Crisis in Unity – game developers boycott the engine. What happened?

On September 12, Unity, the company behind the game engine of the same name, announced a change in its business model. The bosses decided to take a commission, not as a percentage of sales, but of each installation. Unity developers, seeing the new conditions, fell into real panic and rushed to look for an alternative to the engine, or sent SOS signals to the gaming community. We tell you what consequences these ‘innovations’ can lead to and how the company responded to the flaring scandal.

Panic about initial conditions

When it comes to finance, large companies try to approach the issue very carefully, preparing the ground, thinking over every word and predicting the possible consequences of their actions behind closed doors. Unity has apparently decided not to do this.

The first message, in which the company announced the new terms of the business model, was written “dramatically”, telling the developers from the first lines that “the rules of the game have changed.”

The size of the order depends on the terms of cooperation and the number of installations

Engine owners will introduce a new commission from January 1, 2024: Unity Runtime Fee. You will be charged if the number of installs of a game made on Unity exceeds a certain threshold. Conditions for the appearance of a steam committee:

  • Games on the Unity Personal and Unity Plus rates must earn at least $200,000 in the last 12 months and receive at least 200,000 installs for the entire period;
  • Games on the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise subscriptions that earned $1 million in the last twelve months and also received at least one million installs throughout the period.

Naturally, in addition to the commission, the company also offers developers new tools, such as a free module for AI training and additional space in the cloud storage for assets. But for many developers, these conditions turned out to be unacceptable: the new “bonuses” do not cover the sharp increase in commission.