Unity's Newly Announced Install Fee Policy Already Causing Disharmony Amongst Devs | Push Square

19.09.2023 - 00:39 / pushsquare.com / Unity Runtime / Stephen Totilo

Unity Technologies, developer of the cross-platform game engine Unity, today announced a policy that will sting developers with a fee based on truly wild things like how many times a game has been installed. This one's likely to develop quickly, but we'll catch you up on the story so far.

In a blog post (spotted by Game Developer), the Unity Runtime Fee was unveiled, which would hit game devs with a financial cost «based upon each time an end user downloads a qualifying game». Apparently, this is because the Unity Engine is comprised of two substantial software components, the Unity Editor and Unity Runtime. When an end user (the player) downloads a game, this Unity Runtime code gets installed, and now the developer of that code wants to get paid for it.

Unity Technologies boldly declared: «Effective 1st January, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November.»

Some caveats would allegedly «avoid impacting those who have yet to find scale, meaning they don’t need to pay the fee until they have reached significant success», and you can see what that looks like below:

Stephen Totilo of Axios is tackling the situation in real-time and reports Unity leadership has since «regrouped», and we'd imagine some level of walk-back is imminent. There are still plenty of questions in need of answers.

As you can no doubt imagine, this entire debacle has been a wild ride for the people who make the games we love. We've collected a small smattering of a much larger and ongoing discussion as we wait to see what shakes out once the dust clears.

Khayl Adam is the second best video game journalist Australia has ever produced, and his ambitions of world domination have (thus far) been curbed by the twin siren songs of strategy games and CRPGs. He has always felt an affinity for the noble dachshund, the best kind of dog.

I really don't understand what the hell Unity was thinking with this move.

Well i guess that unity is probably going to be dropped by devs. To be honest i've never been a massive fan of the engine and i always felt that games like the golf club series always suffered because the engine just seems to be rigid and not very flexible. I'm not a developer or a programmer so i can only speak from a gamers perspective but whenever i see that unity logo i always sigh.

What I can’t believe is that it applies to all games currently out (not just new games yet to be released), it also applies to demos if they have the option to carry over to a full game, and for every recurring install (so if you delete and then reinstall later it’s a new fee, if