After the recent slate of indie developers speaking out against Unity’s recently-announced plans to revise how it makes money off games developed using the engine, the company has taken to social media platform X to release a new statement.
“We have heard you,” reads the post by Unity. “We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused.”
The company recently came under fire for its new monetisation policy, which revolved around charging developers any time a game made in Unity was installed on a player’s system. When originally announced, this included players reinstalling games. The new policy was also set to be retroactive, applying to older Unity-based games as well.
“We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy,” the statement continues. “We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.”
Quite a few indie developers have spoken out against Unity’s new policy, including the studio behind Among Us, as well as the developer behind indie roguelike title Caves of Qud.
Indie developer Rami Ismail has criticised Unity’s new statement, stating that the company taking so long to clarify its new policy and the statement is “terrifying”. Ismail goes on to call the issue between developers and the engine maker an issue of trust.
We have heard you. 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…
— Unity (@unity) September 17, 2023
It’s terrifying to think Unity leadership dragged this over the weekend leaving every studio out there with genuine existential concerns, and even now cannot simply go “our intent is to drop the per-install fee”. We have to be worried longer & we have to keep talking about this. https://t.co/p9JKgaxNGI
— Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) September 18, 2023
