Unity Technologies has made a major change to how it charges developers for using its engine. Starting January 1, 2024, Unity will begin charging a fee for every time a game is installed, with fees dependent on which subscription to Unity a developer has. Once a game has surpassed a threshold of $200,000 in revenue and 200,000 installs and are in either the Unity Personal or Unity Plus subscription tier, a "Unity Runtime Fee" will be applied to the development team. Those subscribed to Unity Pro, which is a tier that Unity will soon be retiring, or Unity Enterprise, will instead be charged fees once a game has made $1,000,000 and has been installed 1,000,000 times.

Depending on which tier a creator is a part of, these new changes could see developers charged as much as $0.20 every single time a game is installed by a user after the threshold is surpassed. It has been confirmed that if an owner of a game were to install a game, delete it, and redownload it, it would cost the developer money, if they were already past the limit. This will also retroactively apply to already released games as well.

Smaller developers have expressed their concerns over these changes, with some concerned about how pirated game installs will cost them, the impact it will have on free to play titles, or that Xbox Game Pass installs will also count, and have the potential to see smaller companies put at risk because of it.

SIGH pic.twitter.com/YgJEKGVQEI

— AGGRO CRAB 🦀 ACT OUT NOW‼️ (@AggroCrabGames) September 12, 2023

Additionally, Unity's own CEO, John Riccitiello, sold 2,000 shares of the company stock just prior to the announcement of the new Unity Runtime Fees.

 

[HarveyHouston]

This is, by far, the worst monetization tactic pulled by a game engine company. This puts a strain on all game developers, and in the long run, it will not benefit Unity at all. I don't care how much money they end up making; it's still a bad move.

 

[tech3475]

You are talking about console games, there you are forced to use proprietary software anyway because of how their ecosystem works, I'm not into that boat as a developer but you can 100% make games without proprietary software on PC and any other platforms that are open by nature, a lot of people do.

But still, when you put your entire game into a proprietary engine or framework you are prone to things like this happening.

It becomes a problem though when you do want to develop for consoles, for example, Godot requires you to go through a third party which comes at a cost.

I wont be surprised if smaller devs choose Unreal over Godot, presuming the initial costs are lower/easier to handle.

 

[CoolMe]

I mean if they wanted devs to pay for using their software, yes i get that, but to pay for every game they make? No.

 

[LokeYourLord]

This is, by far, the worst monetization tactic pulled by a game engine company. This puts a strain on all game developers, and in the long run, it will not benefit Unity at all. I don't care how much money they end up making; it's still a bad move.

Yes, you do not care how much money they will make, but they do. You see, companies NEVER EVER do things for the long run, ever. They are EXTREMELY shortsighted in order to fulfill those next quarter, half or annual markers so that they can say that "look at how much money we made", despite then shortly after seeing it all turn into ashes due to horrendously stupid decision making. It's always done like this, it's corporate culture, to just make enough money in absolutely ANY WAY POSSIBLE while you are the head, and then go off with as much money from said bonus as possible and then leave the company, or rather shall I say burning pile of ashes that is left behind, and have someone else carry the burden of fixing your intentionally bad decisions that you made.

And until consumers and developers alike punish such behaviour through regulations, we'll never see the end of it.

 

[NinStar]

It becomes a problem though when you do want to develop for consoles, for example, Godot requires you to go through a third party which comes at a cost.

I wont be surprised if smaller devs choose Unreal over Godot, presuming the initial costs are lower/easier to handle.

Well, that is basically what I mentioned in the message you quoted, although I do believe a lot of smaller developers mainly aim at PC and mobile devices, but as other person mentioned in the thread, the only true way to prevent getting into a situation like this in platforms that require proprietary software and NDAs is by developing your own engine.

 

[Hassal]

This sounds wrong on many levels. How do you know who is legit installing or being a jackass?
I do believe its okay to charge money on FIRST install but not subsequent.

 

[yoyoyo69]

That seems ridiculous and it also seems that the price of unity developed games would have to increase to the consumer. Either that or devs stop using Unity and games production suddenly takes a slump.

