Symptoms:
- I want to know what an Extension Asset license covers.
- I want to know what a Multi Entity license covers.
- I want to know what a Single Entity license covers.
- I want to buy an asset but I see two license purchase options. Which one should I choose?
- I want to understand the type of license I am purchasing.
- What is an Extension Asset?
Resolution:
As indicated in the Asset Store EULA terms, assets can have three different license types. Using the links below, jump to the section on the license type you want to know more about:
Extension Assets
Any asset found under the Tools category falls under a license type collectively known as Extension Assets.
If you are buying an Extension Asset, you are required to purchase one seat per user who has access to the raw asset files.
When purchasing an Extension Asset, you can change the quantity via the shopping cart. This number represents the number of seats/ copies. The asset’s cost is per seat:
If you already own the Extension Asset but need to purchase more seats, you can do so via your Unity ID or directly via the Asset Store. See the article, 'How do I purchase additional Asset seats for my Organization?', for more details.
Single Entity & Multi Entity assets
Providing the asset you're purchasing does not fall into the Extension Asset license type, you are given two purchase options depending on which license you need:
- Single Entity - If an asset is not categorized as Editor Extension, Scripting, or Services and the END-USER purchaser of the license is a company or other business, then it can be shared with any employee within that company or business. This option is typically for a single user or single company.
- Multi Entity - This covers parent, child, and sister companies, as well as contractors on a project. Multiple people across different branches of a company can use and access the raw asset files.
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Example: Jessi works for Unity as a digital artist and wants to use a 3D model she's found on the Unity Asset Store in her project. Since Jessi is working on this project with her direct team which consists of 10 people, all working at Unity, she only needs to purchase a Single Entity license type. Later, Jessi receives a message from Carlos, a software engineer at Ziva Dynamics, (a Unity-owned company, but a separate entity) asking for a seat to use the asset she purchased. In order for Jessi to share the asset with Carlos, she needs to purchase a Multi Entity license instead. |
More information:
Comments
38 comments
Please provide more details for standard assets. The question is about all assets, but the answer, for some reason, is only about Editor Extensions. Can a team, working on one project, use one license for an Asset purchased from the Asset Store?
Hi Yuriy,
You can use one purchase of an asset with your Team, so long as you are all based on the same site. Editor Extensions are the exception to this rule, as they require one license per seat.
Please see this passage from our Asset Store Terms of Service for further clarification:
2.3
EXCEPT FOR EDITOR EXTENSION ASSETS, END-USER is granted a license to install and use Assets on an unlimited number of computers provided that these computers are either all (i) physically located at a single physical location ("Site") belonging to END-USER, or (ii) laptops belonging to END-USER which have been made available by END-USER to its employees that are employed at the same Site provided all such computers have appropriately licensed Unity software installed. Consequently, any Asset may only be used at particular Site or on computers assigned to END-USER's employees employed at the same Site and may only be moved to another Site subject to prior written approval from Licensor. THIS CLAUSE 2.3 DOES NOT APPLY TO ASSETS THAT IN THE UNITY ASSET STORE ARE CATEGORIZED UNDER THE HEADING "EDITOR EXTENSIONS."
After purchase of multiple Editor Extension licenses - How can I allow team members to download and use it without giving them my account password?
Hi Tomasz,
If you have purchased multiple Editor Extension license seats for your team, you can distribute the download files between these users. We would recommend you do this via a file sharing system, such as Dropbox or Google Drive.
:)
How does this work for a developer publisher relationship where another person/persons at a different site would have access to your project, but not actually be using the assets. Are you still required to purchase extra licenses in that case?
Alternatively if you have a team of two, say a coder and an artist, do you need multiple licenses of code based assets that the artist will never touch?
I am currently a solo developer with Unity Plus, and have that setup on a Mac running Bootcamp. Functionally I have a Mac and Windows computer, in accord with EULA for Unity Plus, allowing it to be installed on a Primary (my Windows) and Secondary (my MacOS) computer. However the Asset Store EULA seems to conflict with that. Section 2.4 calls out "per computer", not "per seat". Which is also in conflict with the wording used on the asset pages themselves, which use the "per seat" wording.
By the wording used, I would need to buy a licence for both my Mac and Windows side for each Editor Extensions like PlayMaker and Amplify Shader.
