Official Important updates to the Unity Runtime Fee policy

I see Unity more so as a ‘business’ now than before.

There was a time I saw it as a collective of passionate gamers trying to create something bigger than themself. I know they did it for money before, but it was for both. Now it just seems like it’s for money, period.

I am thankful for the changes, but not from the perspective of someone who is thankful to a friend, but someone who is thankful a corporation didn’t alter our original deal further. Because I believe they only changed direction because the outcry was so loud that it brought the stock down.

I now see the benefit of the open source community with game engines. And I think those communities will begin to thrive in a way they never have, because of what I mentioned earlier - a group of trusted and passionate professionals is who game devs want on their development team.

I am thankful for unity, and for all it’s done for the community. I will continue with them until I find a more favorable alternative, which I understand is mutual, because they’re just a business.

 

So a freemium model game that makes no money at all we can pay 2.5% of nothing. IE $0 . ?

 

I guess I don't understand the concern - if you make over 1,000,000 on the game, you pay either on the installs, or 2.5% - whatever is less. That seems fair to me.

 

Don't get baited. Just remember that this is the new program....... for now.

 

It's optional AND self reported apparenlty.

 

Great.

 

That's how I read that - if your fremium game fails, you aren't stuck paying anything for it. But if you make 4 billion dollars on it, like Genshin Impact did, you're paying

 

Impressively, it's always capped at 2.5%, in some cases you can even pay less than 2.5%.
However, I still recommend that you change the name Runtime fee because it brings a bad feeling to everyone. Let's call it auto count new users.

 

This does not fix the issue that Unity acted like RATS hiding the TOS and pulling the rug from everyone.

 

Unity needs a leadership team we can trust.

Edit: Also, the runtime fee portion shouldn't be in there at all anymore. Looks like a desperate attempt to save face. Sure, it gives those who stick around and update the choice to potentially do something cheaper than 2.5% (although it could also be a trojan horse and the 2.5% choice goes away at some point), but more than anything it's a reminder of Unity's incompetence.

 

I'm afraid unless there's changes to the upper management responsible for the original runtime fee, I couldn't in my right mind trust this company.

 

What about Industry license? Will you still force non-game companies to buy overpriced Industry license? I need clarification which version applies to Industry, since it was introduced in TOS last year? (I don't exactly remember).

 

This is my thought as well. They needed to appease this guy, and this is what we end up with.

 

Well, yeah. But that was the same with the previous policy. There were 200k thresholds for personal users and 1 million revenue thresholds for pro users before you'd even be charged a penny...

 

I personally think this is great news. I just hope this is enough to bring back all the devs that abandoned ship during the past week...

 

This is actually quite good. Everything you need to get going, and once your game gets super traction it's only a 2.5% revenue share.

And no splash screen.

Ok. I'm back.

 

I really like the changes, trust must be rebuild but thats a good step in the right direction! Nothing happend than a announcement, Unity heard us so lets see what the future brings, i personally will stay with unity

 

bear in mind, that the splash only goes away in personal if you opt in into 2024LTS

so, if your project stays 2021 forever, even post revenue, the old rules still apply to you
from what I see you can still remove it by going to the pro version? While staying in 2021 LTS

I think this is a very elegant way to do it

 

Happy!

 

Can you give us a STAND ALONE OFFLINE VERSION OF IT?

One that we can USE to predict "installs" and would be the OFFICIAL metric to calculate that?

Because it´s a complete JOKE...

 

I agree with this, but I think ... they deserve a chance to make amends? This is a really good start!

 

So what about people on older LTS versions like 2021 and 2022. How much will it cost them to remove the splash screen?

 

This sounds nice. Would be nice to use my company splash screen and at least I'll be able to publish my game on PC

 

Pretty sure in the blog post they said that we would be self reporting these numbers ourselves.

 

I think I can do that: it's not shady. The TOS is a public facing legal document. It is always under close scrutiny, whether it's tracked on github or not.

Can you please stop making this about trust?

