The Unity Runtime Fee is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2024, and it's been universally panned by developers on social media since its announcement earlier today.
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For instance, if a free-to-play game has made $200,0000 in the last 12 months but has millions of people installing it, the developer could end up owing Unity more than the profit earned from in-game purchases.
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Others are worried this could lead some smaller developers who built their games on Unity to pull titles from digital storefronts to prevent more people from racking up downloads.
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"I bet Steam, Epic, Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft will love having waves of developers pulling their games," writes Forest from Among Us developer Innersloth Games. "Innersloth has always paid Unity appropriately for licenses and services we use. I'm not a discourse guy, but this is undue and will force my hand."
Other developers are actually asking people online to not install their game built in Unity, with Paper Trail developer Huenry Hueffman writing, "if you buy our Unity game, please don't install it… demos also count, dont install this demo, you'll literally bankrupt me".
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Unity also clarified that the fee will not apply to charity games or charity bundles. Unity defended the pricing model, saying it's designed to only charge developers who have already found financial success.
We only succeed when you succeed. Our 5% royalty model only kicks in after your first $1M in gross revenue, meaning that if you make $1,000,001 you owe us 5 cents. And this is per title!
Also, revenue generated from the Epic Games Store will be excluded from that 5% royalty.
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Unity has been under pressure lately, laying off hundreds of employees in the first half of 2023. Riccitiello also came under fire in 2022 for referring to developers who don't focus on microtransactions as the "biggest f*cking idiots" before apologizing. Featured in everything from Cuphead to Beat Saber to Pokemon Go, it has been lauded for ease of use. However, trust in the platform has been declining over the years, leading many developers to look to alternatives.
Because a lot of mobile games are made in Unity, and mobile has a higher rate of people who install and then uninstall without really playing the game. People also install things by mistake on mobile, thinking they're something else.
So by charging based on installs, they're able to squeeze developers a lot more (especially mobile game developers). Competitor engines like Unreal don't run very well on mobile.