I think everyone has a rough idea what has been happening with Unity the past couple of weeks. It doesn’t happen often that we get a big uproar from game developers and there are few things where we’d see such a big uproar. Only one of the biggest game engines could elicit such a response. For the people that don’t know, Unity is one of the biggest public engines out there. It’s an engine that specializes in 2D, phone games and games that use cartoon/anime art styles. Furthermore, it is an engine beloved by smaller development companies and up and coming game designers, however it is also used by some very big companies which is undoubtedly what they are trying to target.
Earlier this month Unity announced a change in its pricing regulations which sparked worldwide outrage. Right now, Unity charges a flat yearly fee to use their engine, which is like what other big engines do. Earlier this month they announced an upcoming change to that charge, opting to go from a flat yearly fee to a charge for every download of a game using their engine. They proposed 0.2$ for every download after 200k downloads, to some this may not sound too bad initially but the circumstances surrounding the engine is what turn this into a problem.
I mentioned earlier that Unity is popular with smaller companies and developers, these companies and developers usually release low priced or even free games to get their name out. Part of these price changes would completely discourage that, 200k downloads really aren’t that many in this industry. Releasing a free demo that ends up being a hit can ruin you and while it isn’t a guarantee, the risk is too much to ask for. Besides small companies there are some very big games out, made by very big companies, that are the obvious targets for these changes. It just so happens that a little app called Pokémon Go and 2 of the top games ranked by yearly revenue, Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, are made in Unity.
Another issue raised by people is how they track the downloads to count towards those 200k and to that they’ve said that they wouldn’t use their proprietary software to track game installs. Instead, they would rely on companies’ self reporting the amount of downloads the game in question had. This of course makes everything sound like a poorly thought-out idea and honestly makes everything seem like a bad cash grab. The biggest companies affected by this change haven’t made any comments about the proposed changes, meanwhile most indie developers have taken to X, formerly twitter, to denounce the changes and the engine.
Now Unity was quick to make some “clarifications” and apologize for “confusing” everyone with the proposed changes. I can’t help but feel like it's incredibly demeaning to suggest everyone is confused when it's perfectly clear what they want to do but that is besides the point. Unity’s stock price to a nosedive and the developer confidence is all but gone. Unity at this point has almost become the laughingstock with some very funny jokes coming from the ordeal. It is sad that such a greedy decision has led to this, and I can’t help but believe it's a symptom of a growing level of greed in the game industry. The CEO of Unity has made some statements in the past that sound like the greed of a bad movie villain and now with everyone losing faith in the engine, we’ll have to see how this turns out.
