Unity announces some key changes to its Runtime Fee policy, which drew the ire of developers and the gaming community when it was announced earlier this month.
Unity Create’s Marc Whitten recently posted an open letter on the official website to address the issues with their announcement pertaining the Runtime Fee policy. They are now going to ease up on some big aspects of the previously announced charges, removing the fee from the Unity Personal tier entirely, but there could still be some fees left for the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise tiers. At least there’s some progress.
This means there will be no more Runtime Fee on games that are built on Unity Personal tier, which remains free. The financial threshold of Unity Personal will be increased from $100,000 to $200,00 and will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.
“No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee,” Whitten said.
There will be changes for Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise too: “The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity.”
“For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month,” it continued. “Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.”
Whitten also apologized to the gaming community at the start of the announcement.
I am sorry.
We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine.
You are what makes Unity great, and we know we need to listen, and work hard to earn your trust. We have heard your concerns, and we are making changes in the policy we announced to address them.
Developers quickly posted online to react to the revisions announced today. Some have accepted the changes easily, while others still remain skeptical. There are a few though who are not convinced anymore and that the trust has been broken.