After doing a terrible job of communicating a controversial new pricing scheme (which culminated in an allegedly self-inflicted bomb threat), Unity Technologies has again apologised for the "confusion and angst" caused and walked back some of its terms. Looking at responses from developers in the community, it doesn't seem like nearly enough.
Unity Reportedly Making Big Changes To Controversial Plan
18.09.2023 - 19:11 / gameranx.com / Marc Whitten
There was quite a bit of attention on the Unity engine last week. However, this attention was nothing pleasant for developers alongside the Unity company. If you recall, Unity announced it would change how it handles developers using its engine. Essentially, developers would be responsible for paying a fee to Unity if their games prove to be a success and result in widespread installations. However, since this proved to be incredibly disheartening for developers and has since caused a backlash, it looks like there are changes inbound.
Thanks to a report from Bloomberg, the publication managed to speak with Marc Whitten, an executive for Unity who is offering some insight into the current plan adjustments. These adjustments have not been officially unveiled to the public, and it’s apparently due to Unity ensuring partners are aware and on the same page. After all, the company doesn’t want to release a message that’s not clear and concise after the flack they received recently. At any rate, if proven to be accurate, we’ll see Unity limit fees up to 4%. This would go towards development studios that have managed to make over $1 million and that now installations counted towards the threshold won’t be retroactive. Apparently, there might even be a cap put into the plan as well.
If you don’t recall, the announcement last week was that Unity would charge developers a fee for the number of installations and money made from games developed using the Unity engine. The fees racked up quite a bit, and developers were vocal against the new plan. That sparked some developers to either announce that they would delist their games or move their projects onto another game engine altogether.
Lastly, the other change being made with Unity is that the company would not track installations themselves. Instead, they would rely on developers to report the data themselves. Again, this is nothing official quite yet, but according to Bloomberg’s report, this might come out official as soon as all the partners are on board with the new plans. With Unity typically used by indie development studios for more casual projects, it will be interesting to see if this new strategy and plan from Unity will prevent an exodus from the engine. Otherwise, we might see Unity start to really struggle with more of their clients using the engine and jumping ship to something entirely different like Unreal Engine. But for now, we’ll just have to wait and see what comes of the game engine in the future.
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