If Unity intended this to mean Per Seat (as defined there) then they should have done so in the Asset Store EULA and have it align with the Unity3D EULA. But they don't. It reads Per Computer.
https://unity3d.com/legal/terms-of-service/software
After buying multiple assets for distributing to the team: how can I tell how many license we have? The unity download manager doesn't show that.
There's basically no difference between having bought an asset once or multiple times (except paying more money). So it's hard to keep track of the licenses.
We are a team of two and I've purchased an extra seat for an editor extension. I can't see how to assign this seat to other team members. There is no page to view which asset has how many licensed seats available/in use.
This whole 'license per seat' system is hard to understand. Please fix this...
We are a team of 10-20 (varying over time) and two people need to use an editor extension. This editor extension is not a pure extension but needs to be committed with the rest of the project in source control. How many licenses should we purchase? 2 or 20? Or 25 just to be sure not to be in breach of the EULA in case we bring on some extra people at crunch?
Is there some way to keep track of this using the unity editor or do we now need to create an excel sheet or something to keep track of who uses which license ourselves?
The unclear EULA and the lack of a way to keep track of licenses will probably result in us not usnig the asset store at all so please fix this ASAP.
It would make sense if editor extensions were only that, an extension of the editor that could exist only locally on one developer's computer. But many of them need to include runtime components and must be pushed to version control along with the project. And the license does not explain how to handle this.
I would also accept a solution where it was possible to purchase an "enterprise version" of an editor extension for say 10 times the price which allowed unlimited seats. Then we could safely put it in the project regardless of how many people later join the team.
Hello Mikael.
Thanks for reaching out to us.
I'll try to help as best as I can. Anything which is an editor extension and requires one seat per user, is written on the asset page. So if it doesn't say this then you can share the asset amongst your team.
Typically the asset store accounts are set up in a way that whoever makes the purchase has access to the asset. If you have purchased more than one license for an editor extension, there is no way to assign these as seats to the developers accounts. They need to be shared manually via Dropbox or some other means of file sharing.
I realize this isn't the most intuitive process. We are always trying to make the asset store easier to use for everyone so I am happy to pass this along as feedback to the store team.
Also, If you would like to continue this discussion feel free to reach out to me and my team on the following email
support@unity3d.com
I hope this information helps you.
@Derek, thanks for taking the time to answer!
My question was not at all about how to share assets, it was entirely about the EULA. I have asked support, I have asked our Unity rep and I have asked here, but getting answers about the EULA on this or other issues seems entirely impossible. Whenever I have had a question about EULA there is some magic handwaving answering some other question that I didn't ask, kind of like above where I am instructed on how to share files between team members instead of answering the direct question about how many licenses I should get. I'm giving up, as it stands now, I will not touch seat licensed assets at all.
The solution seems simple to me, either remove single seat licensing entirely (from the publisher forum it seems publishers are not too happy about them either) or fix the EULA and add an enterprise license so companies can "buy once and then forget".
EDIT:
Also, it would help immensely if you could let the EULA state what it means to "use" an editor extension. As the asset store allows single seat licenes to force their way into the runtime repository of a project, it would be great if the EULA could state if this is excluded from "usage". Otherwise a single seat asset that puts its dirty tentacles in the actual runtime code of a project will taint the whole team with needing a license, regardless if they even know the "editor extension" exists or not.
If an editor extension was only an editor extension then I would have no problem at all with single seat licensing. But unfortunately they
1. must be included in the project and can't be installed in the editor like plugins in any other tool I have ever used, so will be pushed unless developers have the discipline to add their path to .gitignore
2. are allowed to also put code in non-editor assemblies, making the .gitignore solution impossible anyway
Just wanted to say thank you to Mikael Hogstrom. You speak the truth for many of us.
Mikael Högström has a very good point and I would like to know the answer to that as well.
Take the asset Odin for example with it's description below:
"Odin puts your Unity workflow on steroids, making it easy to build powerful and advanced user-friendly editors for you and your entire team."
Odin needs to be added to source control in order to fulfill it's purpose so there is no way for it to only be kept on a single developer's machine.
If the team has 4 developers, 1 artist and 1 game designer but only one developer is actually using Odin for the development (other members are consumers to say so) how many licenses are needed? One four, six?
