Unity, a video game and computer technology company has today updated its payment plan for game developers who use their game engine.
This change is seen from several aspects, where Unity will start charging fees to all developers at all levels of their Unity engine subscription, from Unity Personal, Unity Plus and also Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise.
More interesting is how this payment will be charged. According to a statement recently released by Unity, all game developers who exceed a certain amount of revenue and game installations will be charged for each game installation that uses the engine, called the Unity Runtime Fee.
For indie game developers using the Unity Personal or Plus plan, when their annual revenue exceeds $200 thousand and lifetime game installs exceed 200 thousand installs, they will be charged 20 cents for each install of games developed with the Unity engine.
Developers who subscribe to Unity Pro and Enterprise are also charged the same, but on average it is seen that those companies can still afford these charges compared to indie developers who don't have a lot of capital.
This includes all types of computer, console or mobile games from all types of game developers, from indie developers to popular game developers.
Popular video and computer games that use the Unity game engine include Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail by Hoyoverse, Cities: Skylines by Paradox Interactive, Fall Guys by Mediatonic, Pokemon GO by Niantic.
This matter is seen as something very serious especially by indie game developers for several reasons. The first is that most indie and first-person games in particular rely on freemium capital, where income is only generated through additional content such as microtransactions.
For games like this, the number of game downloads may have high numbers, but if the income through microtransaction purchases is not enough, it will also cause these small game developers to suffer losses due to paying these installation charges.
This Unity Runtime fee will be charged starting January 1, 2024 and for companies that have already exceeded the requirements set to pay this charge will only need to pay Unity based on the amount of software downloads that occur after that date.
Meanwhile, one of the cheapest Unity subscriptions, Unity Plus will be discontinued starting today (September 13, 2023) to standardize their subscription offerings. Existing Unity Plus customers will be offered a Unity Pro subscription at the existing Unity Plus price for one year.