A year ago, Unity Technologies created a huge problem for itself and the developers who use its game engine: It introduced a near-universally hated new fee tied to a developer’s game installs. While Unity argued its fee change would impact only developers with “successful games” that had lots of revenue, Unity users didn’t see it that way — for those developers, it was a major risk that could cause financial ruin. The company ended up walking back parts of the runtime fee change by Sept. 22 — something that was a small improvement for some developers.
Now, Unity is fully revoking the maligned fee, effective immediately, the company posted to its website Thursday. “I’ve been able to connect with many of you over the last three months, and I’ve heard time and time again that you want a strong Unity, and understand that price increases are a necessary part of what enables us to invest in moving gaming forward,” new CEO Matthew Bromberg wrote. “But those increases needn’t come in a novel and controversial new form.”
Bromberg took over the helm from interim CEO Jim Whitehurst, who took on the role after former CEO John Riccitiello stepped down weeks after the runtime fee disaster.
Unity will now use a “seat-based subscription model” for all its gaming customers, it said, including companies that are using Unity 6. Unity 6 is the newest version of the engine, where the runtime fee still applied. Seat-based subscription models typically calculate price based off the number of people at a company who use it. Here’s Unity’s plan, straight from its news release.
Unity said it’ll be making changes to that subscription plans in 2025, including on its pricing. (Unity also said it’ll revisit pricing each year.)
On social media, developers have praised Unity for finally and fully adjusting its pricing model. “Finally,” InnerSloth co-founder Forest Willard wrote on X. “For the record, Innersloth has already migrated our next games from Unity. We’ve found a lot of speed and power in a custom platform atop a minimal engine. That said, Among Us no longer has to worry about upgrading for the next-gen consoles. Thanks for that, Unity.”
Many others have expressed similar sentiment, including Godot creator Juan Linietsky. “Happy that many Unity users now no longer have to feel forced to move to Godot due to this,” he wrote. “Hoping that, if they move, its because they really like our work and mission instead.” Still, plenty of developers — including those supporting the move — lament how long it took Unity to make this decision.
In the fallout from the debacle, several game engines rose to meet demand for new options, including open-source, free engine Godot, which reportedly “doubled its user base” after the Unity change had developers looking elsewhere, according to Game File. Another engine, GameMaker, made its engine free for all non-commercial use; it also adjusted its PC commercial license to a one-time fee. Godot, in particular, recently received a boost in investment — $15 million in December 2023 — to scale up the engine.
Meanwhile, Unity marked 2023 by laying off more than 1,100 people throughout the year, closing several offices, and terminating a deal with Peter Jackson’s Wētā FX. In January, Unity made another round of cuts, laying off more than 1,800 people in what was called a “company reset.” In 2023, Unity made $2.1 billion in revenue, but was not profitable, reporting a net loss of $826.3 million, a number that is down from previous years. The company has never turned a profit, but former interim CEO Whitehurst told Game Developer in April that he was “getting the company to a size where we are proudly profitable.”
