Unity announced a new, controversial pricing model that primarily burdens the developer studios. Now they have apologized and presented new changes to accommodate developers.
What was the problem? Unity stated a few days ago that they wanted to introduce a new pricing model: developers should now pay for game installations by users. This not only angered developers but also thousands of players. Some developers even announced they would delete their games from Steam to avoid costs.
The whole issue eventually escalated: Unity apologized and said they wanted to make changes. Now they have reached out again and are retracting most of the changes to the pricing:
Unity makes changes, games remain partially free
This is what Unity presented: In an official blog post, Unity outlines what they now plan to do:
- Unity Personal Plan will remain free and there will be no runtime fee for games.
- Additionally, the cap will be raised from $100,000 to $200,000.
- The obligation to include the “Made with Unity” splash screen will be removed.
- No game with less than $1 million in revenue in the last 12 months will be subject to the fee.
- There will also be changes for Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise developers based on your feedback.
For costs, they want to offer developers two different models:
- Either they choose a revenue share of 2.5% that will go to Unity.
- Or they pay a certain amount based on the number of users. This resembles the old model, but developers are supposed to estimate the data themselves.
Whether developers and players will actually return to Unity is another story. Some teams have already stated they would rather look for other engines and no longer want to use Unity. One particularly successful game has already donated a lot of money to the competition:
