Unity Engine runtime fee

2026-04-29T00:12:54Z

Pigninja2003: Updated information to reflect the changes Unity made involving their pricing in November 2025

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{{IncidentCargo
|Company=Unity
|StartDate=2023-09-12
|EndDate=
|Status=
|ProductLine=
|Product=Unity Engine
|ArticleType=
|Type=
|Description=Rent-seeking
}}

On 12 September 2023, [[Unity]] implemented sweeping changes to the pricing model for its Unity Engine that would affect all developers using it, forcing them to either adopt Unity's per-download fee or de-list their games.

On 10 November 2025, Unity backtracked on the runtime fee and implemented a pricing system based on the revenue of the companies/individuals using the software.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-11-10 |title=Changes to Unity subscription plans and pricing |url=https://unity.com/products/pricing-updates}}</ref>

==Background==
Unity is a well known game engine used by studios of all sizes, and very widely across the indie space due to its accessibility, capacity for both 2D and 3D development, and C# support. Prior to the runtime fee, Unity had multiple subscription tiers:

===Unity Personal===
Costs nothing and allows you to the Unity game engine to produce commercial works up until your revenue from the product created using the Unity game engine reaches $200,000 at which point you're required to change license to one of the higher tiers.

===Unity Pro===
Costs $210 monthly per seat, and allows you to continue working on your projects if your business made over $200,000 in funding or annual revenue.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Plans & Pricing |url=https://unity.com/products}}</ref>

===Unity Enterprise===
Uses a custom pricing model that requires you to get a quote for. It is required for businesses making more than $25M in annual revenue.<ref name=":2" />

==Runtime fee (Defunct)==
On September 12th, 2023, Unity announced a "Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs," which fundamentally altered their monetization model. This runtime fee aimed to charge developers a small amount every time an end user installed their application. To qualify for the fee, games must have passed a minimum revenue threshold within the past 12 months and a minimum lifetime install count threshold. The following table (taken directly from the original announcement) lays out specific thresholds and install costs that the new model would impose on engine users.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |first= |date=2023-09-12 |title=Unity plan pricing and packaging updates |url=https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230912135629/https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates |archive-date=2023-09-12 |access-date=2025-06-16 |website=Unity Blog}}</ref><table class="table-responsive" style="width:100%;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000"><tr style="background-color:#2196f3;color:#ffffff"><th style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000" width="15%"></th><th style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000" width="28%">Unity Personal and Unity Plus</th><th style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000" width="29%">Unity Pro</th><th style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000" width="28%">Unity Enterprise</th></tr><tr style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"><td colspan="4" style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">Unity Runtime Fee thresholds to be met</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">Revenue Threshold (USD)</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$200,000 (last 12mo)</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$1,000,000 (last 12mo)</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$1,000,000 (last 12mo)</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">Install Threshold</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">200,000 (life to date)</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">1,000,000 (life to date)</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">1,000,000 (life to date)</td></tr><tr style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#ffffff">Installs over the Install Threshold</td><td colspan="3" style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#ffffff">Standard monthly rate</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">1–100,000</td><td rowspan="4" style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.20 per install</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.15 per install</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.125 per install</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">100,001–500,000</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.075 per install</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.06 per install</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">500,001–1,000,000</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.03 per install</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.02 per install</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">1,000,001+</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.02 per install</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.01 per install</td></tr><tr style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"></tr><tr style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#ffffff">Installs over the Install Threshold</td><td colspan="3" style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#ffffff">Emerging market monthly rate</td></tr><tr><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">1+</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.02 per install</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.01 per install</td><td style="padding:10px;border:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000">$0.005 per install</td></tr></table>
These fees were to be applied retroactively to any product using the unity runtime, including those released prior to this change.<ref name=":1">Needs citation
</ref>

This announcement also removed the popular unity plus plan, forcing developers to the more expensive Unity Pro plan if they wanted to remove the baked in unity splash screen.<ref name=":0" />

To ensure adoption of this change Unity quietly changed their EULA to allow for such a change and never notified their users, going as far to private their EULA Github repository which was created as a result of a prior incident where Unity Technologies changed quietly their EULA quietly.<ref name=":1" />

==Consumer impact==
''What the repercussions of the incident are for consumers in the context of "new" consumer protection (privacy,right to ownership,right to say no).''

==Consumer response==
The yearly GMTK Game jam released a series of statistics on engine usage within the jam, both in 2023<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brown |first=Mark |date=2023-07-18 |title=game engines that people used to make 6835 game jam games |url=https://nitter.us.catsarch.com/gamemakerstk/status/1681376508688883713 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260321165148/https://nitter.us.catsarch.com/gamemakerstk/status/1681376508688883713 |archive-date=21 Mar 2026 |access-date=2025-06-16 |website=Twitter}}</ref> before the runtime fee announcement and in 2024<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brown |first=Mark |date=2024-08-21 |title=game engines that people used to make 7,711 game jam games |url=https://nitter.us.catsarch.com/gamemakerstk/status/1826184926393491689 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://megalodon.jp/2026-0322-0154-40/https://nitter.us.catsarch.com:443/gamemakerstk/status/1826184926393491689 |archive-date=21 Mar 2026 |access-date=2025-06-16 |website=Twitter}}</ref> afterwards. The 2023 results showed 59% of jam entries were made in the unity engine, while the next largest engine, Godot, (a free & open source competitor to unity), took a 19% share. The 2024 results see unity's share drop by 16% to an overall 43%, and Godot's more than double to 37%, Illustrating a significant exodus of talent from the unity platform correlating with the release of the runtime fee.

==References==
{{reflist}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Unity game engine runtime fee}}
[[Category:Unity]]
[[Category:Software licensing]]

Consumer Rights Wiki - User contributions [en]

Unity Engine runtime fee