Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

I'm not happy that the splash screen will stay on the old versions, it's a mistake on Unity's part! I wonder, why do you keep letting trash games ruin your reputation and pissing off the developers? Is it worth it for a few more bucks? The rest of the new changes look good to me as a solo developer - no charges for old versions and for 2023 LTS and later versions - no charges if under $200,000 per game, after $200,000 buy Pro, after $1,000,000 only pay 2.5% on the excess over $1,000,000 and if a game earns more of $1,000,000 in the last 12 months. If I hit $1,000,000 with my game, I will put Unity logo on my custom splash screen! I promise, hahaha!

 

Why not stick to revenue share and put tiers to compete? Look carefully: it is not that, it is insistently a runtime fee. I thought why someone does that: you can change the fee anytime you want. Being 20 cents now does not mean it will remain so in the future. Basic not even 3rd grade logic to see this. The remaining question is, can they also update the max cap on this when the time comes?

EDIT: This opens other possibilities. Via runtime fee, the export module of the engine is charged. Tomorrow, they can say, we already charge the export module and you accept it, why not charge addressables module, srp modules, even vs code module... So, it is very clear that this idea should be strongly avoided.

 

Personally I don't mine evolving contracts with an evolving product...provided:

A) Old versions get important bug fixes. (No holding us hostage)

B) We are clearly informed when updating to major versions that the agreement is different. (No sneaking in terms you hope we wont notice)

C) No where in the agreement does it allow for retroactive changes. (Pure evil)

That last one is obviously the most important to me. Bait and switch rug pulls can cost years of development, on top of being unethical (and often illegal).

 

I would be interested in a Unity employee answering this question:

Why would anyone choose to use the Unity engine moving forward?

1. You are incapable of improving your tools

2. All the money we give to you poofs into the air, it does not propel the industry forward

3. It is clear you are in dire financial straights and must jump towards predatory, destructive money schemes to manhandle your users.

These terms may be acceptable, but how do we know we're not the frog in boiling water? The cat's out of the bag.

You do not communicate, you don't innovate, you don't give a damn about your product, you are not grateful for your consumers who give your product value, you're incapable of balancing a budget, or fostering talent. You have no idea what you're doing and you are actively trying to destroy everything your customers value.

We assumed all the above for years, but you went ahead, slammed an iron fist on the table and removed all doubt.

I used to lament the decline of Unity, I now celebrate it.

I resent the situation you have put us long term devs who are shackled to your engine, but that's the entire reason for all of this isn't it? You've exploited the market to benefit from the works of those who came before you, because we're stuck with you. Because those who came before you created something of value. You do not feel a duty to provide value, you're simply going to beat money out of others while providing them nothing.

This engine is a f*cking joke, and I CANNOT WAIT for a semi competent alternative.

Used to dream of finding success in your engine, to sending feedback, to a future of an even better engine built between you guys and the user base. Believe it or not, I wanted to send you guys big ol' chunk of money if I ever found success. I am still grateful for these tools, I couldn't work on my project without this fantastic engine. It's a TRAVESTY what you have done to the potential you have sat on all these years.

It's clear this company doesn't understand or give a damn about game dev, so why should we give a damn about your money grubbing company?

 

I would like to say:

Good job
New terms are more then acceptable, I almost can't believe that its real

Firing the CEO would be a cherry on top, but I am very happy Unity developer as of now.

//Edit: I hope there is going to be some new splash screen editor. I have no problem displaying Unity logo in my game, but I would like much more control over how its displayed

 

The fact that runtime fees are remaining an option leaves a bad taste in my mouth and represents a stain on the industry as a whole.

 

They are in a bind in march 2025.

Dark mode has been free for years. Go to "Edit/Preferences", and change the "Editor Theme" to "Dark".

 

I'm gonna put on my calm and rational hat for this post. If you're angry and want your pound of flesh, I understand, but I can't deal with emotional people because it's going to muddy the waters.

