Unity, the game engine, has recently announced a new fee that will be levied on developers that will be charged for every installation of the game a user does. The fee will apparently remain even for those cases where a user is installing a game that they own already, as long as the installation is being done on a fresh computer. Understandably, developers are fuming.
Unity Faces Severe Backlash
The latest change in policy, which has become phenomenally unpopular, was announced via a blog post on September 12th. The immediate reaction was widespread disbelief, anger, and confusion among the community of game developers. The new fee, known as the Unity Runtime Fee, will be charged from January 1st, 2024 by Unity Technologies.
It will be applicable to every game that is built using the game engine. However, there will be a minimum count for lifetime installs as well as a minimum threshold for revenue that a game will have to pass for the fee to be applicable. At present, the threshold for revenue stands at $200,000 while the install count stands at 200,000. This, however, varies depending on which version has been used.
The calculation of the fees is done based on the installation count that is beyond the threshold. For now, developers can see a charge of a maximum of $0.20 for every installation. Even if the amount seems small, it can be absolutely damning for several game studios. The number of games that have been built with the engine is extremely high. It includes top-grossing titles like Among Us, Genshin Impact, Beat Saber, and Marvel Snap. In the blog post, the company explained that this method was chosen because Unity Runtime gets installed every time a Unity game gets downloaded.
