Unity will charge developers money per new game installation

Unity will adjust the prices it charges to engine developers. From next year they will have to pay per download. Various tiers will be available, starting at 20 cents per game download.

Unity says that from now on it will charge a Unity Runtime Fee for games that use the Unity Engine. Those games connect to the Unity Runtime component and, according to the company, this happens “billions of times a month.”

The new model applies to games that meet two criteria. They must be games that have generated at least $200,000 in revenue over the past twelve months and have 200,000 total installs. There is no time limit on the latter. Game makers then fall within the Unity Personal and Unity Plus tiers. In addition, there is a Unity Pro and an Enterprise tier for at least one million dollars in revenue and one million installations. Games that fall into the Personal and Plus tiers and have up to a million monthly downloads will pay twenty cents per download. Games in the Pro and Enterprise tier pay different prices, ranging between one and fifteen dollar cents per download.

Unity defines an install as any time a player downloads and installs a game. A company spokesperson says to Axios that this only concerns initial installations on the same device, but if a player downloads a game on a second device, the fee does apply.

The new prices will take effect from January 1, 2024. In November this year, Unity will add some new tools to the paid tiers. For example, there will be an Asset Manager and a tool to add AI models to Runtime. Unity writes in a faq that licenses for gambling and educational games are excluded from the price plans.