On September 12, 2023, Unity (the maker of the Unity game engine) made a sudden and startling announcement: as of 2024, the company would be introducing sweeping changes to its pricing model. Gone were the standard yearly subscription models, replaced with a complicated table of installation fees. The backlash against the changes was swift and universal with developers of every size publicly speaking out.
The Biggest Kid on the Block
So, how exactly did Unity find itself in this situation? Well, the company had been actively focusing on growth for a few years, and in 2021 alone, the number of games being made with the Unity engine increased by 93% while the number of new creators rose by 31%. The engine’s ability to seamlessly develop for multiple platforms, its free entry model, and its ease of use all meant that anyone who wanted to start developing could do so with minimal effort compared to many previous engines.
Even if you’ve never worked in game development, you know who Unity is. After all, more than 750,000 games have been built with the engine (including over half of all mobile games), and every time you boot one up, you’re presented with the company’s ubiquitous logo. To put things into perspective, a new gaming online platform launched just a month ago by an iGaming company with a decent track record offers their players a catalog of “only” 3.500 browser-based games, which is more or less an industry standard. With that kind of existing base of developers and studios reliant on the Unity engine, it’s needless to say that the company has some serious leverage over the entire gaming industry.
Unity’s growth, though, was always a double-edged sword. Spurred by changes spearheaded by CEO John Riccitiello (the very same CEO who was forced to resign from Electronic Arts due to a series of abysmal business decisions), the company adopted a “growth-at-all-costs” mentality. However, as any first-year economics student can tell you, infinite growth is impossible, and eventually, the market becomes sufficiently saturated. What is a struggling CEO to do?
Getting Down to Brass Tacks
The new changes proposed by Unity were…extreme. What had previously been a fairly straightforward pricing model with fixed per-seat prices was replaced by a series of installation fees. The details of the pricing are a bit complex and variable from tier to tier, thankfully, Unity put out this guide.
That’s a lot of figures. The short version is that Unity was about to start charging developers a per-install fee as opposed to the standard per-seat license. Developers were now about to be on the hook for a runtime fee of as much as $0.20 per download, regardless of whether or not that installation was tied to an actual purchase. What’s worse is that all of these new fees were meant to be on top of the existing subscription fees—all while Unity was removing the cheapest yearly options.
The announcement was met with an immediate and intense negative reaction from devs who all expressed fear, anger, and repugnance. Perhaps the biggest grievance that many users had was the idea that these changes could disproportionately affect solo, independent, marginalized, and mobile developers.
The single biggest issue, though, was all about the aforementioned “runtime fees” which are calculated based on the raw number of game installations without consideration for any of the reasons why a game might have multiple installs that might not correlate with multiple purchases. Users installing a purchased game on a second device? You get charged. Did someone download a game demo? You get charged. Do pirates install your game after downloading it for free from a third party? Yup, you get charged. Services like Game Pass giving your game away for free? You get charged. As you can see, this would be a logistical and financial nightmare for any developer to deal with.
Furthermore, there is a genuine worry among many that this system could be used to exploit marginalized developers. Malicious actors could easily manipulate this system to incur charges through continuous downloading and reinstalling of games as a form of protest or grief, potentially bankrupting smaller groups.
More Than Money
To say that this ruffled a few feathers might just be the understatement of the year. This new pricing structure came out of nowhere with zero input from developers (you know, the people who actually use the product) and seemed to raise more questions than answers. Suddenly, devs who had committed to working on Unity for their projects were being faced with a potentially massive new bill that they simply hadn’t budgeted for.
While the financial issues are certainly the major point here, it’s also worth mentioning that this was seen as a massive breach of trust by the entire gaming community. Unity had long been an industry staple and this sudden change was only seen as a betrayal. If the company was willing to make such drastic changes without so much as a warning, what would be next?
Speaking Out
The response from game developers was immediate with studios of all sizes coming out with very vocal condemnation. Brandon Sheffield, director at Necrosoft Games said it plainly:
“…if you’re starting a new game project, do not use Unity. If you started a project 4 months ago, it’s worth switching to something else. Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted.“
Other studios, such as Cult of the Lamb developer Massive Monster Games responded by stating that they would outright pull their games from marketplaces before the new pricing terms were rolled out. It seemed that Unity had pushed a bit too far and the entire industry was prepared to push back. With an increasing number of studios publicly shaming the decision and more and more projects shifting away from Unity to avoid these charges, the company seemed to realize that they may have crossed a line.
At this point, it is very much worth pointing out that Unity CEO John Riccitiello (and MANY other Unity executives) sold off thousands of shares of stock in the company less than a week before the announcement. While this in and of itself is a gray area legally, the optics of it are crystal clear. They all knew what they were going to do would end poorly and they did it anyway.
It Was Too Late to Apologize
After just a week, Unity was forced to backtrack considerably on several of the proposed changes. Unity issued something that could very loosely be called an apology after only a few days.
“We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening and talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.”
Shortly after, Unity released an updated pricing model and sought to clarify several points. While the specifics are incredibly nuanced, the gist of it is that only devs who bring in more than $1 million and have more than 1 million installs will have to pay; either through Unity’s 2.5% revenue sharing model or the calculated Runtime Fee. Likewise, any project that uses a currently supported version of Unity will be exempt from any new pricing changes, and only projects using the newly updated engine will be affected.
The End for Unity? Unlikely
Even after undoing some of the more egregious changes that they had proposed, trust in the company is at an all-time low. For many, the damage is already done, and the choice to move away from the Unity engine is a done deal. Many feel that Unity’s backtracking is simply an attempt to put the rug back under our feet so that they can simply pull it out again, potentially with even less warning.
While it’s unlikely that this marks the end for Unity, it’s likely the end of its utter dominance in the indie and mobile development market. When asked about how the company plans to regain the trust of users, Unity president Marc Whitten said
“The most fundamental thing that we’re trying to do is we’re building a sustainable business for Unity. And for us, that means that we do need to have a model that includes some sort of balancing change, including shared success,{…} I can’t tell you that you should trust me, you have to decide that on your own.”
At least we can all agree on that, Marc, I don’t have to trust you.
Update: It seems that John Riccitiello has been forced out of his job as Unity CEO, with the fallout from this entire debacle being cited as the main reason. This needs to be seen as a sign to any executives out there who forget that their business is all about their customers and not their shareholders.
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