Unity Technologies Outlines Proposed Changes To Its Highly-Criticized Runtime Fees
Earlier this week, Unity Technologies finally responded to the intense backlash that it received over its new Unity runtime fees. The company offered a general apology and promised that they’ll be making changes to the policy in an effort to appease the video game development community. The company has now outlined proposed changes to the controversial fees and apologized once again for their hasty decision.
“I am sorry,” wrote Unity President Marc Witten. “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.”
While the company has put its foot down with the additional fees, it’s willing to compromise by doubling the revenue limit to $200,000, removing runtime fees from Unity Personal plans, as well as the requirement to display the “Made with Unity” splash screen in Unity-made games.
The studio also assured developers that they won’t be charging runtime fees for games that make less than $1 million a year and will be giving Pro and Enterprise subscribers a choice between being charged per installation or giving the company 2.5% shares in their revenue from a game, with all data being self-reported. They also made the policy non-retroactive.
“The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond,” the company explained. “Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity. We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version.”
So far, the community’s reaction seems to be that of resigned acceptance, which for Unity Technologies is infinitely better than outright hostility.
Here is an open letter to our community:
https://t.co/qadAWzdGkb— Unity (@unity) September 22, 2023