Just to make sure I got this right (because I hate misunderstandings) this is my summary of the new deal:

• If I assume best faith and intentions, Unity wanted to add a royalty to gather more revenue from developers whose revenue exceeded a threshold, but didn't want this royalty to hit at full-strength as soon as they crossed that threshold.
• All of my further suppositions will be based on this one assumption, so if it's wrong, all of my following statements in this post can be chucked into flaming disposal.
• That said, this debacle could have been avoided by calling it a/an: runtime fee installation fee easing royalty
• This easing royalty had to be based on some sort of metric of success, which during the initial announcement, was an unreliable and vague "we'll-figure-it-out-trust-me-bro-ai-will-solve-it" install fee, which has been changed to a self-reported metric based off of downloads from the digital distributor's service.
• So the theory/intent behind this royalty is so that Unity doesn't miss out on the big Genshin Impact money from the one-in-a-zillion smash hit game, but it leaves alone pretty much everyone else.
• The royalty has a 2.5% cap, and my god, you really should have announced that there was going to be a cap earlier because when you leave people in the dark and stonewall them they fester like jealous lovers and I don't blame them at all. Unity totally screwed the pooch when it came to their PR. This will become a case study for other corporations for years to come, only to be repeated by those who don't study it.
• Personal Plan has been vastly improved since the cap has been doubled from $100K to $200K, and the option of hiding the Unity Splash screen from Plus has been rolled into it.
• Personal Plan isn't subject to a runtime fee.
• Plus is gone, though its option of hiding the splash screen has been rolled into Personal.
• No game that made less than $1Mil in the last year has to pay this fee.
• That said, there are still subscription fees for things like Pro and various services.

To Unity:

Please bring back your TOS github.
Please KEEP the Editor-version TOS lock-in.

Don't stonewall, and don't limit your conversations to just your insiders. The rest of us will simply assume the worst.

I'm mostly just glad this is over. One of my paid side projects in Unity has gone over to Godot, so I still have a bone to pick with Unity for irreversibly making my life harder through their poor judgement because now I have to straddle two engines.

 

That's not going to be released for many months, but the changes to Plus are happening now.

 

Thanks for the update, big improvement.

Nobody likes a price hike, vut you do need to be profitable for things to be mutually beneficial, so I can understand the direction.

This solves my big issue, which was the unlimited install fee liability. I see it as a 2.5% royalty now, but as it's no longer retroactive we can plan future projects accordingly.

Of course, I look forward to the actual terms so that they can be properly evaluated.

Thanks especially to any and all staff pushing for a better solution.

Unity, if anyone resigned in disagreement against thr previous proposal, please offer them their jobs back. You seem to agree that they were right. People who stand up for the right thing are the kind of employees you need. Please look after them!

 

That only applies to people who already have Plus. Those who don't still have to pay 4.5x as much as they would if they signed up for Plus a few weeks ago.

 

This.
Do the right thing.

 

Tell us which parts of the terms are subject to change, and how frequently?

Runtime fees are on fixed values, things like inflation will change those over time. If I make a game with Unity 2023, and release in 2029, assuming runtime fees have changed in that time, which ones do I pay? The terms when I started the project, or am I now subject to new terms that weren't disclosed when I began my game?

Explain why there's a 2.5% cap or runtime fee. The metric is still lumping in a bunch of stuff... sales volume, installs, downloads, and more. The FAQ describes everything using sales volume though to calculate it. Why write all those other metrics into the TOS? Is this based on an expectation of where the industry will move to in the future?

How long will Unity 2022 and earlier be supported in terms of compatible packages? If a next generation of a console were to release, would we be forced to move to a new Unity version to build for it? Right now, I can go all the way back to Unity 5 and still use some newer stuff. Will new packages continue to work with 2022?

Will the Asset Store require Unity 2023 and later only releases? Does the runtime fee apply to asset store projects?

