Death threats and office closures, to say Unity has had a negative response to their “Runtime fee” policy change would be an understatement.
It’s been three days since Unity announced a change to their pricing structure, adding a “Unity runtime install fee” to their existing pricing structure for the popular game engine. The fee was intended to charge developers anywhere from $0.01 to $0.2 USD per installation of a game built using the Unity engine on an end-user device. This as you can imagine caused a large uproar from developers small and big alike worried that the fee could spiral out of control and cost developers more than they even make on a game, with potential exploits like “install bombing” being one issue, and other issues bundles, charity releases, and free games being impacted unfairly, as well as host of other potential issues and a breakdown of trust between Unity and their development community.
Unity has since come out with a lot of clarifications (some of which contradict each other) and also walked back some points (not claiming that only the first install would count). This however has not stopped gamers and developers from taking things too far, and Bloomberg reported yesterday that Unity location or employees (this isn’t clear) received “credible death threats” in wake of the controversy. In response to this Unity has made the following to PC Gamer when they reached out for comment:
“We have taken immediate and proactive measures to ensure the safety of our employees, which is our top priority. We are closing our offices today and tomorrow that could be potential targets for this threat, and are fully cooperating with law enforcement on the investigation.”
In addition to shutting down the offices, Unity CEO John Riccitiello was supposed to have a town hall meeting yesterday (Thursday 14.09.2023) which was also cancelled due to the threats. Such a meeting is sorely needed to put concerned and outraged developers at ease as Unity has done a very poor job of clearly communicating this policy change, who will be affected, and once the backlash started happening, exactly which parts of the plan they were changing due to feedback and which were staying the same.
Currently, the only place you can find semi-clear communication about the changes they’re making to the policy is in the Unity community forums, which is not the best place for it. Even Unity’s own blog still has outdated policy terms (written before the backlash) and is very unclear in its communication. To that effect, I’ve highlighted some of their most salient Q&A changes from the forum so Razzem’s readers can get the most up-to-date information on the policy shift, but be sure to visit their forum to see the full list.
Q: If a user reinstall/re-downloads a game, will that count as multiple installs?
A: We are not going to charge a fee for reinstall. The spirit of this program is and has always been to charge for the first install and we have no desire to charge for the same person doing ongoing installs.
(Updated, Sep 14)
Still no word on exactly how they would track this without requiring games to have an initial online connection on installation to “call home” and register the installation. Which would be a controversy in its own right.
Q: Do installs of the same game by the same user across multiple devices count as different installs?
A: Yes – we treat different devices as different installs.
(Updated, Sep 14)
This seems fair enough if you buy into the concept of an install fee being fair to begin with, but it does open up for potential abuse to “install bomb” a game using bots, hardware spoofing, and/or virtual machines.
Q: When in the lifecycle of a game does tracking of lifetime installs begin? Do beta versions count towards the threshold?
A: If you can get from the demo to a full game (like via an in-game upgrade), then yes. If it’s not (like just one level that can’t upgrade), then no.
(Updated, Sep 13)
This would seem to alleviate some concerns developers had around beta releases, free weekends, etc. Though again it’s hard to know exactly how they will track this, I can imagine a horror scenario where developers will have to walk a Unity representative through the menus of the game to demonstrate that the demo shouldn’t count for the fee.
Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games?
A: No, the Unity Runtime fee does not apply to WebGL games.
(Updated, Sep 13)
So developers on itch.io can breath a sigh of relief.
Q: Does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to gaming subscription services?
A: For creators using gaming subscription services, the game dev isn’t responsible for the runtime fee in this case.
(Updated, Sep 14)
So this refers to things like Game Pass and Epic Weekly Giveaways, in this case it would be Microsoft and Epic which would be responsible for paying the fee.
Q: Are these charges applied retroactively?
A: No, the Runtime fees will not be applied retroactively. If, starting on Jan 1, 2024, you meet both the revenue and install threshold for a given game, you will only pay for net new installs happening after Jan 1, 2024. We’ll look at your cumulative revenue and then installs from the past 12 months to see if you qualify for the thresholds of the new install fee but you won’t pay for any installs or revenue that happened before Jan 1, 2024. Starting Jan 1, 2024, if you continue to meet the thresholds then you’ll only pay for net new installs. Also, your qualifying for the install fee is measured every month on a rolling 12-month basis to ensure you’re paying the correct amount.
(Updated, Sep 13)
This should alleviate some of the fears developers had that their games which used to be popular but have since fallen off would suddenly cost them huge amounts they don’t have the cash-flow to pay.
That’s it for now, stay tuned to Razzem for future updates on the story.
