In a major victory for both players and developers, Unity has officially cancelled their infamous Runteim Fee.
Unity have announced their infamous “Runtime Fee,” charging royalties per-install, has now been cancelled.
For those who may not recall, on September 12th, 2023 Unity announced the that they would be instating a universal Runtime Fee, therein effectively charging developers each time their games were installed. The fee was also a flat rate, irrelevant of how much a developer charged for their game.
As developers and players raged against the Fee, Unity not only updated their Q&A to explicitly confirm that devs would be charged any time a customer reinstalls a given game (a fact which led to the latter demographic half-joking that one could hypothetically bankrupt an entire studio by either widely pirating or endlessly deleting and reinstalling any of their titles that were built on the engine), but also attempted to defend the unpopular policy.
On top of that, there were allegations Unity were covering their license change dates to retroactively charge developers with this new fee.
In response to this proposed fee, numerous developers released statements denouncing Unity and their greed, including Massive Monster (Cult of the Lamb), Aggro Crab (Another Crab’s Treasure), and Mega Crit (Slay the Spire).
Finally, on September 17th, just five days after their initial announcement, Unity apologized and stated they would accept feedback, in turn ultimately softening the policy to only charge “a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month” and insisting that the policy would not be retroactive.
And now, just one year later, Unity has decided to pull the plug on the entire idea.
The news came straight from Unity’s new President and CEO Matthew Bromberg, who in statement published to the company’s official website on September 12th announced, “After deep consultation with our community, customers, and partners, we’ve made the decision to cancel the Runtime Fee for our games customers, effective immediately. Non-gaming Industry customers are not impacted by this modification.”
Moving to explain the reason behind this decision, the CEO then informed the public, “Over the last 20 years, we’ve partnered with brilliant designers and developers, artists and engineers, publishers and platforms, to build a world where great games could be built by anyone, for everyone. We called it ‘democratizing game development,’ and it remains our core mission today. However, we can’t pursue that mission in conflict with our customers; at its heart, it must be a partnership built on trust.”
“I’ve been able to connect with many of you over the last three months, and I’ve heard time and time again that you want a strong Unity, and understand that price increases are a necessary part of what enables us to invest in moving gaming forward,” he claimed. “But those increases needn’t come in a novel and controversial new form. We want to deliver value at a fair price in the right way so that you will continue to feel comfortable building your business over the long term with Unity as your partner. And we’re confident that if we’re good partners and deliver great software and services, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what we can do together.”
To this end, Bromberg revealed, “So we’re reverting to our existing seat-based subscription model for all gaming customers, including those who adopt Unity 6, the most performant and stable version of Unity yet, later this year.”
Bromberg then explained how the various tiers of Unity licenses would change in 2025.
Unity Personal will remain free, doubling the revenue and funding ceiling to $200,000. Even the “Made with Unity” splash screen will become optional in Unity 6. (Notably, as mentioned above, these changes were all previously announced in late September 2023 after the initial backlash to the Runtime Fee).
Meanwhille, Unity Pro and Enterprise will modify their subscription pricing, along with the qualifying annual revenue thresholds , with the former rising to “$2,200 USD annually per seat” and being “required for customers with more than $200,000 USD of total annual revenue and funding”, while the latter will see a “25% subscription price increase”, which will vary according to the specific needs of the relevant developers, and “be required for customers with more than $25 million USD of total annual revenue and funding.”
Further attempting to assure developers that Unity was on their side, Bromberg declared, “From this point forward, it’s our intention to revert to a more traditional cycle of considering any potential price increases only on an annual basis.”
“Our commitment [as updated last year] remains that if we change the Editor software terms in ways that impact you, you may continue using your current version of the software under the previously agreed terms as long as you keep using that version.” he concluded. “Canceling the Runtime Fee for games and instituting these pricing changes will allow us to continue investing to improve game development for everyone while also being better partners. Thank you all for your trust and continued support. We look forward to many more years of making great games together.”
As for who was behind this entire fiasco, blame has been cast at the feet of former Unity CEO John Riccitiello, himself one of the most controversial figures in the whole of gaming.
Along with being the former CEO of EA, during which time he oversaw the addition of lootboxes to FIFA 09 and toy with the idea of charging Battlefield players $1 to reload their gun, Riccitiello is also known for his 2022 assertion that those developers who chose not to desperately monetize their games were “f—–g idiots” and selling selling 2000 shares in Unity just one week before the Runtime Fee was announced.
Riccitiello would ultimately retire from his role as Unity boss on October 9th, 2023.
However, his exit could not heal the damage already done to the company’s reputation. As of August 2024, Unity’s stock has fallen over 60% since the start of the year.