Any company can make changes to their pricing and plans and terms of service at any time, that is not a breach of trust.

The CEO is by title the "executing" person implementing operational changes. Decisions are made by the board of directors and investors in a publicly traded company. Of course it's JR's head that serves as a dart board, that's part of the job as a CEO.

Whether any of this was his idea or someone else's we won't ever know. Most likely, it was a combined effort.

In addition statements like "nearly killed Unity" are just bollocks. Look at the developers who publicly announced quitting Unity. Most of the names you've probably never heard of.

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This whole S***storm was blown way out of proportion, and this is in part thanks to various influencers putting oil in the fire, deliberately spreading misinformation, making outrageous claims. And then there's people calling this "investigative journalism".

I have another term for this: outrage culture.

To combat this I have collected the most common outrageous statements and tried my best to explain them. Feel free to direct future offenders to this document. I'll gladly update it with counter-arguments - if there are any.

 

Thanks Unity. I appreciate the people within Unity that fought senior mangement over the initial decision which was totally unacceptable.

As a gamer as well as a hobbyist game developer I no longer have to worry about installing a game I've purchased on multiple devices (PC and Steam Deck) and negatively affecting the game developer.

Looking forward, when you meet to discuss lessons learnt from this event (which I hope will happen), one thing the senior management need to realise is that you need to look after the game developers that use your product. Without the game developers you don't have a market. Just as without gamers the game developers don't have a market.

 

Yes I like that too! BTW OOC do you have some Blitz history?

 

Not a concern per se, just the principle of getting charged for something that does not generate revenue directly feels iffy. Also, there's no way to count WebGL engagements on our side, so Unity will determine our engagements if we don't opt for straight up 2.5%. We could treat it as just 2.5% rev share, which it technically is, but the engagement model still sucks.

 

With the today announce Unity continues their road to autodestruction, a Installation Fee is unfair and absurd, is a direct attack against free to play games, the Unity users exodus will be continue.

 

Btw Unity needs to have some awesome F***ing features in the pipeline for 2024 for ppl to upgrade versions

 

This works for us. Thanks for listening, Unity.

 

In fact, for my team it is an improvement from what it was BEFORE the first controversial announcement.

 

Sounds like a very good deal to me. Easy to understand. 2.5% revenue share once you're making decent money seems very fair. And no requirement for Splash in any plan.

 

I like the calculator.

 

Yeah, it means anyone who wants or needs to stay on a previous version will have to pay for pro.

The subscription model is already questionable by nature but this is a new level of anti consumer practice when the plan we're engaged in is removed.

 

i looks like it will be 2000$ per year by my understanding

 

Missing the POINT!
Its only going away from 2023 LTS onwards, but Plus subscription is going away immediately. So if you drop to Personal, yes splashscreen gone in 2023LTS, but NOT in older versions, which i'm locked to for some old projects.

Karl_Jones
Is splash screen removal coming to current and older versions of Unity that are pre-2023LTS?
No it starts from 2023 LTS​

 

This new scheme is really so much better than I expected to come up with, kudos to the team and rather fast response considering all the complexity of designing it.

 

When you go over $200k & 200k downloads, do you automatically get pushed up to the pro level?

That would actually be good.

I didn’t like it when you could have a sleeper hit, and a year later your game crossed the threshold for a month without you realizing and costs you $.20 per download. Seemed like one of those ‘corner cases by design’.

 

People being happy about "only" 2.5% forget Pro is already super expensive and is about to get even more expensive.

 

Watching...

 

2023 LTS. 2023 is still on Tech Stream.

 

Hey, read this comment, does it help?

 

The only Blitz History I have is... "Ahh them were some good days".

 

Seems fair to me, better than expected. I think it's a win-win for both sides.

 

That's actually EXTREMELY fair, with a clear calculator and clear rules. Self-reported eliminated all the RGPD and trust concerns. Well done.

 

Do u get speedtree application and full library access for instance for the pro sub?

 

others replied already, you can disable the splash screen with the free version