Unity unites the indie game industry against its new pricing model

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By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.

Unity, a company that makes a suite of video game development tools, has recently sparked a major controversy in the industry after announcing changes to its pricing model. Under the new model, Unity plans to charge developers on a per-install basis after certain revenue and game download thresholds are met.

Sentiment regarding the new pricing has been largely negative, with reports of death threats to the company as developers and video game professionals respond on social media with calls for Unity to reconsider since the changes could threaten the already thin profits of indie games. Developers are concerned that Unity has implemented these changes unilaterally, violating trust while offering virtually no time for developers to prepare for the potential costs. Many developers have spoken out against the change, urging Unity to retract the new model or risk indie developers porting their games to other engines.

Unity has offered some clarifications and retractions to the new pricing, but some developer concerns, like how Unity intends to track valid installations and separate them from exempted installations, remain unaddressed.

TODAY, Two hours ago

Ash Parrish

Earlier this week, Unity, the company that makes the Unity video game engine popular with indie developers, announced that it was changing its pricing model. The changes included a pricing scheme that sought to charge developers on a per-install basis for games that met specific download and revenue thresholds.

Unity wanted to charge developers for game installs without seemingly taking into account