Together with Tokkal-vono, Unity, which owns the game engine of the same name, is trashing its commission system, which was introduced just a year ago and then transformed almost immediately. The introduction of the runtime fee last year caused a huge uproar in the development community, which shook the company to its foundations.
Unity just announced on September 14, 2023 that it will introduce the so-called Unity Runtime Fee, which essentially would have been charged to all developers, but to a different extent, based on post-game downloads and revenue.
The change, which mainly affected indie developers very unpleasantly, blew the fuse in the industry in no time: at one point the matter escalated to the point where the company’s employees received death threats, so it also temporarily closed two offices for the safety of the employees. In the meantime, independent developers and small studios have announced one after the other that they are looking for a new engine after losing their trust in the company, accepting the possible disadvantages that come with it.
HP Wolf Pro Security: An invisible layer of protection in the age of hybrid work (x)
94 percent of cyber attacks start with an email, so endpoint protection is of utmost importance, especially if several employees work remotely.
Unity finally realized in a little more than a week that the situation had become untenable and that it had to give way, so it decided that the users of the free Unity Personal package, which is typically used by smaller indie developers, individuals, organizations, do not have to pay the new fee at all . Games that generate less than $1 million in revenue over a 12-month period are also exempt from the sarc.
Although the change was accompanied by an apology, the incident caused seemingly irreparable damage to Unity, from which the completely discredited CEO John Riccitiello left shortly. The company subsequently sent away 265 workers in November and another 1,800 in January – the latter represented a quarter of the entire collective.
The company’s current CEO has now announced that the Unity Runtime Fee will be permanently discontinued in all its forms, while the Unity Personal subscription, typically used by indie developers, will remain free.
In parallel, the annual costs of Unity Pro and Enterprise subscribers will increase, by 8 percent for the former and 25 percent for the latter.
Source: www.hwsw.hu
