Following Unity Fee Controversy, Kingdoms of Elyria May Need Another Pivot

mmorpg.com:

After a recent dev journal saying that Chronicles of Elyria/Kingdoms of Elyria dev Soulbound Studio was nearing some bright spots, there is a pause in plans due to the recent controversial pricing announcement by Unity. Soulbound has reportedly been on the verge of sealing a licensing deal that would provide some needed funding, but CEO Jeromy Walsh is now pausing as they sort out the Unity situation and potential new options.

If you missed it, Unity decided to adopt what they were calling an install fee starting next year that would be charged based on the company's service plan tier as well as how many installs their game got. The fee would have applied to every installation of a game using Unity as its engine, not just copies sold. This would,  if it acted as originally announced, have a huge impact across the gaming industry, but a disproportionate impact on free-to-play games, which are installed more often, as well as on Independent developers.  Unity has since begun walking back a number of the changes and is expected to have a final version, after rampant negative feedback following the original announcement.

Jeromy “Caspian” Walsh commented in the official Discord in response (HT: Slapshot1188), noting that Kingdoms of Elyria is built on Unity, a choice originally made for several reasons. Unity previously charged a monthly fee per “seat” (user), but promised not to charge royalties or per-sale fees for using the engine in a game, with no limit on titles in development. This model was developer friendly, allowing teams to work on multiple games simultaneously without additional costs, especially since you could stop using Unity’s engine at any time, with no further fees. 

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