Unity Writes Open Letter to Developers and Gamers Regarding Runtime Fees

Very recently, Unity got into a controversy after they announced a new approach to their pricing, where instead of using only a monthly subscription for the game engine, the company would be taking a fee from every download the product had. We covered these news, talking about the possible games affected and how it was a dangerous approach for the company.

Now, on Friday 22nd of September, Unity released a new statement in the form of a letter by the CEO of the company named "An open letter to our community", wherein Marc Whitten talks about the controversy and the approach they will be taking to regain the trust of the developers. The first and most important topic touched is games that had already been released, which would be exempt from the new fees that would be instated.

The way the company is going to earn a bit of money from the developers that make it big using the engine has changed as well, as Unity will now be taking either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount of new users engaging with the game per month, both of which would be self-reported, as per Unity's words. This change will also only affect games that have earned $1 million in a 12-month period.

There are a couple of other changes. Unity Personal will now remain free and will receive no Runtime Fee, alongside removing the Made with Unity splash that covers the screen. The likely best news for everyone is the way Unity will be approaching games that were already in development, which will not be affected by any fees as if they'd already been released prior and will also be exempt from the fees. The fees will only apply to the LTS version of Unity, which will be released in 2024 and beyond.

The current criteria for the runtime fee is as follows:

• The game must be made with Unity Pro or Unity Enterprise.
• The game created is upgraded to the LTS version releasing in 2024.
• The game has reached the threshold of earning $1,000,000 USD in revenue over 12 months.
• The game has received a lifetime initial engagement of 1,000,000.

In the X post created by Unity, developers and the community are still a bit cautious about the change but seemingly more optimistic. Now, a more dedicated team is watching over the comments and providing further information about the changes, which is a change from the original post announcing the Runtime Fee, where the company mostly replied with a copy-paste message.

Here is an open letter to our community:
https://t.co/qadAWzdGkb

— Unity (@unity) September 22, 2023

Optimism is relatively low, as Garry Newman commented on the post mentioning that the trust has been broken and paints a bleak picture of what could happen in the future. Many have iterated the same feeling of distrust, where they no longer trust the company and might still be migrating engines, regardless of the changes and apologies.

This all seems fair enough to be honest, and glad to see it, for the sake of the community.

Sadly, for me, the trust has been broken. It woke us up. The threat of what could happen in the future is too apparent now.

— garry (@garrynewman) September 22, 2023