It’s been almost a full week since Unity announced its controversial Runtime Fee, and the developer backlash continues.
Studios around the world have expressed concerns that the new fee – charging them every time their game is installed after January 1, 2024, providing they meet certain thresholds – threatens to jeopardise the health, or even existence, of their business. And despite subsequent statements from Unity, it’s still not entirely apparent how badly these businesses will be affected.
“The most ridiculous part of this fiasco is that the full effects of Unity’s decision on the business aren’t even clear,” says Ustwo Games chief creative officer Danny Gray. “We’re left astounded that an operation of that size can move forward with such ill-thought-out plans and are now scrambling to make amendments.”
Yep. The insanity of thinking you could apply it retroactively to already licensed games was absurd.
If you tied it to a future main version release with features people wanted, you could absolutely get away with some light pushback that’s the usual grumbling on price changes, and a lot of developers would suck it up and move to the up to date engine anyways.
But when you try to pull the rug on people for stuff they’ve already been developing under previous terms, they’re going to seriously reconsider, and on stuff they already published makes it extremely hard to justify working with you again.