Unity plans to overhaul their controversial policy while developers express distrust towards the company and their recent actions. Read on to find out what was the reported change as well as what the developers have been saying towards the company.
Unity Overhauls Runtime Fee
Unity Reworks Runtime Installation Fees
Unity is now considering a cap to fees being imposed by their proposed policy. This consideration is brought by the massive controversy caused by their announcement on the new runtime fees.
The tentative new plan will be setting a limit to a 4% cap of a game’s revenue for customers making over $1 million USD. They also stated that the installation count will not be retroactive towards reaching the threshold. In comparison to Unreal’s royalty fee, this will result in a potentially cheaper deal in terms of revenue share towards Unity provided they follow through that this fee is a one-time fee and not a per-month deal.
Unity has also mentioned in their meeting that installation counts will be reliant on self-reported user data contrary to what they originally stated that they will be using exclusive tools to track installations of their software. This is one of the main points of contention between the community and the company due to the definition of installations and how they would track malicious as well as pirated installations.
CEO, John Riccitiello, further reiterates that 90% of Unity’s customers will not be affected by this policy change and that the new policy is designed to generate more revenue for their biggest customers. There are still no official announcements to these changes currently, and the company and several of its employees are concerned about how to recuperate from breaking the customers’ trust. With executives even stating to "show, not tell" so as to not sour the relationship between the community and the company further.
Unity Breaches Trust with Developers
Developers Express Distrust about Unity’s actions
It was discovered recently via Reddit that Unity quietly altered their Terms of Service back in April to remove a clause that specifically targeted developers being able to use previous versions of the document if future updates negatively impacted their rights. All of this in conjunction with recent massive blunders they have made have certainly lost the trust of many studios, developers, and gamers alike.
Danny Gray, Chief Creative Officer for Ustwo Games, stated that "We shouldn't introduce new agreements that impact tons of the market with little clarity." Ustwo Games have been primarily making games for subscription services like Apple Arcade and Netflix, wherein Unity have stated that they will charge the distributor instead of the developer on subscription based installs - charges which Gray is doubtful Apple or Netflix will pay for.
Another developer namely Lucas Pope, known for making Return of the Obra Dinn which was built in Unity, also stated that the company’s "jumbled information" that they have released has made it so that even clarity will not help in calculating the damage this will do to his business. He also states that the main reasons he chose to use Unity is because of the simplicity and predictability of the subscription costs.
More and more developers express their distrust and bafflement on Unity’s recent decisions with some even deciding to switch engines for future projects due to how shady Unity handled their policies, licenses, and fees. With the recent vitriol thrown at Unity it is no surprise that they have taken a few days to reconsider their policy as well as being extra careful on their messaging. Riccitiello stated that he doesn't "think there’s any version of this that would have gone down a whole lot differently than what happened," admitting that it "is a massively transformational change to our business model."
“I think we could have done a lot of things a lot better.”
Source:
Bloomberg - Unity Policy Overhaul Report
Eurogamer - Unity Policy Overhaul
GamesIndustry.biz - Developer Distrust Towards Unity
Reddit - Unity deletes Github Repo of ToS changes