It really does.

If I were a developer or publisher, with a game in progress, I'd be furious. Imagine investing so much time, cash and other resources, then having this forces on you.

For some developers, it begs the question do you remove your game completely at some point, but then as those sold games will continue to be installed, billing continues?

I expect extremely strong push back against this from all angles. The damage is already done, but this will cost them dearly.

 

[subcon959]

I'm sure Microsoft will be thrilled they have to pay for this now

 

[Bladexdsl]

I'm sure Microsoft will be thrilled they have to pay for this now

knowing them they will just exclude every single game that uses unity from GP

 

[osaka35]

Godot is now the way to go. free and opensource and most likely always will be. Gets new features all the time, and the last big update was a doozy. Plus, you owe nothing to anyone. Any issues you have with the software, there's a strong chance it'll be addressed at some point, though some currently lacking features do suck. I want

Poor Unity. How the mighty have fallen. This makes any new developer or student's decision pretty easy now. I don't even know what unreal engine's licensing is like.

It becomes a problem though when you do want to develop for consoles, for example, Godot requires you to go through a third party which comes at a cost.

I wont be surprised if smaller devs choose Unreal over Godot, presuming the initial costs are lower/easier to handle.

This is what Godot had to say about the pricing structure for the W4 games thing for console development:

the best business model instead (and the route that W4 Games will most certainly take) is to offer Godot console ports as an affordable and transparent yearly subscription that includes all platforms (the admission to each platform is, of course, conditioned on being approved as a licensed developer by the respective console manufacturer).


The pricing scheme will aim to be on par with other commercially available game engines that offer a yearly subscription, but it will additionally offer significant advantages such as full source code access to the ports and the inclusion of larger team sizes for every type of subscription. We will also include, as part of the subscription, access to many of our upcoming W4 cloud services such as online assistance (support), CI (for custom console builds), performance analytics, teams and back-end services (for authenticating users). More will be announced in the coming weeks about this, so stay tuned!


But we still want to allow developers to test their games on consoles without needing to pay for a subscription, so we are evaluating ways to make this happen. We hope we will be able to announce something like this in the future.

 

[linuxares]

Well then... lets see how fast they destroy their business model

 

[Ryab]

Well then... lets see how fast they destroy their business model

I mean they already lost a good chunk last year when they merged with a company known for making malware.

 

[linuxares]

I mean they already lost a good chunk last year when they merged with a company known for making malware.

Oh I totally forgot about that... I hope Godot gets as developed and easy to use as Unity.

 

[Ryab]

Oh I totally forgot about that... I hope Godot gets as developed and easy to use as Unity.

4.0 update improved a ton.

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

This is what you get when you decide to use proprietary software to develope your games.

well i mean theres a difference between usinf software for moral reasons and software because you like it.

ive tried godot and unity and i hate godot’s workflow so much

 

[linuxares]

Unity is backpaddling so hard right now

 

[Ryab]

Unity is backpaddling so hard right now

They will backpedal on everything, but them actually charging people. Basically just trying to make people accept it with less hatred.

 

[osaka35]

Is this why they bought a malware company? To ensure they could track installs? jayzus

 

[YoureALoser]

Shit like this is why I was never a fan of Unity. They just keep making changes that piss people off. Doesnt help that every god damn engine update breaks my projects.

Post automatically merged: Sep 13, 2023

That is more due to the console SDKs not working with the model that Godot uses. Open source stuff does not mix well.

Nothing to do with the SDKs not working & everything to do with Godot being an open source engine. Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo do not allow open source engines on their consoles because it could lead to exploits. Godot documentation literally says as much.

 

[Ryab]

Nothing to do with the SDKs not working & everything to do with Godot being an open source engine. Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo do not allow open source engines on their consoles because it could lead to exploits. Godot documentation literally says as much.

Which is a massive shame. The major benefit of an open source engine is that you never have to worry about the developer of the engine doing things like this.