Unity Apologizes for Controversial Runtime Fee and Reveals Updated Policy

Unity Technologies has apologized and revealed an updated policy after being embroiled in a controversy after introducing the Runtime Fee that charges developers per game installed recently.

As announced in an official blog post, Marc Whitten, the President of Unity Create, apologized for the controversial Runtime Fee and addressed the changes made to the policy, walking back on some of their decisions.

Unity Personal & Plus

In the blog post, Whitten announced that the Unity Personal and Plus plan and any games built with the plan will exempted from the Runtime Fee.

Additionally, Unity said that they will also be increasing the revenue cap which users have to upgrade to the next tier of the plan from $100,000 USD to $200,000 USD.

Furthermore, developers will no longer be required to keep the “Made with Unity” splash screen.

The company also noted that any Unity-developed games that make less than $1 million USD in revenue in 12 months will not be subjected to the Runtime Fee.

Updated Policy

Previously, the Runtime Fee policy was stated to be applied to all Unity-made games that met a revenue threshold and set download counts, however, the company has walked back on the decision.

Now, the Runtime Fee will only be applied to games developed with the next LTS version of Unity that is launching in 2024 and beyond.

“Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity,” said Marc Whitten.

In addition, Unity is also reinstating the clause where developers can use the terms of service (ToS) that corresponds to the version of Unity that they are currently using.

Initially introduced in 2019, Unity stated that, “When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the ToS.”

This means that so long as developers have not updated the Unity version, any newer ToS will not be applied to their game.

For games subjected to the Runtime Fee, Unity stated that developers can pay either a 2.5% monthly revenue share or a number based on monthly initial engagements.

However, Unity did not specify what is the engagement metric numbers that developers need to calculate to pay them.

Unity, however, mentioned that both numbers will be self-reported and they will bill developers the lesser of the two.

While Unity seems to be trying to walk back on some of the Runtime Fee policy changes with the latest announcement, trust between the company and game developers might have been damaged and will not be mended any time soon.

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