How the Unity Scandal Could Affect Your Favourite Upcoming Games

Recently, Unity — a very famous videogame engine that has been used to create many masterpieces — underwent a massive scandal over its new upcoming pricing practices. In a post announcing an increase in price and a runtime fee, what might have seemed harmless for some and those unaware of the situation became a scandal for many developers and a potential threat for some of the most anticipated upcoming games.

- Artura Dawn

The pricing changes aren't as ludicrous at first glance, as many even understood Unity's desire to earn more from the highest-earning titles created with its engine. Games like Pokémon GO, Raid: Shadow Legends, Genshin Impact, Hollow Knight, and Cuphead have been made using Unity, and the company sought to find a way to earn money from those who found massive success with the engine.

In a now-updated blog named "Unity plan pricing and packaging updates", the company shares its plans to use a runtime fee for those who have reached certain thresholds. Most notably, having earned a certain amount of revenue over the last 12 months, with pricing varying between packages ($200,000 for Unity Personal and Unity Plus to $1,000,000 for Enterprise). Alongside this, your game must have received at least a total of 200,000 installs (Unity Personal and Unity Plus) or 1,000,000 before you qualify for the Runtime Fee.

Calculations and monetary value aside, the biggest controversy that Unity came across was their approach to said fees — owing a price per install. Though these won't be retroactive, many developers on X feared the possible implications for a system that makes you pay per install rather than per unit sold, where bad actors could “install bomb” a game to raise the fees required, or free-to-play games might see large numbers of installs that rack up debt, or subscription services with several million subscribers (such as the case of Xbox Game Pass) could see these fees skyrocket.