Unity To Charge Developers A Fee Each Time A Game Is Installed Next Year

Well... More GameMaker: Studio games are coming, then?...

Unity is official garbage lol

So Unity just felt like up and killing itself I guess. Definitely going to see it nowhere near as in use as it is now within a year or two.

This is awful. This screws over so many devs of all sorts - those already deep into making games with unity are screwed over completely out of their control, larger devs are not going to be happy to be forking over a tax for literally no reason, and this is going to affect every game made with Unity already out on the market as well. For no reason but corporate greed.

This should be illegal, hopefully unity gets the crap they deserve and they cease to exist. Scum company.

F' that for a laugh.

This is an odd and messed up decision. Firstly, as others have stated, Unity is notoriously hard to deal with…. Devs struggle all the time to make games run smooth and optimized in Unity. So, maybe I’m missing something, but this seems like major incentive to never use Unity again. Not sure why devs choose it in the first place when other engines work so much better and easier. Maybe initial cost to develop in Unity?

Edit - after reading posts I realize it’s free to start in Unity. Explains a lot actually. I feel sorry for all the devs of mobile games that are likely suddenly going to be hit ultra hard with fees.
On the flip tho, probably a lot less shovelware free games trying to make a Buck with ads…. Still a crappy move from the company I’d think for any developers using Unity.

Dang. I know Unity has made some awful moves in the past 2-4 years, but this seems like one of the dumbest moves imaginable. There’s no way developers are going to put up with this.

Wait, Unity is charging developers if people end up buying a game? Why not just charge to use Unity?

Unity and Riccitiello looking to stick a fat arm into the "user acquisition" expense that many mobile developers are already sweating bullets over. That's nice.

Suddenly everything from next year onward will be made with next free engine

@blindsquarel
The idea is to monetize the success, not the experimentation and the development. Which by itself is a noble enough approach.

And here I was about to start learning Unity. Welp...

I mean, do they not want to be the number one tool for indie game devs anymore?

Absolutely woeful. Explains why the CEO sold shares three days ago!

@Pod
I get the idea, that doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Just charge a monthly fee to use Unity and then let the developers keep the money from their game.

Unity is shooting itself in the foot.

This is actually wild

I mean I install and uninstall games all the time on my Switch due to its limited storage and lack of Micro SD Cards over 500 GB due to the chip shortage so I imagine this could be a HUGE problem and fear that to combat this there will be limits placed on how many times you can install games you've purchased...

What??? What is even the thought process behind a change like this? Guaranteed Unreal and GM Studio are going to become the standards.

Ridiculous but nobody takes Unity seriously in the AAA space anyway, so this won't change a thing.

@EaglyBird we love kaos

Unreal Engine is like Luigi: He is winning by doing absolutely nothing.

How to kill a game engine: A real life case study

Does Epic have a plant inside Unity who sold them them on this idea?

Great, download a demo. Download a free to play game and the dev's are hit. Download a pirated version.... This is insane.

Shoddy, greedy business practice.
And surely the CEO selling shares would count as insider trading in a way? Ahead of this bombshell news.

***** this! My ass is out here trying to learn game development and they pull this *****? Great timing unity, really helping me out here. Guess I'll just have to restart the whole learning process. Whoop-de-*****' doo.

Move on to a proper game engine.

Can someone explain how this is different to their previous model of taking a prrcentsge of your profits?

@Switch_Pro Super Mario Run was made with Unity. This is big for Unity, but not for gamers. Devs, this is another good opportunity to checkout Godot!

Do they honestly think the developers are gonna be okay with this?

As someone who uses Unity, and does not ever expect to meet those requirements, I'd much rather this, than being charged to use Unity period.

@Switch_Pro

1. A lot of AAA do outsource to Unity, typically for mobile devices to save time on building an engine exclusively for mobile. Just because you don't care, doesn't mean it's not happening.

2. This will hurt or stunt a lot of indie developers who make it big,

I don't think it is legal to change that kind of contractual terms to an already established contract if there's no agreement between the two sides.

The CEO sold stocks a week in advance, knowing full well that today’s announcement would happen and would not be popular.

