Unity has done a complete 180 on their extremely controversial Runtime Fee system that everyone in the entire industry was unanimously against. The company has reintroduced the policy with far less arduous system for independent developers, all of which whom threatened to drop the software and platform behind up to that point. Users on the Unity Personal subscription plan will no longer be charged the new fee, with Unity now increasing the revenue cap on games made with that plan to $200,000. In addition, any titles made with the Unity engine that makes less than $1 million in 12 months will not be subjected to the fee.
In addition, Unity also changing what titles can be assessed with the new fee policy. The company states that it will only apply to games made with the next version of Unity that is expected to launch sometime in 2024. In the original policy, the fee would have applied to all titles that met the specific download and revenue thresholds. Also starting in 2024, Unity will allow developers to choose between two different choices of how the fee is applied, “Either a 2.5 percent revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month.”
Unity has also backed off on having developers use “proprietary software” in order to determine if a title has met download and revenue thresholds. Now they will instead allow users to self-report revenue. On top of all this, Unity Lead Marc Whitten made a public apology on the post, saying that the lack of communication was unacceptable and went further into how this affects both them and the developers. “We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine.”
Despite these changes to the Runtime Fee Policy, the damage has already been done due to the initial attempt last week. It’s possible that Unity has caused irrevocable impairment to the relationship between them and the developers that use their software, and only time will tell if any studios, new and old, want to keep using them as their development kit/tool.