Last week, Unity rolled out a new look version of its controversial Runtime Fee in the wake of a seismic backlash from developers who felt the original policy represented an egregious act of betrayal for a myriad of reasons.
22.09.2023 - 18:21 / techradar.com / Marc Whitten / Unity Pro / Unity Create / Runtime Fee
The president of Unity Create, Marc Whitten, has published an open letter responding to the backlash over the recent Unity Runtime Fee announcement, and has outlined a number of changes that are going to be made to the policy before it’s enforced in 2024.
“I want to start with simply this: I am sorry,” Whitten wrote. “We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine.”
Explaining the changes, Whitten first confirmed that the Runtime Fee will no longer apply to Unity Personal and Unity Plus users. Runtime Fee aside, the annual revenue and funding limit for Personal is being increased from $100,000 to $200,000, and it will no longer be a requirement to use the “Made in Unity” splash screen — this will become optional.
Detailing the further alterations to the Runtime Fee, Whitten continued: “No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee.”
While the Runtime Fee will still apply to Unity Pro and Enterprise users, it will now only apply to games created with the next Long Term Support (LTS) releasing in 2024, so games that have already been shipped and projects currently in the works will not be affected unless they’re upgraded.
Furthermore, affected users will have the choice between paying a 2.5% revenue share or a calculated amount based on the amount of “unique initial engagements” on their game(s). They will pay whichever amount is the smallest, and both potential costs are calculated based on self-reported data.
Wrapping up the letter, Whitten added: “Thank you for caring as deeply as you do, and thank you for giving us hard feedback.”
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Last week, Unity rolled out a new look version of its controversial Runtime Fee in the wake of a seismic backlash from developers who felt the original policy represented an egregious act of betrayal for a myriad of reasons.
On Friday (September 22), game engine Unity announced that it was making changes to its controversial upcoming Runtime Fee, and developers have been sharing their thoughts on the amended policy.
Unity have announced that they're making changes to their "runtime fee" in response to overwhelming negative feedback. The key changes are that the fees no longer apply to developers using Unity Personal, and will only apply to developers using Unity Pro or Unity Enterprise who upgrade the next version of Unity which ships in 2024.
Unity has officially walked back on controversial monetisation plans for its popular game engine.
Last week, 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.
Next Up: Read Game Developer's interview with Unity Create President Marc Whitten , discussing the road to the changes below and what Unity has learned from the backlash surrounding the original Runtime Fee policy.
It was only a matter of time before Unity offered something in the way of a concession for the controversial install fee it recently unveiled to the horror of game developers. And while the company has offered an unambiguous apology for the way it initially planned to implement the runtime fee, it isn't backpedaling entirely.
Unity has done a 180 on a controversial new pricing scheme that users of its cross-platform game engine almost unanimously disparaged. A new pricing policy is still incoming, but it’s far less fraught for independent developers, many of whom threatened to leave the engine and platform behind rather than pay.
In an open letter to its community, Unity has revealed its reworked free structure and controversial runtime fee changes. Under the new structure, the Unity Personal edition will remain free and incur no runtime fee. The new cap before the fee starts has been increased from $100,000 to $200,000, and no game with under $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee. Interestingly, the new Runtime Fee will only apply to the next version of Unity that is shipping in 2024. Already shipped and current in-development projects will not be subject to the fee unless they upgrade to the 2024 version of Unity. In the post, Marc Whitten, leader of the Unity Create team apologized for what has transpired in recent weeks.
Unity has unveiled its planned changes to the controversial Runtime Fee policy that would charge developers fees on a per-install basis.
Re-Logic, the indie game developer and publisher behind the 2D sandbox title Terraria, has condemned the newly announced Unity Runtime Fee, and has announced that it is donating a substantial sum of money to two different open-source game engines, to help keep them “powerful and approachable for developers everywhere”.
Controversy at Unity seems to be the story that never ends at the moment. Though today it appears that the owners of the popular game engine may be about to concede, at least a little, on the Unity Runtime Fee announcement that set the developer world on fire last week.