Unity Technologies, the developer of the popular game engine Unity, has decided to drastically change its pricing policy. With the new decision, a certain commission will be asked from every game downloaded by users. This situation seems to be quite difficult for independent developers.
Unity will charge for every downloaded game
According to Unity, starting next year, a fee will be deducted from every game downloaded by players. Fees will vary depending on the Unity subscription plan, but will reportedly be at least $0.15-0.20 per install.
The new fees will be added on top of Unity subscription costs. However, not every developer will be charged. It was stated that a deduction will be made from the amount uploaded to the app stores and earned in the last 12 months. In addition, only games that achieve “significant success” will be subject to per-installation fees.
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The Unity game engine is popular both on mobile and desktop. Many popular games such as Escape From Tarkov, Outer Wilds, Hearthstone, Hollow Knight and Beat Saber were developed with this engine.
Especially independent developers started to oppose this policy. Developers who spend significant time and resources to develop custom games with Unity say they will face unpredictable new fees. These cuts could lead to an increase in game prices.
Some developers also object to the policy’s deduction for re-uploaded games. The same user who deletes a game and then reinstalls it should not be charged. For now, Unity has said that it will not deduct from games that are returned or developed for charity.
