Unity Kills The Runtime Fee

In a blog post, Unity CEO Matt Bromberg announces that the controversial runtime fee will finally be scrapped. Exactly one year after its launch, the question remains whether Unity will ever fully regain the trust of developers.

On 12 September 2023, Unity announced the end of the Unity Plus subscription in a blog post and announced a runtime fee (in German), which caused a shockwaves in the global game development community. Smaller companies, indies, students and start-ups in particular, as well as all free-to-play developers, would have faced incalculable costs under the new pricing structure.

Unity quickly corrected the pricing and offerings, which had obviously hardly been discussed with customers in advance. However, the loss of trust was enormous and, as is well known, led to the resignation of CEO John Riccitiello. Jim Whitehurst, who took over the job on an interim basis, introduced Matthew Bromberg as the new CEO in May.

And it was he who once again addressed the community in a blog post to mark the anniversary. "After deep consultation with our community, customers, and partners, we’ve made the decision to cancel the Runtime Fee for our games customers, effective immediately. Non-gaming Industry customers are not impacted by this modification", his text starts.

"Over the last 20 years, we’ve partnered with brilliant designers and developers, artists and engineers, publishers and platforms, to build a world where great games could be built by anyone, for everyone. We called it 'democratizing game development', and it remains our core mission today."

"However, we can’t pursue that mission in conflict with our customers; at its heart, it must be a partnership built on trust", Bromberg wrote.

He then briefly outlines the new three-tier pricing model that will be used in future. It consists of Unity Personal, which, as announced last year, will continue to be free of charge for studios that remain below a certain annual turnover or funding. This cap will be doubled from 100,000 dollars to 200,000 dollars per year.

There are also still the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise models, but these will have price increases from 1 January 2025. Unity Pro for companies with an annual turnover of more than 200,000 US-Dollar will then cost 2,200 US-Dollars per year and seat. The customised packages within Unity Enterprise will increase in price by 25 per cent. Unity Enterprise is mandatory for developers who generate more than 25 million Dollars revenue or funding per year.