Wait…that’s illegal!

seems screwy if it can affect existing or in development games as that screws witht he value propositions they looked at when working on it, also apparenly it even counts reinstalls as separate, or installs on multiple devices

I guess Unity is following in Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo's footsteps by raising prices and charging fees for things that should be cheap or free.

Unity? More like Discord.

I can already hear Tim Sweeney crying from his impending suffering from success.

Holy sh** that's a stupid decision, what were they smoking when they thought of this stupid idea??

The Unity CEO is the former CEO from EA. This move should surprise no one!

@EaglyBird Gaming strike? Maybe some of us can finally get through our gaming backlogs!

Unity is actually acting like there isn’t competition lmao!

@riderkicker Right! That’s what they said! I for one don’t have a problem in the slightest.

Money’s gonna money.

Not because it’s just or reasonable, only “because I could get away with it.”

Pretty soon there’ll be a per-post charge on social media.

There's never been a better reason to stick to physical releases on Switch. They play right from the cart, no install required.

The unchecked greed of so many is going to be the downfall of the world. Sooner than later too. At least I'm here for the fireworks!

@epicgamner Gotta hand it to you for dreaming big and thinking your first attempt at a game was going to do $200k of sales in the endless sea of new games LOL

...Oh. I was wondering what was going on with Unity earlier, guess I didn't see this.

So, that meme about pirating a game 1000 times to bankrupt a developer isn't far from the truth now?

Oh, and John Riccitiello used to be he CEO of EA as well, should explain so much of this.

I hope this is one of those things that have such a backlash that is not implemented. I started developing a game on Unity a year ago and this sounds like it's already killing it.

Piracy after buying the game once has just become a way to support developers.

As someone who develops in Unity… that seems pretty stupid

So hold on, let’s say Genshin Impact, a free game made in Unity that gets quite a bit of revenue from in-app purchases, the developers will be charged every time someone downloads their free game?

Disgusting move driven by pure greed.

Also I see everyone involved has forgotten how to use the word "installation". "Install" is a verb. You can't say "for every install" or "number of installs". It's "installation". Pathetic English use here.

No dev deserves to be screwed over like this. It’s not going to be long before a better engine comes along and takes Unity’s place.

Can they retroactively apply this? Sounds illegal to me in some countries. I'm worried that some games will be removed from digital stores due to this...

As for the future, well, they're taking a cut of sales instead of a fee for development, so it's a matter of how much will a given studio spend to develop their own engine vs Unity pricing.

Edit: Just read the article again and on second though Unity will die for sure unless they replace install count with purchase count. I mean, what's next? "You can only install this game 5 times license"?

It sounds super scammy, siding with Developers on this one for sure

What happens if someone installs, deletes, installs, deletes on repeat?

Also what's stopping devs from moving into another, such as unreal engine?

@RenanKJ i was thinking the same thing, I have 3 Switches at home and most of the time i download the game in everyone of them, this means Unity gets a cut for every time i download the game, what about the times SD card gets corrupted (haven't happen but you never know) and you have to download the game? IDK, this does not sounds fair at all

@westman98 yeah but at least Luigi is a friendly and charming fellow. Unlike unity.

The irony of naming the engine "Unity" was lost on the ones who decided this.

@CutchuSlow It apparently still counts!

What's stopping devs from switching engines is if their Unity game is already far enough in development for it to be unfeasible, or if it'll take considerable time to figure out a new engine

Can we not just pay for something and just own it anymore?

I don't understand how they can change this for existing lisences and products. Going forward, sure, they can do what they want, but they are materially altering the agreement that devs signed up for. That sounds like a lawsuit to me.

Well, s***... and that's the end of Unity. I've been looking into Master's programs for video game direction and design and I was starting to dip my toes into Unity. Well, guess not! Guess I'm using Unreal instead. Absolutely no way am I going to support this greedy practice.

@LordPieFace You sell the game to each customer once but it can be INSTALLED by that customer dozens of times. The number of potential installs grows over time. And those install numbers can potentially be driven up artificially by people wanting your studio to fail or by Unity themselves wanting to cash in. And it's retroactive, so suddenly developers that released a game years ago are now liable for additional fees which they never agreed to. I wouldn't be surprised if this causes an exodus, developers leave in droves and we start seeing older Unity titles pulled from Stores.

@blindsquarel
From what I can tell it’s because if you had to pay to use Unity most devs would move to unreal or some similar engine.

@B_Lindz You could learn unity alongside another engine and make your career converting games but I know from experience how hard learning one is.

kinda reminds me of reddit.

This is so stupid. I could understand if they were hosting the servers, but no. All they do is run the game. I can understand wanting a slice of the pie if the game is popular, but only a small slice they should get. Now they wanna pay a fee EVERY time a game that they had almost NOTHING to do with? That's just horrible. I'm a wannabe game developer myself, and I WAS gonna use Unity, but heck, I'm just gonna use something else now.

Really disappointing. It's already difficult to be in the creative industry especially when the tools you need to create are butchered like this.

@Guybrush20X6 I couldn't agree more. Not just because I do, but how could I not with your blue hair? You gotta have blue hair. And then there's the mouth. Real tiny when it's closes. Ridiculously huge when it's open.

@TaraBates There are pretty much no AAA games made in Unity. Fire Emblem Engage and Genshin Impact are not AAA by any definition of the term.

And yes, this does suck for people using Unity in a professional capacity. But everyone in the industry knows that Unity has been running their business into the ground for a while now, this is not a surprise.

@EllaTheQueen6 I think a lot of people are missing the fact that you need to be making over $200K per year revenue from your game AND surpass 200K installs (with the free Unity version) for this to even apply at all. If you make an indie game by yourself, you won't be earning that much from it and Unity won't take any cut. Don't get me wrong, it's still a terrible model, but if you wanna learn to make games it's still probably the best place to start.

Then they just tack it to the game price, solidifying the $70 price point as the new norm.

@Switch_Pro Yea, I agree with what you said. It really is a great engine to develop in, considering it's free to start. There's also a lot of tutorials all over. It does have it's community. It's just not good for game studios in general. Changes like these are substantial and the impact is far reaching cause of how common Unity is.

CEO knows this will be hugely unpopular. He knows exactly what’s he doing. He probably took a massive short position before he dumped, then intentionally put out this BS to drive the stock further down… taking millions in profit.

Oh no, how will Instamarketingandgame and its asset-flipping aliases survive this?

No sir...I don't like it.

But what if I get a physical version of any of those games? I'm considering getting Cuphead physically. For those I won't, I guess I better get them before New Year.

And I hear about this with less than half a year to launch my first game...

At least I don't expect $200k levels of success so soon... And I was considering moving to unreal on the next, welp, not much of an option now.

That is is some bull.

So greedy. Guess they just want to hasten their demise.

Guess its Godots time to shine. Always thought indie scene should embrace a more open-source engine. Not sure how porting would go through.

again pure greed has take it toll and will have victims

@LilyGoMEOW Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

And with this in mind, "to combat this there will be limits placed on how many times you can install games you've purchased...", and they say Digital is better.

Get ready to see games pulled off stores after ~2 years.

@EaglyBird I have so much stuff to play I'd probably be good for at least five years if there's a strike, but most game companies won't be impacted by it. Still, would rather have that than voice actors replaced by robots.

"concerned about users who may well abuse the system by constantly uninstalling and reinstalling games"

Hol' up, so the whole thing isn't even just supposed to imply the initial user purchase followed by downloading and running a game? Considering that redownload servers remain around even after respective storefront shutdown, I wonder whether Unity folks even have the contractual authority and means to keep track of such in-depth data, not to mention the very seeming notion of somehow continuing to raise the game's associated expenses on the customer side even by way of personal device storage management. Something either has yet to be made clearer or was written under the influence.🤔

@Darkthany If you never hit this threshold, you never had to pay to begin with. Unity Personal has been free for a while now.

Ehhhh...that's a lot to take in, can someone translate this into non-geek speak for me?

@grundlefish yup, download your unity games now because they're going to fly off the stores and never come back!

So I can just bankrupt studios by uninstalling and reinstalling their games over and over again? Don't mind if I do!!

Time to switch to Godot. Put a lot of money and time into unity, but this means we (the devs) are being punished for working hard on creating games... As many have said, this is the time for Godot to shine. Switching today, this hour, porting all current work done in unity to Godot, even if it takes 6 months or more.

Do we actually need to use something like unity anyway? I can just as easily code a game in Visual Studio as I can in Unity.

“This new model is also being applied retroactively across games that are already on the market and have been developed using Unity.“

Excuse me?! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. I know it won’t be easy for some, but I hope people jump ship from Unity

@blindsquarel
I understand. But that is kind of a no-go if you want hobby developers on board early. Unity has been free this whole time. If they introduce a monthly fee now, children, schools, clubs, hobbyists and indie studies with 10+ seats would immediately switch to using Unreal instead.

I have mixed feelings. There have been some great games made with Unity, but I think that devs who are really dedicated will find a way to make their game regardless of the engine.

The best thing that can come out of this is that we see less shovelware in the future. Like that TLOU clone that was making the rounds not too long ago.

Congratulations, Unity, you've beaten the Xbox One's used game fee and online checkin as the dumbest and most consumer-hostile corporate decision in gaming history - at least those policies wouldn't have directly affected developers or retroactively affected the Xbox 360. You've bitten the hand that feeds you. Even if (or rather when) you backtrack because big-name developers - including The Pokémon Company - are threatening to sue you, you've ensured that no major future projects will use your engine because you clearly cannot be trusted.

A fee after $200,000 means when you become very rich, pay some money for the cheap tool you used. It will not impact small-time devs who are trying to find their place in the market. Once you are a high profit company, build your own bespoke engine. I see no issue here.

@Pod Why would it affect them at all? You think schools are going to be making $200K off the assignments kids are developing? Let alone have 200,000 installs.

This will only affect popular/successful games and the fees are so small that after you meet this threshold you pretty much made bank using an engine that was free.

@Moistnado has made the best comment here.

Everyone else in this comment section is flipping their lid and presumably not understanding the details. The only problem that could happen is the harassment issue but is it even confirmed that they count the same user account's uninstall and reinstalls as unique?

I see no problem with this new structure since it helps smaller devs and only applies a fee to a game that is doing well. If a developer is finding success they have way more options than a small dev which is how it should be. Also, did everyone forget that "nothing worth having is free?"

@GOmar Yes it's confirmed, you can repeatedly uninstall and reinstall the game and they'll get charged each time. Plus, there's no cutoff date, you'll continue owing money on people installing the game for life, even if you remove it from stores.

@RenanKJ Doesn't even matter if they remove it from stores. If you already bought it, you can continue to uninstall and reinstall forever, costing money while you've now removed the only potential income stream. There's no expiration date either, so they'd still be trying to charge if a game is reinstalled a 100 years from now, you're on the hook for life.

@link3710 Well I did a quick search and this was posted 15 hours ago.... so it was true at one point but that is not true anymore.

https://www.axios.com/2023/09/13/unity-runtime-fee-policy-marc-whitten

@Olmectron Piracy STILL is going to kill the devs because of the Unity Runtime Launcher. Every time a game is booted up, pirated or not; it still counts... Unity can track those.

@Robby2021 It can be cracked. Also, play offline always anyway, since most games usually don't work online if pirated on PC.

So basically if a bunch of 4chan trolls decide they hate a game because it has a trans character in it or something, they can make bots that uninstall and reinstall the game en mass to bankrupt the studio. This is wrong for so many reasons.

Sounds like Unity will go broke before long, this will absolutely destroy their popularity. If I had stock I'd sell sell sell before it's worthless.

@Doomcrow That kind of behavior is highly illegal, if true he could do prison time and face serious financial penalties.

As a full time indie dev, this initially came as a real shock. Especially for freemium games on mobile, as believe it or not it's actually quite difficult to earn over $0.2 per download, unless your game is rammed with ads or has some fairly extreme gacha mechanics. But for games that want to avoid doing anything too spammy or predatory, it is honestly very difficult to hit or exceed that target per download. Not to mention people who pay for user acquisition.