Thank you in advance for clarifying this.
"Unfortunately, Unity is not a law firm and cannot provide legal advice"
This cracks me up :) If I need a law firm to answer my very simple question about how many licenses to purchase then your EULA might need some clearing up.
Hello Mikael,
I'm sorry for the delay in my response time. I appreciate you following up with clarification. I'll do my best to help clear up any concerns you may have regarding this topic.
I thought I would give you an answer once and for all since there seems to be a lot of people who like some concrete answer of what counts as "Using" an Asset.
As stated at the top of the article "If you are buying an Extension Asset, you will be required to purchase multiple copies (seats) for the Asset if multiple users will have access to it."
Since there is a lot of confusion around this statement, allow me to clarify. This means that you should have the same number of licenses as there are team members who are able to modify the Asset or use the source code for the Asset.
Every team member who has access to the Asset will need a license for the editor extension.
To clarify further, It is impossible for a legal contract to anticipate every hypothetical scenario. Since some people think that their situation is the exception to our EULA at that point we can only ask them to seek their own legal council.
I hope this information helps you.
Feel free to get back to me if you have any follow up questions.
Hi Derek,
Thanks for getting back on this issue. That actually clears things up. So in my case that would have meant 20-25 licenses and for Oliver above 6 licenses. That makes editor extensions a lot less attractive and it seems right that my team avoided them.
I think Unity has made a big mistake with the editor extension category on the asset store by allowing assets on there that are not pure editor extensions. In my mind a pure editor extension would be something that a user of the editor could have on their machine and was not needed to be pushed to repos or included in builds. If that was the case then it would make sense to charge per seat. Currently though, almost no "editor extension" works that way, almost all of them requires to include something either in the repo or even in the final build itself.
For a small organization it might make sense to still use them as it is possible to keep track of those licenses over time. But in a large organization it would be a nightmare.
Personally, I will stay away from all editor extensions until there is either proper tooling to keep track of licenses that can warn me if I am in the wrong or the EULA changes to not allow anything but pure editor extensions in that category, in which case they would not sneak their way into a repo that can be accessed by any coworker.
Hello Mikael.
Thanks for your reply. I'm glad to hear that clears things up. I completely understand where you are coming from. For some entities it just isn't worth it.
The idea of Extension Assets and the Asset store in general, is to give those developers who do not have the resources that bigger companies have to develop. The bigger companies' might have more of a budget for this or have their in house devs who can implement this themselves without the use of the Asset.
I respect not everyone has the luxury of this and I know the store team are always happy to hear how to make things better for our users. I will be more than happy to pass this along as feedback.
I appreciate your understanding and thanks for your sharing your thoughts.
All the best.
Hi Derek,
First, I would like to thank you for ignoring me until now, that takes lots of professionalism.
Now, with that out of the way, you said to Mikael :
"This means that you should have the same number of licenses as there are team members who are able to modify the Asset or use the source code for the Asset."
I am a developer, my partner is a UI/UX Designer. I want her to have access to the game we are creating so she installs Unity, logs with her Unity credentials and pulls the project that is hosted on git.
As I have bought Odin I decide to use it in the project. The way Odin works is that source code needs to be added to source control in order for it to serve it's purpose and work as intended (as Mikael Högström said, these assets should not be actually listed as Editor Extensions)
My partner, a humble UI/UX Designer could but is not "able to modify the Asset", nor "use the source code for the Asset". She will probably not even notice the existence of Odin inside the project.
Now, here comes the question, I need a straight answer, not an evasive one that only reveals the lack of grip on the subject.
In the situation listed above, do I need to purchase one or two seats?
Hi Oliver.
Thanks for reaching back out to me.
Since you are still unsure of how many licenses you need. I will help as best as I can directly to you. :)
If your colleague has access to the Asset then they will require to purchase a license for the Asset.
The best way to interpret how many licenses you need is to ask yourself this question "Does your colleague have access to the Asset?" Can they use it?
To clarify further, It doesn't matter if they will notice the Asset or not. If they have access, then they need a license.
I know you feel that some Assets should not classed as editor extensions and I can appreciate thats the sentiments of a lot of users here. However, the publisher can choose to submit these assets as editor extensions and the curation team reviewing the process deem this appropriate.
like I said previously, I've passed this feedback along to the store team.
