The recent news from Unity that fees for installs will be coming to developers, has not gone over well with a large swath of devs who use the Unity engine to run their games. The egregious plans from Unity have spurred numerous developers to speak out, one of them being Slay the Spire dev Mega Crit, who have never made a statement ever before, now plans to up and ditch Unity entirely. 

👋 @unity pic.twitter.com/mBCfb8li3z

— Mega Crit (@MegaCrit) September 13, 2023

In a post on X/Twitter, Mega Crit stated, “The Mega Crit team has been hard at work these past 2+ years on a new game. But unlike with Slay the Spire, the engine we have been developing it in is Unity.”

“The retroactive pricing structure of Runtime Fees is not only harmful in a myriad of ways to developers–especially indies–it is also a violation of trust. We believe Unity is fully aware of this, seeing as they have gone so far as to remove their TOS from GitHub. Despite the immense amount of time and effort our team has already poured into development on our new title, we will be migrating to a new engine unless the changes are completely reverted and TOS protections are put in place. We have never made a public statement before. That is how badly you fucked up.”

Come January 1st, 2024, Unity will charge developers a fee of $0.20 for whenever a player installs their game. The fee kicks in once a game has over 200,000 installs and $200,000 in revenue. Developers who pay for a higher tier of Unity’s service won’t have the fee until a higher number of instals is reached. One of the more glaring aspects of the installs too as per Unity, is that every single install counts as a fee, even if a player installs, then uninstalls, and then installs a game again. It would be considered a charge of $0.40 in total for the two installs. 

Another developer, Massive Monster has also been even more outspoken against the impending changes from Unity, saying they will simply delete Cult of the Lamb entirely on January 1st, 2024 if the plans remain in place. While the declaration is astonishing to just up and delete the game from platforms, Massive Monster seems to be dead serious, as they’re encouraging players to buy the game now, and have posted other Tweets stating they’re 100% serious. 

Stop the stink @unity pic.twitter.com/ijme9wQ89m

— Massive Monster 🙏🐑 (@MassiveMonster) September 13, 2023

The turmoil of these changes continue, and it largely remains to be seen if Unity will backtrack on these plans after near universal revolt from indie developers. Or if they stick with the fees and face more problems once January 1st, 2024 arrives.