But for some balance, it's not as bad as it initially appears, by a long shot.

You get a $200k buffer, so you only pay this after you've hit $200k/200k downloads, for every download you get after that threshold. At which point it's in your best interest to upgrade to Unity Pro, which raises this threshold to $1 million.

After that threshold though, it could be very bad for indie devs on mobile, as it's not unusual for a freemium game to earn $0.1 per user or less. Which would mean Unity's cut for the next million downloads would be 30%, and that would be on top of Apple's cut of 30%. Which makes Unreal Engine's cut of 5% look incredibly appealing in comparison.

The tables are turned for indie devs on Steam though. Let's say the game costs $10 and sells a 200,000 copies totalling $2 million. With Unity you'd only have to pay for the cost of Unity pro, which is 1800 Euros per seat, so for small Indie teams this won't be much. With Unreal you'd have to pay 5% of the revenue on $1 million, so $50,000.

I don't like the way Unity is being run at the moment, with surprise charges being slapped on at every turn (even analytics per monthly active user) but these new charges aren't quite as bad as they initially appear.

Ultimately though it does seem a rather absurd way of doing things, a charge per download, just take a % of the revenue over $1 million like Unreal, maybe 4% to make Unity more appealing.

@Switch_Pro You really sound like an arm chair developer.

Just because bigger studios you care about don't use it, doesn't mean this isn't a big problem for everyone.Unity having been in the industry for quite sometime to the point that hundreds of studios relied on it and have developed their own tools and frameworks around it. Just to "Oh the industry knows its going downhill, just change engines" isn't a drop it and forget it task.

This also sets a bad precedence for the industry. If any middleware, not just game engines, start doing this, either the costs for development will be passed to the consumer, or the studio just dies.

In an industry where 90% of "AAA" games are just chasing after the latest trend, a lot of indie games are the heart and soul of the industry and having their main engine utilized against them is just hearbreaking.

@Olmectron I know it can be cracked, but if a rom that someone chooses isn't; the devs are screwed.

dang it, i'm trying to use unity for my game development

@GOmar
You quote me, but I'm the one saying this WOULDN'T affect the people I mention, but that a monthly subscription fee WOULD.

@Pod Yea sorry I didn't see the word monthly in your comment, just fee which I read as the article's topic of the install fee. I also didn't see who you were replying to either, I really wish this comments section nested quotes for context.

@JayJ I know it's easy to have a kneejerk reaction like this - and I don't want to sound like I'm defending Unity as they've made some very strange decisions recently, that are quite anti-dev - but they had to do something.

They're currently making a loss per year, as traditionally they've been quite generous and haven't obtained a revenue share etc like Unreal, so the reality is they HAVE to do something in order to turn a profit, otherwise they really would go bust.

I think they should have just gone about it in a much different and better way than springing random charges on devs, especially something as weird as a per download fee. Just take a revenue share like Unreal over $1,000,000 revenue, it's simple, it's tried and tested, and wouldn't cause any outrage amongst devs or players.

@Dm9982 I know Unity doesn't have the best reputation, but modern day Unity is actually extremely good and powerful, and scalable. In the right hands and using some of its modern toolsets - the Entity Component System, Burst compiler, and Addressables (for asynchronous loading) - it's capable of outperforming Unreal.

@rushiosan It is a proper game engine. It has a very powerful editor, it can do almost everything Unreal can, and even outperform it if used to its max potential.

@Dazman Go and try to code a game in Visual Studio, without a game engine/physics engine/level editor, and let me know how it goes

@Moistnado The reality is not that simple. I've previously developed my own bespoke game engine as well as several physics engines, and the amount of work and upkeep of your own engine is immense. Especially in a somewhat modern workflow. It was a breath of fresh air learning Unity, and being able to spend more time actually working on games rather than core engine stuff.

