A day after announcing its controversial Unity Runtime Fee, Unity released a new response aiming to acknowledge and appease creator frustrations—a move that’s garnered anything but a breath of relief from game developers worldwide.
Unity had hoped to clarify three main points about its expected pricing changes: who it affects, what the fee applies to, and specific measures that would seemingly protect creators from paying unwarranted fees.
Instead, the update, shared on Twitter and in an update to the company’s latest blog post on Sept. 13, has just stirred up more outrage.
“The price increase is very targeted,” Unity’s response reads. “In fact, more than 90 percent of our customers will not be affected by this change. Customers who will be impacted are generally those who have found a substantial scale in downloads and revenue and have reached both our install and revenue thresholds.”
Within two minutes, the post returned a strongly worded statement from Slay the Spire developer Mega Crit regarding its proposed “modest one-time” fee. Calling the move a “violation of trust,” Mega Crit threatened to migrate its upcoming game to a different engine unless the Unity Runtime Fee is walked back wholly.
Mega Crit also cited a Reddit post that seemingly reveals how Unity had been quietly laying the groundwork for this change since June 2022. According to the post, Unity removed its GitHub repo that tracked license changes from its terms of service last year, then updated its TOS to remove a clause that allowed creators to avoid being subject to future license changes this April.
“We have never made a public statement before,” Mega Crit’s statement reads. “That is how badly you f****d up.”
Ultimately, despite Unity’s counter that the change would only affect 10 percent of its customer base, it appears gray areas within the policy’s fine print and shady TOS modifications still have developers far from being on board with the move.
Published: Sep 13, 2023 08:00 pm