Gaming Rumor Unity apologizes to devs, reveals updated Runtime Fee policy

SunsetFelid

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According to GameDeveloper.com:

Unity's much-derided Runtime Fee is receiving a massive rework almost two weeks after its disastrous debut. In an open letter posted on the Unity blog, the company formally apologized for the chaos sowed since the announcement and revealed massive changes to the policy in response to a week of negative feedback from the game development community.

The Unity Runtime Fee will no longer apply to games built on Unity Personal. Developers on said plan will also be able to now earn up to $200,000 in revenue according to the terms of service. Those developers will also no longer be required to use the "Made with Unity" splash screen.

For developers on the Pro and Enterprise plans, the Runtime Fee will only take effect beginning with the next LTS version of Unity arriving in 2024. Games made on the current or prior versions of Unity will not be included, unless they are upgraded to the next version of Unity.

Games subject to the Runtime Fee will have the option to either be subject to a 2.5 percent revenue share or a calculated fee based on "the number of new people engaging with your game each month." Unity says revenue and "new people" (phrased elsewhere as "initial engagements") can both be reported by developers, who will "always be billed for the lesser amount."

No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee.

This is a massive shift from the previous plan, which promised to charge developers anywhere from $.001 to $.20 each time their game was installed. Those rates would vary based on which Unity plan a developer subscribed to and how many installs over a certain threshold their game achieved, and would be charged for all games made in Unity, even ones made on prior versions of the terms of service (though the company would only start counting installations after January 1, 2024).

Does this change your opinion on Unity? Or has the bridge already been burned?

Link to the Article
 
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When companies make announcements like that, then they are going to eventually go through with them. So I don’t trust Unity and honestly, I think no one should trust them after this
 
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Unity has forever killed any sort of trust you could have with that company.
The only people that would use it now is ones that somehow didn't get news of their bullshit somehow. Or guess those people churning out zero-effort shit that's everywhere.
Even if they paid me to use their engine, I'd give them the middle finger, aside that I dunno anything about coding, lol.

The only way they could get a smidge of trust back is if they hanged that cancer growth that is Riccitiello. But even then, if they also revert back all this crap, think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone wanting to work with them ever again.
 
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SunsetFelid

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Have they given any assurances that they won't just retroactively change all agreements again when they feel the heat has died down a little?
I don't think any reassurances they could give would matter, we'd just expect them to renege on them anyway
 

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