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Verter on 18 September 2023
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Just for clarity and just in case, I'll post here a (kind of crudely) translated excerpt from an article that I wrote recently, covering the Unity fee and its potential impact on the gaming industry. I'll also attach the official Unity image with the fee prices. I'm doing this because, while I may be wrong, I feel like there's a bit of misinformation here.

  • The fee is only applicable when a video game meets two requirements: it must exceed a minimum number of total installations (200.000 for basic subscriptions and 1.000.000 for premium plans) and generate an annual income in dollars greater than those amounts.

  • If a game meets those conditions, the developer is required to pay between $0.005 and $0.2 for every new installation after that threshold.

  • The fee is billed on a monthly basis.

  • For an installation to count as such, the game must have been opened at least once.

  • Every installation is only paid once, so the fee doesn't accrue from month to month.

  • Only the first intallation per device is counted towards the total (note: the Unity team claimed the opposite at first, then backtracked).

  • Installations of games obtained through charity bundles or subscription services such as Game Pass, as well as web and streaming games, are excluded from the total. And so do demos, as long as they don't include the whole game.

  • Installations of early access games are counted towards the total.

  • If a game is included on a bundle, it's up to the developers themselves to let Unity know.

  • The Unity team encourages developers to contact them if they suspect of piracy or fraud, but it's not clear how they intend to check to what extent the game is affected.

  • The installation count begins on January 1, 2024 and doesn't add up the number of installations the game had before that date (but they are taken into account in determining the total).

  • Non-game applications are not affected.

  • Products created with a Unity Industry subscription are also unaffected.

  • The fee is significantly lower when the game is installed in an emerging market.

  • Premium subscriptions include a reduction in the fee.

  • The reduction in the fee works in ranges: the more the total number of installations increases, the lower the amount to be paid for each installation.

  • Use of some Unity services may be accompanied by fee reductions.

Also, as a (semi)professional Unity developer, I want to say that, in my opinion, the only bad thing about this fee (apart from the fact that Unity hasn't given developers enough time to fully prepare for this) is that it's linked to installations, which is absolute and utter nonsense, and has the potential to cause many headaches and unfair situations. Other than that, I'm totally fine paying a well-implemented fee (although I'd rather not, because who wouldn't?) if that means that a game I created has reached over 200,000 lifetime installations AND generated 200,000 dollars in revenue. In fact, if that were the case, I would just spend 2,000 of my 200,000 dollars to update to the Pro license, which would mean that I wouldn't have to pay the fee until I reached ONE MILLION dollars AND ONE MILLION total installations.

I mean, Unity is a professional game engine, one of the only two publicly available engines holding that status (the other being Unreal). And, despite that fact, it's 100% free to use unless your game has reached more than 200,000 total installations and generated more than 200,000 dollars in revenue. And, if your game has generated one million dollars and reached one million installations, it still only costs you 2,000 dollars per year if you have upgraded to the Pro version. It's only when you've surpassed those humungous amounts when you actually need to pay the fee (which also means, by the way, that the smaller developers are the least affected —if at all— by this measure).

Again, I think that tying the fee to the new intallations instead of the monthly revenue is a terrible decision, and also the reason why I'M AGAINST IT in its current state. But I guess that what I'm trying to say is that this whole situation has been blown WAY out of proportion, mainly due to two reasons:

  1. Unity wasn't clear at first and has then been making a lot of clarifications as they have arisen, which has made things even more confusing and hard to follow for everyone.
  2. Many people around the web (most likely here too) are giving their opinion based on other people's opinions, without having actually read the Unity announcement or the FAQ (particularly the FAQ, which is the most informative of the two), and therefore many people actually don't know for sure what they're talking about.

And for the third time, I think linking the fee to the new installations instead of the monthly revenue is a garbage move, and I'm glad Unity is going to make changes, but, seriously, the majority of reactions on the internet are disproportionate.

Also, Unity is not going anywhere anytime soon. Not even close to that. People are focused on the public reactions of a number of companies that have made a name for themselves in the industry thanks to a beloved game or two, sometimes a few of them, but this industry is way, way larger than that.

Last edited by Verter - on 18 September 2023

I'm mostly a lurker now.