Unity Promises Changes to Controversial New Policy After Causing 'Confusion and Angst' | Push Square

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After a week of intense criticism and backlash, Unity has apologised for the «confusion and angst» caused by the announcement of its unpopular Runtime fee policy. In a post to social media, the company has promised to make changes following the strong reaction from the development community.

Unity is a game engine platform utilised by many studios large and small, and currently has a pretty normal payment system, whereby a royalty fee is paid based on sales of a game. The proposed new policy relates to Unity Runtime, which is «code that executes on player devices and makes Made with Unity games work at scale». The company announced that a Runtime fee will be introduced in 2024 that, past a certain threshold, will incur a payment every time a Unity game is installed by a user.

Many development studios have expressed their feelings on this policy change; in a nutshell, the Runtime fee would be incredibly costly for dev teams, so much so that a lot of outspoken studios say they'll move to a new engine unless the policy is abandoned, or at least heavily reworked.

Unity has attempted to answer the many questions brought up by developers, but most of its public communications so far have done little to convince them the new policy is a good idea. Now, the company has issued a new statement on the matter:

The company apologises for the «confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused». It «will be making changes to the policy» after feedback and conversations with «team members, community, customers, and partners». Unity will «share an update in a couple of days».

So, now we wait to see what changes. The statement has already rubbed developers the wrong way, who say there was never «confusion» about