Nearly a week after announcing its new royalty program, Unity claims it will be changing the pricing policy and apologizes to developers for the issues. If you missed it, last week Unity announced a new royalty fee for developers who used its engine to make games. The change would see indie developers (and large studios too) pay a fee for every Unity-powered game download.
While royalty fees are nothing, this Unity program would not exclude the likes of demos and subscription-based downloads. Essentially, developers who have their games added to Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus would have to fork out money to Unity every time their game is downloaded through these services.
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The new policy caused a mass outcry in the industry. Many developers voiced their concerns over the pricing structure and how small studios would have to find ways around these fees. The studio behind Cult of The Lamb even threatened to delist its game to avoid these extra fees which were not factored into the original financial plan in the first place.
Some developers even went as far as disabling their ad monetization in their Unity-powered games. 19 companies that built mobile games in Unity turned off in-game ads in protest over the new pricing policy.
After all the drama and controversy, Unity announced this morning that the company would be adjusting its runtime fee policy. Unity has yet to share exactly what it means by this. The tweet claims the company will be “making changes” to the policy and will provide an update in the next couple of days.
Unity will have to pull a rabbit out of a hat at this stage. The company is under the spotlight now after upsetting developers and studios. If anything, relationships have been broken between them and unless there’s a decent solution in sight, Unity might face darker times ahead.
We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of…
— Unity (@unity) September 17, 2023