To put it simply, there is a reason why even Nintendo uses Unity for their mobile games, as well Call of Duty Mobile, Pokemon GO, etc etc. These are some of the biggest, wealthiest developers in the world and even they realise the time and resources spent making a bespoke engine isn't really worth it when Unity is available, and actually more performant than most people think - in the right hands. There are notable and highly rated console games made in Unity too like Inside, both Oris, Outer Wilds, etc.

This is such a awful decision. Unity better not make this a thing.

@Raffles I was wondering. Curious question, is it harder to utilize than say Unreal or other comparable engines? It just seems that most games that use it, at least on consoles, perform at a lesser rate than games made in other engines, or sometimes a port is deemed impossible, even when seemingly the Unity game should be less demanding than a different but comparable game in a comparable engine…..

I’ve had some programming training, but never used Unity or Unreal. All old school like Cobal, Python, C++ and some Java, so a general understanding of how things might operate under the hood, but never actually used the newer development platforms.

@Moistnado $200,000 for a whole development studio. Plus that's revenue, not profit. $200,000 isn't a lot of money. That's barely the going rate for a single software developer's annual salary.

@Dm9982 I would say the barrier to entry in Unity is easier than Unreal, because C# is easier than C++, and there are a significant amount of tools available for Unity, both from Unity and independent developers selling tools on the asset store etc. This can significantly help dev times for smaller teams.

But to use Unity well? That's another matter. It's possible that Unreal is more performant out of the box, but like I said - using Unity to its full potential can outperform Unreal Engine. Don't forget, Unreal Engine 4 games are notorious for struggling on the Switch, as well as having pretty bad shader compilation stutters on PC, even powerful PCs. It's been a bit of a blight on PC gaming this gen.

I do think the Unity performance issue is overblown on the Switch, it's one of those things that gets repeated and exaggerated. It's possible some games have been released with subpar peformance by teams who weren't great at optimising, or perhaps didn't know how to use Unity to the fullest.

But for all those games, there are plenty of Unity games that perform really well, that for some reason don't get talked about.

Inside, Subnautica, both Ori games, Dusk, Neon White, and the recent Bomb Rush Cyberfunk are all made in Unity and all perform really well with solid visuals. In fact, 5 of them run at 60fps which is somewhat rare on the Switch.

Conversely there are Unreal Engine 4 games on the Switch that have quite basic visuals and struggle to even hit 30fps like A Hat in Time. It's very developer dependent, and the reality is Unreal has a much better reputation than Unity so people automatically assume it runs everything better

Now that I think about it, I can only think of one Unreal Engine game on the Switch that runs at 60fps and that's Tetris Effect

@Raffles Awesome, thanks for the insight! I was truly curious. And I was more thinking about during the Wii U era where there seemed to be even more struggle. But perhaps the Unity of then was less documented and developer friendly as the Unity of now.

And you’re right I never noticed Ori being Unity, but those games run and look great!

@TaraBates I was specifically talking about AAA in the first place so I have absolutely no idea why you are preaching to the choir about indie devs. My original comment was "nobody in the AAA industry takes Unity seriously". I didn't mention indie devs anywhere ... Of course they are negatively affected, they are using Unity, helmed by one of the worst CEOs of the gaming industry the last two decades, with a proven track record of failure to comprehend gaming. Hardly a surprise. And Unity has been a joke for quite a while, instead of doubling down on what makes it good they kept chasing the AAA market without understanding what the AAA market wants.

@EaglyBird I meant to say at least 5 years. WAY more in reality. XD

There's no way they will get away with claiming that this change applies to games made previously under their previous license. Hopefully they are brought to court over this. Game devs on Twitter are making a lot of noise about this one. I'm seeing a huge shift toward open source engines, and many promises to remove their Unity games from sale, which is tragic, but what choice do they have?

If they get hit hard enough, they might come back on the announcement and say it doesn't concern free2play games, but only paid games at the time of purchase and use someone in communication as a scapegoat.

@GOmar
No biggie. I'm surprised at how many in here think a subscription fee is a better idea, when that would quite literally eradicate adoption of Unity. Not saying an install fee is a good idea. But it doesn't immediately kill the platform.