If I update a project to 2023 to test feature sets but later want to lower the version and release on 2022 for some reason (for example, Hololens is notorious for working on only very specific versions of Unity), which license terms am I now under?

Can people on pre 2023 but have a need for splash screen removal get an alternative? Some people do contract work or support projects on legacy versions that aren't viable to upgrade. If they were previously on Plus they can no longer remove the splash screen. Some sort of price/option that's Personal features but a paid splash screen removal (as that's what they used Plus for) would help a segment of your customers here.

 

@karl_jones When can we expect these changes to be reflected on the MAIN TOS?
Specifically the fact that versions lower than Unity 2023LTS will remain free of any fee.

 

I'd like to see a clarification of "as long as you keep using that version". Does this mean that if I start a secondary project in LTS 2023 and agree to the terms of that version, that I am now also bound to those terms for other projects that only use LTS 2022 and prior?

Conventional intuition would have me say 'of course not'. But if I've learned anything from Unity's demeanor towards policy changes in the past weeks, is that it tends to not adhere to conventional thinking and use vague wording. So extra-clear delineations for this is something that we want to see in the TOS.

 

Hi @karl_jones thanks for your replies to the thread so far.

I'd like to give my feedback, which is that I have been paying for Unity Plus solely to remove the splash screen, and the change to now have to pay for Pro just to remove the splash screen is very disappointing. The "one year of Pro for the price of Plus" special offer does not solve the issue, only delays it.

If you guys could resolve the splash screen issue (somehow grandfather us in, since we used Plus?), I would view the outcome of all of this as a positive thing. But for now, the changes are still a "net negative" for me personally.

 

Looks like they remove it from Personal.

 

I just wanted to say I'm happy to see this announcement. I couldn't work properly on my project the last week and stood in front of the daunting task of potentially porting my 6+ years project to Unreal.

Just, thank you.

 

The splash screen is only removed for 2023 LTS Personal, which doesn't exist yet. Current Personal users are still stuck with it. This is a problem for some developers who won't want to upgrade to 2023 LTS because of breaking changes and/or the new terms.

 

@karl_jones When can we expect these changes to be reflected on the MAIN TOS?
Specifically the fact that versions lower than Unity 2023LTS will remain free of any fee.

 

anytime. it's nice to see happy people. i wish these changes will come more often. must be hard to decide, which screw turn next.

 

Pro tip: When Unity puts the TOS github repository back up, subscribe to change notifications so you don't get broadsided by new shenanigans down the road.

Bonus Pro tip: Build a 3rd party service that emails you every day that the github repository is still up, change or not.

 

Even before it was not morally ok to charge a contractor based on someone else's revenue.
But now it's worse, contractors will have to go on pro instead of plus 400/y --> 2000/y because it has been removed
Edit: it has been that bad for contractors even before (plus was limited at 200k)
still putting the limit on the contractor's client is wrong, now that unity has rev-share it should stop putting that much pressure on contractors

 

no more plus tips?

 

I will ask again:

If I have a couple of Unity games out, stop updating them and stop using Unity (let's say one is 2021 LTS and the other 2023 LTS), then I release a game with a different engine that makes my revenue > $200k, do I need to have a Unity Pro license active if I want to keep selling my old games, even though I don't use Unity any more?

 

Hey people, the removed splash screen is just a trade off for phoning home, you can't use personal offline for too long. ඞ

Which basically exclude people like me who are on thin online ice (i'm using multiple point of access, may main machine is offline and my smartphone do the bridge with going to public place with free internet and back to my offline home).

 

I'm not worried about the pricing structure anymore, I hope it's enough for Unity to survive.

I'm far more worried about Marc Whitten saying that he didn't accept that the engine has stagnated in recent years. That just seems completely delusional to me. When was the last time Unity released a killer feature like Nanite or Lumen?

