Unity draws heat over newly announced fees tied to game installs

destructoid.com:

This morning, Unity Technologies announced an update to its pricing plans and fees that sparked a bit of an outcry among developers. Unity says that, starting on January 1 of 2024, the company will introduce a new runtime fee based on game installs for any game that passes certain thresholds.

To break it down in straightforward terms, there are two components of Unity: the Editor and the Runtime. The Runtime is code that plays on devices, making Unity-made games work.

This new Unity Runtime Fee, as the company dubs it, would be based on each time a game is downloaded by a user. According to Unity, games that meet these thresholds qualify:

“With this new policy, as of January 1, 2024, we will offer Unity Personal to anyone regardless of how much revenue they make to provide more flexibility in how creators manage their licenses,” the company’s announcement explains. “Once a game passes the revenue and install thresholds, the studio would pay a small flat fee for each install.” It then refers to a table, detailing the fees.

Essentially, once a game clears the marked thresholds for revenue (per year) and lifetime installs, the developer will start incurring fees per install. And as Unity states, once it goes into effect on January 1, 2024, the fee will apply to all eligible games on the market that continue to distribute the runtime.

In clarifying comments to Axios’ Stephen Totilo, Unity says if a player deletes a game and re-installs it, that counts as 2 installs and consequently 2 charges. The same goes if a user installs a game on two devices. Unity also says that charity games and bundles are “exempted from fees,” per Totilo.

Alongside this new fee, developers also spotted a number of other changes. Namely, Unity