It looks like developers might be able to breathe a sigh of relief pending Unity’s update due in a few days, but has the damage already been done?
The latest development in the drama surrounding the Unity game engine and their controversial new “runtime fee” policy sees the Unity twitter account tweet out the following statement:
“We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.”
We’ll have to wait and see exactly what this will mean, if a full-scale reversal is coming and Unity transitions to something more like the revenue share model Unreal Engine is using, or if this will simply be minor tweaks, additional exemptions, and higher thresholds before the fee is applied. From the community side, it would appear that the “breach of trust” is a far more significant injury than the actual fee itself and likely large parts of the indie developer community won’t be satisfied until Unity makes a full-scale reversal of the policy. Beyond that, the commonly shared sentiment on X (Twitter) as well as other game-Dev communities is that Unity CEO John Riccitiello and his management team would also have to be shown the door.
For those unaware, this all started last Tuesday (09. 12.2023) when Unity announced it would be adding a so-called “runtime fee” to their pricing model forcing developers to pay up to $0.20 (or less based on volume and Unity license tiers) per end-user game install…regardless of it being due to a new purchase, reinstall, or already owned install on a new platform. The community was quick to respond with anger and Unity, in turn, was quick (though chaotic) to clarify and walk back a few points about exemptions and exactly who this new fee was meant to target, but it did little to calm the anger of the community who felt the clarifications and walk back didn’t sufficiently address the illogical nature of the fee, the numerous opportunities for abuse, and edge cases that would see legitimate developers need to pay more in fees than they could ever possibly make for their product (free-to-play mobile games with in-app purchases that only a very small percentage of the player-base pays for).
Things took a further dark turn when it was revealed by Mobilegamer.biz that developers could be offered a drastic reduction in the runtime fee if they signed up for Unity’s ironSource and Ads services to monetize their games through Unity instead of competitors like AppLovin. Leading many (including AppLovin leadership) to suspect that the new fee was designed almost exclusively to try and muscle them out of the market. Around the same time, Unity was reportedly forced to close two of their offices in the US and cancel a town hall meeting with the CEO after one of their out-of-state employees sent “credible death threats”.
Now all that’s left to do is wait and see what changes Unity has in mind, I’ll keep you updated as the situation develops.
