“We have heard you,” Unity posted on Twitter/X on Sunday afternoon. “We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused.”
“We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.”
Within 90 minutes Unity’s tweet had been viewed over 1 million times. Pushback had built over the last five days to Unity’s announcement that next year they’d charge developers per game installation (beyond certain thresholds). IGN reports:
Unity tried to clarify the policy, saying it will only count “net new installs” on any devices starting January 1 and devs would not be paying fees on re-installations, “fraudulent” installs via botnets and the like, trial version, web and streaming games, and charity-related installs. Unity also claimed that “90 percent of customers will not be affected by this change.”
The development community did not take kindly to these proposed changes and clarifications, and many teams across the globe, including Rust 2 developer Facepunch Studios, said they won’t be making their games in Unity now. Others, like Massive Monster, threatened to delete its Unity-made game Cult of the Lamb on January 1 should these changes happen.
The pushback got so severe that Unity offices in San Francisco and Austin had to close due to what it called a credible death threat.
