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Unity, the company behind the Unity game engine and development tools, announced a new pricing plan for using its products this week. The response from many indie game developers has been extremely negative, and since then Unity has backtracked slightly on their plans.
In a blog post earlier this week, Unity announced a change in pricing for its Unity Runtime code that's included with every game that's made with the Unity engine:
We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.
The fees would kick in after a certain amount of revenues and game installs take place, according to the company:
- Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs.
- Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.
The new fees will begin on January 1, 2024. However, this decision has come under heavy fire by many game developers. Eurogamer contacted a number of developers who have used the Unity engine. One of them, Dan Marshall, stated he was going to stop using Unity for games like his own Lair of the Clockwork God and use Epic's Unreal Engine instead. He stated:
How this is being tracked is super vague and feels half-thought-through. It seems open to review-bombing exploits, but in a way that actually costs developers. If someone buys a game on Steam and installs in on three machines, are Devs liable for three payments? If so, that sucks. Gamepass is suddenly a massive headache... the list goes on.
Brandon Sheffield, the head of Necrosoft Games, posted a blog entry called The Death of Unity, where he offered an example of how a game made largely by a one person team, Vampire Survivors, and released for a cheap price, will be cut down by these install fees:
Vampire Survivor's edge was their price, now doing something like that is completely unfeasible. Imagine releasing a game for 99 cents under the personal plan, where Steam takes 30% off the top for their platform fee, and then unity takes 20 cents per install, and now you're making a maximum of 46 cents on the dollar. As a developer who starts a game under the personal plan, because you're not sure how well it'll do, you're punished, astoundingly so, for being a breakout success.
Unity has since tried to do some damage control. In a post on its official X (formerly Twitter) account, it stated this per-install pricing change will only affect a small percentage of the developers that use Unity:
Today, a large majority of Unity Editor users are currently not paying anything and will not be affected by this change. The Unity Runtime fee will not impact the majority of our developers. The developers who will be impacted are generally those who have successful games and are generating revenue way above the thresholds we outlined in our blog.
The post added that the install fee will not be retroactive and will only affect games that are installed starting January 1, 2024. Axios has also received some further clarifications, including that a game will only be charged for its first install on a device, rather than charging multiple times if a game is deleted and reinstalled.
Games that are released for charity would not be included in the new per-install fee, according to Unity. But what about games that are released via Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass? Unity claims that in that case "fees are charged to distributors, which in the Game Pass example would be Microsoft."
So far, Microsoft has not yet commented on this move by Unity to push extra fees to the company if an indie Xbox Game Pass title gets downloaded millions of times.
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