Unity Engine runtime fee
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Unity Software Inc. (aka: Unity Technologies), a publicly traded software company known for their Unity game engine, implemented sweeping changes to its pricing model for Unity that would affect all users of the engine, forcing users to either adopt their per-download fee or de-list their games.
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 100,000$ at which point you're required to change license to one of the higher tiers.
Unity Pro
Costs [TBD]$ yearly per seat, and allows you to continue working on your projects past the 100,000$ revenue limit and gives additional features.
Unity Enterprise
[TBD]
Runtime fee
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.[1]
| Unity Personal and Unity Plus | Unity Pro | Unity Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unity Runtime Fee thresholds to be met | |||
| Revenue Threshold (USD) | $200,000 (last 12mo) | $1,000,000 (last 12mo) | $1,000,000 (last 12mo) |
| Install Threshold | 200,000 (life to date) | 1,000,000 (life to date) | 1,000,000 (life to date) |
| Installs over the Install Threshold | Standard monthly rate | ||
| 1–100,000 | $0.20 per install | $0.15 per install | $0.125 per install |
| 100,001–500,000 | $0.075 per install | $0.06 per install | |
| 500,001–1,000,000 | $0.03 per install | $0.02 per install | |
| 1,000,001+ | $0.02 per install | $0.01 per install | |
| Installs over the Install Threshold | Emerging market monthly rate | ||
| 1+ | $0.02 per install | $0.01 per install | $0.005 per install |
These fees were to be applied retroactively to any product using the unity runtime, including those released prior to this change.[2]
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.[1]
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.[2]
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
Summary and key issues of prevailing sentiment from the consumers that can be documented via articles, emails to support, reviews and forum posts.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Unity plan pricing and packaging updates". Unity Blog. 2023-09-12. Archived from the original on 2023-10-14.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 2023-09-12 suggested (help);|first=missing|last=(help) - ↑ 2.0 2.1 Needs citation