Game devs revolt after Unity reveals plan to charge them a fee based on installs: "You'll literally bankrupt me"

gamesradar.com:

Unity has announced a plan to charge game developers a fee every time someone installs their game after a certain threshold. The "Unity Runtime Fee," which will only apply to games which have achieved success based on both installs and revenue over a period of time, is being universally lambasted by the game development community.

You can check out a breakdown of the pricing structure, but essentially, Unity plans to begin charging game devs a fee for every install after their games reach thresholds based on downloads and sales over the past year. For example, if a game built in Unity Personal made $200,000 over the past 12 months and has been installed 200,000 times since launch, the developer will be charged a flat fee for every install. 

The engine's higher tiers, Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise, offer subscribers "volume discounts" that reduce the fee for installs. Unity says those discounts mean the price of the install fee "can be offset by the savings as the game grows." Meanwhile, Unity Personal, which Unity says is designed for "individuals, hobbyists, and small organizations," will just have to eat a flat .20 cents per install for the life of the game.

As you might expect, those at risk of being charged every time their game is downloaded aren't happy.

"Hey Unity, our game 'The Fall' was on the Epic Games Store as a free game - I was quite happy to sell them the rights for peanuts and the game was installed like 7 million fucking times," reads a tweet from Over The Moon Games. "How do you propose this will work? I'd owe you more money than I've made in my life."

"So this means no demos, no charity keys, no prologues, no gamepass, no ps+, no indie f2p. What a sh*t show," reads a tweet from Megagon Industries