Published , by Donovan Erskine
Published , by Donovan Erskine
Unity has been in a bit of a crisis since it announced Runtime Fees last week, which would see developers having to make payments toward the company based on game sales and installs. After releasing a statement last week in which it indicated upcoming changes to the policy, Unity has issued an official apology for the announcement of its Runtime Fee policy, and has announced changes in hopes of winning back soured devs.
The statement was posted today and written by Marc Whitten, the lead at Unity Create. He apologizes for the damage that the news caused in the development community, as many studios released statements opposing Unity and encouraging others to seek alternate engines for their projects. He goes on to announce the changes coming to the Runtime Fee policy.
Changes are also coming to Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise users. Instead of going into effect on January 1, 2024, the fees will instead apply to these users alongside the next LTS version of Unity, which is currently expected to arrive sometime in 2024. The fees won’t apply to existing games or ones that are currently in development.
Unity took a lot of fire for its announcement of Runtime Fees, and it’ll likely be an uphill battle to undo that damage and establish trust with developers. We’ll continue to follow the situation and provide updates over on our Unity Engine topic page.