Unity hasn’t tossed out its new fee, but it has removed the most objected-to features.
just about everyone in the games business was mad at Unity over a new, retroactive per-install fee for games made with the engine. Unity developers raised troubling question after troubling question about the proposal: How would installs be counted? What if someone reinstalls a game over and over? What about cases where a developer could end up paying Unity more than they made from selling their game? After over a week of turmoil, Unity has announced that it’s walking back the most objectionable aspects of the fee.
In an “open letter” published today, Unity executive Marc Whitten apologized for the company’s errors and outlined the revised plan. Here’s the big stuff:
The new install fee (called a “Runtime Fee”) will not apply to games made with the Unity Personal or Plus plans, only the Pro and Enterprise plans.
The free Unity Personal plan was previously restricted to studios that made less than $100K in the past 12 months. That threshold has been increased to $200K.
The Runtime Fee won’t apply to games made on the current or older versions of Unity, unless the developer moves them onto the new version releasing next year or future versions.
Games which are subject to the Runtime Fee (they’ve made $1M in the past 12 months and have been installed more than 1M times) can opt for a 2.
