On Tuesday, the cross-platform game engine Unity announced that it will begin charging game developers for the Unity Runtime service, starting on January 1, 2024. According to the announcement, Unity Personal and Unity Plus accounts will incur charges once they exceed $200,000 in revenue in a year and reach 200,000 lifetime installations. Meanwhile, Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise accounts have a threshold of $1 million in revenue in a year and one million lifetime installations. The standard rate for these charges ranges from $0.01 to $0.20 per new installation, depending on the monthly count. Unity claims that some 70% of mobile gaming titles are built using its engine, with major China-developed games such as HoYoverse’s Genshin Impact and Tencent’s Honor of Kings among them. The announcement of the new charges led to frustration and confusion among game developers, with negative comments quickly spreading across social media. Today, Unity provided further clarification on game developers’ concerns through X (formerly Twitter), stating that the platform will invalidate installations in the following circumstances: re-installs, fraudulent installs, trials, partial play demos, web streaming games, charity bundles, and in-game initiatives. [Unity]