I hope this helps. If you have any follow up questions, please feel free to get back to me.
This indeed helps, thank you for the detailed and concise answer, Derek.
With this information, in the future, I will be a lot more wary before purchasing Editor Extensions.
I strongly believe that Unity is losing potential users, users that could turn into customers eventually. Non-technical people involved in projects that use these "mandatory in source control Editor Extensions" will be asked to refrain from installing Unity unless absolutely necessary.
HI Oliver.
You're welcome. I appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback, so thank you.
I wish you all the best.
Just to chime in, because I feel you could pass along all the feedback you can get on this topic. To quote you Derek:
"The idea of Extension Assets and the Asset store in general, is to give those developers who do not have the resources that bigger companies have to develop. The bigger companies' might have more of a budget for this or have their in house devs who can implement this themselves without the use of the Asset."
I think this statement is wrong.
Even with all the money in the world it does not make sense to try to copy functionality of an asset on the store. That seems like a huge waste of effort. If the asset is 100% what you want, why would creating it again be a good solution?
Especially for the bigger companies it is incredibly hard to manage all the licenses required for shifting team members. It's not really about the money per se, its about what makes sense. I think for a 200+ company this would require to have a Unity Asset store License Manager as a formal role, just to manage the licenses required. Think about how non sensical that is. At least add the option to have a per project license and increase the price accordingly. This way we could spend the effort on making games instead of maintaining spreadsheets with who owns which asset licence for what. Please. let's get back to the real world.
@Sebastiaan
What you say has so much sense.
Regarding asset managing, they just changed the Asset Store menu - Licenses that showed the number of seats per assets and allowed to buy more is now Assign Seats that will take you to Organization where you will be able to assign seats. For me it doesn’t work right now but from what I understand they are working on it and previously acquired assets will be shown there in the future.
Hi Sebastien & Oliver.
Thanks for your input.
I can completely see the point that you both are conveying and I appreciate your feedback.
In my opinion, It does depend on the situation you are in if the way the licensing benefits you or not. Nonetheless, this seems like a huge pain point for many users like yourself.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that it will be changed any time soon but I'm glad to hear users speaking up about it and I'll make sure to pass this along.
Again, thanks for your feedback.
All the best,
Derek.
What if I'm developing a moddable game? Am I right that I can buy an Asset (I've already done), compile it and distribute as a non-modifiable library as a part of modding SDK?
It's almost unreal to buy a single copy of asset for each developer in case of publicly available moddable game - unlimited money needed:) And I understand that Asset developer doesn't want to distribute theirs sources unlimitedly. So is compiled distribution allowed?
Hi Konstantin,
Thanks for contacting us.
In order to guide you with your question, I have created a ticket for you #861548. Customer Service will assist you over the ticket. You will receive a reply in the next couple of days.
Thank you. Have a nice day.
I bought 2, I can only assign 1.
If I can only assign 1, then this is very silly.
Hi Eric B.
Thanks for contacting us.
Apologies for your inconvenience.
I have created a ticket for you #906405. Customer Service team will assist you over the ticket. You will receive a reply in the next couple of days.
Best regards, Rory.
This is a colossal mistake. The industry standards are: you license the the right to build and distribute libraries into your software. You purchase a SEPERATE license for client tools, if at all.
Generally, client tools are free, since senior developers are capable of writing their own, and don't feel inclined to do business with anyone who has wacky ideas about nickel-and-diming us out of business.
I'd have to question the leadership of anyone who doesn't see a problem here.
Hi Max.
Derek from Unity Customer Service here.
I appreciate you taking the time to write us your feedback. From what I can see in your message, I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "client tools" with this are you referring to the editor extensions themselves?
If so, since many of the Extension Assets on our store are made by 3rd party independent developers, we have no say in how much we sell them for. The developers conjure up the idea for a tool and decide that the Unity Community would benefit from this, so they use our store as the platform to sell it on.
We're slowly working different tools into the software itself but unfortunately many remain produced by Unity users making tools in their spare time.
If you like, I can create us a ticket for us to continue to chat about this topic so we can make sure your feedback is heard and taken onboard. In which case, I would appreciate further clarification.
All the best
Derek.
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