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.
14.09.2023 - 10:29 / gamedeveloper.com / Runtime Fee
Engine maker Unity has acknowledged (but not apologized for) the "confusion and frustration" caused by the announcement of its new runtime fee policy and has attempted to address some of the development community's top questions and concerns.
In a statement posted to X, which comes two days after the company unveiled a new fee that will see creators charged per install after certain thresholds have been met, Unity sought to offer developers a salve in the form of a quick-fire FAQ.
The company began by reiterating the runtime fee "is very targeted" and will affect less than 10 percent of its customers. "Customers who will be impacted are generally those who have found a substantial scale in downloads and revenue and have reached both our install and revenue thresholds. This means a low (or no) fee for creators who have not found scale success yet and a modest one-time fee for those who have," reads the statement.
It added that runtime fees will only be levied against "new installs," emphasizing that it has now backtracked on its previous position of charging developers each time a person deleted and reinstalled a title–even on the same device.
Notably, the company added that developers are not responsible for paying a runtime fee on fraudulent install charges; trials, partial play demos, and automation installs; charity-related installs; and web and streaming games. As for how Unity will ensure developers aren't charged for those fraudulent installs, the company said it will "work directly" with creators on cases where fraud or botnets are suspected of malicious intent.
In a more robust FAQ on the Unity website, the company provided additional information relevant to developers. For starters, it explained it will leverage its own proprietary data model to collect the number of installs. That model will provide estimates of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project and will cover an invoice for all platforms.
It said that qualifying developers will be invoiced monthly based on the month's install data, and noted the Runtime Fee will be used to support the "continued investment" in the company's runtime code, which supports "billions of devices" every month.
Elaborating on who will be charged, Unity said the "entity that distributes the runtime" will be asked to foot the bill. In the case of charges incurred by subscription-based games–so titles on services like Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus, and Netflix Games–Unity said it will be invoicing the distributor, not the developer.
Despite Unity's attempt to quell the masses, it appears the vast majority of developers still aren't sold on the new policy–with many replying to the post with additonal questions that still haven't been
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.
A Unity representative claims the company pulled its terms of service (ToS) from Github because "views were so low."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
More than 500 developers have joined the protest against Unity's Runtime Fee policy by switching off monetization.