It’s been almost a full week since Unity announced its controversial Runtime Fee, and the developer backlash continues.
Studios around the world have expressed concerns that the new fee – charging them every time their game is installed after January 1, 2024, providing they meet certain thresholds – threatens to jeopardise the health, or even existence, of their business. And despite subsequent statements from Unity, it’s still not entirely apparent how badly these businesses will be affected.
“The most ridiculous part of this fiasco is that the full effects of Unity’s decision on the business aren’t even clear,” says Ustwo Games chief creative officer Danny Gray. “We’re left astounded that an operation of that size can move forward with such ill-thought-out plans and are now scrambling to make amendments.”
I’m not a lawyer, but this seems illegal, they can’t retroactively change licenses, imagine Microsoft decides that starting January 1st you need to pay them 20¢ each time you open the file explorer or each time you boot windows. They can’t just decide to change their pricing strategy for an existing product that people have already agreed to. They could make it that starting from version X that would be the price, because people with games already released or in the works can keep the current terms with the downside of not being able to update the engine, or even have a page where people can contact them to tell what is their current project so that projects that started before this date are not affected. But the way it’s being done feels like it should be illegal.
Somebody’s already asked some lawyers and they’ve already said it is illegal. Now we’re just waiting for somebody to sue them, but it’ll probably take a while because getting all of that paperwork sorted will take some time.