Unity announced big changes following the hated Runtime Fee

After the absolute disaster that was their original Runtime Fee announcement, Unity have now put up another apology and announced what the new plan is going forward.

Their new plan will keep Unity Personal free and there's no Runtime Fee for games made with it. The revenue cap there is also moving up to $200,000 and they're removing the requirement to show the Made with Unity splash screen. Additionally, no game earning less than $1 million in a 12 month period will be subject to the Runtime Fee.

For developers on Unity pro and Enterprise, the Runtime Fee will now only apply with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024. So existing games and games with older Unity versions will not be included (unless developers choose to upgrade).

Unity said they will also "make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version", so they won't change the terms for existing users. Although, we've heard that before and they changed their mind as I noted in a previous article.

For games that are subject to their new Runtime Fee, they will offer a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share "or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month" and those numbers will be self-reported by developers and they will "always" be billed the lesser amount.

They're also inviting developers to a live fireside chat hosted by Jason Weimann today at 8 PM UTC.

Pictured Credit - Unity

As for how Unity will calculate the Runtime Fee from the FAQ it states: "While we always recommend you supply your own data, in the absence of that, we will use our own data from Unity services that you have agreed to integrate into your project, and readily available external data." and they also confirmed the Unity Runtime does not phone home by default unless developers have hardware stats enabled.

The new plan that has a fresh policy page here is a lot better that's for sure but is it enough? Their original announcement and the anger it caused for developers has broken a lot of trust.

What are your thoughts?