The Oxford dictionary defines “unity” as the following:
1.the state of being united or joined as a whole.2.the number one.
A tech company named Unity is the creator of one of the most popular gaming engines in circulation for developers. Many indie creators are customers of the company, using their engine to create well received games such as Hollow Knight, Tunic and Cuphead, to name a few.
Unity Has Recently Angered Developers
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Recently, the company put out a statement that infuriated many of these developers, and rightly it was a statement that angered gamers as well. Unity is increasing their prices. More specifically, fees are being raised or just created for every gaming installation through a developer.
This fee is being called the Runtime fee and charges developers $0.20 for every install once their game reaches a threshold of 200,000 downloads and revenue of $200,000.
Naturally developers that use company’s engine did not react positively to this news. Many took to the newly branded X (previously known as Twitter) to share their malcontent.
Some development teams fearing the change would cause them to go bust if their games were up for charity, or were being offered on GamePass or other subscription services.
The fear being that multiples of downloads could potentially cost them dearly. Talks of switching to Unreal Engine, or another alternative, were being discussed by the teams.
Unity exec Marc Whitten has now promptly made his way to the internet to walk back a few of these fee statements, or as the company would put it, clarify its policies in better detail.
Unity Clarifies Its Fee Policy For Developers
First off, the runtime fee will only be charged for an initial installation. This means if you are angry at any Unity using developer, you cannot just keep deleting the game and reinstalling it to wrack up the bill. However, there will be an additional fee if the game is installed on a secondary device.
Demos of games will not incur these fees, unless the demo was included with a full game, of course. Games made for charity will be exempt, requiring the developer to simply notify Unity. Finally for games that are included in subscription services, and thus open for a multitude of downloads, will be charged to the distributor and not the developers.
Hopefully this merciful update is beneficial for all developers who would be effected by Unity’s new runtime fee. Whitten indicates that this is to to help keep their technology evolving and relevant.
Whitten also predicts that only 10% of developers using Unity’s engine will even be effected, based on their ability to have their games reach the threshold. A little on the cynical side it seems.
What do you think of the policies created by Unity? Are they bad for business or economically logical? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.
Source: Unity
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