Unity walks back some of its widely criticized pricing updates

polygon.com:

After two weeks of chaos, Unity Create president Marc Whitten has a message: “I’m sorry.”

Whitten’s apology, and a revised pricing policy, comes after a tumultuous period for the company, as game makers who rely on Unity panicked over the impact of its controversial “Runtime Fee.” Unity Technologies announced Friday that it will no longer force developers into that fee structure for the current version of its Unity software — but said that the fee will apply to future versions of the engine, should a developer choose to update. However, people using Unity Personal won’t have to pay at all. (Developers can use Unity Personal, the free version of the engine, as long as their project’s combined funding and revenue stays below $200,000 — an increase from the current $100,000 cap.)

Unity also said that for situations where the Runtime Fee does apply, it will kick in only when a project has met two thresholds: $1 million in gross revenue over the past 12 months, and 1 million initial engagements (which is the fancy, but more precise, term that Unity is using in place of “installs”).

Developers on the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise plans will only see fees starting with the next version of Unity, which is called 2023 LTS and is expected to ship in 2024. (An early access version, 2023.1 Tech Stream, is available for developers now, however.) They’ll be able to choose either the Runtime Fee as calculated by the installs or a 2.5% revenue share. Unity also vowed that it will always charge developers the lower amount between the revenue share and the Runtime Fee.

Unity expects developers to self-report this information from “data [they] already have available.” On a separate Q&A page, Unity said it’s working with its customers and