Today Unity revealed a rather radical change to the new pricing policy announced a while ago, following the massive backlash from many of its developers and the wider gaming industry.
The announcement was teased a few days ago following an attempt with partial concessions, and it comes signed by Unity Create president Marc Whitten.
The Unity Personal plan will remain free and there will be no Runtime Fee at all for any game built under that plan.
On top of that the revenue cap for the plan will be increased to $200,000 from the previous $100,000. Developers also won't have to use the "Made With Unity" Splash screen anymore.
On top of that, if a game has not achieved over $1 million in revenue in the past twelve months, its developer won't have to pay the fee either.
Developers using the engine under the Unity Pro and Enterprise tiers will see the new policy applied only with the next version of Unity shipping in 2024.
If you use a current version or earlier, you won't be affected, unless the developer decides to upgrade them to the next version of the engine.
If a game is affected by the new pricing policy, there will be two forms of payment. The first is a 2.5% revenue share, or the "calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with the game each month."
Developers will self-report these numbers via the tools that they are already provided and they will always be billed the lesser amount among the two.
The meat of the matter is accompanied by an apology in which Whitten admits that the company's leadership should have talked to more developers and implemented their feedback before announcing the Runtime Fee policy.
He also reiterates that the policy exists to ensure that Unity can continue to invest in the engine.
We'll have to wait and see whether this is enough to appease the development community or it's too little, too late.
