Unity Runtime Fee attracts backlash
The program called Unity Runtime Fee, announced by Unity, aims to deduct the fee for every download by the user as of January 1, 2024. The company states that it made such a decision because it also installs Unity Runtime with each download.
Deductions will vary depending on developers’ subscription level. Unity Personal and Unity Plus subscribers will pay $0.2 per download if they exceed 200k total downloads and $200k in revenue in the last 12 months.
Unity Pro subscribers will start at $0.15 and pay $0.02 per download when they generate more than $1 million in revenue in the last 12 months with 1 million total downloads. Unity Enterprise subscribers will start from $0.125 and go up to $0.01.
The developer world is very reactive to the decision. They claim that this decision, taken without asking anyone, will pose a financial risk, especially in games sold for charities, free-to-play games, gift game distributions and pirated games.