Unity, the game engine used by developers worldwide, has made significant changes to its pricing, and this has upset many indie game developers. They’ve introduced something called the ‘Unity Runtime Fee,’ which means that game studios will now have to pay a fee every time someone installs a game made with their engine. This new pricing system will start on January 1, 2024, and the amount you pay depends on the type of Unity subscription you have.
This change has left a lot of developers confused and angry because it could potentially harm their finances. It mainly affects developers who have reached a certain level of sales or downloads, while many others who use Unity for free won’t be impacted.
Okay, here’s the deal. Say you’re a small-time dev using Unity Personal or Unity Plus. If your game makes more than 200 grand in a year and gets 200,000 installs, you’ll be forking out about 20 cents (around Rs. 17) for each download. That’s roughly 40 grand (about Rs. 33 lakh) you gotta hand over to Unity every year.
But if you’re a big shot using Unity Pro or Unity Enterprise, you only start paying this fee when your game hits a cool million (about Rs. 8 crore) in revenue and a million lifetime installs.
Unity’s saying they’re doing this because every time someone grabs your game, a part of Unity comes along with it. They reckon it’s better to charge an upfront fee instead of taking a cut from what you make.
At first, Unity was all like, even if you delete your game and then put it back, they’d charge you again. But now, they’re saying it’s only the first time you install it. But watch out, if you install the same game on different devices, you’ll get slapped with more charges.
This has got a bunch of devs really mad ’cause they’re worried these rules could make ’em go broke. They’re saying, “Hey, someone could just pirate our game, download it, delete it, and keep doing that on different devices to make us pay more!”
Unity’s response? They talk about “fraud detection practices,” but they haven’t really figured it all out yet. They’re working on some way for devs to report these issues.
These rules also mess with freemium games that make money from in-game purchases. Some of these games are worried they’ll end up paying more than they’re making, especially if they get millions of downloads in a year. But if your game’s on subscription services like Xbox Game Pass, the fee goes to the distributor, like Microsoft. Games given away for charity or as demos don’t have to pay these charges, but Unity hasn’t explained how they keep track of those numbers.
In protest, some devs are like, “Unity, we’re not happy with you!” For example, there’s this studio called Massive Monster, and they’re threatening to yank their popular game, Cult of the Lamb, from stores on January 1. Innersloth, the folks behind Among Us, are also thinking about pulling their game from stores.
This whole thing makes sense when you think about all the awesome games made with Unity, like Genshin Impact, Cuphead, Ori and the Blind Forest, Rust, and Hollow Knight, just to name a few. The last one even had a much-awaited sequel planned, Silksong, but it got delayed earlier this year for some extra polish. Now, fans are worried it might get delayed even more if the devs, Team Cherry, decide to switch to a different game engine. No official word from them yet, though.
