Unity reportedly considering cap on hugely controversial per-install fees

eurogamer.net:

A week after Unity announced dramatic changes to its Unity Engine business model — drawing immediate and widespread condemnation from the development community — the company has reportedly told staff it'll be making adjustments to the controversial new pricing plan.

As reported by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Unity leadership addressed employees in an all-hands meeting held earlier today (a meeting originally planned for late last week was cancelled following a «potential threat» from an employee), saying the company was «considering» introducing a cap on its hugely unpopular new per-install fees.

Unity initially caused an outcry last Tuesday, when it told developers that, on top of their existing Unity Engine licence subscription, they'd be expected to pay an additional monthly Unity Runtime Fee each time a user installed their game, starting on 1st January 2024. This would apply to all games, including those already on the market, that had made $200k USD or more in the last 12 months and had at least 200k lifetime game installs.

Now though, Bloomberg reports that Unity is looking to calm development criticism by capping fees at 4% of a game's revenue for customers making over $1m. Whether that'll be enough to assuage developer concerns and prevent a mass exodus to other game engines such as Unreal and Godot remains to be seen; a cap is far from the fee reversal many developers have been calling for since last week, and it remains unclear if Unity plans to offer concessions and introduce similar caps for developers making less than $1m.

Presumably at least some of those lingering questions will be answered when Unity makes its planned changes public — although there's currently no indication of how long that might