In Unity, Animation, Terrain, Navigation etc, have all been neglected. If you make a new Unity project, URP and the "new" input system are not the default despite being around for like 5 years! Everything Unity does takes years. Even the F***ing URP sample project still isn't out. It was announced half a year ago. 3 Empty scenes! Epic have already released 2 starter projects this year with actual gameplay. They just dropped them when they were ready, no stupid delays.

Can someone inside Unity talk to Marc and other executives explain the reality of where they're at. Hopefully the mass migration to Godot will wake them up.

 

They've said revenue is by game (per several of their responses around the last policy). Not by individual or business. No, your revenue elsewhere doesn't add to these thresholds. That would be insane if they counted your revenue for games using a different engine.

 

That's a recipe for email fatigue. Why not one that does the opposite?

 

The new letter and FAQ don’t say anything about per game for the Personal license.

Please remember that you called this insane when (if) I get an answer.

 

- Let's see your ToS, first. Not only the current one, all of them in history. Let's see how you handle your version based promises on the ToS text. There should be insurances of further changes in those specific ToS versions. Also, attaching ToS to the specific engine version would be a good idea.

- Remove the runtime fee. It is just a silly idea. You can achieve the same results with tier based revenue share. Much more clear and manageable solution. Runtime fee idea is a very dangerous virus that can make Microsoft charge you per C# command you use in your engine. It is irresponsible to put such a thing out. Prove that you care about a healthy future, not just amount of fees.

- Executives are your problem, but, I think there is much to do there. One or two sentences of an apology per individual would make it sound better.

These are very simple things, all in your power.

EDIT: - Also, try to release a game of you made instead of inventing a Runtime Fee. That way, you rise your funds, you test your engine in a production environment yourself (I was just struggling with how Steam would process my addressables archive to be suitable for further updates, it appeared me that you are lack of calculating real world scenarios in your tools, releasing a game of your own would help you figure it out), and you gain sympathy and appreciation. It is 100% profitable. Taxing your community's works (Runtime Fee) is the easiest solution, you need to make your charisma out of your seats for funding, and Runtime Fee is not the way.

 

I'm glad there's a more reasonable way for devs to make an exit now. Resignations and a full walk-back might better demonstrate some actual remorse and responsibility.

 

Also people comparing unity to unreal, and/or mentioning genshin impact, while it's not the same business acumen, tower of fantasy is made with unreal, that's enough of a direct comparison.

 

PSA @karl_jones Is a software engineer at Unity. Please don't expect him to have all the answers or blame him for anything.

 

I want to provide a real forward-looking and actionable response to this question, both for Unity's sake and the community's.

First, let me just say that this version of the runtime fee, how it is reported, the FAQ, its goals and extra incentives for developers to focus on quality and retention, the math works. I agree with many others that if this is how the announcement began, I wouldn't have thought much of it.

However, the community damage is real, and this affects myself and others. Some of it cannot be repaired. Some of it already has by taking your time to get things right. And some of it might still be repairable by taking the following actions:

1) Bake your revenue percentages and fee rates into a formal legal document tied to a specific version or even calendar year that an Editor version was released. Also set an expected time for when prices need to be reevaluated, and maybe have some difference cap in place.

2) Fix the TOS retroactivity (sounds like you are already on it).

3) There's a negative loophole where anyone who was developing in personal and nearing release and wanted to upgrade to plus to remove the splash screen now has to either wait a year for 23 LTS to release or upgrade to Pro. Fix this!

4) We need transparency. Perform a retrospective investigation on how this got screwed up so badly, and publish the data along with a plan to fix this within your company doctrine so that such bad screw-ups don't happen again in the future.

5) Add some additional perks for Pro users, because right now there's no value-add from Unity in this deal.

6) Help the community collaborate in Unity. Right now, "free" assets on the asset store cannot be shared in open projects, such as public git repos. This makes it difficult for those who make tutorials or samples or anything of that sort to share visually interesting projects and grow the community. I'm not asking you to relicense everything on the Asset Store. There are obviously issues with that. But see if you can come up with some solutions to make those facing this dilemma not feel stuck (or break EULAs naively).

