Unity adds fee for installs for successful small devs, triggering a backlash
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A year after Unity raised prices for enterprise and professional versions of its game engine, Unity added a new charge for for smaller developers who meet thresholds for revenue and installs.
Starting on January 1, 2024, Unity will charge a Unity Runtime Fee for any game that surpasses a revenue and lifetime install in the preceding 12 months. Normally, Unity Personal usage is free, and subscribers for Unity Pro pay $399 per seat.
But under the changes announced today, Unity Personal and Unity Pro users will pay fees if they hit $200,000 in revenue in a year and 200,000 lifetime installs. For anywhere from one to a million installs, those users will pay 20 cents per install.
“It’s a price increase. It’s a business model change,” acknowledged Marc Whitten, Unity Create president, in an interview with GamesBeat. “From our perspective, we’re working on ensuring that there’s an accurate exchange of value between Unity and its customers. But with that said, this price increase doesn’t impact the significant majority of our customers.”
As you might expect, this did not go over well with developers, judging by social media responses. Brandon Sheffield, an indie game developer at Necrosoft and contributor to Game Developer, wrote an article about the fees and other problems with Unity entitled, “The Death of Unity.” As that story and many other posts on social media reflect, skepticism is running high
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