Unity are changing how their heavily criticised "runtime fee" works

rockpapershotgun.com:

Unity have announced that they're making changes to their "runtime fee" in response to overwhelming negative feedback. The key changes are that the fees no longer apply to developers using Unity Personal, and will only apply to developers using Unity Pro or Unity Enterprise who upgrade the next version of Unity which ships in 2024.

The announcement came in an "open letter to our community" on the Unity site.

"I want to start with this: I am sorry," writes Unity's Marc Whitten.

"We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine."

Unity announced last week that qualifying developers would be charged a fee, typically around $0.20, the first time a new player installed their game. Developers were immediately critical of the move, in particular the retroactive application of new fees to games made in Unity long ago, as well as for the ambiguous way in which installs would be tracked and of the risk of fraudulent installs - for example, by those pirated the game - costing developers money.

In the days following the announcement, Unity's efforts to clarify the terms and process mostly just made things worse. Several developers announced their intention to stop using the development platform, citing a loss of trust in a company that could introduce retroactive fees at any moment.

This new announcement does walk back many of the core concerns. For example, if you made a game in Unity in the past, and it was still selling well enough to cross the revenue thresholds, you still won't be charged the runtime