Summary
- Unity has reversed its proposed Runtime Fee changes after facing criticism from developers and a mass protest by over 500 studios worldwide.
- The new policies include no fees for games using previous builds of the Unity engine and a higher revenue cap for Unity Personal users.
- Unity Pro and Enterprise users will now only be subject to fees if their games generate at least one million in revenue over 12 months, and the revenue share model will be self-reported by developers.
Unity has just announced the reversal of the changes it proposed with its new Runtime Fee. Unity's new licensing model was announced on September 12, and it would charge developers for how many times their games were downloaded after they hit a certain milestone in revenue.
The change was almost immediately criticized by developers due to being invasive and prone to manipulation, and a few days later hundreds of game devs joined to protest Unity. Over 500 studios from across the world joined the movement, switching off Unity Ads and all in-game monetization in their titles, which directly affected Unity’s revenue sources, and prompted the company to review its policies.
Now, Unity made good on its previous promise to reverse the Runtime Fee policy. In a blog post written by the lead of Unity Create, Marc Whitten, the company unveiled new, less invasive policies. Now, games using previous builds of the Unity engine won’t need to pay any fees, as long as they keep using that version, which solves a huge pain point that developers had about Unity previously changing its agreement with them. Also, no games built using Unity Personal will be charged Runtime Fees, and the yearly revenue cap for using this tier will rise from $100,000 to $200,000.
Creators who use Unity Pro and Enterprise will also see some positive changes. According to the new announcement, games would need to get at least one million in revenue during 12 months to be subjected to any fees. Unity will no longer track downloads on their own, and it will give developers the choice to either pick a 2.5% revenue share model or a calculated amount based on “new people engaging” with the game monthly. In both cases, the numbers will be self-reported by the devs.
In the post, Whitten also affirmed that Unity was sorry for not incorporating feedback from the developers before and that it would work hard to earn the trust of the community again. He also announced that Unity will host a live chat later today at 4:00 pm ET/1:00 pm PT to answer questions.
Unity’s changes are certain to appease some of the developers. However, it’s still too early to know whether trust in the company will be fully restored, as several devs have previously announced that they won’t be using Unity in their following products. For instance, the devs of Facepunch Studios have affirmed that a possible Rust 2 will not use Unity, as the company does not have their trust anymore, and it would be a mistake to use the engine again.