Unity to Roll Back Some Key Aspects of Runtime Fee Policy

The move comes after massive backlash from the community.

Unity has announced some key changes to its widely panned Runtime Fee policy, which spawned both derision and confusion from developers and the gaming community at large when it was unveiled earlier this month.

It's easing up on some big aspects of the previously announced charges, removing the fee from the Unity Personal tier entirely, although it still remains in a revised form on the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise tiers.

In short, as originally announced, starting on Jan. 1, 2024, Unity would start charging developers a small fee every time someone downloads a game built on Unity's game engine after a certain threshold for minimum revenue and install count. The different tiers of Unity plans - Unity Personal/Unity Plus, Unity Pro, and Unity Enterprise - had different thresholds and, per the original announcement, smaller developers using Unity Personal/Unity Plus would have to pay Unity $0.20 per install once their game passes $200,000 in revenue over the last 12 months and 200,000 life-to-date installs.

Unity announced today, however, that there will be no Runtime Fee on games built on Unity Personal, which will remain free. They will also be increasing financial theshold of Unity Personal from $100,000 to $200,000 and will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.

"No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee," Unity's Marc Whitten said in the blog post today.

Unity also revealed changed for Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: "The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping 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," it said.

"For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month," it continued. "Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount."

Unity's Jason Weimann will also be holding a fireside chat at 1 p.m. PT/4 p.m. ET today to discuss the changes.

In addition to announcing the revisions, Unity apologized for its communication in the initial announcement, with Whitten writing outright, "I am sorry."

"We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy," he wrote. "Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine."

"You are what makes Unity great, and we know we need to listen, and work hard to earn your trust," he continued. "We have heard your concerns, and we are making changes in the policy we announced to address them."

After Unity announced the policy on Sept. 12, the backlash was swift. Among the concerns were for what the Runtime Fee would mean for charity bundles, free-to-play bundles, mulitple installs, and Game Pass. Some developers hinted they'd be forced to pull their games from the engine, and Among Us developer Innersloth confirmed to IGN that "pulling Among Us for a little while" was on the table.

While Unity released several statements attempting to clarify the policy in the following days, they did little to help, mostly just confirming aspects that were already controversial. On Sunday, however, Unity said they would be "making changes" to the policy.

Developers were quick to react to the revisions when they were announced today, with dev Rami Ismail posted on X/Twitter, “You know what, on first glance, I think this works? It’s effectively a 2.5% revenue share for $1M+p/y earners? No retroactivity left, LTS stability, no black-box data, yeah? I think that works for every use-case."

There's also a fair amount of skepticism, however, with many pointing out that the trust has already been broken.

Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.