Game engine maker Unity on Friday abandoned part of its controversial plan to charge developers fees based on the number of installed game downloads.
In an open letter, Marc Whitten, who leads the company’s Unity Create group, began by issuing an apology, which isn’t entirely surprising given the furor in the Unity community. The engine is used by games ranging from Pokemon Go and Hollow Knight to Cuphead and Heartstone.
“I’m sorry,” Whitten said. “We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new fulfillment fee policy.”
Unity closes offices, cancels town hall after threats related to enforcement fee restructuring
Whitten said Unity’s goal was financial, “to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and continue to invest deeply in our game engine.” And yet since announcing on September 12, a change to its fees – essentially charging game developers a fee when someone installed an eligible title built on Unity – the company’s stock price fell from around $39 to just a little less than $32 today, not to mention destroying developer loyalty. for the company.
Unity users became furious because the engine maker in 2019 promised it would charge developers “a flat fee per seat – not a fee on your entire revenue.” Its per-install execution fee, which did not apply to all games, went against this commitment. The reaction proved severe enough that the company closed offices a week ago because of an alleged threat. And among game developer forums, there were many posts discussing alternative game engines and code porting options.
Last week the updated pricing plan it looked like this. Under these rules, the following games were eligible for fulfillment facility fees, effective January 1, 2024:
The amount of the installation fee varied depending on the circumstances, but could be as high as $0.20. After the announcement, the business sought to to clarify the situation and calm people down by pledging, for example, not to charge fees for relocations or fraudulent installations, and to only tax new installations from January 1.
Developers feared being bombarded with installs – trolls reinstalling a game over and over again to cost dev houses, or hacking games and costing creators money – and that Unity would make them pay for previous installs . There have been many rumors, attempts at explanations and upheavals.
On Monday, it appeared that a policy reversal was afoot. In a Facebook post, David Helgason, co-founder and former CEO of Unity, was unequivocal about the PR disaster.
“We screwed up on many levels,” he said. said. “There’s no other way to say it: a new business model for Unity was announced in a way that was difficult to understand, but it also missed a number of important cases and ended up, centrally, with an outcome that was the opposite of what it was. was supposed to be.”
The next day, Unity promised a policy update in the coming days to fix some of the mess.
Today, Whitten revealed the revised policy in his position.
The bottom line is that “the Unity Personal plan will remain free and there will be no runtime fees for games built on Unity Personal.” Unity Personal is aimed at individual developers or small teams of developers, and the Personal plan’s annual income and funding limit will be increased from “$100,000 to $200,000 and we will remove the requirement to use the screen Starter Made with Unity. »
“No game with less than $1 million in revenue over the past 12 months will be subject to these fees,” it added. A FAQs goes into more detail:
The version of Unity you’re using and when you choose to release your title matters: “If you publish a game using Unity 2022 LTS, fulfillment fees will not apply. If you publish or release level a game in 2024, using Unity 2023 LTS (which will be released in 2024), runtime fees would apply.
Essentially, older software will remain subject to the terms and conditions established for that version.
And for games subject to fulfillment fees, Unity developers will have the option to choose the lesser of two revenue sharing options based on self-reported figures: either 2.5% of revenue or “the calculated amount depending on the number of new people. interact with your game every month.
However, regaining the trust of developers can take some time. There will still be a runtime setup fee for eligible titles, but not as was announced last week. ®
