Unity Cancels Controversial Runtime Fee Effective Immediately

Unity has cancelled the controversial Runtime Fee after “deep consultation” with its community and partners. This goes into effect immediately.

Matt Bromberg, the President and CEO of Unity, wrote a message on the blog announcing this decision. Customers who aren’t part of the gaming industry will not be impacted. To summarize his message on the Unity blog, Unity made the engine to “democratize game development,” but if it’s at conflict with its customers, then it can’t fulfill that goal. Though customers understand that price increases are necessary investments in the engine, it shouldn’t “come in a novel and controversial” way.

Unity will return to a normal subscription model. Unity Personal is still free, and the revenue and funding ceiling is $200,000 instead of $100,000. You can also turn off the “Made With Unity” screen that appears when a game boots up if you want to. As for Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise, the subscription pricing will become higher as of January 1, 2025. Unity Pro will see an 8% subscription price increase to $2200. If you make more than $200,000 of revenue or funding, you need to get Unity Pro. Unity Enterprise will see a 25% subscription increase and if you’re making over $25 million of total annual revenue or funding, you will need to upgrade to that plan.

The Runtime Fee was a controversial new plan that Unity implemented in September 2023. Essentially, if you make a game with the Unity Engine, you will need to pay a fee every time someone installed your game. Due to protests from developers and fans around the world, Unity changed the Runtime Fee plan to balance it for the different users.

Unity will cancel the Runtime Fee effect immediately. It will revert to the seat-based subscription model that it had in the past, and this goes for Unity 6 users after the engine comes out later in 2024.