Unity recently released a blog post informing users of an update to its engine in the form of so-called “Runtime Fees”. These fees will charge developers whose games cross specific install and revenue thresholds – and they have generally been badly received.

So, today, I wanted to talk about what changes, what some of the concerns are, and why many developers, in both the Indie Dev and AAA spheres, are saying that Unity has lost their trust.

What are the changes?

Starting January 2024, those on the Unity Personal or Unity Plus licenses will have to pay a fee of 20 cents per install after a project crosses both $200,000 in revenue over 12 months and 200,000 total installs, resulting in at least $40 grand that devs will have to pay to be successful.

Pro and Enterprise users will pay a smaller per-install fee that scales downward with the number of installs over the initial threshold. “Pro” user fees will begin at 15 cents per install and scale down to as low as 0.02 cents per install, while “Enterprise” user fees begin at 12.5 cents per install and scale down to as low as 0.01 cents per install.

These fees will be charged on a monthly basis.

On top of that, the fees will also vary depending on what region a game is monetized in, so in countries like India, Personal and Plus users would owe 0.02 cents per install, Pro users would owe 0.01 cents per install, and Enterprise users would owe 0.005 cents per install.

Developers of Free-to-Play games “will have the option to offset this fee by adopting other Unity services, such as its LevelPlay advertising mediation service”, as GameDeveloper states in their article.

As for the reason that Unity made this change, Unity’s announcement attributed the fee to the ongoing development of Unity Runtime, the exec that players download with every game that enables games made in Unity to “work at scale”.

Previously, they haven’t charged anyone for Unity Runtime, yet, but they have created multiple plans that developers can sign into, which is common practice, I think.

This new fee, however, is not just poorly worded and not in-depth enough to lend itself to no miscommunications but it also screws over those developers that use Unity to create their games who end up being successful.

Concerns with this Plan

“Only 10% of developers may be affected by this change”

…or so Unity states.

But 10% of developers, including AAA and Indie devs, is a big number. Some of the concerns were that “install-bombers” may appear who would uninstall and reinstall games multiple times to screw developers they’re angry at over.

Initially, this was something that Stephen Totilo of Axios Gaming stated in this thread on X, the site formerly known as Twitter: If players delete a game and re-install it, that’s two charges. If they install a game on two devices, that’s two charges.

Since then, though, there have been some clarifications since Unity apparently met up again and discussed how the current proposition is prone to abuse. Totilo states here that Unity “regrouped” and apparently, demos “mostly” won’t trigger fees, devs are not on the hook for Game Pass, and apparently “only the initial installation of a game triggers a fee”… but that initial installation still counts twice if you end up installing a game on your Steam Deck on top of your PC.

Rami Ismail, a speaker, consultant and game dev, stated that if a game made $200K in revenue at a 50/50 publisher split, and you decided to support a charity bundle for Racial Justice, you’d end up with up to $60K debt.

Apparently, charity bundles are not counted, though, when it comes to fees but it’s unclear how Unity makes that distinction. What about giveaways, like on Epic Games? What about Pirating?

If you got the game in a Charity bundle, during a giveaway or via dubious pirating sites, how does Unity aim to factor that into the charges.

What’s worse is that publishers aren’t the only people that take a cut. Steam takes a cut with every purchase. Paypal takes a cut with every purchase. If a developer sold their game on itch.io and decided to not give Itch any of the money, they’d still lose a bit due to Paypal’s fees.

Apple, Microsoft, and other subscription-based sites will be “on the hook” for these charges but it’s unclear how Unity will know and whether charges to developers will still be made.

Devs losing trust in Unity

For many developers, Unity is an important tool to create the games we end up being able to play.

The change isn’t in effect yet and as Unity may have noticed, many developers aren’t so thrilled about a change that could easily cost them the chance to update their games further.

Massive Monster, the developers behind Cult of the Lamb, released an announcement just yesterday stating that their team specializes in Unity games and because of this change, they may have to delay future updates significantly as their team would “need to acquire an entirely new skill set” by switching to a new engine entirely.

On their game’s X page, they even joked about deleting the game on January 1st whereas Devolver Digital, their publisher, also didn’t seem thrilled about the change.

AggroCrab Games also released an announcement “calling on Unity to reverse the latest string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product’s actual users.” The Innsersloth devs (known for Among Us and The Henry Stickmin games) also released a much briefer announcement, asking Unity to “stop it. wtf?”

At last,…

On the one hand, I get that Unity wants to secure the funds to be able to create and develop the tool that helps so many people create and develop their games…

But on the other hand, this really isn’t it.

Unity wants to allow developers to tell them that they’re doing charity deals and whatnot but that’s not a reliable way to reduce possible charges, at all.

What Unity is doing is so prone to abuse.

Again, piracy exists. It sucks. And with this, piracy will harm developers even more than as is, if the pirated games hit the thresholds.

Now, something I dislike a lot is how much different news sites generalise the new fees and act as if they’re immediately in effect.

There are a few sites out there that act as if Unity immediately, and without any information, dished out this update and started to retroactively charge people – which is false, from what I can tell.

To defend Unity a bit here (not too much, just a bit): If I understand correctly, the fees will be charged after the thresholds are met and not based on prior installs. So, once you make $200k in revenue within 12 months and once you get 200k installs, you’ll get charged a set amount per user. So, that’s 20 cents per install after the 200k installs.

That said, I don’t want to defend the big evil corp, of course. Socialist Magi all the way. °^°)

For all I know, they could charge retroactively. I haven’t found a source that states that that’s the case… but I also haven’t found a source that states that that isn’t the case. If you have one, let me know. Happy to make corrections.

So, I don’t know if they retroactively charge 40 grand when the thresholds of 200 grand in 12 months and 200k installs have been met.

That’s something they should clarify.

In my opinion, a lot of news sites are exaggerating too much, leaving out bits and pieces that are unclear, and they are only focusing on the outrage and trying to farm clicks like this – which is perfectly normal in this day and age but still incredibly problematic in my humble opinion.

But that’s just me.

I’m also upset at Unity, obviously, because this really isn’t it.

I don’t think that a per-install fee is feasible, especially in this day and age… and especially with pirates being a thing.

Rather, I’m sure they could find a new and different way to fund this without the 10% of devs that are affected by this change possibly jumping ship completely.

Just some thoughts.

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well.