Unity is Dropping its Unpopular Per-Install Runtime Fee
Freeman writes:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/09/unity-is-dropping-its-unpopular-per-install-runtime-fee/
Unity, maker of a popular cross-platform [game] engine and toolkit, will not pursue a broadly unpopular Runtime Fee that would have charged developers based on game installs rather than per-seat licenses. The move comes exactly one year after the fee's initial announcement.
In a blog post attributed to President and CEO Matt Bromberg, the CEO writes that the company cannot continue "democratizing game development" without "a partnership built on trust." Bromberg states that customers understand the necessity of price increases, but not in "a novel and controversial new form." So game developers will not be charged per installation, but they will be sorted into Personal, Pro, and Enterprise tiers by level of revenue or funding.
[...] Unity's announcement of a new "Runtime Fee that's based on game installs" in mid-September 2023 (Wayback archive), while joined by cloud storage and "AI at runtime," would have been costly for smaller developers who found success.
[...] The move led to almost immediate backlash from many developers. Unity, whose then-CEO John Riccitiello had described in 2015 as having "no royalties, no [f-ing] around," was "quite simply not a company to be trusted," wrote Necrosoft Games' Brandon Sheffield. Developers said they would hold off updates or switch engines rather than absorb the fee, which would have retroactively counted installs before January 2024 toward its calculations.
[...] A massive wave of layoffs throughout the winter of 2023 and 2024 showed that Unity's financial position was precarious, partly due to acquisitions during Riccitiello's term. The Runtime Fee would have minimal impact in 2024, the company said in filings, but would "ramp from there as customers adopt our new releases."
Instead of ramping from there, the Runtime Fee is now gone, and Unity has made other changes to its pricing structure:
- Unity Personal remains free, and its revenue/funding ceiling increases from $100,000 to $200,000
- Unity Pro, for customers over the Personal limit, sees an 8 percent price increase to $2,200 per seat
- Unity Enterprise, with customized packages for those over $25 million in revenue or funding, sees a 25 percent increase.
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