Unity has announced that it's canceling its controversial runtime fee policy, reverting instead to a seat-based subscription service while also increasing prices for Pro and Enterprise customers.
In a blog post on the official Unity website, company CEO Matt Bromberg says the decision to cancel the runtime fee was made "after deep consultation with our community, customers, and partners".
Bromberg goes on to say that his company's mission to "democratiz[e] game development" can't be achieved if the company is "in conflict with our customers", and that price increases, while necessary, "needn't come in a novel and controversial new form".
Unity Personal, the lowest tier of Unity's pricing model, "will remain free", and the revenue and funding ceiling will be doubled from $100,000 to $200,000. Additionally, the Made with Unity splash screen will be optional for games made using Unity 6, which launches later this year.
Things are a little different for the Pro and Enterprise models, however. Pro subscriptions will jump by 8% to $2,200 per year, effective from January 1st, and if your game has more than $200,000 in revenue and funding, you'll need to use this tier.
The Enterprise tier, meanwhile, is for customers with more than $25 million total revenue and funding. The price of this tier will jump by 25%, but Blomberg says he and his company will contact customers on this tier in the next few days "to discuss customized packages".
Unity says it'll return to this pricing structure every year to decide whether it needs to be increased or not, but that if the Editor changes "in ways that impact you", you can keep using the previous version "as long as you keep using that version".
If you're wondering exactly what Unity's controversial runtime fee is (or was), it's a policy announced last year that charged developers based on the number of installed copies of their game.
As you can probably imagine, indie developers reacted with outrage; Garry's Mod developer Garry Newman estimated that he'd have paid the engine "about $410k more" for Rust, for instance, while indie dev legend Rami Ismail said the changes made developing in the ecosystem "a straight-up financial risk" on a number of levels.
Unity quickly apologized for the "confusion and angst" it had caused developers, promising changes to the policy, which it announced a few days later. Those changes didn't scrap the runtime fee, but they did make it a little less punitive for smaller developers.
The controversy saw then-CEO John Riccitello stepping down from the company, and Unity subsequently laid off a huge number of workers in January this year. That move may or may not be related to the runtime fee controversy, but said controversy certainly can't have helped.
We'll have to wait and see if these changes restore trust in Unity among the developer community. Stay tuned for more.
