When I’m not playing video games, pursuing my illustration goals, or engaged in other activities, I like to read articles and watch videos on the gaming world. It’s a good way to keep up to date with potential new games to try, updates on old favorites, or just generally get a feel for the gaming landscape. And recently that landscape became a boiling lava pit of anger as one of the biggest game development engines announced a decision to change the way they charge the developers that use it.
Unity announced a change to it’s fee structure on September 12th. Called the “Unity Runtime Fee” it meant that game developers who fell under certain gross sales, both in revenue and download numbers, would be charged a per download fee.
If this in itself wasn’t bad enough, the new proposed fee would disproportionately affect small developers. Those under the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise plans, with revenue of $1 million and downloads of $1 million would be charged on a sliding scale. The more installs they had per month, the less they’d be charged per install – from $0.15 down to $0.01 cents each. However, those under the Unity Personal/Unity Plus plans would be charged a flat rate of $0.20 cents per download with a revenue threshold of $200,000 and an install threshold of 200,000.
Along with this, they’ve also elimiated the entry level Unity Plus plan that was a relatively affordable $40 a month, leaving a choice between the very limited free personal tier or the much more expensive Unity Pro plan at $2000+ a year, over 4x the price of the Plus plan.
According to Unity, this would only affect a small percentage of their market.
To say the news angered the gaming development community and, as an offshoot, gamers in general, would be a huge understatement. Everyone has weighed in on the issue from Massive Monster, developers of the hugely popular Cult of the Lamb, to Thomas Brush, an indie developer with several games under his belt such as Pinstripe and Neversong. No one is happy about the changes. Many developers are talking about moving to different engines, such as Unreal or Godot. Some, too far along in the process or already released are looking at their own options moving forward.
Re-Logic, developers of the beloved game Terraria, have donated $100,000 to Godot to fund further development of this open source engine. They’ve also donated to FNA, another open source game engine.
Since the announcement Unity has put out a statement on X (formerly Twitter) saying –
“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”
They’ve also further clarified the changes, incuding a statement by Marc Whitten – company executive – saying “Our Unity Personal plan will remain free and there will be no Runtime Fee for games built on Unity Personal.” They also added that games with less than $1 million in revenue over a 12 month period will not be subject to the fee.
I’m sure their plummeting stock value and the increasingly vocal developer revolt has a large part to play in this decision. However, it’s likely too little, too late, as all the good will they’ve cultivated with their community has been burnt to ash with that one announcement.
Will these clarifications and backtracking work? Hard to tell until the dust settles to determine the damage they’ve done to their image. And damaging it was. How many small developers are going to put faith, and their own profit margins, in the hands of a company that has proven it can change the terms at any time? I know I wouldn’t.
Now, you might ask – why would I be interested in these events? After all, I’m not a game developer. I’m just a gamer. This is true. I’ve played a lot of games but I’ve never made one. However, this does affect gamers too, especially gamers who love the growing indie game community. Certainly not to the degree of the developers, of course, as we’re not financially hit by these changes. Still …
Imagine Joe Bonkers. He’s been working on a small game for months now. He’s probably spent years learning Unity, maybe even went to school for it. He’s almost finished and this game has the potential to be a breakout hit. Maybe he’s decided to only charge two or three dollars for it because he can and he wants to make it as affordable for everyone as possible. Now he’s gotten the news that his game, should it surpass the threshold Unity set, will set him back more money. He does some quick and dirty math and what he comes up with says that after these fees and expenses he’s already incurred, not only will he not profit from the game at the price he’s chosen, but he may even be in the hole to Unity for more money than it made. Joe now has to make a choice. He can either scrap the project altogether and say screw this, it’s not worth burying myself in more debt. He could put the project on hold indefinitely while he learns a new game engine, a task that could take a couple of years more. He could put the game out as planned but instead of charging $3, he now has to charge $5. Sure, it’s not a huge amount, but it could be a big enough difference that less people want to pay it and try out the game. It doesn’t get the traction it could have, doesn’t become a breakout hit. Joe looks at the numbers and scraps his next project, thinking he failed.
Joe Bonkers could be any number of small developers. Some may have already decided to scrap projects and walk away from game development. Some will likely have to either raise their prices or eat the cost. Some will put their projects on hold to move to new engines. And we, the gamers, will have less little gems to populate our gaming libraries.
Thanks Unity. You’ve managed to live up to your name by uniting everyone – against you. Next time, look at where you’re stepping. The floor is lava, after all.
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