Unity is adding a royalty fee based on the number of times a game is installed

Unity will begin charging a royalty fee based on the number of times a game is installed using the Unity engine.

Starting on January 1, 2024, the new Unity Runtime Fee will apply to games that meet a minimum revenue threshold and have passed a minimum lifetime install count.

It will also vary based on the type of Unity subscription plan the developer has.

The fee will apply to games made with Unity Personal and Unity Plus that have made $200,000 or more in the previous 12 months and have at least 200,000 lifetime installs.

It will also apply to games made with Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise that have made $1,000,000 or more in the previous 12 months and have at least 1,000,000 installs.

The fee, which will be payable monthly, will see Unity Personal and Plus developers paying a flat $0.20 per install over the threshold.

Pro and Enterprise developers will pay a smaller fee that scales downward based on the number of installs over the threshold, as detailed in the table below.

There’s also an “emerging market monthly rate” that ranges from $0.005 to $0.02 per install over the threshold.

“The Unity Runtime is code that executes on player devices and makes Made with Unity games work at scale, with billions of monthly downloads,” Unity said in its announcement on Tuesday.

“We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed.

“Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.”

In an interview with Game Developer, Unity Create president Marc Whitten claimed that maintaining the Unity Runtime executable “is quite expensive”.

Today’s announcement sparked concerns among some members of the development community, who said the new fee structure would have a number of negative effects and could be open to abuse.

Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail said “developing in Unity is now straight-up a financial risk” for subscription services, charity bundles, piracy, free-to-play games, malicious installs and giveaways.

“Plenty of folks at Unity *are* developers – and any of those would’ve been able to see these obvious problems. So it’s not that they didn’t ask developers – it’s that whoever made this call straight-up ignored the answer.”

Nic Tringali, a game designer on Lunar Division’s The Banished Vault, raised many of the same concerns as Ismail.

“I mean I guess back catalogs are just going to be taken down completely as I’d rather not even deal with the mental overhead that it *might* cost me money,” he wrote.

“Charity bundles (something I do instead of putting my games on sale) are out of the question as those will easily get you thousands of installs, but (by definition) make me no money.

“What about if people get angry enough and organize a mass-install knowing it costs developers? Were any of these extremely basic points considered at all?

“What about refunds? Demos? Installs across multiple devices (one steam purchase of The Banished Vault could install on PC, Mac, and Steam Deck)?”

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One anonymous Unity developer said studios who sell their games relatively cheaply could be hit particularly hard by the new system.

“Sales will be more costly for developers since they are not asking for a percentage, but a flat fee,” they told Game Developer. They argued that this fee “screws over indies and smaller devs the most.”

According to Game Developer, makers of free-to-play games will have the option to offset the new fee by adopting other Unity services like its LevelPlay advertising mediation service.

Unity has also announced that its Plus offering is being retired for new subscribers effective today “to simplify the number of plans” available. Existing subscribers will receive an email next month with an offer to upgrade to Unity Pro for one year at the current Plus price, it said.