Unity is Doing Away With Its Controversial Fees

Unity has officially canceled its controversial Runtime Fee, which was originally implemented in September 2023. Released in 2005, Unity is still one of the most popular engines for indie developers and has been used to create many beloved games, such as Hollow Knight, Cuphead, Subnautica, Among Us, and many others.

Last year, Unity announced a new licensing model for its engine. Instead of using a simple subscription fee as the company did before, Unity started to charge developers depending on how many times their games were downloaded after they hit a certain milestone in revenue. The change enraged most game developers due to its invasive nature and how prone it was to manipulation, prompting many creators to boycott the engine. A month after the announcement, CEO John Riccitiello left the company.

Unity’s CEO Matt Bromberg, who has been heading the company since May 2024, has announced that this Runtime Fee will no longer exist, with the change taking immediate effect. According to Bromberg, the company decided to return to its traditional subscription model after consulting with the community, customers, and partners, who disliked the change. With the new pricing model, Unity Personal will continue to be free until a developer’s revenue hits $200,000. All other models will return to being traditional subscriptions, though these will see price hikes, with the cost of Unity Pro increasing by 8% and Unity Enterprise’s increasing by 25%.

Unity Will Return to More 'Traditional' Ways of Charging Game Devs

This is not the first time that Unity changed its controversial Runtime Fees. Soon after revealing the pricing model, Unity went back on some aspects of the fees due to immediate backlash. At the time, the engine maker exempted games that used older versions of Unity from the fees and allowed devs to self-report their earnings instead of tracking the downloads of their games, addressing the most pressing concerns about the pricing model.

It seems that these changes were not enough. Despite being one of the most popular game engines on the market, Unity has recently lost some space to competitors such as Godot and Unreal Engine due to the bad reputation it earned from the implementation of these controversial Runtime Fees.

Earlier this year, Unity also laid off 1,800 employees. While the layoffs were part of a trend that has become common in the gaming industry since 2023, it’s likely that the controversy with the Runtime Fees did not help matters. Only time will tell whether Unity will regain the trust of its community after ditching the Runtime Fees, but at the very least, this is seen by many as a step in the right direction.

Source: Unity is Doing Away With Its Controversial Fees