Unity is introducing a new fee associated with game installations.

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In a move which Unity Create president Marc Whitten states is to "make more money", the video game software development company has announced plan pricing and packaging updates.

Starting in January 2024, Unity will introduce a new cost called the "Unity Runtime Fee." This fee is based on the number of users who install games created using Unity as their game engine.

The fee applies once certain revenue and installation milestones are reached, depending on your subscription plan:
  • Unity Personal and Unity Plus users will start paying the fee once a project reaches $200,000 in revenue over 12 months and has 200,000 total installs.
  • Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise users have a higher threshold: the fee applies when a project earns $1 million in revenue over the same 12-month period and reaches 1 million installs.
The fees will be charged on a monthly basis, and the amount per install varies based on your license:
  • Unity Personal and Plus users pay a fixed fee of 20 cents per install.
  • Unity Pro users start at 15 cents per install and can go as low as 0.02 cents per install as installations increase.
  • Unity Enterprise users start at 12.5 cents per install and can go as low as 0.01 cents per install as installations increase.
The decision to move from a flat fee to an install-based fee has raised some eyebrows in the game development community. Especially as at first glance the decision looks to penalise the smaller Personal or Plus customers over the more expensive Pro and Enterprise subscribers.

gamedeveloper.com reports:
In Unity's announcement, the company attributed the fee to the ongoing development of Unity Runtime—the executable that players download with every game and allows games made in Unity to "work at scale."

Unity has not previously charged developers for any services related to Unity Runtime. Its various licensing plans hawk the capabilities of the Unity editor and offer a number of services for live service games including DevOps, monetization, and player analytics.

Whitten explained that maintaining the Unity Runtime executable is an active effort. Even after a game ships, Unity Runtime needs to be frequently updated to operate on platforms that are being constantly updated. "It's quite expensive," he said, adding that the fee was designed to charge developers who have found "scaled success" with their games while giving smaller studios enough time to build their audience before paying additional costs.
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How will this impact the development of Sanctuary: Shattered Sun? We have reached out to the developers for comment and will update once a response has been received; but one user on the official Discord had a single comment:

rip.jpg

Yet this dedicated Sanctuary: Shattered Sun enthusiast is not yet willing to see everything in a negative light. More information will be made available once we have it.
 

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Why are they trying to be more aggressive than unreal on pricing when they don't have even half the features to back it up? Nothing wrong with simplicity and ease of use but its about the only things they had going for them, now that's pretty much gone.
 
Potatoman said:
Why are they trying to be more aggressive than unreal on pricing when they don't have even half the features to back it up? Nothing wrong with simplicity and ease of use but its about the only things they had going for them, now that's pretty much gone.
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not profitable enought to give good divident for the share holders
 
Al said:
In a move which Unity Create president Marc Whitten states is to "make more money", the video game software development company has announced plan pricing and packaging updates.

Starting in January 2024, Unity will introduce a new cost called the "Unity Runtime Fee." This fee is based on the number of users who install games created using Unity as their game engine.

The fee applies once certain revenue and installation milestones are reached, depending on your subscription plan:
  • Unity Personal and Unity Plus users will start paying the fee once a project reaches $200,000 in revenue over 12 months and has 200,000 total installs.
  • Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise users have a higher threshold: the fee applies when a project earns $1 million in revenue over the same 12-month period and reaches 1 million installs.
The fees will be charged on a monthly basis, and the amount per install varies based on your license:
  • Unity Personal and Plus users pay a fixed fee of 20 cents per install.
  • Unity Pro users start at 15 cents per install and can go as low as 0.02 cents per install as installations increase.
  • Unity Enterprise users start at 12.5 cents per install and can go as low as 0.01 cents per install as installations increase.
The decision to move from a flat fee to an install-based fee has raised some eyebrows in the game development community. Especially as at first glance the decision looks to penalise the smaller Personal or Plus customers over the more expensive Pro and Enterprise subscribers.

gamedeveloper.com reports:


How will this impact the development of Sanctuary: Shattered Sun? We have reached out to the developers for comment and will update once a response has been received; but one user on the official Discord had a single comment:

View attachment 72

Yet this dedicated Sanctuary: Shattered Sun enthusiast is not yet willing to see everything in a negative light. More information will be made available once we have it.
Click to expand...
To a buy and play it's not a huge portion of the fee it's more for free to play game or when you give it away or if you have a free demo
 
Unity have gone back to the drawing board now after a bit of a backlash. They've already said the fee won't be per install but instead per initial install. I bet they're still hammering out the details.
 
Skoub said:
To a buy and play it's not a huge portion of the fee it's more for free to play game or when you give it away or if you have a free demo
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Sux2b free2play right now. But knowing how responsive these kind of companies are to community pressure, I can see that changing too.
 
It scales with installs - and is dependent upon revenue, before ANY charges are made. Free to play will either be free as they're not earning enough or if on Pro or Enterprise will scale down with significant installs.
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Greed have always been one of the biggest flaws most gaming companies have and it's something that always pulls down their projects sooner than later. There's no doubt about this Unity's new game Sanctuary: Shattered Sun having a good potential and it's not bad to make money from their projects but they should make money their priority than giving service to gamers. It won't end well for them and the game.
 
We live in a capitalist society where making money is the core aim of pretty much every person (who has covered the essentials). Why would Unity be any different? It's a business, not a charity. It has shareholders/stakeholders. They are more important than someone who wants to play a videogame.
 
Pfft. They caved. I just don't get what they managed to achieve with this, other than tanking their stock.
 
Brodes said:
Pfft. They caved. I just don't get what they managed to achieve with this, other than tanking their stock.
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I read one of the bigwigs sold their stock shortly before this announcement, anyone knew well to abandon ship at this point.


This makes one think on why they pull such a brash stunt like this, I'm going to roll with some other's thoughts that they did this to make what they really want to do seem a lot better than this recent announcement. As in, start with the really bad to make what they want to do seem better.
 
Seems like they were hoping to see the announcement get a different reaction than it did and when it didn't, take a U-turn instead and backtrack.

It's a shame that so many companies are looking to make money over making it so that more things are available to gamers without a hefty fee.
 
Yeah I watched life stream on Friday. Was somehow interesting.
But some answers to questions were more PR unfortunate.
However, seems on right track.

One thing I don't get it, is why Unity such sticks to Per Install concept, along with other changes.
 
In a bid to make more money they happened to shoot themselves in the leg. The point being ‘more money’. They can’t say they were running short specifically.
They surely didn’t expect the kind of public response that resulted.
 
Al said:
Unity have rolled back on this, somewhat:

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They know what the consequences would have been for a new, that's why their hands was forced to listen and change things up. Majority of their potential gamers would have walked out on the game and it's going to be a flop at sales.
 
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