language to Mandarin, which I would call hyperbolic, but nevertheless it's a good example of the general attitude on here. So most advice you get will naturally try to steer you towards the quickest shortcut to making a game. It's just the nature of this forum in my opinion. If you identify as a hobbyist and don't really care about the journey, by all means, take their advice.

However, if you know how to program in any of the C-style languages, or is willing to learn, you can just download Unity and get started right away and it's honestly pretty great. It does everything you need, really. And it's technically "free" while you're learning and as long as you're making small potatoes.

Finally, I'll add one thing about Unity. They do keep an eye on who are using their engine. For instance, if you accidentally made like the next Vampire Survivors and made a bunch of money on steam, Unity WILL make sure you've payed your license. They would basically send you a stern email and a bill. They don't track your every move or anything but their licensing enforcement is quite good.

 

[GNVE]

In my opinion, it's all about perspective, really. On this forum you're going to find mostly hobbyists with limited programming experience, with a few exceptions. Discussions here tend to be about tools that make your life easy, and not so much about code or game development in of itself. The post above compared a programming language to Mandarin, which I would call hyperbolic, but nevertheless it's a good example of the general attitude on here. So most advice you get will naturally try to steer you towards the quickest shortcut to making a game. It's just the nature of this forum in my opinion. If you identify as a hobbyist and don't really care about the journey, by all means, take their advice.

However, if you know how to program in any of the C-style languages, or is willing to learn, you can just download Unity and get started right away and it's honestly pretty great. It does everything you need, really. And it's technically "free" while you're learning and as long as you're making small potatoes.

I agree with your analysis that most people here are hobbyists myself very much included. I disagree with the rest of your analysis.

- Sure I can bust out the compressor hose and air powered screwdriver for a single screw and yes those are the best tools you can get. But maybe a screwdriver would have been a better fit. Programming (as anything else in life) is not about working hard but working smart. Dismissing the easy tools as not real game development is a bad argument. If you take that logic to the extreme you aught to be recommending people to just learn machine code or even binary itself.

I have seen several programmers with experience in the C languages still using and recommending Ren'Py and Twine because it does for what they need it to do for the game they are developing.

- Second reason is stepping stones. The C languages are just harder to learn than some other programming languages. You are arguing that swimming should be learned by jumping into a rough sea. A complete novice to programming might be best off learning how to make a few somewhat complex excel sheets, playing a game that teaches the basics of programming or use a visual programming tool using blocks of code. It doesn't teach coding as such but teaches the programming mindset.

Even if your ultimate goal is to make it in the industry it still pays off to have more than one programming language under your belt and to start off with something easy.

 

[WalkingCrow]

Even if your ultimate goal is to make it in the industry it still pays off to have more than one programming language under your belt and to start off with something easy.

Yea it does. I will say though that my girl and I are making a SFW game in unity that is about to put subway surfers to shame. NSFW, This is my true passion of hobby (gets out the air tools and jumps into the deep blue, funny ). Been developing a toy now for a year or so and its bloody good imo. I'm just really new here and still exploring.

The thing about programming your toy is, get it laid into unity and then go out to fiver and find yourself a brilliant coder. Fiver offers a really nice protection platform. We found one in Greece and he is brill. And guess what....

Neither of us are coding our toy. We focus on mechanics and art development, just dishing it out piecemeal to him. At like 10-35$ per set. We then take that code (his is way way better than either of us can do) and slam it in. And like I said above, fiver protects us. Stealing on that sight is treated very severely, even all around the world.

I got all caught up with my struggles with C# that I kinda strayed off topic here. my bad.

As for Unity and adult material there is nothing in the EULA yet. However, your true issue is with apple and the game app stores. As long as you keep it low key, like here in the 95, develop away.

Illusion has used unity to publish on steam. Like two or three of them. So, they are breaking ground out there.

This genre of toy is so new that, I doubt anyone will look at it till an adult toy makes real money. And isn't that always the case. So break the mold Lali. Be a cowboy and go for it. That is what I am about to do. I wanna play your toy! Can I help?

 

[miyuki25]

One thing worth noting is that (while I doubt this is particularly enforced) the Unity Asset Store EULA does explicitly prohibit the use of any asset obtained on the store for pornographic purposes.

See

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You agree that no modification or use of those Assets shall[...](d) be defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar, or offensive[...].

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I will disagree that C# is particularly difficult to learn, and it's certainly not antiquated (though Unity itself implements a slightly modified version which is a few years out of date, but this will be changing). Most issues you run into with Unity are quirks of the Unity engine itself rather than issues with C#, but the forums etc. are pretty active and usually somebody else has already encountered the issue and found a fix/workaround. Additionally, the popularity of both Unity and C# also means that there are a great deal of tutorials and videos covering how to do any beginner or intermediate uses you could think of, and some even cover more advanced areas too.

 

[GNVE]

I will disagree that C# is particularly difficult to learn, and it's certainly not antiquated (though Unity itself implements a slightly modified version which is a few years out of date, but this will be changing). Most issues you run into with Unity are quirks of the Unity engine itself rather than issues with C#, but the forums etc. are pretty active and usually somebody else has already encountered the issue and found a fix/workaround. Additionally, the popularity of both Unity and C# also means that there are a great deal of tutorials and videos covering how to do any beginner or intermediate uses you could think of, and some even cover more advanced areas too.

I'm talking about degrees of difficulty and C# is definitely more difficult than Python. It is not (just) about having access to good tutorials and libraries (both of which have plenty of) but also about how readable the code is and how much fluff you need to get it working.
For instance Python is often derided for using indentation rather than brackets {}/[]/() to show dependencies (or whatever it is actually called). But every example code I have looked at programmers still use indentation to show to themselves where they are in the code. Python is written to be human readable and that matters. That is why I recommend it as a good introduction. It will help people get into the habit of coding without a lot of the frustrations of other code bases. Once they are good at it they have an easier time transitioning to less forgiving/more precise/less readable languages.

 

[miyuki25]

Eh, I'll take your word for it, I've always found the way python is written to be highly ambiguous and hence both confusing and hard to read for exactly that same reason. You can also write C# in a similar way if you desire anyway, so I don't really see the advantage.