Unity has apologized for the “confusion and anxiety caused by the runtime fee policy” it announced last week and revealed it will be “making changes” to it.
Unity took over Twitter/X to share the news, saying he’s talking to a number of people inside and outside the company and plans to change course on the controversial policy. While he didn’t give any details on what the changes might be, he did promise that the next update would arrive in “a few days.”
We heard you. We apologize for the confusion and anxiety caused by the run fee policy we announced on Tuesday. We’re listening, talking to our team members, community, customers and partners, and we’ll be making policy changes. We will share the update in a few…
— Unity (@unity) September 17, 2023
“We heard you,” Unity wrote. “We apologize for the confusion and anxiety caused by the per-run policy we announced on Tuesday. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers and partners and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a few days. Thank you for your candid and critical feedback.”
The Unity Runtime Fee Policy is set to go into effect on January 1, 2024 and will charge $0.20 per install for any game with more than 200,000 installs. This obviously raised some eyebrows as the installation date is a bit hard to pin down these days. For example, will developers receive multi-install fees from those who install, uninstall, and reinstall their games? Do Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Plus installs count even though there is no charge to the consumer after paying the monthly fee?
Unity tried to clarify the policy, saying that starting January 1st it will only count “clean new installs” on all devices, and developers will not pay fees for reinstallations, “fraudulent” installs via botnets and the like, trials, web and game streaming, and charity installation. Unity also claimed that “90 percent of customers will not be affected by this change.”
The development community did not take kindly to these proposed changes and refinements, and many teams around the world, including Rust 2 developer Facepunch Studios, said they would no longer be making their games in Unity. Others, like Massive Monster, have threatened to delete their Unity-made game Cult of the Lamb on January 1st if these changes happen.
The pushback was so severe that Unity had to close its San Francisco and Austin offices due to what it called a credible death threat.
Of course, we’ll continue to follow this story closely and share any new details as they’re shared from Unity. Until then, be sure to check out why these new installation fees are causing massive backlash among game developers and Unity games, which could be the most affected by these controversial changes.
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Adam Bankhurst is a reporter for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and further Twitch.
