The initial plan was announced on September 12 and included charges for all projects that earned $200,000 in a 12-month period or reached 200,000 installations if they used cheaper Unity subscriptions. For those using more expensive subscriptions, such as Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise, the threshold was set at $1 million in revenue or 1 million installations.
On Sunday, Unity tweeted: ” We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused,” promising to soon share updated information about their new payment plans.
This change comes after negative reactions from the gaming community. Most notably, the criticism from Gary Newman, the developer behind the game Rust, who calculated that based on the number of installations, his company Facepunch Studios would have to pay $410,000 to Unity. Additionally, reports indicated that Unity would charge even in the case of a game being reinstalled by the same user.
This decision sparked so much outrage that many called for a boycott of Unity. Game developers like Slay the Spire’s MegaCrit threatened to switch to another game engine if appropriate changes were not implemented.
The situation was further exacerbated by the news that Unity’s executives, including CEO John Riccitiello, had sold a large number of the company’s shares prior to this controversial announcement. Riccitiello had sold more than 50,000 shares in 2023 alone, which further shook the confidence of investors and developers.
For many developers, the damage has already been done. Newman wrote on his company’s blog that Unity had failed to maintain their trust, and future installments of the Rust game would not be developed on the Unity platform.
(Originally published on Telegraf.rs)