7) I noticed in a lot of Unity-sponsored videos there's significant promotion of paid Unity assets and neglect of other freely available alternatives. Mix it up a little so it isn't so obvious.

You took a big step today in the right direction. Try to take a couple more in the next few weeks!

 

The new one looks fair thank you.

PS: Hope you'll also consider to provide access to full source code for Personal license which is available to Enterprise only now AFAIK. There are experienced people there also who can make improvements.

 

Nothing about per game or related to Unity or anything here:

 

To be clear, I am calling it insane to count money you make using a different engine. That would be absurd, and not legally possible.

If they count your license, and all games under it, towards the single limit, I don't think that's insane. I think that's much less impressive of a deal than they've currently shown. And it would maybe make me think of making only one game in Unity before moving on.

 

Then let's get a response from @karl_jones. Because in the previous thread, it was mentioned that it was explicitly per game. Of course, they left a lot of details out of the FAQ, and still are leaving plenty out. But I took that response as just as truthful as anything in the FAQ. Although there's no way I can go back through and find that response and keep my sanity, so take that as a pinch of salt I guess.

 

They count all the money you make (+ funding) in any way, including by using a different game engine. This isn’t a question that part is clear to me.

The unclear part is if they will require me to get a subscription even though I will not be using their engine any more.

 

I actually see that as a GOOD thing because it forces Unity to actually innovate and implement banger new features so developers will be motivated to make the transition. You know, the way it used to be back in the day when perpetual licenses were sold.

 

Hey @karl_jones I just wanted to chime in on this to make sure this is clear - it is absolutely not feasible to suggest that we upgrade a project from previous years versions (example: updating from 2021LTS to 2023LTS) simply to gain the ability to remove the splash screen. Not sure if you're a programmer or not, but it could be an incredible amount of work to do that with all of the changes/differences between versions.

Edit: I just wanted to add that it is even worse for games that are already released - do you really want to subject your active playerbase to potentially new bugs/issues by updating your game's Unity Version... for the sole sake of maintaining that the splash screen is removed?

I'm worried that people over there at Unity do think that its as simple as that, when it is not. I hope that you guys can make modifications to the new policy to solve the issue of Unity Plus subscribers being stuck with having to pay for Pro just to remove the splash screen.

Thanks again for monitoring the thread and replying to people!

 

So, as an independent creator, staying below a yearly income cap of $200.000, Unity is now completely free. The snag being, I have to trust a board of directors that have just proved their complete incompetence, and face no professional consequences.

 

Can you show me evidence of where they claim they will charge you for games you make in a different game engine? That's like Adobe charging me for every other photo editor I ever use. That doesn't track. The correct response to that bill is to laugh. And there's no way you'd have to pay that. Unless I am really misunderstanding what you are saying here..,?

 

Think long and hard before updating to 2023

Let's be honest, the original price changes and retroactive change to the license agreement would never have held up in court. But the 2023/2024 license 100% will. Why? Because you will have agreed to it.

The Unity Runtime Fee will be implemented and Unity will have the option to just change it down the line. Because you will have agreed to that. "Just choose the flat revenue share" you say, Unity can change that as well.

The Always Online requirement (30 days grace) will be implemented, meaning you can now get banned from using the Unity editor, just as easily as a YouTuber or a Twitch streamer can get banned from their platform. Because you will have agreed to that.

If you "upgrade" your old projects to Unity 2023 LTS or newer, then those games will legally be on the hook as well. Because you will have agreed to that.

Devs who rely on the Unity Plus subscription are still screwed, unless they accept the 2023 license agreement or pay more than 4 times the price per seat. Since the splash screen will not be removable on the old free versions.

And for some reason *61% of you are now happy with this?

GG Unity. Well played.

*The Q&A live stream had a poll. 61% happy with the revised changes, 39% unhappy.