Unity is doing away with its controversial “runtime fees” effective immediately. They’re returning to the “place-based subscription model” that previously funded the game creation tool.
“After extensive consultation with our community, customers, and partners, we have made the decision to immediately cancel the Runtime fee for our gaming customers. Non-gaming customers are not affected by this change” says the ad from Unity CEO Matt Bromberg.
“I’ve had the opportunity to engage with many of you over the past three months, and I’ve heard time and again that you want a strong Unity and that you understand that price increases are a necessary part of what allows us to invest in game development. But those price increases don’t have to come in new and controversial forms. We want to deliver value at a fair price in a way that you can continue to feel comfortable building your business with Unity as your partner for the long term.”
The runtime fees were immediately canceled, but other changes are coming when Unity 6 launches later this year. Unity Personal will remain free, and the revenue cap at which the fee is charged will double from $100,000 to $200,000, and the “Made With Unity” splash screen will be optional in Unity 6. Unity Pro and Enterprise subscription prices and revenue thresholds will change on January 1, 2025.
Unity’s runtime fees charged developers money—usually around $0.20—every time their game was installed, and were applied retroactively to all games that used the engine. This means that if you had released a game using Unity five years ago, you would suddenly be charged every time a player installed the game. Tracking install data would also be based on estimates, with narrow ability to detect “fraudulent” installs.
The change was immediately controversial, with several developers, like Among Us creators Innersloth, planning to abandon the platform. Nobody liked the fees, nobody liked the potential for abuse, and nobody liked the fact that Unity could change its terms retroactively—which meant there was no guarantee that if you took on a multi-year development project using the toolset, you wouldn’t end up paying significantly more than you expected because Unity had changed the rules in the meantime.
Unity immediately began to retract or clarify the changes, excluding Unity Personal from the fees and allowing developers using older versions of Unity to remain on their existing terms. These changes did little to composed developer concerns.
Shortly after, Unity CEO (and former EA CEO) John Riccitiello retired, effective immediatelyMatt Bromberg was named the up-to-date CEO of Unity in May of this year.
Speaking to Game creatorBromberg called the changes part of a plan to “become a fundamentally different company.” I don’t know if that will be enough to win back developers’ trust. I wouldn’t bet my business on it.
