After doing a terrible job of communicating a controversial new pricing scheme (which culminated in an allegedly self-inflicted bomb threat), Unity Technologies has again apologised for the “confusion and angst” caused and walked back some of its terms. Looking at responses from developers in the community, it doesn’t seem like nearly enough.
In an open letter to the community published Friday, Marc Whitten, responsible for both the Unity engine and editor teams, said: “I am sorry. We should have spoken with more of you, and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow and keep deeply investing in our game engine.”
As such, the Unity Personal plan remains free, and no Runtime Fee will be levied on games built in Unity Personal or Plus plans, only applying to Pro and Enterprise. The cap will be increased from $100,000 to $200,000, and developers won’t be required to include the “Made with Unity” splash screen.
The installation fee is still a factor, but it won’t apply retroactively, instead affecting those who install the upcoming LTS (Long Term Support) version, which will be released in 2024. How anyone could be game enough to start a new project on the platform after all this is anyone’s guess, but we suppose only time will tell.
