💀The Death Of Unity: What Happened?
Solving the murder of the world's most popular game engine
Happy Mystery Monday! In today's newsletter, you will:
Get caught up on the Unity Runtime Fee controversy
Receive my advice on how to handle the situation
See a sneak peek of our community project!
On Tuesday, Unity introduced a "Runtime Fee," which sent shockwaves through the game development world.
In short, this fee requires developers on the free plan (Unity Personal) who have earned more than $200,000 revenue in the last 12 months AND whose games have received more than 200,000 lifetime installs to pay Unity $0.20 per install.
No, not per sale — per install!
An overwhelmingly large number of gamers, developers, and influencers have spoken out against these new changes all over social media.
The biggest concern is that “installs” are entirely uncorrelated to “sales”, meaning that your game studio might actually be killed off by its own success.
Or, in an even worse scenario, disgruntled gamers could repeatedly install your game to intentionally bankrupt you.
Since the backlash, Unity has since revised and clarified its stances on these concerns, which you can read in their FAQ:
We are not going to charge a fee for fraudulent installs or “install bombing.” We will work directly with you on cases where fraud or botnets are suspected of malicious intent.
But that only prompted more questions from developers, wondering what kind of tracking technology might be embedded inside their games (to discern fraud) and what kind of information it could potentially be sending back.
Again, these concerns were later addressed in the FAQ:
The method we are using to calculate installs is currently derived from aggregated data from various sources collected in compliance with all privacy laws and used to build a confidence around our estimate.
Any install data will be collected in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws.
Unity will likely continue to update and clarify their policy in the coming days.
So ultimately, assuming the fee itself isn’t an immediate deal-breaker, the success of this Runtime Fee hinges upon two questions:
Will Unity be able to accurately determine which installs are legitimate?
Will developers be able to trust the invoices that Unity will ask them to pay?
Because Unity's announcement broke so much trust already, the answer to both questions — at least to me — is a resounding "no."
And there is also a third, more pressing question:
Will these terms be updated in the future to charge developers even higher fees?
Right now, the personal plan is $0.20 per install, but who says it won't go up to $0.40 or even $1.00 or more?
Even though Unity won’t be billing for installs prior to January 2024, the policy is being applied to all Unity games, including those created many years ago.
So who knows if the policy will be changed again in the future, for the worse?
And why create a game using an engine with such uncertainty surrounding it?
It also remains to be seen whether such a drastic change in terms and conditions can be held up in a court of law.
But in my opinion, the worst thing is that the Runtime Fee punishes success.
Unity has tried to argue that this change won’t affect most game developers anyway.
But telling yourself "I'm never going to make $200,000 a year, so I won't worry about it" isn't a good mindset to have.
You should always remain optimistic, aim high, and do your best.
Even if you are completely and utterly convinced that such levels of financial success will never happen to you — you really never know which game will go viral next.
I'd even argue that $200,000 isn't always a big number — imagine you worked on a game by yourself for 5 years, and then it had massive success on launch day.
$200,000 of revenue split across 5 years really only earned you $40,000 per year (before expenses and taxes).
But under these rules, you would still owe Unity their cut — and you just have to hope that what they ask you to pay isn't outside your budget.
The same logic would apply to a team of 5 people who made a game in 1 year and evenly shared their revenue.
There are so many different ways you could go bankrupt, it’s not even funny.
I should also mention that Unity is offering discounts on the Runtime Fee if you upgrade to their paid plans.
But with this announcement, Unity removed their cheapest paid plan, which was around a somewhat affordable $40 per month.
Now your only option is to pay $185 per month (or $2,040 per year, paid upfront).
Given that in 2022, the median indie game barely exceeded $1,000 in lifetime revenue, paying for Unity Pro is a serious financial risk.
So as far as I can tell, all of these changes are designed for Unity to siphon cash from the top-selling games, at the expense of... well, literally everyone else.
The Motive For The Murder
Unity has been bleeding massive amounts of cash ever since the company went public.
Net income in 2022 was a negative $921 million — a loss of almost a billion dollars!
Furthermore, Unity’s stock price has plummeted from an all-time high of around $200 in November 2021 all the way down to $36 today.
It's likely they are doing whatever it takes to start turning some kind of profit, even if it means pivoting away from the indie game developers who built Unity's positive reputation in the first place.
Indeed — Unity was always seen as a 100% free engine that any beginner could use to make a professional indie game.
Nearly every decision since its IPO has focused more on monetization for big companies over creating tools for fledgling developers.
And while a certain level of fiduciary duty to investors is required by law, I believe things could’ve been handled without utterly destroying Unity’s reputation.
This was, in my view, a last-ditch effort that flopped horribly.
The Runtime Fee announcement showed a total lack of understanding of Unity's largest customer demographic — the demographic it was initially created to serve — and thus it lost overnight nearly all of the trust it had built up since its inception.
And this is purely my speculation, but the only reason it would make any amount of sense to disregard your primary customer base is if they won’t be for much longer.
For example, last year Unity signed a multi-million dollar government contract.
It’s possible that Unity will be designed for use in more diverse 3D applications than indie video games, and especially built for much more lucrative fields.
The constant developments and integrations with the emerging technologies of VR, AR, AI, and blockchain (Unity’s stock peaked during Zuckerberg’s “metaverse” announcement) are all indicators to me that they’re headed in this direction.
Not to mention the rejection of AppLovin’s buyout in favor of merging with ironSource, two key players in the mobile advertising space.
In other words, pushback from indie game devs might just be a cost of doing business.
I sincerely hope the situation improves for all involved, but as a game developer myself, it would be hard for me to justify using the Unity engine after this.
It’s a reminder to diversify your risk and avoid putting all your eggs in one basket.
And to be clear: if you want to stay with Unity, I respect your decision.
But it's not something I would honestly recommend at this time.
What Should You Do?
The good news is that when things like this happen, you can vote with your wallet.
If you haven't started a project yet, or you're still in the early stages, I'd recommend switching engines immediately.
But if you're in the middle of a project or close to the end, it’s probably better to just eat the sunk cost, quickly finish your game using Unity, and then switch engines at the start of your next project.
And fortunately, most of your skills are transferable — learning your first programming language and game engine makes it easier to learn new ones.
An overview of different game engines is an article in its own right, but our readers should check out Unreal Engine, Godot, Game Maker, RPG Maker, and Ren’Py.
Or, if you're an experienced programmer with a lot of patience, you can try your hand at building your own game engine.
I spent 2 hours nearly every night from 2019 to 2021 doing exactly that — and I don't regret it one bit.
My engine doesn't have Unity’s bells and whistles, but it does give me peace of mind during situations like this one.
Community Project
Coincidentally, this week I've been teaching myself Unreal Engine for work on our community game.
We're actually making this game in Ren’Py rather than Unreal, but we are using Unreal to render the background images.
Now, normally I'd consider myself more of a writer or a coder than a 3D artist.
But thanks to Unreal, I've been able to piece together some pretty cool 3D scenes in an incredibly short amount of time.
Despite only using basic shapes and freely available 3D models, I've already built a crime scene that looks like it’s straight out of Danganronpa:
I’m still learning, but given how little time I’ve invested into it, I’m liking the results.
I’m also incredibly proud of all the work our team has done so far!
Considering how well this has gone, I will definitely plan on doing more in the future.
Our project will be made available in October, so be sure to subscribe and you’ll receive an e-mail when it’s ready for you to play!
Thank you for reading!
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