Developers hate Unity's new install fee

We've seen many discussions about how much of a game's revenue Epic Games Store, Steam, GOG and other digital stores have taken through the years, but there's also a less talked about part of many games that needs its share of the pie before a developer and/or publisher can start putting the money into their own pockets: game engines. Unreal Engine and Unity are two of the most popular ones, and Epic has tweaked the revenue share a few times lately. Now it's Unity's turn, and it's definitely not being received well.

A blog post reveals that Unity wants to introduce what's simply called Unity Runtime Fees on the 1st of January, 2024. This is set to replace the revenue share, as game creators instead will have to pay Unity a fee every time their games are installed on a device. The fee varies based on what kind of Unity subscription they have after reaching certain milestones. Unity claims this change will only affect a small subset of titles, but social media makes it seem like more than enough have a problem with it.

The Among Us developers at Innersloth shared their concerns after Another Crab's Treasure's Aggro Crab was one of the first studios speaking up against it, and they're not alone. Cult of the Lamb's Massive Monster is one of the many other studios threatening to swap engine if this actually happens..

Not exactly weird when the original idea was to charge the fee every time a game was installed and across different devices. Fortunately, Unity backtracked a bit in a comment to Stephen Totilo at Axios, so developers/publishers will only pay for the initial install and not demos (unless it's Early Access or other variants that include the full game), subscription services and charity offers. Still, it seems like the large majority of fairly known teams don't like this idea, so it'll be interesting to see if Unity does a complete turnaround, backtracks a bit more or stands its ground.

What do you think about the Unity Runtime Fee?